I am amazed at the effort (thread continues in October) a developer of Java AWT will expend to make possible bad user interface.
I am amazed at the effort (thread continues in October) a developer of Java AWT will expend to make possible bad user interface.
Unix crack
Before I went to bed last night, I decided I should leave myself a note to try something later. I don't use a sticky note program or anything like that, and I figured I would miss a file containing the note. I decided to touch a note:
touch "Try blahblah for the blahblahblah"
That way, when I run ls, as I'm sure to do, I see my message.
But 'M' comes before 'T', so I was dissatisfied with the result. I renamed the file with a numeric prefix.
Then, I thought, "Why restrict myself to one line?" Indeed, I could insert newline characters in the filename, so I did so. But ls just showed question marks instead of newlines. A check of the man page revealed the --show-control-chars option. It worked, except for scatterring all the other filenames about. A wildcard fixed that easily enough.
So now I have these two (surely not portable) shell scripts, note and notes. The first takes a string argument and touches it with a little modification. The second lists, "showing" control characters, files matching those made by the first. Neither checks input or anything like that; I was about to fall asleep.
note
#!/bin/sh touch ".^HNote from `date +"%-I:%M%P %A %e %B %Y"` $1"(That's '^H' the backspace character, not "^H" the string caret and 'H'.)
notes
#!/bin/sh ls --show-control-chars .?Note*(The '?' is a wildcard to catch the backspace.)
The backspace character rubs out the '.' which is there to keep normal ls clean. I sacrificed my initial purpose.
With a little modifcation, like using ui -in $USER, notes could include author information or whatever else. Of course, filename length is limited.
Well, for whatever reason, I only slept about two hours. I think I'll go back to bed now.
Hardware
We need at least two new computers, so I went to CompUSA to see what sort of things they're selling. I have a feeling they're not selling much; either they were remodelling, as one small oddly placed sign said, or they decided they didn't need marketing. The store was a mess beyond just the bad floorplan.
One of the fuzzypiles of boxes was littered with signs about customized computers. The most obvious customization available was the shiney Jolly Roger power supply fan grill.
When we need 128-bit machines to store Unix time, there will be a museum featuring a display case of PDAs next to an SUV with a sign, "Life before the extraterrestrial overlords. Be happy, citizen."
I wandered over to the dismal laptop section. The laptop business must depend on ignorance, stupidity, and desperation. It should be obvious that a laptop will not be used in a clean room, yet every laptop had a multipart keyboard. The design requirements must have included "short lifespan." Standalone keyboards would also be better with fewer parts, but they're at least sturdier and easier to replace. To get a decent keyboard on a laptop, you have to buy a "ruggedized" laptop; I guess that somehow ties into the SUV philosophy.
The standalone keyboards were hilarious. Some of them had a warning like, "Some experts think prolonged use of any keyboard may cause injury." They didn't even need any markup to get across the sarcastic tone. These warnings were etched into the plastic, not stickers. They also stated that more information could be found on the bottom of the keyboard. I tried to look, but the keyboards were bolted onto the shelves. (So much for checking heft.) Of course, most of them featured Windows keys, arrays of buttons, and Windows shortcut engravings.
My depression is a medical condition?
Craftsman
Craftsman hand tools have always had an unlimited warranty. To this day, past the 1950's demise of durable goods, you can take a broken Craftsman hand tool to any Sears store and get a replacement at no cost. (Sometimes the clerk doesn't know this, so you have to ask for the manager.)
GNOME Blog
Just now trying the free standing GNOME Blog. I got lost. Instead of the blog entry window, it opened to the preferences page. At first I thought the entry window was somehow buried underneath something else. For the third time, I had to set it to Advogato and enter my username and password. The applet version never survive being removed from the panel; this seems to be a systemic applet bug. The password field is asterisked out, but the key value is stored unencrypted.
There are a few HIG violations and other UI errors.
As with most applications, GNOME Blog doesn't need preferences. It just needs a blog and some other data to post an entry. That this state is stored where various preferences are stored is an implementation detail. I can see two ways to eliminating the bogon:
(I told Seth online that I'd just blog my complaints instead of adding to the email and bug reports he's already receiving. ;-) )
Another Test
The bold 'A' button uses the STRONG tag, and the italic 'A' button uses the EM tag. They behave oddly - only working when something is selected. The "Add Link" button, on the other hand, doesn't work on the selection at all. And I keep pressing enter at the end of a visual line because I'm used to soft returns from other markup contexts.
Does the person tag work? I am auspex.
What about explicit anchors? Advogato
The title entry didn't do anything. Maybe it should be removed when the blog is advogato.
I've noticed the button states for STRONG, EM, and the panel applet button get confused. The tag buttons will stay down when focus is changed via keyboard. The panel applet button was pushing in on mouseover for a while.
Maybe the popup window should skip the window list? It seems odd to have a borderless window with two buttons on the panel.
Must remember to check the source of the posted entry.
Temperament
tk: according to http://keirsey.com/personality/nt.html, Rand would be an INTJ. (And you've a typo s/F/T/.)
tk, faassen: According to that same site, when depressed (like now) I'm either a "mastermind" (Eisenhower, Rand) or a "fieldmarshal" (Gates (!), Thatcher). And when not, add: "crafter", "promotor", "inspector", and "supervisor".
Oh, yeah, and I'm also an Aries and a Dragon. ;-)
GUP
I think personas [sic] are a gimmick. They're a way to get programmers to think about the things that, in my experience, in programming classes they're taught to think about and detest thinking about. They're a shortcut around rigorous design. I never met anyone who liked drafting a flowchart. I hope they'll be an effective gimmick for GNOME.
Part of the trouble I'm having with a design document is the persnicketiness of some people. You can ask, "Does the application allow the user to create something?" and get the response, "Yes. My application allows the user to create a device state." Try to narrow it down: "Does the application allow the user to create a document?" "Yes. The document which is the permanent storage of the device state." If you actually manage to get a precise question: "This document is too long. I'm not reading it."
Another thing bugging me is that people make a living off of this, or at least get a degree. I doubt I'll be doing either.
Temperament
mibus mentions an article about introverts. In false one-upmanship, I declare that my group is more rare than introverts. Almost every time I've gone through a personality sorter (hmm, sounds painful), I've found myself split between introversion and extroversion. On rare occassion, I've been a point to one side or the other.
It gets worse. I'm not only split between introversion and extroversion, I'm also split between the pairs sensing/intuiting and judging/perceiving. Only in the pair thinking/feeling do I fall clearly to one side: thinking. However, depression is a wicked thing. I am not certain of this, but when depressed I seem to fall to intuiting and judging - slightly.
So, my normal type: XXTX; my depressed type: XNTJ.
(The one-upmanship is false because I'm really just bewildered. Most people I know fall heavy to one type.)
GUP
Minimal progress. I wrote my to-do list thinking that doing so would prevent a depressed lull. It didn't work.
[Edited to correct a spelling error.]
My GUP to-do list
Other software to-do's
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!