Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2021

OCR results:
Clara requires X11. Not happening on my Windows box, and a bit too much to ask for a Windows solution (my scanner is Windows-only atm). The app only requires stubs, I think. Looks like it was written poorly if that's the case and needs a good refactoring.

gocr... Installs great, but less than great results. Here are the results of reading in a test scan of a piece of paper (printed by inkjet) I had laying around:

- override filllnStackTrace() ìn Exceptions, if this is
O.K. for your app security and debugging.
public Throwable fllInStackTr8ce() ( return nuIl.)
- _on't etop your application immediately ìf your code detects
that sOmeone is obvíous Iy hacking the lioense check (no h8It
after fnt liGense check. second one faìls). Modi_ some
variables instead that wíII break execution at a far later
stage in the program.

So for Windows, for now go to this location to download Wocar, which luckily gave out a free [for non-commercial use] version before selling out (hey, nothing wrong with that, but that's what he did) and Wocar became Simple OCR.

Here're the results from Wocar (much better interface as well. Hit F9 to get your scanner started, and voila, the image is right in Wocar. Oh yeah, results:

- override filllnstackTracel) in Exceptions, if this is
O.K. for your app security and debugging:
public Throwable filllnstackTracet) ( return nuIl;)
- Don't stop your application immediately if your code detects
that someone is obviously hacking the license check (no halt
after erst license check, second one fails). Modify some
variables instead that will break execution at a far later

Word for word. There were only three mistakes, two of whice were in the following line (with one of the mistakes repeated elsewhere):
public Throwable filllnstackTracet) ( return nuIl;)

... which should have read...

public Throwable filllnstackTrace() { return nuIl; }

Get Wocar while you can for the best, free (if not Free and open) OCR application available for Windows. (NOTE: On second look, SimpleOCR's application (but not API) is free as well. I gave it a shot. Interface is, as a whole, not nearly as intuitive and useful as Wocar's, I'm afraid. Results were the same, plus a mistake. SimpleOCR seems a step down at first look.)

freakinname aside

Another example where I'd rather have something written well for free than something written poorly open source. This one guy did better for the fun of it than at least one open source project -- one I've seen reviewed against commercial programs, so it's apparently relatively popular. One good programmer, sticking to what s/he knows, given time, is all you need to make a great app. I'd be interested to see the Wocar (now SimpleOCR) ActiveX object and gauge how easy it is to use the object in an app.

A well commented object that works is definitely worth more to a programmer than even a fairly well-documented open source project (and try and find one of those!) that's only partially done.

A while back, I finally got fed up enough with my choices for "real" ftp clients (that is, a dedicated GUI-fied ftp client) on Mac OS 9 that I finally shelled out for Panic's Transmit. It's not cheap, at least not as cheap as I'd expect an ftp client to be. I even asked if they'd accept less than the $25 they were asking, and got back a relatively haughty email (imo) saying how many universities, etc and other clients had felt that the price was justified. (Fwiw, they seem like pretty good guys; I don't think they intended that email to come across haughty.)

Anyhow, I eventually shelled out my $25. Transmit is a very nice app, and as I upgraded to OS X, though the cmd-line ftp client is right easy to get to, I still missed Transmit. Panic was working on Carbonizing 1.7 (the version I'd gotten -- Carbonizing is, oversimplified, a way of using the same codebase you'd been using in Mac Classic and use it in OS X with minimal tweaking), and I was hopeful.

Well, after a while trying to create a Carbonized version, which they released for free to beta test, they essentially gave up and "rewrote [Transmit] from scratch in Cocoa for Mac OS X". And for me to get a copy, I've got to shell out another $17 (so about $7-8 off for having registered the first version).

That doesn't make me particularly happy. When I registered 1.7, iirc (and granted that's an important if, but it is the impression I've got), I was told I'd get free upgrades for the rest of time. I didn't ask Panic to rewrite Transmit for what they see as a new OS. For the consumer (here, of course, me) the move to OS X is not a hurdle that I see. I want my ftp client on my Macintosh.

I'm not quite going to call shenanagans b/c OS X is a new OS, and as a bit of a programmer, I can see that being a problem. But imagine if there was no OS X yet and we were still on OS 9.9.999.9 and somebody rewrote their app from scratch to use what they felt was a better technology. And then say they charged you for this upgrade after telling you you'd get all upgrades for free if you "register today". That's hardly fair, is it? Back to our our Transmit example: For the "uneducated", OS 9 and OS X are the same thing -- one is just a newer version of the other.

Why should I pay again to compensate for your decision to rewrite your application in another langauge?

Anyhow, not something that's going to get me too upset, but I did think that this is something software programmers, including myself, need to remember about clients. If they don't see something as a hurdle, it's going to be hard to justify the cost. Transmit is just the example that hits closest to home. And so far, I've been content to use ftp on the cmd-line in OS X.

title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.	descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Quote quoted in a Maccentral article, taking on the perception that 99¢ per song is too much in Apple's new music service: "At the end of the day Apple is not going to stop music piracy on its own. People that want everything for free and are not willing to pay a penny for their music are not going to go with this service. But they aren't going to go with it at $0.50 a song or $0.10 a song -- there is no sweet spot for those people." I think that's important. You're simply not going to convince many pirates to spend a dime on legit music downloads. Free is free. Similar to my thoughts on having your trialware app cracked, I'm not sure going through great pains to introduce any amount of trouble for pirates to use illegit 0's and 1's is going to increase your revenue significantly. You're not trying to make your service attractive to pirates. You're trying to make money from people who will actually pay it. posted by ruffin at 4/30/2003 07:18:00 AM

Tuesday, April 29, 2003
note to self posted by ruffin at 4/29/2003 02:27:00 PM

One interesting item I've finally figure out is that Windows users are quite happy with GUIs that suck. Visual Basic allows you to throw any sized button and textarea anywhere you want. Things don't have to line up, and in many apps they don't. Many GUIs end up looking "non-standard" when compared to the apps MS ships -- everything from help screens to config panels to notepad to Office. In Java, this is often a big complaint. "These apps don't look right." People think this because they don't hold a truely native Windows look & feel, even when using Windows look and feel. You don't see many applications like this on the Mac. They're there; don't get me wrong. REALbasic allows you to make just as ugly an app as VB. But there aren't as many out there, and certainly not as many successful applications rolling in dough that you'll use in the office-place, if only b/c most offices don't use Macs. Apple also makes a bigger deal of following their GUI guidelines. At any rate, it's good to know that GUI perfection isn't a must for Windows apps. Much more flexibilty when "designing" a GUI. Not that being slack is a good idea, but it's better to know and understand expectations of users than not. posted by ruffin at 4/29/2003 09:18:00 AM

Monday, April 28, 2003
New iTunes is neat. A decent amount of "Apple-owner type" music in there. Sheryl Crow, Sting, some pop crap. Also a ton of Allman Brothers, which was surprising. Some require you to buy an album at once (can't get the 33 minute Mountain Jam for 99¢, dang it), others have ye olde 99¢ price tag, which I'm going to go ahead and predict goes up quite a bit within six months. I might grab one of the Sting "exculsives" for the hell of trying the new music store out. Many top notch bands are missing, however. Rolling Stones aren't there. No Madonna. No Kool Moe Dee. iTunes 4 still sucks up 15-35% of my G3 when playing tunes. When they added the "Shop" button to Mozilla and called it "Netscape", I was upset. Not so with iTunes, yet. This really does seem to be Napster done right. 30 second previews for free, CD quality songs for 99¢... even a decent (if not great) selection. Each artist also has a pretty fancy "home page" with all their offerings listed, and even links to videos. That part is very well done, so far. Once the price goes up and the pop-ups start, however, sign me off. I was also imporessed with the front page of the store. Embedded Safari, you think? Looks like Apple finally figured out the power of a browser in their apps. At any rate, worth a download as is. posted by ruffin at 4/28/2003 08:38:00 PM

One thing that's awful obvious to me now is that you have to target money to make money. Want to write the next great Internet utility -- or even a cheesy email list digest parsing application -- for home computer users everywhere? That's great, but it's not going to make money. Note that I haven't released the app yet, but it's already becoming painfully obvious. Much of your potential audience is getting along fairly well now without your app, and for the less-than-hardcore digest users (in my case), the advantage over what they do now is too small for customers to say, "Wow, $15?!! I'll save more than $15 of time in the first two months of use!" If you want to make money, target money. Make an application that handles finances. Target an industry, not a home user. Make something that benefits a business, not just its employees on an individual basis. Appeal to a team or a manager's sense of "time is money in the workplace" by creating something they need to make a sale. But most importantly, get contacts in the business where you want to make dough. The best advice I think I can give a programmer who wants to go into business for him or herself is to practice them people skills. You're going to have to be able to sell yourself to people who have money to make money. Have I driven that point home well enough yet? Utilities and consumer apps are great, and if you have the desire to make something "done right go for it. But if your motavation for programming your own thing is to make dough, target dough. posted by ruffin at 4/28/2003 10:57:00 AM

Saturday, April 26, 2003
Looks like working on Saturday encourages breaking. Anyhow, here's a quote from a particularly good post on Slashdot. [Microsoft is] willing to take ten YEARS to let something come to fruition; they have no problem 'waiting for fullness.' This is a HUGE advantage that a lot of OSS people simply don't have; whoever's coding NiftyApp gets bored around version 0.64 and drops it, and meanwhile, some other guys is making GniftyApp 0.4 because he doesn't feel like working with the first guy. On the other side of the pond, Microsoft will let something fail, and fail, and fail, tweak, twist, fix, and then they have something worth having. People who like open source often point to the biggest projects, but as we've seen with Mozilla on Mac OS 9-, sometimes when you take away the money, even the largest projects die as well. How many people are really coding large, successful projects, like OpenOffice, Mozilla, Eclipse, even AbiWord, primarily because they love coding? How about Red Hat and IBM's contributions to Linux? How about jEdit and SQuirrL SQL, two apps I use every working day? Even people who write apps for the fun of it are often doing it to make themselves more marketable, even if their motavation isn't as bad as those open source vaporware projects I mentioned a while back. That's where a successful, commercial company has a great advantage. Longevity and a reason (unfortunately money) to keep with it. Good post. posted by ruffin at 4/26/2003 12:05:00 PM

I believe the thing that needs the most innovation in contemporary computer OSs is file navigation. I think MS is on the right track by using SQL Server to keep track of files. If I want to go to a folder called, "myProject_1", there should be some way to hit a key-combo (that says, "find dir") and then type in "myProj" and see everything that starts with "myProj" as if I were Googling my directory hierarchy. The quickest I can do it now is in Windows Explorer (or, if I know the whole path, Windows-R), alt-D to open a location, and start typing, "C:\dir1\dir2\dir3\myProject...". No search, no nothing. You should also be able to jump to a recently used folder with a simple keystroke combo. Same thing with applications. Apple's app bundles are a good first step of treating apps and folders equally. Somebody do all this in Linux before it's patented. Or I should hack it in VB, I guess. And then get sued b/c somebody already patented it. posted by ruffin at 4/26/2003 10:30:00 AM

A conversation with Eclipse's ftp server. Status: Connecting to download2.eclipse.org ... Status: Connected with download2.eclipse.org. Waiting for welcome message... Response: 220 Welcome to the download2.eclipse.org FTP service. All activity is logged. Command: USER anonymous Response: 331 Please specify the password. Command: PASS ****************** Response: 230 Login successful. Have fun. Status: Connected Command: CWD /R-2.1-200303272130/ Response: 250 Directory successfully changed. Command: PWD Response: 257 "/R-2.1-200303272130" Command: TYPE I Response: 200 Binary it is, then. Command: PORT 10,24,1,57,7,138 Response: 200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV. Command: RETR eclipse-examples-2.1-win32.zip Response: 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for eclipse-examples-2.1-win32.zip (1239714 bytes). Command: PWD Response: 257 "/R-2.1-200303272130" Response: 226 File send OK. Status: Download successful Command: REST 0 Response: 350 Restart position accepted. Status: Disconnected from server Command: TYPE A Response: 200 ASCII tastes bad, dude. Status: Disconnected from server posted by ruffin at 4/26/2003 10:22:00 AM

Friday, April 25, 2003
Today's lesson: Once you've gotten an application to the point that it's releasable, release it. It's been months since I decided to add "just one more feature" to my trialware app before releasing it, and it's nowhere to be found. Why add the feature now? Well, I covinced myself that doing so would save me time not coding for backwards compatibilty later. It's not even that I'm particularly stuck. I just haven't set aside the time for this next relatively major refactoring and feature addition. Of course a smart man would have simply added the functionality to anticipate the new feature instead of trying to add it all now, making major changes to the GUI, etc. In this case, I just have to add one extra line of text for each entry in a particular file. For now, the code just needs to know to write a dummy entry into that line and to ignore it when reading later. Easy as that, my app's infrastructure is ready for the future update. This, of course, is the time I wish I had source control on my tiny app. I've got old folders with the whole slew of source around, but no notes saying what's been done to each. But I think I can pull out something old, add the anticipatory functionality only, and finally get the danged thing out the door. As I think I've mentioned before, this experience has really helped me see why so many apps have quirks that you think would be awuflly easy to fix. At some point, you have to stop worrying about quirks and ship your product. It may not be idealistically perfect, but if it's a useful, fairly priced app, the proverbial world will still be better for your having released it. posted by ruffin at 4/25/2003 10:08:00 PM

Thursday, April 24, 2003
Was using my iBook today and noticed the terminal wasn't taking input very quickly, which is a sign some sort of process is taking way more processing time than it should. After checking, it was our old friend, iTunes 3. On the .5 GHz iBook, iTunes 3 will take 20-30% of my processor's time to play whatever it is I'm listening to. So I decided to run iTunes 2 in Classic to see if I got any bonus. Nope! 30-40%, typically. What the heck is it that takes up so much power? It'd be interesting to grab REALbasic again and use Quicktime to play mp3s and see what's what. More interesting would be to grab whatever will play mp3s on top of Darwin and see how that compares. Of course, Terminal could also use a bit of a rewrite if you notice a processor's not even half drained when typing. posted by ruffin at 4/24/2003 07:45:00 PM

Sybase 5.0 has a different abbreviation for minutes than later versions. It's not "mi". `select DATEFORMAT('2001-07-17 14:20:10.0', 'mm/Dd/yyyy hh:nn:ss.ms') 07/17/2001 14:20:10.70` Voila. posted by ruffin at 4/24/2003 01:31:00 PM

Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Decently commented editable flexgrid for VB4-6. posted by ruffin at 4/23/2003 12:44:00 PM


Though O'Reilly's history followed a UNIX/open source path with its first few books, they've quickly found that there's dough to be had in the Microsoft world. This article at O'Reilly's ondotnet site is a real break from the O'R tradition. Here we have some MS sellout quoting Bill Gates on security, even if slightly tongue in cheek, and, much worse, embracing and extending a word for heaven's sake. Remember Apple's rendezvous standard? With the above article on .NET, the author abstracts what Apple's Rendezvous does and talks about a more generic "rendezvous problem". He's deflating Apple's standard, and making .NET programmers who have read his article use a totally different lexicon than those trying to use Apple's Rendezvous for discovery-based networking/app communication. This has no place in a "tutorial site". I'd understand if MS threw out the smoke screen; they make money by beating competitors. But what motavation has this author got to obscure technologies like this? Tutorials should be written to make programming easier in every aspect of their content, not confuse schmoes. Save that for the MS propaganda. posted by ruffin at 4/23/2003 08:17:00 AM

Tuesday, April 22, 2003
The following is from a customer newsletter that my current company sent out today. I don't think this is news to any programmer, but is a good compiled list for a program's clients. * Tab - to move from one field to the next on a form * Shift + Tab - to move backwards through the fields * Space Bar - For marking checkboxes * Arrow keys (right, left or up) - For directional movement * MS Window Key +R - Calls the run box to start a program. You can type in the program name, such as Winword, and then press enter to start the program without using the start menus. * MS Window Key +R +WinWord (typed in the Run box) - Opens Microsoft Word * MS Window Key +R +Excel (typed in the Run box) - Opens Microsoft Excel * MS Window Key +R +Outlook (typed in the Run box) - Opens Microsoft Outlook * MS Window Key +M - Minimizes all windows * MS Window Key +F - Launches the Search Window * MS Window Key +E - Launches Explorer * Shift + Crtl + arrow keys - to highlight words * CTL + C - to copy the selection * CTL + V - to paste the selection * Alt + Tab - to switch between open applications on your workstation * First Letter - When selecting from a drop-down list, enter the first letter of the entry desired. Then use the arrow keys to move up or down to the entry (if there is more than one entry with the same first letter). Be sure to sort your tables alphabetically to make best use of this feature. * Alt + Letter - To change tabs without clicking the mouse, Press Alt + the underlined letter on the Tab. posted by ruffin at 4/22/2003 08:28:00 AM

As most people already know, you can use the SQL Server 2k core for free, but redistribution rights are a little funky. ASP.NET apps can pretty much use MSDE for free, as ASP.NET Matrix is free (the ASP.NET-specific IDE). But at worst, if you're creating a .NET app, you're a $90 IDE away from free SQL 2k. posted by ruffin at 4/22/2003 08:22:00 AM

Monday, April 21, 2003
In the little bit I've messed with it, Apple's X11 port is quite good. It really should ship as part of OS X. Even if the apps aren't aquafied, the fact that they can run natively at all is great news for Mac fans. posted by ruffin at 4/21/2003 07:25:00 PM

Making a true console app in VB. Cute. posted by ruffin at 4/21/2003 04:21:00 PM

Friday, April 18, 2003
From here: Q. Dear Uncle Louie -- There seems to be nothing of substance in your column. My question is, "Where's the BEEF?" A. $BEEF is located at address 48879. Har har har har har!!!! sigh posted by ruffin at 4/18/2003 02:01:00 PM

1.) I don't think this is going to work, if the rumor's true. 2.) Was sent two MS Word docs today. Finally got the iBook printing and didn't care to hook up the XP box (which is a flight of stairs away as well), but I don't have Word on the Mac. What to do?!! That's easy! Download Apple's port of X11 and then download Abiword. Abiword has some trouble printing [on Mac OS X through X11], but will open a .doc and will save it to .rtf. Open .rtf in TextEdit and poof! "Free" .doc printing. Might not sound like the most direct way to print out your .doc files, but since I had plenty to do while things were downloading and installing, it was really pretty pain-free. Just one quick step away from opening .docs in TextEdit, and "no" steps away from viewing the .docs on the screen. Open source on Mac strikes again. posted by ruffin at 4/18/2003 12:16:00 AM

Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Have you used VB6's Package and Deployment Wizard? Don't!!! Grab the Microsoft Visual Studio Installer 1.1 instead. posted by ruffin at 4/16/2003 10:36:00 AM

Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Ah, also meant to say I think I'm switching free ftp client, while we're on the subject of good free software like Wocar and Cygwin-like jive. I've been using LeechFTP, which is a free client for Windows that hasn't been developed for quite some time now (years). Rather, it's now Bitbeamer or something similar and costs money. Good client. Some errors are in German and there's often an error on startup as it tries to find its update server (probably some way to turn that off). And worst of all, occasionally with very long transfers I get some errors. I'm going to start using FileZilla now, I believe. MIT endorses it, at least implicitly, and it seems feature-complete. Another neat homespun app that wasn't released as commercial software b/c there was "too much competition" already. Wish somebody would take that tack on MacOS, but c'est la vie. There are several decent Java-based ftp clients, but none have screamed, "polished final product" like FileZilla and leechftp (leech is almost there, so not really screaming) do. posted by ruffin at 4/15/2003 12:36:00 PM

Here are some ports of common GNU utilities to native Win32. In this context, native means the executables do only depend on the Microsoft C-runtime (msvcrt.dll) and not an emulation layer like that provided by Cygwin tools. Useful, smaller than Cygwin tools for use on MS OSs. I'd wanted to use sed for a while. Need to learn sed (or Perl, I've been thinnin') as it'd replace my reliance on cheeseball VB6 apps I've written for text manipulation. posted by ruffin at 4/15/2003 12:19:00 PM

Monday, April 14, 2003
Woohoo! New Safari beta and I finally bothered to look and see if Lexmark had new drivers for OS X for my old inkjet on a lark and poof they do! What a day. First time I've printed from the iBook, strangely enough. posted by ruffin at 4/14/2003 10:57:00 PM

Sunday, April 13, 2003
OCR results: Clara requires X11. Not happening on my Windows box, and a bit too much to ask for a Windows solution (my scanner is Windows-only atm). The app only requires stubs, I think. Looks like it was written poorly if that's the case and needs a good refactoring. gocr... Installs great, but less than great results. Here are the results of reading in a test scan of a piece of paper (printed by inkjet) I had laying around: - override filllnStackTrace() ìn Exceptions, if this is O.K. for your app security and debugging. public Throwable fllInStackTr8ce() ( return nuIl.) - _on't etop your application immediately ìf your code detects that sOmeone is obvíous Iy hacking the lioense check (no h8It after fnt liGense check. second one faìls). Modi_ some variables instead that wíII break execution at a far later stage in the program. So for Windows, for now go to this location to download Wocar, which luckily gave out a free [for non-commercial use] version before selling out (hey, nothing wrong with that, but that's what he did) and Wocar became Simple OCR. Here're the results from Wocar (much better interface as well. Hit F9 to get your scanner started, and voila, the image is right in Wocar. Oh yeah, results: - override filllnstackTracel) in Exceptions, if this is O.K. for your app security and debugging: public Throwable filllnstackTracet) ( return nuIl;) - Don't stop your application immediately if your code detects that someone is obviously hacking the license check (no halt after erst license check, second one fails). Modify some variables instead that will break execution at a far later Word for word. There were only three mistakes, two of whice were in the following line (with one of the mistakes repeated elsewhere): public Throwable filllnstackTracet) ( return nuIl;) ... which should have read... public Throwable filllnstackTrace() { return nuIl; } Get Wocar while you can for the best, free (if not Free and open) OCR application available for Windows. (NOTE: On second look, SimpleOCR's application (but not API) is free as well. I gave it a shot. Interface is, as a whole, not nearly as intuitive and useful as Wocar's, I'm afraid. Results were the same, plus a mistake. SimpleOCR seems a step down at first look.) freakinname aside Another example where I'd rather have something written well for free than something written poorly open source. This one guy did better for the fun of it than at least one open source project -- one I've seen reviewed against commercial programs, so it's apparently relatively popular. One good programmer, sticking to what s/he knows, given time, is all you need to make a great app. I'd be interested to see the Wocar (now SimpleOCR) ActiveX object and gauge how easy it is to use the object in an app. A well commented object that works is definitely worth more to a programmer than even a fairly well-documented open source project (and try and find one of those!) that's only partially done. posted by ruffin at 4/13/2003 08:15:00 PM

Two open source OCR alternatives for me to try later: http://www.claraocr.org/index.html http://jocr.sourceforge.net/download.html posted by ruffin at 4/13/2003 01:13:00 PM

Saturday, April 12, 2003
You got Safari? Check this location for Safari's help file. Very useful. Jump to the Google search bar? Cmd-option-F. Nice. posted by ruffin at 4/12/2003 07:03:00 PM

Friday, April 04, 2003
Why should any application sort these three strings: "Area 2" "Area 12" "Area 20" ... into... "Area 12" "Area 2" "Area 20" ...? I'm tired of ASCII-only searches. There should be a sort order that takes into account numbers in strings. I'm sure somebody's already done it, but I don't know what the name is, and it should be there. ANSI SQL should have it. Functions in the basics of a programming language should support it. It's silly in this day and age of supercomputers on desktops that we don't have more complex standard sorting orders. Rant over. posted by ruffin at 4/04/2003 12:42:00 PM

Interesting, in some ways somewhat similar (in terms of topics) blog. posted by ruffin at 4/04/2003 09:16:00 AM

Beware people who say they have self-commenting code. Be wary-er of a programming team where everyone agrees their team's code is self-commenting! People who say their code is self-commenting count on everyone looking at the code to understand similar coventions. The problem is that they also often overlook and take for granted the full scope of the conventions that they're using. Oh, sure, they might use Hungarian and whitespace, but the conventions used on a programming team extend far past code format. It dips all the way into code structure, logic control, variable scoping, and the like. And if you have a number of people who expect there to always be, say, the path to an error log file defined as a object-level scope variable in every object (let's not debate whether that coding practice is a bad idea and just accept that it is), then the fact that there's nowhere, no comment at all, for a person new to the code to find that information never occurs to the people who used to support that project -- nor will it occur to anyone who's been using those same esoteric conventions for months or years in their own code. Some conventions are universal, but those are only the conventions defined by the programming language itself, like variable types or the grammar for writing a switch/select/case statement. EVERYTHING else needs to be considered commentable. posted by ruffin at 4/04/2003 08:56:00 AM

Thursday, April 03, 2003
Let's see if I can paste in javascript and html here: Un/check to contract/expand. Insert text here, or leave blank, depending on what people should see first. Un/check to contract/expand. Un/check to contract/expand. Un/check to contract/expand. Hrm. Not without some danged ugly whitespace, and inline js is pretty much impossible, it seems. posted by ruffin at 4/03/2003 10:14:00 AM

Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Wow. Ole /. is pretending that they're going to accept my story submission. Incredible. Just on the off-chance that really happens, I thought I'd include a link for people who might wander from /. to here to one of my past blog entries on Swing where I point to where Sun slams [its own] Swing. Sun compares Swing unfavorably to MS Windows GUI techs in this "The AWT Focus Subsystem" doc, and it's a right good read if you're interested in what's really wrong with Java GUIs, straight from the horse's mouth. posted by ruffin at 4/02/2003 06:11:00 PM

Not sure why I keep submitting stories to ole /., but I do. But now, instead of submissions wasting away once they're rejected, I figure I should put the time writing and linking to if-not-good-then-at-least-better-than-nothing use here: Java client application developers should take a look at Sun's J2SE Client Developer Survey. Swing's relative slowness has always made a Java app with a GUI look and feel slow, and Sun might finally be doing something about it. Questions on the survey suggest Sun is considering moving away from a crossplatform look and feel (eg, Metal) towards native looks by default. If Sun is going to follow the suit played by IBM's native widget toolkit, SWT, or do things on individual platforms like Apple has done with its hardware accelerated version of Aqua-Swing, Java might finally find its way to becoming a competitor on the desktop. posted by ruffin at 4/02/2003 02:02:00 PM

Tuesday, April 01, 2003
A while back, I finally got fed up enough with my choices for "real" ftp clients (that is, a dedicated GUI-fied ftp client) on Mac OS 9 that I finally shelled out for Panic's Transmit. It's not cheap, at least not as cheap as I'd expect an ftp client to be. I even asked if they'd accept less than the $25 they were asking, and got back a relatively haughty email (imo) saying how many universities, etc and other clients had felt that the price was justified. (Fwiw, they seem like pretty good guys; I don't think they intended that email to come across haughty.) Anyhow, I eventually shelled out my $25. Transmit is a very nice app, and as I upgraded to OS X, though the cmd-line ftp client is right easy to get to, I still missed Transmit. Panic was working on Carbonizing 1.7 (the version I'd gotten -- Carbonizing is, oversimplified, a way of using the same codebase you'd been using in Mac Classic and use it in OS X with minimal tweaking), and I was hopeful. Well, after a while trying to create a Carbonized version, which they released for free to beta test, they essentially gave up and "rewrote [Transmit] from scratch in Cocoa for Mac OS X". And for me to get a copy, I've got to shell out another $17 (so about $7-8 off for having registered the first version). That doesn't make me particularly happy. When I registered 1.7, iirc (and granted that's an important if, but it is the impression I've got), I was told I'd get free upgrades for the rest of time. I didn't ask Panic to rewrite Transmit for what they see as a new OS. For the consumer (here, of course, me) the move to OS X is not a hurdle that I see. I want my ftp client on my Macintosh. I'm not quite going to call shenanagans b/c OS X is a new OS, and as a bit of a programmer, I can see that being a problem. But imagine if there was no OS X yet and we were still on OS 9.9.999.9 and somebody rewrote their app from scratch to use what they felt was a better technology. And then say they charged you for this upgrade after telling you you'd get all upgrades for free if you "register today". That's hardly fair, is it? Back to our our Transmit example: For the "uneducated", OS 9 and OS X are the same thing -- one is just a newer version of the other. Why should I pay again to compensate for your decision to rewrite your application in another langauge? Anyhow, not something that's going to get me too upset, but I did think that this is something software programmers, including myself, need to remember about clients. If they don't see something as a hurdle, it's going to be hard to justify the cost. Transmit is just the example that hits closest to home. And so far, I've been content to use ftp on the cmd-line in OS X. posted by ruffin at 4/01/2003 11:36:00 AM

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