Notes...that flash by and are gone...(was Re: any good audio/video editing apps in macports?)

[Aljaž Srebrnič]

Hello from a fellow OM and MacPorts dev!

On 25/feb/2013, at 23:12, Jim Graham <spooky130u at gmail.com> wrote:

> Back way before I expected to be able to return.  Strange.
> 
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 08:13:39PM +0100, Jan Stary wrote:
>> On Feb 25 07:42:04, spooky130u at gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 02:05:07PM +0100, Jan Stary wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> There may be something I'm missing here, but why "No way" ?
>> 
>> Because it wants to open new windows.
> 
> Yeah, you said that, and someone else asked about using it in a non-GUI
> environment.  Ok, but it doesn't HAVE to be a GUI version.  Switching
> it from using a text widget and scrollbars would mean changing a few
> lines of code (e.g., instead of "$w.t insert end $message\n" d
> just use "puts $message").  If the idea is to add it at the end, so it
> doesn't scroll right past whatever the user's scrollback buffer is set
> to, that's just a few more lines:
> 
> for each text sent:
> 
>   lappend mlist $message
> 
> and later, when it's all finished (or crashes):
> 
>   foreach line $mlist { puts $line }
> 
> Yeah, very difficult.  :-)

The point is not that it's difficult, but rather cumbersome and not needed by all. Since we are OM, let's talk radio:
Say you do 150WPM CW on your trusty self made QRP transmitter. It's yours, you know it in and out and you like it that way, it does exactly what you intend to do, send out a wave when you press your key. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now say that someone takes your beloved transmitter and shoves a FT1000 in your face. Bam! Thousand buttons, things blinking, SSB traffic blowing from the speaker. What's your reaction?

> 
>>> I've already written a command-line pair of Tcl/Tk scripts
>>> that should work fine, and last night, e-mailed them to
>>> Craig (off-list) in a response to the post you're responding
>>> to.
> 
>> Are you trolling or just high?
> 
> I won't dignify that last bit with an answer.  As for trolling, while I
> do love fishing:
> 
>   A) Wrong time of year for mackeral here (they're further south right now)
> 
>   B) With the severe t-storms we had all night and well into this
>      morning, even the charter boat captains who were the most
>      desperately in need of cash wouldn't even THINK about going through
>      the East Pass to get out onto the Gulf....
> 
>   C) If I WAS out on the Gulf trolling last night, I wouldn't have been
>      here typing away at my computer, now would I?
> 
> So no, I was not out trolling.  I was here.  And WTF does whether or not
> I was out fishing last night or this morning have to do with anything
> even remotely macports related, anyways?

Oh, come on. I believe you wouldn't behave like that on the air. Jan clearly meant something else.

> 
>> Running a server application that opens new windows
>> just to _display_a_few_lines_of_text_ ??
> 
> First, I was told that it's often a lot more than a "few" lines of text.
> But second, it seemed like the easiest way to do it.  You start up the
> server with a one-line command, which then accepts the text to display
> via a simple Tcl socket command from the client (puts $chan $message)
> and displays it.  Wow...very difficult.  Yeah, very tough to code.  :-)
> 
> But there's another point here, and that is, with one app running to
> display the text (whether in a text widget or just printing to a
> terminal, perhaps using less as a pager, you'd have to keep some type
> of interface to it open.  A simple second app that sends it the text
> to display, and is its own one-line (or longer for longer text) command,
> seems, to me, to be the easiest way to implement it:
> 
>   add_text.tcl normal "you need to do something now to make this work"
> 
> OR in a GUI, if you want larger, bold, red text to emphasize something,
> 
>   add_text.tcl boldred "you need to do something now to make this work"
> 
> I could add more than just a bold/red/larger option if needed, but that's
> what's in there right now.
> 
>> (Using various fonts, for sure.
> 
> Yep.  It's currently set up for Courier, but that's easy to change (two
> lines---one for normal and one for larger, bold, red text) set in the
> server app.
> 
>> But where's the piechart?
> 
> What pie chart are you referring to?  Nobody told me that was a
> requirement.
> 
>> Where is the XML, I ask.)
> 
> Same question for XML.  Nobody said anything about that to me.
> 
>> How's about you just display all the packages messages
>> after the port(1) job finishes, and the user, uh, I don't know,
>> reads them?
> 
> You mean something like others and I were discussing both on-list
> and off-list earlier this morning, and also mentioned above?
> Yeah, in a text-only version, that would be, in my opinion for
> what it apparently is not worth crap here, would be the best
> way to do that.
> 
>> Whether you have ever heard about the Keep It Simple, Stupid
>> principle before or not, you are trying to fsck it in the ear.
> 
> You consider 75 lines of code for both the client and the server
> (including all blank lines and comments---basically just
> "wc -l *" output) NOT simple?  Wow.  That's pretty severe.
> 
> Not only that, but the idea was to also keep the IMPLEMENTATION
> simple, too.  I think my idea would have done that quite well.
> 
> Ok, so it's a bad idea.  I did say, in my first mention of this, that if
> nobody wanted to use it, "oh well."  It doesn't bother me a bit if nobody
> liks this or any of my ideas...my rather insignificant ego doesn't give a
> shit, and even then, I tell it to go fsck itself if it speaks up at all.
> So I'll just scrap the idea and go back to what I was doing before.
> Besides, I'd hate to have to make those [sarcasm mode on afterburners]
> very complicated [sarcasm off] one or two line changes to adapt to the
> non-GUI version instead of the GUI one.  Yeah, that might take a whole
> minute or two of my time….

It's not really a bad idea, but it belongs in a GUI like pallet IMHO. There are other solutions for the command line, not everyone likes things popping up from the console (and, well, it is a little counter-intuitive for the CLI to pop up additional windows when the main "text" is in the console itself).

> 
> Later,
>   --jim


73 de IV3BSI, hoping to catch you in HF.
--
Aljaž Srebrnič a.k.a g5pw
My public key:  http://bit.ly/g5pw_pubkey