On 2024-11-17 19:07, rbowman wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Nov 2024 17:17:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Horses for courses. Never underestimate the value of a few printf()s
>> sprinkled here and there (or log file writes if you're really headless).
>> I'm still a fan of makefiles.
>
> I'm a dinosaur so my preferred technique is either printf or log files.
> For production code I've sometimes created a sequence of log statements
> that can be turned on with a flag that are a narrative of what's going on.
> My goal is a support person can read the file and see where the problem
> occurs. Often it is a configuration issue they can fix.
>
> The nice part is the technique can be used with any language and is
> effective where a debugger isn't available.

The other day a daemon program spewed 2 gigabytes of log entries, all
almost identical (the filename changed). The program was tracker-extract.

Currently there are many programs that spew chat like there is no
tomorrow to syslog :-/

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024, Phillip Frabott wrote:

> On 11/18/2024 23:59, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Nov 2024 22:20:45 -0500, Phillip Frabott wrote:
>>
>>> Either when a dev doesn't do the right thing or if they are doing
>>> cross-platform where not all platforms use it. (Windows for example).
>>
>> If it’s open source, submit a patch to fix it.
>>
>> All the cross-platform open-source software should have learned to respect
>> common *nix conventions by now.
>
> It's not that big of a deal really. And to be honest, when I go home from
> work, I don't touch a computer.

What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at home,
without touching a computer? ;)

On 19/11/2024 09:02, D wrote:
>
>
> What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at home,
> without touching a computer? ;)
Sex, drugs and rock and roll?

--
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of
conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by
thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

― Leo Tolstoy

On 11/19/24 09:23, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 19/11/2024 09:02, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at
>> home, without touching a computer? ;)
> Sex, drugs and rock and roll?
>

The drugs I take now just don't seem as much fun as the drugs I took
when I was young.

On 19/11/2024 10:07, Pancho wrote:
> On 11/19/24 09:23, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 19/11/2024 09:02, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at
>>> home, without touching a computer? ;)
>> Sex, drugs and rock and roll?
>>
>
> The drugs I take now just don't seem as much fun as the drugs I took
> when I was young.

This is sadly true...

It's sad when the most useful thing you 3D printed was a drawer to hold
them all and a little cup to hold them before swallowing...

--
In todays liberal progressive conflict-free education system, everyone
gets full Marx.

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 19/11/2024 09:02, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at home,
>> without touching a computer? ;)
> Sex, drugs and rock and roll?

Great job! Now Jesus is crying!

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024, Pancho wrote:

> On 11/19/24 09:23, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 19/11/2024 09:02, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at home,
>>> without touching a computer? ;)
>> Sex, drugs and rock and roll?
>>
>
> The drugs I take now just don't seem as much fun as the drugs I took when I
> was young.
>

I think you probably need to increase the dosage! That seems to be the
word on the street!

The Natural Philosopher wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

> On 18/11/2024 14:36, Phillip Frabott wrote:
>> On 11/18/2024 00:42, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>> Just make sure 'nano' is there. There's a trick to
>>> setting the default editor to nano, find it.
>>
>> I usually just symlink vi and vim to nano. Never had problems with it.
>>
> Year of using vi have made me ok with it. For small jobs.
> For bigger jobs I either use s GUI editor or joe.
> Geany is my coding app of choice.

For me, it's vi(m) or nothing.

I used to use microEmacs, but I found regular emacs too knuckle-busting.

My partial list of must-haves:

- Fluxbox window manager (and Xfce4 for its tools/managers)
- xbindkeys
- tmux
- mpd, mpc (for automation), and ncmpcpp
- GCC and Clang, autotools, libtool, gdb and cgdb
- git
- conky
- urxvt
- texlive, latexmk for project documentation
- JACK, a2jmidid
- alsamixer
- nm-applet, NetworkManager
- ssh client and server
- cups
- cheese and guvcview
- LibreOffice (for letters, shopping lists, and tables)

There's a bunch of others I forget about, and have to install when I try to use
them.....

--
Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
-- Jimmy Cannon

On 19/11/2024 12:31, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>
>> On 18/11/2024 14:36, Phillip Frabott wrote:
>>> On 11/18/2024 00:42, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>>> Just make sure 'nano' is there. There's a trick to
>>>> setting the default editor to nano, find it.
>>>
>>> I usually just symlink vi and vim to nano. Never had problems with it.
>>>
>> Year of using vi have made me ok with it. For small jobs.
>> For bigger jobs I either use s GUI editor or joe.
>> Geany is my coding app of choice.
>
> For me, it's vi(m) or nothing.
>
> I used to use microEmacs, but I found regular emacs too knuckle-busting.
>
> My partial list of must-haves:
>
> - Fluxbox window manager (and Xfce4 for its tools/managers)
> - xbindkeys
> - tmux
> - mpd, mpc (for automation), and ncmpcpp
> - GCC and Clang, autotools, libtool, gdb and cgdb
> - git
> - conky
> - urxvt
> - texlive, latexmk for project documentation
> - JACK, a2jmidid
> - alsamixer
> - nm-applet, NetworkManager
> - ssh client and server
> - cups
> - cheese and guvcview
> - LibreOffice (for letters, shopping lists, and tables)
>
> There's a bunch of others I forget about, and have to install when I try to use
> them.....
>

I have no idea what my distro includes. Most of em have never been run.

I only really run the stuff I've installed over and above the standard
installation.

--
I would rather have questions that cannot be answered...
....than to have answers that cannot be questioned

Richard Feynman

On 2024-11-19, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 19/11/2024 10:07, Pancho wrote:
>
>> On 11/19/24 09:23, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> On 19/11/2024 09:02, D wrote:
>>>
>>>> What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at
>>>> home, without touching a computer? ;)
>>>
>>> Sex, drugs and rock and roll?
>>
>> The drugs I take now just don't seem as much fun as the drugs I took
>> when I was young.

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all.

> This is sadly true...
>
> It's sad when the most useful thing you 3D printed was a drawer to
> hold them all and a little cup to hold them before swallowing...

You know you're getting old when all the names in your
little black book end in "M.D.".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 2024-11-19, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 19/11/2024 12:31, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
>
>> For me, it's vi(m) or nothing.

+1 - it's available on all machines, and my fingers speak
it well enough that if I'm trying to move down the screen
in other editors a string of "j"s appear on the screen.
For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
Occasionally I'll fall back to a GUI editor if I need
to cut and paste text - mousepad works, but not well
enough to make me want to switch.

>> I used to use microEmacs, but I found regular emacs too knuckle-busting.

I looked at emacs once or twice, but it lives on a different planet
than I do.

>> My partial list of must-haves:

<snip>

gcc - for software development in C

xfce - lean and mean - lets me open as many bash windows as I want
and play command-line tricks, including running graphical programs
as needed.

xv - yes, I know it can't handle progressive JPEGs, but its
user interface is so damned simple that I can't give it up.
If I have to view things that xv can't display, I'll fall
back to whatever is included with the distro (currently
ristretto), but I won't like it.

Seamonkey - a Firefox variant. Unfortunately there are many
web sites it can't display, but its user interface doesn't
contain all the new crap that Firefox has been adding since
release 29, so I use it whenever I can and and fall back
to Firefox when I must.

Thunderbird - for e-mail.

sox, mpv - for editing and playing sound files.

easytag - for maintaining ID3 tags in MP3 files.
(I wrote my own utility, cmpmp3, which compares
the audio portion of two MP3 files, ignoring ID3
tags - it's great for weeding out duplicates that
differ only in their ID3 tags.)

pdftk, xpdf - for editing and viewing PDF files.

xsane, simple-scan, naps2 - each of these scanning programs
works slightly differently, and each has its own pros and
cons. I use whichever one best does what I need at the time.

LibreOffice - for the occasional Word document or spreadsheet
that I have to read.

Thunar - for the things that a file manager can do more easily
than the command-line (typically, renaming files with long names).

>> There's a bunch of others I forget about, and have to install when I
>> try to use them.....

Yes, any time I go to a new release I learn all over again
exactly which ones they are.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 08:57:00 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> The other day a daemon program spewed 2 gigabytes of log entries, all
> almost identical (the filename changed). The program was
> tracker-extract.
>
> Currently there are many programs that spew chat like there is no
> tomorrow to syslog :-/

My favorite was a Windows process that repeatedly logged the C: drive was
almost full -- to the C: drive of course. Cleaning up after it
successfully committed suicide was fun.

We had a couple of programs that would politely check for disk space
before running. That worked well for years before the first machines with
TB+ drives showed up. Back to the drawing board for the disk space
calculation.

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 14:22:26 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> I have no idea what my distro includes. Most of em have never been run.
>
> I only really run the stuff I've installed over and above the standard
> installation.
>

After I run 'dnf update --refresh' I'm left wondering what the hell many
of the things on the list are. I'm assuming my life wouldn't be the same
without freedesktop but I'm not clear on what it's doing for me.

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> ... my fingers speak [vi/vim] well enough
> that if I'm trying to move down the screen in other editors a string of
> "j"s appear on the screen.

The vi/vim apps I’ve used also support the arrow keys, like modern
programs.

> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.

Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.

On 2024-11-19, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> ... my fingers speak [vi/vim] well enough
>> that if I'm trying to move down the screen in other editors a string of
>> "j"s appear on the screen.
>
> The vi/vim apps I’ve used also support the arrow keys, like modern
> programs.

As do mine, and I often use them. But it's often nice not to have to
move your hands out of home position. When I really get going, even
reaching for a function key feels like excessive work.

>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>
> Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
> insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
> insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.

One keystroke is pretty cheap in the scheme of things. And not all
editors can easily do things I use a lot in vi(m), such as placing
the cursor on a brace, bracket, or parenthesis and jumping to the
corresponding one.

The thing that really irritates me is the effort made by a lot of
software (particularly under Windows) to force your hands out of
home position - or, even worse, off the keyboard entirely (i.e.
by having no keyboard shortcuts for commonly-used functions).
To me, one mouse click is worth at least 10 keystrokes, and is
more error-prone. Most people don't realize the tremendous demands
on hand-eye coordination needed to accurately position the mouse
pointer at a tiny point on the screen and not let it move as you
click a button. There's a reason that touch typists work hard
to develop their skill.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:53:52 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> ... it's often nice not to have to move your hands out of home
> position.

That “advantage” makes no sense to me. My hands move all over the place --
to the various parts of the keyboard, and to the mouse, and other controls
-- wherever I need to operate something. Going back to home position is
something you can do by touch, very quickly, anyway. (That’s what those
little nubs are for.)

>>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>
> One keystroke is pretty cheap in the scheme of things.

You were saying ... ?

> ... And not all
> editors can easily do things I use a lot in vi(m), such as placing the
> cursor on a brace, bracket, or parenthesis and jumping to the
> corresponding one.

Surely all the common editors can do that. What about moving between lines
with matching indentation -- handy for Python programming?

> The thing that really irritates me is the effort made by a lot of
> software (particularly under Windows) ...

Yet another reason not to use Windows ... ?

On 19/11/2024 19:30, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-11-19, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 19/11/2024 10:07, Pancho wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/19/24 09:23, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 19/11/2024 09:02, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What!? But what do you do to give joy and meaning to your life at
>>>>> home, without touching a computer? ;)
>>>>
>>>> Sex, drugs and rock and roll?
>>>
>>> The drugs I take now just don't seem as much fun as the drugs I took
>>> when I was young.
>
> One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small,
> And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all.
>
>> This is sadly true...
>>
>> It's sad when the most useful thing you 3D printed was a drawer to
>> hold them all and a little cup to hold them before swallowing...
>
> You know you're getting old when all the names in your
> little black book end in "M.D.".
>
And the only pretty girls you meet work for the NHS

--
Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the people.
But Marxism is the crack cocaine.

On 20/11/2024 00:53, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> To me, one mouse click is worth at least 10 keystrokes, and is
> more error-prone. Most people don't realize the tremendous demands
> on hand-eye coordination needed to accurately position the mouse
> pointer at a tiny point on the screen and not let it move as you
> click a button. There's a reason that touch typists work hard
> to develop their skill.

And why many many professional users of various applications much prefer
the keyboard shortcuts to using a mouse.

Really, GUIS for a touch typists are rather things that get in the way.

On the other hand, CAD is impossible without one...

--
Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the people.
But Marxism is the crack cocaine.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> ... my fingers speak [vi/vim] well enough
>> that if I'm trying to move down the screen in other editors a string of
>> "j"s appear on the screen.
>
> The vi/vim apps I’ve used also support the arrow keys, like modern
> programs.
>
>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>
> Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
> insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
> insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.

With vim, you can be in insert mode and still move around with the arrow keys.

/usr/share/vim/vim91/doc/ contains about 11 megs o' text help files.

Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things. :-)

--
I have accepted Provolone into my life!

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:53:52 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> ... it's often nice not to have to move your hands out of home
>> position.
>
> That “advantage” makes no sense to me. My hands move all over the place --
> to the various parts of the keyboard, and to the mouse, and other controls
> -- wherever I need to operate something. Going back to home position is
> something you can do by touch, very quickly, anyway. (That’s what those
> little nubs are for.)
>
>>>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>>
>> One keystroke is pretty cheap in the scheme of things.
>
> You were saying ... ?
>
>> ... And not all
>> editors can easily do things I use a lot in vi(m), such as placing the
>> cursor on a brace, bracket, or parenthesis and jumping to the
>> corresponding one.
>
> Surely all the common editors can do that. What about moving between lines
> with matching indentation -- handy for Python programming?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61435894/autoindentation-in-vim-for-python

But 'smartindent' is not really that appropriate for Python (as you can
guess by it handling curly braces.) Instead, you'll want to use filetype
indent on in order to load per-filetype indentation rules, which should
load appropriate indentation for Python when you edit Python sources.

I'd recommend that you add this to your vimrc:

filetype plugin indent on

I'm not bothering to verify this.

Or you could try

https://github.com/mathialo/bython

Bython

Python with braces. Because Python is awesome, but whitespace is awful.

Bython is a Python preprosessor which translates curly brackets into
indentation.

:-D

--
Shedenhelm's Law:
All trails have more uphill sections than they have downhill sections.

The Natural Philosopher wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

> On 20/11/2024 00:53, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> To me, one mouse click is worth at least 10 keystrokes, and is
>> more error-prone. Most people don't realize the tremendous demands
>> on hand-eye coordination needed to accurately position the mouse
>> pointer at a tiny point on the screen and not let it move as you
>> click a button. There's a reason that touch typists work hard
>> to develop their skill.
>
> And why many many professional users of various applications much prefer
> the keyboard shortcuts to using a mouse.
>
> Really, GUIS for a touch typists are rather things that get in the way.
>
> On the other hand, CAD is impossible without one...

I dunno about that. One AutoCAD guy I knew at work spent a lot of time in the
AutoCAD command-line.

--
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.

On 20/11/2024 12:48, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>
>> On 20/11/2024 00:53, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>> To me, one mouse click is worth at least 10 keystrokes, and is
>>> more error-prone. Most people don't realize the tremendous demands
>>> on hand-eye coordination needed to accurately position the mouse
>>> pointer at a tiny point on the screen and not let it move as you
>>> click a button. There's a reason that touch typists work hard
>>> to develop their skill.
>>
>> And why many many professional users of various applications much prefer
>> the keyboard shortcuts to using a mouse.
>>
>> Really, GUIS for a touch typists are rather things that get in the way.
>>
>> On the other hand, CAD is impossible without one...
>
> I dunno about that. One AutoCAD guy I knew at work spent a lot of time in the
> AutoCAD command-line.
>
One of the reasons I disliked autocad intensely.

DrawLine(x1,y1,z1, x2, y2, z2) is not very visual.

The best 2D CAD ever is still Corel draw. Draw a square where you want
to to be, and then type in its side values to make it exact...you can
use the mouse OR type in values.

--
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They
always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

Margaret Thatcher

On 2024-11-19 20:34, rbowman wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 08:57:00 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>
>> The other day a daemon program spewed 2 gigabytes of log entries, all
>> almost identical (the filename changed). The program was
>> tracker-extract.
>>
>> Currently there are many programs that spew chat like there is no
>> tomorrow to syslog :-/
>
> My favorite was a Windows process that repeatedly logged the C: drive was
> almost full -- to the C: drive of course. Cleaning up after it
> successfully committed suicide was fun.
>
> We had a couple of programs that would politely check for disk space
> before running. That worked well for years before the first machines with
> TB+ drives showed up. Back to the drawing board for the disk space
> calculation.

You may remember the Borland Pascal code to insert a delay of so many
milliseconds in the code. It was simply a noop loop, and the runtime
code made a measurement at start. That worked well, till faster
computers made the counting time variable to overflow.

I don't remember right now if the code crashed or not. (Google confirms
they crashed)

Every program made with those compilers were affected. You needed to
recompile with a newer version. (Google said you could apply an
external, third party, patch)

Possibly Borland C was also affected, but I do not know.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=50079
https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~bds2/ltsn/tpbug.htm
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20787583

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2024-11-20, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>
>> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>>
>> Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
>> insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
>> insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.
>
> With vim, you can be in insert mode and still move around with the arrow keys.
>
> /usr/share/vim/vim91/doc/ contains about 11 megs o' text help files.
>
> Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things. :-)

Every now and then I come across some nifty trick I didn't know about.
One of my favourites is /\<foo\> - which finds the next occurrence of
"foo" that is a complete word, i.e. it ignores "foobar".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 2024-11-20, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 20/11/2024 00:53, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> To me, one mouse click is worth at least 10 keystrokes, and is
>> more error-prone. Most people don't realize the tremendous demands
>> on hand-eye coordination needed to accurately position the mouse
>> pointer at a tiny point on the screen and not let it move as you
>> click a button. There's a reason that touch typists work hard
>> to develop their skill.
>
> And why many many professional users of various applications much prefer
> the keyboard shortcuts to using a mouse.
>
> Really, GUIS for a touch typists are rather things that get in the way.

Hear, hear.

> On the other hand, CAD is impossible without one...

Which is why I believe there should be both options available.
Use one or the other as you prefer, and ignore those people
who insist that you use the One and Only True Way, whatever
that is.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey