[OT] Was: totally satisfied :D

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 10:37:10 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> I have one objection to your list though: although _for the most part_
> AA's can work with any kind of key, there are a lot of bugs in that
> area. The language itself, of course, in theory supports any kind of
> key, but the current implementation is honestly a mess. I've tried
> fixing things but one thing leads to another and nothing short of a
> total overhaul will completely address all of the problems.
> 

There is that, however, it beats the hell out of what I've seen in
other languages, like Haxe, where the *value* is generic or templated,
but the key is a string. Period. (And then I think Haxe also has a
IntHash type now, too, but that's...a signal of not quite *getting*
generic code.)

> Can you believe that prior to C++11, true AA's weren't
> even a part of the standard library?

Yes, I can believe that very easily. :/


> 
> Well, there's a GUI front-end for it (LyX), I don't know if that
> handles things like native UTF support. I was thinking more of a 21st
> century rewrite of LaTeX that has modern support like native UTF,
> revamped syntax to replace anachronisms, etc., but adhering to the
> original design principles. Sorta like what Knuth & Lamport would've
> come up with, if they had developed TeX/LaTeX in 2012.
> 

Right. I mean like what CoffeeScript does for JavaScript. But then I
don't know if you'd would be able to solve all of latex's issues that
way, mostly just syntactic ones.

> Sites like Wikipedia use LaTeX to generate math formula images by
> passing embedded <math> tags through LaTeX for formatting. :)
> Seriously, that's what makes math even remotely tolerable to write in
> Wikipedia. It's imperfect, though, 'cos the baseline of the formatted
> text in the image often doesn't line up with the baseline of the
> surrounding HTML text. And font sizes don't always match up. But it's
> better than the horror of attempting to write math in HTML.
> 

Interesting.


> > 
> > Funny thing is, it works fine (ie without using pop-ins) when JS is
> > off. But I can't turn JS off in iPhone Safari.
> 
> Argh... iPhone/iPod Safari is one of the worst horrors there are. The
> UI is simplistic to the point of daimbramage, which makes it unusable
> for anything but the most trivial of tasks. Nothing is configurable,
> no privacy settings, can't control Javascript, the maximum number of
> tabs is ridiculously small,

You can't tell it to override all "target:blank" (I think that's what
it's called, I never make them, so I don't remember) and always open in
the same tab unless *I* say otherwise. That's one of my biggest
annoyances with it so far.


> scrolling a long page is really horrible,

Yea. Needs directional buttons. Swipe is overrated and only suitable
for minor infrequent uses.

> wide images get clipped with no way to unclip them when using the
> mobile stylesheet (probably the same bug you describe above), etc..
> And Apple has the audacity of forcefully banning all other browsers
> from the app store, for the simple reason that they are superior
> browsers, and oh no, we simply can't allow customers to have a
> superior experience!

I thought Chrome was available for iOS?

But if what you say is true, then that's interesting to compare to
"evil M$":

Microsoft: Installs their browser by default. Allows any other browser
to be installed and set as default. People are pissed. Gates is
demonized. DOJ sues.

Apple: Installs their browser by default. Bans other browsers
entirely. Everybody's happy and praises Jobs as a great designer and
savvy businessman. No lawsuit.


> 
> About the only commendable thing with iPod Safari is the lack of Flash
> (good riddance!).
> 

Yea, I was always ambivalent about that. On one had, I felt it was a
bone-headed decision and that it should be left up to the user. OTOH, I
can get behind almost anything that helps bring an end to Flash. So
I've always been torn ;)


> > 
> > The problem with that is you're creating excess vertical scrolling.
> > Just to read linearly it's "scroll down, scroll up, scroll down",
> > etc. (Of course, that pain is hugely compounded when the
> > multi-columns are on page-based PDFs, like academic research
> > papers.)
> 
> That's why I said that multicolumn support needs to be natively
> supported in the browser, NOT hardcoded into the page itself. It
> should be the browser that decides whether something should be
> multicolumn, and how tall the columns should be. There's no way the
> author can possibly account for every possible browser configuration
> out there to make this kind of decisions.
> 

I see. I'm not sure how even the browser would really make it work
though, unless maybe you make the whole page scroll horizontally with
as many columns as it takes?

> 
> > The root problem there is that the need for multi-column on the web
> > is artificially created by manufacturers and consumers who have
> > collectively decided that watching movies is by far the #1 most
> > important thing for anyone to ever be doing on a computer. Hence,
> > "decapitated fat midget" 16:9 screens for everyone! No matter how
> > bad it is for...just about everything *but* movies and certain
> > games. Which, I suspect, is also the main reason we can't have
> > browsers anymore with nice traditional UIs - because they have to be
> > shoe-horned into a movie-oriented half-screen.
> [...]
> 
> I avoid those height-truncated monitors like the plague. I only ever
> buy monitors with 4:3 aspect ratio. Seriously, if all I wanted to do
> was to watch movies, I wouldn't be using a PC in the first place.
> 

I would do the same thing. In fact I had sworn I would
never get anything wider than 5:4 (and even then I prefer 4:3).
Unfortunately, when I was shopping for a laptop, there was *nothing*
but 16:9. Not one single model, in or out of my price range. So it was
16:9 or no portability :(

At least this has VGA output though (and HDMI, but anything that
takes HDMI is going to be 16:9).


> But still. Sometimes you have a long list of narrow items, and
> multi-column makes it more readable without excessive scrolling.
> 
> Maybe I should start a new trend: side-scrolling webpages with
> *multi*-columns. :) (Though this probably only makes sense with
> vertical writing systems, like the vertical variant of Chinese
> writing. Which is in vertical columns *and* read right-to-left.
> Bwahahahaha...)
> 

Heh :) Traditional Japanese is like that, too. (Not surprising since
their writing system is derived from Chinese.) Weird thing is, after
studying that, and reading a lot of manga, anytime I see vertical
English text, I keep trying to read it right-to-left out of habit :)