I know exactly what nautilus is. I've played around with the source code, even. And yes, it does use gecko, obviously, since mozilla's rendering engine is gecko. ----
There's also Nautilus, which will use gecko, I believe to render HTML. GtkHTML, as you mentioned, is simply meant to render simple HTML. It's used in Evolution to render and edit HTML emails. ----
Have you ever tried Programming for X? Much of X's current functionality was thrown on as an afterthought. At first it wasn't even designed to use a window manager! The point is, I think it's high-time we start from the ground up and design a windowing system with an easy-to-learn API, extreme flexibilty (which X does have), compatibility, and extensibility. All systems as complex as a windowing environment are going to show their age after a while. Well, X is beginning to show it's age...We need a system designed from the ground up to render fonts of all types, alpha channeling and anti-aliasing, 3D graphics rendering using GL. These things are part of a mondern windowing environment. X is trying to tack these on as afterthoughts to a system not designed with that in mind. ----
yes but it does it poorly. Sure, you can write extensions to X, and there are examples, such as the shaped-window extension. But what I'm refering to is having an API that is much more flexible. ----
Xlib is a very lean and fast library, I think it would be hard to improve on it in userland. If the alternative you're suggesting is an in kernel GUI, then think again. This is why stability in Windows NT suffered during the transition from NT 3.51 to 4 - the clean distinction between kernel and GUI was broken in the name of efficiency. This allowed calls direct to the hardware, and buggered NT's stability.
However, the X protocol is a rather heavy-weight one. A protocol such as ICA could prove useful. ----
The GDK library provides a layer of abstraction that sits between GTK+ widgets and applications and the underlying windowing system. Instead of making calls directly to the X window system, applications call GDK when they need to draw to the screen or handle events.
This extra layer of abstraction provides several advantages. First, it increase portability. Porting GTK+ (and hence, to a large part, GNOME) to another windowing system reduces to porting the GDK layer. A port to Microsoft Windows has already been done. Also, it allows GTK+ programs to transparently use a number of X extensions that may or may not be present. If they are not present, GDK provides substitute functionality in terms of standard X calls. Finally, in many cases, the GDK calls are simpler than the corresponding X calls. Some rarely used parameters are omitted and the correct values for other parameters are determined automatically. ----
We need a large scale revolutionary project to develop an advanced windowing system for Linux/Unix. Not only should the new system address current problems with X (lack of unicode support, poor font support, no alpha channel, etc.), but it should be designed from the ground up for the future, allowing for easy extensions. I'm thinking the Gnome and/or KDE projects might be ideal canidates to develop something like this. Those projects, more than any other, have insight into the inherent problems with X, and in the case of Gnome, after porting GDK to the new system, we'd already have a plethora of apps available. In addition an X-compatibility layer might be feasible.
Instead of hacking around X's problems, why not redesign the system to fix those problems? ----
Version numbers mean nothing. KDE is preparing to release their second major release. KDE went from 1.0 to 1.1 to 1.2. Gnome went from 1.0 to 1.2. Incidentally, I am a Gnome user. My comments above regarding KDE were simply out of respect for the work they've done. ----
Well maybe you haven't been keeping up with what's really been changing in KDE. There is a profound difference between KDE 2 and KDE 1. And in between there was KDE 1.1. In the Gnome camp similar strides have been made. Look at the changelogs from various files just to get an idea. It's amazing. Large scale free software projects seem to develop slowly from the point of view of outsiders who aren't really involved in working with the code. Mozilla is an excellent example. The developers told us that things were moving right along, but so many people complained over and over about the delays. Come on, folks. It's open source! If you don't like the delays, get in there and help! ----
I'll second that notion. I have a friend doing Bible translation with Wycliffe in Russia. From what I hear they could definitely use help from computer techies. ----
...go to the Churches. If you're wanting to use your technical skills for a good cause, and are willing, in some cases, to accept little or no money for your work, go to your local churches and find out what ministries and outreaches they have going. You might be surprised at the need they have (whether realized by them or not) for computer work. Setting up a small network for them, or putting together a web page, might really help them out. Or perhaps you could save an organization money by switching their Microsoft network over to Linux or FreeBSD.
As an example, I recently worked for New City Development Corporation, a non-profit ministry of New City Fellowship, a Presbyterian church here in St. Louis, MO. The organization builds/remodels low-income housing in the inner-city, rebuilding broken neighborhoods. And they are committed to racial reconcilation. I found myself working there in the office and noticed a great need for some hacking. Taking out their ridiculously unstable Win95 firewall, and replacing it with a Linux box would have done them a lot of good. I also had numerous ideas for software projects (that probably would have been well-taken-to in the Open Source community) that would have extraordinarily useful and a drastic improvement over their current way of getting things done. ----
Absolutely. Oh, and by the way, a myth can be true.:) C.S. Lewis was once an atheist. His good friend and colleague, J.R.R. Tolkien was influential in leading him to Christianity. Lewis refered to Christianity as a "Myth." Tolkien said, "Ah, but it's a true Myth." Lewis was hooked. ----
No one has said that this is anything but some talks at this point. Of course there isn't code yet, or a formal project to develop a common component architecture between the two projects. It's just the hope that key developers from KDE and GNOME would swallow their pride and talk openly about what possibilities are open to them. ----
I have been working on a project called Kafka and one thing that struck me about KDE that was impressive was there are standardised actions and routines in the libraries to keep application looking and working in an integrated fashion. Will KDE still follow this path or will it try to move out like GNOME has and try to accommodate everything?
In KDE we have always tried as much as possible to put things in the libraries so that writing a application is as easy as possible, and it means that navigation is consistent. There is still the freedom to do something completely different; you can put the file menu on the right, and you can change anything you want, but we make it simple if you want to make the application compliant with what people are used to in terms of user interface.
I don't really see how KDE and Gnome are different in terms of providing the API's for standardizing user interfaces, while allowing complete freedom to do things like change the toolbar icons, put the menus elsewhere, etc. What is meant by the "standardization" that KDE offers vs. Gnome "accomodating everything." Of all the differences between Gnome and KDE, this isn't one that I've really noticed. Any thoughts? ----
You are wrong. The plural of virus is not viri. Viri is plural of vir, meaning "man." Really the most likely Latin plural is virora like corpora, the plural of neuter corpus. However viruses makes the most sense. From language.perl.com:
First off, the OED gives nothing but viruses for the plural.
Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.
Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular[1], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.
Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing[2], but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie.
The crucial problem here is that, classically speaking, there appears to be no recorded use of virus in the plural. It was a 2nd declension noun ending in -us, which is rather common, but it was also a neuter, which is rather rare. I could only come up with three such 2nd declension neuters: virus (some poison), pelagus (the sea, usually poetically), and vulgus (the crowd). None appear to admit plurals. Perhaps this is because they are mass nouns, not count nouns. [3]
One citation below wonders whether these -us 2nd declension neuters might have inflected -us => -ora, the way the 3rd declension's neuter plurals for tempus and corpus do. There's really not any support for that notion--that I could find at least. If so, that would end up producing *virora. Most other citations think that these plurals just never happened at all, or that if they did, they didn't jump declensions. Perhaps they were invariant as they oddly are for the vocative and accusative cases. In any event, *virora does not fit comfortably in the mouth of an English speaker, which is a good reason to avoid it.[4]
Another theory holds that virus, being a 2nd declension neuter--which we are 100% certain of because its nominative singular is -us and its genitive singular is -i--must go to *vira in the plural as do its -um neuter brethren in the 2nd declension. However, that assumes that it works like a -um form, not as a -us form does. And it really seems to do neither. If it were a -us form (again, as a 2nd declension nominative), then its vocative would have to be *vire; but it's really only virus. You also expect an accusative form *viros, but that too is missing; it's still just virus in the accusative. And if it were a -um form, then its vocative would have to be *virum. But it's not--here again, it's only virus. (Vocative examples of virus are not particularly common. Apparently the Romans seldom addressed their slime in a personal fashion.:-)
So what we have here is something of a mixed or invariant declension. Trying to find a plural for something that didn't take a plural (possibly because it was not a count but a mass noun), or at least, one for which no plural is classically attested, is a fruitless endeavour. Best to stick with English and use viruses.
Out of curiousity, why did you copy comment #29. Why not come up with your own comment? ----
Re:...lack of community, lack of continuity
on
The Leased Life?
·
· Score: 1
Leased houses, apartments, cars, etc just fit into a sense of never quite belonging, or being there. We develop online communities (like Slashdot, or my old MUD, Tsunami) to combat the transience of the of our lives. As long as I can get online, I can be with my friends, I can be informed, I can be part of a group
Indeed. And it's a group that spans the globe and never sleeps. People may change jobs, move to another city, state, or country, but they'll always be online. While the cyber world increasingly mimics the "real" world (with its many, many subcultures that often never cross), there's something a bit disconcerting about the whole thing. It's just not real. To borrow the phrase from the original poster, it's part of the "Leased Life." Do you really know the people you chat with, email with, submit patches to. In some cases, yes. But more and more people are retreating to their leased homes after working all day at a job (where their efforts ultimately benefit a corporation but provide little or no personal benefit) to sit online and participate in relationships that for all intents and purposes aren't real. We eat preprepared food, watched prepacked entertainment, and enjoy conversation with people we don't really know and will likely never meet in person. The work of our hands only serves to provide money which we use to lease the rest of the things we need and want in life. Is it any wonder that depression has been steadily on the rise? ----
Have you heard about Inti yet? It's a set of integrated foundation libraries for developing C++ applications in Linux, and it uses GTK+ as the toolkit. Here's a sample hello world app in Inti:
I'm looking to purchase a new video card for my Linux box. I'm looking for something not terribly expensive (say $50 - $100 U.S.) that offers excellent support under Linux (my current card is somewhat flaky under Linux) in terms of stability and performance. Any suggestions? ----
I wouldn't classify it as a worm any more than I'd classify a script that does "rm -rf ~/*" and is disguised so that surfers don't think it's malicious, so they download it and run it. ----
Actually Enlightenment is not the Gnome Project's Window Manager. Up until recently, Gnome hasn't had a default window manager. Enlightenment offered the best Gnome support at the time, and was highly customizable, so RedHat, and others shipped with E as the default Gnome wm. Recently Sawfish (formerly Sawmill) has become the default Window Manager for the Gnome Project. There will be tighter integration with the Window Manager and Gnome, although you can still use Window Maker, Enlightenment, or some other wm. ----
get it right. If you knew anything about OO you would know that GTK is a disgusting hack (your definition of OO in C)
Object Oriented programing in C is not a "hack" as you put it. From a technical standpoint, that is. Prefer C++ if you like, but don't presume to the level of arrogance where you claim to know more than thousands of C hackers who have been doing professional OO programming for years.
Gnome IS unstable. It is about as usable as some MS hype. The only difference is that this unusable piece of software comes from the supposedly "better" free software community. Gnome is an embarassment. Gnome IS the MS of open source. All talk, lots of bugs and hype, and trashing of an obviously superior product (KDE).
Perhaps you haven't used Gnome lately. It is rock solid, and is arguably better technically than KDE. ----
Slashdot Mirror
I know exactly what nautilus is. I've played around with the source code, even. And yes, it does use gecko, obviously, since mozilla's rendering engine is gecko.
----
There's also Nautilus, which will use gecko, I believe to render HTML. GtkHTML, as you mentioned, is simply meant to render simple HTML. It's used in Evolution to render and edit HTML emails.
----
Have you ever tried Programming for X? Much of X's current functionality was thrown on as an afterthought. At first it wasn't even designed to use a window manager! The point is, I think it's high-time we start from the ground up and design a windowing system with an easy-to-learn API, extreme flexibilty (which X does have), compatibility, and extensibility. All systems as complex as a windowing environment are going to show their age after a while. Well, X is beginning to show it's age...We need a system designed from the ground up to render fonts of all types, alpha channeling and anti-aliasing, 3D graphics rendering using GL. These things are part of a mondern windowing environment. X is trying to tack these on as afterthoughts to a system not designed with that in mind.
----
yes but it does it poorly. Sure, you can write extensions to X, and there are examples, such as the shaped-window extension. But what I'm refering to is having an API that is much more flexible.
----
However, the X protocol is a rather heavy-weight one. A protocol such as ICA could prove useful.
----
Ummm ... GTK+ has such a layer. It's called GDK.
The GDK library provides a layer of abstraction that sits between GTK+ widgets and applications and the underlying windowing system. Instead of making calls directly to the X window system, applications call GDK when they need to draw to the screen or handle events.
This extra layer of abstraction provides several advantages. First, it increase portability. Porting GTK+ (and hence, to a large part, GNOME) to another windowing system reduces to porting the GDK layer. A port to Microsoft Windows has already been done. Also, it allows GTK+ programs to transparently use a number of X extensions that may or may not be present. If they are not present, GDK provides substitute functionality in terms of standard X calls. Finally, in many cases, the GDK calls are simpler than the corresponding X calls. Some rarely used parameters are omitted and the correct values for other parameters are determined automatically.
----
Instead of hacking around X's problems, why not redesign the system to fix those problems?
----
oops.
^second^third
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Version numbers mean nothing. KDE is preparing to release their second major release. KDE went from 1.0 to 1.1 to 1.2. Gnome went from 1.0 to 1.2. Incidentally, I am a Gnome user. My comments above regarding KDE were simply out of respect for the work they've done.
----
Well maybe you haven't been keeping up with what's really been changing in KDE. There is a profound difference between KDE 2 and KDE 1. And in between there was KDE 1.1. In the Gnome camp similar strides have been made. Look at the changelogs from various files just to get an idea. It's amazing. Large scale free software projects seem to develop slowly from the point of view of outsiders who aren't really involved in working with the code. Mozilla is an excellent example. The developers told us that things were moving right along, but so many people complained over and over about the delays. Come on, folks. It's open source! If you don't like the delays, get in there and help!
----
I'll second that notion. I have a friend doing Bible translation with Wycliffe in Russia. From what I hear they could definitely use help from computer techies.
----
As an example, I recently worked for New City Development Corporation, a non-profit ministry of New City Fellowship, a Presbyterian church here in St. Louis, MO. The organization builds/remodels low-income housing in the inner-city, rebuilding broken neighborhoods. And they are committed to racial reconcilation. I found myself working there in the office and noticed a great need for some hacking. Taking out their ridiculously unstable Win95 firewall, and replacing it with a Linux box would have done them a lot of good. I also had numerous ideas for software projects (that probably would have been well-taken-to in the Open Source community) that would have extraordinarily useful and a drastic improvement over their current way of getting things done.
----
I thought the same thing at first. :) I definitely got my attention. What it actually said wasn't nearly as interesting.
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Absolutely. Oh, and by the way, a myth can be true. :) C.S. Lewis was once an atheist. His good friend and colleague, J.R.R. Tolkien was influential in leading him to Christianity. Lewis refered to Christianity as a "Myth." Tolkien said, "Ah, but it's a true Myth." Lewis was hooked.
----
No one has said that this is anything but some talks at this point. Of course there isn't code yet, or a formal project to develop a common component architecture between the two projects. It's just the hope that key developers from KDE and GNOME would swallow their pride and talk openly about what possibilities are open to them.
----
I don't really see how KDE and Gnome are different in terms of providing the API's for standardizing user interfaces, while allowing complete freedom to do things like change the toolbar icons, put the menus elsewhere, etc. What is meant by the "standardization" that KDE offers vs. Gnome "accomodating everything." Of all the differences between Gnome and KDE, this isn't one that I've really noticed. Any thoughts?
----
First off, the OED gives nothing but viruses for the plural.
Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.
Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular[1], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.
Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing[2], but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie.
The crucial problem here is that, classically speaking, there appears to be no recorded use of virus in the plural. It was a 2nd declension noun ending in -us, which is rather common, but it was also a neuter, which is rather rare. I could only come up with three such 2nd declension neuters: virus (some poison), pelagus (the sea, usually poetically), and vulgus (the crowd). None appear to admit plurals. Perhaps this is because they are mass nouns, not count nouns. [3]
One citation below wonders whether these -us 2nd declension neuters might have inflected -us => -ora, the way the 3rd declension's neuter plurals for tempus and corpus do. There's really not any support for that notion--that I could find at least. If so, that would end up producing *virora. Most other citations think that these plurals just never happened at all, or that if they did, they didn't jump declensions. Perhaps they were invariant as they oddly are for the vocative and accusative cases. In any event, *virora does not fit comfortably in the mouth of an English speaker, which is a good reason to avoid it.[4]
Another theory holds that virus, being a 2nd declension neuter--which we are 100% certain of because its nominative singular is -us and its genitive singular is -i--must go to *vira in the plural as do its -um neuter brethren in the 2nd declension. However, that assumes that it works like a -um form, not as a -us form does. And it really seems to do neither. If it were a -us form (again, as a 2nd declension nominative), then its vocative would have to be *vire; but it's really only virus. You also expect an accusative form *viros, but that too is missing; it's still just virus in the accusative. And if it were a -um form, then its vocative would have to be *virum. But it's not--here again, it's only virus. (Vocative examples of virus are not particularly common. Apparently the Romans seldom addressed their slime in a personal fashion. :-)
So what we have here is something of a mixed or invariant declension. Trying to find a plural for something that didn't take a plural (possibly because it was not a count but a mass noun), or at least, one for which no plural is classically attested, is a fruitless endeavour. Best to stick with English and use viruses.
----
Out of curiousity, why did you copy comment #29. Why not come up with your own comment?
----
Indeed. And it's a group that spans the globe and never sleeps. People may change jobs, move to another city, state, or country, but they'll always be online. While the cyber world increasingly mimics the "real" world (with its many, many subcultures that often never cross), there's something a bit disconcerting about the whole thing. It's just not real. To borrow the phrase from the original poster, it's part of the "Leased Life." Do you really know the people you chat with, email with, submit patches to. In some cases, yes. But more and more people are retreating to their leased homes after working all day at a job (where their efforts ultimately benefit a corporation but provide little or no personal benefit) to sit online and participate in relationships that for all intents and purposes aren't real. We eat preprepared food, watched prepacked entertainment, and enjoy conversation with people we don't really know and will likely never meet in person. The work of our hands only serves to provide money which we use to lease the rest of the things we need and want in life. Is it any wonder that depression has been steadily on the rise?
----
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I like that. Boobytrap it is.
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I'm looking to purchase a new video card for my Linux box. I'm looking for something not terribly expensive (say $50 - $100 U.S.) that offers excellent support under Linux (my current card is somewhat flaky under Linux) in terms of stability and performance. Any suggestions?
----
I wouldn't classify it as a worm any more than I'd classify a script that does "rm -rf ~/*" and is disguised so that surfers don't think it's malicious, so they download it and run it.
----
Actually Enlightenment is not the Gnome Project's Window Manager. Up until recently, Gnome hasn't had a default window manager. Enlightenment offered the best Gnome support at the time, and was highly customizable, so RedHat, and others shipped with E as the default Gnome wm. Recently Sawfish (formerly Sawmill) has become the default Window Manager for the Gnome Project. There will be tighter integration with the Window Manager and Gnome, although you can still use Window Maker, Enlightenment, or some other wm.
----
Object Oriented programing in C is not a "hack" as you put it. From a technical standpoint, that is. Prefer C++ if you like, but don't presume to the level of arrogance where you claim to know more than thousands of C hackers who have been doing professional OO programming for years.
Gnome IS unstable. It is about as usable as some MS hype. The only difference is that this unusable piece of software comes from the supposedly "better" free software community. Gnome is an embarassment. Gnome IS the MS of open source. All talk, lots of bugs and hype, and trashing of an obviously superior product (KDE).
Perhaps you haven't used Gnome lately. It is rock solid, and is arguably better technically than KDE.
----