You can also make things much cleaner by putting on abstraction layers to windowing calls and then compiling the implementations to the abstractions separately for each function. Makes the code cleaner.
The Wxwindows toolkit is designed to do just that. I don't endorse it (since it forces you to use icky C++), but you might like it. Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Regarding your Windows woes, why don't you just use the ported GDK and compile your GTK programs for Windows? Isn't that port in pretty good shape? Alternately, you could learn to program Qt, which is rock-solid on Windows. I'm sure it's much easier than the Microsoft Foundation Classes (though I've never touched them, I've listened to many, many other developers complaining about their Byzantine structure and their many obscure and obfuscated APIs). Hey, program in Qt and Windows users won't even notice the difference!
If you really want to be portable, you could use Mozilla's NSPR wrapper for all your threading instead of explicit Win32 and POSIX threads.
Oh, well, that's just my $.02. I hope you find it helpful. Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
So Linux is a Unix-based language that doesn't even use a mouse. Hmmmnn. It's intersting how often journalists want to call Unix a language, even though they identify it elsewhere in their pieces as an operating system, and even give the pat layperon's definition of an operating system ("The basic low-level software that controls hardware, without which a computer cannot start up" is the way it usually comes out. Not bad.) What's interesting about this slip is that the Unix command interpreter --i.e. the user interface, the only part a journalist could see--is a language. So they're really not that far off the mark. In fact, Larry Wall, in his usua l playfulway, calls Perl an extension to the weird and variegated language called Unix (or some such; I'm paraphrasing, obviously) in the camel book.
It's kind of neat to see the GUI effortsgetting so much press coverage. At last, this is a aspect of Linux's superiority that plan old users can understand. Hopefully the positive buzz will encourage people to give Linux a spin (especially once they see the eye candy that comes with GTK and Enlightenment! Woohoo!) No longer will we have to listen to "Linux is like Unix? Oh, I can't stand all those techie commands. I'll stick to Windowseven though I think Bill Gates is the Antichrist and want to eviscerate him on my front lawn.";)
By the way, I'm thinking some of you will be concerned about the fact that GNOME is getting so much more publicity than KDE. I wouldn't worry too much. Th mainstream press is playing its usual game of picking up and article somewhere, going, "Hmmnn, that's interesting," getting a new interview with the article's subject, and basicall cribbing the content of the original. It's a sad ravesty of invertigative journalism, but it sems to be the norm noawadays. (I'm afraid the Internet is encouraging it, too, and detacting from real investigation as lazy writers sit on their asses in front of computers instead of going outside.) Anyway,the practical result for us is that all it takes is one artcle about KDE, and the press hounds will jump on the story and run it to death just as hard as they're unning GNOME now. Just look at all last year's articles about Linux!
Hmmmmnnn, maybe they should call them"press copycapts" instead of "Press hounds".;)
PS: APologies for the typos, of which I'm sure there aremany. Halfway through this article my !@&*^# Sun display got munged. Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Kind of an ironic name, "Final Fantasy", eh?;) Actually, a Japanese-speaking friend of mine tells me that that's a poor translation; "Ultimate Fantasy" would be closer to the intent (but sound too much like "Ultima"). I still think it's funny.
Sure, Marxism and anarchism have nothing to do with one another . ..*Snicker* *Snort* *Guffaw* *Chuckle* *Sniff*.
How about instead of defining an ideology by the way its stupid modern "followers" view it, you actually go out and read its original statement? Come to think of it, I believe more people would have respect for Christianity (especialyl Americans;) ) if they did just that. --Q
Yep, it was named after Lady Lovelace, the famous patron of computing pioneer Charles Babbage and an early AI prophet in her own right. She was the daughter of Percy Shelly (the poet) and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of Frankenstein), so you knew she had to turn out cool.;)
So the "laws of nature" mandate using jet-propelled, computer-controlled nuclear missiles against entire cities of people you've never met, eh? I don't know of any other animals that do that. Most all the animals I can think of kill other species for food or, on rare occassions, kill individuals of their own kind.
In fact, I don't know of any other animals that engage in war at all, except for ants. Let's face it, it's an aberration.
I think these guys are bluffing. How the Hell do you get chaotic information from a laser, one of the finest examples of coherence and organization in the physical world? Their off-the-wall speculation about using neurons in computers, and their wild extrapolation to the possibility of talking to your computer in natural language, shows the sloppiness of their thinking and the cavalier flashiness of their press presentation.
(For what it's worth, I know what I'm talking about. I have a degree in cognitive science, and I'm going on in grad school in complex systems.)
Piece o' cake: Use DLTs. I work at Indiana University (an awesome CS school, by the way; I just finished my bachelor's here;) ) that just purchased what's called a "tape silo". It's a huge enclosure with shelf upon shelf of DLT-sized cubbyholes and a robot that moves among them in two dimensions (up/down and left/right) inserting and removing tapes. They plan to obtain around 15 TB of storage, with 1 TB of spinning disk to keep the whole thing moving. For a university of 30,000+ students and tons of research on the primary campus, that's not unreasonable!
The moral of this story: DLTs are a perfectly feasible backup medium. You can get 17GB on one tape.
A journaling (not "journaled") filesystem is one that keeps track of all the writes it's going to make on a special part of the disk. That way, if you lose power with the disk still spinning, the FS can read its record of "pending transactions" and make the needed changes immediately when you boot again. Journaling thus eliminates the need for fsck'ing. Cool, huh?
I had a friend who did just that. He removed all the guts from his computer and spray-painted it electric blue, two coats. Then he put everything back in, and the computer ran just fine. As long as you do the work outside and give the case a little time to air-dry (as per the spraypaint instructions), it should be O.K.: no errant particles on the disk or boards.
Yeah, why can't destructive, undisciplined miscreants be good guys? It just breaks my heart to see them get their lame little rocks off on sabotaging good sites instead of sabotaging bad sites.
C'mon, get a clue. The nature of the Dark Side is such that its minions will always work for indiscriminate destruction and self-serving ends, not for good.
"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge, never for attack."
--Yoda
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The Wxwindows toolkit is designed to do just that. I don't endorse it (since it forces you to use icky C++), but you might like it.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Regarding your Windows woes, why don't you just use the ported GDK and compile your GTK programs for Windows? Isn't that port in pretty good shape? Alternately, you could learn to program Qt, which is rock-solid on Windows. I'm sure it's much easier than the Microsoft Foundation Classes (though I've never touched them, I've listened to many, many other developers complaining about their Byzantine structure and their many obscure and obfuscated APIs). Hey, program in Qt and Windows users won't even notice the difference!
If you really want to be portable, you could use Mozilla's NSPR wrapper for all your threading instead of explicit Win32 and POSIX threads.
Oh, well, that's just my $.02. I hope you find it helpful.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
It's kind of neat to see the GUI effortsgetting so much press coverage. At last, this is a aspect of Linux's superiority that plan old users can understand. Hopefully the positive buzz will encourage people to give Linux a spin (especially once they see the eye candy that comes with GTK and Enlightenment! Woohoo!) No longer will we have to listen to "Linux is like Unix? Oh, I can't stand all those techie commands. I'll stick to Windowseven though I think Bill Gates is the Antichrist and want to eviscerate him on my front lawn." ;)
By the way, I'm thinking some of you will be concerned about the fact that GNOME is getting so much more publicity than KDE. I wouldn't worry too much. Th mainstream press is playing its usual game of picking up and article somewhere, going, "Hmmnn, that's interesting," getting a new interview with the article's subject, and basicall cribbing the content of the original. It's a sad ravesty of invertigative journalism, but it sems to be the norm noawadays. (I'm afraid the Internet is encouraging it, too, and detacting from real investigation as lazy writers sit on their asses in front of computers instead of going outside.) Anyway,the practical result for us is that all it takes is one artcle about KDE, and the press hounds will jump on the story and run it to death just as hard as they're unning GNOME now. Just look at all last year's articles about Linux!
Hmmmmnnn, maybe they should call them"press copycapts" instead of "Press hounds". ;)
PS: APologies for the typos, of which I'm sure there aremany. Halfway through this article my !@&*^# Sun display got munged.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Being a little more polite
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Some revisions
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Third time.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
1-2, 1-2 (It's the Wu)
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Testing.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Kind of an ironic name, "Final Fantasy", eh? ;) Actually, a Japanese-speaking friend of mine tells me that that's a poor translation; "Ultimate Fantasy" would be closer to the intent (but sound too much like "Ultima"). I still think it's funny.
How about instead of defining an ideology by the way its stupid modern "followers" view it, you actually go out and read its original statement? Come to think of it, I believe more people would have respect for Christianity (especialyl Americans ;) ) if they did just that.
--Q
Yep, it was named after Lady Lovelace, the famous patron of computing pioneer Charles Babbage and an early AI prophet in her own right. She was the daughter of Percy Shelly (the poet) and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of Frankenstein), so you knew she had to turn out cool. ;)
In fact, I don't know of any other animals that engage in war at all, except for ants. Let's face it, it's an aberration.
(For what it's worth, I know what I'm talking about. I have a degree in cognitive science, and I'm going on in grad school in complex systems.)
The moral of this story: DLTs are a perfectly feasible backup medium. You can get 17GB on one tape.
A journaling (not "journaled") filesystem is one that keeps track of all the writes it's going to make on a special part of the disk. That way, if you lose power with the disk still spinning, the FS can read its record of "pending transactions" and make the needed changes immediately when you boot again. Journaling thus eliminates the need for fsck'ing. Cool, huh?
You don't need the sandpaper. My friend
didn't use any.
I had a friend who did just that. He removed all the guts from his computer and spray-painted it electric blue, two coats. Then he put everything back in, and the computer ran just fine. As long as you do the work outside and give the case a little time to air-dry (as per the spraypaint instructions), it should be O.K.: no errant particles on the disk or boards.
I'd like my NeXT box to be a PPC too, but it just sits there all black and turdly running NeXTStep with its greyscale monitor . . . ah well.
;)
C'mon, get a clue. The nature of the Dark Side is such that its minions will always work for indiscriminate destruction and self-serving ends, not for good.