Look at a project like LyX. They were making great progress until they decided to have a unified GUI API. While they have been working on "GUI independence", very little improvements have been made to the actual application.
What I once considered of the most interesting applications is now spending all of development time on writing a GUI toolkit instead of improving the application.
Writing a unified API for a forms/graphics toolkit sounds great. What some people do not realize is that writing a unified API is really creating a third toolkit.
Check out this thread where Matthias Ettrich points that Netscape tried something similar with Navigator and failed and trying to make every happy makes no one happy.
A quote about users (not developers ) not wanting to use certain toolkits from Ettrich:
We still would avoid using toolkits at all (some users
don't want to use XYZ toolkit, so better use Xlib. Ooops, some users don't
want to use X, so better use Curses. Oops, some users have broken termcaps
and cannot use Curses, better use stdout.
Would someone please give the community some insights on how this worked on the HP 3000 or Hp MPE. My understanding is that everything in that operating system was a transaction. When powering on, the system would roll back to the last commited transaction and just start right back where it left off.
With this system, the process would just start from where it left off.
I agree with the annoyance of MS Word attachments, but the solution proposed in the RMS editorial is insufficient. If a person requiring MS Word format is a problem, to provide a solution, one must consider why the person is using the MS Word format. RMS suggests that the problem is user ignorance. His solution to user ignorance is user education by them by sending them an email. He does not consider there might be valid reasons why the person requires MS Word.
There are genuine needs that MS Word solves. For example, having a single file for a document with figures cannot be done with HTML. PDF is mostly read-only, but MS Word can be edited. Solve problems like this and many of us can finally abandon Word. If fact, the community could stop trying to emulate MS Word and start creating solutions that are better than it.
The reasons why people use MS Word will be added to this Slashdot as we comment on 'use X instead' and 'I use MS Word instead of X because . ..'. After reading Slashdot comments, you get a picture of the reasons people use MS Word. Solve these needs and then people will stop asking for MS Word attachments.
More on stack vs. register based VM
on
Parrot Updates
·
· Score: 1
our experience with the implementation of a stack machine in the AT&T Crisp microprocessor [5] leads us to believe that stack architectures are inherently slower than register-based machines. Their design lengthens the critical path by replacing simple registers with a complex stack cache mechanism.
In other words, it is a better idea to match the design of the VM to the processor than the other way around.
Is the oversight committee is a waste of Satchell time? It does nothing to change the status quo of the Microsoft monopoly.
<wishful thinking> Put him in-charge of a government program like quote below from Nathan Newman's
While such government restrictions are likely necessary, none of them speaks to the issue of creating a strong viable alternative to Microsoft. The federal government already spends billions of dollars on software research, purchases, and implementation. If it consolidated those resources in support of open-source solutions, it would not only expand many of the clear advantages that open-source software delivers, but it would also simultaneously undermine the Microsoft monopoly. If the government revived its collaboration with top programming talent to define the best standards and used its purchasing power to require that those standards be met in government contracts, this would go a long way toward challenging the Microsoft monopoly and preventing fragmentation of standards throughout the open-source universe.
Slashdot Mirror
Ericsson already has a history of providing open source. See Erlang Does anyone know of open source solutions that the other companies provide?
Look at a project like LyX. They were making great progress until they decided to have a unified GUI API. While they have been working on "GUI independence", very little improvements have been made to the actual application.
What I once considered of the most interesting applications is now spending all of development time on writing a GUI toolkit instead of improving the application.
Writing a unified API for a forms/graphics toolkit sounds great. What some people do not realize is that writing a unified API is really creating a third toolkit.
Check out this thread where Matthias Ettrich points that Netscape tried something similar with Navigator and failed and trying to make every happy makes no one happy.
A quote about users (not developers ) not wanting to use certain toolkits from Ettrich:
Would someone please give the community some insights on how this worked on the HP 3000 or Hp MPE. My understanding is that everything in that operating system was a transaction. When powering on, the system would roll back to the last commited transaction and just start right back where it left off.
With this system, the process would just start from where it left off.
A description is in this paper MPE/iX Transaction Manager
I agree with the annoyance of MS Word attachments, but the solution proposed in the RMS editorial is insufficient. If a person requiring MS Word format is a problem, to provide a solution, one must consider why the person is using the MS Word format. RMS suggests that the problem is user ignorance. His solution to user ignorance is user education by them by sending them an email. He does not consider there might be valid reasons why the person requires MS Word.
.'. After reading Slashdot comments, you get a picture of the reasons people use MS Word. Solve these needs and then people will stop asking for MS Word attachments.
There are genuine needs that MS Word solves. For example, having a single file for a document with figures cannot be done with HTML. PDF is mostly read-only, but MS Word can be edited. Solve problems like this and many of us can finally abandon Word. If fact, the community could stop trying to emulate MS Word and start creating solutions that are better than it.
The reasons why people use MS Word will be added to this Slashdot as we comment on 'use X instead' and 'I use MS Word instead of X because . .
<wishful thinking> Put him in-charge of a government program like quote below from Nathan Newman's
</wishful thinking>