Write it in (was Re:none of the above)
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If I'm seriously opposed to / offended by all listed candidates for an office, I have written in ``None of the above'' --- the elections folks hate it, 'cause they have to file paperwork on every name voted for (including non-names like this), but it does my conscience good.
A typeface design is uncopyrightable, however the specific expression of a design as a digital font, _including_ the selection of curve points can be copyrighted.
It would've been Quark 4.1, but yes --- course, the terrible thing is, if anything, Quark 4.1 is even more poorly behaved in Mac OS X.
I to am surprised that they're still around --- the only reason I used it for the redesigned version of the journal in question was that there's no equivalent in InDesign to the XTension ProVJ ( http://www.durrant.co.uk/provjm.html ), though I've been beta-testing a plug-in for InDesign which seems promising (of course, the most ironic thing is that I worked up a xelatex format for the journal, but we can't let the publisher know about it, 'cause if they knew this could be done in a batch processing system it'd be sent offshore).
Right, that was my point, Mac OS X itself doesn't crash much --- _much_ less than 14 times in one year (most of those crashes were Mail.app and Safari.app), at least once, maybe twice would be my recollection --- not bad, almost as good as NeXTstep (which crashed for me every couple of years, usually 'cause of a hardware fault like a dying hard drive).
Quark can do this too (lock up the system hard enough to require a Vulcan nerve pinch).
Usually frequent crashing is a corrupt font cache though --- either using Linotype Font Explorer's option for this, or a specialist utility like FontNuke will fix it.
One gets the Apple crash reporter unless the application developer has coded up a specific handling of crashes themselves --- Quark does this for XPress, and Adobe for pretty much all their apps except for Acrobat.
1.5GB of RAM. I don't see that limited RAM in Mac OS X should affect crashing --- performance yes, but crashing? memory gets swapped out or it doesn't, right?
Most of the crashes I've logged are the results of application bugs (as I noted, on the one journal, in Quark v6.5, undoing re-sizing a text box would crash the app), or leaving the machine running long enough for the font cache to become corrupted &c. (but I usually go a couple of weeks between reboots)
Since working out the specifics of the one journal the crash incidence has gone way down, but as I said, it took a while to condition myself not to hit undo under certain circumstances &c.
When I first started using Quark XPress 6.5 in Mac OS X here at my new job, it took a while to work out the kinks for a rather complex project (doing layout for a journal w/ a 24 hr. turn-around), to the point that I actually put up a ``crash log'' outside of my cubicle, so that people could gauge my mood before entering. It's been a year now, and while I've gotten the project in question worked out (had to train myself _never_ to undo re-sizing a text box &c.), the totals might be interesting to people:
2006: Quark XPress: 207 crashes (as many as 9 per day) Adobe Illustrator: 25 InDesign: 35 PhotoShop: 15 Acrobat: 65 Microsoft Word: 23 Macromedia FreeHand: 9 Mac OS X: 14 (this includes Mac OS X apps like Mail.app and Safari.app)
The totals for this year are a bit more reasonable --- Quark XPress v6.5: 26, v7: 46 (I had to move the afore-mentioned journal over to Quark 7 after a re-design and that involved a new set of things to work-around) --- but I find Mac OS X overall reliable and workable as an environment (thought not as nice, consistent and synergistic as NeXTstep).
(I wrote this up for the bookpeople mailing list....)
The local Borders store set up a display w/ one of these yesterday and I spent a while playing with it. Initial impressions:
- nice size, _very_ thin
- crisp, sharp greyscale display --- very readable
- uses GPL software (there's a list of utilities in the user manual as well as notes on where to d/l the source for the software)
- decent interface w/ sensible buttons and okay layout
- supports pdf, txt, rtf, bmp, jpeg, gif and png files as well as the proprietar? BBeB books (.lrf and.lrx)
- plays mp3s
- switches from portrait to landscape and back quite easily
- nice magnification mode
On the downside:
- ~2--3 seconds to switch from one page to another sometimes one gets a distracting flashing
- sometimes one gets ``ghosting'' if the new page has a lot of white space where text or image was before
- the text H&J when displaying text files and.rtfs is _awful_, allowing widows and orphans and pages to end on a hyphen
- the font used for displaying rtfs uses oblique, not italic for emphasis
- sidebars of some of the text font characters, ``i'' most egregiously is not good resulting in poorly spaced text
- urls in.pdfs which break at a line end become two distinct hyperlinks (this may be a problem in how the user guide.pdf was created)
- while one can play an mp3 while reading, controlling the mp3 functions require going all the way back to the main menu --- would've been better to've over-ridden the number buttons for use as audio controls while an mp3 is playing.
One can't help but wonder if the status bar at the bottom can be turned off --- it displays a persistent page number --- perhaps people will format.pdfs especially for this and leave page numbers off?
Apparently this is an updated model and the text updating used to be even slower.
Borders didn't seem to have a mechanism for selling BBeB books in their stores though which is strange since they can be stored on memory cards (Sony proprietary sticks and SD memory cards).
William (who found it inspiring enough to want to put some more effort into getting his Fujitsu Stylistic to boot off of a compact flash card in a CF-IDE adapter, since he uses that to read a _lot_ of ebooks and the hard drive noise is distracting (and to make them, see http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio.html which includes my version of _The Book of Tea_ which is in the TeX Showcase))
Well, I picked up a 2GB card and started the install last night --- installing from the 2GB CF Card onto the 4GB CF card in a dual CF-IDE adapter on a 233MHz Pentium is going a bit slowly --- it was 5% done this morning....
In my case, I blurred 'cause that's what the journal asked for in this case --- one consideration for the most recent such request was that there was medical equipment over part of the face and they didn't want obscured / detracted by a black blob --- other instances get the black block (and the original layered image is _not_ placed in the pages, only a flattened version).
I guess the question in this instance is, can one recognize a face from a ~20 x 17 pixel graphic (which is approximately how many 38 pixel^2 mosaic squares there were --- and this will be halftoned and printed, so will further degrade, and there's a large breathing tube &c. over part of the face.
How much of the 60GB HD is empty and hence writeable?
Will the system actually relocate data which is typically only read so as to make that space available for writing to?
Things don't look so rosy if one has say a 4GB CF and ~3.25GB of that is fairly persistent data (say an install of Windows 2000 and applications and data and music) --- one then has.75GB to soak up all the usage --- which I'm going to try anyway since I got a CF-> IDE adapter for my pen slate, but I'm still waffling on whether or no I'll use a swap file, and if I do, I'm considering putting it on a second card which only holds the swap space and temp files.
That's why when I need to obscure a face (when working on images for a medical journal) I use the mosaic filter after running a heavy gausian blur --- leaves something recognizable as a face, but w/ too little information to reconstruct even a postage stamp (~10 x 16 pixels).
Naturally, the Newton's MP3 player is a 3rd party app --- also, not 100% sure on the iPhone adding of appointments --- it seems certain the iTouch can't, but perhaps the iPhone can?
MP3 player - yes / yes cell phone - yes / no WiFi - yes / no (but possible w/ third-part card) Available, officially released SDK and ability to install 3rd party apps - no / yes handwriting recognition - no / yes (and Newton spellcheck pervasively) freeform drawing & shape recognition - no / yes copy & paste - no / yes full calendar features including ability to enter new appointment - no / yes (and Newton's ``assistant'' makes this _really_ easy, right, ``lunch with Bill on Friday'' and tap assist and it'll get it right or offer you the chance to pick which Bill you mean) folders - no / yes type or edit in horizontal mode - no / yes
There's a list of 100+ iPhone features wanted here:
Interesting and I agree, 'cept that I thought that this would've been the iTouch (iPhone w/ SDK but no phone), so I guess the question is:
- is there room between the iTouch and the lowest end MacBook
- what would be the shape / form factor / size / weight?
- what specific capabilities would it have?
Something small enough to be usable as a remote control (for the AppleTV or a MacBook when giving a presentation), but large enough to function as an electronic picture frame (when docked) and graphics tablet (when attached to a full-fledged Mac) and as an e-book reader would be interesting, say 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 --- but as others have noted, it would _have_ to fit in a pocket.
William (who actually had shirts tailored to have pockets large enough to accommodate his Newton MP 100)
Give me an item dispenser, the program should name things sensibly as they're created and all formulas should read as plain text like: profits = sales - expenses.
If it included support for using a stylus and had InkWell handwriting recognition, I would finally be able to replace my Newton MessagePad --- instead, I guess I'll just get another Fujitsu Stylistic, which will preclude my getting a MacBook (or Axion ModBook), which is a shame since I prefer Mac OS X.
Hopefully when Leopard comes out it'll be feasible to run it on a Tablet PC.
Norden bombsights didn't help the B-17s when attacking a Japanese carrier group during the Battle of Midway --- the problem w/ bombing a ship is that unlike land-based targets, they can move and in this case, did successfully dodge all of the dropped bombs.
That said, the bombing did interfere w/ aircraft launching, refueling and recovery operations, though not to the degree or military value of the run of Torpedo Squadron 8 whose attacks had scattered the carriers and their defensive escort from formation and pulled all the Japanese fighter cover down so that the dive bombers led by Lieutenant Commanders Max Leslie and Wade McCluskey from the Enterprise and Yorktown respectively were able to severely damage Soryu, Kaga and Akagi (two of which were scuttled by the Japanese, the other sunk by the USS Nautilus).
Which is not to say the Norden wasn't an amazing piece of equipment --- the Brits w/ their Mk. XIV were putting 5% of their ordinance w/in a _mile_ of their target --- the Norden allowed the 8th Air Force to put 40% of their bombs w/in 500 yards of a target (in clear weather).
IBM, back when the 755c was a new model and mine was under warranty would accept sending in a machine sans HD if the diagnosis didn't include it --- that's how I got mine repaired.
Slashdot Mirror
Or the printer's version:
- Fast
- Good
- Cheap
Pick any 2.
William
If I'm seriously opposed to / offended by all listed candidates for an office, I have written in ``None of the above'' --- the elections folks hate it, 'cause they have to file paperwork on every name voted for (including non-names like this), but it does my conscience good.
William
A typeface design is uncopyrightable, however the specific expression of a design as a digital font, _including_ the selection of curve points can be copyrighted.
http://directory.serifmagazine.com/Ethics_and_Law/Copyright/judgement.php4
William
It's minimalist, but I find SumatraPDF useful:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/
William
It would've been Quark 4.1, but yes --- course, the terrible thing is, if anything, Quark 4.1 is even more poorly behaved in Mac OS X.
I to am surprised that they're still around --- the only reason I used it for the redesigned version of the journal in question was that there's no equivalent in InDesign to the XTension ProVJ ( http://www.durrant.co.uk/provjm.html ), though I've been beta-testing a plug-in for InDesign which seems promising (of course, the most ironic thing is that I worked up a xelatex format for the journal, but we can't let the publisher know about it, 'cause if they knew this could be done in a batch processing system it'd be sent offshore).
William
Right, that was my point, Mac OS X itself doesn't crash much --- _much_ less than 14 times in one year (most of those crashes were Mail.app and Safari.app), at least once, maybe twice would be my recollection --- not bad, almost as good as NeXTstep (which crashed for me every couple of years, usually 'cause of a hardware fault like a dying hard drive).
William
Quark can do this too (lock up the system hard enough to require a Vulcan nerve pinch).
Usually frequent crashing is a corrupt font cache though --- either using Linotype Font Explorer's option for this, or a specialist utility like FontNuke will fix it.
William
One gets the Apple crash reporter unless the application developer has coded up a specific handling of crashes themselves --- Quark does this for XPress, and Adobe for pretty much all their apps except for Acrobat.
William
1.5GB of RAM. I don't see that limited RAM in Mac OS X should affect crashing --- performance yes, but crashing? memory gets swapped out or it doesn't, right?
Most of the crashes I've logged are the results of application bugs (as I noted, on the one journal, in Quark v6.5, undoing re-sizing a text box would crash the app), or leaving the machine running long enough for the font cache to become corrupted &c. (but I usually go a couple of weeks between reboots)
Since working out the specifics of the one journal the crash incidence has gone way down, but as I said, it took a while to condition myself not to hit undo under certain circumstances &c.
William
When I first started using Quark XPress 6.5 in Mac OS X here at my new job, it took a while to work out the kinks for a rather complex project (doing layout for a journal w/ a 24 hr. turn-around), to the point that I actually put up a ``crash log'' outside of my cubicle, so that people could gauge my mood before entering. It's been a year now, and while I've gotten the project in question worked out (had to train myself _never_ to undo re-sizing a text box &c.), the totals might be interesting to people:
2006:
Quark XPress: 207 crashes (as many as 9 per day)
Adobe Illustrator: 25
InDesign: 35
PhotoShop: 15
Acrobat: 65
Microsoft Word: 23
Macromedia FreeHand: 9
Mac OS X: 14 (this includes Mac OS X apps like Mail.app and Safari.app)
The totals for this year are a bit more reasonable --- Quark XPress v6.5: 26, v7: 46 (I had to move the afore-mentioned journal over to Quark 7 after a re-design and that involved a new set of things to work-around) --- but I find Mac OS X overall reliable and workable as an environment (thought not as nice, consistent and synergistic as NeXTstep).
William
(I wrote this up for the bookpeople mailing list....)
.lrx)
.rtfs is _awful_, allowing widows and orphans and pages to end on a hyphen .pdfs which break at a line end become two distinct hyperlinks (this may be a problem in how the user guide .pdf was created)
.pdfs especially for this and leave page numbers off?
The local Borders store set up a display w/ one of these yesterday and I spent a while playing with it. Initial impressions:
- nice size, _very_ thin
- crisp, sharp greyscale display --- very readable
- uses GPL software (there's a list of utilities in the user manual as well as notes on where to d/l the source for the software)
- decent interface w/ sensible buttons and okay layout
- supports pdf, txt, rtf, bmp, jpeg, gif and png files as well as the proprietar? BBeB books (.lrf and
- plays mp3s
- switches from portrait to landscape and back quite easily
- nice magnification mode
On the downside:
- ~2--3 seconds to switch from one page to another sometimes one gets a distracting flashing
- sometimes one gets ``ghosting'' if the new page has a lot of white space where text or image was before
- the text H&J when displaying text files and
- the font used for displaying rtfs uses oblique, not italic for emphasis
- sidebars of some of the text font characters, ``i'' most egregiously is not good resulting in poorly spaced text
- urls in
- while one can play an mp3 while reading, controlling the mp3 functions require going all the way back to the main menu --- would've been better to've over-ridden the number buttons for use as audio controls while an mp3 is playing.
One can't help but wonder if the status bar at the bottom can be turned off --- it displays a persistent page number --- perhaps people will format
More information on the reader at:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16184
Apparently this is an updated model and the text updating used to be even slower.
Borders didn't seem to have a mechanism for selling BBeB books in their stores though which is strange since they can be stored on memory cards (Sony proprietary sticks and SD memory cards).
William
(who found it inspiring enough to want to put some more effort into getting his Fujitsu Stylistic to boot off of a compact flash card in a CF-IDE adapter, since he uses that to read a _lot_ of ebooks and the hard drive noise is distracting (and to make them, see http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio.html which includes my version of _The Book of Tea_ which is in the TeX Showcase))
Well, I picked up a 2GB card and started the install last night --- installing from the 2GB CF Card onto the 4GB CF card in a dual CF-IDE adapter on a 233MHz Pentium is going a bit slowly --- it was 5% done this morning....
William
In my case, I blurred 'cause that's what the journal asked for in this case --- one consideration for the most recent such request was that there was medical equipment over part of the face and they didn't want obscured / detracted by a black blob --- other instances get the black block (and the original layered image is _not_ placed in the pages, only a flattened version).
I guess the question in this instance is, can one recognize a face from a ~20 x 17 pixel graphic (which is approximately how many 38 pixel^2 mosaic squares there were --- and this will be halftoned and printed, so will further degrade, and there's a large breathing tube &c. over part of the face.
William
Interesting datapoint --- however, how full were the 512 MB cards?
Did you compare their lifetime w/ 1 GB cards w/ the same data (but much more empty space)?
William
How much of the 60GB HD is empty and hence writeable?
.75GB to soak up all the usage --- which I'm going to try anyway since I got a CF-> IDE adapter for my pen slate, but I'm still waffling on whether or no I'll use a swap file, and if I do, I'm considering putting it on a second card which only holds the swap space and temp files.
Will the system actually relocate data which is typically only read so as to make that space available for writing to?
Things don't look so rosy if one has say a 4GB CF and ~3.25GB of that is fairly persistent data (say an install of Windows 2000 and applications and data and music) --- one then has
William
That's why when I need to obscure a face (when working on images for a medical journal) I use the mosaic filter after running a heavy gausian blur --- leaves something recognizable as a face, but w/ too little information to reconstruct even a postage stamp (~10 x 16 pixels).
William
I like Sumatra PDF:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/
William
which they've received for blank tapes and stop producing blank media suitable for copying music as a sign that they feel such actions are wrong.
William
Naturally, the Newton's MP3 player is a 3rd party app --- also, not 100% sure on the iPhone adding of appointments --- it seems certain the iTouch can't, but perhaps the iPhone can?
William
iPhone / Newton:
MP3 player - yes / yes
cell phone - yes / no
WiFi - yes / no (but possible w/ third-part card)
Available, officially released SDK and ability to install 3rd party apps - no / yes
handwriting recognition - no / yes (and Newton spellcheck pervasively)
freeform drawing & shape recognition - no / yes
copy & paste - no / yes
full calendar features including ability to enter new appointment - no / yes
(and Newton's ``assistant'' makes this _really_ easy, right, ``lunch with Bill on Friday'' and tap assist and it'll get it right or offer you the chance to pick which Bill you mean)
folders - no / yes
type or edit in horizontal mode - no / yes
There's a list of 100+ iPhone features wanted here:
http://bradchoate.com/weblog/2007/09/08/100-plus-iphone-features-i-want
looks like Apple has only delivered on 3 of them since the iPhone came out --- the Newton had many of them....
William
Interesting and I agree, 'cept that I thought that this would've been the iTouch (iPhone w/ SDK but no phone), so I guess the question is:
- is there room between the iTouch and the lowest end MacBook
- what would be the shape / form factor / size / weight?
- what specific capabilities would it have?
Something small enough to be usable as a remote control (for the AppleTV or a MacBook when giving a presentation), but large enough to function as an electronic picture frame (when docked) and graphics tablet (when attached to a full-fledged Mac) and as an e-book reader would be interesting, say 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 --- but as others have noted, it would _have_ to fit in a pocket.
William
(who actually had shirts tailored to have pockets large enough to accommodate his Newton MP 100)
I never, ever want to see A1..A10 again.
Give me an item dispenser, the program should name things sensibly as they're created and all formulas should read as plain text like: profits = sales - expenses.
Please.
William
Agreed.
If it included support for using a stylus and had InkWell handwriting recognition, I would finally be able to replace my Newton MessagePad --- instead, I guess I'll just get another Fujitsu Stylistic, which will preclude my getting a MacBook (or Axion ModBook), which is a shame since I prefer Mac OS X.
Hopefully when Leopard comes out it'll be feasible to run it on a Tablet PC.
William
Norden bombsights didn't help the B-17s when attacking a Japanese carrier group during the Battle of Midway --- the problem w/ bombing a ship is that unlike land-based targets, they can move and in this case, did successfully dodge all of the dropped bombs.
That said, the bombing did interfere w/ aircraft launching, refueling and recovery operations, though not to the degree or military value of the run of Torpedo Squadron 8 whose attacks had scattered the carriers and their defensive escort from formation and pulled all the Japanese fighter cover down so that the dive bombers led by Lieutenant Commanders Max Leslie and Wade McCluskey from the Enterprise and Yorktown respectively were able to severely damage Soryu, Kaga and Akagi (two of which were scuttled by the Japanese, the other sunk by the USS Nautilus).
Which is not to say the Norden wasn't an amazing piece of equipment --- the Brits w/ their Mk. XIV were putting 5% of their ordinance w/in a _mile_ of their target --- the Norden allowed the 8th Air Force to put 40% of their bombs w/in 500 yards of a target (in clear weather).
William
IBM, back when the 755c was a new model and mine was under warranty would accept sending in a machine sans HD if the diagnosis didn't include it --- that's how I got mine repaired.
William