voislav98 said: >often contradicting the original Frank Herbert books::applause::
I wasn't able to make it through the first book because of such.
It's really a shame Frank Herbert didn't put sufficient effort in the _Dune Encyclopedia_ so as to edit it and make it canonical and more in-line w/ his view of the history, perhaps that would've foreclosed on some of Brian Herbert's really bad gaffes.
nick.ian.k said: > Indesign and its amazing typesetting algorithms
Uh, you really should know that InDesign's mult-line composer is URW's HZ algorithm, which was developed as an extension of TeX's H&J (see the paper by Knuth & Plass on linebreaking for the original) and that Han The Than (sorry, his name is Vietnamese and should have several accents which can't easily be shown here w/ robustness) in developing pdftex added the HZ features to his pdftex, see http://www.pdftex.org/ and his doctoral thesis which was published as an issue of TUGboat: http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents21-4.h tml
The latter is especially interesting since it shows the new font technologies in use by TeX and which are being worked on for luatex, pdftex's successor.
The closest thing I can think of is Simson Garfinkel's sBook (recently opensourced, not sure of the license, see http://www.simson.net/ref/sbook5/ ), but all it does is parse addresses --- I'd love to see a more general purpose one where I can dump all sorts of data in, have it organize it, then run more than just queries, but calculations / forecasts / charting off the data in it (one example, dump a listing of all of my book collection in and have it create a table of average page counts by types of book over time).
Agreed. Stripping out the phone capability would make it a lot more palatable to me --- I've got zero interest in owning a cell phone (spent too many weekends w/ a beeper when I was in the military).
William (who gave up on Apple making a Newton replacement and bought a Fujitsu Stylistic and wants a pen slate running OS X, and would be more tempted by the ModBook if it had a docking station)
Not only that, the incidence of complications with dental implants is significant --- 7% in one article I found --- it's almost scary to read through dental implant product literature where each one notes a different way that it reduces the risk of complications.
The OP is fortunate it's a molar, so doesn't justify a partial, which is a whole 'nother world of problems.
While I'm sorely tempted by the ModBook, it lacks the niceties and synergies afforded by the nice suite of peripherals available for my Fujitsu Stylistic --- in particular being able to drop my pen slate into a docking station on my desktop and instantly being connected to full-sized keyboard and mouse, Wacom graphics tablet, 17" display, network, printer and CD-ROM drive is something I'm not wild about giving up.
Apple's ``Best of Both Worlds'' (codename for the initial PowerBook Duo and docking station, ``Bob-W'') is something I'd like to see them re-visit.
I'd really like to see Apple do something interesting and compelling in the pen slate computer form-factor --- at the very least they should add a digitizer to the screen and make it a convertable (having the screen fold over the keyboard while still being visible --- something better than a ThinkPad 360PE or Vadem Clio &c.).
It's silly that InkWell (nee Rosetta, the print recognizer from Newton OS 2.0) is bundled w/ every copy of Mac OS X, yet is only enabled when one plugs in a graphics tablet (and only fully usable if one shells out for a Wacom Cintiq).
DrFalkyn said: >I don't see any reason why all those coke bottles can't just be sterlized and used again with new labels.
Remember the old horror stories of people finding a mouse skeleton in a bottle?
Usually it was a shrew, which got into the bottle when it was discarded along a roadside, then made it into the food chain when the bottle was picked up by someone, run through the recycling chain (essentially just washed and sterilized --- done while the bottle is upside down, most skeletal bits would drop out, but every so often one would ball up so that it would get stuck) and used to bottle soda again.
Recycling is a good idea, but limits imposed on re-usage to preclude such are a necessity.
Unless of course you're dealing w/ an app like Quark XPress 6.5[1] which bloats a ~80 pg. journal w/ a couple of dozen master pages into ~160MB.
William (who pages such a journal 16 times a year and for whom Quark XPress 6.5 crashed 208 times last year)
1 - v7 finally fixes this by not including bitmap previews in the file, but regenerating them on the fly as the document is opened. Unfortunately the v7 beta was unable to convert the template for this document and Quark was completely uninterested in it after learning that it was ~120MB.
I picked up a 4GB CF card a while back to do backups on (both a 20GB and 30GB HD started erroring out in my pen slate due to excess heat, so I'm back to the original 4GB HD) and intend to try this out as well.
Downside is that apparently having swap space on the card will exceed its read / write cycle capacity fairly quickly (anyone know what the symptoms of that are? Or if there's a way to check on the remaining lifetime?)
The F-117 hasn't been retired yet --- there was a brief misinterpretation of one squadron standing down or some such, but the current inventory is scheduled to remain in service until replaced by the F-22 in 2008 or so.
Yeah, the big problem here is Apple won't cooperate and provide a reasonable alternative --- I've been considering getting a Mac Mini and a Wacom Cintiq and rigging up a portfolio case and battery pack for it, but unfortunately Wacom has discontinued the smaller models.
Aside from the graphics / annotation considerations Mac OS X would probably be a good choice for the OP. Again, it's a shame Apple won't make it easier to try out.
Actually, I'm writing this out now, since I find regularly switching between keyboarding and writing mitigates my own carpal tunnel problem.
Editing and annotating with a pen is also for more natural and efficient, and it's hard to beat the improved portability and flexibility.
I can drop my pen slate into a docking setup at my desk, or place it in a portfolio case which mimics a laptop but rarely do so, but when I had a traditional clam shell laptop, I almost always had to carry around a graphics tablet and/or scanner. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't have anything with the flexibility I need.
Granted, a lot of its niceness is lost w/ the loss of the synergy one gets w/ things like LaTeXiT, spell-checking, shared completion lists &c., but still, it'd be nice to have a tex previewer / editor w/ synchronization between a.pdf preview and the code.
I'm afraid those are all NeXTstep apps --- for GNUstep you'd need to see if you could port TeXshop, use Cenon instead, use Affiche instead of Poste (might need to add the envelope-printing service), there was a project called ``mylibrary'' to replace Digital Librarian/Shakespeare and you could use WordNet instead of Webster's. Not aware of an unencumbered book of quotations though --- Fortune w/ an index maybe?
People who value a nice, open development environment and the integrated and synergistic environment which such creates. Consider a typical work-flow in NeXTstep:
- write an article in TeXview.app
- select a word, hit = and get a definition / thesaurus entry while writing it
- create a drawing in Altsys Virtuoso which needs an equation in a label
- copy the proper equation out of your.tex file from the TeXview.app window
- paste in the equation into Altsys Virtuoso
- invoke the Service TeX eq -> eps in Altsys Virtuoso and get a.eps of the typeset equation (you can send the source to a background layer for reference (what I usually do) or delete it.
- select the address of the journal receiving the article
- invoke Poste.app to bring up a window from you you can print an envelope to mail it for submission
The environment affords similar integration w/ Mail.app as well if desired.
The commercial developer Nova Mind, http://www.nova-mind.com/ uses it to get a Windows version of their Mac OS X software.
And for those who say just use Mac OS X (I do at work):
- monolithic main menu bar w/ wasted blank space between the menus and the (optional) information / settings menus for Airport &c.
- verbose Mac-style shortcut descriptions w/ arcane symbols instead of concise NeXT-style shortcuts (in NeXTstep, Save is indicated by ``s'' and Save as by ``S'', no Command symbol (it's assumed---Control only as a modifier is reserved for personal shortcuts / Unix-use), Shift by case)
- Print, Hide, Services and Quit are no longer top-level menus where they made more sense and were quicker to get at.
- scroll bars on wrong side (this can't be fixed by theming 'cause Carbon apps are responsible for deciding where scroll bars are placed:( having them on the left means a window is more useful when partially dragged off-screen and results in less-frequent need to resize a window
- no Webster.app (this has since been addressed w/ 10.4), Digital Librarian / Shakespeare or Oxford's Book of Quotations --- in NeXTstep this meant one was guaranteed to have Command = _not_ used in an app so it'd be available for looking things up in Websters
- Pantone colour library --- used to be this was licensed w/ the system, now each graphic app which needs it has to pay a license, and one _doesn't_ get them in one's office apps (major negative for adhering to corporate identity programs where such is specced)
- vertical menu
- pop-up main menu --- this is wonderfully fast / efficient / elegant. For me, ``Punch'' in Altsys Virtuoso is pretty much a gesture, right-click, down a bit, then straight over and release
- repositionable sub-menus --- no need for inscrutable button bars, and one can make a given command easy to get to as needed (when doing lots of envelopes I tear off the poste.app Services menu, put it in the bottom left corner, then an envelope is merely a selection, mouse move to bottom left, click, shift right to the print menu (also aligned on the bottom edge for this) click away. (takes longer to say / type than to do)
William (who really should save all that and put it on a web page or something instead of typing it up each time --- check my rants at http://groups.google.com/ in comp.sys.next.advocacy to see if I forgot anything...)
Slashdot Mirror
Appropriately enough called ``LuaTeX'':
http://www.luatex.org/
Makes easy a lot of things which had required some bizarre texniques.
William
voislav98 said: ::applause::
>often contradicting the original Frank Herbert books
I wasn't able to make it through the first book because of such.
It's really a shame Frank Herbert didn't put sufficient effort in the _Dune Encyclopedia_ so as to edit it and make it canonical and more in-line w/ his view of the history, perhaps that would've foreclosed on some of Brian Herbert's really bad gaffes.
William
::applause:
And concur.
His collection _Space Lash_ (originally published as _Small Changes_) was a book I read and re-read as a youth.
William
nick.ian.k said:
h tml
> Indesign and its amazing typesetting algorithms
Uh, you really should know that InDesign's mult-line composer is URW's HZ algorithm, which was developed as an extension of TeX's H&J (see the paper by Knuth & Plass on linebreaking for the original) and that Han The Than (sorry, his name is Vietnamese and should have several accents which can't easily be shown here w/ robustness) in developing pdftex added the HZ features to his pdftex, see http://www.pdftex.org/ and his doctoral thesis which was published as an issue of TUGboat: http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents21-4.
Also look at the TeX Showcases:
http://www.tug.org/texshowcase
and
http://www.tug.org/xetexshowcase/
The latter is especially interesting since it shows the new font technologies in use by TeX and which are being worked on for luatex, pdftex's successor.
William
How about just useful desktop applications?
The closest thing I can think of is Simson Garfinkel's sBook (recently opensourced, not sure of the license, see http://www.simson.net/ref/sbook5/ ), but all it does is parse addresses --- I'd love to see a more general purpose one where I can dump all sorts of data in, have it organize it, then run more than just queries, but calculations / forecasts / charting off the data in it (one example, dump a listing of all of my book collection in and have it create a table of average page counts by types of book over time).
William
iPods don't have pen input.
The third-party app angle is another issue --- will third-parties be allowed to develop for it or no?
Yeah, buying one and cancelling the contract is an option I've been considering, but a nuisance all the same.
William
Agreed. Stripping out the phone capability would make it a lot more palatable to me --- I've got zero interest in owning a cell phone (spent too many weekends w/ a beeper when I was in the military).
William
(who gave up on Apple making a Newton replacement and bought a Fujitsu Stylistic and wants a pen slate running OS X, and would be more tempted by the ModBook if it had a docking station)
Not only that, the incidence of complications with dental implants is significant --- 7% in one article I found --- it's almost scary to read through dental implant product literature where each one notes a different way that it reduces the risk of complications.
The OP is fortunate it's a molar, so doesn't justify a partial, which is a whole 'nother world of problems.
William
While I'm sorely tempted by the ModBook, it lacks the niceties and synergies afforded by the nice suite of peripherals available for my Fujitsu Stylistic --- in particular being able to drop my pen slate into a docking station on my desktop and instantly being connected to full-sized keyboard and mouse, Wacom graphics tablet, 17" display, network, printer and CD-ROM drive is something I'm not wild about giving up.
Apple's ``Best of Both Worlds'' (codename for the initial PowerBook Duo and docking station, ``Bob-W'') is something I'd like to see them re-visit.
William
Only if you're still using Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar (maybe Panther too), but definitely not on 10.4 Tiger.
Rosetta! Rosetta! Rosetta!
is all I get in 10.4 after clicking the ``Send'' button in the Ink window after writing that out.
William
I'd really like to see Apple do something interesting and compelling in the pen slate computer form-factor --- at the very least they should add a digitizer to the screen and make it a convertable (having the screen fold over the keyboard while still being visible --- something better than a ThinkPad 360PE or Vadem Clio &c.).
It's silly that InkWell (nee Rosetta, the print recognizer from Newton OS 2.0) is bundled w/ every copy of Mac OS X, yet is only enabled when one plugs in a graphics tablet (and only fully usable if one shells out for a Wacom Cintiq).
William
That would be an old version of Missile Command I believe:
http://www.mrob.com/pub/source/missile.html
William
DrFalkyn said:
>I don't see any reason why all those coke bottles can't just be sterlized and used again with new labels.
Remember the old horror stories of people finding a mouse skeleton in a bottle?
Usually it was a shrew, which got into the bottle when it was discarded along a roadside, then made it into the food chain when the bottle was picked up by someone, run through the recycling chain (essentially just washed and sterilized --- done while the bottle is upside down, most skeletal bits would drop out, but every so often one would ball up so that it would get stuck) and used to bottle soda again.
Recycling is a good idea, but limits imposed on re-usage to preclude such are a necessity.
William
I'm not typing, I'm formatting and paginating. Takes about 8 or 9 hours to lay out an entire issue (plus 3--5 hours prep work in Word or FreeHand).
I've been pushing for a RAID setup, but since I've made all the deadlines comfortably it's a low priority.
William
Unless of course you're dealing w/ an app like Quark XPress 6.5[1] which bloats a ~80 pg. journal w/ a couple of dozen master pages into ~160MB.
William
(who pages such a journal 16 times a year and for whom Quark XPress 6.5 crashed 208 times last year)
1 - v7 finally fixes this by not including bitmap previews in the file, but regenerating them on the fly as the document is opened. Unfortunately the v7 beta was unable to convert the template for this document and Quark was completely uninterested in it after learning that it was ~120MB.
I had good luck w/ the unofficial Windows 98 second edition update (forget the name though).
I've been meaning to try the SP5 for Windows 2000:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4817.html
Anyone had any luck w/ it?
William
It's doable, and there's even a product to enable it:
d er/ad44midecf.asp
http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_rea
I picked up a 4GB CF card a while back to do backups on (both a 20GB and 30GB HD started erroring out in my pen slate due to excess heat, so I'm back to the original 4GB HD) and intend to try this out as well.
Downside is that apparently having swap space on the card will exceed its read / write cycle capacity fairly quickly (anyone know what the symptoms of that are? Or if there's a way to check on the remaining lifetime?)
William
The F-117 hasn't been retired yet --- there was a brief misinterpretation of one squadron standing down or some such, but the current inventory is scheduled to remain in service until replaced by the F-22 in 2008 or so.
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123030185
William
Yeah, the big problem here is Apple won't cooperate and provide a reasonable alternative --- I've been considering getting a Mac Mini and a Wacom Cintiq and rigging up a portfolio case and battery pack for it, but unfortunately Wacom has discontinued the smaller models.
Aside from the graphics / annotation considerations Mac OS X would probably be a good choice for the OP. Again, it's a shame Apple won't make it easier to try out.
William
Actually, I'm writing this out now, since I find regularly switching between keyboarding and writing mitigates my own carpal tunnel problem.
Editing and annotating with a pen is also for more natural and efficient, and it's hard to beat the improved portability and flexibility.
I can drop my pen slate into a docking setup at my desk, or place it in a portfolio case which mimics a laptop but rarely do so, but when I had a traditional clam shell laptop, I almost always had to carry around a graphics tablet and/or scanner. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't have anything with the flexibility I need.
William
Reasons not to buy a Mac:
- already have a PC and don't want to go through the nuisance / expense of selling it and buying a Mac
- want/need a form-factor Apple doesnt make, e.g., subnotebook sans optical drive or a pen-system w/ integrated graphics digitizer (Tablet PC)
- no single vendor clause / requirement to purchase a supported configuration
Which is why I wish Apple would license Mac OS X or build a pen slate.
William
TeXshop.
.pdf preview and the code.
Granted, a lot of its niceness is lost w/ the loss of the synergy one gets w/ things like LaTeXiT, spell-checking, shared completion lists &c., but still, it'd be nice to have a tex previewer / editor w/ synchronization between a
William
I'm afraid those are all NeXTstep apps --- for GNUstep you'd need to see if you could port TeXshop, use Cenon instead, use Affiche instead of Poste (might need to add the envelope-printing service), there was a project called ``mylibrary'' to replace Digital Librarian/Shakespeare and you could use WordNet instead of Webster's. Not aware of an unencumbered book of quotations though --- Fortune w/ an index maybe?
William
Tony said:
>Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web on a NeXT.
Other interesting programs which began on NeXTstep:
- FreeHand v4 (essentially a port to Windows and the Mac of Altsys Virtuoso v2)
- Doom
- Lotus Improv
- Stone Design's Create
- sBook
An interesting opensource app w/ NeXTstep roots:
- http://www.cenon.info/
William
People who value a nice, open development environment and the integrated and synergistic environment which such creates. Consider a typical work-flow in NeXTstep:
.tex file from the TeXview.app window .eps of the typeset equation (you can send the source to a background layer for reference (what I usually do) or delete it.
0 )
:( having them on the left means a window is more useful when partially dragged off-screen and results in less-frequent need to resize a window
- write an article in TeXview.app
- select a word, hit = and get a definition / thesaurus entry while writing it
- create a drawing in Altsys Virtuoso which needs an equation in a label
- copy the proper equation out of your
- paste in the equation into Altsys Virtuoso
- invoke the Service TeX eq -> eps in Altsys Virtuoso and get a
- select the address of the journal receiving the article
- invoke Poste.app to bring up a window from you you can print an envelope to mail it for submission
The environment affords similar integration w/ Mail.app as well if desired.
The commercial developer Nova Mind, http://www.nova-mind.com/ uses it to get a Windows version of their Mac OS X software.
And for those who say just use Mac OS X (I do at work):
(from: http://macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=4190&cid=6359
- monolithic main menu bar w/ wasted blank space between the menus and the (optional) information / settings menus for Airport &c.
- verbose Mac-style shortcut descriptions w/ arcane symbols instead of concise NeXT-style shortcuts (in NeXTstep, Save is indicated by ``s'' and Save as by ``S'', no Command symbol (it's assumed---Control only as a modifier is reserved for personal shortcuts / Unix-use), Shift by case)
- Print, Hide, Services and Quit are no longer top-level menus where they made more sense and were quicker to get at.
- scroll bars on wrong side (this can't be fixed by theming 'cause Carbon apps are responsible for deciding where scroll bars are placed
- no Webster.app (this has since been addressed w/ 10.4), Digital Librarian / Shakespeare or Oxford's Book of Quotations --- in NeXTstep this meant one was guaranteed to have Command = _not_ used in an app so it'd be available for looking things up in Websters
- Pantone colour library --- used to be this was licensed w/ the system, now each graphic app which needs it has to pay a license, and one _doesn't_ get them in one's office apps (major negative for adhering to corporate identity programs where such is specced)
- vertical menu
- pop-up main menu --- this is wonderfully fast / efficient / elegant. For me, ``Punch'' in Altsys Virtuoso is pretty much a gesture, right-click, down a bit, then straight over and release
- repositionable sub-menus --- no need for inscrutable button bars, and one can make a given command easy to get to as needed (when doing lots of envelopes I tear off the poste.app Services menu, put it in the bottom left corner, then an envelope is merely a selection, mouse move to bottom left, click, shift right to the print menu (also aligned on the bottom edge for this) click away. (takes longer to say / type than to do)
William
(who really should save all that and put it on a web page or something instead of typing it up each time --- check my rants at http://groups.google.com/ in comp.sys.next.advocacy to see if I forgot anything...)