That sounds more or less like the Swing approach. You tell it to do something in a certain way and it's supposed to be implemented per-platform to look and feel like the real thing. Problem is, Swing is drawn in Java-land so it will never look quite right until someone un-fucks that aspect of it.
You're on the right track there, though. A good cross-platform GUI API would abstract everything exactly like that... more than Swing. Much more.
But you know, for the majority of things, the developer wants a button with "Blah" written on it, and there's no big reason that it has to take different code on every platform.
It would probably be enough to have a common API for most stuff, and then platform-specific extensions for neat bits and pieces which don't exist elsewhere.
Congrats on your copy and paste effort. You got a surprising number of replies for such a cliche comment. And the story wasn't even about a phone this time, which has gotta be worth bonus points!
wxWidgets is somewhat better. Qt is better too, although I'll acknowledge that Qt/Mac looks shit... but again, that's also an implementation problem rather than a design problem.
The problem is that there are a whole lot of vendors making these devices. Then there are a whole lot of operating systems, and a whole lot of applications which want to use these devices.
So what you need in the middle is a cross-platform interface which the vendors can conform to, and the application developers can use.
PAM is pretty far from cross-platform, and BioAPI's entire point is to be that "simple interface" to get at the readers.
The best thing about fingernail security devices is that when someone wants to steal your ID, they don't need to cut off your finger. The way I see it, less harm to me is a good thing, so I'm all for it.:-)
One of the real reasons Doom3 never took off is because I needed to buy a new computer to use it. And so did everyone else.
I didn't. I had a reasonably middle-end Athlon XP 2500+ CPU, and a Radeon 9600 graphics card, and that worked more or less fine. Maybe people who don't already upgrade their hardware every three years would have had to buy a new computer. The rest of us... the gaming MAJORITY... did not.
I personally hate SWT, so you've picked the wrong example. SWT is a particularly good example of where I am right: the GTK interface is written like crap, slow, and utterly useless. But I don't think it has to be.:-)
Not really. GUI is an OS-specific thing, but recompilation should be all that you need to make it look native on all platforms. You can blame this "looking like ass" (however things look like a donkey, I have no idea) on the developer of each platform's implementation, but you can't blame it on the idea.
Naturally. Although most users have upgraded to Links or ELinks years ago, I see it as a fair requirement that web applications must gracefully degrade to any browser. This includes mobile phones too, if you're so bored on the train that you simply must do a tax return.;-)
Oh, I know well that they're an approximation. That's part of the whole weighing of cost of an accountant against the extra money they'll get you. But the point is that the approximation works well enough for the vast majority of people.
On the scale of complexity though, I still stand by my statement that our system is simpler than other places.
More like 90% than 99%. And complexity? Maybe you live in an area where the tax system is complicated, but in Australia it's relatively simple unless you have extremely unusual income.
There are several tax companies over here in Australia offering a simple web-based interface to taxation. The only difference is that these other interfaces cost $40 or so to use (tax deductible, of course), whereas the government are giving access to their own eTax system for free.
My objection here is that they're only giving this freebie to mindless Windows users. The rest of us still have to pay.
I guess it could be worse. In Australia, AO games are outright banned (as Leisure Suit Larry was last year.) Be thankful that you're in a place where at least some game store carries AO titles.
Me, I'm thankful that the game came out here for long enough for everyone to get who would actually care.
The best thing about entries in the IOCCC is that it really is "making things purely for their beauty," and therefore a "fine art" by Stallman's definition.
2. It takes a little longer than just five seconds to register for a new service. First you have to spend at least five seconds filling out a form and squinting to read the CAPTCHA. Then you have to wait a few minutes for the email to finally arrive and then confirm it. Of course, I'm only talking about the majority of services here. Clearly there are one or two (total) services in the world which actually take five seconds to sign up for.
Furthermore, that's not the only reason they did it. Suppose John Smith registers on 5,000 web sites. What says that JohnSmith at Slashdot is the same john_smith at LiveJournal? OpenID solves that part of the problem.
3. Last I checked, Firefox's "remember password" feature didn't help my home browser remember passwords entered at work. Furthermore, this feature doesn't magically register new accounts either.
4. I agree, and not having to register on 5,000 web sites is minimalism for most people.
6. If you'd bothered to read their documentation, they actually admit that rogue sites can do whatever they want, including simply not handling the OpenID information at all. What OpenID does is makes sure that sites which _do_ play by the rules have a consistent view of identity.
7. I'm sure most users would love to have to manage a cron job just to do something that web sites can do for them.
They aired a lot more than that. It was part of Toonami a while back... I can't remember what year, but it was two house moves ago which would have made it something like 3-4 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure some LARP fanatic can help you out with lightning balls.
Yeah, just don't try to grind so much while you're sitting on public transport. People might start getting suspicious.
That sounds more or less like the Swing approach. You tell it to do something in a certain way and it's supposed to be implemented per-platform to look and feel like the real thing. Problem is, Swing is drawn in Java-land so it will never look quite right until someone un-fucks that aspect of it.
You're on the right track there, though. A good cross-platform GUI API would abstract everything exactly like that... more than Swing. Much more.
But you know, for the majority of things, the developer wants a button with "Blah" written on it, and there's no big reason that it has to take different code on every platform.
It would probably be enough to have a common API for most stuff, and then platform-specific extensions for neat bits and pieces which don't exist elsewhere.
Congrats on your copy and paste effort. You got a surprising number of replies for such a cliche comment. And the story wasn't even about a phone this time, which has gotta be worth bonus points!
320x240 is just enough for DOOM though. :-)
wxWidgets is somewhat better. Qt is better too, although I'll acknowledge that Qt/Mac looks shit... but again, that's also an implementation problem rather than a design problem.
The problem is that there are a whole lot of vendors making these devices. Then there are a whole lot of operating systems, and a whole lot of applications which want to use these devices.
So what you need in the middle is a cross-platform interface which the vendors can conform to, and the application developers can use.
PAM is pretty far from cross-platform, and BioAPI's entire point is to be that "simple interface" to get at the readers.
The best thing about fingernail security devices is that when someone wants to steal your ID, they don't need to cut off your finger. The way I see it, less harm to me is a good thing, so I'm all for it. :-)
I guess most people aren't so keen to go to a sequel for a movie that sucked.
One of the real reasons Doom3 never took off is because I needed to buy a new computer to use it. And so did everyone else.
I didn't. I had a reasonably middle-end Athlon XP 2500+ CPU, and a Radeon 9600 graphics card, and that worked more or less fine. Maybe people who don't already upgrade their hardware every three years would have had to buy a new computer. The rest of us... the gaming MAJORITY... did not.
I personally hate SWT, so you've picked the wrong example. SWT is a particularly good example of where I am right: the GTK interface is written like crap, slow, and utterly useless. But I don't think it has to be. :-)
Not really. GUI is an OS-specific thing, but recompilation should be all that you need to make it look native on all platforms. You can blame this "looking like ass" (however things look like a donkey, I have no idea) on the developer of each platform's implementation, but you can't blame it on the idea.
It could go right past 2030 if they want to go to base 36...
Java doesn't force you to use OO design and type introspection any more than C forces you to use a procedural design.
That brings up an interesting thought. Are there any keyboards optimised for the Ruby language? :-)
Naturally. Although most users have upgraded to Links or ELinks years ago, I see it as a fair requirement that web applications must gracefully degrade to any browser. This includes mobile phones too, if you're so bored on the train that you simply must do a tax return. ;-)
Oh, I know well that they're an approximation. That's part of the whole weighing of cost of an accountant against the extra money they'll get you. But the point is that the approximation works well enough for the vast majority of people.
On the scale of complexity though, I still stand by my statement that our system is simpler than other places.
More like 90% than 99%. And complexity? Maybe you live in an area where the tax system is complicated, but in Australia it's relatively simple unless you have extremely unusual income.
There are several tax companies over here in Australia offering a simple web-based interface to taxation. The only difference is that these other interfaces cost $40 or so to use (tax deductible, of course), whereas the government are giving access to their own eTax system for free.
My objection here is that they're only giving this freebie to mindless Windows users. The rest of us still have to pay.
I guess it could be worse. In Australia, AO games are outright banned (as Leisure Suit Larry was last year.) Be thankful that you're in a place where at least some game store carries AO titles.
Me, I'm thankful that the game came out here for long enough for everyone to get who would actually care.
Of course, they wouldn't need to port the program if they made it truly web-based in the first place.
The best thing about entries in the IOCCC is that it really is "making things purely for their beauty," and therefore a "fine art" by Stallman's definition.
2. It takes a little longer than just five seconds to register for a new service. First you have to spend at least five seconds filling out a form and squinting to read the CAPTCHA. Then you have to wait a few minutes for the email to finally arrive and then confirm it. Of course, I'm only talking about the majority of services here. Clearly there are one or two (total) services in the world which actually take five seconds to sign up for.
Furthermore, that's not the only reason they did it. Suppose John Smith registers on 5,000 web sites. What says that JohnSmith at Slashdot is the same john_smith at LiveJournal? OpenID solves that part of the problem.
3. Last I checked, Firefox's "remember password" feature didn't help my home browser remember passwords entered at work. Furthermore, this feature doesn't magically register new accounts either.
4. I agree, and not having to register on 5,000 web sites is minimalism for most people.
6. If you'd bothered to read their documentation, they actually admit that rogue sites can do whatever they want, including simply not handling the OpenID information at all. What OpenID does is makes sure that sites which _do_ play by the rules have a consistent view of identity.
7. I'm sure most users would love to have to manage a cron job just to do something that web sites can do for them.
9. Let's see how.
They aired a lot more than that. It was part of Toonami a while back... I can't remember what year, but it was two house moves ago which would have made it something like 3-4 years ago.
Slashdot is even more cutting edge, they seem to have forgotten that Adult Swim aired Evangelion a few years back.
Go and market that opinion to the third world...