Re: Great SWT Program
- From: nebulous99@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:27:06 -0800 (PST)
On Dec 10, 12:32 pm, b...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Bent C Dalager) wrote:
[calls me a liar]
None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.
So it just guesses what to convert to?
No.
Well if it isn't told explicitly, it has to try to guess somehow.
information it may have about the destination type is the file name
extension you want to give the destination file.
Yes.
In other words, it guesses. :P
Guessing types based solely on
file extension is unsafe anyway.
It seems not.
Sure it is. That's why there's MIME, magic numbers in file formats,
and other systems for file type determination and communication. Gee,
you're not very knowledgeable about some areas of computer technology,
are you?
So much, by the way, for conveniently converting foo.gif to foo.png;
you can't just specify the source file, the destination type, and get
output with just the extension changed. Instead you have to wastefully
type the whole damn name over again. Which may be a lot longer than
"foo".
Who said anything about the icon doing this? The text caption below or
to the right of the icon (depending on view settings) is what would
communicate this information.
Exactly
OK, so now you're no longer claiming that the Windows version of such
a conversion tool is crufty?
[snip some irrelevancies about windows -- we're talking text-mode unix
remember? -- and beginners]
[implied insult deleted; mental health again? Not very creative, are
you?]
I didn't mention mental health at all [insult deleted]
Not explicitly, perhaps. Regardless, none of the nasty things that you
have said or implied about me are at all true.
as compared to two clicks or thereabouts and zero keyboard typing.
There is no interface that would let you do the same with two clicks
except by first expending considerably more clicks to put you into a
position to set up the relevant command.
Except that you can do that just once, and then invoke the same
command numerous times. The text mode equivalent is just some crude
and primitive variation on the idea of a command history -- you can
find a previously typed command by tapping up-arrow or something until
the right one appears, then edit it to change the arguments. Crufty
extra keystrokes required to erase the old arguments of course.
Arrowing to the command may be relatively quick, if only you didn't
have to do it blind, as you can only see one item in the history at a
time. The history will also contain duplications. Contrast a window
with icons poised ready for use, with only one of each, all a quick
flick of the mouse away.
By your own admission, you would even have to download and install new
software to do it
Yes. You do need to have a given piece of software installed before
you can use it, as a general rule, unless it's used remotely.
[snip speculation about how long it would take me to find]
Five minutes.
It's amazing. Especially if you're using a laptop (or worse, a PDA) in
seat 37B with other passengers hogging both of the armrests beside you
and the one in front of you reclining an impolitely large amount, kind
of limiting your elbow room. During turbulence. Seatbelt-sign-keeps-
going-on-and-off-again level turbulence. Truly amazing.
Air travel "analogies" now?
If you don't know an analogy from an example, it's no wonder you are
in a perpetual state of confusion and misunderstand nearly everything
I write, except when you simply comprehend nothing at all, even
wrongly.
Baloney. First, there's no filename fragments in here at all.
No, there's this tricky auto completion issue again. [implied insult deleted]
I know, but with no filename fragment, it either won't complete
anything or it will pick the first file in the directory or something.
To control it into picking a SPECIFIC file requires typing enough of
the filename to disambiguate. You never did this in your broken
example.
Also, none of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.
Second, that minimalist, random-file-converting example is already 14
characters, so forget any of the lower numbers in the range "10-14".
There are more minimalist examples, but [implied insult deleted]
Baloney. The example you gave is as minimal as it can be, with the
arguments entirely generated by tab completion and as little of the
command name typed as possible before also tab completing it. That was
fourteen characters. To actually get a specific file converted instead
of one chosen arbitrarily by the completion engine would require
typing some more: either part of the name of the specific file
desired, or prior commands to move that file into a directory by
itself so that it's the only possible selection for tab completion.
Also, none of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.
Then there's the elbow-room factor, the PDA-with-only-a-pointing-
device factor,
I can only assume that these are [implied insult deleted]
You forgot my earlier example of trying to use your cruft while in a
crowded environment? Airplane, subway, bus ... any of those would be
nasty.
You certainly can, but you will probably want to inspect the result
before hitting enter.
And then you have to wait for it to catch up. No more cutting corners
and setting speed records riskily by typing blind then. :P
so on a low-latency connection it's
wait or risk having actually invoked a command named "conv-format-all-
fixed-disks".
Seeing that this command doesn't actually exist
How do YOU know? There may not be such a thing on your computer, but
it isn't an illegal filename, so if someone put a file named /bin/conv-
format-all-fixed-disks file on a system ... and it did as the name
implied ... well, you get the picture.
Moreover, there is a tendency not to run image conversion
commands as super user so there is a strict limit to how much damage
you can do.
In practise, the superuser runs all kinds of stuff as superuser just
because logging out and back in and losing all session state every
five minutes is hugely inconvenient.
My enter key rarely manages to get pressed on its own initiative.
Of course not, but slips of the fingers and accidents and such happen.
But twice that number (a far more realistic number of keystrokes) is
certainly noticeable.
Not really, no.
Uh-oh. Bent's in denial again...
But it doesn't even know what tokens ARE file or path names, aside
from that the first token on the line necessarily is one.
It doesn't need to - it auto completes path/file names all the same.
But how does it even know whether that's what the user intends?
(And the first token isn't necessarily one either.)
Sure it is, unless it's an alias or a shell builtin, which are
occasional special cases.
And a proficient mouse user takes an even smaller amount of time to
clickety-click.
Hardly. He has to navigate directory trees, pick out files, pick an
application, click around within it to get it to do what he wants it
to and so forth.
Unless windows are already open and parked in the appropriate places.
The setup work only has to be done once per session, so the time and
effort involved in doing so can be safely ignored. At least, so long
as you aren't logging out and in again every five minutes. (Do you
really do that?)
.
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