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← 2022-11-13 | 2022-11-15 →
crtdaydreams[busybot]: haven't been following closely, what's the lore on this alamada research watchamacallit
signpost[asciilifeform]: crtdaydreams: my guess is the guy's got so much adderall and xanax up his nose at this point he doesn't know what he's posting.
asciilifeform: signpost: (via locklin's www) was the chix who had the dope post, but come to think of it prolly both overindulge
asciilifeform: ^ a++ marie antoinette btw, lulzy
signpost[asciilifeform]: asciilifeform: rumor is they had an on-staff shrink to write the amphetamine prescriptions
asciilifeform: signpost: laddel managed without a full-time dr.mengele. but whoknows
asciilifeform did tell laddel, 'dopaminergics aint a toy', but since when does anyone listen
signpost[busybot]: I fully support any kind of augmentation/experimentation one wants to attempt
signpost[asciilifeform]: tried oxiracetam a while back, was great. my conclusion was it was too good, had to have a cost.
asciilifeform lived in usa long enuff to have eaten'em, not speaks 'from arse'
asciilifeform: if must do it, do a la paul erdos -- smallest possible dose, now&again, not erryday
asciilifeform: errything has cost.
signpost[asciilifeform] sips his coffee
signpost[asciilifeform]: drugs are just another tool
signpost[asciilifeform]: but yeah, the rapid unscheduled disassembly tends to follow a pattern
signpost[asciilifeform]: when it strikes
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-03-17 asciilifeform: verisimilitude: doin' dope 'correctly' is as much a skill as e.g. running a table saw or flying a 'cessna'
asciilifeform: signpost: there's a classic 'fuhrerbunker' pattern where sufferer 'doubles down', very characteristic of dopaminergic abusers
asciilifeform: signpost: unapropos -- know anyffin re guiism ?
bitbot[busybot]: Logged on 2022-11-13 13:29:28 asciilifeform[4]: unrelatedly, asciilifeform hit a rather stiff wall with fltk (and then tried classic tk, where apparently on asciilifeform's box same issue) -- not worx with x11 dpi settings, microscopic font (and if cranked up, overflows widgets)
asciilifeform thus far failed to discover a way of baking gui for ada proggy (even under strictly linux) that he could read w/out a magnifying glass, lol
signpost[asciilifeform]: nah no idea. maybe it has an opinion re: use of .Xdefaults vs .Xresources ?
asciilifeform: signpost: neither fltk nor tk appear to have any provisions for scaling up fonts for menu, buttons, etc. i.e. hard-baked for ancient lcd
asciilifeform: this leaves afaik gtk, qt, and wx. found purported ada bindings for the 1st 2, but neither (unsurprise, circa early 2000s) builds
signpost[asciilifeform]: anyway zero experience with fltk on my end
asciilifeform: signpost: mnope. doesn't fix menu bar, buttons, etc. found (but not have link handy) explanation where author 'yea it's pixel-based, no provision for scaling'
asciilifeform suspects is dead end
asciilifeform if can't use $proggy on main machine where 3 x 4k lcd, won't be bothering with $lib
asciilifeform: apropos. there seems to be a catastrophic shortage of anyffin usable for this purpose.
asciilifeform: (even if toss out 'cross platform' req)
signpost[asciilifeform]: one approach might be to specify a client/server protocol between the station and a UI, or bot, or w/e.
signpost[asciilifeform] not saying anything earth shaking here
signpost[asciilifeform]: just whenever I encounter an ambiguity like this, first urge is to define an interface so the ambiguous part can be thrown away repeatedly until right
asciilifeform: signpost: naturally can bake per-platform ui in cpp, and link in a 'libpest'. but would rather not have any overflowlang in the build at all
asciilifeform: otherwise risk 'submarine with screen door'(tm)
asciilifeform: would be useful for other proggies also, to have a sane gui avail.
asciilifeform: thus far found only desert landscape with skeletons.
signpost[asciilifeform]: yup, goal makes sense, and also ^
signpost[busybot]: would communication with the station via a socket be undesirable?
asciilifeform: presently asciilifeform has no leads at all. fltk & tk seem to be catastrophically misarchitected, would likely take moar effort to fix than to bake replacement from 0
asciilifeform: signpost: orthogonal to problem.
asciilifeform: problem is 'canhaz graphical chat box w/out cpp?'
signpost[asciilifeform]: yep, getting owned at the UI layer isn't better than getting owned at the station layer
signpost[asciilifeform]: looking for cpp-less binding, or fully cpp-less communcation with X?
asciilifeform: signpost: ideally looking for 'like wx but with ada-able c interface' but realistically 'cppless with x11' is prolly the limit of what is doable without over9000 manhour
asciilifeform considered 'talk to x w/ domain sockets' but 0 useful ref material within easy reach, may have to uncrate ancient manuals
asciilifeform: and of course ^ reopens the 'write font renderer, scroller, etc. widgetry from 0' sisyphian labour
asciilifeform turned up 'xcb', a possible approach to above
asciilifeform: purported ada binding. asciilifeform not tried justyet.
phf[asciilifeform]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2022-11-14#1016214 << afaiu xcb is a rewrite of xlib to make networking a bit more sane, but otherwise doesn't solve any of your problems
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-11-14 16:02:06 asciilifeform[6]: turned up 'xcb', a possible approach to above
phf[asciilifeform]: you're still essentially operating it "print line of string at x,y, draw a rectangle x,y,w,h" level
asciilifeform: phf: that part not surprise yes
asciilifeform: phf: was looking to solve moar general problem of 'canhaz drawable framebuffer and x11 i/o in statically linked ada proggy?'
asciilifeform: (and yes this means 'render font 'by hand'' etc)
phf[asciilifeform]: i'm surprised there's no tk update that supports dpi though. the whole thing is quite "modern" on mac, i thought somebody's keeping it up to date. but it sounds like the unix infra is failing in general
asciilifeform if understands correctly, 'xcb' is simply glue to talk to x bolix-style, via domain socket
asciilifeform: phf: can't be certain that it wasn't updated (or perhaps only mac ver?) but if so not found
asciilifeform: and yes 'things falling apart', but dun expect anyone tuned in is surprised
phf[busybot]: after common lisp i expected most languages to have something like clx, so you can talk to x over native stream with no ffi of any kind. apparently nobody else have anything remotely similar, and in lisp world it only exists because symbolics people spent all that effort
asciilifeform: afaik precisely because bolix
asciilifeform: (iirc so that could sell that headless ivory 400 or wat was it)
asciilifeform: sumbody noticed that a low-end sun has better display and costs 5x less than the console, or sumthinglikethat
asciilifeform: (then somebody else -- 'mac costs even less' and so 'macivory')
phf[asciilifeform]: that's as good an origin theory as any. i suspect that at some point genera was a kind of "emacs", had lots of support for orchestrating unix boxes. nfs, rexec,x11, etc.
asciilifeform: considering that most users had fleet of unix boxen along with bolix -- made sense
asciilifeform also suspects that bolix brass realized (if too late) that it dun actually make economic sense to manufacture own glass tubes (and even -- lol -- laser printers !) if could be avoided.
phf[busybot]: i suspect it was attempts at novel delivery strategies, rather than march to grave. for example the order of events is backwards, macivory was the first ivory machine, then xl, then sun extension board, then the headless nxp1000
asciilifeform: iirc they also had a thrust to address 'customers complain that deployment of $soft costs same as $devstation' so 'let's make cheaper deploybox'
asciilifeform: that'd explain the order
asciilifeform for somereason thought that 'xl' was 1st
phf[asciilifeform]: reading some old release blurb looks like macivory just happened to be ready first, even though xl400 was being developed at the same time, but took longer
phf[asciilifeform]: β€œThe machine with 1Mb Mac II, the board and Genera, 8Mb of NuBus memory, the Apple mouse and extended keyboard, a 12 mono screen and 300Mb SCSI disk is $21,900, with limited ships in early October. The board with 8Mb and software for existing Mac IIs will be $10,900 from next March.”
phf[asciilifeform]: β€œ The MacIvory adds a Symbolics board containing the Ivory symbolic processor and NuBus interface, and is the first product based on the Ivory microprocessor, as well as the first Symbolics product based on a non-proprietary machine.”
asciilifeform: 1986 mercedes 300, for comparison, ~35k (1986 $)
← 2022-11-13 | 2022-11-15 →