[dev] Shell vs C where is the border?
Hi, I was recetly wondering about the use cases of C and shell. I've seen that this topic appears several times mostly when discussing sbase. Some of you probably knows ffmpeg, software that allows to convert media files between various formats. Imagine now that we have several smaller tools that do one thing and do it well and to convert mkv wideo do webm we do: videostream movie.mkv | theoradec | v8enc video audiostream movie.mkv audio createwebmvideo video audio But having so many individual programs is more harder to use that just one (we need to run more commands), so reasonable would be to combine all this commands to one script which would do all this work automaticaly. So what solution would be better in your opinion? When we should use shell scripts and when write new C programs to achieve our goals? BR, Szymon
[dev] What is bad with Python
Hi, I've recently had a presentation(during local Linux User Group meeting) about some basic ideas Unix philosophy and suckless projects. This has led my attention once to the topic of programming languages and I must admit that I've found Python much less harmful that I had previously considered it to be. And when I can point out why does Perl, PHP, JS sucks, python is another way round. Python has precise design, the code is readable and what is very important it simplify many things. In addition it has many great libraries so why do not use Python at least as a prototype language. Mayby it's multi-paradigm aproach is the problem but what alternatives to python do you see? awk? Limbo? And at last what do you thing about Ruby which is quite similar to the python in many aspects? BR, Szymon
Re: [dev] man and man-db
On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 10:58:58AM +, Raphaël Proust wrote: On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Szymon Olewniczak szymon.olewnic...@rid.pl wrote: Which db engines do you consider of being suckless? I (as in “myself”, not as in “the suckless community”) think file based storage is a DB that sucks less than most systems out there. But it has some disadvantages. For example searching database, without indexes can be very slow. Another issue rise when you have huge files that cannot be fully loaded to RAM. When you would relay only on the kernel, you could easily slow down your system with lots of unnessesery IO operations. So when you think about this in that way, you will realize that some database engine can be useful. However, I would argue that the file abstraction is the important bit, not the implementation (i.e. if you have a file interface that does not rely on usual files can be close enough to the suckless philosophy (depending on the implementation). E.g. procfs is a database of the running processes on top of which is is reasonably easy to building clean, portable scripts and programs that do not suck too much. Other examples: devices in /dev, network connections in Plan9's /net. Great idea. I'll look at it. BR, Szymon
[dev] man and man-db
Hi, I've realized recently that starting from the times of Fedora 13 man application was replaced by man-db in all major GNU/Linux distros. Do you thing that using Berkeley DB is better that traditional flat-text whatis db (in my opinion it is, it probably speed up things)? Does the apropos command works in the original man implementation? And what is your opinion about Berkeley DB - is it suckless or not? Which db engines do you consider of being suckless? BR, Szymon
[dev] TDD
Hi, what is your opinion about TDD? Is it suckles or not? Do you have any experience with this kind of development? Do TDD in C make any sense? BR, Szymon
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about XML
On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 01:02:34AM +0200, Dmitrij D. Czarkoff wrote: Evan Buswell said: But OTOH, I do like the idea of separating the translation-to-html bit from the generate-sensible-output bit. XSLT may have done this poorly, but it's on the right track (and what else works better for this, Awk? Perl? m4?). I mean, I take the point that we can't really make the web stack all that much better, but at least we can containerize suck? Yes? Containerize suck of web stack? It is already containerized in browsers - choose the one that sucks less. See, the problem with web stack are not somewhere between the stack and the rest of your software and data. You readily may have your data in whatever format you want and share it via whatever protocol you like. Eg. you may have a bunch of JSON files accessible via their URLs as they are and via werc (or your custom CGI script) as HTML. The problem with web stack is the ugliness of web stack itself, and there is no workaround for that. But think that we need to find something between. If we develop our own window manager on top of X11(which itself isn't very suckless), its useful beouse it uses X11 (something that is standrad now) and it let us use all X11 apps in a less sucky way. So I think that saying - all modern web sucks(which is right in fact) - let's make something completly diffirent is like saying - X11 sucks, let's create something that can replace it. I'm serching for something similar as dwm in the web services world. We cannnot force everyone to use something diffirent than HTML and HTTP becouse noone want a huge revolution(users, web browsers and http servers developers). But maybe we can use this tools to create something less sucky, something that would make the web a better place. I don't want to starting a new project that will make the web worst place. I believe that web developdent can be done better rigth now and I want to show that it's possible. BR, Szymon
[dev] Some thoughts about XML
Hi, everyone knows that XML has its defects but considering some of our discussions about suckless web ideas I think that XML + XSLT is quite a good solution - much better than plain HTML. Pages writen in XML has readable source and data can be accessed much more easily. In addition using of XML causes that we have API for each web page which is using it. Other disadvantage of XML - the large size of files (in compression with JSON) also isn't a big problem becouse when we use some compression algorithms (gzip for example), xml will compress much better and it's size will be similar to its JSON equivalent. Another advantage of XML is its adaptation. We've already have MathML, SVG and many many others[1] all build on top of XML. Persons who would like to use web browser to read the page can still do it (using XLST) and the person who would like to get some information from the page can also do it in easy way. At the and I want to ask you a question. What do you think would be the best solution for bulding websites which would look similar to this what we have now(gopher is great but ...) and would have easily accessible data for persons who want to use it in thay own applications? BR, Szymon [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_markup_languages
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about XML
On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 06:48:06PM +0200, Dmitrij D. Czarkoff wrote: Chris Down said: On 2013-10-18 14:44, Szymon Olewniczak wrote: Pages writen in XML has readable source and data can be accessed much more easily. I don't even know what to say to this... Strictly speaking, I agree with OP on this: XML is much better then HTML (actually fault-tolerance reuired for HTML makes it much worse then otherwise nightmarish XML). That doesn't make XML usable though. I've started this topic becouse I'm woriking in a small family firm and we have decided that we need an new application to managing complaints, documentation, and several other things of our clients (I don't want to go into detail). So I'm thinking about model that would make it usable for peoples like me and for non-tech users. XML + XSLT is one of my ideas, another is one file web application based on JSON calls (maybe its better, what do you think?). I believe that we can make the web the better place without huge revolutino(such as changing HTTP to something else) or maybe I am wrong. BR, Szymon
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about XML
On 18/10/2013, Szymon Olewniczak szymon.olewnic...@rid.pl wrote: I believe that we can make the web the better place without huge revolutino s/HTML/XML+XSLT/g is quite a revolution. But it's something whitch I can use in my application straight away without forcing user to change their web browsers. (such as changing HTTP to something else) Which is this about, HTTP or HTML? It's about whole modern web stack and ways we can make it better, without a huge revolution. BR, Szymon
[dev] [dwm] mousless monitor switching
Hi, there is one thing about dwm that really annoy me. In multi-monitor setup I need to use mouse to switch between my screens. Can I do it using some keyboard shorotcuts. I like the way it's working in i3 where I simply have one set of tags for all screens and switching tag automaticly switches screen, when the tag belongs to other screen. (by default first screen get 1 tag second 2 and so on). Can I achieve something similar in dwm? Regards, Szymon
[dev] Why HTTP is so bad?
On the http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ I've found very interesting statment about HTTP: or best of all: don't use HTTP. Can someone explain me why the author claims that? What is bad in http? Regards, Szymon
