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da_rob

182 karma · joined September 1, 2019

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da_rob··on WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)
> I still miss the ability to "Reveal Codes" and see exactly where it had placed the non-printing codes to turn on/off bold, italics, to change margins, etc. [...]

Not a full replacement for WordPerfect, but Pure has "Reveal Codes" (F9): https://github.com/roblillack/pure

da_rob··on I made a terminal pager
Well-written article!

I wish there was some kind of standard to tell CLI apps what features to expect from the system pager, so they can act accordingly …

Right now, apps can talk to the terminal to check for feature support, but all of that falls apart when the output is piped to a pager. (Do we support inline links? ANSI colors? Sixel support??)

Shameless plug, specifically regarding Sixel support: I needed a pager with better image support than just less -r and made https://github.com/roblillack/lessi

da_rob··on How to build a `Git diff` driver
Yes, there is imgap: https://github.com/roblillack/imgap

You can use it to create delta images for git diff but also to interactively compare changes via git difftool.

da_rob··on I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard
Wow, this project (and actually the whole thread here) is awesome. Love it! Our (iPad-based) kitchen timetable[1] is nothing compared to the work (and money) Joel sank into this.

If someone wants to go the easy route towards something like this: iPad (Air 1, I think) is connected to the charger 24/7 and runs in Kiosk mode. Application is just a React website hosted on Vercel, client credentials are stored in localStorage …

[1]: https://roblillack.net/unser-stundenplan-family-timetable-vi...

da_rob··on NeuralSVG: An Implicit Representation for Text-to-Vector Generation
It’s not PIC and not really suitable for complex diagrams, yet, but you can use Vizzlo’s Chart Vizzard to create a subset of the supported chart types (let’s say a Gantt) and then continue editing it using the chart editor: https://vizzlo.com/ai
da_rob··on TUI spreadsheet app in Rust based on IronCalc engine
Author posted a screenshot here: https://bsky.app/profile/zaphar.bsky.social/post/3lc67gecky2...
da_rob··on First Impressions: Lenovo T14s with Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM64 CPU
OpenBSD support is quite a bit further: https://roblillack.net/openbsd-arm64-on-the-thinkpad-t14s
da_rob··on Virtual Windows 3.11 Computer
IIRC it's the Calculator. :(
da_rob··on Virtual Windows 3.11 Computer
> On both Windows and macOS, windows are clearly delimited by drop shadows.

https://www.threads.net/@roblillack/post/DBYOuivOPFV

da_rob··on Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out
That did the trick, thank you!
da_rob··on Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out
Screenshot:

https://imgur.com/hoOlRDy

Happy that this will finally be a feature of FF. Still pretty useless for me, though, for these reasons:

- There's an empty tab bar shown at the top of the window.

- Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too.

da_rob··on Show HN: Non SaaS – Directory of Non SaaS Apps
Went through the list, all listed services are SaaS apps. :(

Granted, most of them are self-hosted (not all!), but this list needs to be called norecurringfee.com ….

da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
Geez, look at the build instructions! It all went downhill when they switched from Motif to GTK.
da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
The virtual component tree is needed as there is no 1:1 mapping of components to widgets.

Using the virtual tree, you are able to build components which dynamically change the rendered subtree based on the current state.

da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
Perfect use-case, IMHO! Looking forward to hear your thoughts ocne you tried it.
da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
For complex scenarios (i.e. the user interacting with the UI while there are some long-running processes in the backround doing this, too), managing the state quickly gets unwiedly: You need to write callback code everywhere that carefully has to inspect the current status of all other activities and might then updates 10s of widgets accordingly.

With the reactive approach you are able to write a single rendering function that describes the interface for any given state and the framework takes care of the rest (when to call that function, what "input" to give it).

It's just way easier to wrap my head around this and after working with React it is hard to go back. Hence the experiment to see if something comparable could be done in Go.

da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
Given the right C compiler and everything, Spot should work without changes on Windows (and select the FLTK) backend.

My (low prio, though) goal is to implement a Win32-based backend, though, the first step is done: https://github.com/roblillack/spot/pull/4

da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
Big fan of WxWindows, I'm just too invested into Go these days. :)

Self-contained Spot "Hello World" is 2.3MiB on my Mac. Not pretty, but works for me.

da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
No, it just means that the main goroutine should not be moved onto another OS thread to ensure that it is always the same OS thread which will run UI updates.

This is necessary for most UI libraries and in Spot's case implemented for both the FLTK and the Cocoa backend.

da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
The backends (FLTK/Gocoa) are using CGo, which currently does not support cross-compiling as far as I know.

So you still need to have a build pipeline with multiple operating systems, signing/notarization tools, etc. :(

da_rob··on Show HN: Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go
While I agree, that the virtual widget tree has a certain overhead, the typical desktop app you would create with Spot probably does not have 1000s of components—more like ten to twenty probably. Compare that to the immediate mode GUIs that currently are en vogue, that re-render all controls all the time.

Spot does not have any optimizations regarding render performance at the moment and it might never be necessary to add them.

On the other hand, due to the reactive programming model, I really like how state management get a lot clearer—especially when working with multiple goroutines.

da_rob··on Biome
The possibility to use dprint plugins (Dockerfile, TOML, Markdown, custom ones) would be awesome.
da_rob··on Biome
Congrats to the team, the rebrand was overdue!

I'd love to see some kind of collaboration or interoperability with dprint in the future.

da_rob··on GoWalla location tracking app returns
I seem to be the last remaining user of Foursquare/Swarm in my city and really miss this openly crowdsourced approach to curating places. Yelp/Google Maps/TripAdvisor just feels too "commercial" for me.

Official announcement by Josh Williams here: https://twitter.com/jw/status/1634178431008247808

da_rob··on Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
Built something like this a few years ago: https://github.com/roblillack/vim-bufferlist
da_rob··on Google will let legacy G Suite users migrate to free Google accounts
True.

I think the issue was that there was lots of uncertainty for people that actually want to keep their Google account for Google Photos other other products and that do not care for the custom domain (anymore). The official wording before this change was: “upgrade and pay or ..... Photos ‘may’ not work anymore”

da_rob··on Ask HN: What are options to replace “G Suite legacy” when it's retired in May?
I started looking for options yesterday[1], currently these are the contestants:

* Google Workspace

* Fastmail

* ProtonMail

* Zoho Mail

* Tutanota

* (Mailbox.org)

[1] https://roblillack.net/google-workspace-alternatives-for-fam...

da_rob··on Google Workspace Alternatives for Families
Thanks for the suggestion! I added Zoho Mail and Tutanota to the list of services to try.

Honestly, though, my gut feeling about Zoho is not that good: Whenever I hear the name, it seems to be some kind of negative story.

A quick search on HN led to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18059792 (worth reading the comments). I even remember someone here talking about having done a due diligence that didn't end too well—can't find the comment, though.

da_rob··on Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams
Congrats on the public release today!

Do you plan to build an integration API (for embedding into Pitch, not the other way round)?

da_rob··on Data Visualization Catalog
True.

Since I got introduced to this simple but effective visualization (in my 30s!), I tend to use it everywhere.

Out of the “chart generation” apps listed in the catalog, only Vizzlo seems to support it: https://vizzlo.com/create/waterfall-chart (and Tableau, I suppose, but IDK if I'd count this as a simple chart generator). I did not check the listed charting libraries.