Linux-Development-Apps Digest #402, Volume #6 Mon, 6 Mar 00 02:13:13 EST
Contents:
Re: array of semaphores... ("mr mike (mike wingert)")
Re: I can't stand this X anymore! (John Hasler)
Re: Free Agent for Linux (Victor Wagner)
Re: Interrupt Service Routines (Victor Wagner)
Re: I can't stand this X anymore! (Michael Gu)
Re: I can't stand this X anymore! (Michael Gu)
Re: I can't stand this X anymore! (Donovan Rebbechi)
question about design and data storage (Dustin Aleksiuk)
Re: Socket problem (Dan Kegel)
Re: which ODBC or other API for Linux (Dan Kegel)
http and ssl on client side ("Tom Wideroe")
Re: Cheap development cd's wanted ("Chris Wise")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "mr mike (mike wingert)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.programming.threads,comp.os.linux.development.system
Subject: Re: array of semaphores...
Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2000 18:30:43 -0500
The key to getting help with profs is to NAG NAG NAG. works every time =-)
>
> I believe, that this is not true in my case. I wish, I had prof. who could
> answer all of my questions,
> but the prof.s here don't care about students. They just lecture and leave,
> and TA's do marking and explanations.
> The TA's themselves may not even know the course material. :(
--
================================================================
The Hubble Space Telescope exists to find signs of cheese in other
celestial bodies, be they star system or stars themselves. The
grand lunar cheese expeditions were a phenominal disaster due to
the total lack of cheese on the moon, as had been previously believed.
Subsequent missions were sent after the initial to see if maybe they
were just looking in the wrong place.
-anonymous
------------------------------
From: John Hasler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: I can't stand this X anymore!
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 22:59:10 GMT
pickle_pete writes:
> It also seem sluggish to me, even running a Matrox G400.
Sluggish how? I'm running a G400 as as far as I can tell everything is
instantaneous.
> Dragging Windows around produces "shadows" and remanent's of destroyed
> Windows.
I don't see that either.
> Sucks if you ask me.
I didn't, actually. Are you trying to ask for help? If so, why be
hostile? If not, why not just go back to Windows? Do think we care that
you don't like X?
--
John Hasler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Victor Wagner)
Subject: Re: Free Agent for Linux
Date: 5 Mar 2000 23:56:52 +0300
Jaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: i use 'pine' for email and news. works nice (without threads)
I think that pine is for mail, but for news tin is way better.
I'm even thinking of gating some high-volume mailing lists into local
newsserver, becouse they are hard to read without threads.
But both pine and tin have very important feature - no GUI.
It allows me to
1. Read news/mail from some console, serial terminal,
or via telnet from outdated 286
machine, in case all better workplaces are used by other people
2. Log in to my system remotely via ssh and get my usial mail/news
environment (of course, nothing prevents me to forward imap port via
ssh, but what would you do if you have to login from someone's else
Win 95 machine?)
So, GUI is for graphic-based work - image processing, chartography,
typesetting, web-surfing, and text-mode interfaces for text-based work -
programming, entering text, mail, news.
--
/* we have tried to make this normal case as abnormal as possible */
-- Larry Wall in cmd.c from the perl source code
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Victor Wagner)
Subject: Re: Interrupt Service Routines
Date: 6 Mar 2000 00:03:12 +0300
Richard Bonomo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: Hello!
: I am attempting to write interrupt service routines for an Intel box
: running RedHat Linux 6.1. I am having a problem locating documentation
: which names and describes the routines used to attach to and otherwise
: deal with the hardware interrupts. (Some documentation about
: Linux/gcc ISR's would be helpful as well.)
Only program which is allowed to handle interrupts under Linux is linux
itself, i.e. kernel (typically it is /vmlinuz file).
So, you should start to read Kernel Hacking Guide and documentation on
writing device drivers. Of course, it is a way to go, if you are
assembled completely new hardware device which generates interrupts for
you. In this case, you really should write driver for it. And make it
appear as file under /dev so application programs could read/write data
or control your device via ioctl interface.
In all other cases there already is driver in the Linux kernel, which
does all the interrupt handling, and you should choose other way to deal
with your problem.
--
------------------------------
From: Michael Gu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: I can't stand this X anymore!
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 00:15:49 GMT
Donovan Rebbechi wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Mar 2000 23:39:25 GMT, Michael Gu wrote:
>
> >Consider such a senario, a application like to create a area of a size just
> >to fit in certain text. And the application does not want a dynamic sized
> >area, because the area is part of a pixel based layout. Now, if the
> >application does not know the exact size of the font, how can it achieve such
> >a goal. I have seen countless applications that either have a botton that
> >does not have all characters displayed, or the botton is truncated because it
> >exceeds the frame border and all sorts of bad displays.
>
> What toolkit was the app written in ? Sounds like a combination of bad code
> and a bad toolkit.
>
OK, let's try this. Can you show me some GOOD X application that runs well on ANY
standard-conforming X server and let's see how it does.
>
> >Besides, the font on X windows are so bad, it wastes display resource. Why,
> >because it need more pixels to achieve the same result.
>
> Not clear on what you're talking about. Are you complaining about TrueType,
> Type1 or bitmap fonts ? Your complaint doesn't make any sense.
>
I think all the pixels that can be displayed on screen at once is your display
resource. Anyway, it probably doesn't matter for people who have 21" 100 DPI
screens.
>
> Actually, the biggest problem with X fonts is they *don't use enough
> resources* ie they insist on sticking to 1bpp rendering.
>
So, if an application displays in 1bpp, it must have used that efficiently, right?
>
> >So, I believe X need to include a basic set of font as part of its standard,
> >if my speculation of the way it works is correct, otherwise, you will always
> >see broken bottons, truncated texts, and ... frustrating users.
>
> I think you're wrong -- the widgets should be able to help that, at least
> partly. Using a loose grid style layout, the buttons should just expand
> to swallow the available text.
>
Loose grid style layout, good idea, so use a 100x100 box if 10x10 doesn't fit, and
resource is out of question.
> Further, I'll say that hard coding in particular font choices, as you seem
> to be suggesting is a stupid idea. Users should be able to set this kind
> of thing.
>
Again, good idea not to hard coding, but is it pratically doable and well done? I
guess I am not stupid enough not to be able to find out that windows display is
much better than X.
BTW, I have read your font HOWTO. I have to say it's a nice document, and I can
understand the feeling and way of thinking of someone who has contributed so much
to something he believe in. However, all these font thing are to be applied to a X
server, which makes me wonder what kind of X server do I need in order to get the
good displays (don't mention the hours I will need to do that)? And, does that
mean the X standard itself is inedequate?
>
> --
> Donovan
------------------------------
From: Michael Gu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: I can't stand this X anymore!
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 00:27:40 GMT
Darren Winsper wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Mar 2000 23:52:12 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > X looks like crap no matter what you do to it.
>
> That's like saying art looks like crap no matter what it is.
>
What kind of logic are you using to get that conclusion?
>
> > Installing pirated True-type
> > fonts from Windows helps, but it still lacks the smoothness that Windows
> > has and even more so that Mac has.
>
> Considering Windows has a worse font engine than that which RISC OS 2
> had, it's still crap.
>
So, anything that is not the best must be crap.
>
> > When I have to look at a screen all day, especially a 19inch state of the
> > art monitor/video card combination it better look good. X hurts my eyes and
> > while the themes are nice the meat and potatoes (the applications) look
> > horrible in my opinion.
>
> That makes no sense. If you install a Gtk theme, all Gtk applications
> take up that theme. To say the theme looks nice but then the
> application doesn't is a rather odd statement.
>
You mean theme = application?
>
> > >Besides, the font on X windows are so bad, it wastes display resource. Why,
> > >because it need more pixels to achieve the same result.
> >
> > It also seem sluggish to me, even running a Matrox G400. Dragging Windows
> > around produces "shadows" and remanent's of destroyed Windows. Sucks if you
> > ask me.
>
> Is this a known bug? Driver bugs should not be blamed on X.
>
> > It lacks crispness. I am talking about
> > kde/Windowmaker/Enlightenment and worst of all Gnome/Enlightenment.
>
> Gnome, with a decent theme looks much nicer than Windows IMHO.
>
> > See the above. Putting Linux side by side with other OS's is a real joke as
> > far as display is concerned. Sure the themes look nice but what happens
> > when you launch the applications?
> > Boxy, fuzzy and generally cheap looking.
>
> Fuzzy? Boxy? Would you care to post screenshots?
>
> --
> Darren Winsper (El Capitano) - ICQ #8899775
> Stellar Legacy project member - http://www.stellarlegacy.tsx.org
>
> DVD boycotts. Are you doing your part?
> "Microsoft is estimating that 28,000 of these [bugs] are likely to be 'real'
> problems [in Windows2000]."
> -http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2436920,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: I can't stand this X anymore!
Date: 6 Mar 2000 01:30:50 GMT
On Mon, 06 Mar 2000 00:15:49 GMT, Michael Gu wrote:
>
>OK, let's try this. Can you show me some GOOD X application that runs well on
>ANY standard-conforming X server and let's see how it does.
I believe any of the KDE/QT apps running under kwm should work fine.
Most of the apps exhibiting the kind of problems you are talking about
( and some more odd behaviours that you don't mention ) are written using
old toolkits.
If you want to be spared these annoying problems, I'd recommend going with
GTK and QT based applications where possible.
>> >because it need more pixels to achieve the same result.
>>
>> Not clear on what you're talking about. Are you complaining about TrueType,
>> Type1 or bitmap fonts ? Your complaint doesn't make any sense.
>>
>
>I think all the pixels that can be displayed on screen at once is your display
>resource. Anyway, it probably doesn't matter for people who have 21" 100 DPI
>screens.
I think I see what you mean. I dispute your claim that you need "more pixels"
on Linux though.
>> Actually, the biggest problem with X fonts is they *don't use enough
>> resources* ie they insist on sticking to 1bpp rendering.
>
>So, if an application displays in 1bpp, it must have used that efficiently,
>right?
I'm not sure what you mean here.
>Loose grid style layout, good idea, so use a 100x100 box if 10x10 doesn't fit,
> and resource is out of question.
I still don't think I understand your complaint about "resource". Are you
saying that X is a memory hog ? This claim has some merit, but I've found
that Linux is no more of a memory hog than say NT, even with X and KDE running
on a 19" monitor.
>Again, good idea not to hard coding, but is it pratically doable and well
>done?
Yes, certainly. When an application does something really dumb, such as take
up more screen space than you have available ( like xfig or xdvi ), it's
simply because the developer couldn't be bothered coding for people wih
small screens.
This kind of UI design glitch is almost always due to bad code, possibly
helped along by a bad toolkit.
> I guess I am not stupid enough not to be able to find out that windows
>display is much better than X.
The toolkits ( such as MFC ) for Windows are much slicker nicer than the older
toolkits for UNIX. However, KDE and GNOME are changing this. IMO,
KDE/QT and GNOME/GTK will be *the* toolkits for Linux, at least as far
as end user apps are concerned. Everything else is on its way out.
We've already seen two major apps, Netscape/Mozilla and Applixware making a
move to GTK.
>to something he believe in. However, all these font thing are to be applied to
>a X server,
I'm not sure I get what you're saying. If you are implying that you
need to do everything in my font HOWTO to get your display to look OK,
no, that is not true. If you are just concerned about on screen quality,
the thing to do is add some good scalable fonts ( Type1 or TrueType ) to
your font server. That is, you only need to do go through the proceedure
outlined in "Making fonts available to X". The rest deals with specific
applications. You may want to follow the instructions re: Netscape, because
it draws the fonts too small by default.
> which makes me wonder what kind of X server do I need in order to
>get the good displays (don't mention the hours I will need to do that)? And,
>does that mean the X standard itself is inedequate?
The only inadequacy with X is that the font system doesn't support
anti-aliasing, ie "font smoothing".
There's also a somewhat deeper
problem with font handling in that writing code that prints and displays
the same font is not easy ( because X will not tell the developer where
the outline files are, and there is no font management system behind X )
This is what makes adding fonts to applications like Linux office suites
somewhat tricky.
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: Dustin Aleksiuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: question about design and data storage
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 01:51:27 GMT
Hi Everyone,
I've decided to write a little address book program using the GTK+
libraries just to get myself started before trying larger, more
interesting projects. I'm sure one already exists, but it seemed like a
reasonable project to start that wouldn't take too long.
Here's my question: how should I store the addresses? I was thinking
about maybe storing them in hidden directory in the user's home
directory in some format. What format? Should I store them in text?
XML maybe? Then would I load them into memory each time the program is
started, or do I load up only parts (such as all the A's) at a time?
I've used DBM files before to store name value pairs, but I think there
are limitations to the amount of data you can store (at least there
were on Solaris).
I'm pretty familiar with Linux and C, but I only have about a year of
practical experience programming, and that's in Java. If anyone could
give me a few pointers, that would be great.
Thanks a lot,
Dustin Aleksiuk
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
daleksiuk@<--remove to e-mail please -->netgateway.net
------------------------------
From: Dan Kegel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Socket problem
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 03:45:10 GMT
Andreas Rottmann wrote:
> while (1)
> {
> /* Block until input arrives on one or more active sockets. */
> read_fd_set = active_fd_set;
> select (FD_SETSIZE, &read_fd_set, NULL, NULL, NULL);
>
> /* Service all the sockets with input pending. */
> for (i = 0; i < FD_SETSIZE; ++i)
> if (FD_ISSET (i, &read_fd_set))
> /* Accepts connections and data */
> /* some code */;
> }
>
> The client simply writes some ASCII strings to the server and the
> server prints them out. Now the problem: As long as I have only one
> string to send, everything works ok. When I send more than that the
> server may 'swallow' some strings (usually all after the third).
0. Have you read Stevens "Unix Network Programming"?
http://www.kohala.com/start/unpv12e.html
1. Have you set nonblocking mode on the fd's?
2. How are you reading in the strings?
3. Do you handle read() returning -1 properly? If it returns EAGAIN
or EWOULDBLOCK, you have to retry it...
> When
> I start gdb on the server it accepts the connection, prints the first
> string amd then closes the socket because a read() on it gave a zero
> return value (due to end of input?).
When you're doing network protocols, it's better to debug with printf's
than with a debugger.
Perhaps if you posted a working server, we could see the error.
It's hiding in some of the code you didn't post.
- Dan
------------------------------
From: Dan Kegel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: which ODBC or other API for Linux
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 04:05:39 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I need to run a client on Linux that accesses data on a Microsoft SQL
> server running on NT. Installing anything on the NT side is unlikely
> to be an option. On the Linux side it should be just a shared library.
> ...
> writing the code in C so I can adapt to some API's. However, I do
> NOT want any library that runs its own event loop. The event loop
> will be in my code only. It is also preferrable to have asyncronous
> access (e.g. so my code doesn't get blocked in some function call
> while waiting on the database).
I think iODBC and FreeODBC both allow you to use multiple threads,
so even if they don't have asynch calls, you can get the same
effect by using several threads.
See http://users.ids.net/~bjepson/FreeODBC/
http://www.iodbc.org
http://linuxdev.net/news/kde-summary-0714-0720.html
- Dan
------------------------------
From: "Tom Wideroe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: http and ssl on client side
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 07:23:14 +0100
Does anybody know how to achive SSL with HTTP. For HTTP I use telnet to port
80 and then issue GET, POST or whatever. But how do I implement SSL?
Thanks,
Tom
------------------------------
From: "Chris Wise" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Cheap development cd's wanted
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 17:35:45 +1100
S.H. Utdown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:89rp5j$pdc$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> At http://www.linux.org/apps/development.html they mention a lot
> of software I can't locate on any of my cd's to give an example.
> But there is much more I have seen, but only orientation is already
> expensive when you have to pay the telephone bill.
A number of the packages mentioned on that page look like commercial
software which would explain why they aren't on standard distributions.
Chris Wise
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Development-Apps Digest
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