Software

2005-06-18
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(new software template)

Gsam_want_gnu_big--alpha

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(on Wikipedia)

This is a mega-project which has spanned decades.

Platform / Computer / Hardware > Operating System > Operating environment > Software > Projects (or whatever)

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Table of Contents [hide]

Stuff ∞

Linux software to check out ∞

GTK+ ∞

Qt ∞

Linux FLTK media stuff ∞

--

Windows software to check out ∞

  • Freenet: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jtcfrost/

  • Resource Hacker

    • Resource Hacker™ has been designed to be the complete resource editing tool: compiling, viewing, decompiling and recompiling resources for both 32bit and 64bit Windows executables. Resource Hacker™ can open any type of Windows executable (*.exe; *.dll; *.scr; *.mui etc) so that individual resources can be added modified or deleted within these files. Resource Hacker™ can create and compile resource script files (*.rc), and edit resource files (*.res) too.
    • Resource Hacker is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems.

Utilities ∞

TODO - Really ancient software notes ∞

Man, this stuff goes WAY back.. Windows "3.12" days.

TODO - Update these ancient notes and put them where they belong. Much of these concerns are already resolved or the software is obsolete anyway.

Rar

  • does not sort by filename like it says it does! it sorts by extension!!
  • rcvt should show the space it saved from the conversion/batch conversion
  • deal with 4DOS description of the original archive name

  • rar / rcvt should be able to time/date stamp according to the newest file inside the archive

Internet/Netscape/Winsock/Other (Windows 3.1)

  • crashed when I've got 256c wallpaper - many *weird* problems like improper screen refreshes

Norton Utilities (DOS, last version)

  • diskedit - cannot edit the seconds stamp, or edit time/date to an invalid value
  • smartcan - it's renaming of executables plays havoc with ThunderByte Antivirus' tbfile
  • smartcan - limit of 9999k for backups -- sucks

  • unerase - when tagging files (space), it should automatically move to the next line down.

Plug-In For Windows 3.1

  • control-escape, and switch (double-click) to a minimized task doesn't work!

Wayfarer (Windows 3.1)

  • shouldn't display the active program on the toolbar!

Renegade

  • the file search function should be able to start at a given file base

  • with a batch download, when downloading several files which are already complete, it should remove them from the queue!

ONTRACK's Disk Manager

  • should not delay so damned long to boot to disk

  • when booting from disk, be able to abort!

STILETTO

  • when in 'run', be able to specify a directory, then press browse - and be sent there!

BCOPY

  • there should also be a bmove

Articles ∞

Notes ∞

Writing ∞

The problem with stale software ∞

One of the problems with open source software is that the world gets cluttered with unfinished but well-intentioned projects. Those same unfinished projects will tend to thwart the attempts of others, as one would tend to not start up a project with a good intention if one sees that someone else may be working on that same idea.. even if that other project has gone stale.

-- spiralofhope

Quote from The Hacker Crackdown - (1992 book), by Bruce Sterling ∞

The stuff we call "software" is not like anything that human society is used to thinking about. Software is something like a machine, and something like mathematics, and something like language, and something like thought, and art, and information . . . but software is not in fact any of those other things. The protean quality of software is one of the great sources of its fascination. It also makes software very powerful, very subtle, very unpredictable, and very risky.

-- The Hacker Crackdown - (1992 book), by Bruce Sterling

On supporting hardware ∞

why does the author have to have access to a physical macbook to accept a community-tested proposal?

The kernel project is not just a bunch of people, it is a network of curated strata of developers who check the code of one another. Submissions make their way up the chain, each being examined _and tested_ before _maybe_ making it into the mainstream codebase.

Ventoy is not that. Adopting someone else's alien and untestable code is not good practice for this project.

I have been subject to the following statement, and I hate it: You are free to fork it. That is what some other developer would have to do to implement Macbook features. Whatever developer writes Macbook code for Ventoy would themselves need to have a Macbook.

Although no developer should rely on some random contributor's code and testing, it's hypothetically possible someone else's code could be so simple that the Ventoy developer could understand and trust it with no testing, so that it would not need to be forked. That is a hypothetical though, and so no promises get made. It's difficult to trust a stranger.

Some more on that topic...

Users should themselves also be wary of such code being introduced. What if the original side-developer becomes unavailable and that code becomes orphaned? Perhaps the user grows fond or reliant of the code. Perhaps that code causes weird bugs later and cannot be fixed easily (since the lead developer cannot test properly). Perhaps it becomes tangled into the codebase and can't even be removed easily.

Even projects which have multiple trusted developers end up with problems when one of the developers become unavailable.

While this has been an interesting thought experiment, I hope you understand why I will end this topic with:

"I hope this minor Macbook support is simple to be included and supported by a different developer, and could be disabled by the main developer if it causes problems in the future."

And so I hope it is understandable when _this_ developer says, politely, no.

-- 2024-02-20, spiralofhope, remarking on Ventoy

Last updated 2024-06-18 at 12:08:09

Footnotes

5 comments

5 comments on “Software”

  2. "software research" was ported from an even earlier content management system into "Software Reviews". You might notice that all the old projects and research pages are being absorbed in similar ways. One of these days "Software Reviews" will be absorbed into other topics and turned into a generic software rant.

    2020-01-22 -- This began happening almost right away, and has been my standard now since 2007 or maybe earlier.

    Reply

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