First, I apologize for any sillinesses that might occur, as I'm not quite sure as how to properly put this question.
I recently got curious about how some applications (like Midnight Commander) control the text-mode output, forming so-called "Text-based user interface", idk. Is that some evil magic with standard output operations or something else that I'm unaware of? I did some poking around google, but didn't find anything of particular interest, and I hope someone here can point me on the right way.
Thanks in advance,
~Insomnia Array
What you're looking for is NCurses - a library which uses special terminal characters to set color, position, etc.
http://www.gnu.org/s/ncurses/
In addition to ncurses, take a look at S-lang.
http://www.s-lang.org/
Related
I am new to processing, i found it by searching for "draw with coding" , and i tried it, seems every time i modify the code, i have to stop and render again to get the final result
Is there any way to get updated graph without re-rendering? that can be much more convenient for creating simple figures.
if not, is there any alternative to processing that can draw a graph with coding?
I've used Tikz in Latex, but that is just for Latex, I want something that can let me draw a figure by coding, I've suffered enough though using software like coreldraw, it lacks the fundamental elegance of coding..
thanks alot！
Please have a look at the FluidForms libraries.
easy to setup
documentation and video tutorials
as long as you don't run into exceptions, live code comfortably
if you prefix public variables with param you also get sliders for free :)
Do check out the video tutorials, especially this one:
Also, if using Python isn't a problem I recommend having a look at:
NodeBox
Field
Python is a brilliant scripting language - which makes prototyping/'live coding' easy(although it can be compiled and it also plays nicely with c/c++) and is easy to pick up and a joy to use.
In Processing, you must re-run your program to see the changes (graphically), unless you write code to receive input from the user to dynamically adjust what you are drawing. For creating user interfaces there's for example the controlP5 library (http://www.sojamo.de/libraries/controlP5/).
It doesn't support "live coding" (at least that I know of).
You must re-run the code to see the new result.
If Live coding is what you're looking for, check out Fluxus (http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/) or Impromptu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impromptu_(programming_environment)
On linux, console applications have the ability to format their output. They can set font color, set background color and can place signs everywehre on the console. Using that it is, for example, possible to implement a tetris game right into the console.
I´m wondering how one can do that. I think they use a output markup language or something else. Can anyone tell me where I can learn more about this?
Thanks very much!
Most console applications involving a lot of motion or color are built using the ncurses library. Some very common examples would be irssi (IRC client), mc (Midnight Commander, the console file browser), mutt (POP3/IMAP mail client)
It seems like you are already aware of the escape codes used to modify console colors. A good list of console color escape sequences (for Bash) can be found here.
You obviously need to get a hold of those every-popular Unix video games, rogue, srogue, larn, hack, and/or nethack. They have a long and venerable history.
Notably, these all use the standard curses — or more recently, ncurses — library. Here’s a screen shot.
Since they have no joystick, motion is with vi commands. They are hands-down the very best way to hone your vi motion skills ever invented: no more two-finger typing for you! You stop thinking about motion; it just becomes a part of your fingers’ muscle memory. You really have to play them to get a feel for the awesome “Zen” state you can get into playing them:
After enough practice, it feels as though your fingers themselves remember how to play the piece. You don’t even watch them. They've a job to do, and once they’ve learned it, can go about that job remarkably free of direct supervision. The key to clearing the mind of the outside world, so that the program becomes the dominant reality, is what a musician would call “finger memory”. (You might have heard athletes or dancers refer to it as muscle memory, but when we’re talking about using the computer, it really is the fingers that count.)
[...] Of course, that's not really what’s going on; it only seems to be. Your fingers don’t really remember. But a part of your brain that controls them does, even though “you” don’t realize it. What’s happened is that you've so successfully assimilated the moves needed that conscious direction is no longer required. The little lighthouse keeper behind your forehead can worry about other things, assured that your fingers will do the job you’ve trained them to do. Your eyes are on the screen, the program in your head, and your head is in the program. Your fingers become an unnoticed extension of your will. [...]
[...] There’s no question that, for certain tasks, the keyboard is clearly the optimally efficient input device. Consider the game of rogue or one of its more recent incarnations. You wouldn’t want to use anything but a keyboard there. The command set is just too rich. Trying to play the game with a mouse‐and‐menu interface instead of a keyboard one would slow you down by at least two orders of magnitude.
The rogue family of video games are also notable for showing how to write a video game for a regular terminal like a vt100 or an xterm, which I believe is what you are looking for. I’d probably use a more modern language than C these days, but all the same principles still apply. Both Perl and Python have good interfaces to these standard libraries.
It's not so much a markup language as a series of escape sequences that trigger the terminal viewer to format in a certain way.
You can send ANSI escape sequences before your output to indicate that the following output should be a certain color, weight, background. You can also send sequences that jump the cursor to specific locations to continue writing output.
If you are going to do a full blown app you should consider using some library such as ncurses which makes these manageable.
I recently broke my finger and can now only type with my right hand. This has seriously impacted my typing speed. Since I write software for a living, this is a serious problem.
I have been doing some research, but haven't found a great solution yet. Here's what I've come up with:
Wacom tablet + hand writing recognition software. Is it possible to write code with hand writing recognition software?
one handed keyboards -- I have only found expensive (> $100) keyboards. These look like they have a steep learning curve.
one handed typing instructions: http://www.aboutonehandtyping.com/manualcompare.html. Does this really work?
What do the one handed coders out there use?
If you're a two-hand touch typist, the answer is a "mirrored" layout.
Mirroring lets you begin touch-typing with one hand almost immediately. Pretty crazy how easy it is. Based on the muscle memory you already have.
If you're typing with your right hand:
Type all right-hand keys normally.
Don't type left hand keys. Instead type the same motion (but mirrored) with your right hand.
So if you want to type:
"D" -> type "K" instead.
"W" -> type "O" instead.
"S" -> type "L" instead.
Same row of keyboard, same finger, same motion. Your muscle memory can already do this... kind of like how you're unable to pat your head and rub your belly at the same time. The wires in your brain are crossing somewhere.
Software to mirror the keyboard as described above:
Hold Spacebar to mirror:
Linux - MirrorBoard
Mac - Mirror-QWERTY
Windows - AutoHotkey version of Half-QWERTY Half-Keyboard
Predictive Text; Automatic Mirroring
Mac - One-Hand Keyboard
Windows - One-Hand Keyboard
Regarding one-handed keyboards, I've tried using a frogpad and found it ok for typing text, but unusable for coding. The symbols require several consecutive key presses and I found it impossible to use shortcuts reliably. It was too easy to hit the wrong key and get it stuck in the wrong mode.
Nobody has mentioned ENTI-key aka Coffee++ Layout yet? It is exactly designed for programming with one hand (left). And unlike qwerty, it is even optimized for speed and ergonomics. I used it some years ago for a short while and I don't know if it still works on newer systems. I think I used it for writing CSS: Typing the words with left, typing all those numbers on the numpad with right.
I can not recommend pen+handwriting. I usually use a tablet PC and handwriting code is terrible. I tried it on Windows 8 and Linux with Cellwriter, and both are not bad programs, but I still switch to onscreen keyboard whenever I can. But maybe the problem is my scratchy writing :)
I also can tell from experience that learning a new layout is not as complicated as it sounds. Especially if the layout is more logical than qwerty. I use Neo Layout since 10 years and getting the hang of it went smoothly, I was able to write a blog article after an evening of training.
"But what if you have to use qwerty on another PC?" This, also, is no problem, really. My simple trick is to never look at the keyboard when using Neo, but glimpse at it when qwerty-ing.
Good luck to anyone who wants to or has to use one hand for typing!
Now, the time to heal a broken finger will be shorter than it takes to adapt to one handed coding, not to mention the time it takes afterwards to get back to two-handed coding
Also, the time it takes to learn the methods is time you could've spend on coding (read: making a living).
Knowing this, we need a quick-fix, short term solution.
First of all, A good IDE, with code completion and similar functionality will help you a lot.
Secondly, use the shortcuts of the IDE, remember, there are Shift, Altand Ctrl keys on both sides of your keyboard.
(you might want to create a cheatsheet for those shortcuts)
In addition to helping you during your time with your injury, learning the shortcuts will also improve your coding speed when you're back up again.
Now, my comments on your proposals:
Don't, simply, Don't, it'll take even more time to fix writos (typos) beacause recognition will be flaky.
That learing curve will slow you down even more.
Won't even comment on that one...
Mirrorboard
A friend of mine broke his wrist snowboarding, and he had reasonable luck using speech recognition software (Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking). It worked quite well for email and documentation, which would solve a part of your problem.
Another colleague, Nils Klarlund of AT&T, developed a version of emacs hooked into speech recognition. He even had a home-brewed set of foot pedals for doing shift, control, etc. He used this exclusively for years (due to bad carpal tunnel syndrome).
And maybe your feet can take up some of the burden. This is part of a parallel discussion going on in this question.
And off-topic, but extremely interesting, T.V. Raman, who's been blind since the age of 14, wrote a version of emacs that works with keyboard input and audio output. There's a chapter on it in Beautiful Code. I've seen him use it, and it's completely awesome. And of course emacs is a great interface for more than just text editing.
If you anticipate that your left hand will be out of commission for a long while, and if it's worthwhile for you to learn a new layout, then there exist one-handed Dvorak layouts.
There's some information at PC Guide: Single-Handed Dvorak Alphanumeric Layouts.
There also once was software for Qwerty Half Keyboards that used the space bar as an extra shift key that reversed the keyboard.
Good luck with your injury!
We have a developer in the office that lost mobility in his right hand and probably won't gain back full use of it. He has mainly learned to type well with his left hand and kind of fill in for his right hand. Although he lets his right hand kind of peck for things. He has gained enough speed back for it not to affect his day too greatly from what i can tell.
Only thing i can think of that might let you speed up some while typing with one hand and maybe being able to get a key or two with the other hand might be to use an IDE instead of text editor if you already don't, so you can use tab completion. Kind of a lame solution if you don't like IDEs or just don't have that option in your work environment but might help out a bit.
The same thing happened to me (I destroyed my left pinky). At the time, I didn't touch type, so my only use for my pinky was left-control, left-shift, and caps-lock.
This sounds as if it just happened to you. I promise you'll quickly learn to compensate. Remember, it's quality, not speed, that counts most.
Perhaps you should seize the opportunity and read to improve yourself as a programmer. Or spend some time debugging.
Now that Wolfram Alpha is released, I am interested in finding out if it can be used as a time-saver in daily programming.
What would you use Wolfram Alpha to do, that earlier took you more time to do manually?
I guess the "Web and Computer systems"-examples is a good start, but there must be more hidden gems that will be really practical for us programmers.
A short list of examples:
MD5-hashing / SHA-hashing
Quick lockup of unicode and HTML-codes for symbols
Color-codes
Please only include one search query per answer, then we can rate them to get the best ones to the top.
(I made this one a community-wiki, since we will be using the voting for ranking)
Note: If some of the links in the answers don't work (eg: wolfram doesn't find any results, then replace all + with spaces..
I might 'save time' by not playing around with it and doing real work instead. :)
Calculating lift coefficients of NACA profiles (example).
(I made a program for this, but it's nice to have the option to do it quick)
I probably won't use it for anything. I don't know about you, but I deal with enough black boxes on a daily basis, and I'd rather use the ones that have been tried and tested thoroughly.
This might come back to haunt me later, but it strikes me that although there might be a point to WA used in a mechanical manner, from my perspective I'm thinking it's not the hard calculable information questions which are the problem which needs to be solved, it's the soft human data which defies classification or rigid modelling. Google seem to understand this, not sure Stephen Wolfram does.
OTOH it could be that anyone can be Colin Laney now.
Someone double check me here:
The MD5 hash of "Wolfram Alpha" (no quotes) is:
882b 0be2 79eb 7e88 86cd 3dae 19c1 d267
And not:
a615 9984 9aee b7be 3091 68bc 0ab7 ?
EDIT: The hash changes every time given the same query...what kind of hash is this?
http://www14.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=MD5%22Wolfram+Alpha%22
I'm planning to write a utility using ncurses. That is menus and panels on Unix.
Is there any way of designing my TUI to see how it looks and feels before I do the actual coding?
Are there any utilities for this, or some articles, links, etc.?
I'm a huge fan of ncurses but I don't know of any tool like this. You can try just doing pencil and paper or Balsamiq mockups. Probably, the best thing to do is to write a slimmed down version of your UI without all the business logic and see how it feels from there.
It seems that the question is no longer relevant, but still ..
I make a cell of the same length and width in LibreOffice Calc, and draw lines interface