[PRL] Re: "dia" in the gimp?

[Greg Pettyjohn]

This sort of nonsense is what I beleive Matthias calls "syntax".

Professor Wands dilema:
Apparently someone added another parameter to the OS, and now things don't
work because:

1. You don't even know that the parameter exists.
2. You don't know what to set it to.

How many parameters does it take to configure an OS?

Why can't they default to something that works?

Why is this "just syntax"?

IMHO, when the rubber hits the road, the OS is broken. Whether or not it
is "syntax" is orthogonal to the question.

(PS. this is ****not**** a Windows vs. Unix rant. My comments, questions
and objections apply equally well to <fill in your OS here>)

In the post apocalyptic future, the archaeologists will make careers out
of trying to decipher our .config files and registry settings. (Heck, who
needs to wait for the apocalypse!)

The problem is that a typical application has the form:

(lambda (env ...)
  (lambda (x ...)
     ... body ...))

In this analogy, the parameters to the inner lambda are the things that
you know about when you conciously execute the program. The parameters to
the outer lambda are the things that you don't (can't possibly keep track
of them all...) know about. To make things worse, the env ... can and
often are mutated *after* the closure is created, or even when the body is
running! This is why I played with an interpreter that allowed you to
specify and capture first-class environments. Most of the people I shared
the idea with said that it would be an unsafe language feature that was
hard to reason about --- equivalent to dynamic binding.

So in answer to one of my questions: it is not "just syntax", the OS is
broken because of *semantics*. The OS uses dynamic binding.

On Fri, 30 May 2003, Mitchell Wand wrote:

> > Assuming one can find a copy, I think dia is well-suited to drawing
> > state machines, although this is of course subject to individual
> > opinion.
>
> OK, I found darkside, and got the following interaction:
>
>  wand at alnilam: ~> ssh darkside
>  wand at darkside's password:
>  Last login: Thu May 29 12:01:22 2003 from alnilam.ccs.neu.edu
> 			 Welcome to the Crew Linux Beta
>
>  Please send problem reports to linux-users at lists.ccs.neu.edu
>
>  To subscribe to the list, visit https://lists.ccs.neu.edu/bin/listinfo/linux-users
>  xtitle: Command not found.
>  ccsnews: Command not found.
>  wand at darkside: ~> printenv PATH
>  /opt/kde/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/qt-3.0.4/bin:/usr/share/texmf/bin:.
>  wand at darkside: ~> xterm &
>  [1] 4048
>  wand at darkside: ~> xterm Xt error: Can't open display:
>
>  [1]    Exit 1                        xterm
>  wand at darkside: ~> dia &
>  [1] 4049
>  wand at darkside: ~>
>  Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
>
>  [1]    Exit 1                        dia
>  wand at darkside: ~>
>
> Now, how do I jigger my X server on alnilam so that it will display
> stuff from darkside (and/or how do I tell darkside to display on
> alnilam)?
>
> I do this just rarely enough that I forget how to do it from one time
> to the next.
>
> --Mitch
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