2026-02-03 10:48:20 HTML is terrible
2026-02-03 10:51:53 veltas, maybe but I've become used to it writing project doc in Fossil DCVS wikis
2026-02-03 10:52:14 veltas, I prefer it to Martkdown
2026-02-03 10:53:59 veltas, but my preffered language is py.sphinx (.rst) which my Mecrisp-Stellaris Unofficial Doc site is written in
2026-02-03 10:54:07 HTML has essentially taken over formatted documents for many purposes, yet it lacks even the most basic typographical features e.g. there's no way to leave extra space between sentences without a lot of CSS gymnastics or incorrect use
2026-02-03 10:54:29 It's crept into email too somehow, again not really capable for the basic jobs in email
2026-02-03 10:56:58 yes, it's got it's problems, and passed one onto me! When I was putting in heaps of HTML editing to finish the release of FURS, my mouse gave me 'trigger finger' because HTML is so 'busy'
2026-02-03 10:57:24 Plain text goes pretty far for a lot of technical documentation, if you want more then there's troff and LaTeX et al, or you can render stuff yourself or with vector / font libraries
2026-02-03 10:57:32 I wouldnt have got that writing py.sphinx doc
2026-02-03 10:58:26 Ive written tons of Tex and LaTex, even a 'screenwriting' class file
2026-02-03 10:59:02 but LaTeX is too 'bookish' or 'acadmic' for web work
2026-02-03 11:00:17 and text is just dead boring for websites (imho) and lacks everything that py.sphinx offers, such as indexes, references, etc
2026-02-03 11:01:34 Ive spent half my life writing doc and Ive tried just about everything, but py.sphinx is the python official doc system, and it's really good. Ive been using it for about the last 5 years
2026-02-03 11:02:42 sadly Fossil DCVS which is my favorite way of distributing projects now, only uses Fossil Wiki HTML
2026-02-03 11:02:59 oe text or Markdown
2026-02-03 11:03:31 Some larger text documents I've seen use conventions to allow you to index them using regex, like formatting section headers a certain way
2026-02-03 11:03:45 So you can go to e.g. ^6.0 section
2026-02-03 11:04:05 But that's less usable for general people
2026-02-03 11:04:54 My issue is that HTML has ended up being a centre of typography in our world, even though it was sort of 'anti-typography' when it was designed originally
2026-02-03 11:16:25 veltas, true, HTML is for web pages, it's unsuited for proper documantation
2026-02-03 11:17:04 And yet it's where a lot of 'proper documentation' ends up
2026-02-03 11:17:18 py.sphinx can churn out a mumber of formats such as epub, html, pdf etc, all from the same source
2026-02-03 11:17:42 It's an interesting question to me how you could redesign the web in a simpler and more forthy way, and I've discussed it on here before
2026-02-03 11:18:05 But I think most of us agree the web is sort of a rich terminal sandbox
2026-02-03 11:18:18 so I just edit in .rst and compile HTML in py.sphinx and RSYNC to my website. Its so easy it should be illegal :)
2026-02-03 11:19:29 crc, has a excellent doc system he uses for his RETRO Forth, it's his own design I believe
2026-02-03 11:19:53 I'd do something like that if I was real programmer :)
2026-02-03 11:20:43 To put it short, to me, HTML is much like English: sure, I'd have preferred writing Esperanto instead, but the thing is, people that may be interested in what I write are much more likely to read English than Esperanto. (Reminds me of http://fimfiction.net/story/390596/1/ , I guess.)
2026-02-03 11:20:43 Other than that, I can see that HTML is used in ways that are in fact "anti-HTML." For instance, HTML was designed for interoperability; using HTML as a mere "bootloader" of sorts for a doesn't give much of that. Same for DRM. The only thing I can say to that is, "don't do that."
2026-02-03 11:21:41 Yeah 100% agreed iv4nshm4k0v
2026-02-03 11:22:20 It's interesting to think about how to do it differently, but I might as well think about how to reinvent Internet Protocol, I'm not going to make it happen
2026-02-03 11:22:39 Doesn't mean we can't have fun and do stuff but we're accepting it won't have broad appeal
2026-02-03 11:23:49 But as for HTML proper - the one documented at http://html.spec.whatwg.org/ - I actually find it a pretty decent specification and format.
2026-02-03 11:25:41 JFTR, I'm less knowledgeable about CSS (I pretty much only do CSS 2.1 and CSS3 selectors), and my Ecmacscript knowledge is focused on 5.1 which duktape (that I use for testing my code) understands.
2026-02-03 11:25:57 My complaints are about the sort of backwards typography issues it's had since the start
2026-02-03 11:26:30 But if you make a webpage then yes definitely understand HTML as it is, and don't abuse JS or dump framework layers: use the actual tools that the browser implements
2026-02-03 11:26:54 JS shouldn't be on most webpages
2026-02-03 12:06:16 Totally agree - avoid unnecessary abstractions.
2026-02-03 12:08:02 In some of Chuck's early writing on Forth he went to some pains to demonstrate to people how they could set things up to allow infix expressions if they wanted to. Later on, as he got more "secure in himself" the way we usually do as we age, he shifted more to a "Why would you want to do that?" sort of perspective. I.e., why would you add all that excess when you could just do it the natural way
2026-02-03 12:08:05 to start with?
2026-02-03 12:08:47 So, my new phone came yesterday, so I'm finally out of 2FA hell.
2026-02-03 12:09:04 2FA purgatory, I guess, since I got out.
2026-02-03 12:09:11 haha
2026-02-03 12:09:45 Unexpected bonus perk - this phone has a fancy astrophotography mode I'm looking forward to trying out.
2026-02-03 12:10:34 And it's got a healthy battery - my poor old phone's battery was pretty much on its last legs.
2026-02-03 12:10:40 I read up about the stsafe-a110 chip when I read that it's used to provide security in starlink dishes
2026-02-03 12:12:44 it's a 8 pin SMT: The STSAFE-A110 is a highly secure solution that acts as a secure element providing
2026-02-03 12:12:44 authentication and secure data management services to a local or remote host. It consists
2026-02-03 12:12:45 of a full turnkey solution with a secure operating system running on the latest generation of
2026-02-03 12:12:45 city and industrial applications, consumer electronics devices, consumables and
2026-02-03 12:12:47 accessories.
2026-02-03 12:13:34 a kind of private key, public key chip
2026-02-03 12:14:56 Neat.
2026-02-03 12:29:52 I have tried that astrophotography, it's quite cool
2026-02-03 12:30:30 It can show aurora clearer and is good at photographing scenery that's too dark to see with the naked eye properly
2026-02-03 13:50:45 M-m. My Pentax K-5 reportedly has astro mode, but it requires a GPS module that I don't have.
2026-02-03 14:03:20 That's annoying
2026-02-03 14:07:58 It still has allowed me to photograph astrophotography equipment, though. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/?curid=91526082 and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/?curid=91566236 , for instance.
2026-02-03 15:53:34 Supposedly it not only does long exposure, but will even handle rotation motion. Of course, that's not REALLY as good, since with a proper setup you literally collect more photons in the same sensor buckets throughout the long exposure. But I still look forward to seeing what it can do.
2026-02-03 15:53:55 You know, since I live in the astrophotgraphy capital of the world, Houston. :-( :-(
2026-02-03 15:54:10 Aka light pollution central.
2026-02-03 15:54:24 "Let's go outside and look at the star."
2026-02-03 15:55:27 I really hate that we've built a world that cuts so many of us off from the night sky. It's something ALL of our ancestors experienced their entire lives, up until not that very long ago.
2026-02-03 15:59:55 One approach is to, instead of taking a long exposure shot, to take multiple short ones, then shift each other a bit to compensate for the movement of the sky, then average. Another, and that's what Pentax K-5 in astro mode is supposed to do, is to shift the sensor itself during a single long exposure shot. Then there's also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_imaging .
2026-02-03 19:23:41 KipIngram: One of the benefits of living near the countryside is I do get to see stars a bit
2026-02-03 19:23:57 And on a short walk from here I can see all the stars
2026-02-03 20:38:33 KipIngram, veltas iv4nshm4k0v , here is a pic I took of Mars at it's closest to earth with my Canon D60 on a tripod, 200mm lens, mirror locked up: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mecrisp-stellaris-folkdoc/files/mars.jpg/download
2026-02-03 21:53:01 Nice
2026-02-03 21:53:59 That's about what I can see with my telescope
2026-02-03 22:30:15 iv4nshm4k0v: Right; stacking. I've looked at various software packages for that, but mostly thought of it in terms of shots taken with my telescope.
2026-02-03 22:55:52 KipIngram, iirc that pic of mine took about 30 seconds to gather enought light and you can see it moved during that time
2026-02-03 22:57:19 I'd have needed a Mars syncronised motion base I guess