Hi, On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Michael B. Brutman <mbbrut...@brutman.com> wrote: > On 5/25/2013 1:45 PM, Rugxulo wrote: >> GPL, so patches welcome! :-) > > Patch what? This code is so tragically flawed and devoid of purpose > that there is nothing worth patching.
In case it wasn't obvious, 0.0.1 implies that the program is far from finalized, perfected, mature, or even release quality. Ever heard of "write one to throw away"? > The patch to make it useful and > get rid of the obvious problems that I pointed out would be bigger than > the original program, by quite a wide margin too. So? Patches often are bigger than the main program. Often times things get rewritten too. All of the big projects out there have been heavily rewritten, reorganized, and tweaked to death. >>> - The headers that it is putting at the top of the file are fixed in >>> format. >> A lot of tools (even digital cameras) do this > > Repeat after me: There is no point in writing a program that spits out > fixed strings that are anonymous/generic in nature. The whole point of > writing a program is to make it flexible for a wide range of inputs and > outputs. That's great (and obvious), and I agree. But the program can't read your mind. You have to tell it what you want. If it's going to include your name, it's going to have to get your username, id, or something from the OS, file, environment variable, network, whatever. I admit that he didn't tell it to do all these things, but then repeat after me: "it's only v0.0.1"!!!!!! :-) DJGPP's djgpp.env file sets "USER=dosuser" by default. What else can they reliably use in all situations?? >>> - It always assumes that you need a link to an image embedded in the >>> output. The image is always 180 pixels wide and 90 pixels high. There >>> is no error checking to see if that filename was even provided so it >>> generates garbage if that option is missing. >> Yeah, error checking, the bane of a programmer's existence. :-P >> >> http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/ten-commandments.html > > Error checking? Forget the error checking - just what is the usefulness > of spitting out a link to an optional image at one point in the file and > fixing the width and height? Anybody who knows rudimentary HTML knows > that if you don't know the image size, let the browser figure it out? > It's just useless! He's writing it for his own needs. Yes, you should just let the browser adjust the image according to environment, but "modern" HTML is far from being so simplistic anymore. I'm not sure if it's quite as generic, clean, or portable these days, so even if I agreed you were right here, it's moot. HTML doesn't work that way anymore. "It's not your grandfather's HTML." >>> - It puts a very spammy link to Digitalatoll Webpage Solutions at the >>> bottom of the generated file. >> That is par for the course, many other tools do the same (e.g. GNU >> Enscript). Manual editing of the output is thus required. > > This is a link to a commercial business, not an open source site. It has > no business in the output, period. Manual editing is required is being > polite - that kind of garbage does not belong in the program in the > first place. So manually excise it. Or tell him (politely) that it's "not very useful". But in case you haven't noticed, we're communicating via SourceForge, which puts very "spammy" ads in our email signatures! (But you'll probably excuse it by saying they pay the bills. Well, if Digital Atoll's chief is writing makehtml, he's arguably paying its development bills too.) >>> The spammy link and the inability to customize the output without changing >>> the code and recompiling make it very very limited. >> I think changing the code and manually editing for one's needs is implied >> here. > > You don't need code to do this. You could just as easily insert a few > lines at the top of your text file with a text editor, or use the copy > command. You don't need HTML at all! Plain text is every bit as readable, just with less markup (obviously). And yet here we are with a billion other incompatible doc formats. We didn't "need" most of it, but it's still there. Besides, again, this program is ultra simple and will almost definitely be updated further, so we can't expect it to be release quality on first commit. (Of course we've all seen worse code, and I remember one that called itself version 0.0 !!) >> P.S. I don't know the history of the Internet nor all programs ever >> made. I'm not sure if GNU A2PS is an official or unofficial precursor >> to GNU Enscript. There does seem to be some partial common heritage >> there. In any case, A2PS has a script called "card" which will "print" >> a reference card of a program based upon its "inline help". Just for >> reference, that exists as well. Oh, and I guess help2man (written in >> Perl) is vaguely similar. Yeah, lots and lots of doc formats out >> there. > > What does this have to do with anything? More tools that do similar. For comparison. If you don't like this one and don't want to patch it, feel free to use something else. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try New Relic Now & We'll Send You this Cool Shirt New Relic is the only SaaS-based application performance monitoring service that delivers powerful full stack analytics. Optimize and monitor your browser, app, & servers with just a few lines of code. Try New Relic and get this awesome Nerd Life shirt! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic_d2d_may _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
