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Author Topic: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)  (Read 27391 times)

cesium133

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #200 on: 30 Jul 2020, 06:44 »

Back when I was in grad school, I was given a large collection of... less than legally-obtained... physics textbooks in DjVu format. It was a useful format, but even back then it was hard to find good software for that format.
I seem to remember that DjVu was supported, on Linux at least, 10-ish years ago, but don't quote me on that.

EDIT: Tova, the definition of .pdf is Postscript with whatever bullshit Adobe decides to add? Has that changed?
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hedgie

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #201 on: 30 Jul 2020, 08:10 »

My condolences.
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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #202 on: 30 Jul 2020, 11:03 »

if i was still on speaking terms with my ex, an astrophysicist, i would ask her what she uses, for comparison.
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cesium133

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #203 on: 30 Jul 2020, 11:10 »

Most of the astrophysicists I've met (and seen the computers of) used Macs, and the rest used Linux.
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zmeiat_joro

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #204 on: 30 Jul 2020, 14:09 »

I remember finding it funny that the "portable document format" was anything but portable.
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Tova

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #205 on: 30 Jul 2020, 14:38 »

Don't quote me on this, but I think (read: guess) the reason the word 'portable' is in the name is that fonts, images and other assets are packaged up in the same file as the postscript referencing them, as opposed to standalone postscript which references them externally.
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Thrudd

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #206 on: 31 Jul 2020, 14:49 »

My observation is that the latest iteration and how most people use the format is to maintain the documents formatting between systems so that it will always look the same no matter the system it is displayed on.  Now compression / file size depends on how efficient the algorithms are on stripping out unnecessary support data like unused characters in True Type font files and reduce the resolution of images.

It was a notorious issue with early text documents where spacing and font sets would vary from system to system and it only got worse when M$ got involved where one version release would radically change the layout of a document produced on a different version release.  :psyduck:
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notStanley

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #207 on: 31 Jul 2020, 15:39 »

While maintaining format when that embeds some of the contents meaning, I get annoyed at documents that are just paragraphs of plain text, yet the author is so enamored of their precious babies that they locked out re-flow, forcing me to scroll across as well as down to read the dang thing!  Survivable when at my desk and can just make that window bigger, but a WTF moment on portable devices with small screens.
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cybersmurf

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #208 on: 03 Aug 2020, 06:05 »

IIRC PDF supports font embedding as a whole, and for the characters only. PDF, as a technically read only format, with being able to use basically anything but not having to turn it into a picture is a good idea. Problem: although now an ISO standard, it was developed as a proprietary thing. While that can be good in the way of being able to move on faster with decisions on how to do so, it was developed as a part of a software suite, with making money as a priority, not usability.
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Tova

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #209 on: 03 Aug 2020, 16:04 »

I would counter that making money and usability are not necessarily in conflict. The two aims simply need to be aligned. I would daresay that with PDFs, they are. It is probably PDF's only feature that matters.

Usability can be just as much of a problem with free software (free as in whichever you like) as it is with proprietary software. As I mentioned elsewhere, open software generally is at its best when developers eat their own dog food (e.g. git, linux). That's a more powerful metric than whether making money was a priority.

Here's a detail. Making money is still a priority. The people who comprise the ISO working group generally come from industry - companies whose goal is to make a profit.
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Yet the lies of Melkor, the mighty and the accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days. (Silmarillion 255)

hedgie

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #210 on: 03 Aug 2020, 16:46 »

Having used Linux for over a decade, and using plenty of *nix software on macs ever since OS X ever came out, I can tell you that, for anything creative, nearly everything is severely lacking either in terms of usability or utility.  GIMP, for example, lives up to its name quite well, and until I got photoshop running, I was having to do all my image editing in Krita, which is painting software, but *still* miles above anything else on the platform.
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Tova

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #211 on: 03 Aug 2020, 16:55 »

I'm not overly familiar with GIMP, so I can't comment specifically. But to be fair, I would point out that Photoshop (the program on which it is obviously based) also has a steep learning curve. Is GIMP in fact significantly less usable than Photoshop?
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Yet the lies of Melkor, the mighty and the accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days. (Silmarillion 255)

Zebediah

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #212 on: 03 Aug 2020, 18:03 »

There are things that are unnecessarily hard in GIMP, but over the years I have found ways to do just about everything I need to do in it. I’m not doing professional-quality graphics so I can’t really justify the price of Photoshop, while GIMP’s price is pretty hard to beat.
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hedgie

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #213 on: 03 Aug 2020, 18:38 »

I hate the interface, which is a pretty common complaint, but the real killer things for me are lack of support for high bit-depth and adjustment layers, which make it useless for me for photo editing.  I do much prefer Krita for my OSS image stuff, even though it's designed for digital painting, since it's intuitive, quite powerful (especially with a wacom tablet), and can handle high bit-depth.
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Tova

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #214 on: 03 Aug 2020, 20:06 »

Interesting. Surprising.

According to my google research, high bit depth was added in 2.9 and an adjustment layers feature is coming.
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Yet the lies of Melkor, the mighty and the accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days. (Silmarillion 255)

hedgie

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #215 on: 03 Aug 2020, 20:10 »

Aah.  I haven't used it in ages, especially since the barrier to entry for Photoshop is so much lower than it used to be.  It's a lot easier to pay $10 a month and having everything constantly upgraded than pay $720 upfront.  Adobe sucks for other reasons, but I really can't go back. 
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Tova

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #216 on: 03 Aug 2020, 20:52 »

There is hate for Adobe out there, but generally it's because people hate something about their subscription model, so I'm unaware of the other reasons people hate them.
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Yet the lies of Melkor, the mighty and the accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days. (Silmarillion 255)

hedgie

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #217 on: 03 Aug 2020, 22:25 »

Buggy software, mostly.  But when there's really no viable alternative, I still use it.
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Kein Kunstler

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #218 on: 03 Aug 2020, 23:04 »

when developers eat their own dog food ... that's a more powerful metric than whether making money was a priority.
I prefer understanding before acting; therefor, \TeX.
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hedgie

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #219 on: 03 Aug 2020, 23:13 »

LaTeX is a wonderful thing, but it's important to find the right editor.  I tend to use Kile on Linux, and TeXmaker on Mac.
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Tova

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #220 on: 03 Aug 2020, 23:19 »

TeX is an extraordinary achievement by an extraordinary computer scientist.
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Yet the lies of Melkor, the mighty and the accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days. (Silmarillion 255)

Kein Kunstler

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Re: WCDT strips 4301-4305 (6th July to 10 July 2020)
« Reply #221 on: 03 Aug 2020, 23:38 »

TeX is an extraordinary achievement by an extraordinary computer scientist.
\TeX resulted from lucid pragmatism.
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