Implicit initialization is EVIL!

[Tim Chase]

On 07/06/2011 11:24 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:10 AM, rantingrick<rantingrick at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Wow nice corner case. Can you come up with at least five of them
>> though? You and I both know that the vast majority of GUI's require
>> visible windows.
>
> Five corner cases. Okay. One is xkill; if I can find four more, we run
> out of corners and they're not corner cases any more - is that it?
>
> 1) See above.
> 2) Win2VNC. Doesn't actually paint a window on the screen, it just
> watches where the mouse goes - move the mouse off the edge of the
> screen, and it wraps and hides it. Very cool.
> 3) Firewall software with a graphical config notebook. I think
> ZoneAlarm actually just hides its window, but that's not strictly
> necessary. (My preferred firewall setup, though, has no GUI at all -
> iptables etc is all I need.)
> 4) Clipboard Converter. An old app that I wrote a while ago that,
> whenever you copy anything to the clipboard, runs it through a script
> and puts the result back on the clipboard. Handier than you might
> think.
> 5) Hotkey manager. It watches for keystrokes and replaces them with
> other actions. Implemented as an input hook with injection facilities.

6) possibly xneko (just mouse-cursor amusements)

7) screen-shot/print-screen software (several such as "scrot" 
don't have an actual window, just a process that interacts with 
the other windows)

8) AutoHotkey and other keystroke-monitors (or 
mouse-gesture-monitors) to expand text, send key-sequences, 
launch programs, reconfigure windows, signal changes in 
display-configuration, etc

9) other clipboard utilities such as xclip or multi-clipboard 
functionality

10) DPMI screen-savers (that only listen for key/mouse activity 
and send a blank-screen signal to the monitor after a given 
period of inactivity)

I think there are sufficiently many edge cases this 
formerly-square room is starting to look round...


> I regret that I am now in the position of following an awesome post
> with a somewhat mediocre one. Steven, the Dead Window Sketch is
> awesome!

agreed :)

-tkc