Text-mode apps (Was :Who are the "spacists"?)

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Rick Johnson
<rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 12:43:59 AM UTC-5, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> Except that it doesn't actually take very much work to call
>> on someone else's library, which is what you get when you
>> use Unicode properly. (At least, assuming you're using a
>> decent language like Python, which comes with Unicode
>> libraries, and a decent GUI toolkit if you're going that
>> way.)
>
> Really. Since when does Python come with a "decent GUI kit"?

I didn't say it came with one; I said you should use (a) a decent
language, and (b) a decent GUI toolkit. Both do exist, but with
Python, the best GUI toolkits are installed with pip rather than being
part of the standard library.

>> Nope. I can't speak Mandarin, but I can make absolutely
>> sure that all my programs can accept Chinese characters. A
>> friend of mine sent me an audio file with a name that
>> included some Chinese, and I was able to handle it no
>> problem.
>
> Most people just quietly change the filename and move on,
> but if you want to spend the extra time worrying about every
> foreign charactor, you certainly have that right. But you
> don't have a right to lecture everyone else about your new
> found religion.

I suppose you'd be okay with all file names being upper-case 8.3
format, and that anyone who wants mixed case and/or longer names
should have no right to lecture people either.

>> > The only justification required is the bottom line. If your
>> > products generate profit, then you're doing something
>> > right. Besides, you don't need _everyone_ on the planet to
>> > buy your product to be a success. Unlike the business
>> > practices of Apple, we would be wise to leave plenty of
>> > room for others to enter the market. Competition is good
>> > for everyone. Monopolies are evil.
>>
>> Riiiiiight. What's the "bottom line" for open source
>> software? How do you measure whether your product is
>> generating a profit or not?
>
> Easy. You count the number of active community members. You
> also closely observe the "community health tends" over time.
> Having a small community today is not necessarily a bad
> thing if the community is healthy and growing. OTOH, a large
> unhealthy community today could be a ghost town tomorrow.
> Biologist refer to that phenomenon as extinction. Which is
> neither good nor profitable.
>
> Rectangular sheets of paper with dead presidents printed on
> them are not the only source of profits. Crowd sourcing can
> be quite a profitable enterprise even in the absence of
> money -- that is, *IF*, and only *IF* -- you invest the time
> required to lower barriers of entry and foster participation
> from diverse external sources. Social homogeny and
> intellectual isolation lead to collective oblivion.

I think you need to define the bottom line with something more stable
than a greased roller skating rink.

ChrisA