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Messages - RickJ

#1
General Discussion / Obsidian
Mon 27/03/2023 03:00:52
I've lately come across a quite nice note taking / documentation tool called Obsidian that may be of interest.  It's based on plain text files using Markdown formatting. It features a live preview (WYSIWYG) editor, linking, embedding, etc.  I have been using it to collaborate with colleagues.  We have a vault (i.e. folder tree) on dropbox to which multiple people can simultaneously access and modify. It's not fool proof as content will be lost if people don't take turns editing the same file and allow a few seconds for synchronization.  Images are easily embedded as are external web links.

It could be a good tool for managing and coordinating teams or for documentation.  It takes a little getting used to as the interface is geared more toward keyboard rather than mouse operation.  Think college student, sitting in lecture hall with laptop on lap, taking notes. So there is a little of not knowing how to do this or that at the beginning but is quickly overcome. Plenty of youtube tutorials as well.

obsidian.md
#2
Oopsie, I accidently reported eri0o to the mods, ... maybe.  I clicked the MORE button thinking I'd get more buttons to push.  I was actually looking for the LIKE button which I finally found. 

And yeah eri0o, I've had that same experience of writing some deep shit in the wee hours and wondering "WTF is this?".  The only thing worse is falling asleep halfway through and waking up not knowing how to finish or to get back to anerror free builds.  :grin:
#3
I don't know if Janet agrees but I would think that if there were a symbol table from which a script command could return a reference to a named variable then people could write their own debug functions.  It could be useful for other things as well.
#4
I would think having a symbol table containing name, type and address would be the way to go (at least for variables with statically assigned memory addresses).  Why not have an option to generate the symbol table and include it in the game file(s)? It would be a small step further to have script commands that access the table so that debug utilities could be implemented in script.
#5
Catpunter: Hehe!  I am so relieved to hear that.  We have 7 that we took in off the street and  they are beloved family members.  When I first saw your nick it made me think of Max the cat.  Anyway welcome to AGS.
#6
CatPunter: I like cats better than people and so I find your nick a bit off-putting.
#7
The Rumpus Room / Re: Happy Birthday Thread!
Fri 18/07/2014 05:53:24
Adeel, Ponch, Arj0n, Tabata,

Thanks mucho for the birthday wishes.
#8
Maintainability is another very good reason to make plugins open source. People tend to come and go, and when they go their plugins are stuck in time and eventually become unusable. 
#9
Mark, Probably the best thing to do is to contact their accounts payable, preferably the person who will be processing your invoice, ask them exactly what they want, in what form, and who's ATTN: it should be directed. 
#10
Welcome to AGS. 

Being a Linux person you may be interested in the following tutorial that explains how to run the AGS editor in virtualbox.   Keep your game files on the Linux disk rather than than the virtual disk and test in window mode.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=39118.0

In more recent times other peop-le have got satisfactory results using WINE.


#11
The Rumpus Room / Re: Happy Birthday Thread!
Wed 16/03/2011 23:08:24
Happy Birthday to Squinky
#12
Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Fri 15/01/2010 00:58:22
Quote from: RickJ on Thu 14/01/2010 23:53:18
If you take a look at Crimson's exam[ple
You mean Ryan's example, don't you :P
Sorry being confused; I am just getting to be too old ;)  Hehehehe!  ;D

Quote
Well, my idea she is not just chatting, she wants to see computer display, while standing almost opposite to one's surface.
However idea of getting kneels to the desk sounds natural enough. But even then I believe person will apply some of its weight on cubicle wall when bending over.
I don't think the weight is a problem at all.  It could be a bit of a puzzle for the player to find something for her to climb up on.  It could be a chair, trash bucket, or even standing on the desk.  I think something like that would work just fine.
#13
Quote
Is it safe for not-so weightly person to lean over cubicle wall and peek into another guy's computer?
If you take a look at Crimson's exam[ple you will see that the walls are only about 5ft tall.  People stick their heads over top to chat with their co-workers all the time.   It would be unusual for someone to climb up and lean over at waist height however I believe it wouldn't be a problem for the wall to hold the weight.   if it were me I would have the character kneeling/standing  on a desk, box or something.
#14
Yea , that's it alright.  :-[  Wouldn't you know it I was searching for"Icon" instead of  "Logo"    :=  
#15
Hehe, I can use a bit of help.  Someone make a couple cool blue cup icons recently and posted them, i believe in the Chat forum but I'll be dammed if I can find them now.   I searched for icon, ags icon, cup, etc  but came up negative.   Perhaps some one with a better memory can help me locate them.  Thanks..   :=
#16
Yes.  After disabling FireFox3 Adobe plugin I am able to save PDF to hard drive and open.   If plain text versions are available I would still like to experiment with making a DocBook version. 
#17
If you some one can bring it up to current AGS version I would be willing to refine it from there, provided folks more familiar with the RoN universe have some ideas of what needs to be done.
#18
I don't know if it's just my computer or what but the PDFs on the resource page take forever to load and then I still can't read them.   Do these documents have source?  If so I would be willing to convert them to DocBook/XML and from the XML generate HTML, PDF, and CHM.

All the links on the resource page seem to be connected to files.  And thanks for adding the dates to the file names.   ;) 

[edit]
Also (you're probably aware) the template is out of date and doesn't work with the latest AGS.   I would attempt to update it for everyone but I am away from my computer; borrowing my brother-in-law's laptop at the moment.     
#19
@Babar:  The monitor in question is a CRT is it not?  If so the clicking sound you hear may be the high voltage electrode arcing across the outside of the picture tube.  This can usually be corrected by just cleaning the outside of the tube around the high voltage electrode with glass cleaner soap and water.  Use something that does not leave a residue.     

@monkey:  This could also be your problem but you made no mention of the tell tale arcing  sound.  It could also be that the high voltage electronics are failing, in which case you will need to replace the monitor.
#20
Quote
I personally think there should never be a problem, as long as you don't attempt to read/write over it, which may or may not produce a segmentation fault depending on how lucky you are. Some people seem to disagree, one of them being my professor.
@Paper Carnival:  Your professor is wrong.  A "segmentation fault" is a hardware interrupt generated in response to a memory read/write to an address outside of a range specified by a register or RAM table of some sort.  The setting of a pointer variable to a value will cause a memory write to the address of the pointer variable but not to the address which it contains.   Read and write signals to the pointer's address are not issued until memory at that address is accessed.  Since there is no memory access there will be no interrupt and hence no segmentation fault.  This is all done in hardware so the operating system is irrelevant.   It's entirely possible to have a software segmentation fault checker but the overhead would be extremely high and I have never heard of it being done.

I agree with you that this should never be a problem and I'll give a couple of good reasons why.  First of all let us assume that we have an application that contains some code similar to the one you give.  Further let us assume that this is application is a closed loop controls system controlling the flying surfaces on a 757 Jumbo Jet.  And just to make things interesting let us also assume your professor is a passenger on the same plane flying at 35000 ft.

1.  Fault response - How should our application respond to a segmentation fault of the variety that you describe (i.e. the application is otherwise operating normally and will continue to do so if the fault is ignored)?  There are two obvious choices; abort the application or ignore the fault.  In this instance I believe your professor would prefer the control system ignore inconsequential segmentation faults be ignored rather
plunge to his death.   What about other applications?  Can you name any application where it is better to crash than to continue running normally?  So if the only reasonable response to a fault condition is to ignore it then what purpose does it serve to detect it.

2. Reliability/Maintainability - No suppose our application is very mature.  It has been in use on thousands of aircraft for over a decade.   With millions of total hours of operation our application has proven to be stable and reliable.     Now suppose that a single line of trivial code, unrelated to the pointer in question, is added and the application is recompiled.  What if over all these years that last p++ left p just a byte shy of the segment boundary and the new code pushed it just one byte past.    This is a horrible situation - In a complex application it could be a long time before such a bug finally revealed itself.  In this kind of situation any kind of changes made to the application, regardless of how small or trivial, would incur huge and unacceptable risks.

3. Redundant-Convoluted Code - In the scenario you give in the example the pointer value would have to be tested before incrementing it.   So either there must be a redundant if statement (there is already a p<MAX test) before incrementing the pointer or the loop must be restructured in a less obvious and understandable way (which would also likely involve redundant code in one way or another.   No useful purpose is served by requiring redundant and/or convoluted code.  In my opinion redundant, convoluted code fits Ghost's description of "...leaving a loaded shotgun lying around...." much better than a pointer containing an invalid address.

4. Runtime vs Compile Error - If the compiler were able to pick this up then it could be argued that knowing that a pointer contained an invalid address could be useful in some cases.   However this is not the case; segment faults occur at runtime and may not occur until long after the application has been released and in the field.
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