MacBook back-up necessity
in [UK Mac]
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From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 2 Jul 2010 16:07 On 2 Jul 2010 13:21:53 GMT, zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: >Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: >> On 2010-07-01, zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: >>> >>> I'm proud too, though less so. http://j.mp/bNLckT >>> The annual UCSM post-pub fight is always fun. See you again next >> > year! >>> >>> (despite what I said on Facebook, they look worse today than in that >>> photo; at least I no longer look like I've spilled tomato sauce all >> > over >>> my face. Find it amusing that almost nobody at work has asked what's >>> happened). >> >> er...what -did- happen? > >A friend and I were heading back from the pub (hint, this probably had >something to do with it) on our bikes. I misjudged the steepness of a >stream's banks, thinking at the speed I was going at my front wheel >would hit the opposite bank head on (it was actually shallow enough that >I wouldn't have got any air anyway). Braked hard and landed literally >face-first in the dirt. Ah, the standard cause of single-person accidents, confidence failure! I've been getting over that recently, but still occasionally do similar brakebrakebrakeouch moves. So far I've failed to land on my face, but it's only a matter of time... You came out quite lightly damaged, probably down to all the muscle relaxant in your system. (I've just got a new-to-me bike - Scott MC-20 - to get used to too, so I'm likely to hurt myself more at the moment!) Cheers - Jaimie -- When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. - Alexander Graham Bell
From: Woody on 2 Jul 2010 17:13 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > Jochem Huhmann wrote: > > > usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk (Woody) writes: > > > > > >> A PDF can not be set up in such a way to let you know what a piece of > > >> information means. > > >> > > >> Really at a basic level it is quite useless for structure. Even a table > > >> is a collection of words with lines drawn in it - there isn't the > > >> constructs inside a pdf to let the information within a table relate to > > >> itself. > > >> > > >> Once information has gone into a PDF, it is just words, any structure it > > >> has is completely lost. > > >> > > >> It is a purely display only format. > > > > > > There is tagged PDF though, which tries to address exactly this problem. > > > > I would say that it is really starting from the wrong end. Wouldn't it > > be better to start with something else that had structure, and put the > > display layout into it? > > Well, yes - PDF is an output format, after all. > > > You can embed full XML structures inside a PDF (or anything really, > > videos, viruses, whatever), but is that not just trying to re-engineer > > something to cope with something it was never designed (and contains no > > structure) to do? > > I don't think so. > > > Effectively you would just have the information twice > > Well, yes, why not? Where's the problem with that? Mark up your input > file with structure, use your PDF creator to generate a structured > marked-up PDF, and Bob's yer auntie's live-in lover. > > Does a small amount of apparent data inefficiency matter, if indeed > there is much? Depends what you want to do with it. PDF is not a good output format for most things, other than sending a document for printing. -- Woody www.alienrat.com
From: D.M. Procida on 2 Jul 2010 17:38 zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: > >> It hurt, but could have been a lot worse. > > > > [trying not to grin like a loon][*nearly* succeeding] > > > > Jim > > About five minutes after it happened, I felt brilliant. Adrenaline is > really cool. Five years ago I crashed my bike at the bottom of a long descent. I was doing about 30mph, perhaps even a little more. Apparently, it looked like the guy with the blue spots at who follows Tom Boonen over Mark Cavendish's head at 21 seconds into <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RNAYR3KPIg>. Amazingly, my bike was in one piece, though some of my skin wasn't. But once I realised I wasn't dead, and I could get back on the bike, I felt incredible. I got back on the bike and powered up the next hill in a state of bliss. I could have taken on anyone. Daniele
From: Rowland McDonnell on 2 Jul 2010 19:32 D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > Jochem Huhmann <joh(a)gmx.net> wrote: > > > > Once information has gone into a PDF, it is just words, any structure it > > > has is completely lost. > > > > > > It is a purely display only format. > > > > There is tagged PDF though, which tries to address exactly this problem. > > PDF is basically built upon PostScript, a language intended to be > interpreted by laser printers. All it does it tell the device: make > such-and-such a mark here. Oh no it doesn't. The design intention of PS is that it's meant for drawing on paper, but since PS is a full-on programming language, it's much much more than a mere page description method. > It seems like the worst possible starting-point for trying to preserve > semantic content, never mind achieve accessibility. Links can be added - internal and external. Code can likewise be added. Tags and labels can be specified to preserve semantic content *IF* you care to define a standard for doing so (or there's no meaning). And I don't know what else. Basically, you can add the necessary structure to PDFs /if you want to/. And since PDFs are all created by software, well, I don't see any serious problem with implementing properly flexible e-book type things in PDF, should someone wish to do the donkey work to get it good. I've got an RPN calculator somewhere - implemented as a pdf file, generated from a TeX source. Yep, open the PDF in your PDF viewer, and you've got an RPN calculator, working buttons, calculator display for the output, all that good stuff. Seems to me that PDF has plenty of flex - certainly nothing like `just put these marks here'. That's what you get with a TeX dvi file (and even they had flex added - Knuth came up with an idea in that line and implemented it). PS and PDF are nothing like as restricted. Rowland. (who's been using an HP RPN calculator for decades, and so found learning the little PS he learnt all those years ago quite easy, actually - unlike some of his peers, who got horribly confused). -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 2 Jul 2010 19:32
Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > > > > The screens always reflect light from the front surface, > > > > > > partially obscuring the image below to a greater or lesser > > > > > > extent, depending on screen tech, angle to the light, angle to > > > > > > the eye, and so on. > > > > > > > > > > Almost always, yes. In the dark they don't > > > > > > > > If it's dark, there is no light. if there is light, it's reflecting > > > > off the screen. Have you never been troubled by the reflection of > > > > your own face from a backlit screen in the dark? I have. > > > > > > Oh no, but then I am beautiful! > > > > Not as pretty as I am, I promise you. Oh dear, did I really write that? > > yes, I did. > > > > So, who are we going to pick to be judges in the beauty contest between > > me and you, then? > > Well, I am happy to judge, but then, I know I win, I have seen your > xface :D Aussie lions are prettier than rats if you ask me. And you should remember that since I'm the master of the universe (although not the internet) any competition will be judged by someone on my side, because it's all mine, you hear, all of it!!! Ahahahahaha! <cough> [<http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=LO4iKnwA6hw> and I haven't been hit by a good dollop of loud psychadelic music and strobe lights for *decades*. I love devastatingly noisy psychadelic music and strobe lights. Bit annoying that what I like seems to be generally unavailable these days, what with the guidelines on the use of strobe lighting so as to avoid fits and whatnot] > > > > > > Proper ink on paper printing is higher contrast. > > > > > > > > > > Thats not true. > > > > > > > > <puzzled> But poor constrast is one of the big unsolved problems of > > > > electronic displays. > > > > > > I clearly have a much better contrast from one of my screens upstairs > > > than any book I have. Some books more than others. > > > > What you think based on what you think you can see is nothing remotely > > like a contrast measurement. You cannot make a determination like that > > with your eyes - quite impossible. > > In which case it is not an issue for me, as my eyes are the only way I > have to measure these things. There are many things to consider when designing a display. What matters at the end of the day is utility - how useful is it to people? If you can indeed read a particular whatever without any reduction in speed or reliability or stress, then whatever that `whatever' might be is fine for you. But to design a display good enough for all - ah well, *then* you have to make engineering measurements, perform tests using real people, correlate the results from the engineering measurements with the test results to find out what engineering factors affect readability, and so on. People are astonishingly varied, you know - what works well for one won't work for another, and so on. There are plenty of people in this world who have trouble with black ink on white paper and are better off with colours, for example. So it goes. All very complicated. [snip] > > > > The layout on a book is meant to be seen one page at a time. > > > > Electronically supplied documents are, mostly, only practical to read in > > > > scrolling down the page mode. > > > > > > > > Get my point? > > > > > > I get your point, but this depends on the book. On books (as in fiction > > > style), they are displayed in one page at a time mode. > > > > I've not met an e-book reader that's big enough to do that and is small > > enough to be convenient. > > I think most of the eReaders do it a page at a time, the sony that I > have certainly does. The iPad does with the books application The iPad screen is too small for that job to my mind - although I'm sure that the people who seem happy with it really are happy with it. > > > > > Agreed. When it comes to A4 books, ebooks are definately a second > > > > > class thing, which is why my sony ebook was not as good as the > > > > > iPad for a4 stuff (although I didn't have the iPad until very > > > > > recently) > > > > > > > > When it comes to normal paperbacks too, if you ask me. Big books are > > > > totally not possible to replace by electronic versions. > > > > > > For me very much so. > > > > What's with the mindless contrarianism? > > Its not mindless, it is that you have an issue that I don't have. No, it's that you're mindlessly contradicting me without understanding what I'm talking about - so it seems to me, based on what you write below. > > There's no way a book containing large art prints can be rendered in a > > form that can be enjoyed on an e-book reader in the same way. > > ok, I will give you that. Didn't occur to me as I wouldn't be looking at > large art prints. I did specify big books, you know - `books' is the general term to describe the entire set of all books, not just the ones you are interested in. (Bloody keyboards. Just been using a MacBook. Now I'm not. The MacBook has the fn key where this one has the ctrl key. ARGH!!!! Wrong button /again/...) > However pictures in general I wouldn't have a problem > with on an iPad style screen (the proper ereaders are very bad at > pictures), just not crammed into a proper book form. I've got a fair few big books that would crush an iPad if dropped - their contents could not be displayed on an iPad screen in a fashion that would permit them to be appreciated as they were meant to be, let alone remotely approaching the same ease of use and quality of reproduction. Atlases and big books of maps, for example - *BIG* ones, where they're big because it's the only way to get the information displayed as it ought to be. Yes, of course one can have a useful map on a small screen - but you can't have a really big high resolution map on a small screen, and sometimes that's useful in a way that a small map cannot be. Also various arty things with big art prints. And so on. Even Ralph Steadman or Gerald Scarfe's work - well, not all of it needs showing off on big pages, but some of it certainly does. [snip] > > > > > > Hmm - what's a sensible indexing system for your needs, then? I > > > > > > seek information. > > > > > > > > > > Well, instant search (not like PDF), > > > > > > > > Do tell. > > > > > > Indexed search. PDF does a linear non stemmed search > > > > Could you translate that into English? > > You type in a group of letters, the word you want to find, it starts at > the beginning, checks every letter and stops when it finds that > combination of letters anywhere. Uhuh. Okay - and why is that a problem? And what do you think would be better - and why? > > > and it is fairly > > > useless, getting more useless the bigger the document. > > > > Not that I've seen. > > I search a lot of technical documentation. But then that is what I do, > generate and format technical documentation. So you're one of the ones I should blame, then? (I have nothing good to say about most technical documentation written since about the mid 1980s - the methods used to produce are severely dysfunctional, from what I've been able to work out.) > The manual that just went for printing (and I normally have nothing to > do with printing) is 1066 pages (actually now split into two) and that > is just a limited subsection. Uhuh. Probably needs cutting down to size and restructuring. I know I would. > Searching that with a linear search is not that useful. 1) Why not? 2) What's better? > > > > > proper index (ie, not having to go > > > > > to the back of the book), > > > > > > > > Eh? But the back of the book is where the index is if it's a proper > > > > index. What do you mean? > > > > > > The index should be where you want it. In an electronic book, why would > > > you have to go to the back of the book to find an index? > > > > Why not just open whatever page the index is on? If the book is > > electronic, what does it matter? > > I don't understand why you would want to go to a page in a book in an > electronic system to get to an index? Because `page in a book' means nothing to an electronic document, does it? Just `display the information' and if that means the software model requires a thing called a `page' to be displayed, who cares? .... just so long as you have a display method that permits you to display the index *and* the content you want to access, separately. [snip] > > Putting it at the > > back in the conventional fashion seems like a sensible idea - and if > > you're looking at it in electronic form, that's no disadvantage if you > > open up more than one window looking at the same file, is it? > > If you have windows maybe not, except you have to find the start of that > index. Erm, yeah - click on the link to the index, how hard is that? Or rather, what could be more convenient? .... and it's do-able with normal PDFs generated the normal way by pdfTeX - although I haven't experimented to see if it's convenient to display the index page alongside the content page I want to access via the index using software that I've got. Assuming there's a convenient way of doing that - and you could easily implement it if it's not already out there - what's wrong with using a PDF? My thinking is that there are already too many file formats out there - what do we need more for, y'know? Okay, for some jobs - but `entities shall not be multiplied beyond necessity' is a good rule of thumb for all sorts of things. Thank you, Mr Of Ockham (William of that ilk)[1]. > But what advantage would you have by scrolling to the back of a > book looking for an index, when you could just select something and go > to an index? Erm, what? > Really don't understand why you would want to do this. I don't - I'm talking about clicking on the link to the index, all set up in the PDF file. > > > > [snip] > > > > > > > > > > When it comes to looking up information, I've often given up on > > > > > > the electronic version in disgust and gone and grabbed the paper > > > > > > version. Yeah, often. > > > > > > > > > > I am the opposite with that, which is where I really go for > > > > > electronic. Recently when I was doing an OU course, I had the A4 > > > > > docs and the PDFs. For looking up info, I would use the PDF, and > > > > > bearing in mind how poor PDFs are for that sort of thing, > > > > > > > > PDFs are best for that sort of thing in my experience - when they > > > > are created properly with internal structure. If it's just a paper > > > > document slapped into a PDF without adaptation, of course it'll be > > > > rubbish. > > > > > > That is the problem with PDFs, they don't have an internal structure, > > > > They can be given one. > > Other than a very very primitive one of which words are in which order, > no they cant. Oh yes they can as far as I can tell - certainly fit 'em out with links and whatnot. They can have code built in too - so flexible that I've got (somewhere) an RPN calculator implemented as a pdf. Yep, a fully GUI RPN calculator with buttons and whatnot. I don't see how you could do that at all if no structure were possible. And I can fit pdfs out with links - internal and external pointing. pdfTeX + the HyperTeX package (just extra TeX macros, nothing fancy). > They can be given a table of contents saying what page something is on > (you can't go finer than page number, like where on the page), Hmm - I'm not sure about that, I'd have to do some research to check, but I think you're wrong. > you can > put in bookmarks (again on the page) and that is it. Erm? > A PDF can not be set up in such a way to let you know what a piece of > information means. Oh yes it can. > Really at a basic level it is quite useless for structure. Nonsense - see below. >Even a table > is a collection of words with lines drawn in it - there isn't the > constructs inside a pdf to let the information within a table relate to > itself. > > Once information has gone into a PDF, it is just words, any structure it > has is completely lost. Nonsense. Structure can be retained by use of internal `I don't know whats, I let the HyperTeX package sort all that out for me'. > It is a purely display only format. So how come I've got a PDF that is a functional RPN calculator that lets me press buttons and get answers displayed when I open the PDF in a PDF viewer? How come I've got PDFs with internal structure and links to internal and external objects? > For a book or your art prints, that is probably acceptable. I produce > technical documents, and the information on the page has some meaning, > and a definate (and very fully specified) structure. I've got technical documents presented as PDFs with plenty of internal structure. > > > > [snip] > > > > > > > > > > Well crafted pdfs generated by pdfTeX with help from hypertex > > > > > > (TeX code to add internal and external hyperlinks to a TeX doc), > > > > > > indexing machine-generated too - ah now, they are often a great > > > > > > pleasaure to work with, because it's so easy to find the bit of > > > > > > the document you're after. > > > > > > > > > > Well, I have a lot of PDFs made with XSLT, which can be ok, > > > > > although it has flaws. > > > > > > > > Surely XSLT is just a method of converting between XML variants? > > > > > > It is a way of converting XML to something else, it doesn't have to be > > > XML. > > > > Hmm - not the impression that Wikip gave; don't worry, I'm assuming > > you're the more accurate information source on this one. > > The input certainly needs to be XML, but the output has the option of > being XML (including xhtml if you want), html, or plain text. Uhuh. > > > > - so > > > > you'd do the conversion to pdf with something else - something meant to > > > > convert XML to PDF. > > > > > > yes, XSL-FO (or a FOP). > > > > You know that's meaningless to me. So why write it? > > Well, you seem to know something about XSLT when I said it, (and looked > up wikipedia) I had no way of knowing you didn't know (or wouldn't look > up) about XSL-FO. I looked up XSLT. You could guess I'd have to do that. I got fed up when you mentioned XSL-FO without bothering to hint at what it might be - you surely knew I had no idea what those letters stood for? > It is a page description layout, Erm? No it's not. It's a document formatting markup language. > you can take XML, process it with XSLT > to produce XSL-FO which you can use a formatting object processor (FOP) > to produce PDF. Generally you can skip the intermediate FO code with > most formatters. Go on, what do you mean? And is this the route whereby XML gets processed with TeX? Or do you know nothing about what TeXies do with XML? > > >which is what i meant (XSL being the major part > > > of my day job) > > > > > > > If you specify the document with sufficient subtlety and then use decent > > > > software to turn it into a pdf, you should get results as good as anyone > > > > could manage with anything. > > > > > > As good a result as anything, except it is still a pdf. > > > > And what could possibly be the problem with that? > > As above. Display only with a complete loss of structure. That's not PDF you're talking about. > > [snip] > > > > > > > > > > Now that's weird... > > > > > > > > > > > > > > What is? That I don't have the time to clear the books up or that > > > > > > > I buy more? > > > > > > > > > > > > 1) That you're so uninterested in the books that you'd not care if > > > > > > they vanished. > > > > > > > > > > well, that is a separate point already covered. is there nothing you > > > > > have that you feel the same way about? > > > > > > > > I don't know what you mean - feel like what about what? <shrug> > > > > > > Is there nothing you have that you wouldn't care if it dissapeared > > > > We're talking about books. > > > > I'd be pissed off if all my books were destroyed - but that would not > > change my relationship with the books in question. > > > > I don't see what relevance your question has to that point. > > The relevance being you don't seem to understand how I have something I > don't care about. You have misunderstood. I don't understand how having your books burnt changed your relationship with them. *THAT* is what I'm baffled by. Not what you said. [snip] > > > > But why not throw them away? > > > > > > That would require some time that I haven't got to give them. > > > > A small investment in time now would save you more time than you'd spent > > - but later. If, that is, you've got a lot of clutter. > > I do. But it is not my way, and over the years I have found that how > ever much I try, I can't change the way I do things. You could if you really wanted to, you know. > It would be handy if I did my VAT as I went along, but I don't, I rush > it all in the last week. Ditto assignments and most other things. Yeah, well, I'm like that, and it's a Bad Thing. Rowland [1] You've heard of Occam's razor? Yeah? It was 'im. Bill, from Ockham. Occam's the Latinized version of Ockham. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking |