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From: mjinks Date: 00:01 on 19 Aug 2003 Subject: how can i hate it? i can't even install it. So, I'm the JumpStart gimp in our shop. For those who haven't had the pleasure of hating JumpStart, it's Sun's software for automatically (HA! Ha ha, ha!) setting up Solaris. When it works (ha!), it saves loads and loads of time and even more aggravation. Having set up jumpstart over the past months-and-months, I wonder how many machines we'll have to let it install before we start to see a positive return on the time. But I did not come here to hate JumpStart, nor Solaris, nor any specific chunk of nasty nasty software; rather, I have come to hate an entire class of software: interactive installers which don't offer an automated option of the sort that would let them become part of our happy new JumpStart regime. Case in point: Sun's own "Forte" compiler package, formerly known as Sun Workshop or something else, who knows. Because it simply must have a host-specific license key which is generated from an installation key and some host-specific info, you can't just make a tarball and truck the same installation out to all your machines at install time. Oh, no. You have to drop the distribution media into the box, answer all the happy questions, drop in your installation key, and let it install all the files itself, or it just won't work. Even better: Veritas' NetBackup. A hateful piece of software if ever there was one, NBU had to have an installer of similar hatefulness. Unlike Forte-or-whatever-they-think-sounds-cute-this-week, NBU doesn't require a license key. There's no reason why it couldn't be distributed as netbackup.<platform+version>.<version>.tar.gz, or a SysV-style package, or whateverthehell. But because Veritas is staffed entirely by slope-browed sadists, they made up for this oversight in inconvenience by writing an installation script. The script must be run interactively. Because Bog knows you're not ever going to want to install NBU on every last machine your operation runs, because after all who would ever want to back up all their systems, so what's the harm in requiring hands-on interaction for each and every blasted copy of NBU that your shop sets up? And in those few cases where NBU installation might be a good idea to include in the initial setup of all a site's machines, well, people will just write expect scripts or something, right? I hate expect, so now I'm picking through Veritas' chain of scripts (just one install script? oh how droll! we need a chain of them which call each other!) looking for the point at which they stop collecting silly environmental information (which will always be exactly the same on every bogdamn box we run) and actually frickin' /do/ something. (I already know that, rather than running tar, or cpio, or pkgadd, or any of the other perfectly-reasonable approaches to installing software archives, they call "cp" many, many times on many, many files.) Then I'm going to slice off all the fat and include just that part of their script in our JumpStart setup. It won't work of course. There will end up being some reason why every box we set up must first be JumpStart'ed, then some human will have to sit down, log in, cd to the NBU source directory, run ./install, hit three keys, and go on to the next thing. Meaning that some percentage of our machines will fall victim to human error and won't get backup software at first. I wonder how long before such a machine has a catastrophic data loss before the oversight is corrected. Then there's ipf. I hate ipf, and now that I'm trying to include it in all our automatically-installed machines, I have new reason to hate it even more. Now, if you hate ipf as well, and particularly if you've hated ipf on Solaris, you might wonder why I mention it here. After all, Mr. Reed makes ample provision for distributing ipf as a Solaris package, so what's the problem? "pkgadd -d <file> -a <admin_file> ipf ipfx" and you're done, right? Well you are if you run that command from an interactive shell, sure; zips right on through, never bothers the user to answer any dumb prompt. But run it as part of a script (as in, say, JumpStart) and it dies, with some moron error like "no TTY set" or some shit like that. Other SysV packages don't do that, but who cares? Why on earth would you want to automate ipf installation anyhow? Not like you'll actually want all your computers to be able to filter unwanted network traffic, after all. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I'm just a luddite who doesn't see the advantage in having more and more Unix software act more and more like Windows software, with individual quirks requiring knowledgeable humans spending their time clicking "OK" over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. I'm learning though. I typed "and over" manually each time, rather than having vi repeat for me, because I'm a get-along-with-others kind of guy, and if that's the trend, then dammit I'm gonna fit in. *fume*
From: Paul Mison Date: 17:31 on 14 Aug 2003 Subject: RT For some reason, RT (at least, when viewed with Safari) has different line lengths on the History display page when it's showing a ticket and on the textarea that supplies said correspondence text when you reply to a ticket. As a result, you get lines that look a lot like those you used to get with bad old email software which makes me hate one (or the other) program.
From: Casey West Date: 17:09 on 14 Aug 2003 Subject: Emacs cperl-mode Dude, seriously, when I tell you I want backspace to delete characters preceding the cursor I bloody well mean it! Why then, *WHY*, do you insist on doing nothing useful when I hit backspace when not running under X? You can get it right under X, and oh so horribly wrong otherwise. I don't want the help when I hit backspace I want the frelling character to disappear. I've easily tried every configuration option known to man, woman, and beast. There is no answer. All further proposed answers will be wrong; especially the ones that insist I should stop using the broken emacs mode, or emacs all together. There is no solution, we are at an impasse. Go screw, cperl-mode.
From: Ann Barcomb
Date: 17:02 on 14 Aug 2003
Subject: I hate Lotus Notes too.
At work, I have to use Lotus Notes for some of my email.
If I'm sent an HTML mail (an evil all on its own), which contains
a link like this:
<a href="http://bar.com/english?session=JKH6*&wshf7">http://bar.com</a>;
it is displayed as if I wrote this:
<a href="http://bar.com">http://bar.com</a>;
Of course, its automatic URL detection knows better than I do what
the link should be. To get around it, you have to write the link
like this:
http://<a href="http://bar.com">bar.com</a>;
From: Earle Martin Date: 16:48 on 14 Aug 2003 Subject: xemacs file dialogues (was: Mozilla save file dialogues) On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 03:57:25PM +0100, Simon Wistow wrote: > And the fr*&king filename disapears. I wonder if that's a GTK thing, because I get it in The GIMP as well. But there is worse. Like xemacs, for example. Hit the "Open" button - cunningly labelled with the icon that means "new file" in 99% of applications, because in emacs land both opening an existing file and creating a new one are called "finding" a file, which is fucking stupid because how can you find something that doesn't exist? - and you get: A select file dialogue box. But not a normal one. Rather than use the traditional vertically-scrolling list beloved of most applications (whether with directories listed first (the One True Way) or not), the xemacs developers have eschewed it, choosing instead to have two panes - the one on the left for directories, the one on the right for files. Not so bizarre yet - The GIMP (to pick it again as an example) uses the same system. However, in xemacs, the panes list things sideways. Yes, sideways. It breaks long listings up into columns of 15 items each. And then if there are more items to the side, it puts a little arrow to the side of each item. Clicking on them has the effect of scrolling the pane one pane's width to the side, which is redundant, because both panes already have a scrollbar underneath, and just makes an ugly dialogue box even uglier. And what the hell is the point of scrolling sideways? Who needs to see half of a filename? Here, look at this: http://downlode.org/pictures/misc/ugly_xemacs_dialogue_box.png Pretty useful, huh? Oh, and as you can see, by default it shows hidden files. No convenient checkbox to turn that off, and if there is an option (buried somewhere within the 800 levels or so of configuration submenus) to stop it, I can't find it. Oh, look, though, you can resize the dialogue box. That should solve it! But does it? Does it fuck. You can make the box as large as you like, but the shitty thing will never display files in columns of longer than 15 items. And as if that wasn't good enough, it increases the space between the columns as you enlarge the box! Which means that I STILL HAVE TO FUCKING SCROLL. Oh and you can't double-click files in the box either. You have to middle-click them once. Which is great fun on my two-button laptop. What a load of fucking bollocks.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 16:45 on 14 Aug 2003 Subject: Re: close tab/close other tabs (fwd) Resent due to the reason mentioned in my last mail about hates software. How much do you want to bet this forwarding is going to mess up threading? ;) Hey, in mailing list software you have to be prepared for every stupid thing a user could do! --------- I want to jump in on the hating Mozilla thread. I have a big problem with pasting to and from the browser. I don't know if this is a problem with X, my window manager, or Mozilla, but I don't have the same problem with other applications. When I highlight a URL or text in the page and then try to paste it in to an xterm, I'm far more likely to get whatever I highlighted before I touched the browser. It usually takes 3 or 4 tries to get it right. And when I try to paste a URL in to the browser, I generally get whatever I last highlighted in Mozilla, rather than what's in the xterm, especially if I switched to another virtual desktop. Next, what is the point of the 'about:blank' text that shows up if you open a new tab and then return to an old tab without typing in a URL? It's not as if this text automatically vanishes as soon as you start typing something in. Nor does the browser simply ignore it if it appears in your URL. No, you have to delete it yourself every time. It also appears if you do type in a URL, but then switch to another tab without actually trying to fetch the page. Why, when it is trying to auto-complete URLs, does it always seem to go for the very obscure URL rather than the one I have visited more often? Instead of trying http://somesite.com, the first thing it will offer is http://somesite.com/some/very/long/path?with=args. Mozilla also can't process commands like cntrl-T or cntrl-N when it is busy contacting a site. In the morning, I like to open a new tab, type in the URL, and then go on to opening the next one while it is fetching the first. But I can only open the next tab when the first is mostly done. It doesn't even delay the command; it just eats it. Finally, when I'm filling in a form field, and then return to paste in some text, the place where the text is pasted is usually wrong. It's not where I was last typing, and it's not where the mouse is positioned, either. Often the field isn't even selected any longer. I have this problem with every browser though, so maybe it's me and not Mozilla. And despite that, Mozilla is my favorite browser. Everything else I've tried is even worse.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 16:41 on 14 Aug 2003 Subject: On the subject of hating hates software I am wondering if hates software is ignoring messages where it is CC'd instead of the primary recipient, since my previous message didn't get through. I'm testing the software by doing all kinds of odd replies...yeah... that's it...
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 16:08 on 14 Aug 2003
Subject: auto-highlighting dialogue boxes in X
This may just be in GTK or maybe just a particular piece of suckage
on behalf of Yahoo Messenger for *nix but
...
HIGHLIGHTING THE GROUPS BOX AUTOMATICALLY WHEN OPENING A 'NEW USER'
WINDOW IS RETARDED, MMMMKAY
Imagine this scenario - I obtain someone's user id, maybe in an email.
It matters not. Because I'm in XWindows I highlight it, move to my
messenger client, click on New User ... and now I have to go deselect
the 'group' entry field, go back, re-highlight the user id and then go
back and paste it in.
I mean, what use is highlighting that dialogue? In case I want copy the
group name back somewhere when I'm done for some reason but am
pathologically lazy and so can't do it myself?
And whilst I'm ranting about Yahoo Messenger ... people stick
interesting URLs in their status messages. Can I somehow click on those
urls or maybe even get to somewhere where I can copy them? No. Because
that would make too much sense.
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 15:57 on 14 Aug 2003
Subject: Mozilla save file dialogues
To be honest, I think this may have been fixed in the later versions of
Mozilla but here goes anyway.
So, you click to save something. Your save file dialogue comes up but
you realise that it's in the wrong directory. So you change it, either
by double clicking on another one in the pane or by typing a new path in
...
And the fr*&king filename disapears.
Because OBVIOUSLY I wanted that nuked. Merely by changing the directory
I was intending to also completely change the name as well.
GAH!
From: Chris Winters Date: 14:50 on 14 Aug 2003 Subject: close tab/close other tabs Could you help me reclaim the neurons burst from the arteries swelling in my brain due to the frustration of the Mozilla designer who decided that 'Close Tab' and 'Close Other Tabs' should be RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER in the right-click tab menu? Shift that mouse down a few millimeters and all the history of the issue you're looking at (including the page with the links that spawned the tabs in the first place) is GONE GONE GONE. Chris
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi