Welcome to the Lounge

I've gone to the dark side...

2hrs 55mins ago

I have my own IoT ecosystem, and often when I add to it I feel a little guilty.

Because half the time I am not creating something that's never been done. It's just never been done my way, or on the particular platforms I target, or whatever.

All of my touchpad drivers operate the same way, using the same basic interface. That was worth it to me to create drivers that were like that, so I could easily port my code to all the different IoT devices out there.

My graphics library was the first to support TrueType fonts on IoT and embedded without megs of PSRAM. My graphics library is still the only one to support SVG (yes, the graphical web technology) on the same. That was worth it to me.

I also try to defend it to myself before I make it. I just don't know if my reasons are rationalizations.

Particularly when my dependency graph on a typical project looks like this:

Dependency Graph
|-- htcw_esp_i2c @ 0.1.1
|-- htcw_esp_lcd_panel_ili9342 @ 0.2.0
|-- htcw_uix @ 0.15.4
|-- htcw_esp_wifi_manager @ 0.1.3
|-- htcw_esp_ntp_time @ 0.1.3
|-- htcw_bm8563 @ 0.1.6
|-- htcw_esp_ip_loc @ 0.1.2
|-- htcw_m5core2_power @ 0.1.4
|-- htcw_ft6336 @ 0.1.6
|-- htcw_gfx @ 1.670.2

Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

Mike Hankey6hrs 35mins ago

Mike Hankey

6hrs 35mins ago

and am now using uSoft Edge as my browser and I have to admit it's better than a sharp stick in the eye.

A home without books is a body without soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.4.0 (Many new features) JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator

k50545hrs 20mins ago

k5054

5hrs 20mins ago

What was your previous browser, and what led you to the conversion?

"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants"
Chuckles the clown

Mike Hankey4hrs 15mins ago

Mike Hankey

4hrs 15mins ago

Chrome, then they wouldn't allow AdBlock so I went back to FF, which I had used for years.
Then I start having problems getting links to work, I was getting a lot of "That site can't be reached" errors so I went to Edge to see if it was a browser issue. I was still getting errors!

Turned out to be with the Server 2019 I have as a file server here at the house. For some reason it started having DNS issues and when I set my Windows 11 machine back to using Auto DHCP it cleared every up and it is now working for FF.

A home without books is a body without soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.4.0 (Many new features) JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator

OriginalGriff5mins ago

OriginalGriff

5mins ago

Mike Hankey wrote:
Chrome, then they wouldn't allow AdBlock

Eh? I run Chrome and have never had a problem with AdBlock - or at least uBlock - except with YT who have been running a blocker war for a year or two now^*
Chrome has never refused to run it, and it "just works" with whitelists for sites like CP.

* YT appears to be losing, with updates within hours of them changing it - and the number of people who use ad blockers going up because they had never heard of them before YT started trying to ban them ...

"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

honey the codewitch4hrs 27mins ago

4hrs 27mins ago

And here I thought by "dark side" you were gonna say you picked up Generic Programming in C++.

You should. We have cookies.

Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

I have vanquished the creeping horror

Mike Hankey4hrs 20mins ago

Mike Hankey

4hrs 20mins ago

Cookie (Best cookie monster voice)
Me love cookie Smile | :)

A home without books is a body without soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.4.0 (Many new features) JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator

Gary Wheeler13hrs 58mins ago

Gary Wheeler

13hrs 58mins ago

We have a customer for whom we've done a [great steaming] pile of custom work. A couple of times a year they find a problem with the custom stuff. It always turns into a wretched slog through a Lovecraftian swamp of bubbling ichor (e.g. legacy code) I didn't write but am now required to maintain. Three months ago they reported an issue with one of their features in the new generation of product that didn't happen with the old one. I compared the code between the two and it was identical. I've spent considerable hours debugging through the code for the feature.

It turns out the new code is looking in the wrong place in the registry to see if their custom features are enabled D'Oh! | :doh:

. The old code only worked accidently.

Cue the fireworks a day early, and let the naked happy dance Jig | [Dance]

commence!

Software Zen: delete this;

jeron113hrs 28mins ago

13hrs 28mins ago

One of our embedded systems has been around for 15+ years, we had one or two customers in that time have random device crashes. We tried setting things up and using the customers configuration, to no avail, for many months. Data from the clients revealed the crashes occur at many different addresses. Finally, in desperation, I decided to look at stack usage. There were two routines related to little used features out of hundreds (think 70-80K lines of code in assembler) that allocated 4 bytes more stack space than it deallocated. It took thousands of these routine calls before encroaching on runtime variables. Twas a happy day when I found it Beer | [beer]

, and as important, a big learning experience.

"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle

Gary Wheeler13hrs 17mins ago

Gary Wheeler

13hrs 17mins ago

jeron1 wrote:
Twas a happy day when I found it , and as important, a big learning experience

Same here. I've had other memorable bugs that were excruciating to recreate and diagnose. One was a GDI handle leak that took over a week of run time to show up and crash the application. Another was a piece of embedded code where the TCP/IP code we bought back in 1995 did not re-initialize properly after a network hardware error. Both of these took weeks of debugging to find and reproduce and only a couple of hours to correct.

Software Zen: delete this;

jeron113hrs 13mins ago

13hrs 13mins ago

Gary Wheeler wrote:
Both of these took weeks of debugging to find and reproduce and only a couple of hours to correct.

Funny how that is. Thumbs Up | :thumbsup:

dandy7212hrs 51mins ago

dandy72

12hrs 51mins ago

Now imagine weeks of debugging and seconds for the actual fix (after the problem was identified and well understood).

jeron112hrs 31mins ago

12hrs 31mins ago

True, it's tough when you are going through it, for me sleepless nights are the usual result!

dandy72 wrote:
after the problem was identified and well understood

To me there's a certain satisfaction to that, as rough as the road was to get to that point (and maybe learning a thing or two about better implementation, as I did).

honey the codewitch12hrs 48mins ago

12hrs 48mins ago

My takeaway is "don't write things in assembly" Laugh | :laugh:

Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

jeron112hrs 40mins ago

12hrs 40mins ago

I wouldn't necessarily argue! Big Grin | :-D

In this particular product there's a lot of time sensitive code, and over the years it's grown, A LOT.

jschell11hrs 57mins ago

jschell

11hrs 57mins ago

Hopefully you bill by the hour.

Gary Wheeler11hrs 52mins ago

Gary Wheeler

11hrs 52mins ago

Unfortunately no Sigh | :sigh:

, at least in my day job.

Software Zen: delete this;

Richard Andrew x649hrs 44mins ago

Richard Andrew x64

9hrs 44mins ago

Wait, you said the code was identical between the new and old versions of the product.

So how is there a difference that caused it to look in the wrong place?

UNLESS, it was always looking in the wrong place, and changes to the surrounding code put the information into a different place that it was unable to find by accident?

OR, are you saying that the code that just turned the feature on didn't work, and the code of the feature itself was unchanged?

The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.

Re: Sabotage to drive sales

Ron Anders3hrs 22mins ago

Ron Anders

3hrs 22mins ago

Whew.

Sabotage to drive sales

Richard Deeming18hrs 21mins ago

Richard Deeming

18hrs 21mins ago

Maybe I'm being cynical, but this just seems wrong to me.

I've been using the HTML editor library CKeditor since the early days, when it was still known as FCKeditor.

I've stuck with v4 because it does everything we need it to, and it's free so long as you don't use any "premium" add-ons. As far as I can see, v5 has some nice features, but is no longer free unless your entire project is open source. And with no pricing information available, with everything hidden behind a "request a quote" button, you can bet it's not cheap!

Yesterday, every editor instance started displaying a big red warning message, obscuring the content being edited:

Quote:
This CKEditor 4.x.x version is not secure.
Consider upgrading to the latest one, 4.24.0-lts.

But is 4.24.0-lts free? No - you have to buy an "extended support model" for your installation. D'Oh! | :doh:

Sure, there's a new config option[^] you can flip to turn off this check - for now. But that feature wasn't present when we integrated the editor; it has been retrospectively applied to all old versions, and defaulted to "yes, please obscure the editor with a sales pitch on every load".

I don't have a problem with you charging for a new version of your library. Nor with charging for "extended support" on an old version of your library. But actively sabotaging old free versions of your library to try to drive sales of your new version or the "extended support" version? No thank you. Mad | :mad:

We'll be sticking with the last free version of v4 with the version check disabled, at least until it either stops working or they start sabotaging it even more. Once that happens, we'll be looking to the competition for its replacement.

For those with long memories, this is reminiscent of the Red Gate / .NET Reflector débâcle, where they took a freeware tool and abused its auto-update feature to try to force everyone to upgrade to their new commercial version. Their argument was that continuing to use the free version was like "wanting today's gas at yesterday's prices". They really struggled to understand that it was more like Homer's elephant rides - expecting people to pay today's prices for the gas they already bought yesterday:

Homer: Um, Milhouse saw the elephant twice and rode him once, right?
Louann: Yes, but we paid you four dollars.
Homer: Well, that was under our old price structure. Under our new price structure, your bill comes to a total of $700.

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

honey the codewitch17hrs 40mins ago

Re: Sabotage to drive sales

17hrs 40mins ago

Surely there has to be a suite of VS Code extensions you can use, like Live Server and other things.
There's nothing strictly WYSIWYG though in VS Code to my knowledge. It's all tags.

Oh, this is a web page component?

Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

Richard Deeming17hrs 27mins ago

Richard Deeming

17hrs 27mins ago

honey the codewitch wrote:
Oh, this is a web page component?

Yes.

CKEditor - Wikipedia[^]

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

PDF from Mandarin to English? (Solved)

honey the codewitch18hrs 36mins ago