Conversation with #inferno at Fri Oct 17 10:49:10 2008 on powerman@irc.freenode.net (irc)
(10:49:10) #inferno: The topic for #inferno is: Inferno and Limbo | Website: http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/index.html | Documentation: http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/docs.html | Wiki: http://canto.hopto.org/wiki/1/index.html | Tutorial: http://www.resc.rdg.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Resc/InfernoTutorial | Mailing list archives: http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.os.inferno.general
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(00:38:34) powerman1: cool. -5 % 3 in Limbo result in -2, while in Perl it result in 1.
(00:39:07) uriel: heh
(00:39:09) powerman1: looks like perl force unsigned for %
(00:39:45) uriel: powerman1: btw, I almost got werc ready to take posts, I had to build a whole auth system, which then required a way to handle cookies, etc...
(00:41:11) uriel: once all the bits are in place it should be easy to add things like a way to edit existing pots, moderate/delete comments, etc
(00:43:11) powerman1: I've not looked at werc, but if it usual 9p thing, then why not just export part of website related to translation using 9p, so I'll be able to just `cp news123.txt /n/werc/`?
(00:43:58) powerman1: it much more funny than cookies and web interface :D
(00:43:59) uriel: no, werc is not 9p at all, it is just http :)
(00:44:03) powerman1: oops :(
(00:44:39) uriel: I could build something like wikifs on top, but that is another project
(00:45:09) uriel: and really, for 9p you don't need much more than simply run exportfs
(00:52:55) powerman1: not really. you have to also run separate auth service. I've asked about this yesterday - few lines above
(00:53:29) powerman1: but maybe that was silly ques and I just have to rtfm more instead of asking
(00:54:01) ***uriel says nothing
(00:54:32) uriel: it is not good for my health to discuss this kinds of subjects, sorry, ask somebody else like rog, I'm sure they will *love* to answer
(00:55:17) olegfink: powerman1: the correct answer is 1, limbo's version looks like -(5 % 3)
(00:55:31) powerman1: I'm not in position to demand an answer of course. answers are good when they are, but then there no answers it's probably much better for self-education ;-)
(00:56:45) powerman1: olegfink: I'm not sure is such thing as "correct" for negative modulus is defined as all
(00:57:00) powerman1: C/glibc return same as Limbo
(00:57:15) powerman1: there several discussions about this on perlmonks.org
(00:58:31) olegfink: at least in maths, the remainder is usually considered positive
(00:59:05) olegfink: of course there are two r's that satisfy a = bq + r if a<0
(00:59:38) olegfink: the positive one is b plus the negative one.
(01:00:13) powerman1: ipwl in cachelib.b calculate hash as n % c.cachesize. so, try to add negative int to cache raise
(01:21:31) powerman1: wow. there no abs() in math-*(2). calc.b implement it manually. I still unable to understand why you guys avoid adding such simple functions to libraries... same story was with readn()
(01:22:09) powerman1: abs() reinvented in 14 modules in /appl/! 4 of them for real, and 10 for int.
(01:23:54) powerman1: maybe there some goodness in doing this, don't know. but if there is, then such design decisions should be documented somewhere... without understanding reasoning for such things I'm going a little crazy :(
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(02:32:15) powerman1: only sensible reason I see is trying to avoid ugly interface with several abs() one per each type (byte/int/...) or even more ugly interface to pick adt... looks like all functions in Math work with real (only exceptions are rand() and bigrand()) , but if there will be only real version of abs, then having to write i_abs=int abs(real i) is ugly again.
(02:42:54) uriel: powerman1: wont you by any chance know who is working on the inferno-openmoko project?
(02:49:32) powerman1: you speak about Masha?
(02:50:05) powerman1: uriel: she has contacted me by email, asking few things about Inferno in russian, but no more
(02:52:42) powerman1: uriel: btw, she emailed be because of same thing - people just afraid to ask questions because of general attitude in this community to "silly" questions. and what is "silly" is very different here from other places, so newbie usually unable to know which questions to ask and which not to ask - and give up :(
(02:54:00) uriel: powerman1: explain that to rog and charles
(02:54:21) powerman1: as for me, it's ok, but if I had a chance I'd like to write some article explaining basic things to newbies, which should enlighten them a little and give some feeling about what is silly question here... but at first I should find that myself :)
(02:54:48) uriel: I have no clue what is a 'silly question' myself
(02:58:14) powerman1: but you ignore a lot of questions yourself while answering to another questions. so looks like you have clue. as far as I see, usually this happens to questions which can be answering after spending more time thinking about it, by reading docs/sources or which already was asked many times before and can be found in archives.
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(03:06:11) powerman1: but I think it's possible to create single FAQ which helps newbie a lot. Inferno/Plan9 is just different, and people should be prepared a little for this. there should be a lot of examples with info about WHY something was done in different way. at least this sort of information I need - not WHAT it able to do, not HOW to do it, but WHY it doing it in this way. after looking at such examples programmers usually will be able to find out some generality and got a clue what is silly question and what is not.
(03:07:40) uriel: 01:58 < powerman1> but you ignore a lot of questions yourself while answering to another questions
(03:08:07) uriel: I ignore lots of questions because 1) I'm clueless 2) some subjects make me sick (usually because I would like to know the answer myself...)
(03:11:25) powerman1: uriel: The "Persistent 9P Sessions for Plan 9" paper is very good example of this. At first, it "explain everything" for me in first two sentences: "Traditionally, Plan 9 [5] runs mainly on local networks, where lost connections are rare. As a result, most programs, including the kernel, do not bother to plan for their file server connections to fail.". This sort of background which newbie don't have, but they wonder about reconnection handing, of course, and asking "silly ques". At second, it's very unusual to look for information in such sort of papers.
(03:14:02) powerman1: After I realize I have to search for such papers - life become much better because I got access to lot of additional docs. Moreover, some of them was written for more-or-less unexperienced (in Inferno/Plan9) readers... and so contain that sort of background "run mainly on local networks".
(03:16:31) powerman1: Maybe I'll try to get all Inferno-related papers listed on single web page and thus make life for somebody else much ease.
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(03:36:11) acmeuser: testing from new macbook pro
(03:41:38) uriel: powerman1: the goal for doc.cat-v.org is to collect such resources
(03:42:42) powerman1: uriel: I know. I'll be happy to have such webpage on your site instead of mine. If (when) it will be prepared we'll discuss how to publish it on your site.
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(03:55:01) uriel: powerman1: I'm thinking of starting a 'plan9 resources' site (and an equivalent inferno one), which aside from the papers in the doc archive, would have a wiki, mirror of bell-labs, a wiki, etc...
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