disgruntled paradigms, inc. :: software the way it should be

I just finished updating the site's design. Figured it’s been way overdue.

Sorry there hasn’t been anything new code-wise from me, but I’m still trying to catch up with recent events. Between a change on jobs and my first kid on the way, I’m suprised I even get to shower once a day.

I’ve also switched back to using GNU/Linux (I would’ve gone back to OpenBSD, but it’s tough enough to get family members to even look at Ubuntu) at home, though I still boot into Windows from time to time. But, as can be imagined, I’m not really in a position to do any shell-related coding just now.

But this doesn’t mean I’m quitting on siaynoq. In fact, I’ve something related to siaynoq in the works.

It’s just a matter of finding the time to do it all in…

For those wondering, siaynoq’s not dead yet.

I know it’s fashionable in this community to raise a ruckus and then disappear for a stretch, only to come back with another hyped project, but I’ve never been one for fashion.

I’ve been very busy these past couple of weeks, but not busy enough not to work on siaynoq, as those who follow the Subversion repository can vouch for. (Well, I’ve only checked in code once or twice since the last news post, but still…)

I’m looking into implementing notification area support right now, which isn’t a piece of cake. This will be my first time dealing with COM on such a low-level, so I’ll have to thread carefully. Of course, I could just copy-and-paste from other projects without trying to understand what the code is doing…

Sit tight. We’re just about due for an alpha. (Just have to figure out a way to get stuff done.)

siaynoq now builds with MSVC (at least it does with my installation of Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition). Unfortunately, it doesn’ as cleanly as I’d like it to— there are a number of warnings that I intend to fix in due time. Also, I broke the tiling a little bit while trying to get siaynoq to compile with MSVC. Again, I must own up to thinking, stupidly, that I can clean up the codebase while porting it to another compiler.

I’ll fix it later.

This is likely the first and last time I’ll invest so much time and effort trying to get siaynoq to build with another compiler. I know there are a lot of really good compilers out there, but I simply can’t afford another operation such as this. Too damn expensive.

Anyway, that’s all for tonight, as I’ve got to be in the office early tomorrow.

When I paused siaynoq’s development about two months ago, I left the codebase in a terrible mess. At the start of the project, the initial goal was to get something to work. The project has reached a state where it’s (sort of) working; now, I’m going back and cleaning up the mess.

In the process, I’m also trying to get siaynoq to compile using Microsoft’s compiler (the one included in Visual C++ Express Edition). Apparently quite a few from dwm’s mailing list have tried (and failed) to compile siaynoq using MSVC.

ARG has sent in a patch to get siaynoq to compile with MSVC, but, in the process, he also took out all the debugging crap I put in. I know they’re ugly, but I want them. Besides, in between applying Tuncer’s patch and all the previous work I’ve managed to squeeze in, the codebase has changed sufficiently enough that I doubt ARG’s patch will apply cleanly.

Better to just go about the cleanup with MSVC compatibility in mind.

P.S. Microsoft’s C compiler sucks rotten eggs. It doesn’t even support C90. GCC may not have complete C99 support, but it supports enough to make a coder’s life significantly easier.

ARG’s opinion is that Microsoft’s compiler is saner than GCC; I can’t comment on that, since I’m no compiler guru. But I will say this: for a supposedly sane compiler, MSVC is driving me completely nuts.

Looks like siaynoq is picking up some steam… Last night, Anselm Garbe, author of window managers wmii and dwm sent me an email asking about siaynoq.

Apparently, ARG had something like this in mind; had I waited maybe a couple of months more, I’d probably be working on dwm4windows or something.

ARG mentioned siaynoq had been mentioned in dwm’s mailing list, which was how he found out about it. Really cool, considering missing dwm is one of the reasons why I decided to write siaynoq in the first place.

Anyway, I check out the thread, and I see several people have started to try out compiling siaynoq and are running into problems. Stupid me neglected to point out that you have to have the latest snapshot of the w32api package for MinGW. (I swear, Real Soon Now™, I’ll start putting stuff like this down on paper.)

Also, so there’d actually be a common place to discuss stuff related to siaynoq, I created a mailing list for its users (the two or three people trying to get it working :D).

If you’d like to try compiling siaynoq (no, I’m still not posting any binaries), or request feature additions, or report bugsor just plain talk about it, add yourself to the mailing list. Of course, if you’d actually like to request new features and/or get bugs fixed, I’d prefer if you use the appropriate tracker. I tend to pay more attention to people who can follow basic instructions. :P