I haven’t published a lot to GitHub in some time, mostly for reasons caused by
me. I blocked most outbound connections, including port 22, which broke my
habit of using SSH to push commits. (I did not, at the time, think of using a
jump host.) I used the gh command (GitHub CLI) until the signing key
expired. In their how-did-this-happen? section, the CLI team shifted the
blame, further “explaining” that both they and their management were
incompetent. That team is no longer permitted to run code on my systems.
The other problem is so-called AI. GitHub wants me to have Copilot, and my
updated workflow makes use of Podman Desktop, which also wants me to have AI
in a non-dismissable ad. The inability to express non-consent on these
platforms is a constant drain on me.
“Vote with your wallet,” they say. “Leave a service if you don’t like it.”
But that doesn’t work if the market leader takes a wrong turn, and everyone
follows.
A new Quilt Draw release has been made! To use it, go to its repository
page. Possible issue: Please turn off Dark Reader for the site when using a
browser that supports prefers-color-scheme, because the site already has a dark
theme for that environment.
This is a major release that restructures the entire UI into tabs. The
“Block” tab retains the editor, block controls, and a mini-preview. A larger
preview, and controls for the quilt as a whole, are on the “Quilt” tab.
Finally, there is a “Print” tab with a print-oriented layout. It should show
the block at a reasonable size, along with the whole preview, on a single page.
Printing is meant to work reasonably well on either A4 or US Letter paper
sizes with “fit width” as the scaling option. Please file an issue if there
are any problems.
The tools for the block editor have been revamped to be graphical.
The “spin” and “flip” tools have been reworked, so that all operations are
available without a right-click function available. That is, instead of a
single “Flip” tool that chooses directions based entirely on the mouse button,
there are distinct “↔” (horizontal flip) and “↕” (vertical flip) tools. Each
one supports right-click to do the related operation, but it is no longer
required.
Minor features include:
The main/secondary color layout is vertical, to reduce confusion when using
left-handed mouse button layout (the primary color is now above, rather than
to the left of, the secondary color.)
The mouse cursor changes shape over the block editor, based on the currently
selected tool, as an additional hint.
New site/app icons have been created.
This release has been tagged in the repository as v2.0.0; going forward,
each release will be given a version number, according to the Semantic
Versioning standard.
Support for Firefox 52 ESR (Windows XP/Vista) and Pale Moon has been retained.
I would like to give a special salute to Mozilla for supporting operating
systems longer than strictly necessary.
The airline theme is designed to change only the leftmost background when
changing modes. Changing the entire line seemed rather distracting.
Due to the limitations of the 256-color XTerm palette, there exists a 256-color
theme, but it is not recommended. One should use :set termguicolors
to activate truecolor rendering in terminal windows for the best experience.
Alternatively, check if has('gui_running') to choose a different theme for
the terminal in the else branch of your vimrc file:
if has('gui_running')
colorscheme garden
else
colorscheme desert
endif
Once again, the repository is github.com/sapphirecat/garden-vim.
A previous update to Zora is that version 1.1.0 (renamed and) documented a
config option, the g:zora_use_gui_colors variable. Internally, the theme
loads only GUI colors if the GUI is running, the termguicolors option is
known+set… or if the variable is set to 1. Otherwise, it falls back to checking
t_Co to load the 256- or 16-color theme, depending on the terminal’s
capabilities.
I am also designing a new theme called Garden, a GUI-oriented theme in warm
earthy tones with a dark green background. This theme will have airline
support from the start. A serviceable 256-color variant will be provided,
but the background color will be gray instead of green.
A new Quilt Draw release has been made! To use it, go to its repository
page. Known issue: Please turn off Dark Reader for the site.
This is a small release to add support for Firefox 52 ESR (Windows XP and
Vista.) There are no new features.
I would like to give a special salute to Mozilla for supporting operating
systems longer than strictly necessary.
Why am I doing this?
In 2012, I bought a PC, and work bought a Late 2012 model iMac for my desk.
That iMac ended up coming home for the pandemic. They finally replaced it with
a System76 laptop (at my request) in 2022, because we have a large investment in
VirtualBox and x86, and sometimes they want to fly me to other offices. I
didn’t rate it as likely that the last Intel systems from Apple would get a full
decade of support, but that’s what I’m targeting for them.
As for my PC… I am writing this on it. It’s still running. It has had an SSD
upgrade, of course, because Windows Compatibility Telemetry was such a drag on
the hard disk, and it’s had an extra 4 GB of RAM put in (freed up by upgrading a
different system.)
It started life with Windows 7, just barely, then moved on through 8, 8.1, and
10. It might live to see the end of support for Windows 10… and then Microsoft
thinks it should become e-waste, just like the iMac.
But they’re both perfectly functional machines!
What if I wanted to use hardware for 15 years? 20 years? Could I make my own
code run on systems that old?
How does it work?
I discovered that Pickr had an ES5 build (well-supported in IE9+, and crucially,
Firefox 52), so I switched to that instead. That allowed for the initial
Windows XP/Vista support.
Unreleased but fully tested, I have updated the toolchain for Quilt Draw itself.
It used to directly use the Typescript 3.9 compiler. This has been replaced
with Webpack and the usual suspects. The new build system supports Typescript
5.1, so now I can catch up on years of new features, and push more of the future
deeper into the past.
This is a change from the versioning policy previously listed in the
CHANGELOG.md file. It previously stated that removing support for a PHP
version would be a major release. However, this is not how the wider PHP
ecosystem treats it, and it does not appear to be necessary under Semantic
Versioning. In particular, this package has no user-facing API, and
therefore, nothing is broken by this change.
Since release, I have found that the 1.0 branch's support of PHP 7.1 is overly
broad. By the time my package is useful (Slim 4.9.0), Slim itself required
PHP 7.3. Nevertheless, v1.0.2 keeps all support that v1.0.0 promised.
A new Quilt Draw release has been made! To use it, go to its repository
page. Known issue: Please turn off Dark Reader for the site.
This is a small release to fix the download buttons in Pale Moon 31, and
presumably, all previous versions. I will be testing the non-updated version
of Pale Moon included with Fossapup64 9.5, and making any additional updates
that prove to be necessary.
I have also learned that Quilt Draw does not work in Windows XP, due to my
choice of color picker library. No changes are expected in that situation, but
it would have been cool if it had worked.
Why am I doing this?
Accessibility is important.
I have used Pale Moon, and I understand it has a ton of shortcomings for the
self-styled "modern" Web. But that makes it doubly important: clearly, the
people who are using Pale Moon, need it.
(To look at the situation from another angle, this is the logical extension of
when I would write for "the version of the programming language that shipped in
Debian Stable." I do not wish to unreasonably stifle users.)
Can we truly say that we "value" something, if we have never made the slightest
sacrifice for it?
A new Quilt Draw release has been made! To use it, go to its repository
page. Known issue: Dark Reader completely destroys the UI elements.
Please turn off Dark Reader for the site.
What’s new?
A native dark theme has been added. If the browser reports that the page
should be rendered in dark mode, then an updated theme will be applied.
A “Flip” tool has been added. Left-click (primary click) will flip a square
horizontally, and right-click (secondary click) will flip it vertically. This
complements the “Spin” tool, because some multi-color designs are asymmetric
and can’t be spun into all configurations.
Finally, an option for guides to be added to the block editor is available, to
help visualize the individual square boundaries. If the guides are active on
the page, then the download will also include them.
What is quilt-draw?
Quilt Draw is a quarter-square triangle designing tool. It lets you pick a
set of colors, then modify a single quilt block using them. A preview of a
full quilt using the block is generated in real time. There are also options
for adding borders and sashing to the preview.
Finally, there are options to download both the block itself, and the quilt
preview.
Technical Support
There is none. This project is strictly for amusement.
Due to an oversight, a 2.1.0 release was also made today, although the
tag has been available in the repository for some time.
What is devproxy2?
devproxy2 is an HTTP/HTTPS proxy server that redirects configured
domains to an arbitrary destination. This allows a Web browser to use a
production URL to access a development VM/container.
In combination with an extension like Proxy Switcher and Manager,
choosing production or development is fast and simple, and has a
graphical status indication.
It is also possible to use NAT port forwarding (e.g. port 8080 on the
host to port 80 on the VM) to access the development code, without the
development code needing to know that the browser sees it on a
nonstandard port. That information is held only in the proxy and
forwarding configurations.
Release Details
Since the 2.1.0 release, the following changes have been made:
The security posture has been improved, per advice that was posted
on r/netsec.
The default ports for servers are applied correctly; this feature was
broken in 2.1.0 with the switch to go-toml 2.x.
The author is using Podman for testing instead of Docker.
