Confusion about command lines

[selden]

The only population numbers that are available are the number of downloads from SourceForge. Many, perhaps most, Linux versions of Celestia are included with Linux or are downloaded from Linux Web sites, so the SourceForge numbers for Linux are too small.

Here are the numbers for v1.4.1:

Code: Select all

Windows:   517947
MacOS:      50598
Linux:      16886
Source:     12064


[Malenfant]

Two things:

First, this "OS stereotyping" is pointless. Though it's interesting that the people who complain most loudly about any other OS choice are the linux users. It's like they have some kind of superiority complex just because they know how to use a more complex operating system. That sort of confrontational attitude is entirely pointless and totally unconstructive, however. Fact is, people use the systems that they prefer to use. Windows is in many ways better than MacOS and Linux - but then MacOS and Linux are better in many other ways than Windows. It all balances out in the end really. But the fact is, Windows is a more popular and commonly used system than any of the alternatives, and a lot of people who use it aren't too technically minded and wouldn't understand PERL or how to compile programs or anything else like that. Whether you think that Windows should be so popular or common or that it deserves to be so, or that its users are 'ignorant' is completely irrelevant - that's the situation, either accept it and work around it, or shut up and let other people do the educating.

That leads me onto my second point, which I've said time and time again, but evidently it's not sinking in, so I'll say it again more clearly: IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE PATIENCE TO EXPLAIN THINGS TO PEOPLE THEN DON'T BOTHER TRYING. Fridger is IMO frankly terrible at explaining concepts and techniques to people, because he always assumes that they're as technically or scientifically savvy as he is when they're not (it's a bad sign when a teacher says "obviously..." when it's not obvious, or "of course..." without any explanation). And yelling at people because they "just don't get it" is neither helpful nor constructive (particularly when you're being fairly obtuse and unclear in your explanation in the first place). Maybe some people are particularly dense in some ways, but yelling at them and calling them stupid or illiterate isn't going to help them understand.

There are other people with more patience and educational skill here that can explain things to those who are having trouble understanding what you're saying. If you're not getting through, then just back off and let those people do it.

[t00fri]

OK,

I will NOT bother again discussing these issues with Malenfant!

I have lots of patience, BUT simply NOT enough time to mess around with these preliminaries for ever. Hence I get upset if I write step-by-step instructions (see gzip example above) that are NOT read carefully, such that I get pages of stuff to answer instead.

Since I only have some spare time on weekends, today and tomorrow

-- there is a tutorial to finish ASAP such that CM can finally open
-- there is galaxy code and templates to wrap up and to commit to CVS TONIGHT
-- there is Chris' star code to debug
-- there are lots of HTML tests in the make with Runar.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Therefore, as concerns myself, this discussion is closed NOW.

If CM opens, there will be a tutorial along with the nmtools. Questions can be asked there on a sensible basis. That's all I am willing to provide after spending months of coding & algorithmic work to complete the nmtools distribution for 4 platforms.

I hope this was clear enough
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Bye Fridger

@Selden:

I guess you are aware that 90% of the spreading of Celestia for Linux happens via the various Linux distributions, NOT via individual SF downloads.

[selden]

@Selden:

I guess you are aware that 90% of the spreading of Celestia for Linux happens via the various Linux distributions, NOT via individual SF downloads.

Yes.

Many, perhaps most, Linux versions of Celestia are included with Linux or are downloaded from Linux Web sites, so the SourceForge numbers for Linux are too small.

[edit]
SourceForge's count for Windows and MacOS is low, too, although perhaps not as much as for Linux.

A quick web search reveals
over 4K downloads from SoftPedia for each of Windows and MacOS,
over 36K downloads from VersionTracker for MacOS but only 343 for Windows.

I'm sure there are many other sites that could be included in the count.
[/edit]

[Malenfant]

I will NOT bother again discussing these issues with Malenfant!

As usual, you take criticism of your style personally.

I have lots of patience, BUT simply NOT enough time to mess around with these preliminaries for ever.

You don't have lots of patience at all, Fridger. If you did, this discussion wouldn't have come to this, and you wouldn't have been yelling at daniel for not understanding you. If you don't have the time to waste on this sort of thing then go do something more constructive and let other people "waste their time" on it. It's really not that hard to comprehend.

If you don't want to "waste your time" explaining things to people over and over again, then just explain it once and leave it! If people don't understand what you say then it's for one of two reasons - either (1) you weren't clear enough for people to understand , or (2) the reader isn't technically savvy enough to understand you. One is a problem with your explanation, the other is a problem with the reader's interpretation.

I've observed over the years here that your ability to explain things to non-experts is generally appalling, Fridger. You tend to explain things in a complicated way, you use obtuse jargon often, you assume the reader knows things that they don't, and you lack the basic patience to deal with people who either don't understand what you say or who require more explanation. That to me says that despite all your technical and scientific expertise, you are singularly unqualified to actually educate people, and so you should stand back and leave that for other people who are better qualified and able to do that. That way you don't waste your time, you don't get frustrated, and you don't annoy or drive away other people because of that frustration.

[Cham]

Okay guys, take a beer !

[selden]

Guys,

Please stop discussing your personal differences in public.

Take it to PMs or e'mail.

If it doesn't stop, I'll have to lock the thread.

[t00fri]

I will NOT bother again discussing these issues with Malenfant!

As usual, you take criticism of your style personally.

Not at all, but I know from lots of experience, where it's going to end...

Let me challenge you: try to explain something sufficiently non-trivial to Daniel. I bet you will fail as well .

[hank]

But what I'm saying here is: why use a lot of time, both for you gurus and for us, poor Windows slaves, to explain/understand a lot of complicated (for me/us) ways to obtain a result, when there is a very simple and ready one that gives the same result for all "click"-fans ?

Andrea, I think you may have missed this in Fridger's earlier post:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The main reason, why I went through the gzip example in detail, was to illustrate with this simple, concrete example, how STDIN/STDOUT redirection and pipes work!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Because that is what is REALLY needed later. And I always WANT people to UNDERSTAND what they are doing...

Fridger has gone to a lot of trouble to make his nmtools available on Windows. But it seems that in order to use it, you'll need to understand things like i/o redirection and pipes, which are not familiar to most Windows users. Fridger was using the gzip example to try to illustrate some things you'll need to know in order to use his nmtools when they're released.

- Hank

[ajtribick]

Hey, let's just agree that some people are a lot better at explaining concepts at an introductory level than others, some people are a lot better at explaining the details.

That's a fact of life, folks. Some of my best tutors at university would be absolutely hopeless teaching at school level.

So be it. Let's not beat people up about not being the (semi?)mythical fantastic-at-all-levels wonderteacher.

[selden]

I'm about to try splitting this thread, although it's absurdly long. Much of it will be going into Purgatory.

Discussions of people's personal failings have no business being here. Discuss the software and the functionality, not each other.

[t00fri]

I'm about to try splitting this thread, although it's absurdly long. Much of it will be going into Purgatory.

Discussions of people's personal failings have no business being here. Discuss the software and the functionality, not each other.

Selden,

I was thinking of something similar.

It's a pity that the flow of the main Developer Talk theme of this thread has been disrupted by all this fuzz. The whole pre-exercise stuff for using the nmtools should go to some new thread (not purgatory though! ) . I think it all started with Daniel's (usual) kind of post, followed a bit later by ANDREA's. All that stuff should go into some thread e.g. in the developer board, called e.g "Pre-exercises for the use of nmtools"

Bye Fridger

[ANDREA]

But what I'm saying here is: why use a lot of time, both for you gurus and for us, poor Windows slaves, to explain/understand a lot of complicated (for me/us) ways to obtain a result, when there is a very simple and ready one that gives the same result for all "click"-fans ?

Andrea, I think you may have missed this in Fridger's earlier post:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The main reason, why I went through the gzip example in detail, was to illustrate with this simple, concrete example, how STDIN/STDOUT redirection and pipes work!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Because that is what is REALLY needed later. And I always WANT people to UNDERSTAND what they are doing...

Fridger has gone to a lot of trouble to make his nmtools available on Windows. But it seems that in order to use it, you'll need to understand things like i/o redirection and pipes, which are not familiar to most Windows users. Fridger was using the gzip example to try to illustrate some things you'll need to know in order to use his nmtools when they're released. - Hank

I understand this, Hank, and this is the reason why I'll wait the nmtools release before posting again here.
I'm a patient old man, so I can wait, if needed, and try again to understand why we need to use such STDIN/STDOUT redirection and pipes .
But meanwhile, why someone cannot try to make us understand at least what we are speaking of?
Thank you Hank.
Bye

Andrea

[Malenfant]

I understand this, Hank, and this is the reason why I'll wait the nmtools release before posting again here.
I'm a patient old man, so I can wait, if needed, and try again to understand why we need to use such STDIN/STDOUT redirection and pipes .
But meanwhile, why someone cannot try to make us understand at least what we are speaking of?
Thank you Hank.
Bye

Andrea

Well this is what we're talking about isn't it?

Code: Select all

gzip -dc <srtm_ramp2.world.86400x43200.bin.gz | resc2pow2 86400 1 | nmstiles 5 6378.14 65536 2.5

This is what I mean about Fridger over-complicating things - he's listed three separate programs here and not really explained what they do or how to use them. I'm not about to download a 1.2GB file to test this, but I think this is how it's working:

the gzip -dc <srtm_ramp2.world.86400x43200.bin.gz part is the bit where you actually unzip the file. I don't think you need to do anything special with this - presumably it contains just one file, so just unzip it into a folder and you're done.

Then what he's doing is running a second program on this file - resc2pow2 - which requires two arguments ("86400" and "1").

Then he's running a third program - nmstiles - on the output of this program which requires these arguments: "5 6378.14 65536 2.5"

I think you can do this in windows without resorting to pipes or STDIN/OUT at all - you could probably enter it as a batch (*.bat) file (remember the old autoexec.bat file? That was a batch file, it just ran lots of programs in sequence). I'm assuming that the second and third programs can have filename arguments which you'd have to enter explicitly into the batch file, but that should work:

Code: Select all

gzip srtm_ramp2.world.86400x43200.bin.gz
resc2pow2 inputfile outputfile 86400 1
nmstiles inputfile outputfile 5 6378.14 65536 2.5


So you'd save the above code as a file (call it "process.bat") and then from the command prompt you could type "process" and it'd go through each step, which should work...

That's assuming that my assumptions about how these programs work is correct anyway

[ajtribick]

I have a copy of VB.Net and I'd guess it shouldn't be too difficult to write a simple front-end which hides all the scary command line stuff behind a nice GUI.

You'd still have to install the respective programs (gzip, resc2pow2, nmstiles, and the .Net framework), but it would probably make it a bit more accessible.

[t00fri]

Well this is what we're talking about isn't it?

Code: Select all

gzip -dc <srtm_ramp2.world.86400x43200.bin.gz | resc2pow2 86400 1 | nmstiles 5 6378.14 65536 2.5

This is what I mean about Fridger over-complicating things - he's listed three separate programs here and not really explained what they do or how to use them. I'm not about to download a 1.2GB file to test this, but I think this is how it's working:

Malenfant,

PLEASE(!), with this line, I only responded to ANDREA's special demand above. Note, the nmtools are NOT YET available.

ANDREA just wanted to practice, while waiting for the tutorial to appear in CM! Any GENERAL explanatory discussion about how and why this command line arises will NOT take place here!!!

That line was just to make people anticipate what the final run command will eventually look like. The actual pipe and STDIN/STDOUT redirection involved here, I explained in the simplest possible step-by-step case of gzip.exe ONLY.

Why are you trying to always twist things into a direction that tries to cast an unfavorable light on what I do??

[hank]

Fridger has gone to a lot of trouble to make his nmtools available on Windows. But it seems that in order to use it, you'll need to understand things like i/o redirection and pipes, which are not familiar to most Windows users. Fridger was using the gzip example to try to illustrate some things you'll need to know in order to use his nmtools when they're released. - Hank

I understand this, Hank, and this is the reason why I'll wait the nmtools release before posting again here.
I'm a patient old man, so I can wait, if needed, and try again to understand why we need to use such STDIN/STDOUT redirection and pipes .
But meanwhile, why someone cannot try to make us understand at least what we are speaking of?

Briefly, these ideas come from Unix. Unix commands are commonly written so that they read a stream of input bytes and write a stream of output bytes. By default they read from and write to the user's terminal. But Unix allows the user to indicate (with '<' and '>') that the input and/or output of a command should come from and/or go to a disk file instead of the terminal. This is called input/output redirection. Unix also allows the user to indicate (with '|') that the output of one command should be connected to the input of the next command. This is called a pipeline. An arbitrary sequence of commands can be connected together in a pipeline to produce a final result in a single step. The intermediate results are simply passed from one command to the next. In the context of image processing, this is a convenient way to combine a series of processing steps needed to produce a desired result.

- Hank

[Malenfant]

ANDREA just wanted to practice, while waiting for the tutorial to appear in CM! Any GENERAL explanatory discussion about how and why this command line arises will NOT take place here!!!

Er, I'll explain whatever the heck I like here, actually, and you have no right whatsoever to tell anyone what they can or can't say or what will or will not be discussed. So back off.

And just once I wish you'd refrain from jumping down peoples throats when you misinterpret what they say (as you often do) - I was merely using that line as a general illustration to show how the pipes and in/out stuff worked, and how it could be simulated by a batch script in Windows. That's all. It wasn't intended to be a definitive 'windows conversion' of that line.

Why are you trying to always twist things into a direction that tries to cast an unfavorable light on what I do??

I haven't even remotely done that, all I did was explain to Andrea how that line could work as a batch file! Jeez, Fridger, just back the hell off and stop being so damn paranoid!

[t00fri]

Why are you trying to always twist things into a direction that tries to cast an unfavorable light on what I do??

I haven't even remotely done that, all I did was explain to Andrea how that line could work as a batch file! Jeez, Fridger, just back the hell off and stop being so damn paranoid!

This is what you wrote under that code line.

This is what I mean about Fridger over-complicating things - he's listed three separate programs here and not really explained what they do or how to use them. I'm not about to download a 1.2GB file to test this, ...

[selden]

Fridger and Malenfant,

You are both violating my most recent recommendation:

do not discuss other people's failings.

I'm locking this thread.