dpflug

This became a religious war at my last role.

I think maybe you’re confused. Java drives a significant percentage of Android apps. It absolutely can do modern UI. I can almost guarantee you’ve interacted with a Java program this year that you never considered.

Pascal is more niche, but it can do modern, too.

Java was doing web clients before the web could and still can. I don’t know much about Delphi’s web stuff, but I know they’ve targeted it for years now.

WASM and transpiling blur the lines, too. LVGL can provide beautiful interfaces on the web as well as platforms Electron could never target, and works with any language compatible with the C ABI.

I’m not saying these strategies are without their own warts, but there are other ways to deliver good experiences across platforms with a ~single codebase in a smaller payload. But mostly nobody bothers because they just reach for Electron. It’s this era’s “nobody ever got fired for picking Intel”.

We need more people working with and on alternatives, not just for efficiency but also for the health of the software ecosystem. Google’s browser hegemony is feasting. Complexity has become their moat, preventing a fork from being viable without significant resources. Mozilla is off in a corner consuming itself in desperation.

A US-based company holds a monopoly over the free web and a hell of a lot of our non-web software. So maybe let’s look for ways to avoid feeding the beast, yes? And we can get more efficient software in the process.

It does, and I’m sure everyone will welcome a solution that lets them open things back up for those users without the abusers crippling them. It’s a matter of finding one.

Implying Hell is frontend… yeah, actually, that tracks.

I mean, Object Pascal was doing the “write once, run anywhere” thing decades ago. Java, too. The former, especially, can make very small programs with big features.

This is a stopgap while we try to find a new way to stop the DDOS happening right now. It might even be adapted to do useful work, if need be.

Before that, it was RCS, released in '82.

AUR isn’t the Arch package manager. It’s a user-contributed package definition repo.

Gotcha. Less difficulty and more just not matching up with expectations.

No, but the software that implements it also implements ActivityPub, so you can get nomadic identity and also still interact with the rest of the Fediverse.

I just wish Hubzilla wasn’t a UX nightmare.

How is Mastodon harder? (Legit question, not snark)

Identity was already solved with Zot aka Nomad, which is part of the Fediverse and easier to implement than ATProto.

It’s mostly been ignored because it’s just not that important to people, apparently.

That thing is going to weigh as much as a cadaver

I like the FreeBSD option because Beastie, but also GuixSD for something truly different.

It’s all good. I just asked about your needs so I could give customised recommendations. :)

A popular option for folks that need exact spellings is Callendar’s Orthographic Shorthand. One of the /r/shorthand regulars digitized the instruction materials. It starts off as a simple alphabet replacement, then layers on more space and time savings. On the Fediverse, @[email protected] has been posting her take on it.

An easier and more compact option is Ponish. The manual is… eccentric, but the system is solid. It’s a modernized version of the 17th century Tachygraphy system by Thomas Shelton. Because no characters depend on size to differentiate, you can write as small as your hand will let you. There is a lower speed ceiling than “Orthic” unless you do some system development of your own. I’ve got ideas for improvement, but that gets into the weeds.

Two other options worth mentioning: Sweet’s Current & Schlam’s. They look and feel more like cursive. The former gets complex, but it’s uniquely beautiful. Both are available on /u/Filalethia’s comprehensive shorthand archive.

I’ll try to contain my jealousy over the ReMarkable. ;) I’ve wanted one for ages.

That’s the biggest problem with everyone doing the corporate socials’ enshittification cycles instead of POSSE and/or independent services. Cool communities just fracture and die.

I’ve tried to get people to see this for decades. Maybe it’ll finally enter the zeitgeist this go around.

I think so!

The difficulty depends on several things, but the easiest systems can be picked up enough to use in a few days to weeks.

I’ll try to put together an intro post this weekend. How would you rank these features?

• Speed
• Size on page
• Less study required
• Number of users
• Ability to type it
• Phonetic (texts written phonetically are about 20% shorter, but it is an extra thing to learn)

You know what, why not? I’ll give it a go. Let’s see what happens.

Shorthand is a method of writing faster and/or more compactly. Speeds over 200 words per minute are attested, or fitting an entire printed page on a sticky note.

It’s an extremely niche interest, so the main thing preventing a comparable community here is enough active users who are interested. I’ve wanted to do a series of posts teaching one of the systems, but I’ve not hand the chance.