La Tecnología

Yahoo Search = FAIL

I tried to search through my mailboxes to find all the mail by one sender, but Yahoo yields nothing.  Then I try to search throughout my thousands of email for anyone that has "hotmail".  These are the results:

I think, like, yeah, Yahoo is in trouble.

Safari Windows: Failure with Asian Text

Today, I tried to use Babel Fish (http://babelfish.yahoo.com) and translate from Japanese text from my friend.  I pasted the text "信頼できないかも" into the dialog in Safari 3.2.2, selected Japanese to English.  It looked pretty much like this:

Then I hit the translate text, and Apple's Safari converted the 2-byte Asian text to HTML encoding.  The result is garbage: 

I am not sure why Safari  would convert raw form data to HTML encoding, as this destroys the data.  It seems Safari is incapable to process Asian text (Unicode?) through at least form data.

I have no problem using either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3.5.2.  I was hoping Safari 4 would be a good alternative browser, as IE is well known for so many security vulnerabilities, and Firefox is lately quite unstable.

Firefox 3.5 w/ Flash 10 Freezes Computer

This is why I am hesitate to upgrade.  It something works, why fix it? 

Somehow, between Firefox 3.5.2 with Flash plug-in (version 10.0 r22) on Windows Vista, my system locks up.  It is functional, but I cannot select other windows, and it seems to happen when accessing a website with Flash content more often than not.  The facility to tab through Windows with ALT-TAB seems to function, and with this, I can get to Windows Task Manager and kill the firefox.exe process.

What's Wrong With Windows XP?

Besides Windows XP itself being bloat-ware when compared to Windows 2000 (such as 3D search puppy interrupting your simple search with paragraphs of explanations and has ability to do tricks), what is wrong with Windows XP?

I mean Windows XP worked, and its gel like interface was not bad, and can be spruced up with other skins via third party, and was reasonably secured (except for default options).  I really think Microsoft should update the core and give it for free, and then sell off option packs of features for those users that want the added bloat.

Also, why should Windows XP break things?  I mean I understand back in the day, you have a diseased DOS dependent systems like WIndows '95, Windows '98, and Windows Me, that was a hackery of magic to make things work, versus an operating system that was built ground up the right way (Note, I'm dancing around the significane of protected mode vs. real mode without trying to be technical).  But the leap to Windows Vista or Windows 7, there's no technological reason why it should be incompatible with prior systems.  Why does Microsoft need to ship a virtual Windows XP with Windows 7 to get corporate buy in?  I mean won't Windows XP running on a hosted bloated Windows 7 be like, um, slower than just staying with Windows XP?

I prefer Macs, but broken Asian fonts...

I have and always will like the Macintosh, because well, it's just sexier.  I enjoy using the system.  I am sensitive to the environment, and I always felt that Windows was an abysmal bore.  I felt energized using the Macintosh.  The later Windows XP has gotten better, and even more so with Windows Vista, with their new appealing interface.

However, half the problem with Windows desktops is the PCs themselves.  I have had countless problems with failed hardware, sometimes these days failed as per design, or just faulty components from cheap manufacturing overseas.  Fortunately, I always had a few computers, so I can swap in and out components and diagnose the faulty component.  However, being overseas, I cannot necessary do that, and my latest and great HP Pavilion's screen went bye bye.  My trusty faithful MacBook, though not as speedy, is fairly sturdy.  It's been dropped even, twice, but it still works.

However, this nonsense with Asian fonts that have missing glyphs, is just annoying.  Windows does not have glamorous fonts at default, but at least the font has all the glyphs, whether the Chinese characters are simplified Japanese Kanji or Chinese P.R.C. hanzi, or whether they are complex traditional characters used in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore, the glyphs are all there.  But with the Mac OS X, even after several years of its existence, there are missing glyphs.  You cannot imagine typing these characters, only to find the one odd ball out, is substituted for a different looking font, and then spending time searching for a font that incorporates all the glyphs.  This is just backwards.  I guess this issue might be rare if you only work in on of these countries...

Open Office vs. Mac OS X Asian Fonts

Well, I have only dabbled with it for about 15 minutes, and I am not impressed.  I opened up an RTF document (rich text file) and the fonts were not preserved, as they were in Word 2008.  Also, the problem with the Asian fonts not changing, it seems it is a problem with the fonts themselves.  If I try to use the character, for instance, of "learning" (pronounced xue in Chinese, hak in Korean) — 學 — I will not be able to use the font Kai.  I am guessing Mac OS X font of Kai does not have that glyph.

Suffice the say, even though I am not an admirer of Windows in particular, I never had missing glyphs from fonts that use Chinese characters.  This just seems sloppy for Mac OS X.

Oh, yeah, back to Open Office.  My initial impression is that it seems a little sluggish, not as intuitive or robust as Word 2008. Still, it is very functional for basic word processing needs, which is impressive, especially given that it is free.

My final conclusion professionally, if there is opportunity to buy robust fonts on Mac OS X, then issues with missing glyphs should be resolved, otherwise, ugh, I would have to recommend, Windows. Ouch.  For word processing, basic needs, OpenOffice is fine, more robust features, Office 2008 is good.

 

MS Word 2008 vs. Mac OS X Asian Fonts

I am in the process of writing this essay, and I often times I have need to use  some text in Korean Hanguel (한글) and Chinese Characters (漢字).  The problem I am running into is that I unable to select the fonts I want.  I select a font like Kai or a font like 华文楷体, but some characters remain in a different font and seem fixated. （See Image below with missing glyphs highlighted in yellow)

In doing some initial research, I suspect the problem can be partially with Microsoft Mac team, in handling of fonts, formatting as well as documenting the behavior, and a problem with either the Mac's font system and/or the fonts themselves.  It is the ultimate collision of bugs or behaviors on many fronts, but in the end, the result is a partially functional Office on Mac OS X. 

Professionally, if there is a need to do word processing with Asian text, I would be hesitant to recommend MS Word 2008 and Mac OS X as the solution, because there are just too many issues to make the solution viable.

One issue is that Apple still hasn't offered Chinese character support for Korean input systems, and it seems that this extremely annoying auto-switch the input method feature that can't figure out which language one is using; after all Chinese characters can be used in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean*, so a cursor at a Chinese character could be any of these languages.

* Usage of Chinese characters, called Hanja (한자), is often disdained by those of Korean ultra-nationalist ideology because there is a feeling that using Chinese characters represents cultural subjugation toward Chinese culture, despite the fact that literature, history, writing before WWII, famous works, Confucian and Seon Buddhist and other ideologies, etc. made heavy usage of Chinese characters, and that the Korean language (as still spoken in South Korea and the historical Joseon and earlier kingdoms) has been heavily influenced by Chinese Characters over the centuries, regardless if they use the Chinese characters or not.

XForms Killed XHTML2

This article I read (Tim Berners-Lee talks about W3C reform and reinventing HTML by Ryan Paul titled) really illustrates the utter failure of XForms, and shows how W3C has lost their prestige because of it.  It looks like essentially the XForms standard killed XHTML2.

I have been a critic of W3C in feeling that they would go crazy on standards, but failed to connect with implementation.  I often commented, why don't they actually implement the standards they design, or in other words, practice what they preach.  My Linux-guru buddy always remarked, "what do you expect from standards comittees".

Ryan commented that "XForms failed as a standard because it wasn't developed with implementation in mind", which I wholeheartedly agree.  Ryan details further: "As a developer with first-hand XForms experience, I have to say that the word 'broken' best characterizes the standard. Although the concept looks great on paper, it just doesn't work for real-world projects" and later adds "The standard itself also has considerable failings, and some server-side XForms implementors have actually deviated from the standard and invented new elements to work around the holes".  I think that assessment is consistent with a lot of criticism about XForms and about theory vs. reality concept in general.

JavaScript Showcase at Google

Google convinced their JavaScript Engine is the fastest have put together this demonstration website, which I must say is just way cool.

• http://www.chromeexperiments.com

Web Stanards Gone Wild: HTML5 vs. XHTML2

This is old news by now and perhaps many know about the web standards by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) that are in use today:

• HTML 3.2 - tables, images, and headings, and presentation tags (font, bold, italic, etc.)
• HTML 4.0 - remove presentation tags and add cascading style sheets (CSS).
• XHTML 1.0 - HTML as a well-formed XML standard (cleaned up HTML)
• CSS - style sheets to easily change presentation on any tag in HTML4 and XML standards (including XHTML).

After some time, there came two current proposals:

• XHTML 2.0
  • breaks prior web standards (not backwards compatible)
  • adds modularity (consistent way to expand the web technologies)
  • remains pure to the scope in that HTML only represents document structure (expansion is handle through modules).
  • modules handle images, forms (XForms), events (XEvents), and other XML standards can be used for animations (SVG), multimedia (SMIL), Math expressions (MathML), etc.
• HTML 5.0 from WHATWG
  • oriented to become a web application platform solution
  • more pragmatic in being backwards compatible to earlier web standards
  • expands role of HTML beyond document structure (e.g. deprecated font tags reintroduced)
  • expansion of scope (feature creep) to add things like drawing, animations, sound, video, etc.

In my personal view, I have apprehension to both directions.  Both approaches amount to (1) documentation representation (W3C's XHTML2) vs. (2) an application platform (WHATWG's HTML5).  An application platform will thrust fledgling standards at well supported commercial solutions of Adobe's Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight, and Sun Microsystem's JavaFX, which is unnecessary. 

The focus should be around content distribution, not competing with giants through comittee, and not redefining how the web works without buy-in from the implementors.

Articles:

• XHTML 2 vs. HTML 5 - excellent dissection of the two standards with the differences and added features in both technologies.
• HTML 5 Reference by W3C Schools.
• HTML 5 and XHTML 2.0? by @HFCC Web Club
• HTML 5 The Future For the Web on Scriptol
• XHTML is the Most Important XML Vocabulary article on xml.com