2013-11-01 UTC
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# 10:04 KevinMarks nothing like installing ghost on heroku to see how much cruft it has accumulated already
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# 17:58 aaronpk my london trip was cancelled. now I have to figure out how to properly update the flight post on my site to reflect that.
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# 18:34 tantek my old BB is finally dying (keyboard/buttons appear to be flakey/nonfunctional), and it's been a struggle to get the data off of it
# 18:35 tantek essentially you have to use BB software to "sync" the BB info onto *specialized* applications on your Mac (not into files)
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# 18:35 Loqi benwerd: tantek left you a message on 10/30 at 3:31pm: - and the other questions? when did you start publishing rel="syndication" markup? and does idno look for (consume) rel-syndication links when you're posting a reply?
# 18:36 tantek I'm going to assume you got it working first - unless you remember specifics
# 18:37 tantek oh interesting. and then maybe I showed you the markup on mine and then you added it? that sounds vaguely familiar
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# 18:37 tantek continuing on that BB sync thread: contacts -> Apple Address Book, notes -> Apple Mail Notes (forcing you to add an account there if you didn't already set it up), photos,videos -> iPhoto. Do you see the problem here?
# 18:38 tantek we need a term for the local-machine equivalent of silos - there has to be a pre-existing term for this but I can't think of it.
# 18:38 tantek silo-apps: apps which store your data in some proprietary/hidden/non-obvious place in the system (i.e. not easily discoverable in the file system)
# 18:39 tantek such apps are obviously acting as "gatekeepers" for your data
# 18:39 tantek since you can't find the actual file(s) that represent your data items in your desktop filesystem and "double-click" them to open them
# 18:40 tantek KevinMarks - is there a term for such silo-apps that violate the desktop file/document metaphor?
# 18:40 tantek I feel like this is part of the #ownyourdata problem
# 18:41 tantek (and mobile apps are even worse - ALL the data in those is hidden in the apps - since mobile has "lost" the desktop metaphor)
# 18:42 tantek this is something we lost as users when OS/device manufacturers (e.g. Apple, MS) transitioned from "desktop" systems to "mobile" systems. by removing the desktop metaphor, they've forced us to keep our data in silo-apps (once created, the data is stuck there)
# 18:42 tantek whereas on a desktop, we could easily drag & drop and move our data anywhere
# 18:42 tantek this seems like a big WTF. how did as users give up on this?
# 18:44 benwerd I'd say that there's a really important lesson here about what users value vs what we value as people who care deeply about software
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# 18:45 benwerd People are actively avoiding 8 because of the removal of that desktop metaphor, even if they're not quite sure why. It turns out people *do* want that more open model
# 18:45 tantek benwerd - the desktop metaphor was supposed to about usability - it was what users valued
# 18:45 benwerd (I submit "lockboxes" if there's no term out there)
# 18:46 tantek maybe all the people that didn't care about the removal of desktop have already switched to iOS etc.?
# 18:46 tantek benwerd - lockbox is not really accurate - you don't use a key everytime you open a mobile app to look at the data do you?
# 18:47 tantek app-silo felt right because just like social network silo - it's convenient, but hard to move the data
# 18:47 benwerd point taken though - it is just another kind of silo
# 18:47 tantek perhaps a natural consequence of an app-centric ecosystem
# 18:48 benwerd re: desktop metaphor, it probably depends on context. Where desktops are used - work - there is still a need for that freedom. On the move, maybe it's less relevant to the use case?
# 18:48 tantek all functionality is thru apps. home to apps. install apps. launch apps.
# 18:50 tantek we know we've lost something, because as a reaction to this app-siloization of our data, there's clumsy workarounds like "share" where you push some of that data through a straw to some other destination
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# 18:50 benwerd Minesweeper - Minesweeper!! - has to be run in a separate full-screen window out of context with the rest of everything else
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# 18:50 tantek I don't want to have to "share" or "move" the data. I just want to point a different app at it to operate on it live. not on a static export.
# 18:51 benwerd We run into this all the time at work, actually. People, eg, want to record audio with one app and then send it with ours. And on iOS, you CAN'T.
# 18:51 tantek how is minesweeper not just minesweeper.js now?
# 18:51 benwerd It's why I like Android. You can just pass data from one app to the other. Still not perfect, but much, much better.
# 18:51 tantek benwerd - no - that's the aforementioned straw
# 18:51 tantek and it's a *copy* of the data that gets passed
# 18:51 tantek it's not shared/common access to the same *data*
# 18:52 benwerd Right, agreed - but even that, which I agree is a clumsy workaround, is better (imo) than the iOS situation
# 18:52 benwerd which is "let's make a deal to make our two apps work together in any way"
# 18:53 tantek benwerd - this tells me that there's an opportunity for some-one to develop a *content*-centric mobile UI/experience that returns control of data to the user
# 18:53 benwerd or better yet, "here is where this kind of data is stored for everyone"
# 18:54 tantek was exactly this kind of user-centric multi-app model (multi-apps in the same document for different parts of it)
# 18:54 tantek problems were: 1. it was too hard to develop for (harder than a normal single document app), and 2. incentive models were not figured out for app developers
# 18:55 tantek turns out if you fix 1 (as the web did), 2 figures itself out in a distributed fashion
# 18:56 tantek another reason I like "app-silo" (do we need the hyphen? for emphasis?) is we can use it in conversations like, "that's not an app, that's an app-silo"
# 18:56 tantek and obviously there's "synergy" (sorry) between app-silos and web-silos
# 18:57 tantek exception to the app-siloization - there's one "Camera roll" of your photos on iOS
# 18:57 tantek why is there no "Text roll" where I can keep my text documents?
# 18:58 barnabywalters there are some 3rd party attempts to create inter-app audio — cowpaths which apple is starting to pave in iOS 7
# 18:58 tantek there's a Camera *app*, and there's the Photos *content browser*
# 18:59 benwerd barnabywalters: there are some interesting attempts to do better at this wrt documents embedded in emails, too
# 18:59 benwerd but emails are not shared spaces - they're documents in themselves
# 18:59 tantek the Photos "app" is basically just a directory of your Album "folders" which contain your photo "documents"
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# 19:00 tantek email should be nothing more than an ephemeral delivery envelope for the stuff inside - which should go somewhere else of its own.
# 19:01 aaronpk I like that approach a lot because the app becomes an input interface to my dropbox account, which is really just a filesystem
# 19:02 barnabywalters aaronpk: kinda like unhosted — apps don’t have to worry about storing documents, only editing
# 19:02 tantek aaronpk, sorta. Dropbox itself is partway between a silo and a hosting provider.
# 19:02 benwerd I think we all agree. So, uh, do we need to go build ourselves an indie operating system?
# 19:02 tantek aaronpk - I'd believe that if such mobile apps could *trivially* move your documents between Dropbox and S3 for example.
# 19:03 aaronpk dropbox is kind of a silo, but I prefer to think of it as a sync tool
# 19:03 tantek well if we succeed with indie web, then all we need to do is combine with existing work on a web-based operating system
# 19:04 benwerd I do like the idea of an abstraction layer app as an interim shim, where Dropbox could be one provider, S3 another, etc.
# 19:04 aaronpk the nice thing about dropbox is it's just a filesystem, so I could replace it with any sync tool in the future
# 19:04 tantek and they'd show up on your desktop as icons, and you could double-click them, and open them and drag stuff back and forth
# 19:05 tantek aaronpk - right. transparency about *where* the data goes is the first step
# 19:05 benwerd (I use Transmit on my desktop, which does exactly this)
# 19:05 tantek do those mobile apps put them in a "well known" folder in your Dropbox?
# 19:05 tantek and then, can you do anything with those files yourself?
# 19:05 aaronpk yeah you choose which folder to upload things from the app
# 19:05 tantek what do they look like when you open them in a text editor?
# 19:05 aaronpk so I have a "Recordings" folder full of mp3 files from Dropvox
# 19:05 aaronpk and a "Notes" folder full of .txt files from the Drafts app
# 19:06 barnabywalters yeah, I have a “writing” folder on dropbox which I edit from my laptop or iPad — contains plain text files
# 19:06 aaronpk and I also have Notational Velocity on my laptop so I get the same list of .txt files on my computer
# 19:07 barnabywalters dropbox apps can ask for access to your whole dropbox, or they can make their own folder
# 19:07 aaronpk it's seamless syncing of plaintext notes between my phone and computer, works quite well
# 19:08 tantek aaronpk I've been exactly looking for this: "seamless syncing of plaintext notes between my [PDA] and computer"
# 19:09 aaronpk evernote tries to do it too, but you're locked into their silo and weird doc formats
# 19:09 tantek aaronpk - can the Drafts app access and use your "Notes" as local store?
# 19:09 tantek right! Evernote smelled very evil when I looked into how it worked.
# 19:10 benwerd I seriously dislike Dropbox as a provider baked into iOS apps though. Really need to be able to select my own provider and not depend on that biz dev link.
# 19:11 tantek benwerd - agreed. why does it need to go to *the cloud* to sync between my two devices which are the same wifi network?!?
# 19:11 tantek aaronpk - how is sending everything to the internet and then pulling it all back down from the internet a *baby* step?!?
# 19:12 aaronpk no, I think local device discovery is still not very well solved
# 19:12 tantek aaronpk - it was in the AppleTalk network days :(
# 19:12 aaronpk it's taken until this year before I've had a good experience setting up any devices on my network
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# 19:12 tantek this is ironically an example of where an open standard (TCP/IP) was a *huge* regression from what was closed (in the 1980s at that!)
# 19:12 aaronpk I mean, I don't have trouble looking at my DHCP server and finding a device's IP addres, but that's not exactly a consumer friendly process
# 19:13 tantek and TCP/IP based "stack" has never caught up to AppleTalk level of automatic discovery, peer to peer etc.
# 19:13 aaronpk but now devices like the philips hue can hop on your local network and your phone can talk directly to it like magic
# 19:13 aaronpk it's special because philips made a distinct effort to create a good experience
# 19:14 aaronpk tantek: just tested on my phone btw. the app I meant is called Notesy, and yes it has a local cache of the files, you can create and edit files offline and they sync when you open the app with network access.
# 19:15 tantek ok so here's my "dumb" MacOS question. In my "home" directory there's Movies, Music, Pictures, so where's the Notes folder?
# 19:16 tantek aaronpk - yeah, saw Documents, but apps don't seem to use it
# 19:16 tantek iTunes will sync Photos to/from the Photos folder, but will not sync Notes to the Documents folder
# 19:16 hober tantek: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/
# 19:18 hober tantek: i don't remember where notes lived before mavericks
# 19:20 tantek discovers the [ ] Sync notes option buried under "Info" in iTunes when you select an iOS device in the list on the left
# 19:21 XgF benwerd: Dropbox being baked into apps seems to be a weird iOS thing
# 19:21 tantek the "obvious" thing to do with text notes is .txt files in a folder
# 19:22 XgF Probably related to the fact that iOS doesn't let you talk to any other app ever
# 19:22 tantek why do devs do *extra* work to crap this stuff up with weird formats?
# 19:22 XgF So, basically, its' what you get for picking a locked down platform :p
# 19:22 benwerd well, and to be clear: the primary store really is iCloud. The files on your desktop are basically a cache.
# 19:24 XgF tantek: Anyway, neighbour discovery on TCP/IP has been a solved problem for, what, a decade? Only issue is that there are two camps: the camp Apple, Linux, and the sane people are in (multicast DNS) and the camp Microsoft and friends are in (UPNP, which uses crazy HTTP over *UDP* shit)
# 19:24 tantek really curious now where these iTunes sync'd "Notes" will go...
# 19:24 benwerd oh, fascinating. I just checked and it claims to be syncing notes with my *Google* account
# 19:26 benwerd that is super weird. It created a folder in Gmail
# 19:26 tantek I don't use mail.app either. but I had to create a local mail.app account just to launch it to the point where it could get notes sync'd from my old BlackBerry
# 19:26 benwerd And it's saving notes as messages over IMAP, I guess
# 19:26 tantek then I had to drag those files to the file system from mail.app's notes view *one at a time*
# 19:27 tantek and then delete the superfluous ".eml" suffix on all of them
# 19:27 benwerd aaronpk: that is actually pretty much how I'm feeling today
# 19:27 tantek and then delete the superfluous RFC822 header that mail.app decided to put on my notes
# 19:27 tantek seriously, developers, why you gotta go make dealing with plain txt so hard?
# 19:27 XgF Mail.app does (did?) stash notes in IMAP
# 19:28 XgF Probably because Mail.app is old and back then IMAP was the only place anybody synced anything
# 19:29 tantek so basically I may actually finally get around to registering a free DropBox account *just* to use it with Notesy
# 19:29 tantek "Your notes are seamlessly synced over-the-air, to and from your Dropbox as plain text files."
# 19:29 tantek seriously Apple, why is that so hard for you to do?
# 19:30 tantek or rather this: "Your notes are seamlessly synced over-the-air, to and from your Documents folder as plain text files"
# 19:30 tantek that's what I want - and it doesn't seem that much to ask
# 19:31 aaronpk I have a paid account, but it still adds 1GB to my limit
# 19:32 aaronpk yeah, I usually disable dropbox sync on my laptop when i'm on limited networks
# 19:32 aaronpk but on iOS it doesn't sync in the background beacuse it can't really
# 19:33 tantek aaronpk - "usually disable dropbox sync" - sounds like a manual pain
# 19:33 XgF And on Android I think it does lazy syncs (i.e. when you open the UI)
# 19:33 aaronpk and it usually doesn't cause that much of a problem anyway
# 19:33 tantek seriously - why isn't this peer to peer between our devices
# 19:34 tantek aaronpk - you forget that iPods used to show up on your desktop as a volume
# 19:34 XgF Because my phone and tablet are rarely on the same network? :)
# 19:34 tantek QS has more of an excuse - new kinds of devices
# 19:34 tantek XgF - what do you mean? my "phone" and laptop are almost always on the same network?
# 19:35 XgF tantek: My phone is normally on my mobile network, not so often on wifi
# 19:35 aaronpk at the office we have weird wifi, and when i'm out and about they're rarely ever on the same network
# 19:35 aaronpk except when I'm using my phone's internet connection from my laptop
# 19:35 tantek aaronpk - when I'm out an about my iPod and laptop are almost always on the same network
# 19:36 tantek why is it easier to sync PDF documents (aka "Books") than plain .txt files?
# 19:36 aaronpk i think that's a pretty unique setup, cause you use the mifi a lot
# 19:36 XgF Also, you can't sell subscriptions to peer to peer syncing
# 19:36 tantek aaronpk - no, when I'm home, they're on the same network. at work, same network. at a cafe with wifi, same network.
# 19:37 tantek and only in between are they on the same network via mifi
# 19:37 aaronpk ah but you are talking about an ipod and laptop, I think a more common combination is a phone and a laptop
# 19:37 tantek XgF - ok so basically getting good peer to peer syncing working has to be a pure open source play - got it.
# 19:37 aaronpk where the phone has its own internet connection, so not as much need to get on wifi all the time
# 19:37 tantek aaronpk I don't know what you mean by "phone". I use my iPod as a "phone"
# 19:38 aaronpk also LTE is often faster than wifi when i'm traveling, so I don't usually connect my iphone to wifi
# 19:38 tantek do you mean a hardware device tied with an expensive contract to a single poor-customer-service domestic only network provider?
# 19:38 tantek I define "phone" by what I use it for, not by how crappy the backend agreement is.
# 19:39 XgF gets free roaming on the other side of the globe from his operator (and my phone is unlinked to a contract :-))
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# 19:39 tantek the "LTE is often faster than wifi when i'm traveling" doesn't add up. just get an LTE mifi then.
# 19:39 aaronpk but i'm talking about the fact the device has its own connection
# 19:40 aaronpk i'm just saying you're in a somewhat unique position of having two devices that only have wifi network
# 19:40 tantek you're talking about a connection which is exclusive to an expensive contract to a poor-customer service provider
# 19:41 XgF doesn't define £6/mo as "expensive" (thats like 2 days lunch. I should probably pack myself lunches...)
# 19:41 aaronpk the fact that you have two wifi devices means you often connect them to the same wifi provider. that doesn't happen for most other people because one of their devices has a cell network connection.
# 19:41 tantek I have device with a cell network connection too.
# 19:42 tantek so what you're describing sounds like a misconfiguration that others have
# 19:42 aaronpk not everyone wants to carry 3 devices, and not everyone has a tethering plan with their cell phone
# 19:43 XgF (and not everybody wants their phone's battery to last 3 hours)
# 19:43 tantek so iTunes *also* sticks notes into the Mail.app app-silo
# 19:44 tantek this is seriously broken. what developer thought it was a good idea to hide your mobile notes in your *desktop* *mail* application?!?
# 19:45 tantek XgF - by what developer, I mean what *person* (sure, perhaps at Apple)
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# 19:48 tantek Well that's that, so much for iOS "Notes" application. With a crappy sync model like that, forget it.
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# 19:48 XgF As I said, they probably do that since notes have lived in mail.app since long before the iPhone
# 19:49 tantek XgF - nah, there was the "Stickies" sticky notes application long before mail.app
# 19:50 tantek Btw the old BlackBerry *does* mount as a filesystem - and you can at least browse/copy your photos.
# 19:51 XgF Mounting as a mass storage device is an stupid idea IMO (have to give the PC exclusive access to the block device...)
# 19:53 XgF MTP is the standard mount format over USB (Media Transfer Protocol)
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# 19:54 benwerd ponders WebDAV as an optional import API interface
# 19:54 XgF Good smartphones have used it for a while (Android 3.0+ by default, hell, my old Nokia N8)
# 19:54 XgF pretty much every non-Mac OS implements it out of the box
# 19:55 bret holy cow, did anyone fly into LAX today for IWCH?
# 19:55 tantek XgF except you could do an HTTP WebDav mount without a hard-USB connection - wirelessly over wifi
# 19:55 XgF Sure. Good value add feature perhaps
# 19:55 XgF Hell, I see no reason somebody couldn't do that as an Android background app..
# 19:56 bret TSA was shot, I really hope nobody from here flying in was hurt :(
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# 19:58 tantek so the Drafts iOS app is tied to the Simperium backend sync provider, and Notesy is tied to Dropbox.
# 19:59 tantek why can't I say, here's my web server, store notes there?
# 19:59 tantek isn't this what WebDAV was supposed to solve?
# 19:59 barnabywalters tantek: the stupid thing is that you can with reminders, calendar and contacts. those apple apps have really good support for hosting your own data
# 20:00 tantek aaronpk, CalDav and CardDave are built on top of WebDav
# 20:01 tantek there must have been market pressure to sync to something like CalDav/CardDav - perhaps as an alternative to exchange
# 20:01 XgF Though CalDAV/CardDAV use an inteligent WebDAV server
# 20:01 XgF The "defacto" standard for syncing notes has become... IMAP
# 20:01 tantek except running your own IMAP server is a pain
# 20:01 XgF CalDAV/CardDAV require a CalDAV/CardDAV server
# 20:02 XgF IMAP is no more of a pain than any other E-Mail server
# 20:03 barnabywalters installing a card/cal/webdav server is a matter of dragging some PHP files to a webserver and setting some config up
# 20:03 tantek it's a "i have an IT staff to maintain it" technology
# 20:04 XgF Well presumably you already have some solution for mail anyway...
# 20:05 aaronpk but I did hack up a neat "login trick" with my latest gps tracker app i just built
# 20:05 tantek XgF - "solution" != personal server that you setup. It's why so many people use gmail now.
# 20:05 XgF tantek: Sure, but from ~2005 Apple's perspective "Nobody has a website. Most of them have some form of E-Mail system..."
# 20:06 aaronpk I run my own mail server (been running it since about 2004 and has required little maintenance) but all it does is forward emails from my various domains to my gmail account and I read it there
# 20:08 tantek so this is the problem. we've moved from a user model of, I have a document, I can open and edit it with any application that supports that type, to, I have an application, and I have to send (copy/share/email) any documents directly to other apps to edit with them, and then send back when done.
# 20:09 barnabywalters to be fair, an app-centric, no-filesystem approach does make things more accessible for a lot of people
# 20:09 barnabywalters my mum never understood file systems, but with an iPad she knows to press the keynote button to do presentations
# 20:10 tantek it seems to trap your data and make it *less* accessible
# 20:10 tantek so the "Documents" folder was supposed to solve that part
# 20:11 barnabywalters “it’s like a filing cabinet, but each folder contains another filing cabinet”
# 20:11 tantek what happens when a new app comes along and she wants to edit her previous "Pages" documents in the new app?
# 20:12 tantek it's like the new model is just a reinforcement of brand-loyalty behavior in other industries
# 20:12 barnabywalters until you need to move things around, at which point it becomes extremely complicated — creating copies of things which erode as you pass them between apps
# 20:12 tantek barnabywalters - I disagree that it is simpler (or must be)
# 20:12 tantek when you go to the grocery store, you don't think app-first, you think content-first
# 20:13 tantek then you look on the shelf at what brands (apps) are available for each type of content you need and it's a late-binding decision
# 20:14 tantek that's like saying, you open your computer to do digital documents
# 20:16 tantek you go there, you get the data you want, you leave with it
# 20:17 barnabywalters wait, now we’re discussing the varieties of food available at grocery stores?
# 20:17 tantek !tell Kevinmarks - you were asking about dinner - looks like we're doing 18:30 at 21st Amendment 2013-11-01
# 20:17 Loqi Ok, I'll tell them that when I see them next
# 20:18 tantek barnabywalters - no, it was you that mentioned "don't cook"
# 20:18 tantek ok I think I will try the Notesy + Dropbox solution because I know I can give aaronpk a hard time if it doesn't work ;)
# 20:19 aaronpk also try notationalvelocity on your computer pointing to the same folder
# 20:21 tantek hmm.. I've been using BBEdit locally with folders of text files quite successfully
# 20:22 tantek sounds like an innovative approach to search with text
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# 20:29 Loqi KevinMarks: tantek left you a message 11 minutes ago: - you were asking about dinner - looks like we're doing 18:30 at 21st Amendment 2013-11-01
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# 20:37 tantek aaronpk - so why does nvALT put documents by default in ~/Library/Application Support/Notational Data/ instead of ~/Documents/nvALT/ ?
# 20:38 tantek what's with the anti-pattern of apps sticking *Documents* into a folder labeled "Application Support"?!?
# 20:39 aaronpk path was: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Microsoft Lync History/aparecki@esri.com
# 20:39 tantek Colloquy also sticks logs in the Documents folder
# 20:39 aaronpk still more buried than I would have liked... ~/Documents/Lync would have been nicer
# 20:39 tantek aaronpk - since you chose that specific fork, could you file a bug on nvALT (assuming you agree it should use Documents folder by default)
# 20:40 tantek (I'm assuming you might know the folks or something)
# 20:40 tantek (no need for it to be dumb like proprietary app / biz dev decisions)
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# 20:47 XgF Using documents or not by default is a tricky one. I find it annoying when applications dump their random folders there
# 20:48 aaronpk that happened to me on windows... too many apps dumped their settings and stuff in "My Documents" that I eventually had to make my own Documents folder where I actually knew what was in there
# 20:48 tantek did the user create a *thing* (like a document) and *name* it?
# 20:48 tantek did the app create some random file/folder for its own caching purposes? then app support or wherever
# 20:49 XgF And because somebody followed that logic my Documents folder is full of crap
# 20:49 tantek it should only be crap you named and created as a user
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# 20:49 aaronpk by that logic chat logs should not be stored in Documents
# 20:49 XgF Yes, but inside folders I didn't create and never wanted
# 20:50 tantek XgF one level of app folder containment by default helps Documents from becoming a complete random mess
# 20:50 tantek I see chat logs as an efficient storing of what otherwise would be one file per statement I typed
# 20:50 tantek they're grouped accordingly into files by channel and date
# 20:50 XgF I'd like the Documents folder to be *my* private domain. The home directory is unused on most OSes (except *nix where it substitutes for a proper documents directory)
# 20:50 XgF IMO application directories I might want to peek in should go there
# 20:51 tantek aaronpk - so it's an aggregation of that rule of, did the user create it and name it
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# 20:51 tantek XgF - "where it substitutes for a proper documents directory" which is why Apple created an explicit "Documents" directory in the home directory
# 20:52 XgF Yes. Chat logs should probably go in home (IMO)
# 20:52 XgF word processors (and similar) should default to documents
# 20:54 tantek I'd almost be ok with another folder for logs rather than documents, where the assumption was clustering by year etc.
# 20:54 tantek (it's an open invite in case that wasn't clear)
# 20:54 XgF KevinMarks: Library is kindof to OS X as AppData is to Windows: a dumping ground for all sorts of application crud
# 20:55 tantek basically, app data should all be deletable without losing any *user data*
# 20:55 tantek and the app should be able to reconstruct whatever app data it needs, as if it was just launched
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# 21:05 tantek benwerd since you didn't post your even to Twitter ;)
# 21:06 Loqi tantek meant to say: benwerd since you didn't post your event to Twitter ;)
# 21:07 tantek I don't think we ever figured out what it would mean to POSSE an event to Twitter
# 21:07 tantek even my blog posts I don't really count as POSSEing to Twitter since the "tweet" is just the article name and URL
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# 21:15 tantek does anyone else here sometimes not bother to click on a link because it's a .PDF? E.g. in search results, or when news articles link to PDFs?
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# 21:26 aaronpk yes, the fact it's a PDF is a huge deterrent. I find I consider much more carefully whether I really wanted to see the content before I click
# 21:26 aaronpk probably I'd say 80% of the PDF links I don't end up clicking on because they're a PDF
# 21:27 tantek we need a term for this, the equivalent of tl;dr
# 21:27 aaronpk although the same is true for known-bloated websites like cnn.com, tends to be news sites
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# 21:33 tommorris tantek: PDF has gotten better since Firefox started rendering them inline. But, yes, in general PDF is a discouragement from reading
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# 21:35 aaronpk the only good use of PDFs is for sharing things where the physical position of things matters
# 21:38 aaronpk *whew* my flight was successfully changed to fly in to Ontario! will still be abble to make it in tonight!
# 21:38 aaronpk now to figure out how to properly handle updated/canceled flights on my site
# 21:40 tommorris PDF is a very useful format incidentally for the reason aaronpk said: for citing
# 21:40 tommorris academia still haven't yet quite got their collective heads around this whole interwebs thing
# 21:41 tantek uh, tommorris, what does "citing" have to do with "physical position of things matters" ?
# 21:47 snarfed seems like fragment backlinks would work fine for that?
# 21:48 hadleybeeman Tommorris: assuming it goes through, the new W3C Data on the Web working group will be working on that.
# 21:49 snarfed huh, benwerd's events have accepted a couple of my rsvps, but not the one for dinner tonight
# 21:49 tommorris hadleybeeman: not referring to data. I'm referring to if I want to quote a passage from, oh, Bertrand Russell's "On Denoting", and wish to do so in an academically respectable way
# 21:49 snarfed i wonder if idno doesn't re-parse on subsequent webmentions
# 21:50 tommorris hadleybeeman: PDFs solve that problem by giving me actual page numbers from original print publications. those matter. fragment identifiers get some of the way there, but the cultural assumptions of academia still have a lot of play
# 21:50 hadleybeeman Ah, I see, tommorris. Some predictable practices around pagination and anchors might help there.
# 21:51 tantek pagination is one of those fixed medium assumptions right?
# 21:53 tantek hadleybeeman - does that WG have anything to do with the Open Annotation W3C Community Working Group?
# 21:54 tommorris tantek: pagination is a fixed medium assumption. bit fixed media and citability rather assume one another. ;)
# 21:54 snarfed glad you caught the tos;dr inference. love that project.
# 21:55 tantek snarfed, unlike pdf;dr, tos;dr is actually quite googleable
# 21:55 tommorris Yep. And they disappear after a few years when people take down websites. Or unpublish their politically embarassing comments.
# 21:55 tantek tommorris - nah, that's why we have dt-accessed (as modeled on WP citations)
# 21:56 tantek snarfed - you shouldn't need the data element
# 21:56 tommorris And for a lot of academic works, they may be on the web (or on the paywall-web) but the print version is considered canonical even if nobody ever reads it
# 21:56 snarfed tantak: without it, php-mf2 didn't extract value = "no"
# 21:56 tantek all it requires is that we make the web version more reliable than print version. no we're not there yet.
# 21:56 tantek snarfed - the "value" attribute is special to the <data> element
# 21:57 tommorris tantek: also, I think Metafilter has long semi-required people to put " (PDF)" next to PDF links because of readers inherent pdf;dr-ism
# 21:57 snarfed aha. so rsvp just implicitly requires an element that has the value attr?
# 21:57 tantek snarfed - no, where did you get that impression?
# 21:57 snarfed oh god. i originally used it in a <cite>. absolutely no good reason, just historical.
# 21:58 snarfed ah, i see. so it will use value, but only if the elem supports it.
# 21:58 tantek <data value=""></data> is valid. <cite data=""></cite> is not. neither is <span data=""></span>
# 21:58 tantek snarfed - it does the right thing if you're using HTML correctly
# 22:00 snarfed ok. so the key is that it gets 'no' or 'yes' from one of the valid places - value, alt, text, etc
# 22:00 hadleybeeman tantek: Not really. I don't know much about that community group, but they're RDF-focused. Data on the Web includes JSON and CSV.
# 22:01 hadleybeeman (having said that, if their ontology is useful... I'm sure it will be factored in)
# 22:02 KevinMarks I can search for it in the document, or on the Web, faster than I can find the page
# 22:02 tommorris we're post-citation because we're post-fact. thank Sarah Palin.
# 22:02 tantek hadleybeeman - nah, that group's tech is bloated classic RDF / SemWeb overthink / complexity.
# 22:02 tantek just wondered if you'd been affected by it or not
# 22:02 hadleybeeman Point taken, tantek: but you're the first to point out when I don't consider pre-existing work. :)
# 22:03 hadleybeeman (But no, to answer you're question. It hasn't come up. I'm actually wondering who is involved...?)
# 22:03 tantek hadleybeeman - it's useful to show that you've considered any existing work, whether crappy or not
# 22:04 tantek hence why we have the *-formats research requirement in the microformats process.
# 22:04 KevinMarks I'd rsvp if I had a posting system working. Ghost was too annoying.
# 22:04 tantek basically - the "show your homework" requirement - which nearly no tech / spec / standard does
# 22:05 hadleybeeman Hmm... That's actually something I think I can change for that working group.
# 22:05 tantek snarfed - yes, value-class-pattern predates the <data> element in HTML5
# 22:05 tantek the <data> element was justified based on the usefulness and adoption of the value class pattern
# 22:05 snarfed benwerd, thanks for the quick revert. pls let me know if the root cause is bad markup in my rsvp.
# 22:05 barnabywalters value-class is still useful for publishing a single datetime as a separate date and time
# 22:06 KevinMarks Talking of pdf:Dr, the odi barometer report was a pdf, which seems like a shame
# 22:06 benwerd snarfed: tracing down a bug elsewhere in something else, but will return to the rsvp shortly
# 22:07 snarfed oh no worries. feel free to drop it, very unimportant.
# 22:07 tantek tommorris - that osm link gives me "SSL peer reports incorrect Message Authentication Code"
# 22:08 hadleybeeman tantek, do you have a template page for documenting this background research?
# 22:08 tantek btw - you should feel free to contribute that kind of research to the microformats wiki directly too
# 22:09 tantek I mean - what you're basically proposing could be useful as an extension to h-card for venues
# 22:09 tantek and assuming we make some progress with it in #microformats, then we can take it upstream to IETF to a vCard extension
# 22:09 tommorris tantek: having all the research is useful because of debates on mailing lists when people come up with absurd questions and I can just point and say "here's twenty examples"
# 22:10 tantek you lost me at "debates on mailing lists when people come up with absurd questions"
# 22:10 tantek I mean - that's what mailing lists are for, right?
# 22:11 mikeal the problem is that there are so many good tools for targeted conversations that mailing lists just get the filth that is left over
# 22:11 mikeal primarily GitHub
# 22:11 hadleybeeman +1 to that, kevinmarks
# 22:12 benwerd snarfed: not unimportant at all. Want to figure it out!
# 22:12 tommorris anarchy in that any user can use any tag they like. formality in that there's a whole complex process laid out that's got all the bureaucratic bits that don't matter but doesn't actually have the critically important reasoning bits
# 22:12 tantek mikeal - such tools evolved because people were already frustrated.
# 22:12 KevinMarks documenting examples publicly is key. I learned this after not doing so on opensocial
# 22:13 mikeal true, i find it's better to just not have a mailing list
# 22:13 tantek tommorris - sure, but since you're bothering the formality, might as well save it somewhere where it's even more appreciated :)
# 22:13 mikeal force people to contextualize their thoughts in to something targetted so that i can go in a better forum
# 22:13 tommorris tantek: I'll PD/CC0 my OSM wiki contribs shortly and port over bits to uf-wiki
# 22:13 hadleybeeman That's helpful, Tantek, but I was wondering if you'd set up templates. I was hoping to steal your mediawiki code. :)
# 22:14 KevinMarks I suspect if I get enough yaks shaved for an rsvp to work I'll miss dinner
# 22:14 mikeal i've found that GitHub issues substitute really well for a list
# 22:14 tommorris We should probably have an -examples big list on microformats.
# 22:14 mikeal i even use them for organizing the staffing for conferences
# 22:14 tantek if you don't know how to use lists and heading, a template is not going to help you
# 22:15 hadleybeeman That's exactly what I'm looking for :)
# 22:15 tommorris examples-examples-factory. we can go full java enterprise
# 22:16 hadleybeeman is looking again
# 22:16 KevinMarks that was the other thing I learned from opensocial. No one reads the spec, they copy the example and generate something that looks like it
# 22:16 tantek KevinMarks that's because their specs were tl;dr
# 22:16 hadleybeeman (I definitely agree with that, kevinmarks. But the documentation — even the background research — is worth having somewhere)
# 22:16 benwerd snarfed: Fascinating. Confirmed that your mention is being parsed
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# 22:16 hadleybeeman Yes, tantek: that does actually help. Thanks!
# 22:17 snarfed got it. thanks for investigating. lmk if i can help.
# 22:17 tommorris has read OWL specs too. Usually I need Red Bull before starting.
# 22:17 KevinMarks Also because the specs were generated from the javadoc that made the code
# 22:17 hadleybeeman tommorris: You have the spec-patience of a saint.
# 22:18 tommorris hadleybeeman: no, it's usually because I need to answer a difficult question
# 22:18 hadleybeeman I know. I've seen you do it. :) But your determination is... formidable.
# 22:19 tantek hadleybeeman - in all fairness, that "examples" page could be improved to be more approachable/readable to answer the use-case you enquired about (templates)
# 22:20 tantek hasn't edited that page substantially since 2006
# 22:20 hadleybeeman is amused
# 22:21 hadleybeeman I realise not everyone organises their work the same way I do. But having questions to answer (or headings in a template) can really focus the work. (Or thought process. Or group discussion.)
# 22:28 tantek hadleybeeman - it's good feedback. edited the page accordingly
# 22:30 hadleybeeman "examples-examples" is lovely, you two. :) Thanks for that.
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# 22:32 tantek the only thing I put above that was how to scope the examples, because it's the next thing people get wrong (the first being the absence of research)
# 22:32 hadleybeeman it is, tantek — seems significantly clearer.
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# 22:35 hadleybeeman That's useful
# 22:35 hadleybeeman the current layout makes sense to me. The logic flows.
# 22:36 hadleybeeman My only last bit of feedback, tantek, is that the heading "Details of Example Scoping" doesn't seem to fit the content.
# 22:40 hadleybeeman Ha. I was going to fix it for you but the page is locked. :)
# 22:42 hadleybeeman Still no.
# 22:42 hadleybeeman Anyway, something about "Broader context" or "Why we need examples"? You might need a transition sentence at the top of that section to say something like "Matching microformats to the way people use the web now keeps them useful and relevant. This is important because:"
# 22:42 tantek hmm - ok, my guess is you haven't made that many edits yet and are still an "unconfirmed" user - I've opened it up to any registered user
# 22:42 hadleybeeman And on that note, I need to pack and get to bed.
# 22:43 hadleybeeman I'm sure you're more than capable of taking care of it. :)
# 22:43 hadleybeeman 'night all
# 22:44 tantek going with "What kind of examples and why" for now
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# 22:47 KevinMarks_ is the interim shim over dropbox s3 et al what camlistore is doing?
# 22:48 JonathanNeal I'm excited for your LA meetup. I'm really sad I'll be hosting an event that night and will miss it.
# 22:48 KevinMarks_ Mavericks doesn't even show me my hard disk any more - I have to search to see my home directory
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# 22:51 tantek IndieWebCamp is 3-4. you could come on day 2.
# 22:51 KevinMarks_ sorry, reading scrollback on the chromebook - why don't irc clients sync ;)
# 22:53 KevinMarks_ so, recapping the earlier discussion: Apple had an OS-level local/cloud sync in iDisk for about a decade
# 22:53 tommorris Nice. Bit short notice for me to get their from London, but great stuff. ;)
# 22:55 KevinMarks_ Despite being paid > $100/year by me for this, Apple stopped it and don't redirect
# 22:57 KevinMarks_ is a Drive folder I can drag stuff into and it shows up on the web
# 23:03 KevinMarks_ I like that Skype makes those weird bubble noises when someone signs on, as it reminds me to quit it
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