Wog's New Writeups

Trigraph (thing)

2001-06-03T22:20:37Z

In C, a trigraph is a special three character sequence that maps to another character. The intent of trigraphs is to support machines which have character sets which do not have certain characters. (Specifically the ones not in ISO 646-1983 Invariant Code Set.)

The trigraphs are:

??= means #
??/ means \
??' means ^
??( means [
??) means ]
??! means |
??< means {
??> means }
??- means ~

Trigraph replacements can occur anywhere.

For example:


??=include <stdio.h>

void prompt(int x, int y)

??<

  printf("??= %d + %d? ", x, y);

??>

…

GNU Pth (thing)

2001-05-26T16:21:42Z

The GNU Portable Threads library.

GNU Pth is a library that allows for the creation of user-space threads on many operating systems.

Pth creates threads that are scheduled cooperatively, rather then preemptively as many "standard" threading libraries do. (Such as pthreads on Linux.) This also tends to be more portable, and probably makes it easier to avoid race conditions. The disadvantage of this is that it doesn't allow for multiple processors to be taken advantage of, since that requires kernel-space threading, which is usually preemptive. Apparently, much of the features of Pth are based upon what can be supported on the most UNIX-like systems.

Pth also offers emulation of pthreads, in an attempt to provide compatiblity with exsiting applications.

GNU Pth can be obtained from http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/. It is distrubuted under…

xtank (thing)

2001-05-26T04:03:42Z

An old, little-maintained computer game for X, apparently once ported to work on the Amiga, too.

The Game, Itself

XTank is a multi-player, or single-player overhead-view shooter, primarily. However, xtank can also be played as a racing game, tank-based ultimate or capture the disc.

The Tanks

Before the game, tanks can be choosen from templates or designed from an assortment of: bodies, engines, weapons, armor, suspensions, treads, heat sinks, bumpers, and have the option to add a few other add-ons to their tank.

Game Types

There are five types of games in xtank:

Combat -- Just a shoot-everyone-not-on-your-team game.
War -- A game based on taking over territory for your team.
Ultimate -- According to some documentation: "Sort of a cross between ultimate frisbee and hockey." There's a disc, and the

…

HQ9+ (thing)

2001-05-21T00:17:47Z

An esoteric programming language.

HQ9+ has a simple instruction set allowing for common programming examples to easily created.

The instruction set:

H -- outputs "Hello, World!".
Q -- outputs the text of the entire program, making the program a quine.
9 -- outputs the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall song.
+ -- increments the accumulator.

The specification does not appear to define the effect of a character outside the instruction set.

As should be obvious, this language is not serious. It is more of a satire of those extremely common example programs.

As for the + operator, in the example implementation of the language at its "offical" website, is pretty much ignored, since its effect is totally unnoticable.

Primary Source/See Also: http:…

Rewind (thing)

2001-05-17T00:51:27Z

A radio show on NPR.

To quote the description on their website: (http://www.kuow.org/rewind/)

Rewind skewers the news each week with sketch comedy, interviews, poetry and a snappy chat between host Bill Radke and a panel of nationally renowned guests.

A typical Rewind episode includes:

a satire of the week's important news (of course)
some comedy sketches, usually related to week's news. Occassionally, these sketches are replayed on serious NPR news programs.
chats about much of the week's more interesting, often less important, news in the "Public Radio Cafe"
an "Ask the Librarian" segment, where listener's questions are forwarded to a reference librarian who answers them on the air.

intermediate colors (thing)

2001-05-05T18:44:59Z

Colors formed by mixing a primary color and a secondary color. These are usually named with the primary color first. For example, red-violet is an intermediate color.

Note that the example given is not valid with all color systems. See some write-ups that aren't mine under color wheel.