= --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- ======= -L- -I- -B- -E- -R- -E- -T- -T- -O- JULY 1997 ========= ======= The iMatix Newsletter Volume II Issue 7 --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- = Copyright (c) 1997 iMatix - distribute freely Back issues at http://www.imatix.com Comments to: editors@imatix.com Finite State Machines - Programming - News and Views - Feedback - Reports == COMMENT ---...-.-...-.--...-.--...-.-...-.....---..-....--.--..-.-.---.-- Last month I visited Chicago with some friends. One day we drove to a mall. After an hour driving through the world's largest parking lot - affectionately called an 'expressway' by the locals - we arrived at Woodfield Mall. Not just one mall, this is a city of malls, with its own InterMall expressways. Mall City! MALL WORLD!! In the sheer mass of shops, there were some interesting and pleasant surprises - a backrub store, a hemp store, a shop specialising in toys for the mind. But the main impression was one of desparate quantity, with less choice and higher prices in the shops than in downtown Chicago. In the 'Rainforest Restaurant', we ate between plastic trees and giant animal heads mounted on the walls. Every five minutes the elephant heads moved and shook and roared as I suppose an elephant would, when trapped in MallWorld, USA. Ed's rules for restaurant happiness: don't sit beneath the loudspeakers, or beside the coffee grinder in a French restaurant, or beneath the elephant heads in MallWorld. Our portions were enormous, far too much to eat. We tried the Oriental Salad, a humungous bowl of food, with a subtle layer of sesame seeds at least an inch thick. "Ok, we added sesame seeds. Now what else can we do?" "Make the portions larger!" If Mall World was software, it'd be one of the megapackages coming out of Redmond. Having stuck every possible function into their software, the software mall developers turn to sheer quantity. There are some interesting and useful tools in there somewhere, but 95% is filler, giving bulk but not quality. Who needs it? The only good reason I heard anyone give for buying Office 97 was this: they were receiving documents that they could not read with their 'old' Office 95. The good folks at Microsoft changed their file formats, presumably for an excellent reason. But possibly because there has to be some reason to upgrade again. This is good business sense, but bad design. One of the hallmarks of a good design is simplicity. Software, like like food and shops, can be better in small portions. To celebrate the notion that "less is more", this month's issue of Liberetto has been trimmed to modest proportions. Pieter Hintjens Antwerpen 1 June 1997, plus ou moins. == NEWS ---..-....-.-.----.-...-...-.---.---.-...-.-.---.-.--..-...-.-.---.- Xitami Benchmark Shock! Yes, the rumours are true. Our nouvelle-cuisine web server performs faster than the major PC software application! In a bold new experiment we broke the barriers of convention and logic and compared the CPU resources needed by Xitami with the most commonly-used office and business application, namely "Solitaire". Xitami consumed only 50-80% of the CPU required by this major product. Unbelievable but true! Xitami can serve web pages faster than Solitaire can deal cards. Our tests were conducted on a Pentium 133 with 32Mb RAM and two cups of coffee. Nairobi Goes Alpha - iMatix HQ Denies Rumours! A spokesman at iMatix world HQ today strongly denied rumours that the long awaited response to MS-DOS 2.10, code-named Nairobi, will be released in alpha this month. When questioned, the iMatix spokesman forcefully rejected any suggestions that Nairobi (not the city; the code-named product) is part of the iMatix internet application toolkit, platform, providing a simple but effective way to use an intranet or internet for business software development!! (Don't go to sleep yet!!) "Any suggestions that this so-called Nairobi will do for software development what a small red Mombassa pepper can do to an unsuspecting child who thinks it's something to chew on are wholly unfounded!". Yet Another Rumour Denied! In a busy week for our spin doctors, iMatix HQ (also known as "Garage number nine") denied press rumours that iMatix employed people who could be described as of a bunch of sexist, long-haired, antisocial, unconventional, loud, heavy-metal loving, and often unsober technoverts with delusions of grandeur, or just plain delusions. "Anyone who works here has to get a decent haircut - we're very fussy," explained Mandy, a pert 29. == LETTERS -..-.----.-.-...-.-.----.-.-.-...-.-----....-.--.-..-..-..--.-.-. >Date sent: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 13:14:24 -0700 >From:
>To: editors@imatix.com >Subject: REMOVE ME FROM LIST > >Delete me from your mailing list and do not allow resubscriptoin. >Someone is forging my e-mail address and joining me to over 600 >mailing lists REPEATEDLY. This is happening to many people. >PLEASE install subscriptoin verify on your list to stop the madness. >All e-mail to me is destroyed automatically. I get megabytes per day. >PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR MAIL LIST ADMINISTRATOR. >THIS IS AN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED REPLY. >Thank You, charles1@netcom.com Your subscriptoin has been deletoid. STOP THE MADNESS NOW!! Okay, whoever it was that subscribed poor Mr X to two thousand copies of Liberetto, tut-tut! That was *not* very funny. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Date sent: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 09:12:07 -0400 >From: gtn@eps.inso.com (Gavin Nicol) >To: editors@imatix.com >Subject: Re: Liberetto II/5 > >One thing I've often wondered, is why something like configure isn't >used for your software. I've often tried to build it on Solaris 2.5 >and have generally failed to do so. One thing you learn early in the portability business is to do things the hard way. If we can't make Libero, SFL, SMT, Xitami build cleanly on a particular system, it's because something is wrong. We'd rather fix that than spend time learning to use configure, make, imake,... to get around the problem. This is another way of saying 'what the he?! is configure, and how will it get around the problem of no standard C compiler and no standard libraries?' We don't just show our ignorance around here, we take it out and wave it around like a Scotsman discovering that his last ten-pound note has caught fire. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From: "Nomad" >To: ph@imatix.com >Date sent: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 04:53:59 +0000 >Subject: Thank you! :-) > >I happened across your website while browsing the No-nags repository >for a web server. I not only found exactly what I was looking for >with Xitami, but I was blown away to the point of inspiration by all >the outstanding offerings on your site... and all of it with the >source code included!!! The elegance of your designs makes the >mystique of portability seem trival... and cross platform design is >an art that sometimes seems completely lost to many of the software >development houses churning out "Windows only" apps these days. > >I'm looking forward to exploring your libero tool as it focuses well >needed attention on the DESIGN phase that so many SW engineers blow >through all too quickly... myself included! > >Thanks again for your generous contributions... they, and the >talented people behind them such as yourself are greatly appreciated >and make the internet world a lot brighter and more productive place! > >Tom Lisjac >Email: netdxr@earthlink.net Thanks, Tom. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From: "Aaron N. Tubbs" >To: >Subject: Re: Xitami update 1.2e >Date sent: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 11:12:46 -0400 > >I just wanted to complement you. With every newsletter that comes out, >and every update that comes out, I'm always amazed. Seldom is an >excellent product built for free, and is as loved, cared for, and >maintained as well as Xitami. I prefer its use over any other shareware >or freeware server, and I've yet to find a commercial system with enough >advantages to draw me to it instead. Congradulations on a most excellent >product, and I hope it continues to be as good as ever! > >Sincerely, >Aaron N. Tubbs >aaron@parrett.net Thanks, Aaron. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Date sent: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 16:48:49 +0200 >From: Frank Pilhofer >To: xitami@imatix.com >Subject: thanks and bug > >I was looking for a simple Win95 Web server to install some CGIs >(written in Tcl) on a home-based machine which unfortunately was >not Linux, and came across your server. It's simple, fast, and >free. Thanks. > >I also believe I've found a bug. I use the PATH_INFO, and also query >the SCRIPT_NAME environment variable for self-references. However, your >server includes the PATH_INFO in the SCRIPT_NAME, which is IMHO wrong. >Let the script be /cgi-bin/foo. If you call /cgi-bin/foo/bar, >SCRIPT_NAME should be /cgi-bin/foo, and not /cgi-bin/foo/bar. > >Frank Thanks Frank. Oh yes, you did find a bug. Fixed in the New Version. == IRRELEVANT TSHIRT SLOGAN OF THE MONTH --..-.--.-.--...-.-.--.----...-.-- "Hong Kong - Just another Chinese takeaway?" We apologise for anyone offended by this. Please do not send a trial PLA starter kit complete with all new armoured personel carriers for only US$230M excluding local sales tax where applicable. "Diese Anwendung wird wegen eines unerlaubten Vorgangs geschlossen" Seen when running Xitami under a German Windows 95. == TERMINATE THE PROGRAM -...---...-..----....-.---..---...-...---.-...---. To quote Ben Johnson, "When you're tired of Liberetto, you're tired of reading an incoherent piece of misplaced but more often missing humour in the hope of ever finding-out the meaning of the little morse-code messages". It's not too late to unsubscribe! Unless you got this, in which case you were too slow.