Here’s the deal: I want your opinion (hopefully, in the form of your own “comment” as input, so others might read it too!), in regard to a suspicious commentary received this year at NoviceNotes™; part of a thread spawned from the NoviceNotes™ article [you are resisting the urge to click links, momentarily, young Jedi, but do return here momentarily to hit it, rebound-like]. That original article, which you won’t click now but later, is a few-articles-ago The Standard US Keyboard: Quick Reference (posted weeks, or months ago– what do i look like, a calendar!? who cares, flapjack! i want candy!) ^†

Seioursly:Share your thoughts. Add your own comments regarding this matter.

Add to the existing thread at the RE: Std US Keyboard if you’d rather thread under the original topic (please read what’s there first). Ah– whatever– I’m easy goin’. Do whatever you want; do say something.
dig.

Thanks!
-JS
Author: NoviceNotes™

But Wait: Something Grows Now….

Bigger, Better, Faster, More!

Hey there! Want to know more about NoviceNotes™, in general? Check the About NoviceNotes™ page!

Grep (and Grep for Windows)

Depending upon the nature of the search I want to perform, I often use grep, a GNU Operating System application, common to the Linux operating system. grep is available for Windows, so I use it there when I can for its unique ability to scan file contents. Not only does grep provide a means of locating a desired string of text from a collection of files on the filesystem, it is also an exercise in the use of regular expressions, and Command Line syntax.

When executing grep, one has the option to use basic, extended, or Perl compatible Regular Expressions. As there are several options for executing a search, I often reference the --help option on the command line, or the included HTML help files. The following excerpt from section 5.5 of the Grep [for Windows] HTML help manual explains the difference between the default grep behaviour (basic regex), and that of egrep^†

egrep | grep -E: grep manual section 5.5

In basic regular expressions the metacharacters `?’, `+’, `{‘, `|’, `(‘, and `)’ lose their special meaning; instead use the backslashed versions `\?’, `\+’, `\{‘, `\|’, `\(‘, and `\)’.

Traditional egrep did not support the `{‘ metacharacter, and some egrep implementations support `\{‘ instead, so portable scripts should avoid `{‘ in `egrep’ patterns and should use `[{]‘ to match a literal `{‘.

GNU egrep attempts to support traditional usage by assuming that `{‘ is not special if it would be the start of an invalid interval specification. For example, the shell command `egrep ‘{1” searches for the two-character string `{1′ instead of reporting a syntax error in the regular expression. POSIX.2 allows this behavior as an extension, but portable scripts should avoid it.

Note: I apologize, I do not recall precisely where I obtained my DOS / Windows cmd.exe compatible version of grep (grep.exe), but I believe it is the same as that which is bundled with several other useful applications in the GNU utilities for Win32 distribution. I recommend following the link, near the top of this entry, which points to the official Free Software Foundation web page for grep.

Readers, I realize the Sidebar (here at NoviceNotes.Net) is, for lack of a better phrase, a bit messed up! I’m in the process of fixing it, but I’d like to explain briefly what is causing it.

Word Press Widgets and Theme Compatibility

A few months ago, I changed the appearance of NoviceNotes.Net , by simply changing the theme of the blog software. Since I had last modified the NoviceNotes™ theme in 2006, features have been added to the core software. There was no problem in switching to the modern theme, recently, because it is up-to-date and compatible with the current version of the blog software. However, I decided I didn’t like that theme, and I’ve switched back to the old one– but not without problems– obviously.

The sidebar is here, but it’s not on the side where it’s supposed to be! For now, just page all the way to the bottom if you need to access links from the sidebar. This problem will be fixed soon. I apologize for the inconvenience.

A few technical details about NoviceNotes.Net

NoviceNotes™ is powered by WordPress, a relatively versatile, pre-fabricated content management system, running on the common LAMP web server model, the tried and true HTTP server model. LAMP refers to four Open Source projects which, combined, make up the most popular server model^† on the web: Linux (the Operating System), Apache (the HTTP server), MySQL (the database / database server), and PHP (the Hypertext Preprocessor; the server-side scripting language which makes it possible to display dynamic or real-time content, as it performs several complex procedures including querying the database for text to display in appropriate areas, and responding to user input as received via HTTP Request transmitted through the combination of various input from the client-side, as submitted by the web browser according to user interaction with the HTML which PHP itself also renders, ultimately).

^†According to Netcraft.com, What’s That Site Running?

Web developers often encounter situations in which it is necessary to preview fonts. As technology develops and the restrictions are lifted on how fonts may be used on the web, web developers will be trying new things, which will require more testing.

For English speaking developers who have adhered to the core web fonts for so many years, a fortunate trade-off to that restriction has been the peace of mind that the MS Core Fonts support ISO-8859-1, the standard encoding for language characters of the Western European character set.

Outside of the very short list of serif and sans-serif typefaces commonly used in web design, it is not altogether uncommon that any given font-family might not contain all of the characters of ISO-8859-1, cp1252, or Windows-1252 (each, a recognized encoding of what is, essentially, an identical character set). In the context of ISO-8859-1, and the text sample below, I recall to mind the usual suspects, which include such commonly occurring characters as “brackets”– both square and curly, the “greater-than / less-than” symbols, and the octothorpe. Often it is the fantasy font-family, the highly-styled or derivative type face which we discover supports only the basic, alphanumeric symbols. While fantasy fonts may be best at adding personality in decorative placements, the omission of character glyphs commonly used in regular typed language tends to prohibit fantasy fonts, for instance, from showing up as the property value of a global stylesheet selector.

The Times, the are a Changin’

I created this text block as a quick reference cheat-sheet for identifying what characters may or may not be supported by any particular font family. The concept is simple. Use it, as is, in your own markup where different font-family values may be applied easily for testing basic character support.

  ~!@#$%^&*()_+
  `1234567890-=

  QWERTYUIOP{}|
  qwertyuiop[]\

  ASDFJKL:'
  asdfjkl;"

  ZXCVBNM<>?
  zxcvbnm,./

©2009 NoviceNotes™
©2009 J Sabarese

###########################################################################

Maintaining standards theory, the following is true of the primary text block, above:

• total lines: 11 (eleven)
• total lines containing text characters: 8 (eight)
• total lines without text [CR/LF only]: 3 (three)
• total new lines [CR/LF]: 10 (ten)

Eight Lines Equals Four Rows

Consider the eight rows of text in the sample, instead as 4 double-rows (or row pairs) to more easily correspond with the physical keyboard. Thus, each row pair (or double-row) represents one row of the standard US keyboard, where each member of a pair indicates the same keyboard row, either with or without depressing the <SHIFT> key (e.g. a single keyboard row is typed with <SHIFT> depressed, to represent uppercase characters, and likewise without for lowercase chars).

Carriage Returns and Line Feeds for Legibility

In addition to the newline^† control character at the end of every line (excluding the final line), each keyboard row pair is followed by an extra newline, so the keyboard rows are further separated visually, for enhanced legibility.

^†Note the Carriage Return, Line Feed pair which is “typed” by pressing the <ENTER/RETURN> key, may be definitively added to HTML in the Unicode, Numerical Character Reference form, &#x000A;&#x000D;

The Standard Keyboard Sample in Practice

Consider each of the four double-rows shown here as a set of characters
which represent a corresponding row of the physical keyboard.

(e.g. The topmost row of printed characters represents the topmost
row of the keyboard. The second group of characters from the top
begins with the characters “QWERT”, just as the keys in the row beneath
the top row of the keyboard, and so on.)

———–WHY ARE THE PRINTED CHARACTERS SHOWN AS DOUBLE ROWS?————

Beginning at the left, continuing from left to right, if each key of the
keyboard is pressed consecutively, only the bottom-row of each group
is printed.

The top-row of each double-row group represents the same keyboard row
as the bottom-row of its own printed group. The top-row differs from
the bottom-row, however, as the printed characters shown require
the SHIFT key be depressed while each of the keyboard keys are typed.

@2009 NoviceNotes™
www.NoviceNotes.Net

Use it

Depending upon what software utilities you might have for previewing the various fonts installed on your system, you might find it useful to copy the text sample above, and paste it into the appropriate text input field of the font preview software.

The following software programs accept text input, and provide a convenient way to preview fonts with a custom text, like the US Keyboard-row characters transposed here.

For Windows

• AMP Font Viewer
• Lav Plourde’s Font Compare
• Sue Fisher’s The Font Thing

For Linux

• Fonty Python – Python powered font preview tool, not unlike The Font Thing for Windows, it offers users the advantage of preferred fonts groups which may be installed or removal at any time, as a means to more easily maintain access to using a large collection of different fonts, without the disadvantage users might experience with traditional global installations when the selection of a custom font means the user must sort through a bloated list to find the preferred typeface, system-wide.

Blog: a Noun; a Verb

Depending upon the topic, how technical the details, and the purpose of the text, I recognize that the inspiration behind writing and the discipline of refining it are not necessarily equal means to the same end. As the former is required before the latter can take place, I hope to change my habits as author/ editor, that I might not concern myself to be so studied. At least, I hope to impose less restriction on what I publish– that I might regard the content of NoviceNotes™, less as a reflection of myself (assuming the site might cast into the minds of readers, something of an image of who I am), and more as a collection of notes; to recall my former tendency to share the little discoveries, that I might place more importance on recording what I’ve learned in hopes that others might find something insightful in it.

Blog Awareness

The preceding entry (dated 2009-10-08) is the first post I’ve authored in the past few months which has not rested for any length of time in a draft-state– having been published immediately upon first composition, at the very culmination of the thought, transcribed– has thus escaped the alternate, unfortunate end. Other compositions exist, however, in what I think of as the NoviceNotes: “requires editing” queue, doomed to be deleted for collecting too much proverbial dust, perhaps, should I neglect revisiting to edit and post them soon. I share my thoughts on the matter here, that the reader might consider his or her own habits in web log maintenance, and to serve as my own reminder. So, I want to get-back, as Paul McCartney advised Joe-Joe^†, and rediscover my earliest approach to writing NoviceNotes.

Premature Destruction

If a draft is destroyed because the content was rendered obsolete by new technology, maybe it is telling of why I might be better advised against placing text in draft, altogether. If I resolve that the content was too sophomoric for publishing (having become more learned of the topic in the meantime), or my own interest in a draft-item has diminished, or– self-censoring out of vanity, that foul motivator– leading myself to believe that readers are not likely to be interested in my text, then the article is subject to deletion. Having gradually adopted this draft-revision process (rather, draft-deletion) over a period of years, I have come now to see this, my tendency to save compositions in draft, is not without a relatively significant impact on NoviceNotes™.

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking^‡

Although authoring a draft, and refining it through subsequent revisions generally results in a better published article (assuming follow-through to completion), my observation prods me to evaluate the balance of my effort to maintain this web log. I must ensure I focus a realistic, or proper amount of energy toward the publishing of draft items, to develop a better awareness of the results of my effort– in general, my productivity– so I do not let viable content to rust for authoring, instead, more new drafts. I must prioritize this process of revising drafts, indeed placing it ahead of certain minutia of web log maintenance, the work which more arrogant advisors might categorize as “the fun stuff”, such as the activities involved in tweaking the CMS (or fumbling about with different CMS platforms altogether), an ever alluring diversion leading perhaps to an inflated sense of accomplishment. If any such related activities get in the way of the real work of the web log– that is, the writing; the actual log; the written journal which is the heart of the thing– after hashing these thoughts out here “on paper”, I hope to have a keener sense to see it happening.