xL8 - Grant Carpenter

Switching... to Vista

2006-10-20T19:44:38Z

About a year ago, I got nutty and bought a beautiful 15" PowerBook G4. I had been running OS X in an emulator, I was teaching myself Rails and, to a certain extent, I was bored of XP. I gave in to some strange, the other--I committed to switching my digital life to a Mac.

Doing so was not only enjoyable but switching pain was nominal. Yes, there's a learning curve, or more appropriately an information curve... what do I use instead of EmEditor? (survey says: Smultron), anything like TopStyle for CSS? (survey gleefully says: CSSEdit), etc. Most of the effort was spent just learning the ecosystem.

When all was said and done, I was happy doing everything that wasn't work on my Mac. There was minor impedance around sharing data and some niches. Music sucked for me on the Mac. I prefer real live ripped CDs and subscription services--to me, iTMS is idiotic. So I kept my music on my Media Center and avoided iTunes.

There were other small areas like this, but for the most part, I was fully converted and happy.

I had switched, I was ready for my commercial.

Now, mind you, my personal history with Windows dates dates back to college--Windows 286, yikes. My work is very specifically focused on the Microsoft stack. I have been using Windows for what seems like eons. I know my way around, I know the good, I know the bad.

I actually wouldn't say I have a strong bias for or against Windows. I've been doing this long enough to have had any shades of zealous idealism beaten out of me. If something works, I really couldn't care much about it's provenance or personal life. If you think I'm a Micro$oft fanboi (tm), I'm not going to convince you otherwise and I'm not going to try.

Besides, I really like the Mac and I really like OS X. I enjoy using it a lot more than XP at this stage.

In a year of cheating on Windows with my Mac, I never stopped surprised at how many great applications are out there for Mac users. I love Quicksilver, ditto TextMate, Mail.app is probably the best IMAP client I've ever used.

I love being able to rsyncx to my FW800 drive to back up my machine and then be able to boot off that same backup drive like it was plain old occidental arithmetic. UAC works like it should. Colloquy makes mIRC look like a pizzaface, Adium is similarly beautiful, NetNewsWire is right there with FeedDemon for best aggregator. CSSEdit makes even lovable TopStyle seem awkward. Xyle Scope is mind-blowingly useful and well executed.

Combined with iTerm, I grew to love the *nixy good ness at the command prompt and would have to say I prefer it to the comparable Windows flavors (including PowerShell, though I haven't invested myself in that yet). Dictionary integration, though not universal, is way better than popping open the browser. Did I mention Quicksilver? Ridiculously addictive--someone in Redmond should have committed ritual seppuke by now for not shipping something comparable in Vista (yes, yes, I know about the new Start menu, no, silly, it's not even remotely the same).

One year in, life on a Mac is totally great, no substantive complaints.

But a funny thing happened a few weeks ago. Something that I still find really surprising.

I stopped using my Mac so much. I started using it only when I had to.

Maybe I had some notes in Devon THINK that I didn't have in my wiki, maybe I didn't have the ftp credentials for a certain site anywhere but in Transmit.

At one point, my Mac was mostly powered down for a week, no love whatsoever.

What happened?

Well, for work-related reasons, I installed Vista RC1. It's surely still got its blemishes and quirks. But, for the most part, it's been extremely stable and--more importantly to the context at hand--it's pretty damn enjoyable to use.

I'll write more later about why I think Vista has won me back for my digital life, but it has that certain "it" factor that I think is at the core of OS X--it just feels right using it, it doesn't feel tired like you're logging into someone's NT 3.51 server.

I realize the world hates Vista and few things have earned Microsoft more negative pub than its delivery issues. I don't think what I'm experienced will be easy for most to understand, but, at the end of the day, it's working for me.

I can get what I want to get done on either platform. In my case, Vista has started to feel as comfortable and rewarding as using OS X was. Choosing one right now might be a bit like Sophie's Choice, but since I can use Vista seamlessly for both work and personal life, I think I'm effectively switched back.

Does this mean I'm going to have turn in all of my corduroy clothing?

Origami = UMPC

2006-03-07T02:22:00Z

I've been reading a fair bit of the Origami/UMPC hype. Alexandria actually looks more intriguing to me. Intel looks to be staging a partner site to build an enthusiast community around the device. It's running off of Community Server (hide that fav.ico on the teaser page, next time) and I was curious if there was more than just the intro video. A product usage page pretty much confirms that the UMPC will have wireless and gps/presence and that it will work well as a media device.

What's it for? Directly from the FAQ:

QUESTION: What is a UMPC?

ANSWER: An Ultra Mobile PC is a small device that you can carry and use to access your favorite online games, videos, music, TV shows and more on the go, with the quality you're accustomed to to when you're in front of your PC.

The UMPC also connects you to people via email, VoIP, Instant Messaging and texting, and since it can identify its environment, the UMPC can bring you information according to your location, like the best local restaurants.

Additionally, the UMPC also offers a long battery life, so you can access your information for long periods of time while on the road.

QUESTION: Is the UMPC going to replace the laptop or PDA?

ANSWER: No. The UMPC is a mobile device designed to access online media and content on the go. It is not designed to process lots of work or write a college thesis. You have your laptop or desktop for these tasks. Instead, the UMPC is a great PC companion.

The UMPC is powerful enough to provide a great gaming, music or video experience. People will have to decide whether they want to replace their dedicated electronic device with the UMPC.

The pictures look like they're closer to real than the various mockups floating around--I've thought these were sort of when one of the car mags posts spy pictures with all the bad fairings and tape. In one shot, you can see a slideout keyboard as the person thumb keys with the device in a portrait orientation. In other shots, it's being used in landscape mode with thumb buttons gameboy/psp style. And let's throw in a shot of a woman shopping--because ladies do like to clock it down at the mall, device or no device.

People keep trying to define what the device is in terms of existing devices. It looks powerful to do most pda tasks easily, although it's too big to be a compact in-the-pocket pda. If you rock the man-purse, then, yes, it's a pda. Media uses look like they're front and center (couple it with Alexandria and maybe Cupertino should check the rearview). Size-wise it has nothing to do with the portable music device form factor--but add video and it's large for the category but plausible. It's smaller and less full-featured than even an ultraportable notebook or tablet, but it can offer a fair amount of these devices functionality and extensibility in more portable and somewhat more durable form factor.

I add these up and see a device that isn't really built to replace each of these items head-to-head. It looks like it's geared to offer a single device that tries to connect what are currently pretty much activity silos. It's an interesting idea. It seems a little large and pricey to catch like wildfire (based upon initial reporting). That doesn't, however, make it uninteresting at all. The synchronization and remote desktop story should likewise be pretty interesting to follow.

Lastly, the usual partisan commentary from both the pro- and anti-Microsoft factions has been particularly comical in this round. Loving or hating Microsoft really takes on its best form when it happens over something fairly abstract. They should save the marketing dollars and just do Jobs-style surprise launches... although if Redmond adopted this approach, the Apple*nix moonbats will have to recast it as some inherent ulterior weakness.

Unit Testing in all VS .NET 2005 Editions: +1

2005-07-15T04:59:00Z

I had really spent any time using VSTS Beta 2 bits for Whidbey--sadly enough, I just don't have the cycles lately. In putting about, however, I was really enamored with the fact that the unit testing functionality in the IDE was even more seamless than things like TestDriven.NET have made it. Unfortunately, I installed the July CTP of the Professional edition and unit testing isn't supported at all.

I recall a lot of testing functionality was VSTS-only from the original pricing release flap, but I never really truly believe Microsoft was this silly. Google this and that, and lo/behold, unit testing is VSTS only. Pointless really, it will just create third-party market opportunity and overall the community will probably end up with a less functional/seamless way of sticking with nunit, but it won't cost an extra couple grand.

Not much of a suprise, but whoever did the edition partitioning this way doesn't really know much about development. It's some relation to creating a product line where only certain editions have an interactive debugger.

Using a Fraction of the Functionality is Bad?

2005-07-09T17:14:00Z

Via Mike Gunderloy's Daily Grind, I was reading about Office 12 possibly making some of its interface elements even more task contextual. The old people-don't-use-even-a-fraction-of-Office's-functionality chestnut reared its head.

And what's the point of upgrading to the next Office if you don't even use a fraction of your current Office 2003 or Office XP or Office 2000? Clearly, Microsoft needs to solve that conundrum.

I've heard this dozens of times before, but upon further review it really just seems like a silly pretext and one that I lot of people seem to consider self-evident.

Sure I like modular software, and, yes, I like applications that align directly with my needs. Smallish task-dedicated applications have an amazingly successful track record.

Word, however, is a broad mass-market application that has to be all things to all people. If I never use Word's Table of Authorities functionality, does it minimize my experience that it's been included so that lawyers can make use of it? I rarely do footnotes, but how is it a negative that I could do any myriad number of things with them if I needed to?

The wrong-headed conclusion that typically is inferred from the 10%-of-functionality argument is that Word is so hard to use no human really knows how to use much of it. In reality, it's an incredibly broad application that can perform a ridiculously extensive number of tasks across the majority of the planet's document authoring needs.

People don't individually use a large percentage of Word's functionality because the set of tasks that people as a whole perform while creating documents is enormously diverse.

The flawed conclusion that Office applications are bloated because they have functionality for the masses is frequently cited in articles questioning the merits of upgrading. The equally specious conclusion is that there is no need for Office innovation and improvements--there is nothing left to add to today's mainstream office applications.

I disagree. I don't see how making existing broad functionality even more usable isn't compelling. Outlook 2003 added new features and improved existing usability. Frankly, it was personally very compelling. If Word and Excel can be shepherded in similar directions, that would be significant and possibly worth the incremental costs.

Ultimately this argument about percentage of feature use is oft-cited but it really doesn't reveal much of anything at all. Would I rather use a significantly less usable office suite with a feature set that included every feature I regularly use but not one more? If this was Scandinavian furniture you might get me to bite on that.

In any event, the feature set specifically mentioned in the article sounds like Personalized Menus which I typically turn off immediately. So it's not a good direction per se, but the Outlook 2003 reference may mean it's just not well defined yet or lost in communication.

Subtext announcement/roadmap

2005-05-06T17:52:15Z

Someone sent me a link to the announcement of and roadmap for Subtext, an open source fork of .Text. A few months ago, I commented on prior forking ruminations and I still think it's counter-productive. One of the comments I read over on the announcement post was "why not contribute to CS or dasBlog?" Exactly. dasBlog is open, it doesn't start with a period and if you think writing a sql provider for dasBlog is tough, I don't know how you can reasonably intend to ever accomplish everything on the roadmap.

That said Subtext is a good name and editing old posts and clearing tons of spam comments are things even I hate about the admin interface. The roadmap has some nice additions on it. I'm snickering about the NDoc item a little--that would be useful, I'm just not sure on the cost:benefit aspects. Reverting to single blog mode is a smart choice as it will greatly simplify configuration and installation, which was always the biggest support headache.

I'm conflicted about people are taking work that Scott and others did and starting their own project in it--it's the very nature of open source, that much I realize, but at the same time I really would personally only want to start a project from scratch or by being involved with the original founders.

I think I'm presumptively cynical about forking .Text into whatever; there are just so many new open source projects that would benefit the .NET community, I'm not sure if it really needs YABA.

File, Print Fedex Kinkos

2005-05-05T04:49:24Z

A couple of months ago, I carped about Avis' SmartClient being neat but largely impractical. In the interest of equal time, File, Print Fedex Kinkos' is something I find useful. The computers are so slow at the local Kinkos, printing a color tabloid schematic can be a 20 minute affair (at 45 cents/min). It's routinely a $20/40-minute thing--with the File, Print client, I offload all the time and work to the store and it costs me about a buck-eighty per print. Much better... for me at least.

Additional note: the client itself is nicely executed. Small, responsive with multi-mb files. Well played. Mimeo also bears mentioning here, but they lack the pick up option and it doesn't seem as convenient for ultra-small batches like I'm doing right now. The Mimeo client is also impressive; it trades some of the simplicity and ease-of-use of the Kinko's client for what appears to be a more extensive feature set. The next time I need manuals or other volume docs, they would definitely go back in the mix.

This would all be best filed under the Dept. of Duh: naturally rich clients like these make sense when they are consistent with the seamless execution of a business need. In both the case of Mimeo and Kinko's, they're extending client-side rich applications/interactions, namely File | Print. Switching gears to a browser-based app is an impedence and this is where keeping it rich makes all the sense in the world. Rich printing interaction also just makes sense because that's what users have been conditioned to expect since the rise of the GUI--as metaphors go it's a time-honored chesnut. In the case of Avis, none of these things were really true. If anything, booking car reservations is an interaction we're accustomed to doing thing since the mid-/late-90's.

Cristobal DiMarco

2005-04-11T12:47:00Z

I'm not a major golf fan, but I've found the major events can make for solid sports drama--even more so if you actually care who wins.

Yesterday, I was rooting for the guy who sat next to me in 9th grade Spanish class to pull off the upset: Cristóbal DiMarco, aka Chris.

Tiger's shot on the 16th at Augusta will probably be what everyone remembers a year from now. People won't even remember the unheralded guy playing alongside Tiger who, in the end, just missed pulling off a classic upset against a champion of Jordanian stature.

He didn't fold his cards after Tiger chased him down via a ridiculous string of birdies in the morning. He didn't even quit after the miracle on 16. Sure it's golf and not war, or even Jack Lambert playing on a broken leg--but the guy showed a lot more grit out there than I ever saw from him on a vocab quiz about items you might encounter on un viaje.

Chris will win a major in the next year or two and even if he doesn't it was sort of heady stuff for me. Just some guy next to you in class nearly 20 years ago--he almost beat Tiger Woods to win The Masters yesterday. Awesome, or as they apparently say in Japan: psycho.

Now if only the other famous sportsman from my high school wasn't the loathsome captain of the Red Sox...

JVC: In the Can?

2005-03-25T17:47:52Z

This isn't a knock against Scoble per se, but it just struck me unusual that somewhere out there, the poor folks who worked hard to bring a new digitial video camera to market over at JVC are going to get wind of the fact that Robert Scoble is doing a review (that will probably be seen by a lot of people) of their fine little device in a bathroom. "I spent nine months designing that camera and now it's color vibrancy is getting bashed in the john..."

If I'm choosing video blog content, I'd rather mine involve the cupcakes at Magnolia (although I think this was staged because there wasn't the usual rugby scrum to get a fresh cupcake).

MSDN/VSTS Details: First Sign of the Apocalypse

2005-03-24T16:53:09Z

Actually, there have been many signs of the Apocalypse, most of which have involved Xtina, Gallagher, or both (and none of which involve the far superior Apocalypse 91 flavor of the end of time). But I digress and exaggerate, all without even breaking stride. The new MSDN/Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) pricing isn't the end of the world.

Frans Bouma's had one of the better elaborations I've seen because he makes the simple point that the enterprise developers using Rational's suite aren't the only people who want and need integrated unit testing, design, deployment, issue tracking, etc. And reading this it also occurs to me: the toolchain is a consideration, but the reason they're not a big fixture as a development platform in enterprise shops isn't really because they couldn't go toe-to-toe with IBM Rational. At the enterprise shops I've worked with, it runs a lot deeper and it's a lot more engrained than offering an integrated development suite. Enterprise shops look down on Microsoft's development tools because they look down on Microsoft's software and track record. This isn't universal but at a lot of financial institutions here in the capital of the world, there's a definite bias and it starts way before we get to "SourceSafe sucks, ClearCase costs US$ 9,000 per seat so it must be great..." (they don't use ClearCase either, so who knows who this hypercritical market Microsoft is chasing is...).

So, yeah, I get the tactics, I don't think the strategy is going to work. Microsoft thought the enterprise shops would kick J2EE to the curb when .NET rolled out. "It's like J2EE but from Redmond." Ummm, no. Today, nearly five years later, .NET has made a lot of inroads, at large and small enterprises. At large J2EE shops, this progress is frequently in the areas where J2EE isn't, it's around the margins. The main trading gateways still run on J2EE and don't need to be migrated. A new tier for the online retail banking application may use .NET to expose legacy data via ws. Which is all to say, no one threw J2EE out of bed just because Microsoft had a solid offering to compete with it at a highly attractive price.

It's likely VSTS will receive the same sort of greating. "Okay, thanks for coming, sorry you were running so late." So we'll see if this an ill-advised strategy or not--that's not really central to what I think is interesting.

I think two things are interesting. 1.) Microsoft is again out of touch with its developer base. The fact that there are three versions of VSTS is silly and that you need a different SKU to mix job functions that get mixed and matched in teams everywhere, everyday is even sillier still. The fact that Microsoft doesn't get why it's developers buy MSDN Universal subscriptions in the first place (as a catch all so they're covered in any scenario) and the fact that the left hands are actively not understanding why the right hands are doing this--well it seems to suggest this decision got made up at the Eric Rudder level or wherever and it got made by someone who doesn't understand what most of the existing MSDN subscriber base really does with their days.

The second thing this made me realize is a bit more surprising. This has probably happened elsewhere in small doses, but to me this seems to be one of the first times Microsoft is eyeballing it's loyal developers and seeing a direct revenue target instead of an indirect market opportunity.

Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.

Microsoft is looking to make serious money off of tools directly. Where it's historically focused on its tools to sell OS, Office and server licensing, now Microsoft seems like it's seeing developers as being more valuable as a direct revenue source than as market influencers.

I'm less worried though about the direct effects. It's always a market-based system, and I think there's every chance any gaps can be filled by better products from companies like JetBrains (who will, say, see this as an opportunity to provide some of the VSTS type functionality in an IDE that isn't stratospherically priced...). The market wants these things, it just doesn't appear Visual Studio will be the only place it looks for them. This is probably a good thing in terms of healthy ecosystems.

I am however worried about the shift in focus at Microsoft about the value of developers. The VB developers have a lot of alienated folks among their numbers. The aggregate number of pissed off developers seems to be increasing on a number of new fronts nearly every day now.

43 Folders: Useful, Short-sighted or Both?

2005-03-21T13:43:48Z

I've been subscribed to 43 Folders for a while now. I can't say it's proven as indispensible as I thought it might when I initially happened upon it, but for whatever reason it was growing on me. Then the author announces that they have a new wiki and mentions a pre-existing non-Windows policy. This is just funny in a third-grade sort of way. "I'm all for curing cancer, but only if you do it with a Mac...", is the quote that first comes to mind, but whatever [1]. I'm primarily a Windows user, but I am also Mac sometimes Mac user, sometimes a *nix user. I work in all departments.

Seeing people discuss ways to implement GTD using a Mac and using a platform-agnostic approach doesn't bother me, it's sort of amusing that having someone chime in on the wiki that there's a great app on Windows for keeping life hacked is going to put people's panties in a twist. Normally, I'd just write it off as typically childish platform zealotry, but it was surprising to see it from a site that otherwise seemed well-conceived and executed. It was sort of like if Zeldman or someone in a mac-centric place (and well-established) stopped allowing any reference to Windows on ALA or his site. Sure.

Anyway, good software is good software, run it where you can, run it where you need to. It's a shame people don't get that. I wish I could run SubEthaEdit on a PC, I wish I could run Visual Studio on a Mac, sue me.

[1] I'm not a great fact-checker, but Steve Jobs said this in 1997. Never mind, that's a lie on my part, but people aren't thorough readers and maybe at least one person will go around falsely attributing that quote.

CS Migration (When Less Is Actually More)

2005-03-15T20:39:03Z

It was sort of a long, lazy effort, but I believe everything's migrated over to CS 1.0 now on the shared server this place sits on. Here's my net takeaway: it's still just not easy enough, you have to be a motivated 'hobbyist' with these things or you'd never stray very far from the Blogger/TypePad hosted confines.

I was thinking of this after spending more time than I wanted writing nasty migration queries to map migrated CS post ids to their old non-identity .Text values (the migration tools do a good job with the data, but the one I used doesn't try to keep the old post ids consistent... which is a reasonably important consideration lest old links blow up everywhere). Cursors ahoy. And my mind wandered to Basecamp and my new recreational study effort, Rails.

For the uninitiated, Basecamp is clean and easy to use and very hyped in the designer community. It has a fair number of limitations, I seem to come up with a new time I use it. It can't quite do everything I want from something in it's space yet, but it does a lot of what I want and it does that part well. Nonetheless, I still find myself liking the application and rooting for it to keep succeeding.

But contrast Basecamp and how users really seem to warm to it and SharePoint. We've used SharePoint at the last three firms I've worked at to serve as the de facto project space. People use it as little as possible, and with all its rich functionality, it seems to be more tool than most people are willing to absorb. Project sites tend to rot and rarely become the epicenter of a project's communication space. Basecamp projects probably have better results, but then again, this might also be because Basecamp projects are simpler than a large application development effort--this is a sweeping generalization, it would be cool to see what a large project that Basecamp fits perfectly looks like (including the human/team factors).

Anyway, this is purely general/anecdotal, maybe the lesson here is to not start from exponentially more functionality than the bare minimum users require to find something useful. This seems self-evident, but how many times do a set of requirements reflect what people would like to have in a product envisioned as mature vs. a project that was egregiously immature but just barely useful.

Start at the barest of minimum thresholds and execute that set of functionality extremely well--be in the top 10% as far as how you do your well-rehearsed if small repertoire of tricks. Build users by being good not broad, lovable but not complete, and add what's most in demand as you move forward. It's effectively an agile business model or product life cycle,

Which is almost exactly what the guys at 37s have said they're doing a number of times. It's sinking in, but everyone says things like this; it's sinking in from watching them, not just listening to them.

This seems like a more centered way to build software and it is really only viable with iterative/agile processes (and likewise probably works best in hosted application contexts). That said, the typical business challenge I seem to find on the doorstep is orders of magnitude more complicated than what Basecamp automates... to say nothing of truly minimally useful being largely inconceivable in today's for-hire engagement models.

Basecamp is a fitting name in more ways than one, if you could build more applications with this style of bottom up planning and execution, a journey of small incremental pushes upward, I'm guessing the world would have itself a lot more applications people loved.

Hopefully, as I get up to speed on Rails, coming at this problem from the execution side of the equation will confirm that making less > more true is reliably and practically achievable.

Book Avis. Why though?

2005-02-23T16:08:00Z

For whatever reason I was looking at some of the smart client work Realtime Enterprises was touting on their site.

The Book Avis Outlook add-in elicited a half-typical response.

Let's preface this: I think this is inherently cool.

That said, it may not necessarily translate into 'useful', 'necessary' or 'viable'.

I installed, entered my wizard number, made a reservation. Okay. I can do all of that today at avis.com. Having it native in outlook may save me 30 to 60 seconds (I tend to copy and paste the reservation details into Outlook appt).

So okay some time was saved. I'm not sure it even gets near the initial installation investment (say 2 minutes), any maintenance effort over time (presumably minimal), any degradation in Outlook performance or stability (presumably slight) and the inherent impedence between doing all of my other travel on the web vs. switching from browser for flights and hotels to Outlook for cars, etc.

Meaning, yes there may be some small increase in the discrete user experience by moving from browser to smart client. At the same time, is the inherent cost of having a different metaphor from the rest of the relevant world far steeper than any small bits of transcational time savings?

I like smart clients. I'm just not sure this application is anything but neat.

PatternShare.org good, FlexWiki legibility bad

2005-02-02T05:02:00Z

MSDN's new pattern workspace is yet another promising development from Redmond, it's nice to see them putting significant resources into the space. So yes I appreciate it... but does anyone realize that just about every dang FlexWiki site out there (with the exception of Chan9) renders as like 4-point type if you're not using IE (which, naturally, you really shouldn't be using in 2005).

I see a lot of bad IE-only sites, I'm surprised something that's made the rounds as much as FlexWiki and is also fairly developer-centric can't get the css worked out to render itself legibly.

So I Lied: .Text 096 build instructions

2005-01-29T05:55:00Z

Well the 096 source doesn't compile, but it did take nearly 8 minutes to figure out why. There were actual syntax errors checked into vaultpub by someone random person. Once you fix those issues, remove and then re-add one reference, the whole solution will build just fine.

1. Download source into a directory. Example D:\DT096. If you're getting it from vaultpub, I'll leave the Vault 101 stuff to someone else, but just make sure you make the source writeable at some point if you're going to work with it.

2. Set up an IIS virtual named Dottextweb pointing to the .\DottextWeb folder. Example D:\DT096\Dottextweb [1]

3. Open VS .NET 2003. Pull up the solution file. Example D:\DT096\DotText.sln.

4. If you downloaded from vaultpub between late November and now you'll need to fix two wierd things. I wouldn't even call them bugs, someone just checked in some odd stuff that breaks the build (committed to vaultpub on 11/24/04 by user 'admin', i.e., not Scott, myself or anyone I know...).

There are three instances of spuriously inserted text reading 'add a comment' involved.

Dottext.Framework\EntryHandling\IEntryFactory.cs: Remove lines 1 & 2
Dottext.Framework\EntryHandling\DefaultHandlers\EntryValidationHandler.cs: Remove lines 1, 2, 24 and 25.

Note: if you haven't already downloaded, this step should be moot because I fixed these two things and committed them to vaultpub. So future pulls from there shouldn't have this issue. I wonder if this was Dragnet testing :)

4. This is a long-standing headache, that never got reconciled. Remove the Dottext.Framework reference from the DottextWeb project. Save everything. Add the reference to the Dottext.Framework prohect back. Sure, this is stupid. If you don't do this, the web project acts like it doesn't have a ref to Framework and everything goes south. There was some discussion about the source/cause of this before, I honestly can't recall anything at all... although this is yet another good reason to never ever use a web project. [1] If I were to fix it, I would probably just remove the solution from scc and go with a nant script as the official way to build it.

5. Rebuild Soution. It should work. 6 project build and 1 is skipped (intentional). I just followed my own instructions with a fresh pull from vaultpub on a clean Virtual Server instance, it does work.

That's your 0.96 source, compiled. Getting the database synched takes more work. There are some posts on the old asp.net forums .Text section discussing how to move 095 schema to 096. It's way fun. You can download a beta of CS while you're reading the myriad of relevant posts.

[1] You can name this whatever you want, just change the .\DottextWeb\DottextWeb.csproj.webinfo url value. I try to never use web projects anymore, just do them as libraries and change the project type. Saves about 4,900 headaches.

.Text 0.96 Silliness

2005-01-29T03:51:00Z

I'm sort of oblivious to these things because my job's not as fun as Scott's, inasmuch as I don't get to work on fun things like CS during the day. Someone forwarded me a post about things people have written about 0.96 and .Text's future in general. It's sort of silly really.

Telligent's Community Server 1.0 is the next version of .Text and it's going to go a lot further a lot faster than .Text. People should be lining up to help Scott, Rob, Jason, Terry and all those folks push CS where it could go as a collaboration platform rather than trying to revive .Text as a standalone product.

The presumptive conclusion that CS is bloated and .Text isn't is pretty silly imo. Download the CS betas and play with them. If you don't realize pretty quickly that CS is going to end up being vastly superior to .Text, you should go on over to TypePad and get a nice hosted account that will keep you from injuring yourself.

More than anything, the tone of people who were posting about this was disappointing to me. Scott did a ton of work on .Text and, if I'm writing the retrospective, he basically helped kickstart a Microsoft-focused blog scene with weblogs.asp.net. My thinking is that people should just say thanks and little else, not bitch about why CS took so long or ruminate on how Rob is on some quest to ruin the world by refactoring ASP.NET Forums, nGallery and .Text into one coherent community platform.

Anyway, I'll see if I still have my 0.97 source around, I think I trashed it. People really shouldn't go that direction but they can if they choose, even if it's counter-productive. At the same time I'm not sure how it can be that complicated getting 0.96 up and running, I posted multiple sets of instructions in the www.asp.net forum about doing just that.

And to whomever things it should be renamed dotText, I understand the logic, but that's silly. It is what it is and no one seems to be having a problem using .NET at the beginning or end of the sentence, lol.

People just feel too entitled to things these days... you kids stay out of my yard!