Add a new blog post complaining about other people

13 files changed, 357 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed.gsp b/src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ec8721
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+@span .fn {-s}@span .op {-/}@span .str {-;[^;]*}@span .op {-/}@span .op {-/}@span .str {-2g}
+@span .fn {-s}@span .op {-/}​@span .str {-\\<(.)([A-Z]*)}@span .op {-/}​@span .str {-\\1\\L\\2}@span .op {-/}@span .str {-2g}
+@span .op {-/}@span .str {-^[^;]*;<}​@span .op {-/}@span .fn {-d}
+@span .op {-/}@span .str {-Compatibility}@span .op {-/}@span .fn {-d}
+@span .op {-/}@span .str {-Variation Selector}@span .op {-/}@span .fn {-d}
+@span .fn {-s}@span .op {-/}@span .str {-[^;]*}@span .op {-/}​@span .str {-\\\\\\\\u&}@span .op {-/}
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/compose.sh.gsp b/src/blog/extend/compose.sh.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c084b5c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/compose.sh.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+@span .fn {-yq} -0 @span .str {-'.mangoes.[].quote.content'} @span .op {-<}quotes.yml @span .op {-\\}
+@span .op {-|} @span .fn {-shuf} -zn1 @span .op {-\\}
+@span .op {-|} @span .fn {-tr} @span .str {-'\\0'} @span .str {-'\\n'}
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh.gsp b/src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2993357
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+name@span .op {-=}@span .str {-"}@span .op {-$(}@span .fn {-cut} -d@span .str {-';'} -f2 UnicodeData.txt @span .op {-|} @span .fn {-dmenu}@span .op {-)}@span .str {-"}
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/download.sh.gsp b/src/blog/extend/download.sh.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..367fdfd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/download.sh.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+@span .fn {-wget} @span .str {-'https://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt'}
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/index.gsp b/src/blog/extend/index.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce2b5fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/index.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,312 @@
+html lang="en" {
+	head { m4_include(head.gsp) }
+	body {
+		header {
+			div {
+				h1 {-Dmenu is a Godsend}
+				m4_include(nav.gsp)
+			}
+
+			figure .quote {
+				blockquote {
+					p {=
+						Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it’s
+						pointless to make binary packages of it.  This keeps its userbase
+						small and elitist.  No novices asking stupid questions.
+					}
+				}
+				figcaption {-https://dwm.suckless.org}
+			}
+		}
+
+		main {
+			h2 #simple {-Simple Software}
+			p {-
+				In a @a href="/blog/gsp" {-previous article} I talked a bit about
+				software simplicity, or perhaps maybe the lack of it that exists in the
+				world.  One of my favorite parts of UNIX-like systems is the
+				composability of command-line tools.  Instead of having giant monolithic
+				programs that do everything, you have various small domain-specific
+				tools that all use a common interface — standard-input and -output.  The
+				following is a good example of this:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(compose.sh.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				I have a m4_abbr(YAML) file on my system with various fun quotes, and I
+				like to have a quote-of-the-day that’s displayed when I open a terminal.
+				I can make use of the @code{-yq} program which is specialized in
+				querying m4_abbr(YAML) files to extract the list of quotes from the
+				file.  I can then use the @code{-shuf} program to shuffle the quotes and
+				pick one at random, and finally I can use the @code{-tr} program to
+				translate null-bytes to newlines.
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Notice how all three of these tools are very specialized to a specific
+				domain; they don’t try to reinvent the wheel, instead offloading the
+				tasks they aren’t specialized to do to other tools.  @code{-yq} doesn’t
+				waste its time with functionality to shuffle lists of items because you
+				can do it with @code{-shuf} instead.  This mindset of composability
+				allows you the user to create tools that are more powerful than they
+				could have been otherwise.  Instead of hoping that all your tools offer
+				support for shuffling items @em{-and} hoping that they can shuffle
+				things in the specific way you like, you can just use the one single
+				shuffling tool @code{-shuf} everywhere.
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				In my example I used @code{-shuf} to pick a random quote, but I could
+				similarly use it to pick a random song from a playlist, or to pick a
+				random image to use as a desktop wallpaper.
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				So with the composability of the UNIX environment being such a great
+				thing, it blows my mind that people are still writing software such as
+				@code{-kitty} that try to do absolutely everything in one giant
+				monolithic program instead of keeping focused to the task at hand and
+				allowing the user to extend their tools to add in the functionality they
+				so desire.
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				figcaption {-Kitty’s unicode input screen}
+				img
+					alt="Kitty’s Unicode Input"
+					src="unicode.jpg"
+					style="width: 100%;"
+				{}
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Some of you have surely already figured out what my issue is with what
+				Kitty has done here, and why I think this is shitty software design.
+				For those that haven’t, allow me to ask you a question:
+				@em{-what would be better than unicode input in your terminal?}
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				The answer is simple: @em{-unicode input everywhere.}
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Why should you be limited to unicode input in your terminal?  What if
+				you’re texting your friend or sending an email, and want to include a
+				unicode symbol such as ‘™’, or want to properly refer to a site you
+				visited such as Ta’ Ħaġrat?  Perhaps you even have a friend whose
+				surname is Mäkelä.  Or maybe — you just want to send your friends a
+				middle-finger emoji sometimes.
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a @em{-global} menu for unicode input?
+				Well turns out it’s actually really damn easy to do yourself, and
+				renders all that Kitty code absolutely useless.
+			}
+
+			h2 #scripting {-Writing the Script}
+			p {-
+				The first thing you’re probably going to need if you want to have your
+				own unicode-input tool is a list of all the unicode characters out
+				there.  Luckily for you, I already went through the hell that is the
+				@a href="https://unicode.org" {-Unicode website} to find it for you.
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(download.sh.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				You can check out the file for yourself if you want.  It’s got a bunch
+				of information in it — a lot of which is really useless for our
+				purposes.  There are also a bunch of control characters and other things
+				in there that I personally don’t care for, so those can probably be
+				removed too.  If it tickles your fancy, I’ve written a @code{-sed}
+				script to clean up the input into something a bit nicer:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(cleanup.sed.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				After processing, your unicode data file should look something like
+				this:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(unicode.txt.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			aside {
+				p {-
+					You know how I inserted that sample of my unicode data file you see
+					right above this?  By using a small- and simple command-line tool in
+					the form of @code{-head} to grab the first 10 lines of the file, and
+					then using another small- and simple command-line tool in the form of
+					@code{-wl-copy} to copy those 10 lines to my clipboard.  Take that
+					Kitty.
+				}
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Now that you have your data file, we can begin scripting.  The first
+				thing we want is to get all of the names of the unicode characters.
+				Turns out that is a very easy task thanks to the @code{-cut} utility.
+				We can split each line on a semicolon and extract the second field with
+				a simple command, and then we can compose it together with @code{-dmenu}
+				or your preferred clone of it to present the user with a graphical list
+				of items they can pick from:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(dmenu.sh.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Notice how we can simply compose @code{-cut} and @code{-dmenu} together,
+				and just assign the result to a variable.  We can do this because these
+				are sane programs that read from standard-input, perform some simple,
+				basic task, and then print a result to standard-output.  One tool to
+				parse a file, and another tool to let the user pick a selection.
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				We have the users selection now, the @code{-$name} variable holds the
+				name of the unicode character that the user selected.  All that we need
+				now is to actually get the unicode @em{-character} of our choosing.
+				Luckily this is @em{-also} incredibly easy thanks to composition:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(program.sh.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Congratulations!  That entire script, which can be easily condensed down
+				into only 2 lines of code is all you need to create a graphical
+				interface that allows you to pick a unicode character, and then copies
+				your selection to your clipboard — and it was all done by taking simple
+				tools and combining them to make a creater application.
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				So next time you’re developing software and want to add a new feature,
+				just pause and think for a second.  Do you @em{-need} that feature?  Can
+				it be done in a better way?  It is possible to generalize your feature
+				to where it is useful outside of just your specific application?  Don’t
+				make the same mistake Kitty did.  Allow me to leave you with this quote:
+			}
+
+			figure .quote {
+				blockquote {
+					p {=
+						The talk reviews reasons for UNIX’s popularity and shows, using UCB
+						@code{-cat} as a primary example, how UNIX has grown fat.
+						@code{-cat} isn’t for printing files with line numbers, it isn’t for
+						compressing multiple blank lines, it’s not for looking at
+						non-printing ASCII characters, it’s for concatenating files.
+					}
+					p {=
+						We are reminded that @code{-ls} isn’t the place for code to break a
+						single column into multiple ones, and that @code{-mailnews}
+						shouldn’t have its own @code{-more} processing or joke encryption
+						code.
+					}
+				}
+				figcaption {-USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings, 1983}
+			}
+
+			h2 #good-bad {-The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly}
+			p {-
+				I would like to take a moment to point out some examples of
+				composability done right, and some examples of features that are
+				actively harmful in the pursuit of the UNIX ideal.
+			}
+
+			h3 {-Ls — Bad}
+			aside {
+				p {-
+					This is already referenced in the above quote, but I added that quote
+					after this section was already written.
+				}
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				The @code{-ls} program is one of the most useful ones found in the UNIX
+				environment.  It has a simple job to perform and it does it well.  It
+				lists files in a directory.  So what’s the issue then?  Well let’s see
+				what happens when you combine @code{-ls} and @code{-cat}:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(ls-1.sh.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Ok… that looks about right.  We invoke @code{-ls} and we get a listing
+				of the current directory, newline-separated.  Well look at what happens
+				when we don’t compose it with another command:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(ls-2.sh.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Yeah… it decided to ‘prettify’ the output by putting everything on one
+				line.  If the input contains enough items it columnates them really
+				nicely for you.  Here’s an example of what it looks like when I run
+				@code{-ls} in my screenshots folder:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre {= m4_fmt_code(ls-3.sh.gsp) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Now don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that I can see more than one
+				item per-line.  But why is this specific to @code{-ls}?  It could
+				actually be really useful to be able to take arbitrary input and
+				columnate it in such a form for easier consumption.  The @code{-column}
+				program does exist on Linux systems, but it is far inferior to what
+				@code{-ls} provides.  In the ideal world, @code{-ls} would simply
+				display one filename per-line with a better @code{-column} command, and
+				you could compose the two to get a nicer viewing experience for your
+				files.
+			}
+
+			h3 {-Tabbed — Good}
+			p {-
+				What is one thing that almost all your graphical applications have in
+				common?  They all have tabs.  Your web browser has tabs, your terminal
+				probably supports tabs (and if it doesn’t, I bet you use @code{-tmux}).
+				Your code editors have tabs, and even modern email-clients have tabs.
+				Now let me ask you: why do we always reinvent the tab?
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				Suckless — the same people that brought us @code{-dmenu} — also created
+				a lesser-known application called @code{-tabbed}.  You can
+				@a
+					href="https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/"
+					target="_blank"
+				{-find it here}.
+				It’s quite a simple piece of software.  You simply run it together with
+				another program (such as the @code{-st} terminal) and it adds
+				tab-support to it.  Not only does this reduce code-duplication, but it
+				also is benefitial for you the software user as it means you get a
+				consistent UI with consistent-behavior and -key-bindings wherever you
+				go.
+			}
+		}
+
+		hr{}
+
+		footer { m4_footer }
+	}
+}
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh.gsp b/src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..389a58d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+@span .p {-thomas} @span .pp {-~} @span .p {-〉}@span .fn {-ls} @span .op {-|} @span .fn {-cat}
+code
+doc
+down
+mail
+media
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh.gsp b/src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd4fc09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+@span .p {-thomas} @span .pp {-~} @span .p {-〉}@span .fn {-ls}
+code  doc  down  mail  media
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh.gsp b/src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a436c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+@span .p {-thomas} @span .pp {-screen} @span .p {-〉}@span .fn {-ls}
+…
+2023-08-03_18:07:58.png  2023-10-05_16:08:17.png  2023-11-18_20:54:30.png
+2023-08-04_16:17:22.png  2023-10-05_20:24:05.png  2023-11-18_21:07:07.png
+2023-08-04_17:50:39.png  2023-10-05_20:24:21.png  2023-11-18_21:07:48.png
+2023-08-05_16:05:07.png  2023-10-05_20:32:49.png  2023-11-18_21:07:57.png
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/program.sh.gsp b/src/blog/extend/program.sh.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..054a750
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/program.sh.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+name@span .op {-=}@span .str {-"}@span .op {-$(}@span .fn {-cut} -d@span .str {-';'} -f2 UnicodeData.txt @span .op {-|} @span .fn {-dmenu}@span .op {-)}@span .str {-"}
+@span .fn {-awk} -vn=@span .str {-"$name"} -F@span .str {-';'} @span .str {-'$2 == n { print $1 \}'} UnicodeData.txt @span .op {-\\}
+| @span .fn {-xargs} printf @span .op {-\\}
+| @span .fn {-wl-copy}
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg b/src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f1f3b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/unicode.txt.gsp b/src/blog/extend/unicode.txt.gsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbc0da5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/unicode.txt.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+\\\\u0020@span .op {-;}Space
+\\\\u0021@span .op {-;}Exclamation Mark
+\\\\u0022@span .op {-;}Quotation Mark
+\\\\u0023@span .op {-;}Number Sign
+\\\\u0024@span .op {-;}Dollar Sign
+\\\\u0025@span .op {-;}Percent Sign
+\\\\u0026@span .op {-;}Ampersand
+\\\\u0027@span .op {-;}Apostrophe
+\\\\u0028@span .op {-;}Left Parenthesis
+\\\\u0029@span .op {-;}Right Parenthesis
diff --git a/src/blog/index.gsp b/src/blog/index.gsp
index 030ad3e..f014029 100644
--- a/src/blog/index.gsp
+++ b/src/blog/index.gsp
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ html lang="en" {
 			p {-Posts:}
 
 			ul {
+				m4_article(extend, {-Extensible Scripting})
 				m4_article(nvim-ts, {-Hacking with Tree-Sitter on Neovim})
 				m4_article(gsp, {-Writing an HTML Preprocessor (feat. Tree-Sitter)})
 				m4_article(fw-ec, {-Patching My Laptop’s Embedded Controller})
diff --git a/src/style.css b/src/style.css
index 53d9499..842e95d 100644
--- a/src/style.css
+++ b/src/style.css
@@ -187,6 +187,10 @@ dl {
 .cnst { color: var(--blue);   }
 .op   { color: var(--lesser); }
 
+/* Terminal prompt */
+.p  { color: #24DFC4; font-weight: bold; }
+.pp { font-weight: bold; }
+
 .diff-ins  { color: var(--green);  }
 .diff-del  { color: var(--red);    }
 .diff-loc  { color: var(--lesser); }
@@ -274,6 +278,7 @@ dl {
 	abbr.totp::before { content: 'Time-Based One-Time Password';      }
 	abbr.uri::before  { content: 'Uniform Resource Identifier';       }
 	abbr.xml::before  { content: 'Extensible Markup Language';        }
+	abbr.yaml::before { content: 'YAML Ain’t Markup Language™';      }
 }
 
 @media (max-width: 600px) {