From 7f5fa3aa1ec14000d2979e5dee03b84b5c48f083 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Thomas Voss <mail@thomasvoss.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2024 02:51:07 +0200
Subject: Add the extend post

---
 src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed |   6 +
 src/blog/extend/compose.sh  |   3 +
 src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh    |   1 +
 src/blog/extend/download.sh |   1 +
 src/blog/extend/index.gsp   | 312 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh     |   6 +
 src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh     |   2 +
 src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh     |   6 +
 src/blog/extend/program.sh  |   6 +
 src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg | Bin 0 -> 31647 bytes
 src/blog/extend/unicode.txt |  10 ++
 src/blog/index.gsp          |   6 +-
 src/style.css               |   4 +
 13 files changed, 358 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/compose.sh
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/download.sh
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/index.gsp
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/program.sh
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg
 create mode 100644 src/blog/extend/unicode.txt

(limited to 'src')

diff --git a/src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed b/src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3978bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/cleanup.sed
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+s/;[^;]*//2g
+s/\<(.)([A-Z]*)/\1\L\2/2g
+/^[^;]*;</d
+/Compatibility/d
+/Variation Selector/d
+s/[^;]*/\\\\u&/
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/compose.sh b/src/blog/extend/compose.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be159bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/compose.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+yq -0 '.mangoes.[].quote.content' <quotes.yml \
+| shuf -zn1 \
+| tr '\0' '\n'
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh b/src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5db5c36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/dmenu.sh
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+name="$(cut -d';' -f2 UnicodeData.txt | dmenu)"
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/download.sh b/src/blog/extend/download.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d6575
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/download.sh
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+$ wget '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..c0bf478
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/index.gsp
@@ -0,0 +1,312 @@
+html lang="en" {
+	head { HEAD }
+	body {
+		header {
+			div .head {
+				h1 {-Dmenu is a Godsend}
+				INCLUDE(nav.gsp)
+			}
+
+			figure .quote {
+				blockquote {
+					p {=
+						Because @code{-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 { FMT_CODE(compose.sh) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				I have a 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 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 { FMT_CODE(download.sh) }
+			}
+
+			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 { FMT_CODE(cleanup.sed) }
+			}
+
+			p {-
+				After processing, your unicode data file should look something like
+				this:
+			}
+
+			figure {
+				pre { FMT_CODE(unicode.txt) }
+			}
+
+			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 { FMT_CODE(dmenu.sh) }
+			}
+
+			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 { FMT_CODE(program.sh) }
+			}
+
+			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 greater 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 { FMT_CODE(ls-1.sh) }
+			}
+
+			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 { FMT_CODE(ls-2.sh) }
+			}
+
+			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 { FMT_CODE(ls-3.sh) }
+			}
+
+			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 beneficial for you the software user as it means you get a
+				consistent UI with consistent-behavior and -key-bindings wherever you
+				go.
+			}
+		}
+
+		footer { FOOT }
+	}
+}
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh b/src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..623bd85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/ls-1.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+$ ls | cat
+code
+doc
+down
+mail
+media
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh b/src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f70801
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/ls-2.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+$ ls
+code  doc  down  mail  media
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh b/src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e91b0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/ls-3.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+$ 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 b/src/blog/extend/program.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da5d1a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/program.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+name="$(cut -d';' -f2 UnicodeData.txt | dmenu)"
+awk -vn="$name" -F';' '$2 == n { print $1 }' UnicodeData.txt \
+| xargs printf \
+| wl-copy
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg b/src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f1f3b3
Binary files /dev/null and b/src/blog/extend/unicode.jpg differ
diff --git a/src/blog/extend/unicode.txt b/src/blog/extend/unicode.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e1dff2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/extend/unicode.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+\\u0020;Space
+\\u0021;Exclamation Mark
+\\u0022;Quotation Mark
+\\u0023;Number Sign
+\\u0024;Dollar Sign
+\\u0025;Percent Sign
+\\u0026;Ampersand
+\\u0027;Apostrophe
+\\u0028;Left Parenthesis
+\\u0029;Right Parenthesis
diff --git a/src/blog/index.gsp b/src/blog/index.gsp
index e869c7e..a54e35b 100644
--- a/src/blog/index.gsp
+++ b/src/blog/index.gsp
@@ -28,11 +28,7 @@ html lang="en" {
 			p {-Posts:}
 
 			ul {
-				/ ARTICLE(andy-val, {-Values in Andy})
-				/ ARTICLE(new-sh, {-Making a New Shell})
-				/ ARTICLE(extend, {-Extensible Scripting})
-				/ ARTICLE(fw-ec, {-Patching My Laptop’s Embedded Controller})
-
+				ARTICLE(extend, {-Extensible Scripting})
 				ARTICLE(grab, {-Making Grep Better})
 				ARTICLE(gsp, {-Writing an HTML Preprocessor (feat. Tree-Sitter)})
 				ARTICLE(nvim-ts, {-Hacking with Tree-Sitter on Neovim})
diff --git a/src/style.css b/src/style.css
index fbeef58..0202e5c 100644
--- a/src/style.css
+++ b/src/style.css
@@ -125,3 +125,7 @@ ins      { color: green; }
 del      { color: red;   }
 
 .hl-red { color: red; }
+
+aside {
+	font-style: italic;
+}
-- 
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