Thursday, May 20, 2004

Textarea, You Are A Sunken Nothing

Yes, I  mean it, Textarea.  You are a Sunken Nothing. You have a beveled edge, but you are a worthless thing to jot upon.  Bad pad!  BAD PAD!!

In my life, I write small things on small squares of paper and I write big things on a few medium rectangles of paper.  But, you, you make everyone type everything in a small square.

You have no features, gramps.  No, wait.  You can hard wrap.

Great, look at all my text.  It's 
got your shoulder size now.
Everyone can see how small you are
for me to write in.  Your only 
feature is driving me insane!

Your soft wrap is too soft, Textarea.  I can't tell a wrapped space from a new line.  You hide everything from me.  So I feel like your mind is somewhere else. You are so distant, you are in Fiji.  And my line feeds are in the sea or somewhere.

Do you accept tabs?  Oop.  Well, my premature article is published now.

You are the most popular text editor.  You are the worst text editor.  Even Notepad has search and replace.  And I can make it bigger and smaller.

You won't budge.  Sometimes when I use my mouse's scrollwheel, I get all focus-confused between you and the browser and I start scrolling you rather than the browser page and then it's like _running on mud_.

And it's embarassing.  No one likes to flail around like that.

Okay.  Well, then.  I am making w3m my ambassador to the WikiWikis now.  I refuse to coddle you anymore.  I've found a companion who can respect my $EDITOR.  And I will never export EDITOR=textarea.

And, be warned, my blithe nemesis, someday you will be supplanted!  Someday the usability pundits will hack you to bits with hard-wrapped machetes and we will have a new _area_.  A 21st century miniedit _area_.

A goodarea.  A greatarea.  A new era of areas.

Some kind of shaded, static text window showing the opening text.  And when you click on it, it opens the full text in your favorite editor.  Or into its own great, good default editor.  With @Replace...@, @Go to...@, syntax highlighting, smothered in hotkeys and shortcut sauce.

Someday.  Someday.

Please, can it be tomorrow?

07:59 PM

disoriented?

why the lucky stiff
is a computer progg'er and aspiring author with no true achievements under his belt.

except there was that time when i vacuumed all of Greenland for them.

email? here.

Books:

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (Blixy Tees)

Blogs:

quiet

RedHanded

Stories:

The Bobby Wolves

Stunt Runner

Comics:

Holy Bible: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven

The Open Window: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine

Lost Children, Lost Children, Lost Children, See Such Feverish Castles: one

Articles:

The Fully Upturned Bin

Seeing Metaclasses Clearly

What's Shiny and New in Ruby 1.8.0?

A Quick Guide to SQLite and Ruby

The Little Coder's Predicament

Wearing Ruby Slippers To Work

Incidents: (29) The Grieving Boar (28) The Story Life Doesn't Explain (27) The Life Guy (26) The Jump Wanter (25) Kimothy's Mouth (24) Speaking Of Flutes (23) The Advisor (22) Wristwatches (21) The Queen-Sized (20) The Tandem Bicycle (19) The Little Piece of Cloth (18) Milk Powers (17) Javek and the Candle (16) The Skier (15) The Man Who Happened to Have Legs (14) The Man Who Happened to Reach Up (13) Duck Typing (12) The Incident (11) The End (10) Ghosts (9) The Man (8) Waking (7) Water (6) Birthstones (5) Ignored (4) The Berkowitz Manuevre (3) Regrets (2) Emptiness (1) The Milkman Who Couldn't Sleep

Five-Minute Plays for Twins Who Don't Have Their Other Twin With Them and An Unlimited Supply of Animals: Swan, Otter

Quatrains: 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 1.0

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