Smilax.org

Smilax ™ is an internet server with a wiki interface for building websites that has been in use for about two years. The current implementation is written in Tcl but the source is not generally available yet. The author is Henry Strickland <strick> of yak.net. Some representative sites are listed in the mega_changes.

Smilax News

Posted on 2005-09-01 by strick:

Markov3 (by Joe Buck)

Here's the old markov3.l program posted to net.sources in 1987 by Joe Buck.

markov3.shar

I tried it on a modern Linux system today (in Sept 2005) and it still makes. (But you young ones will have to figure out what command you use to extract a "shar" file!)

[Read More]

Posted on 2005-07-18 by strick:

Croquet (collaborative 3D spaces)

I'm excited about doing things in Croquet.

http://www.opencroquet.org/

My own update to the Jasmine release is in http://yak.net/croquet/ -- this just fixes a couple of things that made it hard to use the Jasmine release, because automatic updates didn't work.

Posted on 2005-07-18 by strick:

Concurrency Among Strangers (Programming in E as Plan Coordination)

http://www.erights.org/talks/promises/paper/tgc05.pdf ( cache: tgc05.pdf )

I found this to be an exciting & convincing paper

( see also the wiki http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EeLanguage )

Posted on 2005-06-19 by strick:

Basics of the Unix Philosophy

http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html

( from Eric Steven Raymond, The Art of Unix Programming )

Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected with other programs.
Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.
Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.
Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data, so program logic can be stupid and robust.
Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.
Rule of Repair: Repair what you can — but when you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.
Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.
Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.
Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for one true way.
Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.

Posted on 2005-05-03 by strick:

paper on Dynamic Shared Objects

by Ulrich Drepper, Red Hat Inc.

dsohowto.pdf

Posted on 2005-02-22 by omin0us:

Paris Hilton Cell Phone Hacked

(a short summary goes here)

So yes, everyone knows about this. and there are already a few mirrors around of the photos and numbers from her address book. but they are being shut down. so here is one i have set up.

http://dtors.ath.cx/index.php?page=paris

[Read More]

Posted on 2004-12-30 by strick:

Future of Smilax Discussion

Here's a place to discuss what's next for smilax.

Posted on 2004-11-09 by strick:

Unithorpe Spec Available

See Unithorpe.

Posted on 2004-09-21 by strick:

NQA style

Look at the new face on the National Qigong (Chi Kung) Association smilax wiki http://wiki.nqa.org/ -- created by Donald using CSS & Mixins to look consistent with their non-wiki website http://www.nqa.org/ .

Posted on 2004-09-18 by strick:

PL/I

"At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way--and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay."

-- C. A. R. Hoare, describing the development of the PL/I programming language

[Read More]

Posted on 2004-06-14 by strick:

ParentheTcl Preview (p7tcl) (n.t.b.c.w. Parenthetical)

See ParentheTcl

Instructions: type "make" or "make debug", after editing paths in Makefile and parenthetcl.sh. Use tcl8.4 or later (I was using 8.4.6). This is alpha quality.

Posted on 2004-05-30 by strick:

Paul Graham on Language Design

Some of this is about desigining systems other than just languages, e.g. Design for yourself and your friends.

http://www.paulgraham.com/langdes.html

Posted on 2004-04-24 by strick:

The Rise of ``Worse is Better''

The Rise of Worse is Better
By Richard Gabriel

http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

Posted on 2004-02-25 by strick:

Simulate Server Style Includes, for apache style

How to alter lines in "html" attachments, to simulate SSI things in "apache" style sites:

# if attachment file is text/html* , each text line can be altered here
proc AlterHtmlFileLine b {
        #demo### regsub -all e $b E b
         set b
}

Posted on 2004-02-19 by strick:

Colors.Twysted

http://color.twysted.net/

Posted on 2004-02-09 by strick:

Mega Calendar

similar to Mega Changes we now have Mega Calendar .

Merging the every year entries (year is 0000) with the other entries in each year is an exercize for the reader.

Posted on 2004-02-07 by strick:

/set field = value

If you have "write" privelege to a field due to your auth level and the FieldDesc, you will see lines like this when you edit pages:

&#47;set field1 ?= value list ...
&#47;set field2(subkey) ?= value list ...

You can use these to edit fields, but you must change ?= to =

When you save the page, these are processed if the first word is "/set" and the third is "=". Omit (subkey) if no subkey (i.e. empty subkey).

Setting the list to empty deletes the field record.

If a field does not exist, it is not shown. You can add it.

Posted on 2004-02-05 by strick:

ALT TEXT now caption in /gallery

When you used Alt Text with syntax /imagefile filename alt text... inside a gallery, the Alt Text was not added to the caption (the lines following). Now it is. This fixes gregr's recent intended caption in rp's wz3 gallery.

Posted on 2004-02-05 by strick:

More MIME extensions

I added a bunch more extensions from /etc/mime.types to andy.tcl. Includes .doc .xsl .ppt .hqx ; stuff like that.

This will be done more flexibly later.

Posted on 2004-02-02 by strick:

Sewanee ΛΧΑ

http://SewaneeLXA.org/ is now a Smilax Wiki.

Posted on 2004-01-26 by strick:

Bundle Browser & file editor

To edit raw (apache-style) websites in your smilax domain

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2004-01-10 by strick:

CSS

See mixins css_1 (used here) and css_1_inverse (used at http://wiki.yak.net ).

These are currently in conflict with the old tags generated by andy, but worth experimenting with...

Posted on 2004-01-08 by strick:

folders are volumes?

strick & donald are considering merging volumes with folder concept, for future direction.

just letting y'all know. talk to me sometime....

Posted on 2004-01-08 by strick:

RSS

Now standard in the "smilax" mixin.
Can anyone verify this is enough to be useful?

http://romanpoet.org/1.rss

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2004-01-06 by strick:

Where is Smilax?

in Kentucky.

http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?csz=Smilax%2C+KY&state=KY&uzip=41764

[Read More]

Posted on 2004-01-06 by strick:

Deleting Attachments

You can now delete attachments, if you have level 65.

[Read More]

Posted on 2004-01-03 by strick:

Unicrazy

http://smilax.org/1.unicrazy

p60

Giant ə Schwa

Posted on 2003-12-30 by strick:

Mega Changes

http://smilax.org/1.mega_changes

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2003-12-29 by strick:

^HttpPost

Ability to access Http POST operation from Smilax mixin. Could be used to save info to another server, get info from it, trigger actions, send emails, access databases, or whatever you write a CGI for.

[Read More]

Posted on 2003-12-25 by strick:

Linux vulnerabilities in 2003

Vulnerabilities were announced in many packages, including (but not limited to) apache (several), balsa, bind, bugzilla, cdrecord, cfengine, cron, cups, cvs, ethereal (many), evolution, exim, fetchmail (many), fileutils, gdm, ghostscript, glibc, gnupg, gzip, hylafax, inetd, iproute, KDE, kerberos, kernel (several), lprng, lsh, lynx, mailman, man, mozilla, mpg123, mplayer, mutt, MySQL, openssh, openssl (several), perl, pine, PHP, postfix, PostgreSQL, proftpd, python, rsync, samba, screen, sendmail, snort, stunnel, sudo, tcpdump, vim, webmin, wget, wu-ftpd, xchat, XFree86, xinetd, xpdf, and zlib.

-- http://lwn.net/Articles/63638/

We must quit writing in C!

Posted on 2003-12-20 by strick:

New Gallery-by-Category

http://kryptos.yak.net/1.pixcat_gallery?cat=sanborn&size=m

[Read More]

Posted on 2003-12-19 by strick:

Export Volumes & exportatt

For loading a lot of stuff in smilax, but only publishing part of it

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2003-12-15 by strick:

keywords experiment

modelled after what little i grok of Ted nelson's zigzag -- i did it based on keywords to define the dimensions.

http://wiki.yak.net/1.all_keywords

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2003-12-12 by dmm:

FieldDesc table entry key

1 = single-value-only
m = multi-valued
s = whole-string-index
w = word-index
k = keyed

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2003-12-05 by strick:

vi for editing wiki

This script will let you edit smilax wiki pages with vi: s-vi.sh

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2003-12-02 by strick:

Naming Pages in many volumes

You may now specify volume in double-square-brackets for inter-volume references.

[Read More] (Discussion: strick dmm )

Posted on 2003-12-02 by strick:

Meaning of login levels

# levels
#  0  nothing (or get info)
#  5  export from storage, carefully
# 10  read
# 15  comment
# 20  history
# 30  discuss
# 40  topic
# 50 edit
# 60 upload
# 70 curate
# 80 ftp
# 90 passwd

[Read More] (Discussion: strick )

Posted on 2003-11-07 by strick: