Navigator, the HelenOS file manager is inspired by Norton Commander from 1986, Dos Navigator and similar file managers. Only recently has it gained the actual ability to create, copy, move, rename, verify and delete files. And also, a nice progress bar. It's time to walk you through these new features.
Tonight I ovserved a bright bolide while on the garder in the evening. (Second time observing from a very similar spot). I've been fortunate to observe a number of bolides over the years. As has been my habit for a long time, I've reported my observation to the Czech Astronomical Institute through their Bolide reporting form.
Observing a bolide is always a special and fun experience, and trying to report them as precisely as possible is also fun. One constant problem is that when I take my phone out of my pocket, it only shows time in hours and minutes, so I cannot produce a more precise time information.
When you are out after sundown, keep you eyes open! Let's hope for more in the future!
Found a CD in my stash of old CDs with a copy of this legendary student film, Matfyzák's story from 1987.
This is a story about the life of a 'typical' student of the Faculty of mathematics and physics, Charles University, Prague. It used to be screened to all new students as late as 2002 when I joined the faculty. Not sure if it is still. I haven't found it on Youtube, so I posted it for archival purposes. I will probably upload the original file to my home page later.
I am working on adding actual file management operations to Navigator, the HelenOS file manager. Here's a sneak preview of New File operation. We can create and empty file or a zero-filled file of the specified size. Creating a large file can take time, so we need progress indication. And we need to do something about the command line, too.
Lubricate the lead screw and the portion of the carriage that rides on the platen by applying a liberal portion of Saunders Magnalube Micropolis P/N 732-0001-6 to these surfaces.Now of course an exact description of the P/N I was not able to find, but Saunders Magnalube are polyurea-based greases. So there you have it, black on white, use a polyurea-based grease. These can be easily found in an lubricants e-shop, no problem there. The internets say silicone grease should be safe, but may be challenging to apply and lithium grease may damage plastics. Take from that what you will, I think I will stick to manufacturer's recommendations. I have a plan for inspecting and probably cleaning a number of floppy drives (CF2, 3.5", 5.25") in the future, so this information is very handy. Let's grease some screws! ^_^
Five years in the (not) making, and now it's finally here! Let's unwrap this very special package!
When debugging audio problems with HelenOS HD Audio driver in VirtualBox, I noticed that HD Audio driver does not actually report the rates/formats supported by the audio device, nor does it set them. So I tried to implement it. Soon I ran into problems (Hound crashing), but mainly the audio device interface is not up to the task. It just expects the audio device to be something like a Sound Blaster, basically being able to set any rate from a (min, max) interval. (In reality, SB can only set the rate approximately.
Also note that I found that we round the rates to multiples of 100 Hz when communicating to Hound. Oh my. In the end I found out that Hound never sets any other format than the default 44100Hz / stereo / 16-bit, because it starts playing even before any stream is started, so it has no way of knowing what format to set.
So I'm not sure if it even makes sense to improve the driver within the scope of the current audio framework, which is severely limited. Even while developing the HD Audio driver I realized that it's a poor match for HelenOS audio architecture. Here's a compiled list of problems encountered so far:
As you might know, our temporary file dialogs were previously a poor man's affair, containing just a plain text entry and an OK / Cancel button pair.
But now lo and behold!
A file list entry for browsing files/directories complete with a scrollbar. And, as is the standard for libui, both in graphics and glorious text mode. Is that cool or is it not? Granted, it's not perfect, but I can feel progress is being made...
And I can assure you it's only going to get more exciting. Just wait and see.
And here's the original text: (in case you haven't watched all the episodes of Animaniacs)
Brain: Come, Mindy, it's time for us to take over the world!
HelenOS 0.11.2 was released on Friday, December 17th. I also posted a screencast highlighting the new features, like the new HiKey960 port, Navigator file manager, UI and text mode improvements.
Some things didn't make it in, like mouse support in EGA console, Unicode support in serial console. I also forgot to show Calculator and Hello running in text mode.
It felt really good to get this release out of the door. And now, back to work!
