Smalltalk - Re: Pharo 5 accented chars bug/regression

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Re: Pharo 5 accented chars bug/regression

Posted by Peter Uhnak on Jun 12, 2016; 10:01pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/Pharo-5-accented-chars-bug-regression-tp4898863p4900574.html

I thought stackoverflow.com might be a good place for that. I was
wrong. Having had my stackoverflow.com post attacked by aggressive
incompetent anonymous down voters who were interested in down voting but
possess no sense of humor or knowledge of Pharo or Smalltalk I think
I understand now that stackoverflow.com is overrated. I don't think a
site that actively encourages that kind of behavior deserves to benefit
from my fix in any way. I would need a whole bunch of sympathizers to
overturn the downvoting. I am not sure it is worth anybody's time.

I understand now that mailing lists have several good qualities that
stackoverflow.com does not have: posts can not disappear. People can not
anonymously make you look bad even if they are incompetent in the subject
matter.

Are you referring to the post titled "Pharo/Seaside for Windows: Cannot type Latin č, Č, ě or Russian Ё, Л, М, Н, О, П characters in Workspace/Playground or System Browser"?

If so, then although it was (imho) a very nice bug report, it has no place on stackoverflow ; we have issue tracker for that https://pharo.fogbugz.com/

So my guess is that your post was downvoted because it didn't fit SO criteria for questions ( https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic ).

Judging by your SO rep you seem quite new to the site, so you might not be familiar with how the site works (reviewing queues, what's on topic https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic , etc.)

It is true that sometimes the questions are reviewed by people that have no knowledge of Pharo/Smalltalk, and then they will judge it on generic criteria, which sometimes results in incidents; however most of the time it seems to work rather well.

So blasting SO because of a single incident, and calling people you don't know "incompetent" is certainly not the way to have a discussion, whether you are right or wrong.

But I do not like places where anonymous bullying is actively encouraged.

Downvoting is not bullying, it's there to help ensure that SO doesn't become garbage dump… and there's a lot garbage incoming. I've reviewed almost thousand posts there and flagged almost half of them, and way too often the user clearly didn't even bother spending five minutes reading about the site and what's appropriate and what's not. With such constant flooding where literally every other question is garbage, I can see why people might be harsher… and not care about misflagging a small fraction of that… in this context it's better to have a more uptight standard than to loosen it up.

When you've asked/answered three questions, having one flagged is a lot and can be upsetting… it's third of all your work. If you have hundred(s) of questions you just shrug and move to the next one, because it's not worth to be upset over it.

Is there anyone out there using Pharo 3, 4, 5 or 6 on Windows that would
benefit now from being able to type the characters č, Č, ě or Russian Ё,
Л, М, Н, О, П in Workspace/Playground and System Browser?

It's a bug and as such should be fixed.

I was so proud of myself. I thought I deserved some recognition. And I
still do.

I guess I would like to know how to get this fixed with my fix and get
some visibility in the process. If there is any interest.

Explicitly asking for a recognition is going on a very thin ice.

You see, I've myself invested a ton of time into Pharo over past two years, but I wouldn't even dream about asking for recognition, because there are people who invested hundred and thousandfold times more and yet I barely thank them myself. The latest release ( http://pharo.org/news/pharo-5.0-released ) has hundred contributors… is it fair that the list has side-by-side people that invested maybe an hour into Pharo and next to him someone with thousands of hours?

Visibility is not built by fixing a single issue… there are tens of fixes every single week, but by continuous and systematic investment.

If and when people appreciate ones efforts is up to them. It certainly feels great when someone thanks you or appreciates your efforts, but it (to me) seems like a fragile ground to build your motivation upon. I contribute because I enjoy it, because I enjoy the system and I want to see it grow, because I want to learn and improve myself, and because I need the problems fixed for my work… and all of it is internal motivation… if noone thanks (which is the majority case for majority of bugs, because most people have no idea that a bug even existed or was fixed)… then I don't care, because I had fun and I made the system better. I actually feel guilty that I do not contribute enough and that I merely reap the benefits of other people's work.

But of course I can only speak for myself, and you may feel different about it. :)

Peter

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 10:30 PM, Milan Vavra via Pharo-users <[hidden email]> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Milan Vavra <[hidden email]>
To: [hidden email]
Cc:
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2016 12:50:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Pharo 5 accented chars bug/regression
I have debugged the issue and figured out how to fix it. I have seen
it as an opportunity to learn Pharo debugging and I did learn a few
tricks on the way. It took me 2 full days of debugging.

It is a simple fix that works for all the Pharo versions on Windows
that have this problem. Including Pharo 6 without Nicolai's fix applied.
And it does not break any shortcuts as far as I can tell.

I was so proud of myself. I thought I deserved some recognition. And I
still do. It is not that someone else could not do it. I am sure that
many people would be able to do that as well. But I did take the time
to do it. And it worked. I kind of would have liked to be able to point
to it and say "I fixed that".

Don't get me wrong. I'm ok with being told that I'm ugly or stupid
if I understand what it is that is disliked. But I do not like places
where anonymous bullying is actively encouraged. Hey I even got a 'Peer
Pressure' badge for deleting my down voted post.

So much for context.

I understand that Nicolai is working on a fix of his own. The preliminary
version for future Pharo 6.0 shows promise. With it, it is possible to
type all the russian characters. Even with the fix it is not possible
to type the Latin 'č' but I guess that can be fixed too.

Back to business:

Is there anyone out there using Pharo 3, 4, 5 or 6 on Windows that would
benefit now from being able to type the characters č, Č, ě or Russian Ё,
Л, М, Н, О, П in Workspace/Playground and System Browser?

I guess I would like to know how to get this fixed with my fix and get
some visibility in the process. If there is any interest.

Milan

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