From hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk  Thu Nov  1 01:44:58 2012
From: hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Harry J Mason)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 08:44:58 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <EMEW3|281db04daabcefa6bf5998bac8f63f42oA08j006hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>

On Wed, 31 Oct 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> I just implemented a compression/expansion behavior, with the robot
> able to explore the new space after expansion.  If, while the resize
> handler is trying to compress the playfield, an object lands on
> another, the following message is omitted:
>
> 	 You crushed the simulation. And the robot. And the kitten
>
> Then the program exits.

I've always liked the quirk that robot and kitten are referred to without
an article.

From esr at thyrsus.com  Thu Nov  1 03:15:57 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 06:15:57 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <EMEW3|281db04daabcefa6bf5998bac8f63f42oA08j006hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<EMEW3|281db04daabcefa6bf5998bac8f63f42oA08j006hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20121101101557.GA28445@thyrsus.com>

Harry J Mason <hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk>:
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> 
> > I just implemented a compression/expansion behavior, with the robot
> > able to explore the new space after expansion.  If, while the resize
> > handler is trying to compress the playfield, an object lands on
> > another, the following message is omitted:
> >
> > 	 You crushed the simulation. And the robot. And the kitten
> >
> > Then the program exits.
> 
> I've always liked the quirk that robot and kitten are referred to without
> an article.

This is a significant point, and I almost changed it to do that just
now.

But when I spoke the two variants aloud to myself, I found that I like
the metrical effect of the extra unstressed syllables. It somehow
contributes to the desired feeling of tragedy and inexorable doom - I
think it might be the grinding quality of the triple parallel
construction that does this.

When I read the above line to my wife, her reaction was (and I quote):

"Nooooooooooooo!"
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk  Thu Nov  1 05:02:38 2012
From: hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Harry J Mason)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 12:02:38 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121101101557.GA28445@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<EMEW3|281db04daabcefa6bf5998bac8f63f42oA08j006hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<20121101101557.GA28445@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211011137400.25300@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <EMEW3|61a2970bb382e0d5129bbedfd2926d7coA0C2e06hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211011137400.25300@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>

On Thu, 1 Nov 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Harry J Mason <hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk>:
>> On Wed, 31 Oct 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>>
>>> 	 You crushed the simulation. And the robot. And the kitten
>>
>> I've always liked the quirk that robot and kitten are referred to without
>> an article.
>
> This is a significant point, and I almost changed it to do that just
> now.
>
> But when I spoke the two variants aloud to myself, I found that I like
> the metrical effect of the extra unstressed syllables. It somehow
> contributes to the desired feeling of tragedy and inexorable doom - I
> think it might be the grinding quality of the triple parallel
> construction that does this.

True, but perhaps we could make it more poignant.
Maybe randomly pick between:

You crushed the simulation. Robot was destroyed first.
You crushed the simulation. Kitten was destroyed first.
You crushed the simulation. Robot never fulfilled its only function.
You crushed the simulation. Kitten never knew companionship.

etc.

From leonardr at segfault.org  Thu Nov  1 05:49:19 2012
From: leonardr at segfault.org (Leonard Richardson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 08:49:19 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
Message-ID: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>

As the original author of robotfindskitten I'd like to offer my
services in creating a new NKI list for vanilla. I will take the
current list, the list from the Inform port, any other lists from
other ports, new suggestions from anyone, and new NKIs of my own
invention. I will come up with a unified list that I think embodies
the spirit of robotfindskitten and contains a balance of different
kinds of NKIs.

If you like this idea, I'll work on this over the weekend. If you have
any suggestions for new NKIs or NKIs to exclude, send them to the list
and I'll handle them all at once.

I would like your opinion on approximately how many NKIs should be in
the list. There are about 740 in the big vanilla list. There are about
200 that were added to the Inform version, but spot checks indicate
most of those are also present in vanilla. Should we aim for more like
700, or more like 1000? Should we go big or prune it down?

Two other comments on recent threads:

1. I think the "crushed the simulation" message should be a slight
variant on one of Harry's suggestions:

"You crushed the simulation. Robot never fulfilled its function."

or

"You crushed the simulation. Robot never found kitten."

IMO robot and kitten should never take definite articles.

2. Regardless of how the NKIs are merged, I'd like to omit the "Clang"
NKI from vanilla. The NKIs are deliberately ambiguous and presented in
a context-free way. I don't want a kid thinking rfk is calling them
the same name their bullies use.

Leonard

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 06:26:42 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 06:26:42 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20121101132642.GO28677@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Leonard Richardson:
> As the original author of robotfindskitten I'd like to offer my
> services in creating a new NKI list for vanilla. 

I think this is a great idea -- thank you for volunteering!

> I would like your opinion on approximately how many NKIs should be in
> the list. There are about 740 in the big vanilla list. There are about
> 200 that were added to the Inform version, but spot checks indicate
> most of those are also present in vanilla. Should we aim for more like
> 700, or more like 1000? Should we go big or prune it down?

I don't actually have an opinion about size. I think we should have
that discussion if things grow considerably larger, although even with
rfk gaining notoriety over the last 15 years that has not happened. So
I think at this point I think you should just take all the ones that
you think "make the cut" from the extant lists and go from there.

Also, FYI -- The Big List (messages.h-731) is not actually the
"vanilla list". To get the vanilla list, check out the new git repo
from Sourceforge. This list actually doesn't include *any* of the
Inform NKI. (This is because the Grand Unified NKI List that I made in
anticipation of the new Alexey version did not make it into the last
revision as made by Ryan Finnie.)

> IMO robot and kitten should never take definite articles.

Absolutely agreed. And they are not proper nouns. And there should
never be spaces in the name.

> 2. Regardless of how the NKIs are merged, I'd like to omit the "Clang"
> NKI from vanilla. The NKIs are deliberately ambiguous and presented in
> a context-free way. I don't want a kid thinking rfk is calling them
> the same name their bullies use.

I agree. This may seem overly cautious, but I think that is
appropriate in cases where the ambiguity could be seen as being
cutting.

pedro

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 06:28:55 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 06:28:55 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121101101557.GA28445@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<EMEW3|281db04daabcefa6bf5998bac8f63f42oA08j006hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211010838270.16130@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<20121101101557.GA28445@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121101132855.GB26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> > I've always liked the quirk that robot and kitten are referred to without
> > an article.
> 
> But when I spoke the two variants aloud to myself, I found that I like
> the metrical effect of the extra unstressed syllables.
>
> ...
> 
> When I read the above line to my wife, her reaction was (and I quote):
> 
> "Nooooooooooooo!"

Haha... it's funny, I definitely agree about the metrical effect. BUT
I must strenuously object to articles being attached to robot and
kitten as previously mentioned. (In fact, I liked the metrical effect
so much, I didn't even notice the unspeakable horror that was
creeping in!)


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 06:57:38 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 06:57:38 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> I have a slightly different concern.  I would like the ports to be 
> refactored so there is just one NKI file in the distribution that all
> of them use.  In some cases this might involve writing machinery to
> massage it into native string-array initializers.

I have a slightly different concern relating to your concern. 

Are you proposing to create a Grand Unified Source Tree of all the
"ports"?  With a build system to "build" any/all of the ports from the
single tree?

I can see how that could be a neat kind of performance art as well,
but I'm concerned that this could become a burden to maintenance. I
mean, if it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.

Certainly, if this is your idea, I think it's something we should all
have a long chat about before understaking.

In case you are thinking that (and forgive my overactive imagination
if you are not), here are my concerns in more detail:

The fact that there are a few ports in the old SF.net source tree is
an artifact that we abandoned a long time ago, since virtually the
only thing that any port share is the NKI list. In the past, any port
author could have written massagers, but by and large they didn't --
perhaps mostly because rfk ports tend to be quick and dirty, more
focused on functionality than compatibility, and in more than a few
cases because of platform constraints on length, etc. The ports
come in, they go up (eventually, whoops!) and they almost never
change. 

At first it seemed sad that the ports were orphaned from the POSIX
tree, but then it seemed like it was probably best because of the lack
of shared code.

But more than that, I don't think we should force port writers to use
the vanilla list, nor do I think we should force the consortium to
integrate port code into the repository if the authors do not care to
do so. I think that is a burden to authors likely resulting in fewer
successful "ports" and a burden on project members for integration.

I don't think that checking out the POSIX code should give you a huge
blart of all 30+ ports. Having a GUST (Grand Unified Source Tree) of
all the ports also probably makes the build system question a lot more
important, which is also to say kind of makes the build system a
bigger headache in the long run for POSIX maintainers. 

That said...

I would like to see source repos for all the ports, and I would very
much love to see massagers written for any/all the ports where it is
practical to do so and where the original authors agree and/or the
licensing permits this. I think these could be written on a piecemeal
basis by motivated contributors. Maybe there's a straightforward way
where the different repos (that have massagers) could pull from the
same NKI file without being all glued together. Maybe they could be
more loosely coupled, like having massagers and a pointer that says
"go here to get the latest vanilla NKI list!" That might be neat.

But I don't think the completeness of the overall project should be
dependent on this task being finished, which is also to say that I
don't think our choice should require any special kind of personpower
going forward. Historically, ports trickle in a few a year like babies
in picnic baskets, but the kind of flurry of activity we are seeing
now is a once-a-decade kind of thing. For better or for worse, our
modus operandi has evolved to suit sustainability... slow and steady
wins the race.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 07:01:21 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 07:01:21 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Remove NKI: Roger Avery,
	persona un famoso de los	Estados Unidos.
In-Reply-To: <CAPa1iyRJ4DGDpHSgP4YpnYutjw9uMALsVEbRtsWykNLcWgwPrA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20121031160306.GP28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031235408.GF20984@boombah.thristian.org>
	<20121101005451.GD28677@tastytronic.net>
	<CAPa1iyRJ4DGDpHSgP4YpnYutjw9uMALsVEbRtsWykNLcWgwPrA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20121101140121.GW26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Nathanial Hendler:
>    I like it.? I think it reads well.? I vote to keep it as is, but I think
>    it could also work without any name at all.

Well, especially because there IS a Roger Avery, maybe a different
name would be better. Perhaps a name that is absurdly and obviously
made up? Like Humbert J. F. McFinklestein IV, Jr..

We can also just let Leonard sort this out. :)

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 07:07:35 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 07:07:35 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Change NKI: Kitten is the letter 'Q'.  Oh, wait,
	maybe not.
In-Reply-To: <CC9DD5E9-7219-4A9D-9DA7-DE7620D951A6@mit.edu>
References: <20121031161256.GT28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031231731.GE20984@boombah.thristian.org>
	<CC9DD5E9-7219-4A9D-9DA7-DE7620D951A6@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20121101140735.GZ26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Star Simpson:
> As a counterpoint, I totally love this NKI, specifically because it
> breaks the 4th wall.  What is RFK except gently and delightfully
> meta-humorous?

Does it break the 4th wall enough to simply say "hiding under Q" (or
whatever?) Or do you specifically like the "maybe not" part? In other
words, would like the proposed version less than the current version?

Again, we may be passing this choice to Leonard, which is fine with me
-- but I don't think that rfk should aspire to always having a perfect
NKI set as obviously it is subjective. Like life, it is in the limit
of many experiences that the overall flavor is revealed, so as long as
there are a few people who actively want to give a thumbs up to
particular NKI I'm happy to give them a pass.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 07:20:57 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 07:20:57 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121031174621.GE28677@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<20121031174621.GE28677@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Peter A. H. Peterson:
> > I just implemented a compression/expansion behavior, with the robot
> > able to explore the new space after expansion.  If, while the resize
> > handler is trying to compress the playfield, an object lands on
> > another, the following message is omitted: 
> > 
> > 	 You crushed the simulation. And the robot. And the kitten
> 
> I think people should playtest this and respond.

Ok, I have some bugs:

0. The success message (YFK!WTGR!) should appear after the animation,
not before or concurrent to it.

1. Resizing is still a bit wonky. Several examples follow:

a. Resizing a window horizontally with the mouse led to a message
about an unknown key direction: "Invalid input: Use direction keys or
q."

b. Why does resizing happen vertically but not horizontally?

c. Resizing can lead to spectral NKI. I resized vertically up and down
a few times, and then went to touch an NKI, and it vanished without a
trace!

d. If the window is resized between the start screen and the play
field, it gets confused. I just escaped the game grid! Oh wait, I'm on
the other side.

e. Given that the repositioning of the NKI and robot is very slight
anyway, why don't we just expand the field but not move the objects?
Or if we want to be clever, center the objects in the field or something.
It bothers me that if I start rfk, then maximize it, then de-maximize
it, I can crush the simulation although I really only put it back the
way it was. (But I would be fine with crushing the simulation if you
resize lower than the field, even if objects do not specifically
collide.) 

What if I had a long running game and I was super close to ascencion?!

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 07:37:49 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 07:37:49 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Michael Wooten's HTML5 robotfindskitten!
Message-ID: <20121101143749.GC26304@tastytronic.net>

Also the first robotfindskitten with a business model,
robotfindskitten.com!


From jeremy at sporktania.com  Thu Nov  1 07:30:27 2012
From: jeremy at sporktania.com (Jeremy Penner)
Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2012 10:30:27 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <50928783.1010600@sporktania.com>

In general, you should not take advice about what is offensive to people 
from anyone who uses the phrase "politically correct."

"Tranny" referring to transgendered people is indeed taken as a 
significantly offensive slur.  In the context of your friend's joke, 
it's fine; he's obviously referring to a transmission.  As an NKI, that 
context is missing.  It should go.

Jeremy

On 2012-10-31 8:27 PM, David Griffith wrote:
> When I made my Inform6 edition of robotfindskitten, I roughly doubled the
> count of NKIs as were inherited from the standard NKI list.  Would there
> be any objection to folding those into the mix?  One potential problem
> pointed out to me is this one:
>
>     "Clang, clang, clang goes the tranny!"
>
> This is a fractured lyric from "The Trolley Song" from the film "Meet Me
> in St Louis".  I was driving somewhere with a friend of mine when my foot
> slipped off the clutch and the transmission made a clanging sound.  A
> friend who was with me at the time sang this fractured lyric to joke about
> my mistake.
>
> The concern pointed out to me is that this usage of the word "tranny"
> might be offensive to transexuals.  This same friend of mine is fairly
> well-learned in the GLBT lore, so I asked him.  He replied with a confused
> "Well, it depends on how politically correct you want to be.".  So, here's
> the question: should it stay or go?
>

From mwooten111 at gmail.com  Thu Nov  1 07:58:53 2012
From: mwooten111 at gmail.com (Michael Wooten)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 10:58:53 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] Michael Wooten's HTML5 robotfindskitten!
In-Reply-To: <20121101143749.GC26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101143749.GC26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <CAAoLVw=o_RtLAE4cisiyqvaKGY5zT=7e1X745X3Dcp+RKd3WaA@mail.gmail.com>

Thanks!

In case anyone is interested, I created a postmortem of my experience
creating the port. It is available on my blog at
http://blog.mwootendev.com/2012/02/post-mortem-robotfindskittencom.html.

-Michael

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net
> wrote:

> Also the first robotfindskitten with a business model,
> robotfindskitten.com!
>
> From Michael:
>
> "...and robot did venture off into the cloud in search of kitten. In
> that cloud he found a giant canvas, filled with wonderful things, one
> of which might be kitten. So robot searches still. This is a
> JavaScript/HTML5 Canvas port of robotfindskitten."
>
> You made robotfindskitten! Way to go, Michael!
>
> http://robotfindskitten.org/
>
> --
> Peter A. H. Peterson
> Graduate Student Researcher
> Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
> University of California, Los Angeles
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev
>
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From b.molitor at gmx.net  Thu Nov  1 08:23:14 2012
From: b.molitor at gmx.net (Benjamin Molitor)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 16:23:14 +0100
Subject: [rfk-dev] Change NKI: Kitten is the letter 'Q'.  Oh, wait,
	maybe not.
In-Reply-To: <CC9DD5E9-7219-4A9D-9DA7-DE7620D951A6@mit.edu>
References: <20121031161256.GT28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031231731.GE20984@boombah.thristian.org>
	<CC9DD5E9-7219-4A9D-9DA7-DE7620D951A6@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <201211011623.15044.b.molitor@gmx.net>

Star Simpson schrieb am Donnerstag 01 November 2012 um 03:54:
> As a counterpoint, I totally love this NKI, specifically because it breaks
> the 4th wall.  What is RFK except gently and delightfully meta-humorous?

this. For me, the first proposed change ('A hastily scribbled note reads: 
"Kitten is the letter Q!"') does this best - the first half sucks me deeper 
into the narrative, conveying the rfk-typical sense of wonder and discovery 
(or, you know, whatever), and then the second half breaks the 4th wall rather 
jarringly, which I like much better than trying to preserve the narrative 
style ("hides under" or so).



Benjamin

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  1 11:25:04 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 11:25:04 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Inform NKIs
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011123450.7153@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>


Here are the NKI's I wrote for the Inform edition of robotfindskitten:

It's the Golden Banana of Discord!
The Inform Designer's Manual (4th edition)
A packet of pipe cleaners.
It's Andrew Plotkin plotting something.
A half-eaten cheese sandwich.
Clang, clang, clang goes the tranny!
A family of integrals is here integrating.
A tuft of kitten fur, but no kitten.
A bottle of oil! Refreshing!
A shameless plug for Frotz: http://www.cs.csubak.edu/~dgriffi/proj/frotz/
Clifford Stoll is here selling Klein bottles.
You found the marble in the oatmeal!
An empty Altoids tin.
An empty Penguin Mints tin.
So, THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!
A cluster of cattails are growing here.
A discarded bagpipe chanter reed.
Big Bird is here looking for Mr. Looper.
It's a Linux install CD.
You found Puppy! Too bad this isn't "robotfindspuppy".
Several meters of cat5 cable.
A scrap of parchment bears the single word, "meow".
A puddle of chocolate sauce.
Your pal Floyd is here and wants to play Hucka-Bucka-Beanstalk.
Someone is talking to Ralph on the big white phone here.
'Twas brillig in the slivey-toves...
Darth Vader is here looking for his Teddywookie.
A baboon with a bassoon hoots angrily at you.
Catsup and Mustard all over the place! It's the Human Hamburger!
Gibble, Gobble, we ACCEPT YOU ...
A rancid corn dog.
It's a tribute to fishnet stockings.
A jar of Vegemite is playing hopscotch here.
Nipples, dimples, knuckles, NICKLES, wrinkles, pimples!!
A bottle of hair tonic.
A packet of catnip.
Here's Cal Worthington and his dog "Spot"!
It's Uncle Doctor Hurkamur!
YEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thunder Cats!!!
An overturned bottle of ink and lots of kitten pawprints.
A flyer advertising a sale at Spatula City.
A 540Hz tuning fork.
A 3-inch floppy disk.
Seargent Duffy is here.
A ball of pocket fluff.
A 3-sided Monty Python record.
A Sanrio catalog.
A scratching-post.
Butane!!!
An ice cube.
Just a cage of white mice.
You've found Harvey, the Wonder Hamster!
A jar of dehydrated water.
Just some swamp gas.
A bowl of cherries.
Spoon!!!
A sign reads "Don't step on the Mome Raths".
Dirty socks.
"Dogbert's tech support, how may I abuse you?"
A radio hisses away. Kitten must have been here.
"Kilroy was here"
"Plexar was here"
"Kibo was here"
It's the cork to someone's lunch.
A piping-hot pizza. Useless.
Diogenes is here demanding whisky.
The Monolith of Spam towers above you.
"Meow meow meow meow..."  How discouraging! It's only a recording.
Marvin is complaining about the pain in the diodes down his left side.
Mr. Kamikaze and Mr. DNA are here drinking tea.
Rene Descarte is whistling a happy tune here.
Ooh, shiny!
It's a giant slorr!
A ketchup bottle (nearly empty).
A large pile of rubber bands.
A ton of feathers.
This nonkitten may contain peanuts.
A tree with some jelly nailed to it.
Ah, the skirl of the pipes and the rustle of the silicon...
You found Parakeet! Too bad this isn't "robotfindsparakeet".
A ball of yarn.
A big chunk of frozen chocolate pudding.
There is no tea here.
An automated robot-doubter. It doesn't believe in you.
A plastic model of Kitten.
It's Yorgle, the Yellow Dragon.
It's Grundle, the Green Dragon.
It's Rhindle, the Red Dragon.
An old pattern is here going on and on.
TV says donuts are high in fat.
It's a pool with a straw in it.
A singing frog. Useless.
It's a funky beat!
A tiny ceramic Kitten. It's probably not the Kitten you're looking for.
An oven mitt with kittens on it.
An empty coaxial cable spool.
Billions and billions of things that aren't Kitten.
Snarf?
Faboo!
99 bottles of beer are on a wall here.
Hydraulic fluid and jagged metal bits. You recoil from the scene of carnage.
A bobolink is twittering a happy tune here.
Biscuits.
A blank deposit slip.
What's that blue thing doing here?
A travel-sized cyclotron.
A largish bath towel.
You found Chinchilla! Too bad this isn't "robotfindschinchilla".
A meerkat... not even close.
A green yo-yo.
A hairless rat.
Bright copper kettles.
Ten yards of avocado-green shag carpet.
A zorkmid coin.
It's Babe Flathead's favorite bat.
It's cute like a kitten, but isn't a kitten.
A cyclops glowers angrily at you.
A discarded pop bottle.
Definitely not Kitten.
A mouse.
Slack!
A troll. Ewww!!!
A tube of white lithium grease. Perfect for your robotic joints.
Talcum powder.
A breadbox. Nope, Kitten isn't in the breadbox.
An unlicensed nuclear accelerator.
A sub-atomic particle languishes here all alone.
A bowling ball with the name "Bob" inscribed on it.
A briefcase filled with spy stuff.
Is that an elephant's head or a winged sandal?
Bibbidy bibbidy bibbidy bibbidy bibbidy bibbidy...
A tube of toothpaste. Too bad you have no teeth.
This isn't the item you're looking for.
A discarded refrigerator box. Nope, Kitten isn't in the box.
A paper shopping bag. Nope, Kitten isn't in the bag.
A flyer reads, "Please donate hydraulic fluid"
A dangly thing mangled by Kitten.
A crouton.
A patch from the Mammoth Caves.
A leather pouch filled with multisided dice.
A pair of combat boots.
A pile of coconuts.
A big bass drum bearing a hole and suspicious clawmarks.
It's a clue!
Long lost needle nose pliers.
A vase of roses.
A crystal ball. It doesn't seem to know where Kitten is.
It's Princess Leia, the yodel of life.
Sigmund Freud is here asking about your mother.
BURRRRP!!!! Flavorful and full of protein!
A jar of library paste.
These aren't ordinary beans. They're magic beans!
Some sort of electronic handheld game from the 1970s.
Just some glop of some sort.
A bottle of distilled water.
A rusty slinky. It was such a wonderful toy!
Some coconut crabs are milling about here.
Dancing cold water pipes. Mikey must have been here.
Ash is mumbling "KLAATU BARATA NI<coughcough>" here.
It's a blob of white goo.
It's a cookie shaped like a kitten.
It's Professor Feedlebom.
A bottle of smelling salts.
Dinsdale!
An Enfield Mk3 rifle.
An M16 rifle.
An M1911A1 pistol.
An M9 pistol.
It's a gun of some sort.
An FN-FAL rifle.
An old rusty revolver.
An AK-47 rifle.
An AK-97 rifle.
A Remington 870 shotgun.
It's a NetBSD install CD.
It's a recursive recursive recursive recursive recursive...
It's Brian Kernigan.
It's Dennis Ritchie.
It's nothing in particular.
Just a box of backscratchers.
An expired transistor.
Air.
A steam-powered bunnytron.
Heeeeeeeeeeeeres Johnny!
It's a catalog from some company called Infocom.
A dark-emitting diode.
A 256 kilobyte write-only memory chip.
A box of brand-new nixie tubes.
Alien underwear.
A sack of hammers.
A sack of wet mice.
A sack of doorknobs.
A rusty melon-baller.
An atomic vector plotter.
You really don't want to know what this is.
A 100 meter long chain of jumbo paper clips.
A cockatoo shrieks at you.
It's Mary Poppins!
A slightly-used smellovision set.
Doodles Weaver is here looking over a horse race schedule.
An overflowing bit bucket.
Blarg!
It's a hairy-armed hitchhiker!
A wolf wearing a nightgown is in bed here.
A gecko zooms about on a skateboard here.
A hovercraft full of eels is parked here.
A waffle iron is here and it's still hot.
A huge pile of pancakes.
A threadbare tweed suit.
A rusted safety pin.
A model of a twin-hulled sailboat.
A jar of lemon curd.
"We interrupt this Zen Simulation..."
A sealed tin bearing only the word "yummy".
It's a groat coated with pocket fluff.
You find an Atari 2600 game cartridge with no label.
A child's drawing of a kitten.
It's a small bouncy creature, but obviously not kitten.
It's an unknown area code.
A bottle of ammonia.
Tweeting birds.
It's a rapidly oscillating function.
A dogcow moofs at you.
A puddle of purple semi-gloss latex paint.
It's a merry-go-round (broken down).
The pants that Curly died in.
A vanilla pudding pop.
It's Jesse James' severed hand and it's still moving.
It's more money than you'll ever need.
A tiny robot scuttles across the floor.
Chunk is here doing the truffle-shuffle.
Data is here setting up some booty traps.
A waterlogged grand piano.
One liter of fuming nitric acid.
A gold-dipped rose.
Bronzed baby shoes.
An electric engraving pencil.
A small, featureless, white cube.
It's a battery-powered brass lantern.
It's an elongated brown sack, smelling of hot peppers.
A glass bottle containing a quantity of water.
It's a blob of red goo.
It's a blob of blue goo.
It's a blob of yellow goo.
It's a blob of green goo.
It's a blob of orange goo.
It's a blob of purple goo.
It's a blob of black goo.
It's a blob of brown goo.
A Scooby Snack! Yay!
A squirrel contentedly gnaws on a sprinkler head here.
Snacky things.
A toupee.
Seat cushion fluff.
Jacket fluff.
Haven't you touched this thing before?
It's a copy of the Book of Found Kittens.
It's a nasty knife.
It's a grue. Fortunately, they don't like to eat robots.
It's a phone book for the 661 area code.
A tiny velvet pouch.
Brass tacks.
It's a rotating potato.
Leave that thing alone!
It's the mark of the beast!
A tube of heat sink grease.
A dead battery.
A pile of irrigation valves.
A stony meteorite.
An iron meteorite.
It's a fragment of an old Russian spacecraft.
A large block of dry ice.
It's a Commodore 64 computer (in mint condition).
It's an Apple II+ computer (in mint condition).
It's a Kaypro II portable computer.
It's a Texas Instruments TI-89 graphing calculator.
It's an Atari 800 computer.
It's an Amiga 2000 computer.
An oddly familiar face shouts "SCREWTEK!" from this computer monitor.
It's an Osborne portable computer.
It's a nameless MSX computer from Japan.
A vacuum cleaner appears to have exploded here.
It's a model of a catamaran.
A cardboard box of sheet metal screws.
A brown glass vial labeled "tincture of iodine".
Just some sort of cat toy.
It's a large pile of crumpled notepaper.
You've found the decoy kitten!
It's a pile of wine corks.
A neat pile of plastic irrigation pipe.
It's one of those carpet-covered things for cats to climb.
This thing appears to be an ancient Roman breastplate.
A claymore.
An unripe orange.
A toy zeppelin.
It's a bucket of mud.
It's a bucket of water.
A clay pot with grass growing it in sits here.
A discarded envelope chewed by Kitten.
A hollow voice says "Fool!"
Several hackles are here and they appear to be up.
Just some spite.
Vitriol.
There is a small mailbox here.
A large oriental rug.
It's an elvish sword of great antiquity.
A large coil of rope is here.
You've found a speed bump.
It's a whirly thing of some sort.
An empty Slurpee cup.
This is a disaster area.
A small box of fishing weights.
A street map of the city of Anaheim.
Bits of red construction paper are scattered all about.
You won't believe what this is.
A meat-scented air-freshener on a string dances in the breeze.
A intact clay pigeon.
Pieces of broken clay pigeons are scattered all about.
This looks like a skateboarding arcade video game.
It's a steaming bowl of homemade gnocci.
An electric fan lies on its side here.
It's something fizzy.
A hickory stump.
This tiny barbecue is spotlessly clean.
A saucer of milk, untouched by Kitten.
Insane laughter issues from this vibrating shipping crate.
Haven't you checked here already?
Just some rusted lug nuts and an ancient hub cap.
A rusty crowbar.
A post hole digger is stuck in a pile of dirt here.
It's a spade.
It's the Queen of Hearts! "Off with their heads!", she shouts.
An assortment of highly-nutritious vegetables.
A dead click beetle.
A roll of scratch-and-sniff stickers.
A roll of duct tape.
Someone dropped a cheap ballpoint pen here.
Someone dropped an expensive fountain pen here.
You've found the Gingerbread Man!
You've found the Stinky Cheese Man!
This looks like an umbrella turned inside out.
3.14159... Pi is all over the place here...
You almost mistook this meatloaf for Kitten.
This drawer is full of dried out rubber stoppers.
A flask of hydrochloric acid is here.
Why are you bothering that old man instead of finding Kitten?
It's a hyperkinetic rabbity thing.
A dog dressed in a cheap suit is here.
"Help me Robot! You're my only hope!"
You found Budgie! Too bad this isn't "robotfindsbudgie".
It's a sleeping lion.
It's an example of the infamous space-cadet keyboard.
You find a random assortment of dots and dashes.
Nothing but some scribbles in crayon.
It's a week-old baloney sandwich.
It's a red stapler.
It's a red staple-remover.
It's a "Wicked Tinkers" CD.
You see a rhinestone-studded dog collar, but no dog.
It's a box of lox.
It's a box of pinball machine parts.
You've discovered an enormous pile of socks.
It's a photograph of Kitten.
It's a copy editor, reading aloud from the Associated Press Stylebook.
Kitty kibble is scattered all about.
A bartender growls, "No robots allowed!"
It's a Franklin Ebookman.
It's a child's kitten pull-toy.
"I'm Speed Racer and I drive real fast!"
"I drive real fast. I'm gonna last."
"I'm a big pirate and I like to steal!"
"I like to steal and I like to kill!"
"I'm a Barbie doll but I've got brains!"
"I'm your doctor and here's the bill."
Go! Go! Go, Speed Racer!
It's a Boeing 777 airliner.
Someone is taking time out for fun here.
You see a street lamp and a lamplighter here.
A broken cricket bat.
It's a mint-condition IMSAI 8080 computer!
A hollow voice says "xyzzy".
Wimpy is here asking for a hamburger.
You found Olive Oyl!
It's Popeye!
Bluto is here looking for Olive Oyl.
"Et tu, Brutus?"
The bodily remains of a Roman emperor.
Yay! It's a hoola hoop!
The Smart Patrol is here.
It's an old sandal.
It's a feather duster.
It's a zipper.
It's an old crumhorn with a broken reed.
A sticky old cough drop.
A jar of buttons.
A bearded dragon lizard is sitting here.
A garden toad.
A garden gnome.
A garden weasel.

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 11:47:47 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 11:47:47 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Inform NKIs
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011123450.7153@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011123450.7153@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121101184747.GA26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> Here are the NKI's I wrote for the Inform edition of robotfindskitten:

Thanks -- Leonard is working through a Grand Unified List and will
send it out when it is ready. I went through the list and really
enjoyed most of these.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 11:52:09 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 11:52:09 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
Message-ID: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>

+-----------------------------------------------------+ 
| [-]                .::. .::.              |\_/|     | 
| (+)=C              :::::::::              |o o|__   | 
| | |                ':::::::'              =-*-=__\  | 
| OOO                  ':::'               c_c__(___) | 
+-----------------------------------------------------+ 

Did you write a "port" of robotfindskitten?

Did you sneakily add NKI to your port in the process, but not submit
them to the POSIX port?

Are you on rfk-dev or happen to see this message somehow?

If so, please submit your NKI to the rfk-dev list if you want them to
be considered for inclusion in the (15th Anniversary!) Mayan
Apocalypse release of robotfindskitten.

(If you are not a porter, and have ideas for additional NKI, you can
also submit them to the list.)

Why, here's one right now!

"A pile of discarded "no dumping" signs."

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 11:53:50 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 11:53:50 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Inform NKIs
In-Reply-To: <966765C5-A976-4863-B1CC-F1F5F5B9F417@mit.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011123450.7153@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101184747.GA26304@tastytronic.net>
	<966765C5-A976-4863-B1CC-F1F5F5B9F417@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20121101185350.GD26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Star Simpson:
> Will this list ultimately be hosted and maintained at rfk.org?  If
> so I'll modify the "Web 2.0" version to draw NKIs from a link to the
> GUL.  Manual updates seem likely too time-consuming.

Yes, definitely. I'll put the GUL in some accessible location.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From stars at MIT.EDU  Thu Nov  1 11:56:17 2012
From: stars at MIT.EDU (Star Simpson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 11:56:17 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <56880127-6334-44A4-96D9-F918CE2EC536@mit.edu>

Three new NKIs from the "Web 2.0" port:

          'It's the blink tag!',
          'The document type definition for a Kitten Object Model.',
          'The number 22.  Could this be a COINCIDENCE?!'

The first are probably GUL-worthy, the third is a reference to culture at http://tep.mit.edu

*

On Nov 1, 2012, at 11:52 AM, "Peter A. H. Peterson" <pedro at tastytronic.net> wrote:

> +-----------------------------------------------------+ 
> | [-]                .::. .::.              |\_/|     | 
> | (+)=C              :::::::::              |o o|__   | 
> | | |                ':::::::'              =-*-=__\  | 
> | OOO                  ':::'               c_c__(___) | 
> +-----------------------------------------------------+ 
> 
> Did you write a "port" of robotfindskitten?
> 
> Did you sneakily add NKI to your port in the process, but not submit
> them to the POSIX port?
> 
> Are you on rfk-dev or happen to see this message somehow?
> 
> If so, please submit your NKI to the rfk-dev list if you want them to
> be considered for inclusion in the (15th Anniversary!) Mayan
> Apocalypse release of robotfindskitten.
> 
> (If you are not a porter, and have ideas for additional NKI, you can
> also submit them to the list.)
> 
> Why, here's one right now!
> 
> "A pile of discarded "no dumping" signs."
> 
> -- 
> Peter A. H. Peterson
> Graduate Student Researcher
> Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
> University of California, Los Angeles
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev

From stars at MIT.EDU  Thu Nov  1 11:51:21 2012
From: stars at MIT.EDU (Star Simpson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 11:51:21 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Inform NKIs
In-Reply-To: <20121101184747.GA26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011123450.7153@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101184747.GA26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <966765C5-A976-4863-B1CC-F1F5F5B9F417@mit.edu>

Will this list ultimately be hosted and maintained at rfk.org?  If so I'll modify the "Web 2.0" version to draw NKIs from a link to the GUL.  Manual updates seem likely too time-consuming.

*

On Nov 1, 2012, at 11:47 AM, "Peter A. H. Peterson" <pedro at tastytronic.net> wrote:

> Quoting David Griffith:
>> Here are the NKI's I wrote for the Inform edition of robotfindskitten:
> 
> Thanks -- Leonard is working through a Grand Unified List and will
> send it out when it is ready. I went through the list and really
> enjoyed most of these.
> 
> -- 
> Peter A. H. Peterson
> Graduate Student Researcher
> Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
> University of California, Los Angeles
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 15:13:42 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 15:13:42 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20121101221342.GZ26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Leonard Richardson:
>    Given the apocalyptic theme of the upcoming release, it would be nice
>    to get to 666. I'll keep coming up with more; send me your suggestions
>    and I'll incorporate the ones I like, while being a little more
>    selective than usual. If I removed an NKI that you really like, let me
>    know that too.

Thank you for undertaking this monumental task!

Following is the [somewhat large] list of cut NKI that I would miss
(or ones from Dave that I specifically like). This is just my opinion,
however, and since you trimmed them you must not like them!

I starred the ones I am most fond of, but I think I touch on why I
like the others below. I wouldn't die on any of these hills, except
maybe #11.

Anyway, discuss:

1. A crowd of people, and at the center, a popular misconception.
2. A haircut and a real job. Now you know where to get one!
3. A stegosaurus, escaped from the stegosaurusfindsrobot game.  It finds you.
4. A team of arctic explorers is camped here. **
5. It's a burrito stand flyer. "Taqueria El Ranchito". **
6. It's a cardboard box full of 8-tracks.
7. It's a copy of "Zen and The Art of Robot Maintenance". **
8. It's a "HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York" novelty cup. 
9. It's Lucy Ricardo. "Aaaah, Ricky!", she says. **
10. It's the handheld robotfindskitten game, by Tiger.

But especially:

11. Youv'e found the fabled America Online disk graveyard! **

Rationale:

These NKI represent a few themes that I like about the game that I'll
try to explain.

I like it when NKIs turn into objects things that aren't (1,2) -- it
gives me a nice kind of fuzzy cognitive dissonance feeling. I also
kind of like that robot finds a haircut and a real job, although
clearly he doesn't need either. 

I notice that you have cut a lot of NKI that are referrent to robot,
kitten, or the game itself (but not all of them), so I can understand
if you don't like 2,3,7 or 10 for that reason, although I like the
absurdity of 3 and the concept of a collision from an alternate
simulation of some kind.

There's a character of many NKI, and of rfk in general that is very
absurd and dreamlike to me. Things that don't belong are crammed
together, some things are oddly detail-free, while other things have
lots of detail. I like 4 for the incongruous aspect, and I like 5 for
the strange amount of detail. 

Now, 5 is a real taco stand (in Chicago), but it was never a big
hangout or anything so it was more about its nature as an odd, lost
piece of litter, rather than a vanity reference. If people like that
concept, but not the fact that it's a real place (as we are purging
many plugs), we could make up the name of a burrito joint.

But it's also a piece of strange trash, as are (in a way) 6, 8, and 11.
I like that kind of forgotten, forlorn junk. I don't love 8, but what
I like about it is it makes me ask "WHY DOES THIS EXIST?" and I
imagine robot's disgust at wasting its time only to find it. (That's
weirdly specific, I guess.) But it's such a piece of crap, and that
was the point. (I bet I wrote that one.)

I think the "Zen and the art..." is funny, but perhaps it is too
self-referential.

I have always loved the Lucy NKI, because it is so absolutely absurd
but also an image that is burned into my brain. (Maybe it doesn't
translate internationally...)

10, I like because it is an oblique reference to the many rfk ports,
and I imagine it being made with those terrible fixed-sprite LCD
screens. How would that game even work? It's like the Tiger version of
Double Dragon. It's only like Double Dragon in the weakest possible
sense. (But it's also self-referential, and you have ejected a bunch
of those things which I respect.)

But 11, especially 11. I think it's a neat little encapsulation
of both technology and just the passage of time. There are NKI that
were created 10 or 15 years ago that we would just never think to
create now. Purging them because they seem a bit dated I think loses
some of the richness of the game and its history. In a sense, the
older it gets, the funnier that NKI gets!

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From leonardr at segfault.org  Thu Nov  1 14:02:11 2012
From: leonardr at segfault.org (Leonard Richardson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 17:02:11 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>

I said I'"this weekend", but I did it today. I present a unified,
trimmed, and updated list of NKIs for the next release.

= Setup

The largest official NKI list has about 730 entries. (By comparison,
the vanilla list actually included with rfk has 441.) I created a
master list by combining the largest official list with the Inform
list. There were 815 NKIs in this master list.

I alphabetized all the NKIs to avoid duplicates and to avoid
subconsciously sparing an NKI just because it was one of the original
set. (I have a certain fondness for the "original" NKIs but many of
them are pretty bad.)

This master list is my first attachment to this message. The revised
list, incorporating removals and additions, is my second. The third
attachment
is a diff between the two.

= Removals

I went through the master list and ended up deleting 244 NKIs, taking
us down to 571.

I deleted an NKI unless I thought it added something special to the
simulation. A few themes emerged as I worked, but I had no hard and
fast rules, and the themes I present below had many exceptions.

* I pared down large groups of similar NKIs to just a couple
  examples. For instance, the multicolored goo from Planetfall. I left
  in a couple of the colors and added "grey goo", which is a
  completely different reference.

* I removed some NKIs that were technically different but conceptual
  duplicates. (e.g. Lenin's corpse and his casket)

* I removed many explicit references to kitten (but added a few more)
  and puns on the word "kitten" (but left some intact).

* I removed many miscellaneous in-jokes, dated references, and
  references to real people (but left some intact).

  I want to give a special send-off to "You've found the fabled
  America Online disk graveyard!", an incredibly dated reference (not
  even a CD graveyard, a *disk* graveyard!) that I still find
  funny. But not funny enough to keep.

* I removed many miscellaneous pop culture references, especially
  references to other games (but left some intact and added a couple
  more).

* I removed some jokes I made in 1997 that I don't think are
  funny. (Lots of overlap with the other categories here.)

* I removed a couple NKIs that said things about RFK canon that I
  disagree with, such as the idea that robot is "soulless". Who are we
  to say?

= Additions

I added 37 NKIs based on NKIs that I removed. Some are simple typo
corrections ("Brian Kernigan"), some result from removing an explicit
reference to kitten, some are twists that I believe make an NKI more
interesting, some are completely new NKIs that used a removed NKI as a
seed.

---
A breadbox that's bigger than a breadbox.
A claymore mine.
A dangly thing.
A discarded refrigerator in a discarded refrigerator box.
A flyer advertising a big sale on flyers.
A gecko clings to the ceiling here.
A half empty milk carton. Or is it half full?
A hollow voice says "Plugh."
A homemade Tesla coil, fully charged.
A large Turkish rug, worn threadbare by years of pacing.
A note reads, "kitten is the letter Q."
A radio hisses away.
A robot comedian performs here. You feel amused.
A saucer of milk.
A stegosaurus, escaped from stegosaurusfindsrobot.  It finds you.
A team of Arctic explorers is camped here.
An albatross, around its own neck.
An automated robot-disdainer. It pretends you're not there.
An erroneous proof of the Goldbach Conjecture.
An ordinary bust of Beethoven... but why is it painted green?
An overturned bottle of rainbow-colored ink.
Ceci n'est pas un chaton.
Haven't you touched this before?
Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!
It's Brian Kernighan.
It's Jesse James's severed hand and it's still moving.
It's a blob of grey goo.
It's a cardboard box full of 8-track tapes.
It's a continental breakfast.
It's a universal Turing machine constructed from LEGO blocks.
It's a wallet full of blank credit cards.
It's either a mirror, or another robot.
It's the Super Bass-O-Matic '76! Mmm, that's good bass!
Lentil loaf.
Several meters of Cat 5 cable.
Sigmund Freud is here, asking about your mother.
---

That takes us up to 608. I added two NKIs from other sources; one from
Star Simpson's Javascript port and one from Pete's CFNKI:

---
It's the <blink> tag!
"A pile of discarded "no dumping" signs."
---

That takes us to 610. I made up 25 new NKIs, taking us to 635:

---
A failing unit test.
An underwater avocado.
A sudden burst of maniaical cackling makes you feel homesick.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously here.
Here you are, at the behest.
Here you are, under the auspices.
It's a prosthetic wheel, bent out of shape.
It's an oil portrait of you, about to find kitten.
It's evidence.
It's probably nothing.
It's the Capable Prune.
It's the shock of recognition.
It's the whites of their eyes.
Keep looking and you will find kitten eventually.
Mere shells cannot contain these peanuts!
"Take a penny, leave a penny." You do both.
There are many coins here!
There's something behind you.
This bouncy castle is filled with helium.
This vending machine dispenses only coffee grounds.
This non-kitten item was present in a previous version, but has been
removed.
Uh-oh...
Welcome back, robot.
Whatever it is, it's circular. Oh, it's a circle!
Your current score: 3.
You've found a precautionary measure.
---

The most self-indulgent of these is probably "It's an oil portrait of
you, about to find kitten." This is a reference to Beth Lerman's
robotfindskitten painting
(http://bethlerman.com/artworks/#jp-carousel-177). I hope you'll agree
that an rfk-themed painting depicting several NKIs should itself be an
NKI.

= More NKIs!

Let's have 'em. As I say, this list stands at 635 NKIs--a lot more
than the 441 included with rfk now, but a lot less than the 730
included in the largest official list.

Given the apocalyptic theme of the upcoming release, it would be nice
to get to 666. I'll keep coming up with more; send me your suggestions
and I'll incorporate the ones I like, while being a little more
selective than usual. If I removed an NKI that you really like, let me
know that too.

Leonard


On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Peter A. H. Peterson
<pedro at tastytronic.net>wrote:

> +-----------------------------------------------------+
> | [-]                .::. .::.              |\_/|     |
> | (+)=C              :::::::::              |o o|__   |
> | | |                ':::::::'              =-*-=__\  |
> | OOO                  ':::'               c_c__(___) |
> +-----------------------------------------------------+
>
> Did you write a "port" of robotfindskitten?
>
> Did you sneakily add NKI to your port in the process, but not submit
> them to the POSIX port?
>
> Are you on rfk-dev or happen to see this message somehow?
>
> If so, please submit your NKI to the rfk-dev list if you want them to
> be considered for inclusion in the (15th Anniversary!) Mayan
> Apocalypse release of robotfindskitten.
>
> (If you are not a porter, and have ideas for additional NKI, you can
> also submit them to the list.)
>
> Why, here's one right now!
>
> "A pile of discarded "no dumping" signs."
>
> --
> Peter A. H. Peterson
> Graduate Student Researcher
> Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
> University of California, Los Angeles
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev
>
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From mwooten111 at gmail.com  Thu Nov  1 15:50:47 2012
From: mwooten111 at gmail.com (Michael Wooten)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 18:50:47 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2239094035319657098@unknownmsgid>

My suggestions:

It's a rousing rendition of O Canada.
It's the shortest distance between two points.
You've found a black screen filled with colorful ASCII characters.

Sent from my iPhone

That last line was not an NKI suggestion.

On Nov 1, 2012, at 6:17 PM, Leonard Richardson <leonardr at segfault.org>
wrote:

I said I'"this weekend", but I did it today. I present a unified,
trimmed, and updated list of NKIs for the next release.

= Setup

The largest official NKI list has about 730 entries. (By comparison,
the vanilla list actually included with rfk has 441.) I created a
master list by combining the largest official list with the Inform
list. There were 815 NKIs in this master list.

I alphabetized all the NKIs to avoid duplicates and to avoid
subconsciously sparing an NKI just because it was one of the original
set. (I have a certain fondness for the "original" NKIs but many of
them are pretty bad.)

This master list is my first attachment to this message. The revised
list, incorporating removals and additions, is my second. The third
attachment
is a diff between the two.

= Removals

I went through the master list and ended up deleting 244 NKIs, taking
us down to 571.

I deleted an NKI unless I thought it added something special to the
simulation. A few themes emerged as I worked, but I had no hard and
fast rules, and the themes I present below had many exceptions.

* I pared down large groups of similar NKIs to just a couple
  examples. For instance, the multicolored goo from Planetfall. I left
  in a couple of the colors and added "grey goo", which is a
  completely different reference.

* I removed some NKIs that were technically different but conceptual
  duplicates. (e.g. Lenin's corpse and his casket)

* I removed many explicit references to kitten (but added a few more)
  and puns on the word "kitten" (but left some intact).

* I removed many miscellaneous in-jokes, dated references, and
  references to real people (but left some intact).

  I want to give a special send-off to "You've found the fabled
  America Online disk graveyard!", an incredibly dated reference (not
  even a CD graveyard, a *disk* graveyard!) that I still find
  funny. But not funny enough to keep.

* I removed many miscellaneous pop culture references, especially
  references to other games (but left some intact and added a couple
  more).

* I removed some jokes I made in 1997 that I don't think are
  funny. (Lots of overlap with the other categories here.)

* I removed a couple NKIs that said things about RFK canon that I
  disagree with, such as the idea that robot is "soulless". Who are we
  to say?

= Additions

I added 37 NKIs based on NKIs that I removed. Some are simple typo
corrections ("Brian Kernigan"), some result from removing an explicit
reference to kitten, some are twists that I believe make an NKI more
interesting, some are completely new NKIs that used a removed NKI as a
seed.

---
A breadbox that's bigger than a breadbox.
A claymore mine.
A dangly thing.
A discarded refrigerator in a discarded refrigerator box.
A flyer advertising a big sale on flyers.
A gecko clings to the ceiling here.
A half empty milk carton. Or is it half full?
A hollow voice says "Plugh."
A homemade Tesla coil, fully charged.
A large Turkish rug, worn threadbare by years of pacing.
A note reads, "kitten is the letter Q."
A radio hisses away.
A robot comedian performs here. You feel amused.
A saucer of milk.
A stegosaurus, escaped from stegosaurusfindsrobot.  It finds you.
A team of Arctic explorers is camped here.
An albatross, around its own neck.
An automated robot-disdainer. It pretends you're not there.
An erroneous proof of the Goldbach Conjecture.
An ordinary bust of Beethoven... but why is it painted green?
An overturned bottle of rainbow-colored ink.
Ceci n'est pas un chaton.
Haven't you touched this before?
Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!
It's Brian Kernighan.
It's Jesse James's severed hand and it's still moving.
It's a blob of grey goo.
It's a cardboard box full of 8-track tapes.
It's a continental breakfast.
It's a universal Turing machine constructed from LEGO blocks.
It's a wallet full of blank credit cards.
It's either a mirror, or another robot.
It's the Super Bass-O-Matic '76! Mmm, that's good bass!
Lentil loaf.
Several meters of Cat 5 cable.
Sigmund Freud is here, asking about your mother.
---

That takes us up to 608. I added two NKIs from other sources; one from
Star Simpson's Javascript port and one from Pete's CFNKI:

---
It's the <blink> tag!
"A pile of discarded "no dumping" signs."
---

That takes us to 610. I made up 25 new NKIs, taking us to 635:

---
A failing unit test.
An underwater avocado.
A sudden burst of maniaical cackling makes you feel homesick.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously here.
Here you are, at the behest.
Here you are, under the auspices.
It's a prosthetic wheel, bent out of shape.
It's an oil portrait of you, about to find kitten.
It's evidence.
It's probably nothing.
It's the Capable Prune.
It's the shock of recognition.
It's the whites of their eyes.
Keep looking and you will find kitten eventually.
Mere shells cannot contain these peanuts!
"Take a penny, leave a penny." You do both.
There are many coins here!
There's something behind you.
This bouncy castle is filled with helium.
This vending machine dispenses only coffee grounds.
This non-kitten item was present in a previous version, but has been
removed.
Uh-oh...
Welcome back, robot.
Whatever it is, it's circular. Oh, it's a circle!
Your current score: 3.
You've found a precautionary measure.
---

The most self-indulgent of these is probably "It's an oil portrait of
you, about to find kitten." This is a reference to Beth Lerman's
robotfindskitten painting
(http://bethlerman.com/artworks/#jp-carousel-177). I hope you'll agree
that an rfk-themed painting depicting several NKIs should itself be an
NKI.

= More NKIs!

Let's have 'em. As I say, this list stands at 635 NKIs--a lot more
than the 441 included with rfk now, but a lot less than the 730
included in the largest official list.

Given the apocalyptic theme of the upcoming release, it would be nice
to get to 666. I'll keep coming up with more; send me your suggestions
and I'll incorporate the ones I like, while being a little more
selective than usual. If I removed an NKI that you really like, let me
know that too.

Leonard


On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Peter A. H. Peterson
<pedro at tastytronic.net>wrote:

> +-----------------------------------------------------+
> | [-]                .::. .::.              |\_/|     |
> | (+)=C              :::::::::              |o o|__   |
> | | |                ':::::::'              =-*-=__\  |
> | OOO                  ':::'               c_c__(___) |
> +-----------------------------------------------------+
>
> Did you write a "port" of robotfindskitten?
>
> Did you sneakily add NKI to your port in the process, but not submit
> them to the POSIX port?
>
> Are you on rfk-dev or happen to see this message somehow?
>
> If so, please submit your NKI to the rfk-dev list if you want them to
> be considered for inclusion in the (15th Anniversary!) Mayan
> Apocalypse release of robotfindskitten.
>
> (If you are not a porter, and have ideas for additional NKI, you can
> also submit them to the list.)
>
> Why, here's one right now!
>
> "A pile of discarded "no dumping" signs."
>
> --
> Peter A. H. Peterson
> Graduate Student Researcher
> Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
> University of California, Los Angeles
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev
>

<master.nki>

<updated.nki>

<nki.diff>

_______________________________________________
rfk-dev mailing list
rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev
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From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  1 16:00:09 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 16:00:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011558410.9832@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Thu, 1 Nov 2012, Leonard Richardson wrote:

> I said I'"this weekend", but I did it today. I present a unified,
> trimmed, and updated list of NKIs for the next release.

I feel it's important to keep NKIs to 80 characters or less so they may be 
cleanly displayed by the POSIX edition. There are few NKIs of more then 80 
characters.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  1 16:01:40 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 16:01:40 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011558410.9832@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011558410.9832@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121101230140.GI26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> On Thu, 1 Nov 2012, Leonard Richardson wrote:
>
>> I said I'"this weekend", but I did it today. I present a unified,
>> trimmed, and updated list of NKIs for the next release.
>
> I feel it's important to keep NKIs to 80 characters or less so they may 
> be cleanly displayed by the POSIX edition. There are few NKIs of more 
> then 80 characters.

+1, good catch.


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  1 16:06:11 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 16:06:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101230140.GI26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011558410.9832@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101230140.GI26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211011603570.9832@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Thu, 1 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> Quoting David Griffith:
>> On Thu, 1 Nov 2012, Leonard Richardson wrote:
>>
>>> I said I'"this weekend", but I did it today. I present a unified,
>>> trimmed, and updated list of NKIs for the next release.
>>
>> I feel it's important to keep NKIs to 80 characters or less so they may
>> be cleanly displayed by the POSIX edition. There are few NKIs of more
>> then 80 characters.
>
> +1, good catch.

I'm pleased that several of my more obscure NKIs made the cut.  For 
instance:

It's Uncle Doctor Hurkamur!

This is from the "Harv and Marv" series of educational films I saw in 
elementary school.  Marv always compared stuff to what his Uncle Doctor 
Hurkamur said.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From nathanhendler at gmail.com  Thu Nov  1 16:25:31 2012
From: nathanhendler at gmail.com (Nathanial Hendler)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 16:25:31 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101221342.GZ26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
	<20121101221342.GZ26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <CAPa1iyQinegXKs_1g62bdqe8Yeyo95K+4RUWqAmSwHDdOVSutQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Peter A. H. Peterson
<pedro at tastytronic.net>wrote:

>
> I starred the ones I am most fond of, but I think I touch on why I
> like the others below. I wouldn't die on any of these hills, except
> maybe #11.
>
> 1. A crowd of people, and at the center, a popular misconception.
> 3. A stegosaurus, escaped from the stegosaurusfindsrobot game.  It finds
> you.
> 4. A team of arctic explorers is camped here. **
> 6. It's a cardboard box full of 8-tracks.
> 7. It's a copy of "Zen and The Art of Robot Maintenance". **
> 9. It's Lucy Ricardo. "Aaaah, Ricky!", she says. **
> 11. Youv'e found the fabled America Online disk graveyard! **
>

I whole-heartedly agree with these choices for a second chance.

I think there should be clear reasons to get rid of NKIs that have been
around a while.  I know the Lucy Ricardo one quite well, it seems to pop up
a lot for me.  I'd miss it.  I'm not worried about dated NKIs

Nathan
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From steve at staticfree.info  Thu Nov  1 21:36:48 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:36:48 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-01 14:52, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
> If so, please submit your NKI to the rfk-dev list if you want them to
> be considered for inclusion in the (15th Anniversary!) Mayan
> Apocalypse release of robotfindskitten.

I happened to be hosting a party this evening and solicited items that
aren't kitten from the group. This is what we found:

A five-horned rhinoceros beetle with rings on every other horn.
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone.
A shrink-wrapped copy of the Prince of Persia user's manual.
An obvious Sisyphus metaphor.
A noun and a boat bound to the wrong verb.
Your existential dread.
In Soviet Russia, kitten finds you. Unfortunately, this isn't Russia.
A giant, mechanical octopus spews flames from its tentacles.
Beef stew.
Something borrowed, something blue.
A sheep and a lamp, lounging beneath a myrtle tree.
It's the wrong number.

-Steve

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From screwtape at froup.com  Thu Nov  1 22:40:31 2012
From: screwtape at froup.com (Tim Allen)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 16:40:31 +1100
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
Message-ID: <20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>

On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 12:36:48AM -0400, Steve Pomeroy wrote:
> Two vast and trunkless legs of stone.

I'm disappointed that in the past fifteen years of NKI research, nobody
thought to suggest that one before now - I love it.

The rest are good, too, but that one especially tickles me.

From stephen at tungol.org  Fri Nov  2 01:28:58 2012
From: stephen at tungol.org (Stephen)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 04:28:58 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
	<20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
Message-ID: <27B54997-54BB-4A25-9DDE-DC0827E0C93D@tungol.org>

I looked through the list of changes. From the ones you cut I'm partial to 

A scrap of parchment bears the single word, "meow".
Haven't you touched this thing before?

I was also going to mention a couple of the nethack references that got cut but looking though the master list, there is plenty of nethack still in there.

I also like 'An autographed copy of "Primary Colors", by Anonymous.' for the contradiction of a signed anonymous work - although if that one gets kept I think it should use a different work than Primary Colors - no longer current *or* anonymous. Possibly remove the need for a specific work entirely: 'An autographed copy of the collected works of Anonymous.' or something like that.

I also like "It's an Internet chain letter about sodium laureth sulfate." but I think it'd be better in generic: "An Internet chain letter." or similar

In your new list, you have 'A note reads, "kitten is the letter Q."' rather than 'A hastily scribbled note reads: "Kitten is the letter Q!"' which was suggested before. I rather like the "hastily scribbled" part and I think it's a lot weaker without it. The exclamation mark helps too. This one is better more specific, rather than less.

In "A non-descript box of crackers." nondescript is usually unhyphenated.

There's a stray double quote at the end of 'The non-kitten item like this but with "false" and "true" switched is true."'

There is only one NKI longer than 80 characters, mentioned previously to be a bad idea: 'Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Color, Phosphoric Acid, Flavors, Caffeine.'

-Stephen

From esr at thyrsus.com  Fri Nov  2 04:05:18 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 07:05:18 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
	<20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
Message-ID: <20121102110518.GA13974@thyrsus.com>

Tim Allen <screwtape at froup.com>:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 12:36:48AM -0400, Steve Pomeroy wrote:
> > Two vast and trunkless legs of stone.
> 
> I'm disappointed that in the past fifteen years of NKI research, nobody
> thought to suggest that one before now - I love it.
> 
> The rest are good, too, but that one especially tickles me.

I, too, thought that was the best of the bunch.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From leonardr at segfault.org  Fri Nov  2 05:59:30 2012
From: leonardr at segfault.org (Leonard Richardson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 08:59:30 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101221342.GZ26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
	<20121101221342.GZ26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <CAOarnHkYXEDyg+Hm=1ke5c0ngnNBKn1UrC_L9wTDHG3DaKP_UQ@mail.gmail.com>

Thanks for all the feedback. In general, I'm fine with keeping any
particular NKI that people are attached to.

These three are still present; I replaced them with slightly different NKIs:

3. A stegosaurus, escaped from the stegosaurusfindsrobot game.  It finds
you.
4. A team of arctic explorers is camped here. **
6. It's a cardboard box full of 8-tracks.

("A stegosaurus, escaped from stegosaurusfindsrobot.  It finds you.", "A
team of Arctic explorers is camped here.", "It's a cardboard box full of
8-track tapes.")

I'd replaced #5 with "A flyer advertising a big sale on flyers.", which I
think is funnier.

I've restored the rest of Pedro's suggestions, as well as 'A scrap of
parchment bears the single word, "meow".' (I didn't remove "Haven't you
touched this thing before?"; I just changed it to "Haven't you touched this
before?")

I removed "Caffeine." from the NKI that was too long.

I incorporated Michael's NKIs and most of Steve's. ("Two vast and trunkless
legs of stone." really is great.) We're now at 658.

Leonard
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From pedro at tastytronic.net  Fri Nov  2 07:07:18 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 07:07:18 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnHkYXEDyg+Hm=1ke5c0ngnNBKn1UrC_L9wTDHG3DaKP_UQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHngxnkD5BL4gOUibrCZ3tP+BnR_koRTBYYJAJBQQgDu8A@mail.gmail.com>
	<20121101221342.GZ26304@tastytronic.net>
	<CAOarnHkYXEDyg+Hm=1ke5c0ngnNBKn1UrC_L9wTDHG3DaKP_UQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20121102140718.GR26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Leonard Richardson:
>    These three are still present [and are now ] slightly different NKIs:
> 
>    ("A stegosaurus, escaped from stegosaurusfindsrobot.? It finds you.", "A
>    team of Arctic explorers is camped here.", "It's a cardboard box full of
>    8-track tapes.")
> 
>    I'd replaced #5 with "A flyer advertising a big sale on flyers.", which I
>    think is funnier.

Great. Sorry I missed the obvious rewordings.


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Fri Nov  2 07:09:32 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 07:09:32 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
	<20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
Message-ID: <20121102140932.GT26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Tim Allen:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 12:36:48AM -0400, Steve Pomeroy wrote:
> > Two vast and trunkless legs of stone.
> 
> I'm disappointed that in the past fifteen years of NKI research, nobody
> thought to suggest that one before now - I love it.

Yeah -- that is genius. 


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From steve at staticfree.info  Fri Nov  2 07:12:12 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:12:12 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
Message-ID: <5093D4BC.9090003@staticfree.info>

I found some more in the shower (don't worry, I rinsed them off):

Haphazard stacks of white, uppercase letters and a decaying cheeseburger.
A rainbow and a Pop-Tart lay motionless here.
A glitten: half glove, half kitten. Freakish.
A mound of hope with bits of luck scattered about nearby.
A warranted genuine Snark.
        or
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried.
This looks remarkably like last Tuesday.
The bottom-half of a mermaid, bleached-dry in the sun.
A smiling, handsome man paces around singing, "Trolololololo..."

On 2012-11-02 00:36, Steve Pomeroy wrote:
> [some things]

-Steve

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From esr at thyrsus.com  Fri Nov  2 07:14:35 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 10:14:35 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121102140932.GT26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
	<20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
	<20121102140932.GT26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121102141435.GB28120@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Quoting Tim Allen:
> > On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 12:36:48AM -0400, Steve Pomeroy wrote:
> > > Two vast and trunkless legs of stone.
> > 
> > I'm disappointed that in the past fifteen years of NKI research, nobody
> > thought to suggest that one before now - I love it.
> 
> Yeah -- that is genius. 

Entertainingly, I just got texted by a RL friend of mine. Molly deBlanc.
She reports that (a) she was in the group Steve asked for NKIs and
invented this one, and (b) she says "i thought of you when i told steve".

And so the circle closes.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Fri Nov  2 07:16:13 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 07:16:13 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <27B54997-54BB-4A25-9DDE-DC0827E0C93D@tungol.org>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
	<20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
	<27B54997-54BB-4A25-9DDE-DC0827E0C93D@tungol.org>
Message-ID: <20121102141613.GV26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Stephen:
> I also like "It's an Internet chain letter about sodium laureth
> sulfate." but I think it'd be better in generic: "An Internet chain
> letter." or similar

Without necessarily endorsing it, I think the reference to SLS works.
Either it will be determined in the future to be completely harmful,
not used because we instead use potassium myrtleth megasulfate, or
found to be akin to DDT. No matter what, the NKI wins.

On the other hand, "An Internet chain letter." allows the player to
insert whatever annoying chain letter they most recently RXed, which
is probably a richer experience. (Richer by being generic!)

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From steve at staticfree.info  Fri Nov  2 07:30:50 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:30:50 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121102141435.GB28120@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<50934DE0.2070808@staticfree.info>
	<20121102054031.GH20984@boombah.thristian.org>
	<20121102140932.GT26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121102141435.GB28120@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <5093D91A.9010405@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-02 10:14, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Entertainingly, I just got texted by a RL friend of mine. Molly deBlanc.
> She reports that (a) she was in the group Steve asked for NKIs and
> invented this one, and (b) she says "i thought of you when i told steve".
> 
> And so the circle closes.

Indeed. That's my favorite of the bunch, too.

-Steve

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From pedro at tastytronic.net  Fri Nov  2 07:33:29 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 07:33:29 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] a few others
Message-ID: <20121102143329.GW26304@tastytronic.net>

It's the Maltese Falcon.
This is a case of the screaming meemies.
Just the usual gang of idiots.
A rusted telephone booth.
It's a fleet of mothballs.
A parade of ants crosses your path.
An historical marker.
It's the entrance to a forgotten mine.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Fri Nov  2 07:35:22 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 07:35:22 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121102143522.GF26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Peter A. H. Peterson:
> +-----------------------------------------------------+ 
> | [-]                .::. .::.              |\_/|     | 
> | (+)=C              :::::::::              |o o|__   | 
> | | |                ':::::::'              =-*-=__\  | 
> | OOO                  ':::'               c_c__(___) | 
> +-----------------------------------------------------+ 

These should have been in this thread... it's early:

It's the Maltese Falcon.
This is a case of the screaming meemies.
Just the usual gang of idiots.
A rusted telephone booth.
It's a fleet of mothballs.
A parade of ants crosses your path.
An historical marker.
It's the entrance to a forgotten mine.

Take'em or leave'em!


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Fri Nov  2 07:45:00 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 07:45:00 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<20121031174621.GE28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121102144500.GH26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Peter A. H. Peterson:
> e. Given that the repositioning of the NKI and robot is very slight
> anyway, why don't we just expand the field but not move the objects?
> Or if we want to be clever, center the objects in the field or something.

I realize now the problem with this is that if robot leaves the
original object area and that screen area is "downsized", we'd have to
teleport robot back into the object area. This could be done ("You
feel tingly for a moment!") or it could destroy the simulation with
the current "crush" message.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Fri Nov  2 13:04:16 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 13:04:16 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121102200416.GW26304@tastytronic.net>

A six-wheeled robot sits lifeless, stuck in the dirt.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From xorph at xorph.com  Fri Nov  2 13:55:33 2012
From: xorph at xorph.com (Brendan Adkins)
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 13:55:33 -0700
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121102143522.GF26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121102143522.GF26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <3F0D29BA-0F59-4EE0-BEC4-62B87C329E73@xorph.com>

You can't touch that.
Your permanent record is here, skipping.
It's an incomplete

--Brendan

On Nov 2, 2012, at 7:35 AM, "Peter A. H. Peterson" <pedro at tastytronic.net> wrote:

> Quoting Peter A. H. Peterson:
>> +-----------------------------------------------------+ 
>> | [-]                .::. .::.              |\_/|     | 
>> | (+)=C              :::::::::              |o o|__   | 
>> | | |                ':::::::'              =-*-=__\  | 
>> | OOO                  ':::'               c_c__(___) | 
>> +-----------------------------------------------------+ 
> 
> These should have been in this thread... it's early:
> 
> It's the Maltese Falcon.
> This is a case of the screaming meemies.
> Just the usual gang of idiots.
> A rusted telephone booth.
> It's a fleet of mothballs.
> A parade of ants crosses your path.
> An historical marker.
> It's the entrance to a forgotten mine.
> 
> Take'em or leave'em!
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter A. H. Peterson
> Graduate Student Researcher
> Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
> University of California, Los Angeles
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev

From screwtape at froup.com  Fri Nov  2 20:22:54 2012
From: screwtape at froup.com (Tim Allen)
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 14:22:54 +1100
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121103032254.GI20984@boombah.thristian.org>

On Thu, Nov 01, 2012 at 11:52:09AM -0700, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
> If so, please submit your NKI to the rfk-dev list if you want them to
> be considered for inclusion in the (15th Anniversary!) Mayan
> Apocalypse release of robotfindskitten.

I spent some time thinking of NKIs while having breakfast and came up
with these:

The rusted gates of a long-abandoned bemusement park.
A little teapot, short and stout.
It's a concatenation of circumstances.
It's part of a complete breakfast.
It's an incomplete breakfast.
An empty lightbulb socket, wired to a lemon rind.
A recharging station. You resume your search with renewed vigour.
A naked singularity. You avert your eyes.
Two magnets cling to each other in the darkness.
It's a stone, unturned.
A copy of "starshipfindsspacekitten" from a thousand years in the future.
A copy of "golemfindswerekitten" from a thousand years in the past.
A Gregorian date palm, fronds gently waving.
You see a wild goose, eyeing you cautiously and ready to take flight.
It's a boondock, though no boons are currently tied up there.
A baby catapult, and a little pile of pebbles.

I checked the current git NKI file, and I'm pretty sure none of them are
duplicates, but I might be vaguely remembering other NKIs I've seen in
the past that aren't in the current git list for whatever reason.

From mwooten111 at gmail.com  Sat Nov  3 07:36:41 2012
From: mwooten111 at gmail.com (Michael Wooten)
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 10:36:41 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121103032254.GI20984@boombah.thristian.org>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103032254.GI20984@boombah.thristian.org>
Message-ID: <4818373503193648530@unknownmsgid>

I like those. In similar lines, I considered:

The Zynga game "androidfindspuppy".

But Zynga probably won't be around in a few years.

I also suggest:

The secret to peace and prosperity for humanity. Alas, not kitten.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 2, 2012, at 11:23 PM, Tim Allen <screwtape at froup.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 01, 2012 at 11:52:09AM -0700, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
>> If so, please submit your NKI to the rfk-dev list if you want them to
>> be considered for inclusion in the (15th Anniversary!) Mayan
>> Apocalypse release of robotfindskitten.
>
> I spent some time thinking of NKIs while having breakfast and came up
> with these:
>
> The rusted gates of a long-abandoned bemusement park.
> A little teapot, short and stout.
> It's a concatenation of circumstances.
> It's part of a complete breakfast.
> It's an incomplete breakfast.
> An empty lightbulb socket, wired to a lemon rind.
> A recharging station. You resume your search with renewed vigour.
> A naked singularity. You avert your eyes.
> Two magnets cling to each other in the darkness.
> It's a stone, unturned.
> A copy of "starshipfindsspacekitten" from a thousand years in the future.
> A copy of "golemfindswerekitten" from a thousand years in the past.
> A Gregorian date palm, fronds gently waving.
> You see a wild goose, eyeing you cautiously and ready to take flight.
> It's a boondock, though no boons are currently tied up there.
> A baby catapult, and a little pile of pebbles.
>
> I checked the current git NKI file, and I'm pretty sure none of them are
> duplicates, but I might be vaguely remembering other NKIs I've seen in
> the past that aren't in the current git list for whatever reason.
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev

From esr at thyrsus.com  Sat Nov  3 09:16:48 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 12:16:48 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] Moving off SourceForge
In-Reply-To: <20121031154851.GM28677@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121031104017.941DE4065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031154851.GM28677@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121103161648.GA12230@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> > There has been some talk of moving the project off SourceForge.
> > On reflection, I don't think I understand why.  In what respects
> > does SourceForge seem to be a bad fit?
> 
> There's no great pressure to do so.
> 
> My motivation for doing so is that since most of the activity happens
> on rfk.org, and we archive source code there as a record of all
> rfkiana, sourceforge tends to become a bit forgotten.

I think this calls for a change in mental habits.  The git repo is your
master record of rfkiana now, both code and NKIs.  It will become even more 
definitively so when I fold in the two ancient releases and the Inform port.

>                                                  It's also a
> dependency on the project that generally serves little purpose other
> than providing CVS.

You're forgetting mailing lists.  And the bugtracker.  Forges really do
serve purposes that aren't met by a bare repo - I think you're dismissing
SF too quickly.

>               We forget our logins and then must go through
> recovery processes. We have to wait 5 seconds to download tarballs
> while looking at ads.

In the brave new git world, you may never log into SF again, nor download 
a tarball.  git clone is your friend!  It makes these impediments go away.

> On the other hand, by setting up a community rcs at rfk.org, we keep
> everything under one roof, in one place. It's just cleaner and
> streamlines the processes of updating code and/or including new ports.

The process of updating code and/or including new ports is now "git push",
and it matters little where the repo is actually located.  That being the
case, I don't see any case for moving it. Doing so would violate the
expectations of people who come to SF expecting to find code.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From esr at thyrsus.com  Sat Nov  3 09:25:27 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 12:25:27 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<20121031174621.GE28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121103162527.GB12230@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Ok, I have some bugs:
> 
> 0. The success message (YFK!WTGR!) should appear after the animation,
> not before or concurrent to it.

This would actually be a bit difficult given the current code organization.
I could explain why in detail, but...how important is this?
 
> 1. Resizing is still a bit wonky. Several examples follow:

I have implemented and pushed much simpler resize behavior.

Objects no longer move during a resize.  Robot can explore any space created.
Crush termination is invoked if the resize would hide any NKI, robot, or
kitten.  Articles have been removed from robot and kitten.

I hope this is satisfactory.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From esr at thyrsus.com  Sat Nov  3 09:36:59 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 12:36:59 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> > I have a slightly different concern.  I would like the ports to be 
> > refactored so there is just one NKI file in the distribution that all
> > of them use.  In some cases this might involve writing machinery to
> > massage it into native string-array initializers.
> 
> I have a slightly different concern relating to your concern. 
> 
> Are you proposing to create a Grand Unified Source Tree of all the
> "ports"?  With a build system to "build" any/all of the ports from the
> single tree?

Not necessarily  of all the ports, but of all the ports that opt in by 
joining their histories to the repo.  Presently that's just the palmos 
and inform ports.  I do think it would be good if more ports joined the
master repo, but obviously that choice is up to the port maintainers.

I also don't have any particular issue with each port directory having its
own build recipe.  I do want to get to where all the in-tree build recipes
use the same master NKI file.  Otherwise we could have port maintainers
doing good work on adding and fixing NKIs that doesn't get shared across
the in-tree ports, which I think would be regrettable.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From steve at staticfree.info  Sat Nov  3 12:06:12 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:06:12 -0400
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <67690ca7-01d7-410f-afe9-84be82011abc@email.android.com>

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"Eric S. Raymond" <esr at thyrsus.com> wrote:

>Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
>> Are you proposing to create a Grand Unified Source Tree of all the
>> "ports"?  With a build system to "build" any/all of the ports from
>the
>> single tree?
>
>Not necessarily  of all the ports, but of all the ports that opt in by
>joining their histories to the repo.  Presently that's just the palmos
>and inform ports.  I do think it would be good if more ports joined the
>master repo, but obviously that choice is up to the port maintainers.

Personally, I don't see the advantage of having everything in one repo. After all, hosting multiple repositories on the same master host will be approximately the same, without the downside of a complicated revision log. Many projects (I'm thinking of Android, for example) keep their discrete parts in separate repositories. I'm happy to keep a copy of my repo in a canonical location, though.

Also, I host my port's website from the same repository as the source. (I maintain the Android port).
- --
http://staticfree.info/
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From hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk  Sat Nov  3 12:08:13 2012
From: hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Harry J Mason)
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 19:08:13 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <3F0D29BA-0F59-4EE0-BEC4-62B87C329E73@xorph.com>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121102143522.GF26304@tastytronic.net>
	<3F0D29BA-0F59-4EE0-BEC4-62B87C329E73@xorph.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211031843420.6954@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <EMEW3|7a7240d1f1535680e2b96c45ccf084f1oA2J8E06hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211031843420.6954@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>

On Fri, 2 Nov 2012, Brendan Adkins wrote:

> It's an incomplete

A vital clue to the whereabouts of kitten.
Bars of lard, stacked a mile high.
Two people in a pantomime kitten costume.
Camelot!
A realistic toy kitten. Suspended high above is a large steel cage.

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Sun Nov  4 08:37:27 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:37:27 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121103162527.GB12230@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<20121031174621.GE28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103162527.GB12230@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121104163727.GU26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> > 0. The success message (YFK!WTGR!) should appear after the animation,
> > not before or concurrent to it.
> 
> This would actually be a bit difficult given the current code organization.
> I could explain why in detail, but...how important is this?

I would say it's pretty important -- having both at the same time is
mutually distracting, and the message no longer pops as a
punchline/finale. But I would like others to chime in on this. 

Perhaps an acceptable alternative would be to do the animation without
printing the success message in the status window, and then following
the animation print the message on standard out before quitting?

> > 1. Resizing is still a bit wonky. Several examples follow:
> 
> I have implemented and pushed much simpler resize behavior.
> 
> Objects no longer move during a resize.  Robot can explore any space created.
> Crush termination is invoked if the resize would hide any NKI, robot, or
> kitten.  Articles have been removed from robot and kitten.
> 
> I hope this is satisfactory.

I have not playtested this yet, but that sounds great.

Thanks again for all your contributions!

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Sun Nov  4 08:50:26 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:50:26 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Moving off SourceForge
In-Reply-To: <20121103161648.GA12230@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121031104017.941DE4065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031154851.GM28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103161648.GA12230@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121104165026.GW26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> > Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> > > There has been some talk of moving the project off SourceForge.
> > > On reflection, I don't think I understand why.  In what respects
> > > does SourceForge seem to be a bad fit?
> > 
> > My motivation for doing so is that since most of the activity happens
> > on rfk.org, and we archive source code there as a record of all
> > rfkiana, sourceforge tends to become a bit forgotten.
> 
> I think this calls for a change in mental habits.  The git repo is your
> master record of rfkiana now, both code and NKIs.  It will become even more 
> definitively so when I fold in the two ancient releases and the Inform port.

I think the git repo is a much more comprehensive repo now, but I
wouldn't call it the master record of rfkiana. There are 30-some
ports on the site, many of which may not ever merge with git. There
are also other kinds of rfkiana, like "other appearances",
screenshots, etc. The git repo is now a much more comprehensive repo
-- thanks to you. But it's not yet the master record.

> > It's also a dependency on the project that generally serves little
> > purpose other than providing CVS.
> 
> You're forgetting mailing lists.  And the bugtracker.  Forges really do
> serve purposes that aren't met by a bare repo - I think you're dismissing
> SF too quickly.

I provide the mailing lists. The bug tracker is no doubt a useful
feature, but the project is also small enough that I'm not sure we
*need* what SF offers. I'm not saying it's valueless, but it comes at
a cost.

> > We forget our logins and then must go through
> > recovery processes. We have to wait 5 seconds to download tarballs
> > while looking at ads.
> 
> In the brave new git world, you may never log into SF again, nor download 
> a tarball.  git clone is your friend!  It makes these impediments go away.

Until we have to push a bugfix back up (and have forgotten our
password), or grant access to a new user (or, if we are using the
bugtracker, track bugs, etc.) If the repo was hosted locally, git
clone would still be our friend, but he'd be our roommate, not living
in another town.

The fact is that I have just always found dealing with SF.net kind of
a hassle, and the project is not so huge or busy that it requires the
(admittedly handy) infrastructure they provide.

> > On the other hand, by setting up a community rcs at rfk.org, we keep
> > everything under one roof, in one place. It's just cleaner and
> > streamlines the processes of updating code and/or including new ports.
> 
> The process of updating code and/or including new ports is now "git push",
> and it matters little where the repo is actually located.  That being the
> case, I don't see any case for moving it. Doing so would violate the
> expectations of people who come to SF expecting to find code.

If we moved the repo, I think we would probably deactivate the SF site
or just point them back to rfk.org. I don't think that the user
expectation of finding rfk code at SF.net is especially widespread or
necessary to protect.

That said, I don't think there's a compelling reason to move it right now,
so I think for now we should table this discussion unless we have to
make a decision that affects it (like relying on the bugtracker
heavily). We have enough other things to discuss, and only so much
bandwidth.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk  Sun Nov  4 09:03:45 2012
From: hjm03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Harry J Mason)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 17:03:45 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <67690ca7-01d7-410f-afe9-84be82011abc@email.android.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
	<67690ca7-01d7-410f-afe9-84be82011abc@email.android.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211041656180.31972@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <EMEW3|0df4f53ce691dcc2af1e45956e2f8333oA3H3m06hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211041656180.31972@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>

On Sat, 3 Nov 2012, Steve Pomeroy wrote:

> Many projects (I'm thinking of Android, for example) keep their discrete
> parts in separate repositories.

Best of both worlds might be to put the NKI file in a standard path in each
source tree, and host the master copy in a repo on its own. Then each port
can merge any upstream changes from the NKI repo, but each port is separate
and requires only one checkout to build. That would also make it simple
for any port to have custom NKI additions which only made sense in that
port.

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Sun Nov  4 13:27:24 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 13:27:24 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121104212724.GY26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> > Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> > > I have a slightly different concern.  I would like the ports to be 
> > > refactored so there is just one NKI file in the distribution that all
> > > of them use.  In some cases this might involve writing machinery to
> > > massage it into native string-array initializers.
> > 
> > I have a slightly different concern relating to your concern. 
> > 
> > Are you proposing to create a Grand Unified Source Tree of all the
> > "ports"?  With a build system to "build" any/all of the ports from the
> > single tree?
> 
> Not necessarily  of all the ports, but of all the ports that opt in by 
> joining their histories to the repo.  Presently that's just the palmos 
> and inform ports.  I do think it would be good if more ports joined the
> master repo, but obviously that choice is up to the port maintainers.
> 
> I also don't have any particular issue with each port directory having its
> own build recipe.  I do want to get to where all the in-tree build recipes
> use the same master NKI file.  Otherwise we could have port maintainers
> doing good work on adding and fixing NKIs that doesn't get shared across
> the in-tree ports, which I think would be regrettable.

I do like the idea of all willing/able ports sharing a single source
NKI file. I think the status quo will (continue to) lead to ports with
out of date NKI lists.

Is there a way that a file could be in multiple repositories in a sensible
way? I'm thinking maybe with links or with nested repos or something? 

Or, the build process for all ports (including POSIX) could include
the NKIs as a dependency (e.g., the build script could pull the
current one from the website for that matter). Perhaps in this world
the NKI list(s) themselves would have their own repo.

As a somewhat orthogonal question, if we had a hypothetical git repo of
*all* ports, is there a way that someone could clone just the port
they are interested in? That (and my phobia of a unified build system)
is my main aversion to a unified tree.

My main concern in all of this is keeping the maintenance load low,
future-proofing whatever we decide to do, and keeping it easy for
people to develop new ports.

Thoughts?

-pedro

FYI -- My workload is heavy right now, so my responses may be a bit
slower for a while.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Sun Nov  4 13:29:36 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 13:29:36 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <EMEW3|7a7240d1f1535680e2b96c45ccf084f1oA2J8E06hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211031843420.6954@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121102143522.GF26304@tastytronic.net>
	<3F0D29BA-0F59-4EE0-BEC4-62B87C329E73@xorph.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211031843420.6954@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<EMEW3|7a7240d1f1535680e2b96c45ccf084f1oA2J8E06hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211031843420.6954@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20121104212936.GA26304@tastytronic.net>

This appears to be a black, featureless monolith.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Sun Nov  4 16:13:12 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 16:13:12 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] REQUEST FOR NON-KITTEN ITEMS
In-Reply-To: <20121104212936.GA26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121101185209.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121102143522.GF26304@tastytronic.net>
	<3F0D29BA-0F59-4EE0-BEC4-62B87C329E73@xorph.com>
	<alpine.LRH.2.00.1211031843420.6954@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<EMEW3|7a7240d1f1535680e2b96c45ccf084f1oA2J8E06hjm03r|ecs.soton.ac.uk|alpine.LRH.2.00.1211031843420.6954@login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
	<20121104212936.GA26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121105001312.GI26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Peter A. H. Peterson:
> This appears to be a black, featureless monolith.

Better yet:

A featureless black monolith.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From steve at staticfree.info  Sun Nov  4 17:04:49 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 20:04:49 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-01 08:49, Leonard Richardson wrote:
> If you like this idea, I'll work on this over the weekend. If you have
> any suggestions for new NKIs or NKIs to exclude, send them to the list
> and I'll handle them all at once.

+1 for this idea.

> I would like your opinion on approximately how many NKIs should be in
> the list. There are about 740 in the big vanilla list. There are about
> 200 that were added to the Inform version, but spot checks indicate
> most of those are also present in vanilla. Should we aim for more like
> 700, or more like 1000? Should we go big or prune it down?

Personally, as someone who occasionally likes playing the game, I'd vote
for more. More chance for surprise makes the game deeper.

On that note, one thing that I am unsure of in the intent of the game:
should there ever be an instance of two NKI on the field at the same
time which both have the same message?

> Two other comments on recent threads:
> 
> 1. I think the "crushed the simulation" message should be a slight
> variant on one of Harry's suggestions:
> 
> "You crushed the simulation. Robot never fulfilled its function."
> 
> or
> 
> "You crushed the simulation. Robot never found kitten."

How sad! I +1 this one.

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From pedro at tastytronic.net  Sun Nov  4 20:27:17 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 20:27:17 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
Message-ID: <20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
> On that note, one thing that I am unsure of in the intent of the game:
> should there ever be an instance of two NKI on the field at the same
> time which both have the same message?

I'm pretty sure that no NKI should be in the simulation more than once
in any given run.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Sun Nov  4 22:59:33 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 22:59:33 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Sun, 4 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
>> On that note, one thing that I am unsure of in the intent of the game:
>> should there ever be an instance of two NKI on the field at the same
>> time which both have the same message?
>
> I'm pretty sure that no NKI should be in the simulation more than once
> in any given run.

I made sure of this in the Inform version.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From stephen at tungol.org  Mon Nov  5 00:04:02 2012
From: stephen at tungol.org (Stephen)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 03:04:02 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>


On Nov 5, 2012, at 1:59 AM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, 4 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
> 
>> Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
>>> On that note, one thing that I am unsure of in the intent of the game:
>>> should there ever be an instance of two NKI on the field at the same
>>> time which both have the same message?
>> 
>> I'm pretty sure that no NKI should be in the simulation more than once
>> in any given run.


I agree, although I would be pretty okay with a special case allowing "Haven't you touched this before?" to appear a maximum of twice, on the other hand.

-Stephen

From leonardr at segfault.org  Mon Nov  5 06:49:59 2012
From: leonardr at segfault.org (Leonard Richardson)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 09:49:59 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
Message-ID: <CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>

My new list is attached. I've gotten up to a round 700 NKIs; new ones
begin on line 616. I replaced a few NKIs with similar suggestions that
were better (e.g. "You've found... Oh wait, that's just a cat." ->
"It's a cat. Are you too late?"), but it's mostly brand new NKI from
the community, slightly edited by me.

This NKI list is approximately the size of the old master list (700
vs. 730) and IMO will make for much more interesting games. I think
this is good enough to put into git as the official list. (I'll sort
it first, mixing the new NKI in with the old.) Let me know if you have
comments or any last-minute NKIs.

BTW, one NKI should not appear more than once in a given run of rfk.
I'm okay with an exception for "Haven't you touched this before?" or
any other NKIs that are similarly meta.

Leonard

On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 3:04 AM, Stephen <stephen at tungol.org> wrote:
>
> On Nov 5, 2012, at 1:59 AM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 4 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
>>
>>> Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
>>>> On that note, one thing that I am unsure of in the intent of the game:
>>>> should there ever be an instance of two NKI on the field at the same
>>>> time which both have the same message?
>>>
>>> I'm pretty sure that no NKI should be in the simulation more than once
>>> in any given run.
>
>
> I agree, although I would be pretty okay with a special case allowing "Haven't you touched this before?" to appear a maximum of twice, on the other hand.
>
> -Stephen
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev
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From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov  5 07:38:17 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 07:38:17 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20121105153817.GB24476@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Leonard Richardson:
> My new list is attached. I've gotten up to a round 700 NKIs; new ones
> begin on line 616. I replaced a few NKIs with similar suggestions that
> were better (e.g. "You've found... Oh wait, that's just a cat." ->
> "It's a cat. Are you too late?"), but it's mostly brand new NKI from
> the community, slightly edited by me.

Great -- thanks for doing this.

> This NKI list is approximately the size of the old master list (700
> vs. 730) and IMO will make for much more interesting games. 

Agreed. It's fun to be surprised.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov  5 07:45:42 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 07:45:42 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
Message-ID: <20121105154542.GD24476@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Stephen:
> ... I would be pretty okay with a special case allowing "Haven't you
> touched this before?" to appear a maximum of twice, on the other
> hand.

I agree with Leonard that this would be OK, and I get why it is funny,
but I'm not sure I think it would be an improvement. And, enabling it
would require a method to mark the "meta NKIs" allowed to be sourced
twice which adds complication to something that is otherwise pretty
elegant. It's not that it's hard, but I'm just not sure it's worth it.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From esr at thyrsus.com  Mon Nov  5 10:15:06 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 13:15:06 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <20121105154542.GD24476@tastytronic.net>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<20121105154542.GD24476@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121105181505.GA23065@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Quoting Stephen:
> > ... I would be pretty okay with a special case allowing "Haven't you
> > touched this before?" to appear a maximum of twice, on the other
> > hand.
> 
> I agree with Leonard that this would be OK, and I get why it is funny,
> but I'm not sure I think it would be an improvement. And, enabling it
> would require a method to mark the "meta NKIs" allowed to be sourced
> twice which adds complication to something that is otherwise pretty
> elegant. It's not that it's hard, but I'm just not sure it's worth it.

I think it isn't.

But while we're talking new features, I have one in mind.  How about an
object that, when the robot bumps it, teleports him to a random (empty)
location?  Would be easy to do...
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Mon Nov  5 13:13:23 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 13:13:23 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <20121105181505.GA23065@thyrsus.com>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<20121105154542.GD24476@tastytronic.net>
	<20121105181505.GA23065@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211051312250.18359@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Mon, 5 Nov 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
>> Quoting Stephen:
>>> ... I would be pretty okay with a special case allowing "Haven't you
>>> touched this before?" to appear a maximum of twice, on the other
>>> hand.
>>
>> I agree with Leonard that this would be OK, and I get why it is funny,
>> but I'm not sure I think it would be an improvement. And, enabling it
>> would require a method to mark the "meta NKIs" allowed to be sourced
>> twice which adds complication to something that is otherwise pretty
>> elegant. It's not that it's hard, but I'm just not sure it's worth it.
>
> I think it isn't.
>
> But while we're talking new features, I have one in mind.  How about an
> object that, when the robot bumps it, teleports him to a random (empty)
> location?  Would be easy to do...

Easy to do, but I think it would overly complicate things.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From esr at thyrsus.com  Mon Nov  5 15:00:00 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 18:00:00 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121104163727.GU26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<20121031174621.GE28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103162527.GB12230@thyrsus.com>
	<20121104163727.GU26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121105230000.GA31497@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> > Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> > > 0. The success message (YFK!WTGR!) should appear after the animation,
> > > not before or concurrent to it.
> > 
> > This would actually be a bit difficult given the current code organization.
> > I could explain why in detail, but...how important is this?
> 
> I would say it's pretty important -- having both at the same time is
> mutually distracting, and the message no longer pops as a
> punchline/finale. But I would like others to chime in on this. 

I've implemented message-after-animation.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From esr at thyrsus.com  Mon Nov  5 15:07:16 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 18:07:16 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <20121104212724.GY26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
	<20121104212724.GY26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121105230715.GB31497@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> I do like the idea of all willing/able ports sharing a single source
> NKI file. I think the status quo will (continue to) lead to ports with
> out of date NKI lists.
> 
> Is there a way that a file could be in multiple repositories in a sensible
> way? I'm thinking maybe with links or with nested repos or something? 

There's a way to do cross-repo reference links in git, but I've
never used it and don't know how robust it is.  I found a description here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2140985/setup-a-git-external-for-remote-repo
 
> Or, the build process for all ports (including POSIX) could include
> the NKIs as a dependency (e.g., the build script could pull the
> current one from the website for that matter). Perhaps in this world
> the NKI list(s) themselves would have their own repo.

Or we just write a commit hook that publishes the NKI file to a web-visible
location whenever it's updated.

> As a somewhat orthogonal question, if we had a hypothetical git repo of
> *all* ports, is there a way that someone could clone just the port
> they are interested in?

I don't know of a way to do that.

> FYI -- My workload is heavy right now, so my responses may be a bit
> slower for a while.

I'm about to become mostly unavailable for a week myself.  Traveling - 
guest-of-honor gig at an SF convention in Chicago.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From steve at staticfree.info  Mon Nov  5 18:32:02 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:32:02 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <20121105230715.GB31497@thyrsus.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
	<20121104212724.GY26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121105230715.GB31497@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <509876A2.3040003@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-05 18:07, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> There's a way to do cross-repo reference links in git, but I've
> never used it and don't know how robust it is.  I found a description here:
> 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2140985/setup-a-git-external-for-remote-repo

I use git submodules extensively for some of my more recent projects. It
works and is built into git, but is a bit clunky at times (mostly in
getting started with it and that some parts aren't as automatic as they
probably should be). I'd say it makes sense for this application -
especially as it's not needed for those who can't figure out how to use
it (they can just download the file).

> Or we just write a commit hook that publishes the NKI file to a web-visible
> location whenever it's updated.

Perfect.

>> As a somewhat orthogonal question, if we had a hypothetical git repo of
>> *all* ports, is there a way that someone could clone just the port
>> they are interested in?
> 
> I don't know of a way to do that.

From my [rough] understanding of how git works, I don't think that's
possible. As it deals with patches which could technically span multiple
objects, I presume that one would still need to clone the whole repo to
get just a subpath. This is most likely why big projects use multiple
repositories to manage logical components - to make things more manageable.

-Steve

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From steve at staticfree.info  Mon Nov  5 18:57:56 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:57:56 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <50987CB4.1030102@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-05 09:49, Leonard Richardson wrote:
> This NKI list is approximately the size of the old master list (700
> vs. 730) and IMO will make for much more interesting games. I think
> this is good enough to put into git as the official list. (I'll sort
> it first, mixing the new NKI in with the old.) Let me know if you have
> comments or any last-minute NKIs.

I was just skimming through the new additions and realized that I
accidentally the whole NKI, "A noun and a boat bound to the wrong
verb.". I wrote it while trying to come up with something that fit that
pattern, but never got it right; I'm not quite sure what it means. But
maybe that's the point?

I very much enjoy these new additions and cleanups. I'm particularly
partial to many of them.

> BTW, one NKI should not appear more than once in a given run of rfk.
> I'm okay with an exception for "Haven't you touched this before?" or
> any other NKIs that are similarly meta.

Roger, thanks!

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From esr at thyrsus.com  Mon Nov  5 19:11:04 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Mon,  5 Nov 2012 22:11:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Scheduling the Mayan Apocalype Edition
Message-ID: <20121106031104.2C3564065B@snark.thyrsus.com>

I believe the code is ready to be shipped.  I have fulfilled all of
the bugfixes and feature requests that I know to have been pending.

I suggest that it's time to integrate the new master NKI list and do a
round of serious playtesting.  I'll be traveling for most of the next
two weeks, but could we shoot for release around 15 November?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. 
	-- Ramsey Clark

From steve at staticfree.info  Mon Nov  5 19:14:10 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:14:10 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <50988082.1070707@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-01 09:57, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
> [a bunch of important things] 
> Historically, ports trickle in a few a year like babies
> in picnic baskets, [some other words]

I propose a new last-minute NKI (or something similar):

* A picnic basket floats by containing what seems to be a baby. Sadly,
it's human.

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From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 07:02:48 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 07:02:48 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Scheduling the Mayan Apocalype Edition
In-Reply-To: <20121106031104.2C3564065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
References: <20121106031104.2C3564065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121106150248.GS26070@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> I believe the code is ready to be shipped.  I have fulfilled all of
> the bugfixes and feature requests that I know to have been pending.

Thanks again for all your hard work!

> I suggest that it's time to integrate the new master NKI list and do a
> round of serious playtesting.  I'll be traveling for most of the next
> two weeks, but could we shoot for release around 15 November?

I will definitely do the playtesting, and I'll do it with Leonard's
list. I'm fine for shooting for this deadline internally; we'll have
to see what works as for getting a Debian version packaged.

Ryan, what's that process look like?

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 07:03:30 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 07:03:30 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Getting this train moving
In-Reply-To: <20121105230000.GA31497@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121031103630.59DC24065B@snark.thyrsus.com>
	<20121031144643.GJ28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121031171702.GA14598@thyrsus.com>
	<20121031174621.GE28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101142057.GB26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103162527.GB12230@thyrsus.com>
	<20121104163727.GU26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121105230000.GA31497@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121106150330.GU26070@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> > > This would actually be a bit difficult given the current code organization.
> > > I could explain why in detail, but...how important is this?
> > 
> > I would say it's pretty important -- having both at the same time is
> > mutually distracting, and the message no longer pops as a
> > punchline/finale. But I would like others to chime in on this. 
> 
> I've implemented message-after-animation.

Ok, thanks. 

Please playtest this and comment!

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 07:04:46 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 07:04:46 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <50987CB4.1030102@staticfree.info>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>
	<50987CB4.1030102@staticfree.info>
Message-ID: <20121106150446.GW26070@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
> I [...] realized that I accidentally the whole NKI, "A noun and a
> boat bound to the wrong verb.".

I just had a real-world robotfindskitten moment.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 07:18:17 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 07:18:17 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211051312250.18359@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<20121105154542.GD24476@tastytronic.net>
	<20121105181505.GA23065@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211051312250.18359@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121106151817.GY26070@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> On Mon, 5 Nov 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> >> Quoting Stephen:
> >>> ... I would be pretty okay with a special case allowing "Haven't you
> >>> touched this before?" to appear a maximum of twice, on the other
> >>> hand.
> >>
> >> It's not that it's hard, but I'm just not sure it's worth it.
> >
> > I think it isn't.
> >
> > But while we're talking new features, I have one in mind.  How about an
> > object that, when the robot bumps it, teleports him to a random (empty)
> > location?  Would be easy to do...
> 
> Easy to do, but I think it would overly complicate things.

Yeah. I think that one of the great things about robotfindskitten is
it's bone simplicity. Both of those suggestions are "interesting", but
they add a certain overhead to the mechanics that is unnecessary.
It's gilding the lily, it's feeping creatureism, it's New Coke. It
also makes port writing more complicated (again, not by much, but it
does). So I think not, and probably not to almost any mechanic change
I can imagine.

That said, one thing we haven't gotten a lot of over the years is
"reimaginings" of robotfindskitten. I think that motivated people
could submit their own versions, which could be "POSIX remixes" (or
whatever) incorporating features like teleporting, moving NKI,
repeated meta NKI, permadeath, identification mini-games, a complete
email reader, rocket launchers, dowsing, bitcoin prizes, etc. I'd be
happy to post those in a new section on the site.


From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 07:23:33 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 07:23:33 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] folding in NKIs from the inform edition
In-Reply-To: <509876A2.3040003@staticfree.info>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1210311718120.13770@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121101012042.GF28677@tastytronic.net>
	<20121101031336.GB24052@thyrsus.com>
	<20121101135738.GD26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121103163659.GC12230@thyrsus.com>
	<20121104212724.GY26304@tastytronic.net>
	<20121105230715.GB31497@thyrsus.com>
	<509876A2.3040003@staticfree.info>
Message-ID: <20121106152333.GA26070@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
> On 2012-11-05 18:07, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > There's a way to do cross-repo reference links in git, but I've
> > never used it and don't know how robust it is.  I found a description here:
> > 
> > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2140985/setup-a-git-external-for-remote-repo
> 
> > Or we just write a commit hook that publishes the NKI file to a web-visible
> > location whenever it's updated.
> 
> Perfect.

So, is the idea here that the port writers would be encouraged to grab
it for their own packaging? Or is there some kind of automatic
mechanism for incorporating the NKI list that I'm not grokking? Either
way, I expect to have the NKI list in a prominent, web-accessible
location. If port writers wanted to even grab it live (hopefully
keeping a cached version somewhere!) I'm fine with that.

Another possibility would be that the NKI editor (Leonard or myself
probably) would get commit access for any participating port and would
push the new list into the new locations directly.

> >> As a somewhat orthogonal question, if we had a hypothetical git repo of
> >> *all* ports, is there a way that someone could clone just the port
> >> they are interested in?
> > 
> > I don't know of a way to do that.
> 
> From my [rough] understanding of how git works, I don't think that's
> possible.

Yeah... so, for this reason I think that multiple, parallel repos,
each sourcing the same NKI file in some way is preferable to one giant
repo with everything in it.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From esr at thyrsus.com  Tue Nov  6 07:29:44 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 10:29:44 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <20121106151817.GY26070@tastytronic.net>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<20121105154542.GD24476@tastytronic.net>
	<20121105181505.GA23065@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211051312250.18359@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121106151817.GY26070@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121106152944.GA18015@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> I for one think a mashup of "robots" and "robotfindskitten" could be
> funny, if not actually fun. 

That's a hilarious idea.  I wish I had time to write it.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 11:04:02 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 11:04:02 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] two minor bugs fixed
Message-ID: <20121106190402.GR26070@tastytronic.net>

- typo in message when user requests too many NKI; fixed and
  clarified.

- "-h" option code present but not in arg string for optarg.

Pushed to repo.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 11:10:36 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 11:10:36 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG -- resizing when robot is on "east" wall
Message-ID: <20121106191036.GS26070@tastytronic.net>

If robot is on the "east" wall of the simulation (including the NE and
SE corners), and the terminal is maximized, the simulation will quit
claiming that robot was crushed. 

This doesn't appear to happen when robot is touching (only) the other
walls.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 11:12:17 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 11:12:17 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] selection of "zero" NKI
Message-ID: <20121106191217.GT26070@tastytronic.net>

Have we ever discussed whether the user must request at least 1 NKI? I
kind of like the idea of being able, as a base case, to say "0 NKI"
and the simulation holding only robot and kitten. But I can understand
how others may dislike that idea.

The current code requires at least 1 NKI, but it appears to function
if the condition is changed.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 11:16:38 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 11:16:38 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] bare selection of NKI number without argument
Message-ID: <20121106191638.GU26070@tastytronic.net>

I seem to recall that in the old version, you could invoke with 

"robotfindskitten 50"

... to get 50 items.

This no longer works, but simply runs the simulation with the default
number of NKI.

I like the use of optarg (e.g., -n 50, or -s to select a random seed
-- nice retro touch, whoever!), but I would support a change so that
the old behavior still works. (I.e., with no optarguments and an
integer following the command, assume it to be the -n argument.) I can
push a patch to do this, but I'm not sure if there's a proper way to
handle that kind of special case.

If not, at the least, entering "robotfindskitten 50" should print the
usage message.

Thoughts?

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From esr at thyrsus.com  Tue Nov  6 11:52:31 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 14:52:31 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG -- resizing when robot is on "east" wall
In-Reply-To: <20121106191036.GS26070@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121106191036.GS26070@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121106195231.GA3286@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> If robot is on the "east" wall of the simulation (including the NE and
> SE corners), and the terminal is maximized, the simulation will quit
> claiming that robot was crushed. 
> 
> This doesn't appear to happen when robot is touching (only) the other
> walls.

Alas, I don't have time to fix this - I'm busy preparing for a week
of travel.  But it seems very likely that the bug is in the if-guard on
line 490 in handle_resize().
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov  6 12:04:51 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 12:04:51 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG(?): rfk should ignore temp files in nki directories
Message-ID: <20121106200451.GX26070@tastytronic.net>

What do you guys think? Currently, rfk will source a file like
"vanilla.nki~" ... is this desired behavior? I would think not.

I suggest only files that end in ".nki" should be sourced. Are there
other tempfile formats we should avoid? I also did not test whether
hidden files are sourced. 

Or is this not a bug?


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From steve at staticfree.info  Tue Nov  6 14:02:28 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2012 17:02:28 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG(?): rfk should ignore temp files in nki
	directories
In-Reply-To: <20121106200451.GX26070@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121106200451.GX26070@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <509988F4.2000606@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-06 15:04, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
> What do you guys think? Currently, rfk will source a file like
> "vanilla.nki~" ... is this desired behavior? I would think not.
> 
> I suggest only files that end in ".nki" should be sourced. Are there
> other tempfile formats we should avoid? I also did not test whether
> hidden files are sourced. 

My vote is to only source .nki. That makes things more flexible (you can
have other files in the same dir) while losing near no functionality.

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From esr at thyrsus.com  Tue Nov  6 14:07:07 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 17:07:07 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG(?): rfk should ignore temp files in nki
	directories
In-Reply-To: <509988F4.2000606@staticfree.info>
References: <20121106200451.GX26070@tastytronic.net>
	<509988F4.2000606@staticfree.info>
Message-ID: <20121106220707.GA15965@thyrsus.com>

Steve Pomeroy <steve at staticfree.info>:
> On 2012-11-06 15:04, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
> > What do you guys think? Currently, rfk will source a file like
> > "vanilla.nki~" ... is this desired behavior? I would think not.
> > 
> > I suggest only files that end in ".nki" should be sourced. Are there
> > other tempfile formats we should avoid? I also did not test whether
> > hidden files are sourced. 
> 
> My vote is to only source .nki. That makes things more flexible (you can
> have other files in the same dir) while losing near no functionality.

+1
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
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From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Wed Nov  7 16:22:32 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 16:22:32 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG(?): rfk should ignore temp files in nki
 directories
In-Reply-To: <20121106200451.GX26070@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121106200451.GX26070@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211071621370.26796@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Tue, 6 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> What do you guys think? Currently, rfk will source a file like
> "vanilla.nki~" ... is this desired behavior? I would think not.
>
> I suggest only files that end in ".nki" should be sourced. Are there
> other tempfile formats we should avoid? I also did not test whether
> hidden files are sourced.
>
> Or is this not a bug?

Good idea.  In the future we might have other things in the directory.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Wed Nov  7 16:39:07 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 16:39:07 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] doesn't work straight out of git
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211071624340.26796@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>


I haven't yet tried to build this new git-hosted rfk yet, so I tried and 
got this:

marvin:/tmp/git/src$ ./robotfindskitten
There are only 2 NKIs available (user requested 20).

Strace(1) tells me that its looking in /usr/share/games/robotfindskitten 
and ~/.robotfindskitten

Okay, I'll put vanilla.nki into ~/.robotfindskitten

Now strace(1) tells me this:

stat64("/home/dave/.robotfindskitten!\200/.", 0xbf9332ac) = -1 ENOENT (No 
such file or directory)
stat64("/home/dave/.robotfindskitten!\200/vanilla.nki", 0xbf9332ac) = -1 
ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/home/dave/.robotfindskitten!\200/..", 0xbf9332ac) = -1 ENOENT (No 
such file or directory)

What's that !\200 doing in there?

So, scratch that, try /usr/games/share/robotfindskitten instead:

$ ./robotfindskitten
*** glibc detected *** ./robotfindskitten: free(): invalid next size 
(fast): 0x092908a8 ***
======= Backtrace: =========

How are you guys getting this compiled?


-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From sam at dasbistro.com  Wed Nov  7 21:34:39 2012
From: sam at dasbistro.com (Sam Phillips)
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 21:34:39 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] NOTABUG: segfault in ncurses
Message-ID: <CAHsjV0zdetqvYABvvF9JA09Cf3SvbM7z53QWRjVBe5QQ382nOg@mail.gmail.com>

Hey so this is most likely not a bug in rfk, but it is causing me
problems.  rfk appears to segfault in libncurses in the call to
start_color

(gdb) bt
#0  0xb7fb678b in start_color () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5
#1  0x08049824 in init (num=20) at robotfindskitten.c:391
#2  0x08048f87 in main (argc=1, argv=0xbffff224) at robotfindskitten.c:718
(gdb)

This is on Ubuntu Precise running on a 32bit linode vm.  I have a
64bit laptop also running Precise and it is not having any problems.

Has anyone else seen something like this happen?

Cheers,
Sam

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  8 11:01:11 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:01:11 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG: install scripts don't work straight out of git
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211071624340.26796@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211071624340.26796@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121108190111.GF28864@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> I haven't yet tried to build this new git-hosted rfk yet, so I tried and 
> got this:
> 
> marvin:/tmp/git/src$ ./robotfindskitten
> There are only 2 NKIs available (user requested 20).

It worked for me post install because I was running it from the
rfk-git/ directory, where it was sourcing the local file
"nki/vanilla.rfk". (This works if you run src/robotfindskitten post
build but pre-install, or if you do make install and then run
robotfindskitten [which is now in /usr/local/games/robotfindskitten].)

When I run it outside of that directory I get the above behavior.

So this is a bug.

Where should the nki go? I'd suggest checking in
/usr/share/robotfindskitten and probably ~/.robotfindskitten.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  8 11:02:58 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:02:58 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] FEATURE? deduplication of NKI?
Message-ID: <20121108190258.GG28864@tastytronic.net>

If the main source dir is (e.g.) /usr/share/robotfindskitten, and it
also looks in ~/.robotfindskitten, should the code automatically
deduplicate identical NKI (e.g., if the user has copied the
vanilla.nki file and only added to it)? Or is this hand-holding we're
not interested in doing?

Discuss.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  8 11:03:54 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:03:54 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] NOTABUG: segfault in ncurses
In-Reply-To: <CAHsjV0zdetqvYABvvF9JA09Cf3SvbM7z53QWRjVBe5QQ382nOg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHsjV0zdetqvYABvvF9JA09Cf3SvbM7z53QWRjVBe5QQ382nOg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20121108190354.GI28864@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Sam Phillips:
> Hey so this is most likely not a bug in rfk, but it is causing me
> problems.  rfk appears to segfault in libncurses in the call to
> start_color
> [snip]
> Has anyone else seen something like this happen?

I haven't seen this happen, but I still believe you.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  8 17:30:54 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 17:30:54 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] NOTABUG: segfault in ncurses
In-Reply-To: <CAHsjV0zdetqvYABvvF9JA09Cf3SvbM7z53QWRjVBe5QQ382nOg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHsjV0zdetqvYABvvF9JA09Cf3SvbM7z53QWRjVBe5QQ382nOg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211081730030.5927@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Wed, 7 Nov 2012, Sam Phillips wrote:

> Hey so this is most likely not a bug in rfk, but it is causing me
> problems.  rfk appears to segfault in libncurses in the call to
> start_color
>
> (gdb) bt
> #0  0xb7fb678b in start_color () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5
> #1  0x08049824 in init (num=20) at robotfindskitten.c:391
> #2  0x08048f87 in main (argc=1, argv=0xbffff224) at robotfindskitten.c:718
> (gdb)
>
> This is on Ubuntu Precise running on a 32bit linode vm.  I have a
> 64bit laptop also running Precise and it is not having any problems.
>
> Has anyone else seen something like this happen?

This happens to me with an Athlon XP (32-bit) and a Thinkpad T42 (32-bit)

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  8 17:42:55 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 17:42:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] BUG: install scripts don't work straight out of git
In-Reply-To: <20121108190111.GF28864@tastytronic.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211071624340.26796@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121108190111.GF28864@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211081639040.5927@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Thu, 8 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> Quoting David Griffith:
>> I haven't yet tried to build this new git-hosted rfk yet, so I tried and
>> got this:
>>
>> marvin:/tmp/git/src$ ./robotfindskitten
>> There are only 2 NKIs available (user requested 20).
>
> It worked for me post install because I was running it from the
> rfk-git/ directory, where it was sourcing the local file
> "nki/vanilla.rfk". (This works if you run src/robotfindskitten post
> build but pre-install, or if you do make install and then run
> robotfindskitten [which is now in /usr/local/games/robotfindskitten].)
>
> When I run it outside of that directory I get the above behavior.
>
> So this is a bug.
>
> Where should the nki go? I'd suggest checking in
> /usr/share/robotfindskitten and probably ~/.robotfindskitten.

There are two problems here.  One is the program not finding the NKIs 
where it's looking.  I pushed some Makefile.am stuff and a slight 
alteration of robotfindskitten.c that will take care of this. 
SYSTEM_NKI_DIR is now set at compile-time.  Vanilla.nki is now installed 
to $(dataprefix)/games/robotfindskitten.  This led to NKIs being composed 
of pieces of Makefiles before I added the code to only parse *.nki.

The other problem is trickier and apparently involves something that works 
on a 64-bit machine but not 32-bit one.  I've been doing all my tinkering 
so far with a 32-bit machine.  I tried an AMD64 machine just now and 
things work fine.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  8 18:44:26 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 18:44:26 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] FEATURE? deduplication of NKI?
In-Reply-To: <20121108190258.GG28864@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121108190258.GG28864@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211081841390.30209@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Thu, 8 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> If the main source dir is (e.g.) /usr/share/robotfindskitten, and it
> also looks in ~/.robotfindskitten, should the code automatically
> deduplicate identical NKI (e.g., if the user has copied the
> vanilla.nki file and only added to it)? Or is this hand-holding we're
> not interested in doing?
>
> Discuss.

In the interest of keeping this program simple and sweet, I don't think 
this is a good idea.  A warning in the manpage about identical NKIs and 
some command line stuff to accomplish deduplication should suffice.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  8 19:26:34 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 19:26:34 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] I'll make a new vanilla NKI list
In-Reply-To: <CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOarnHnzUMTF1hirzBPfwFMBn74V7eP4EYpgZjWNNRDGPfwszA@mail.gmail.com>
	<509710B1.2040209@staticfree.info>
	<20121105042717.GN26304@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211042257570.9044@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<4FB1324E-4A2A-4F95-9F97-68765469B34D@tungol.org>
	<CAOarnH=+1hTZDKxA_vmXGjghfpgsX7_=dGq3qpbygfFsF9CNzw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211081852000.30209@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Mon, 5 Nov 2012, Leonard Richardson wrote:

> My new list is attached. I've gotten up to a round 700 NKIs; new ones
> begin on line 616. I replaced a few NKIs with similar suggestions that
> were better (e.g. "You've found... Oh wait, that's just a cat." ->
> "It's a cat. Are you too late?"), but it's mostly brand new NKI from
> the community, slightly edited by me.
>
> This NKI list is approximately the size of the old master list (700
> vs. 730) and IMO will make for much more interesting games. I think
> this is good enough to put into git as the official list. (I'll sort
> it first, mixing the new NKI in with the old.) Let me know if you have
> comments or any last-minute NKIs.
>
> BTW, one NKI should not appear more than once in a given run of rfk.
> I'm okay with an exception for "Haven't you touched this before?" or
> any other NKIs that are similarly meta.

Corrections:

-3.14159... Pi is all over the place here...
+3.14159265359... Pi is all over the place here...
-A card sharp sits here, practicing his Faro shuffle.  He ignores you.
+A card sharp sits here practicing his Faro shuffle.  He ignores you.
-A discredited cosmology, relic of a bygone era.
+A discredited cosmology -- a relic of a bygone era.
-It's cute like a kitten, but isn't a kitten.
+It's cute like kitten, but isn't kitten.



-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Thu Nov  8 19:42:51 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 19:42:51 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] FEATURE? deduplication of NKI?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211081841390.30209@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <20121108190258.GG28864@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211081841390.30209@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121109034251.GL5269@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
>> If the main source dir is (e.g.) /usr/share/robotfindskitten, and it
>> also looks in ~/.robotfindskitten, should the code automatically
>> deduplicate identical NKI (e.g., if the user has copied the
>> vanilla.nki file and only added to it)? Or is this hand-holding we're
>> not interested in doing?
>>
>> Discuss.
>
> In the interest of keeping this program simple and sweet, I don't think  
> this is a good idea.  A warning in the manpage about identical NKIs and  
> some command line stuff to accomplish deduplication should suffice.

I tend to agree, for the same reasons... but I figured it was worth
putting on the table.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Thu Nov  8 23:03:47 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 23:03:47 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] segfaults and other crashes in 32-bit mode
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211082255450.3490@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>


As of the latest git (42bc0c234cf3e71a8f02849e073da502f8be1e5e) and even 
before I commited anything to the codebase besides the Inform edition
robotfindskitten will crash like this:

marvin:~/proj/rfk-git$ src/robotfindskitten
*** glibc detected *** src/robotfindskitten: free(): invalid next size 
(fast): 0x08cf38e0 ***
[lots of crap deleted]

In the function read_messages() is a for loop that starts like this:
   for ( i = 0; environ[i]; i++ ) {

That loop is for processing NKIs presented in $HOME/.robotfindskitten.  If 
that for loop is commented out, we can proceed to a segfault that happens 
when init() makes a call to start_color().

None of these problems happen on an AMD64 machine, just x86 (ia32, etc). 
Does anyone here know what's going wrong and how to fix it?

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From steve at staticfree.info  Wed Nov 14 21:07:12 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:07:12 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] androidtestskitten
Message-ID: <50A47880.2090602@staticfree.info>

Hello fellow kitten seekers (and finders).

I've been putting together an improved, hardware-accelerated,
tablet-ready edition of the Android version of robotfindskitten. The
source is over here: http://staticfree.info/projects/rfk/ but the
version below is not yet the "main" version. If you have an Android
device, please try it out and tell me what you think!

(this is a build of 558038c4e3894e3177c83a2fd17cfde5e00ae94a signed with
the key I use for publishing on Google Play):

http://staticfree.info/projects/rfk/robotfindskitten_1.0.700.apk

-- 
Steve Pomeroy
http://staticfree.info/

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From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Sun Nov 18 14:14:36 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 14:14:36 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>


Has anyone recently looked at why rfk keeps crashing on 32-bit x86?  I'm 
halfway considering rewriting the thing from scratch.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Sun Nov 18 18:05:42 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 18:05:42 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121119020542.GT4599@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> Has anyone recently looked at why rfk keeps crashing on 32-bit x86?  I'm 
> halfway considering rewriting the thing from scratch.

I don't have time to do that right now, although I would definitely
prefer have the bug fixed than go through the process of discussing a
new codebase. 

If that means making this the "I Survived the Mayan Apocalypse and All
I Got Was This Lousy Release" release, that's fine with me. After all,
we do have a solid POSIX version.

Peter





-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From esr at thyrsus.com  Sun Nov 18 19:14:22 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 22:14:22 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121119031422.GA29715@thyrsus.com>

David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>:
> Has anyone recently looked at why rfk keeps crashing on 32-bit x86?  I'm 
> halfway considering rewriting the thing from scratch.

I dunno why it's crashing, but I can certify that there's nothing complicated
or weird about the code. Matter of fact it's simpler than it used to be since
I took out the binary search (totally unecessaet for a list with on the
order of 20 items).

Toolchain problem maybe?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From david at wolever.net  Sun Nov 18 20:29:36 2012
From: david at wolever.net (David Wolever)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:29:36 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <9948ECF5-65A9-43D9-B75D-33165C835D53@wolever.net>



On 2012-11-18, at 17:14, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote:

> Has anyone recently looked at why rfk keeps crashing on 32-bit x86?  I'm 
> halfway considering rewriting the thing from scratch.

Is this bug listed somewhere? Or what are the steps to recreate? I've got a number of 32 bit x86 machines around and the possibility of some free time.

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Sun Nov 18 20:50:00 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 20:50:00 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <9948ECF5-65A9-43D9-B75D-33165C835D53@wolever.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<9948ECF5-65A9-43D9-B75D-33165C835D53@wolever.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211182047260.1705@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Sun, 18 Nov 2012, David Wolever wrote:

> On 2012-11-18, at 17:14, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote:
>
>> Has anyone recently looked at why rfk keeps crashing on 32-bit x86?  I'm
>> halfway considering rewriting the thing from scratch.
>
> Is this bug listed somewhere? Or what are the steps to recreate? I've 
> got a number of 32 bit x86 machines around and the possibility of some 
> free time.

Just clone the repo, run autogen.sh, configure, and make.  Then 
src/robotfindskitten.  It then crashes like this:

marvin:~/proj/rfk-git$ src/robotfindskitten
*** glibc detected *** src/robotfindskitten: free(): invalid next size 
(fast): 0x0975a8e0 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(+0x6af71)[0xb766ef71]
[...]

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From david at wolever.net  Sun Nov 18 21:37:21 2012
From: david at wolever.net (David Wolever)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:37:21 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>

Alright, found the bug. Here's a reasonable patch to fix it (although I can't say with certainty that it's definitely the most reasonable):

diff --git a/src/robotfindskitten.c b/src/robotfindskitten.c
index 7074273..4afd34e 100644
--- a/src/robotfindskitten.c
+++ b/src/robotfindskitten.c
@@ -354,7 +354,7 @@ void init ( unsigned int num ) {
        unsigned int i, j, temp;
 
        /* allocate memory */
-       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
+       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num + 2, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
                fprintf ( stderr, "Cannot malloc.\n" );
                exit ( EXIT_FAILURE );
        }

The issue was introduced in:
commit e4523de30933e3095436dabb0fc7c7df7e6bbf38
Author: Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com>
Date:   Wed Oct 31 10:22:02 2012 -0400

    All objects, including robot and kitten, now live in the same items array.
    
    Soon this will enable more interesting resizing behavior.


And has been tested (albeit briefly, and only by checking the output of valgrind) against:
commit 42bc0c234cf3e71a8f02849e073da502f8be1e5e
Author: David Griffith <dave at 661.org>
Date:   Thu Nov 8 20:15:43 2012 -0800

    Fixed problem with up-down movement resetting fromright to false.
    The practical effect of this is if you move left and then up to touch
    something, the animation will now show robot approaching kitten from the
    left.  Prior to this, if you approach from the top of bottom, the
    animation would always put robot on the left.


On 2012-11-18, at 5:14 PM, David Griffith wrote:

> 
> Has anyone recently looked at why rfk keeps crashing on 32-bit x86?  I'm 
> halfway considering rewriting the thing from scratch.
> 
> -- 
> David Griffith
> dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
> 
> A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev

--
phone: (416) 906-0403
pgp: B230230D

From david at wolever.net  Sun Nov 18 21:52:39 2012
From: david at wolever.net (David Wolever)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:52:39 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
Message-ID: <FEC109AD-79C2-4AAC-9F4C-E939AC0EDC16@wolever.net>

Merge request: https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/1/

On 2012-11-19, at 12:37 AM, David Wolever wrote:

> Alright, found the bug. Here's a reasonable patch to fix it (although I can't say with certainty that it's definitely the most reasonable):
> 
> diff --git a/src/robotfindskitten.c b/src/robotfindskitten.c
> index 7074273..4afd34e 100644
> --- a/src/robotfindskitten.c
> +++ b/src/robotfindskitten.c
> @@ -354,7 +354,7 @@ void init ( unsigned int num ) {
>        unsigned int i, j, temp;
> 
>        /* allocate memory */
> -       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
> +       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num + 2, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
>                fprintf ( stderr, "Cannot malloc.\n" );
>                exit ( EXIT_FAILURE );
>        }
> 
> The issue was introduced in:
> commit e4523de30933e3095436dabb0fc7c7df7e6bbf38
> Author: Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com>
> Date:   Wed Oct 31 10:22:02 2012 -0400
> 
>    All objects, including robot and kitten, now live in the same items array.
> 
>    Soon this will enable more interesting resizing behavior.
> 
> 
> And has been tested (albeit briefly, and only by checking the output of valgrind) against:
> commit 42bc0c234cf3e71a8f02849e073da502f8be1e5e
> Author: David Griffith <dave at 661.org>
> Date:   Thu Nov 8 20:15:43 2012 -0800
> 
>    Fixed problem with up-down movement resetting fromright to false.
>    The practical effect of this is if you move left and then up to touch
>    something, the animation will now show robot approaching kitten from the
>    left.  Prior to this, if you approach from the top of bottom, the
>    animation would always put robot on the left.
> 
> 
> On 2012-11-18, at 5:14 PM, David Griffith wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Has anyone recently looked at why rfk keeps crashing on 32-bit x86?  I'm 
>> halfway considering rewriting the thing from scratch.
>> 
>> -- 
>> David Griffith
>> dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
>> 
>> A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
>> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>> A: Top-posting.
>> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>> _______________________________________________
>> rfk-dev mailing list
>> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
>> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev
> 
> --
> phone: (416) 906-0403
> pgp: B230230D
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev

--
phone: (416) 906-0403
pgp: B230230D

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Sun Nov 18 21:56:02 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 21:56:02 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211182155400.8212@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, David Wolever wrote:

> Alright, found the bug. Here's a reasonable patch to fix it (although I 
> can't say with certainty that it's definitely the most reasonable):
>
> diff --git a/src/robotfindskitten.c b/src/robotfindskitten.c
> index 7074273..4afd34e 100644
> --- a/src/robotfindskitten.c
> +++ b/src/robotfindskitten.c
> @@ -354,7 +354,7 @@ void init ( unsigned int num ) {
>        unsigned int i, j, temp;
>
>        /* allocate memory */
> -       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
> +       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num + 2, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
>                fprintf ( stderr, "Cannot malloc.\n" );
>                exit ( EXIT_FAILURE );
>        }

Doesn't seem to work.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From esr at thyrsus.com  Sun Nov 18 22:29:46 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 01:29:46 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
Message-ID: <20121119062946.GA5570@thyrsus.com>

David Wolever <david at wolever.net>:
> Alright, found the bug. Here's a reasonable patch to fix it (although I can't say with certainty that it's definitely the most reasonable):
> 
> diff --git a/src/robotfindskitten.c b/src/robotfindskitten.c
> index 7074273..4afd34e 100644
> --- a/src/robotfindskitten.c
> +++ b/src/robotfindskitten.c
> @@ -354,7 +354,7 @@ void init ( unsigned int num ) {
>         unsigned int i, j, temp;
>  
>         /* allocate memory */
> -       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
> +       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num + 2, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
>                 fprintf ( stderr, "Cannot malloc.\n" );
>                 exit ( EXIT_FAILURE );
>         }

Ah, the glory and wonder that is memory management in C.  Sorry about that.
I was trying to simplify the code by removing several special cases in
screen-object handling.  I never saw this blow up on my 64-bit machine.

One amendment: the constant 2 should be SPECIALS, which is a macro for the 
number of {robot, kitten} objects in case that ever changes.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Mon Nov 19 01:08:29 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 01:08:29 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <20121119062946.GA5570@thyrsus.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
	<20121119062946.GA5570@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211190105400.16256@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> David Wolever <david at wolever.net>:
>> Alright, found the bug. Here's a reasonable patch to fix it (although I can't say with certainty that it's definitely the most reasonable):
>>
>> diff --git a/src/robotfindskitten.c b/src/robotfindskitten.c
>> index 7074273..4afd34e 100644
>> --- a/src/robotfindskitten.c
>> +++ b/src/robotfindskitten.c
>> @@ -354,7 +354,7 @@ void init ( unsigned int num ) {
>>         unsigned int i, j, temp;
>>
>>         /* allocate memory */
>> -       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
>> +       if ( ! ( state.items = calloc ( num + 2, sizeof ( screen_object ) ) ) ) {
>>                 fprintf ( stderr, "Cannot malloc.\n" );
>>                 exit ( EXIT_FAILURE );
>>         }
>
> Ah, the glory and wonder that is memory management in C.  Sorry about that.
> I was trying to simplify the code by removing several special cases in
> screen-object handling.  I never saw this blow up on my 64-bit machine.
>
> One amendment: the constant 2 should be SPECIALS, which is a macro for the
> number of {robot, kitten} objects in case that ever changes.

While the change probably is a good idea, it doesn't seem to fix or even 
address the crashes I've been getting.  Those appear to be coming from 
ncurses.  I've tried this on a Thinkpad T42, a desktop using an Athlon XP, 
and a Raspberry Pi.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From david at wolever.net  Mon Nov 19 07:40:13 2012
From: david at wolever.net (David Wolever)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:40:13 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] compiling rfk for 32-bit x86
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211190105400.16256@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211181413380.22262@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<0CCAED1F-5C9E-437B-89F2-BE0B02DD069E@wolever.net>
	<20121119062946.GA5570@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211190105400.16256@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <6CD17288-A990-4D0E-96D5-458B11196876@wolever.net>

On 2012-11-19, at 4:08 AM, David Griffith wrote:

> While the change probably is a good idea, it doesn't seem to fix or even address the crashes I've been getting.  Those appear to be coming from ncurses.  I've tried this on a Thinkpad T42, a desktop using an Athlon XP, and a Raspberry Pi.

Ah, strange. Before this fix, I would see crashes in curses-related functions (ex, `start_color()`), but that was likely due to memory corruption, as everything works on my Xenon after the fix.

Valgrind does still report a couple small issues which I'm fixing now?

If after applying https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/2/ you're still seeing crashes, can you run rfk under valgrind (valgrind --log-file=curses-crash src/robotfindskitten) and post the resulting log file?

--
phone: (416) 906-0403
pgp: B230230D

From david at wolever.net  Mon Nov 19 08:26:44 2012
From: david at wolever.net (David Wolever)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 11:26:44 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
Message-ID: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>

Please forgive my ignorance (I believe I saw some mail on this, but can't find it now), but what is the preferred patch submission process?

I've just tried using SourceForge's "merge request", but it seems? suboptimal? as it doesn't allow me to edit, update, or even close my own merge requests.

--
phone: (416) 906-0403
pgp: B230230D

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov 19 08:41:27 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 08:41:27 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
Message-ID: <20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Wolever:
> Please forgive my ignorance (I believe I saw some mail on this, but
> can't find it now), but what is the preferred patch submission
> process?
> 
> I've just tried using SourceForge's "merge request", but it seems?
> suboptimal? as it doesn't allow me to edit, update, or even close my
> own merge requests.

There isn't really a process yet; so far everyone who has submitted
patches has had commit access to the POSIX repo. I (or someone else)
will need to handle the requests... which I hope to do shortly.


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov 19 09:58:47 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:58:47 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Peter A. H. Peterson:
> Quoting David Wolever:
> > Please forgive my ignorance (I believe I saw some mail on this, but
> > can't find it now), but what is the preferred patch submission
> > process?
> 
> There isn't really a process yet; so far everyone who has submitted
> patches has had commit access to the POSIX repo. I (or someone else)
> will need to handle the requests... which I hope to do shortly.

I believe the patches are now merged... but I'm not familiar with SF's
tools and merge process... so I'd appreciate it if someone could
verify this.

Thanks,

Peter


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From david at wolever.net  Mon Nov 19 10:01:59 2012
From: david at wolever.net (David Wolever)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:01:59 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>


On 2012-11-19, at 12:58 PM, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> Quoting Peter A. H. Peterson:
>> Quoting David Wolever:
>>> Please forgive my ignorance (I believe I saw some mail on this, but
>>> can't find it now), but what is the preferred patch submission
>>> process?
>> 
>> There isn't really a process yet; so far everyone who has submitted
>> patches has had commit access to the POSIX repo. I (or someone else)
>> will need to handle the requests... which I hope to do shortly.
> 
> I believe the patches are now merged... but I'm not familiar with SF's
> tools and merge process... so I'd appreciate it if someone could
> verify this.

Looks good to me.

I've just submitted one more merge request, which fixes one more off-by-one error: https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/4/

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov 19 10:03:46 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:03:46 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
Message-ID: <20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Wolever:
> I've just submitted one more merge request, which fixes one more
> off-by-one error:
> https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/4/

Done.

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov 19 10:04:32 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:04:32 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] androidtestskitten
In-Reply-To: <50A47880.2090602@staticfree.info>
References: <50A47880.2090602@staticfree.info>
Message-ID: <20121119180432.GL4599@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
> I've been putting together an improved, hardware-accelerated,
> tablet-ready edition of the Android version of robotfindskitten. The
> source is over here: http://staticfree.info/projects/rfk/ but the
> version below is not yet the "main" version. If you have an Android
> device, please try it out and tell me what you think!

I would if I could, but I can't since I don't have an Android device
so -- regrettably -- I won't.

Sorry!

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From david at wolever.net  Mon Nov 19 10:11:11 2012
From: david at wolever.net (David Wolever)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:11:11 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>

On 2012-11-19, at 1:03 PM, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
> Quoting David Wolever:
>> I've just submitted one more merge request, which fixes one more
>> off-by-one error:
>> https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/4/
> 
> Done.

Awesome. With that, valgrind reports no more invalid memory accesses? And with https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/6/ we won't even leak memory!

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov 19 10:15:38 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:15:38 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
Message-ID: <20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Wolever:
> Awesome. With that, valgrind reports no more invalid memory
> accesses? And with
> https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/6/ we won't even
> leak memory!

... should be merged now. 

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From esr at thyrsus.com  Mon Nov 19 10:58:55 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:58:55 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] androidtestskitten
In-Reply-To: <20121119180432.GL4599@tastytronic.net>
References: <50A47880.2090602@staticfree.info>
	<20121119180432.GL4599@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121119185855.GA25923@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Quoting Steve Pomeroy:
> > I've been putting together an improved, hardware-accelerated,
> > tablet-ready edition of the Android version of robotfindskitten. The
> > source is over here: http://staticfree.info/projects/rfk/ but the
> > version below is not yet the "main" version. If you have an Android
> > device, please try it out and tell me what you think!
> 
> I would if I could, but I can't since I don't have an Android device
> so -- regrettably -- I won't.

My wife has a Nexus 7 and would love to try this out.  What is the
download and installation procedure?

Does it use the new master list of NKIs?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From steve at staticfree.info  Mon Nov 19 11:38:04 2012
From: steve at staticfree.info (Steve Pomeroy)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:38:04 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] androidtestskitten - installation instructions
In-Reply-To: <20121119185855.GA25923@thyrsus.com>
References: <50A47880.2090602@staticfree.info>
	<20121119180432.GL4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119185855.GA25923@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <50AA8A9C.8070008@staticfree.info>

On 2012-11-19 13:58, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
>> I would if I could, but I can't since I don't have an Android device
>> so -- regrettably -- I won't.

You're missing out on an exciting RFK experience! Next time you happen
to wander through a BestBuy or similar, you can try it out on their demo
machines (once I publish the updated version, that is). And maybe leave
an icon for it on the desktop...

> My wife has a Nexus 7 and would love to try this out.  What is the
> download and installation procedure?

First, ensure that the app can be installed by going to the Android
Settings ? Security ? Device Administration and checking Unknown
sources. This lets you install downloaded APK files and is generally
safe provided you trust the APK source. You will always be prompted
before an app gets installed and it will warn you about permissions, you
just won't be restricted to only downloading apps from Google Play.

Then, the easiest way is to open the following link on the device (I
usually just open the email on the device, but it doesn't matter how it
gets there):

http://staticfree.info/projects/rfk/robotfindskitten_1.0.700.apk

This will download the app's apk file (essentially a signed zip file
containing all the compiled classes, resources, metadata, etc.) which
you can then click on to install. If for some reason you lose it in the
notification bar, just go to Applications ? Downloads and you'll find it
there.

> Does it use the new master list of NKIs?

Indeed. It still has that new-car smell, too.

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From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Mon Nov 19 13:54:06 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:54:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
	<20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> Quoting David Wolever:
>> Awesome. With that, valgrind reports no more invalid memory
>> accesses? And with
>> https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/6/ we won't even
>> leak memory!
>
> ... should be merged now.

Looks like these changes did the trick.  I'm running rfk on a 32-bit 
machine without trouble.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov 19 14:09:59 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:09:59 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
	<20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121119220959.GQ1945@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
>> Quoting David Wolever:
>>> Awesome. With that, valgrind reports no more invalid memory
>>> accesses? And with
>>> https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/6/ we won't even
>>> leak memory!
>>
>> ... should be merged now.
>
> Looks like these changes did the trick.  I'm running rfk on a 32-bit  
> machine without trouble.

Excellent!

With that, I think we should do a pretty solid round of playtesting to
make sure that we have uncovered/fixed all the bugs in the new code. I
suspect there are more to be fixed.

pedro

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Mon Nov 19 16:22:37 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:22:37 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <20121119220959.GQ1945@tastytronic.net>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
	<20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121119220959.GQ1945@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191621580.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:

> Quoting David Griffith:
>> On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Peter A. H. Peterson wrote:
>>> Quoting David Wolever:
>>>> Awesome. With that, valgrind reports no more invalid memory
>>>> accesses? And with
>>>> https://sourceforge.net/p/rfk/git/merge-requests/6/ we won't even
>>>> leak memory!
>>>
>>> ... should be merged now.
>>
>> Looks like these changes did the trick.  I'm running rfk on a 32-bit
>> machine without trouble.
>
> Excellent!
>
> With that, I think we should do a pretty solid round of playtesting to
> make sure that we have uncovered/fixed all the bugs in the new code. I
> suspect there are more to be fixed.

Here's one: when robot finds kitten and the animation plays, robot and 
kitten in the playfield both disappear.  That's a bit jarring.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Mon Nov 19 16:35:56 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:35:56 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191621580.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <09613BE4-1CC7-44DC-BFBA-52717AF088D5@wolever.net>
	<20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
	<20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121119220959.GQ1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191621580.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121120003556.GB10737@tastytronic.net>

Quoting David Griffith:
> Here's one: when robot finds kitten and the animation plays, robot and  
> kitten in the playfield both disappear.  That's a bit jarring.

Nice catch!

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From esr at thyrsus.com  Mon Nov 19 20:05:56 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 23:05:56 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <20121120003556.GB10737@tastytronic.net>
References: <20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
	<20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121119220959.GQ1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191621580.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121120003556.GB10737@tastytronic.net>
Message-ID: <20121120040556.GA32003@thyrsus.com>

Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> Quoting David Griffith:
> > Here's one: when robot finds kitten and the animation plays, robot and  
> > kitten in the playfield both disappear.  That's a bit jarring.
> 
> Nice catch!

You want to fix that or shall I?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Tue Nov 20 00:21:03 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:21:03 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <20121120040556.GA32003@thyrsus.com>
References: <20121119164126.GB4599@tastytronic.net>
	<20121119175847.GD4599@tastytronic.net>
	<05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
	<20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121119220959.GQ1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191621580.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121120003556.GB10737@tastytronic.net>
	<20121120040556.GA32003@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211200020490.17009@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>

On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
>> Quoting David Griffith:
>>> Here's one: when robot finds kitten and the animation plays, robot and
>>> kitten in the playfield both disappear.  That's a bit jarring.
>>
>> Nice catch!
>
> You want to fix that or shall I?

I'd like to take it on.

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Tue Nov 20 00:40:35 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:40:35 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] git surgery or re-gitting
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211200037290.17009@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>


Have we come to a conclusion as to what we're going to do regarding the 
git repo after Sourceforge?  I'll go ahead and put my Inform edition of 
rfk on Github for now and deprecate its direct inclusion.  Comments?

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From esr at thyrsus.com  Tue Nov 20 05:11:44 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:11:44 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] Preferred patch submission process?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211200020490.17009@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <05F86E8B-7989-42F3-9536-102E5E06A25C@wolever.net>
	<20121119180346.GJ4599@tastytronic.net>
	<E7F48D5A-896C-4E52-B05B-37A9290A3611@wolever.net>
	<20121119181538.GB1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191351260.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121119220959.GQ1945@tastytronic.net>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211191621580.31706@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121120003556.GB10737@tastytronic.net>
	<20121120040556.GA32003@thyrsus.com>
	<alpine.DEB.2.00.1211200020490.17009@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121120131144.GA21583@thyrsus.com>

David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>:
> On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> 
> >Peter A. H. Peterson <pedro at tastytronic.net>:
> >>Quoting David Griffith:
> >>>Here's one: when robot finds kitten and the animation plays, robot and
> >>>kitten in the playfield both disappear.  That's a bit jarring.
> >>
> >>Nice catch!
> >
> >You want to fix that or shall I?
> 
> I'd like to take it on.

Go right ahead for all o'me.  I have plenty to do.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From esr at thyrsus.com  Tue Nov 20 05:13:57 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:13:57 -0500
Subject: [rfk-dev] git surgery or re-gitting
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211200037290.17009@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211200037290.17009@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121120131357.GB21583@thyrsus.com>

David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>: 
> Have we come to a conclusion as to what we're going to do regarding the 
> git repo after Sourceforge?  I'll go ahead and put my Inform edition of 
> rfk on Github for now and deprecate its direct inclusion.  Comments?

I don't know of any conclusion about the move, but I plan to knit the
Inform releases into the history as previously requested.  It's next on my list
after the current siege of work on reposurgeon.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Tue Nov 20 08:06:06 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:06:06 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] git surgery or re-gitting
In-Reply-To: <20121120131357.GB21583@thyrsus.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211200037290.17009@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
	<20121120131357.GB21583@thyrsus.com>
Message-ID: <20121120160606.GG10737@tastytronic.net>

Quoting Eric S. Raymond:
> David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>: 
> > Have we come to a conclusion as to what we're going to do regarding the 
> > git repo after Sourceforge?  I'll go ahead and put my Inform edition of 
> > rfk on Github for now and deprecate its direct inclusion.  Comments?
> 
> I don't know of any conclusion about the move, but I plan to knit
> the Inform releases into the history as previously requested.  It's
> next on my list after the current siege of work on reposurgeon.

I don't think an official decision was made about either. 

I still kinda like the idea long term of keeping everything at
rfk.org. But there's absolutely no hurry to do that, and it shouldn't
need to hold up our decision about how to structure the git repo(s). 

However, I think that separate, parallel git repos sourcing a
canonical NKI source is the best approach. For these reasons:

1. there's no (good) way to get just the part you're interested in if
all the repos are joined. It seems like bad form to make people
download Dreamcast or OpenGL code when they just want to look at the
Atari 2600 version... so i think One Big Repo is not the best
approach.

2. there's no (good) way to have a git repo refer to an external file
(i.e., the vanilla.nki) so that it would get cloned remotely along
with the port source (nested repos or some kind of "external git
dependency" or something). So there's no "automatic" way to make git
work transparently with separate repos.

3. I'm not that interested in fragile hacks that could possibly fix
one or both of the above objections. If there isn't a *good* way to do
it, I don't really want to do it. That would just be someone's
neckpain later.

So I think that my preference would be for every "port" to use a
mechanism for getting the current nki file, such as HTTP from rfk.org,
or by downloading it from sourceforge at build time or something along
those lines. Online versions could source the file from rfk.org at
runtime. 

The ports would also include their own code for massaging the nki file
into their internal format.

Current authors can keep whatever git host they currently use.

Either the vanilla.nki file could live in the POSIX repo, or it could
be in it's own dedicated repo and the POSIX port would source it just
like everybody else.

So, if people generally agree with this concept, it seems to me that
we should break the Inform port *out* of the POSIX repo, not fold it
in. The same goes for PalmOS but that hasn't been updated in about a
decade.

Thoughts?

Peter


-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles

From esr at thyrsus.com  Wed Nov 21 15:57:54 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:57:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Static analysis
Message-ID: <20121121235754.55BD64065F@snark.thyrsus.com>

I have run two static analyzers on the code, and added various small
changes and annotations to make them happy.  cppcheck runs clean; 
splint doesn't yet (getting splint to run clean on nontrivial code
is very difficult).  I'm going to get us registered with Coverity
so we can use their scanner, too.

"make cppcheck" and "make splint" in the source directory to see
the results from those.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".
        -- Claire Wolfe, "101 Things To Do Until The Revolution" 

From esr at thyrsus.com  Thu Nov 22 22:09:58 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 01:09:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Coverity says the robotfindskitten code is clean
Message-ID: <20121123060958.73E1B4065F@snark.thyrsus.com>

One false positive, suppressed.

Between splint, cppcheck, and Coverity we now have mechanized
correctness checking that is good as existing technology allows on C
code.  That's my apology for introucing a bug.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Probably fewer than 2% of handguns and well under 1% of all guns will
ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the problem of criminal gun
violence is concentrated within a very small subset of gun owners,
indicating that gun control aimed at the general population faces a
serious needle-in-the-haystack problem.
	-- Gary Kleck, "Point Blank: Handgun Violence In America"

From esr at thyrsus.com  Thu Nov 22 22:16:51 2012
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 01:16:51 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] Ohloh repo pointer updated
Message-ID: <20121123061651.8532A4065F@snark.thyrsus.com>

I have updated the repository pointer on the project's Ohloh page.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Probably fewer than 2% of handguns and well under 1% of all guns will
ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the problem of criminal gun
violence is concentrated within a very small subset of gun owners,
indicating that gun control aimed at the general population faces a
serious needle-in-the-haystack problem.
	-- Gary Kleck, "Point Blank: Handgun Violence In America"

From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu  Tue Nov 27 22:23:10 2012
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith)
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:23:10 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [rfk-dev] origin of "plexar was here"
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211272221170.20506@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>


I found an old post from 2004 about the "plexar was here" NKI and its 
origin.  Here's a blog post about it: 
http://manillismo.blogspot.com/2010/12/plexar-was-here.html

===begin quote===
Finally the answer to the graffiti Plexar was here that appears in several 
games. Verbatim response from the author, Steve Hales:

     The game, Slime, was one of my first arcade style games. The aliens 
that were attacking you, were called the Plexarians. It was an easter egg 
that I put into Fort in the form of graffiti, hence "Plexar was here". It 
appeared in a few other games from some friends of mine. Atari ST mostly.
===end quote===


-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

From pedro at tastytronic.net  Wed Nov 28 09:12:20 2012
From: pedro at tastytronic.net (Peter A. H. Peterson)
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:12:20 -0800
Subject: [rfk-dev] origin of "plexar was here"
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211272221170.20506@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1211272221170.20506@sleipnir.cs.csubak.edu>
Message-ID: <20121128171220.GW19488@tastytronic.net>

Nice! I love little historical things like that.

Quoting David Griffith:
> I found an old post from 2004 about the "plexar was here" NKI and its 
> origin.  Here's a blog post about it: 
> http://manillismo.blogspot.com/2010/12/plexar-was-here.html
> 
> ===begin quote===
> Finally the answer to the graffiti Plexar was here that appears in several 
> games. Verbatim response from the author, Steve Hales:
> 
>      The game, Slime, was one of my first arcade style games. The aliens 
> that were attacking you, were called the Plexarians. It was an easter egg 
> that I put into Fort in the form of graffiti, hence "Plexar was here". It 
> appeared in a few other games from some friends of mine. Atari ST mostly.
> ===end quote===
> 
> 
> -- 
> David Griffith
> dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
> 
> A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> _______________________________________________
> rfk-dev mailing list
> rfk-dev at robotfindskitten.org
> http://robotfindskitten.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rfk-dev

-- 
Peter A. H. Peterson
Graduate Student Researcher
Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research
University of California, Los Angeles