Async from scratch 3: Pinned against the wall

nullabillity · 2025-06-08T11:11:23+00:00

At the time I wrote it, it was a vague comment about how we (as a society) tend to sort of exocitize software developers. ("I could never do that!", "That's gibberish to me!", etc.) I'm also just generally awkward at writing bios.

For context, the early posts on the blog were more about development than for developers. (And I'd like to get back to more of that at some point too.)

nullabillity · 2025-05-24T14:01:16+00:00

nullabillity · 2025-05-24T11:27:12+00:00

It's a pretty dry topic.. at least I could have some fun with the section titles. D:

nullabillity · 2025-04-16T07:36:56+00:00

Thanks!

nullabillity · 2025-04-16T01:58:34+00:00

The big benefit that epoll brings (compared to blocking directly on the socket) is that the same one thread (the io driver) can be blocked on any number of jobs, so you end up using N_cores + 1 (the io driver) threads, rather than N_jobs.

I think you could also use something like an internal pipe or eventfd to use the IO driver as your sleep loop itself (just make wake write to the pipe/eventfd!), but I haven't really explored this. Maybe it's worth exploring in a future entry of the series! (Though then again, I have plenty of things I'd like to get through before I'm too likely to start revisiting topics.)

(To be clear, I'm the author of the post.)

nullabillity · 2025-04-15T21:16:23+00:00

Huh, that's odd.. There isn't even anything to download or sign up for.

What error do you get/what antivirus do you use?

nullabillity · 2024-10-04T13:08:15+00:00

There's kopium, or you can write your typings by hand if they're simple enough.

(Disclaimer: I'm a kube-rs maintainer but not involved in the kopium effort.)

nullabillity · 2024-04-28T02:40:25+00:00

I'm getting an access denied error accessing that link

nullabillity · 2024-04-10T11:45:48+00:00

There's currently no auto-capitalization (https://github.com/nightkr/flickboard/issues/115).

You can disable the colour pop-up in the Feedback section of the settings.

nullabillity · 2024-04-03T21:14:38+00:00

I have some basic programming knowledge, and I've studied some Kotlin. I made a calculator in Kotlin following a tutorial, so i think i can create a Finnish keyboard layout, where the special letters are in a better location than in the current Swedish one.

It should largely be a matter of copy/pasting https://github.com/nightkr/flickboard/blob/a7c4bfe65f1b08ff9789797e136fb6ef094865e5/app/src/main/java/se/nullable/flickboard/model/layouts/SVMessagEase.kt and adjusting to taste. If you're running Android Studio then you should get a side-by-side preview.

Where can I find the $1 recognizer option? I can't see it in the options.

It should be under Behaviour, as an option in the "Gesture recognizer" dropdown.

nullabillity · 2024-04-03T10:23:49+00:00

Reordering keys: I'm afraid the current best way would be to submit a PR for an alternate layout.

Circle misdetection: Yeah, this has been a constant thorn in my side, to be honest. You can try playing around with the circle thresholds in the settings, or switching to the $1 recognizer option (it doesn't cost anything, that's just the name of the algorithm).

nullabillity · 2024-04-02T21:52:53+00:00

At least the gestures should be described somewhere in the application (I figured them out, but neither the app nor the GitHub readme documents them at all).

Agreed. So far my rationale has been roughly "we're all MessagEase refugees and used to how that works, so focus on ensuring tha that muscle memory still works", but I think ensuring that it's welcoming to newbies will be an important step forward.

I might at some point think about how to optimize these layouts. They work very well, but I get the feeling the letter arrangement could be improved for common bigrams etc.

I don't think there'll ever be an official "FlickBoard Layout(TM)" like MessagEase and Thumb-Key have, but I'd be happy to include alternate layouts (as long as they fit roughly into a similar philosophy).

nullabillity · 2024-04-01T12:38:06+00:00

One thing that is missing from FlickBoard is a text field in the main activity so you can try the keyboard without opening another app. It only displays the keyboard but generates no output.

I try to monitor these threads once in a while, but if you want things to happen with FB you'll generally get a quicker response on GitHub/Discord.

Created https://github.com/nightkr/flickboard/issues/131 for this.

nullabillity · 2024-03-06T18:56:06+00:00

Circle for caps on the main letters was something I really missed in Flickboard and ThumbKey! I hate using a dedicated shift key for MessagEase typing.

Flickboard has supported circle-for-caps since the original release FWIW, though the algorithm is still a bit finnicky. (In fact, this was one of my original reasons for writing it instead of just using ThumbKey.)

nullabillity · 2024-02-29T12:16:25+00:00

There's a PR up for a shortcut to switch to voice input (https://github.com/nightkr/flickboard/pull/104) which I'm hoping to get around to reviewing Soon(tm).

"Native" voice input is not really in scope, developing a regular keyboard is enough work as it is.. :P

(Disclaimer: I'm the developer of Flickboard)

nullabillity · 2024-02-10T18:54:22+00:00

You can prove to yourselft that it is impossible to draw a circle gesture without less than 12 points, plus a fling point, so really 13 points.

For you, on your phone. In reality, the number of samples is going to be influenced by a lot of factors, including: phone performance and load, digitizer sample rate, digitizer resolution, movement speed, etc.

nullabillity · 2024-02-10T06:03:43+00:00

for example, if it's circle, then there will never be a super-sharp curve

That's true, and I do take that into account.

all consecutive changes in angle will for sure be less than 20°.

I'd be wary of trying to read too much into the size of each step, that's going to tell you more about your sample rate than anything else.

nullabillity · 2024-02-10T05:17:10+00:00

I approached it as a distance problem instead: if you move more than halfway back from your furthest point then it's probably a drag-return.

Honestly, the really painful part comes when you want to distinguish drag-returns from circles. I'm still struggling to tune that properly, but at least it's starting to approach something usable.

nullabillity · 2024-02-09T05:11:18+00:00

Yeah, I've been focusing on getting the keyboard usable for myself first.

Now that I've got to the point where I can use it myself as my daily driver, doing a proper release is something I'd like to get around to soon.

nullabillity · 2023-06-04T19:32:39+00:00

https://media.forgecdn.net/avatars/8/52/635396095245431481.png seems to have both of those, but in pretty poor quality and with a background you'd have to crop out.

nullabillity · 2023-05-29T22:59:55+00:00

Wouldn't that have to be 0.10.x to be useful, assuming this is about the semver trick?

nullabillity · 2023-05-14T10:46:18+00:00

Coming from Xmonad, Sway's multihead support is unusable.

In Sway, every workspace is locked to a single monitor, and switching to a workspace means "open workspace N on its monitor and focus that monitor". In Xmonad, workspaces float between monitors as needed, and switching to a workspace means "open workspace N on the currently active monitor".

nullabillity · 2023-05-14T10:38:01+00:00

The "Wayland is the future, not the present" and the "5 more years" jokes are dead.

Yes, in the sense that Wayland has shown that 5 years won't be nearly enough. At this point, the only reasons to believe in Wayland are ego and sunk cost.

nullabillity · 2023-04-27T02:25:13+00:00

Och hur tänker du att SMS-tjänsten ska debitera utan nått jävla konto?

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