h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Other than sub standard work that is there for anyone to see"

People have looked, Tango, but they didn't find. What is there 'for anyone to see?' And I mean *see* - sitting at a normal distance from their monitor and looking at the pictures in a browser *not* using 500% magnification in a graphics program and poking about with the eyedropper tool.

Put your money where your mouth is. List those graphics.

Times have changed then, or you went to an exceptional school. In 1968 I had to decide for science or humanities. "High School" is for the benefit of our N American members although that expression is common in Scotland.

I remember well my days in the sixth form at the age of 17 and 18yrs studying the three sciences and additional maths. Formality, proven conclusions and set format's were the order of the day. Quantum theory had been introduced only the year before mine. We were the first cohort to use the SI system (metric).

That's why I understand the conflict here. In fact broadcasters like Melvyn Bragg have made tremendous efforts to bring science across the divide to the "chattering classes" who are mostly social scientists.

The only prop social sciences have are statistics which have been comprehensively abused. Most of the time they rely on rhetoric which I can assure you Tango sends me to throttle-up as well as you.

The interim period between then (1969) and now has been spent mapping out the humanities. My wife, a historian, has helped me achieve a fair grasp, but inherently I just ain't wired for it.

Times have indeed change.

Tango

"Put your money where your mouth is. List those graphics."

I belive such a list does exist somewhere, i am making enquiries.

Tango

Tango, you keep telling us that Atled was all your own idea and yet whenever we ask for the evidence on which you based your plans none of the information is in your brain, it's always somewhere else. You would think that you'd remember at least some scraps of the evidence. You don't have to give us chapter and verse, just describe the pictures you've seen and I'll provide the blob numbers.

All I want is an example or two of graphics that are in *your* opinion, based on evidence *you* can really see, substandard.

There are plenty of images with bad antialiasing, bad borders, etc. that i could find if i wanted too. However, there is already a list somewhere, so i'm not going to waste time doing something someone else has already done. If i get a moment i will try and find you one example.

Tango

Tango, have you just come off of pre-mod? Your most recent posting is time stamped as four minutes ago and I can read it. That's a much faster turn around than usual for a moderation decision.

It's Sunday, not so many people at work. Moderators must be quiet.

"There are plenty of images with bad antialiasing, bad borders, etc. that i could find if I wanted too."

So you don't want to? You just want to bandy around unsubstantiated insults, do you?

I'll help you out. Yes, there are images that have slightly imperfect borders.

Let's do a little activity. Everyone can join in - you'll need a piece of paper and a pen. About ten of the communicate images on page A1095383 have the sort of problems to which Tango is referring.

How many can you spot just by looking at the page in a browser?
Answers on a postcard. To get you started they include the three default h2g2 logos so now you just have seven to find.

Whether or not you can see them in normal use is not relevent. The specifications are very specific. "no-one can tell" is not a good enough excuse to break them. Imagine if that were a valid defense in a court of law.

I don't want to find the images, because i know someone else has already done it and reinventing the wheel is pointless.

Tango

That's your opinion but I think you'll find that it isn't shared by many others. There is some tolerance in the specs. Those in engineering will be familiar with the concept. However, unlike in engineering, the tolerance isn't a stated value. The measure we use is 'Can it be seen?'

The system of checks that we have evolved over the past year involve a visual check in a browser only. We don't, and I strongly suspect won't, spend time crawling over each other's borders with a magnifying glass.

"Whether or not you can see them in normal use is not relevent. The specifications are very specific. "no-one can tell" is not a good enough excuse to break them. Imagine if that were a valid defense in a court of law."

This is about art, not about law and not about science. To apply the same standards that apply to science or law to something that is based on completely different standards is, in a word, stupid. Tango, you are an intelligent enough to see that.

Let me be more clear anyway. We have the color "blue". What exactly is the color blue? Is there a precise value that is blue? We could say that the value represented by hex #0000FF is blue, and colors that are not precisely that value are off a little, but that fails to recognize that the hex value is based not on any artistic measure of blueness but on the workings of computers - they use binary numerals for calculations, and #0000FF just happens to be a nice even binary number. It's completely arbitrary - if someone had invented computers that worked in base 7 calculations we would all have a different value for blue. If you don't see the validity of this, look up a discussion of "web safe" colors (lynda.com is a good place to start since she coined the term).

Furthermore, there is considerable variation in the workings of monitors so that the value I see at #0000FF has no guarantee of being anywhere even close to what you see at #0000FF. Ditto the variation in our own eyes. Even black and white have no "pure" value (black is an oxymoron anyway - technically it is the absence of light which is impossible on a computer monitor unless the thing is turned off).

So it seems to me that where you see specifications being broken, you may actually be applying measures that are both non-standard and rather futile (in that they are non-artistic and based on arbitrary measures). But I'm still not entirely certain about what you saw in the graphics to begin with, so I could be way off base. You will have to tell me, are my comments appropriate?

I'm not the one that wrote the rules. The rules are extremely specific, and use fixed measurements. For example borders have to be exactly one pixel wide. I don't actually see the point of that rule, but it is there, and should be obeyed.

If someone wants to go through and modify the specs to be less precise, and rely more on common sense, then i will be happy, but as long as the rules are as they are, they are way too many blobs breaking them.

Tango

Tango's point is, I believe, valid. If the flaw can be detected then why not fix it. Just fix it!

Oetzi, we're not running double identities, we're playing an anagram game with our names. Double identity is the reason I started this discussion. Read the first two LED's of this thread, then understand that Tango created Atled and was abetted by some unspecified researcher who did the graphics and is now conspicuously absent from this discussion. Tango told us a while back he can't draw.

To reprise, I find the whole Atled effort morally repugnant, and while the sidebars on scientific method and education have been interesting, they have not been what this matter is about.

d'E has nailed it: this is about art, not science, not law. And I wrote the Edited Guide article on web-safe colours, by the way.

Could someone provide Oetzi with the url for the discussion we had about anti-aliassing and circles over on the Freespace thread? I have to leave in a few minutes. Thanks. When you read the thread, Oetzi, I think you'll notice that Tango didn't actually understand what we were saying. The complaints don't originate with him.

It's around this post - F23574?thread=293188&post=4103282#p4103282

Tango, Oetzi, and any other perfectionists out there, you're going to find this hard to accept but no matter how much you stamp your feet about this nothing will change. The CAs are not choosing to create imperfect borders, it's something that the graphics packages just happen to do. Strangely, the more expensive the package, the more likely it is that imperfections will be introduced. If we notice, then of course we correct it. It's just that we don't go out of our way to notice.

I'll give away an answer to the quiz. Picture 4 is one of the seven. There are two pixels in the border that are nearly but not quite black. The fifth pixel down on the left and the sixth one down on the right are very very very dark grey. On a scale of 0 to 255, where 0 is black and 255 is white, they're both 7. It is unlikely that anyone will be able to see the difference even on 1000% magnification. None of us is prepared to examine other people's graphics that closely, nor would any of us be petty enough to ask someone to fix a trivial, invisible problem. We're all very busy people.

This is about people not pixels. The team will not function properly in an atmosphere of constant nagging about insignificant details.

Many of the issues Tango has raised boil down to perfectionism vs pragmatism. Perfectionism is something that usually gets knocked out of people as they experience life. My advice would be to get that process over and done with as soon as possible - perfectionists are never popular.

The standards of our graphics are not going to change nor do we need the specs rewriting, Tango. You might like them to be rewritten but the CAs don't need them to be changed and won't be pushing for it. TPTB can tighten the rules if they wish but they'd better be prepared to enforce those rules themselves (something they've not done hitherto) and to face the damage it will do to team morale for no discernable benefit. Personally, I think they'd be mad to do so.

"Tango, Oetzi, and any other perfectionists out there, you're going to find this hard to accept but no matter how much you stamp your feet about this nothing will change."

So you are closed to any suggestions that you might be anything short of perfect? That is arrogance.

"The CAs are not choosing to create imperfect borders, it's something that the graphics packages just happen to do. Strangely, the more expensive the package, the more likely it is that imperfections will be introduced. If we notice, then of course we correct it. It's just that we don't go out of our way to notice."

What's the phrase? A poor craftsman blames his tools, or something like that.

"This is about people not pixels. The team will not function properly in an atmosphere of constant nagging about insignificant details."

It's about people? You mean the purpose of the CAs is the boost the feeling of self-importance of its members? Strange... i always thought it was about art.

"Many of the issues Tango has raised boil down to perfectionism vs pragmatism. Perfectionism is something that usually gets knocked out of people as they experience life. My advice would be to get that process over and done with as soon as possible - perfectionists are never popular."

People who critisise perfectionists are usually people who are not capable of getting something right, so try to make those that are, or those that expect people to be, look bad.

"The standards of our graphics are not going to change nor do we need the specs rewriting, Tango. You might like them to be rewritten but the CAs don't need them to be changed and won't be pushing for it. TPTB can tighten the rules if they wish but they'd better be prepared to enforce those rules themselves (something they've not done hitherto) and to face the damage it will do to team morale for no discernable benefit. Personally, I think they'd be mad to do so."

Considering the number of times i've pointed it out, i would have expected you to have started reading things properly by now. I recommended lossening the rules, not tightening them.

Tango

Found that list of 'bad' blobs yet Tango? You've had plenty of time...