A kingdom for a sarcasm tag...

I have noticed a lot lately that these days people write in chats and forums the way they speak in every day life. First and foremost, to myself, who was tortured... sorry... "classically educated" until I wrote everything correctly (within a minimal margin of error) both in English and in German, this is plain horrible.

I will not go into the details why I find it cringeable when native speakers do not see the difference between there and they're or when I need 5 minutes to wrestle the hidden meaning from a three line forum post. I will go into something, that has been holding me back quite a bit. Namely, the fact, that it is impossible to use different intonations, which would make, for example, the difference between a serious and a sarcastic statement.

I admit it, I love sarcasm and irony. It is said that "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit." But quite frankly, I had the feeling that, so far the people I have met who said this, didn't really know how to use it or didn't understand it. Sarcasm when used correctly (same as irony), can make someone, who has been spouting utter nonsense, aware of his mishap without having to potentially humiliate him in front of others. In the same vein, it can be one of the best retorts ever. I am a very sarcastic person and I enjoy it. It makes me smile. For example, one of the main characters in the Guy Ritchie film Snatch, Turkish, is a sarcastic bastard and I love that movie for his quotes alone. The rest is just the cream on top :D

Anyhow, back to the point. In forums and chats, it cannot be used, because you would have to highlight it somehow. I would very much favour a forum, where you could use intonation tags. Using a different font (switch from Times to Arial) or something like that, I don't care what, but it would be awesome. True, part of the sarcastic appeal is, that it remains hidden to some, but c'mon a slimmed down version is better than nothing :).

WYSIWYG: A new start with wxFormBuilder

Warning, this is just a short update...

I have been absent for a while and I apologise, real life is keeping me rather busy, I must admit. Regarding things relevant to this blog, I have been busy transferring my GUI design to a new WYSIWG editor in order to have results that are more like what I was hoping to achieve. I used XRCed or wxGlade before, but I have not been content with them. The project XRCed has been inactive since a long time, so it was time to move on and something about wxGlade I just don't like. It is, in my opinion, a bit unwieldy and I find myself trying to incorporate widgets that aren't available in it.

As a consequence, I have been looking for an alternative, which came in the form of wxFormBuilder. It looks like a nice project and the design borrows heavily from Microsoft's Visual Express, which is not always a bad thing. As such, I have been busy, unlearning some of the things, I got used to and gotten to grips with peculiarities of the other. So far, very pleased with it. Unfortunately, there isn't a particularly good tutorial out there, which means, I will ned a little longer. At the off-chance, I may be able to write one once I have become more proficient with it.

Anyhow, so long, folks and thanks for all the fish.