Re: The First Distro To Offer XLibre

On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 16:39:01 +0530, Not Necessary wrote:

On 01/07/25 8:20 am, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

>
But you said “computers can’t understand plaintext, they understand
binaries”. But if they’re the same thing, then why would computers
understand one but not the other?

 
The characters or glyphs we see are ultimately mapped according to the
encoding format, which represent a numeric value for that character or
glyph. The computer can't understand the glyph; we do. It can only use
the numeric value associated with it to store / parse / transmit it.

So where does the “computers can’t understand plaintext, they understand
binaries” come in?

So do “microcode” and “firmware”. Are they part of the “software” or
the “hardware”?

 
Microcode is software, and so is firmware.

What if it’s in ROM? What if it’s in the ROM of a power controller or
management-engine chip that’s built into the motherboard or even
integrated into the CPU die, that needs to start up before your CPU can
even work?

It’s the one layer of abstract machine that is not designed for
additional layers to be built on top.

 
GUI is one of the paradigms of user interface, just like the CLI is. You
can't build an interface on top of a CLI.

Sure you can. It’s all abstract machines on top of abstract machines: you
can build a more special-purpose CLI on top of a more general-purpose one.
And at the final step, you can build GUI front-ends to CLI tools.

A lot of GUI apps work this way. That also means you can automate
operations by writing scripts that drive the back-ends directly, without
having to resort to flaky and fragile fake-mouse-clicks-and-keystrokes
GUI-automation tools.

A program using a pseudo-graphical interface such as Emacs on the
terminal does not build ``on top'' of the CLI

I’ve got news for you: Emacs has long had the option to run in its own GUI
windows, independent of any terminal (though it can still work through a
terminal). It also includes the basics of a GUI toolkit, for you to create
custom interfaces to an Emacs extension.

-- one loses the ability to pipe and redirect data that they can do on
the command line.

No you don’t. Emacs can run CLI commands that take input from editor
buffers and return output to editor buffers. And of course there is copy
and paste between editor windows and terminal windows.

Likewise a file manager such as Dolphin isn't build on top of KDE.

You *do* realize KDE is just a framework for implementing Dolphin and
other apps, right? So yes, they *are* built on top of KDE!