Jump to page content

Colouring lessons page 3


Text input on the screen is generally shown using a flashing cursor. We’ve been doing this for over two decades. So how does this happen?

We’ve been showing dialog boxes for over two decades, too, so how about this one? The amount of text is not even close to excessive.

Are Adobe longing for the good old 8.3 days again?

The following bug is more esoteric. When Pyramid solitaire lays out all the cards, it buffers each row of cards by taking a screenshot of the system; pieces of that row’s screenshot are drawn back when cards are removed from play. If you switch task or open another window while the cards are being dealt, that window will be in the screenshots for the rows too:

Apple are one of those companies with a thing for inventing their own interfaces when the operating system already has a perfectly good one. Sadly, the operating system generally knows better! (Ignore the 16-colour icons in the background, dammit.)

Well, except the NT Virtual DOS Machine. Here, a hidden QBasic mode 9 framebuffer was recalled after I resumed execution of Gorillas:

The PhotoSQL database at a previous employer, broken down yet again:


Also this screenshot

This was merely an attempt to play an incomplete video clip, not an invitation to have QuickTime Player barf on me:

A new bug in Notepad, for a change:

That was Terminal Italic apparently. It also has a notable habit of forgetting to draw in windows, as well as repositioning all the text, and the caret, every time you save, so screenshots like this happen:

The bugs lie in the way soft-wrapped text is handled. Which is very, very badly.