the corner office : tech blog

Back when I was fiddling with Eclipse RCP development one of the things which frustrated me about SWT in Gtk+ was autocomplete behaviour of drop-down lists. Type-ahead doesn't work, so while you can use the arrow keys to move through the list, and hit space or alt-down to see the choices, you can't hit keys and have the right entry show up. It works fine in Windows, so I'd presumed it had something to do with Gtk+.

I think I was right, since I've run into this again with wxWidgets in Gnome. I went as far as trying out some more widely used wxWidgets apps, and they all have the same problem, so I have to assume it's not just me doing something stupid. I found some wxPython code which tries to implement type-ahead on list controls but frankly, it's all just a pain in the butt. I went as far as trying out a simple combo using Gtk# in MonoDevelop, and it's the same thing.

Given my dislike of Swing, I have to grudgingly admit that I tried it in Swing, and a JComboBox does exactly what I expect.

Update: I noticed GtkEntryCompletion which seems to do the trick, but it doesn't seem to be exposed via wxWidgets.

Update2:: Links:

• wxpython-users: list control searching on Linux
• wxPython wiki: Combo Box that suggests options
• wxPython wiki: TextCtrlAutoComplete
• wxPython wiki: TypeAheadListCtrlMixin

A new Ubuntu distro based on the LXDE desktop environment. This article shows that not only does Lubuntu use a fraction of what Ubuntu uses, but it looks like Xubuntu, based on Xfce, is more of a memory hog than Ubuntu.

Cliff Click Jr: Java vs C performance... again... (via)

An erratic trail lead me to an archive of the late Edsger Dijkstra's writings, and copies of his manuscripts, which make interesting reading.

Remarkable is how many of his manuscripts, especially later years, are hand-written. In our touch-typing world, how easy is it to turn out text so neatly, and succinctly, and with what often looks like no correction?

cpulimit (via) allows you to throttle specific processes and applications. Just the thing for my stupid-ass laptop which is overheating, partly because the fan needs cleaning but mainly because (as I've come to conclude), Acer laptops are crap.

When life's a little busy for me as it currently is, I battle to write a blog post a week. Microsoft blogger Raymond Chen averages more than a blog a day and as of Feb this year, had nearly 15 months' worth of blog posts stored up.