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newsletters:2025-09 [2025/10/02 21:04] – [Speed up the animation port] osnrnewsletters:2025-09 [2025/10/02 23:06] (current) – Add open house group picture cwervo
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 ===== What we've been up to ===== ===== What we've been up to =====
  
-==== Overview notes on folk2 internals ====+==== Internals notes ====
  
 [[https://github.com/smj-edison|Mason Jones]] has been writing overview notes on the internals of the new parallel folk2 evaluator (a lot of it applies to folk1 also): [[https://github.com/smj-edison|Mason Jones]] has been writing overview notes on the internals of the new parallel folk2 evaluator (a lot of it applies to folk1 also):
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 These should be good for people who want to understand what's going on and maybe contribute to the core, and it's great to see Mason develop that understanding himself also. These should be good for people who want to understand what's going on and maybe contribute to the core, and it's great to see Mason develop that understanding himself also.
  
 +==== Keyboard refactoring ====
 +
 +  * Andrés: This month mostly consisted of working with Mason's [[https://github.com/FolkComputer/folk/pull/208|old PR code for keyboard improvements]] that would allow code views and interactive tabletop editing of programs in folk1 and beginning to rewrite it for folk2. This will take shape next month as a new PR fit for extending folk2's editor.
  
 ==== folk2 kernel ==== ==== folk2 kernel ====
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 </code> </code>
  
-The ''-atomically'' block should guarantee that the circle doesn't blink out (use previous version if new one isn't converged yet), that you always see exactly one circle (unless the block really goes away for a while), and that you always see the circle that corresponds with the label (no partial states).+The ''-atomically'' block should guarantee that the circle doesn't blink out (use previous version if new one isn't converged yet), that you always see exactly one circle (unless the block really goes away for a while), and that you always see the circle that corresponds with the label (no partial states: either all the statements from the version appear or none do).
  
 The way it works is that each invocation of the block gets an associated version object, and all downstream statements of the invocation are tagged with that version. The version has an inflight counter that increments every time a new work item is dispatched from a statement and decrements when the work item completes. When the inflight counter on a version hits 0, that version is considered converged, and statements from that version can be returned as results from ''Query! -atomically''.  The way it works is that each invocation of the block gets an associated version object, and all downstream statements of the invocation are tagged with that version. The version has an inflight counter that increments every time a new work item is dispatched from a statement and decrements when the work item completes. When the inflight counter on a version hits 0, that version is considered converged, and statements from that version can be returned as results from ''Query! -atomically''. 
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 The ''$quadLib change'' function was doing a synchronous Query! to find any changers that are around to convert from one space (like camera-space) into another space (like projector-space). The ''$quadLib change'' function was doing a synchronous Query! to find any changers that are around to convert from one space (like camera-space) into another space (like projector-space).
  
-I got rid of the 'quad-local space' that all quads used to be specified in; now they all are in camera space immediately. Then I replaced the whole space-changer system with a single claim that exposes a changer that knows how to convert any known space to any other known space, since now this only changes with the calibration anyway (so almost never).+I got rid of the 'page-local spaces' that all quads used to be specified in; now they all are in camera space immediately. Then I [[https://github.com/FolkComputer/folk/compare/a749c4a5...42b45736|replaced the whole space-changer system]] with a single claim ''the quad changer is /quadChange/'' that exposes a function ''quadChange'' that knows how to convert any known space to any other known space. (This claim is [[https://github.com/FolkComputer/folk/blob/1c4ba1d582b56ce1533ea4b70e317ee10e0c8765/virtual-programs/tags-to-quads.folk#L372|based on a Collect of all declared changers]], which should almost never change now that we don't have page-local spaces; it should only change when calibration changes.)
 === Speed up camera slices === === Speed up camera slices ===
  
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 === WIP: Speed up the animation port === === WIP: Speed up the animation port ===
  
-Recall from last month.+Recall that we [[newsletters/2025-08#animation-demo|ported animation to folk2 last month]]. That port works OK, but it degrades as you put more programs on the table, timing messes up, and it makes a lot of Holds and takes up a lot of GPU slots and stuff because of all the synthetic objects.
  
-Don't actually need a canvas per frame box. +We don't actually need a canvas per frame box, so I've been trying to write a version that just has quads for the frames (to get camera slices) but no canvases, and which draws everything straight to the display buffer. 
-==== Other improvements ====+ 
 +That led me to realize that the ''quadChange'' I did earlier doesn't handle inverse changes, so I just added those. Haven't gotten to finish this yet, though. 
 + 
 +{{.:pasted:20251002-212544.png?550px}} 
 +=== Other improvements ===
  
   * [[https://www.subelsky.com|Mike Subelsky]] added an [[https://github.com/FolkComputer/folk/pull/226|option to folk2's Makefile to set FOLK_REMOTE_NODE from the environment variable]]   * [[https://www.subelsky.com|Mike Subelsky]] added an [[https://github.com/FolkComputer/folk/pull/226|option to folk2's Makefile to set FOLK_REMOTE_NODE from the environment variable]]
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     * Working again:     * Working again:
       * {{.:pasted:20251002-195038.jpeg?350px}}       * {{.:pasted:20251002-195038.jpeg?350px}}
 +  * Omar: Fixed tab close cleanup of web programs & added synthetic quad when you make a new web editor program (so you can do the classic green outline program again)
 +  * Omar: Fixes to synchronization and Tracy and other build system stuff
  
  
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 <code> <code>
-  Wish $p runs Unix command "echo" with arguments [list "Hello" "World"] +Wish $p runs Unix command "echo" with arguments [list "Hello" "World"] 
-  Wish $p runs Unix command "curl" with arguments [list "-fsS" "http://wttr.in/Baltimore?format='%l:+%C'"] +Wish $p runs Unix command "curl" with arguments [list "-fsS" "http://wttr.in/Baltimore?format='%l:+%C'"] 
-  Wish $p runs Unix command "ls" with arguments [list "-sSh" "/home/folk/folk2"] +Wish $p runs Unix command "ls" with arguments [list "-sSh" "/home/folk/folk2"] 
-  Wish $p runs Unix command "ping" with arguments [list "google.com"] +Wish $p runs Unix command "ping" with arguments [list "google.com"] 
-  Wish $p runs Unix command "sh" with arguments [list "-c" "while :; do date +%s.%3N; sleep 0.5; done"]+Wish $p runs Unix command "sh" with arguments [list "-c" "while :; do date +%s.%3N; sleep 0.5; done"]
 </code> </code>
  
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 === Website updates === === Website updates ===
  
-Omar: I moved this website from PHP shared hosting to a VM on Azure. It feels a lot snappier and more reliable to me now, especially images/video loading. I also upgraded DokuWiki.+Omar: I moved this website from PHP shared hosting to a VM on Azure. It feels a lot snappier and more reliable to me now, especially images/video loading. 
  
 (DokuWiki is quite cool to migrate, because all its code and data are in one folder, so you just copy it from old host to new host and you're good, as long as it can host PHP. No database or other config files outside /var/www/html or whatever to move.) (DokuWiki is quite cool to migrate, because all its code and data are in one folder, so you just copy it from old host to new host and you're good, as long as it can host PHP. No database or other config files outside /var/www/html or whatever to move.)
  
 +I also upgraded DokuWiki. We have exactly one change to the base DokuWiki that I manually re-applied, to make resized images look acceptable on hi-DPI displays:
 +
 +{{.:pasted:20251002-211349.png?650px}}
 === Open house === === Open house ===
  
 An especially small one this time, but we had the studio open all afternoon, and it was great to cowork with Mike (who came in from Baltimore) who was playing with audio stuff. An especially small one this time, but we had the studio open all afternoon, and it was great to cowork with Mike (who came in from Baltimore) who was playing with audio stuff.
  
-{{:newsletters:pasted:20250929-150103.jpeg?250px}} {{:newsletters:pasted:20250929-150122.jpeg?250px}} {{:newsletters:pasted:20250929-150134.jpeg?250px}}+{{:newsletters:pasted:20250929-150103.jpeg?250px}} {{:newsletters:pasted:20250929-150122.jpeg?250px}} {{:newsletters:pasted:20250929-150134.jpeg?250px}} {{:newsletters:folk_open_house_group_photos.jpeg?500px}}
 ===== What we'll be up to in October ===== ===== What we'll be up to in October =====
  
   * Omar: Probably merge folk2   * Omar: Probably merge folk2
 +    * Omar: Try to fix some remaining crashes
 +    * Omar: Try to test -atomically in production
 +    * Omar: Work on animation port
   * Omar: Continue trying to configure gadget projector   * Omar: Continue trying to configure gadget projector
   * Omar: Maybe stereo-calibrate gadget and do some UI experiments with the full stereo setup (segmentation, projection-mapping, lassoing)   * Omar: Maybe stereo-calibrate gadget and do some UI experiments with the full stereo setup (segmentation, projection-mapping, lassoing)
 +  * Andrés: Porting core Folk drawing Wishes to Folk2
 +  * Andrés: Work on refactoring keyboard to be more easily improved and extended (e.g. text resizing, interactive editing of table programs)
 +  * Andrés: Possibly revisit video branch to get support merged into folk2
  
 ===== Links we've enjoyed ===== ===== Links we've enjoyed =====
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 ==== Andrés ==== ==== Andrés ====
 +  * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-xHr61m0sY&t=692s| Composers Desktop Project]] — a project for offline sound programming that's been continuously developed since 1986, entirely without a GUI as a programming based project. This tutorial walks you through a modern open source GUI for the project. 
 +  * [[https://color-buddy.netlify.app/|Color Buddy]] 
 +  * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1fvJ5sHh6A|How Townscaper Works: A Story Four Games in the Making]] 
 +  * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KYwi2F5Ce4|The "Geometry" of Colours]] 
 +  * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdjqXOCeEtg&t=1s|How Criterion Collection Brings Movies Back From the Dead]]
newsletters/2025-09.1759439054.txt.gz · Last modified: by osnr
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