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Friday, March 22, 2002

New table of contents
I've adapted Jon's StoryList macro for s l a m service. The UserTalk source code is available here.

Used a css 'toc' class for paragraphs and links

Moved the date to the title attribute of the post's link

To make sure the 'table of content' story is upstreamed with each new post, it is necessary to enter an update script in the user.radio.callbacks.publishItem table.
My updateStoryList script on a MacOS version of Radio uses ':' instead of a PC styled '\' as folder separator.
I wonder if there is a function in Radio to return the running system's default directory separator.

9:10:17 PM    comments:   Google It!

Automated ToC test
Can I see this on the contents page ?
Oops, no on first try...
Second try... post to the home page only ... Third try...
It works ! but with a ':' as folder separator in path.

7:46:41 PM    comments:   Google It!

Of bytes and Byte
Somebody asked me yesterday why a character was referred to as a byte in 'geekspeak' (sic). Boy, did that one make me feel old. I'm afraid my explanations soon drifted to boring anecdotes of this industry's lore.
So, this afternoon, I decided to go back to the source: I re-read Carl Helmers' first editorial of the first issue of Byte magazine, back in September 1975. According to Carl:
The origin of the term "byte" lies in IBM's documentation and terminology for the extremely successful System 360 series. The folk tale has it that IBM needed a more "personalized" (i.e. unique) term for the old standby of earlier generation computers, the "character". [...] it could not have been long before some wizard of verbal magic figured out that a group of little bits must constitute a mouth watering byte.
Wow, looking at the ads in Byte's first issue was enough to start a new fit of nostalgia. I think I'll leave my Byte magazine collection on my bookshelves from now on.

3:25:10 PM    comments:   Google It!

Upgraded Subscriptions widget
I've updated Jon's subscription display widget to better fit into s l a m's current theme:
moved tiny xml link next to coffee cup link;
replaced alt='comment' attributes in <img> tags with title='comment' attributes in <a> tags for proper display in IE;
modified text links to open in a new window;
each line is now a <div> with the class='navsection' attribute;
each text link has the class='navsection' attribute as well.
The last 2 changes allow for more style flexibility with css.
You can copy the updated Usertalk code form here.

2:41:48 PM    comments:   Google It!