The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[Raphael]

Perhaps it might be useful to have a general-purpose thread for all things computer- and electronic-gadget-related. Questions, comments, random musings, reports about tech making you happy or unhappy or causing you contradictory feelings - stuff like that.

[Travis B.]

I really need to track down information on the STM32F746NG MCU and the STM32F746 DISCOVERY board so I can begin porting zeptoforth to them, but I just can't motivate myself to do so for some reason beyond me, even though they are really neat pieces of hardware. I did find a datasheet for the STM32F746NG, but while it emphasized how neat the hardware was, it was short on the actual hardware info needed to program the MCU.

[Raphael]

Today I learned that the common software menu icon consisting of three vertically stacked horizontal bars is called the hamburger icon. I would never have guessed that. I had actually seen people talk of that icon without knowing what they meant. *slaps forehead*

[Travis B.]

Today I learned that the common software menu icon consisting of three vertically stacked horizontal bars is called the hamburger icon. I would never have guessed that. I had actually seen people talk of that icon without knowing what they meant. *slaps forehead*

It took me a while for me to pick that up too, actually.

[Travis B.]

It took me a while to find docs for the STM32F746, which I eventually found, but now I have the problem that I don't know how to set the processor clock all the way up to its maximum of 216 MHz (it defaults to 16 MHz)...

[Qwynegold]

I have an HTML problem, and I was wondering if anyone is able to help. You see, Lexique Pro has an option to load an HTML document, so that when you're viewing the dictionary, there's a button called "About <conlang name>". When you click it you're supposed to get information about the language. It can be a short description, a small grammar or just info about how to use the dictionary.

I can't program, but I figured I could just type a text document in Open Office, and then save that as an HTML document. But it turned out to not work. If you choose the one available HTML option in Open Office, you get a .html file. (This produces a file that I can view in my browser.) But Lexique Pro is expecting a file called index.htm, so it won't accept the file extension .html. So then I tried saving the document again, typing in "index.htm" in the save dialog. Lexique Pro will load this file, but only display a short paragraph of random characters. Viewing this file in my browser I see a wall of random characters.

Is there an easy way to solve this?

[bradrn]

I have an HTML problem, and I was wondering if anyone is able to help. You see, Lexique Pro has an option to load an HTML document, so that when you're viewing the dictionary, there's a button called "About <conlang name>". When you click it you're supposed to get information about the language. It can be a short description, a small grammar or just info about how to use the dictionary.

I can't program, but I figured I could just type a text document in Open Office, and then save that as an HTML document. But it turned out to not work. If you choose the one available HTML option in Open Office, you get a .html file. (This produces a file that I can view in my browser.) But Lexique Pro is expecting a file called index.htm, so it won't accept the file extension .html. So then I tried saving the document again, typing in "index.htm" in the save dialog. Lexique Pro will load this file, but only display a short paragraph of random characters. Viewing this file in my browser I see a wall of random characters.

Is there an easy way to solve this?

The problem you are having is as follows. OpenOffice (and Word, and Pages etc.) is a rich text editor: it doesn’t just edit a list of letters, it edits a list of letters with formatting applied. Given this use-case, when you save an OpenOffice document as HTML, it doesn’t just convert the raw letters to HTML — that would mean throwing away all the formatting, which is stupid! (Not to mention that it would generate invalid HTML most of the time.) Instead, it does what you’d naturally expect: it goes through the document, converts each and every bit of formatting to the corresponding HTML elements, and then puts them together. The net effect is that, as you say, you get an HTML document which replicates in the browser what your document looks like in OpenOffice.

The problem with this approach is that the HTML is getting autogenerated by OpenOffice. And autogenerated HTML can get very messy very quickly. I can’t know for sure, but my best guess is that there’s some sort of weird construction in the HTML OpenOffice is generating which disagrees with the inbuilt viewer in Lexique Pro, and that’s messing everything up. One way to get around it is to write the HTML yourself. Luckily, HTML is simple, especially if you’re only making a simple ‘about’ page — just go through one of the many tutorials online and you’ll learn it easily. (It’s much easier than, say, conlanging!) On the other hand, if you really want to use OpenOffice, I can certainly try fixing the problem — though to do that, I’d need at least screenshots of the original OpenOffice document, the HTML page shown in the browser, and the page shown in Lexique Pro (in that order, please!).

(As for html vs htm: the two extensions are exactly equivalent — you can just save your document as ‘.html’ and then manually rename it to ‘.htm’. The former is standard; I believe the latter dates back to the days when Microsoft only allowed three characters in an extension.)

[Travis B.]

You should just write raw HTML in a proper text editor such as emacs, vi, Notepad++, etc. WYSIWYG HTML editors are known for producing bad HTML. As for file extensions, yes, the standard is .html, and .htm is just an old Microsoft-ism that is long obsolete.

[Qwynegold]

Thanks for the replies!

About writing HTML yourself: I'm really, really programming handicapped so I will not attempt that. I had a programming course once, it was such a nightmare. And I had to give up some formatting ideas on FrathWiki because I just can't get the wiki code to work. I've also looked at some how to guides on HTML when I've wanted to use HTML on Jetpunk, and failed to apply it correctly.

About the file extension: Okay, so .htm and .html are the same thing. Yet Lexique Pro will not load a file with the extension .html. When I had that .html file I first tried just right clicking the file icon, choosing rename, and typing index.htm. But that would not actually change the file extension, .htm just became a part of the name and not the extension.

On the other hand, if you really want to use OpenOffice, I can certainly try fixing the problem — though to do that, I’d need at least screenshots of the original OpenOffice document, the HTML page shown in the browser, and the page shown in Lexique Pro (in that order, please!).

Thanks for the offer, but I don't wanna bother you with that. Right now I just wrote a list of abbreviations used in the dictionary, but I actually want a more proper about page. And I will want to make a lot of changes to it, as things progress...

[bradrn]

Thanks for the replies!

About writing HTML yourself: I'm really, really programming handicapped so I will not attempt that. I had a programming course once, it was such a nightmare. And I had to give up some formatting ideas on FrathWiki because I just can't get the wiki code to work. I've also looked at some how to guides on HTML when I've wanted to use HTML on Jetpunk, and failed to apply it correctly.

As it happens, for an ‘About’ page, you don’t need to know much HTML at all. This template should be complete enough for your purposes:

Code: Select all

<html>
<head>
<title>Put the page title here</title>
</head>
<body>

<p>This is where you put your text.</p>
<p>You need to surround each paragraph with 'p' tags, like this.</p>
<h1>This is a top-level heading</h1>
<h2>This is a second-level heading</h2>
<p>Here are some formatting commands: <b>bold</b> <i>italic</i> <a href="adress-to-link-to">link</a></p>
<p>Here is an image:</p>
<img src="image-file.png"/>

</body>
</html>

About the file extension: Okay, so .htm and .html are the same thing. Yet Lexique Pro will not load a file with the extension .html. When I had that .html file I first tried just right clicking the file icon, choosing rename, and typing index.htm. But that would not actually change the file extension, .htm just became a part of the name and not the extension.

Hmm… what OS are you using? On Windows at least, you have to manually select the file extension if you want to change it.

[cedh]

As it happens, for an ‘About’ page, you don’t need to know much HTML at all. This template should be complete enough for your purposes:

Code: Select all

<html>
<head>
<title>Put the page title here</title>
</head>
<body>

<p>This is where you put your text.</p>
<p>You need to surround each paragraph with 'p' tags, like this.</p>
<h1>This is a top-level heading</h1>
<h2>This is a second-level heading</h2>
<p>Here are some formatting commands: <b>bold</b> <i>italic</i> <a href="adress-to-link-to">link</a></p>
<p>Here is an image:</p>
<img src="image-file.png"/>

</body>
</head>

The very last tag should be </html> rather than </head>. Apart from this, I agree that the sample code should be (more than) enough for writing an 'About' page in raw HTML.

[bradrn]

As it happens, for an ‘About’ page, you don’t need to know much HTML at all. This template should be complete enough for your purposes:

Code: Select all

<html>
<head>
<title>Put the page title here</title>
</head>
<body>

<p>This is where you put your text.</p>
<p>You need to surround each paragraph with 'p' tags, like this.</p>
<h1>This is a top-level heading</h1>
<h2>This is a second-level heading</h2>
<p>Here are some formatting commands: <b>bold</b> <i>italic</i> <a href="adress-to-link-to">link</a></p>
<p>Here is an image:</p>
<img src="image-file.png"/>

</body>
</head>

The very last tag should be </html> rather than </head>. Apart from this, I agree that the sample code should be (more than) enough for writing an 'About' page in raw HTML.

Whoops, so it should. Fixed!

[vegfarandi]

And you kinda need to declare the doctype at the top. Like so:

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE html>

[Travis B.]

I have to emphasize that basic HTML, without CSS, is not much like programming and more like using BBCode; it primarily gets more complex if one wants to apply arbitrary formatting, which requires CSS.

[Qwynegold]

As it happens, for an ‘About’ page, you don’t need to know much HTML at all. This template should be complete enough for your purposes:

But tables would be an absolute nightmare to do. Hmm, can you insert tabs in the text?

Hmm… what OS are you using? On Windows at least, you have to manually select the file extension if you want to change it.

Windows. What do you mean manually select? Ah, it doesn't matter. I can just create a new document, and it works just typing index.htm as its name.

[bradrn]

As it happens, for an ‘About’ page, you don’t need to know much HTML at all. This template should be complete enough for your purposes:

But tables would be an absolute nightmare to do. Hmm, can you insert tabs in the text?

Tables in HTML are pretty similar to ZBB tables:

Code: Select all

<table>
<tr><th>TH</th><th>cells</th><th>are</th><th>headers</th></tr>
<tr><td>TD</td><td>elements</td><td>define</td><td>ordinary</td><td>cells</td></tr>
<tr><td>Here</td><td>is</td><td>yet</td><td>another</td><td>row</td></tr>
</table>

That being said, typing all that out is a bit horrible. A minimalist alternative is to use the pre element, which displays preformatted text:

Code: Select all

<pre>
Just   preformat  your    text
to     look       like    a
table  and        then    place
it     in         ‘pre’   tags.
</pre>

Hmm… what OS are you using? On Windows at least, you have to manually select the file extension if you want to change it.

Windows. What do you mean manually select? Ah, it doesn't matter. I can just create a new document, and it works just typing index.htm as its name.

When you open File Explorer, it should display the extension for each file. (If it doesn’t, you’ll need to enable that setting, which in general is a good idea — do it like this: https://www.howtogeek.com/205086/beginn ... xtensions/.) However, when you rename a file, it doesn’t automatically select the extension for renaming — you’ll need to manually select the extension if you want to rename it.

As it happens, if you’re on Windows, the procedure for manually creating an HTML file is a bit subtle. (Not difficult, that is, just easy to get wrong.) In case you’re not familiar with it, here’s what you have to do:

1. Open Notepad (not OpenOffice!).
2. Type in your HTML file.
3. Open the save dialog: File > Save As.
4. At the bottom, select ‘All Files (*.*)’ next to ‘Save as type’. (Otherwise it’ll save as .txt rather than .htm).
5. Type in your filename: ‘index.htm’.
6. Press ‘Save’.

[Travis B.]

This might be more appropriate for the Venting Thread, but as this thread exists, I might as well use it.

I feel utterly and completely stuck - I about a couple months back bought a new board to port zeptoforth to, an STM32F746 DISCOVERY board. It is a very nice piece of hardware, complete with a big touchscreen and everything. The problem is that its base clock rate is 16 MHz, and I want to run it at its max clock rate of 216 MHz. I don't know how to properly configure all the clock registers to do that. Furthermore, when I look at code examples using this board online, they all just use a prewritten library routine, which does me no good, because I want to know how to actually program the MCU's registers to configure it for 216 MHz. Furthermore, Mecrisp-Stellaris, which I have been using for programming hints along the way, does not do me any good because even though it supports the F746, it has no code to up the clock rate from its base rate. So I feel stuck, like I need to solve this before I move onto something bigger and better (such as programming the F746's built-in memory controller to interface with the included external flash and SDRAM).

[Ares Land]

This might be more appropriate for the Venting Thread, but as this thread exists, I might as well use it.

I feel utterly and completely stuck - I about a couple months back bought a new board to port zeptoforth to, an STM32F746 DISCOVERY board. It is a very nice piece of hardware, complete with a big touchscreen and everything. The problem is that its base clock rate is 16 MHz, and I want to run it at its max clock rate of 216 MHz. I don't know how to properly configure all the clock registers to do that. Furthermore, when I look at code examples using this board online, they all just use a prewritten library routine, which does me no good, because I want to know how to actually program the MCU's registers to configure it for 216 MHz. Furthermore, Mecrisp-Stellaris, which I have been using for programming hints along the way, does not do me any good because even though it supports the F746, it has no code to up the clock rate from its base rate. So I feel stuck, like I need to solve this before I move onto something bigger and better (such as programming the F746's built-in memory controller to interface with the included external flash and SDRAM).

I'm wholly unqualified to give advice on this, but in any case I hope you manage to get that working. May the fickle sprites of microelectronics be with you.

[Travis B.]

I found a free software firmware library, opencm3, which supports the STM32F746 - it might contain code I can work off of to figure out how to configure the STM32F476's clock.

[Travis B.]

I looked at the code for opencm3, and it told me everything I needed to know (even though in the process I found a minor bug in it).