This encouraged me to dig a little deeper. The term “Pasteboard” was inherited from Mac OS X’s ancestor, NeXTSTEP, which used it in its user interface (see The Complete Guide to the NEXTSTEP User Environment for an example). “Pasteboard” is still used in Apple’s documentation for programmers. However, while NeXTSTEP may form the technical foundation for OS X, the classic Mac OS, which always used the term “Clipboard,” is the basis for Mac OS X’s user interface, so “Clipboard” has mostly won out.

So why does the X11 application use the term “Pasteboard”? I can only speculate that the X11’s developers wanted to the distinction between X11’s CLIPBOARD and OS X’s Clipboard as clear as possible, and that computer geeks, who are likely the only ones who would use X11 in the first place, would be familiar with the term.

• I wanted to use Helvetica Neue for all of the text, but it wasn’t included in Inkscape’s Fonts drop-down list. I had to copy the font from /System/Library/Fonts to /Users/my_username/Library/Fonts for Inkscape to load it. None of the other fonts in the system folder had problems loading.
• I also could not use Helvetica. Whenever I chose it, Inkscape kept switching me to Sans. I never figured out what was wrong.
• I tried to copy some objects from one Inkscape window to another, but the pasted objects were converted into a bitmap. This is because X11 synchronizes its CLIPBOARD and PRIMARY buffers with Mac OS X’s Pasteboard* as much as possible, and something got lost in translation. I turned off the synchronizing by going to X11 → Preferences… → Pasteboard tab and turned off Enable Syncing.
• I wanted to import an EPS file which contained vector graphics, but Inkscape can’t import EPS files directly. Instead, I opened the file in Preview and then saved it as a PDF. Inkscape then imported the PDF perfectly.

Hopes this helps others using Inkscape on a Mac!

* The clipboard on Mac OS X is called a pasteboard? Bleh!

James Landay: “Nice profile of Scott Klemmer’s work in Technology Review: Tools for Better Web Design”

Watch President Obama announce the death of Osama bin Laden: MSNBC

[May 1] Osama’s death have prompted huge crowds to gather at World Trade Ctr. (Wall Street Journal) Hard to believe I was there <36 hrs ago.

Sadat Shami: “Interactive map of emotional reactions and the perceived significance on the war on terror after Bin Laden’s death” (New York Times)

Overrrated Outcast: “We still haven’t seen Sarah Palin’s high school diploma.”

Keir Clarke: “Washington Post Map of the American Civil War. I can’t believe how much work has gone into this animated time-line map.”

New York Times: Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building Upward. James Landay adds: “This will be more important than people say.”

“Henry Kissinger”: “I asked Palin for her thoughts on secularism in Turkey. She said she only eats poultry from ‘God-fearing farmers’. #GiveMeStrength”

Overthinking It: The economics of Death Star planet destruction (via Daring Fireball)

Why is c the symbol for the speed of light? (Physics FAQ)

Google at CHI 2011 (via Ed Chi )

Another sweet stop-motion video: 2000 photos of Paris

A reminder to all Americans going to CHI 2011: Canada is a foreign country. Don’t forget your passport. ]]> http://blog.jameslin.name/2011/05/15/twitter-2011-05-01/feed/ 0 http://blog.jameslin.name/2011/05/15/twitter-2011-04-17/ http://blog.jameslin.name/2011/05/15/twitter-2011-04-17/#comments Sun, 15 May 2011 20:36:50 +0000 Jimmy Lin http://blog.jameslin.name/?p=429

Sadat Shami: “Giving up tenure… and getting happiness in return? Reflections from someone who did” (The Scientist via Nick Diakopoulos)

I think I’ll get a standing desk (New York Times)

Jeffrey Bigham: “How languages may have diffused from Africa, modeling phonemes” (New York Times)

Boris Smus: “Allow me to explain sorting algorithms through interpretive dance” (YouTube via Pamela Fox)

This collaboration of cellist Yo-Yo Ma and street dancer Lil Buck is amazing (YouTube)

Looks like the folks at Red Hat are creating their own JVM language called Ceylon (Ars Technica)

Sandra Kogan: “Walmart’s $1.85 billion mistake. They relied on what customers said in a survey versus what they actually do.” (Phil Terry)

Dilbert creator Scott Adams: Forget art history and calculus. Most students need to learn how to run a business. (Wall Street Journal)

Mugizi Rwebangira: “How to fool yourself into working harder” (Dextronet)

Impressed by Ovi Maps 3D. Besides buildings, trees and overpasses in suburban Silicon Valley are also 3D.

Republicans paying $575 an hour to defend Defense of Marriage Act (San Francisco Chronicle)

Sadat Shami: “Google Map Maker allows you to add your local knowledge to a map [currently for the United States only]”

Kayur Patel: “1998 Onion article on streaming video. It’s more interesting than funny in today’s Netflix age.”

Frog Design and design innovation in China (Forbes via James Landay)

Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice? (St. Petersburg Times via Lynn Wu)

John Regehr: “‘Facts have no meaning on the Internet.’ —Thomas Jefferson”

Boyce Avenue not only covered Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” they subtly changed some of the lyrics: YouTube video

Intrigued by Hyde, a static website generator in Python and Django by Lakshmi Vyas. Boris Smus switched his blog to it.

xkcd: Seismic Waves

Mike Lee: “So busy bitching about iPhone location logs I forgot to check in on Foursquare”

The joy of mapping a 2D image on to a 3D terrain model (The Map Room)

Cities build airport cities — ‘aerotropolises’ — for growth (USA Today via Sara Galligan)

Sadat Shami: “BO.LT is a web-based tool that enables people to quickly, without code, remix the content presented on a website” (Huffington Post)

Madhu Prabaker: “Interesting new approach to metered parking in San Francisco. sfpark.org”

Sadat Shami: “Recommendation service Hunch revisits the Mac vs. PC debate with this infographic based on their users”

The Onion: ‘The Economist’ To Halt Production For Month To Let Readers Catch Up ]]> http://blog.jameslin.name/2011/05/15/twitter-2011-04-17/feed/ 0 http://blog.jameslin.name/2011/04/17/twitter-2011-04-10/ http://blog.jameslin.name/2011/04/17/twitter-2011-04-10/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:23:05 +0000 Jimmy Lin http://blog.jameslin.name/?p=418

Backbone.js is a model-view-controller JavaScript library in just 4KB (via Boris Smus )

SparkFun intros IOIO, which allows Android phones to control DIY electronics. (Engadget)

Everyone in Google Doodle for Charlie Chaplin’s birthday are part of Doodle team, and like many of Chaplin’s films, it was filmed in the Niles District of Fremont, California. More from CNN.

IBM launches Maqetta, an HTML 5 tool as an open-source answer to Flash and Silverlight. (eWeek via Jeff Pierce )

The White House launches a personalized tax receipt (Macon Phillips of the White House, via Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post )

I’ve often had this very same thought: Tim Pawlenty wants members of Congress to do their own taxes without help. New York Times article

Mister Rogers defends PBS in front of the US Senate in 1969. (via @Noetic_Hatter )

The Story of Linux: a 4-minute video commemorating 20 years of the Linux operating system (via Mario Fusco )

Jen Mankoff, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor with Lyme disease, tries to make sense of Lyme info online (via James Landay )

Barack Obama: “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending $1 trillion on tax cuts for millionaires & billionaires.” ]]> http://blog.jameslin.name/2011/04/17/twitter-2011-04-10/feed/ 0 http://blog.jameslin.name/2010/11/28/choice-words-from-bob-taylor/ http://blog.jameslin.name/2010/11/28/choice-words-from-bob-taylor/#comments Sun, 28 Nov 2010 23:19:57 +0000 Jimmy Lin http://blog.jameslin.name/?p=403 Back in May, Bob Taylor spoke with Guy Raz at the Computer History Museum about his days at ARPA, funding visionary projects such as Douglas Engelbart at SRI and the ARPAnet, and founding the Computer Systems Laboratory at PARC. Here are some of my favorite quotes of Bob Taylor from that conversation:

• Computers were abominable to use. (To the audience) How many of you have punched holes in cards? (Most of the audience raises their hands.) You look a lot smarter than that.
• There are four people that claim to be the father of the Internet. What does that say of the morals of the mother?
• “Mission-oriented research” by definition can’t be research.
• (Someone who questioned the importance of the research Taylor was funding said to him:) “If what you’re working on is so important, why isn’t IBM working on it?” What do you say to an idiot like that?

]]> http://blog.jameslin.name/2010/11/28/choice-words-from-bob-taylor/feed/ 0 http://blog.jameslin.name/2010/02/07/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-02-07/ http://blog.jameslin.name/2010/02/07/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-02-07/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:30:00 +0000 admin http://blog.jameslin.name/2010/02/07/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-02-07/

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There are quite a few features the iPad lacks: multitasking, a camera, Adobe Flash support, HDMI video output, USB ports, an SD slot, and so on. But remember that at first, the iPhone didn’t 3G or native apps for a whole year. And who would have thought you could successfully sell a smartphone without copy and paste for two years? I bet the iPad is starting out the same way — start off with just enough features to get people hooked, figure out what’s really necessary, and then add on.

If you paid attention to Steve Jobs’ pitch, he may have talked about features and specs, but he really emphasized the experience of using the iPad. “The Internet in your hands,” he said over and over again. Hey, it may look like just a giant iPhone, but once you actually try it out, you’ll be hooked. He’s trying to appeal to your emotional, sensual side — which helps explain why a lot of left-brained geeks weren’t buying his spiel.

A few other random thoughts:

• I found it quite interesting to see what were essentially full-screen iPhone menus being used as pop-up menus or sidebars in iPad applications. If Apple designs its SDK well, it may not be too difficult to create one application that works on both the iPhone and the iPad.
• The home screens look anemic on such a large screen. The icons look too small, and the spacing too large. I’m surprised Apple didn’t put more design work into this.
• For input, I didn’t believe the rumor that the iPad would require you to learn a complex set of gestures, but I was hoping for something more interesting than a virtual keyboard (hello, ShapeWriter). I’m curious to try it out and see how well it works. While the iPhone keyboard isn’t perfect, it works better than I expected on such a small screen. And at least you can use a Bluetooth keyboard with it.
• The biggest surprise for me was how aggressive the pricing is, $500 to $830.

I’d love to get my hands on an iPad, try it out, and see whether it’s as “magical” as Jobs claims. But even if it is, I won’t buy one yet. I never buy the first generation of a gadget, and in the case of the iPhone, it was a good idea. Let’s see what the iPad 2 is like.

• Technology Review: TR35 2009