User talk:Kwhitefoot

Visual basic Classic: To do

 * Continue simple arithmetic
 * Effective programming: Discuss and dismiss defensive programming, recommend fail fast.
 * Optimization: add object pooling, arrays.

Done

 * Optimization: add dictionaries, collections
 * Split main page into many pages, replace main page with contents page similar to Ada.

Programming:Windows Programming
This book is in pretty lousy condition, and I would like to start a project soonish (within the next few weeks) to try and expand this book. I have started a basic outline on my user page to try and lay out the things that (I think) this book should cover. I see that you have been a contributer to this book in the past, and I would therefore like to get your input on the current outline, and see if there is anything that i should add, or anything that I should remove from it.

The outline can be found at User:Whiteknight/Windows Programming. -- 23:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


 * My contribution was simply to list VB as one of the programming tools. Nonetheless I'd be happy to contribute if I can find both the time and the necessary expertise.  I have only two comments so far on the proposed outline.  Firstly I think that the .NET stuff should come later in the book because .NET is not really Windows specific and other topics such as device drivers, DLLs (both traditional and COM), and shell programming are more important.  In fact I think it could be argued that .NET deserves only a passing mention.  Secondly I think that it is a very ambitious work.  When I think of the size of Charles Petzold's original Programming Windows book which doesn't have anything like the range you are proposing I wonder if you aren't biting off more than we can chew, there is material for a whole series of books but let's see how it goes.  Is there a central location for discussions of your outline?  Should comments go to your talk page, the talk page of the outline or...? --kwhitefoot 08:53, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Discussion can really go anywhere, although i suppose we should probably limit it to the talk page of the outline. My idea with creating a book as ambitious as this one is that if any particular section gets too big, it can be easily separated out into it's own book. However, there are alot of important topics to discuss when talking about programming windows. Petzold is an impressive book (i have 2 editions of it on my shelf), but it falls far short of explaining everything there is to say on the subject. Also, if we look at WB:WIW, I am constantly reminded of the statement "wiki is not paper." We don't have the size limitations that a physical paper book would have, and so we are capable of creating a monstrous book such as this. I am more then willing to contribute a very large amount to this project myself, so hopefully we can get a few more contributers on board, eventually. -- 14:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

=Religions and their Source= Thanks for suggesting that the Dissentions on:

"Talk:Religions And Their Source/3. Present Day Religions/1. Some Major Religions/3. My Dissatisfaction With Existing Religions; 17:15 . . Kwhitefoot (Talk) (Someone seems to have misunderstood the point of the discussion page)"

should be put on the Discussion page. Is it OK if I (David Hockey, the origional author) move them there? David Hockey 19:47, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

If I, or someone, does this, how do readers know to check the Discussion Page for suggested changes? David Hockey


 * Surely it's obvious that the discussion page is where discussions should occur. Sorry, being facetious, you wouldn't have asked otherwise.  My solution in the book I am editing (Programming:Visual Basic Classic) was to add a note explaining how readers should use the book to the introduction.  As no one seems to be reading it I have no idea if it works :-/  Another option would be to provide a separate page for Dissenting Opinions so as to avoid distracting the reader while still having the Dissent as part of the book.  By the way, I think the conventional spelling is dissension not dissention and anyway I'm not sure that it's the correct word to use as it usually implies not merely disagreement but discord  (on the other hand the example in question was pretty discordant in my opinion, so perhaps it is appropriate after all).


 * As to whether you or someone else can move them: of course you can. The real question is how to do it without getting into an edit war.  As the dissenter is anonymous in this case you can't easily discuss the point with him or her (him I think).  My own reaction if this happened to a book I was largely responsible for would be to move it to the discussion page and attach an explanation to the discussion page and a link to it from the book page.  After a decent interval I would then remove the link.  I'm no expert so don't take this as advice, just an idea.  --kwhitefoot 20:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Kwhitefoot. I like what you wrote and have been thinking about how to apply it. I won't be able to do that for a few days (going to see the kids) but will try it on return. David Hockey 13:57, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Hello Kwhitefoot.
 * I haven't been able to find the original references, but Global Footprints was part of it. Here is their site: http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/
 * And here are some quotes:
 * “Accepting 12 percent as the magic number for biodiversity preservation, one can calculate that from the approximately 2 hectares per capita of biologically productive area that exists on our planet, only 1.7 hectares per capita are available for human use.” http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/benchmark.htm
 * and, “Footprints are too large. Most countries presented in this report live on footprints larger than what their own ecosystems can support. On a global basis and even by conservative measures, humanity’s footprint has overshot global capacities by over 35 percent.”
 * “Population versus consumption. The numbers show the impact of both consumption and population. Clearly, the high levels of consumption in industrialized countries take the biggest share of the planet’s bounty. But with ever larger populations it becomes progressively less likely that a reasonable quality of life can be secured for everybody. Particularly the rapidly growing populations will lose their prospects even faster.” from http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/numbers.htm


 * It is more than energy use I was referring to. I know that this site is only one of many differing points of view. That’s one of the discussion points, I guess! David Hockey 14:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that those quotations and urls would make good footnotes/endnotes. Armed with that information a reader can dig further and come to a reasoned agreement, or disagreement, with your points.  Also I think that such information will help defend the book against charges of violating the NPOV policy.  --kwhitefoot 08:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the idea. I have added a reference to the site in the text and kept our discussions on the discussion page (maninly because adding an endnote means I would have to change all the endnote numbers to the other endnotes to this chapter). David Hockey 14:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

VB book query
hi ,I am an experienced pascal programmer ,who knows come C.

I'm looking for an online tutorial source to study VB from scratch(having some previous experience in othe languages) ,after accomplishing this I'd like to know more about DB interfaces such as in Exel and access scripts.

There are so many sources on the Net ,do you believe the current version of the VB wikibook is sufficient and complete as a tutorial that'll guide me thorugh all various aspects I needed ,or do you recommende an exisintg site ..?

thank's for all your honest help..:)

w:user:Diza


 * I'd love to be able to say it was that good but unfortunately it isn't. In fact I doubt that any book on any subject could ever be that good.  However, I have a fairly wide experience of VB6, including using it and VBA to drive Excel, Word, Access and various other programs so if you are willing to help we might be able to turn the book into the book you need by working together.  I also have about thirty years of experience of writing in various other languages (that's a statement of fact, not a boast - it's not all useful and the early years were certainly nothing to be proud of).  If you look at the history of the various pages you will see that the rate of additions to the book has declined over the last month, and that isn't just beause it was Christmas; the principal reason is that I realized that I was simply writing chapters that interested me and that I really didn't know if they were of use to anyone else.  One of the problems with Wikibooks is that it is very hard to know if anyone is reading a book (really reading it as a textbook I mean, not just using it as part of the great World Wide Web reference library).  So to summarize: if you would be willing to read some of the book and comment on its structure, content and quality and to name topics that are missing that you need I'll try to fill them in.  --kwhitefoot 22:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

So ,by Help you mean commentery.Oky.

I'll try to start learning from elsewhere and report back to you on the WWW best places difference to this book.


 * Thanks. Don't forget that you can contribute as well.  Even if all you do is add chapter and section headings that can help.  --kwhitefoot 07:05, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Link to Advanced page in C sharp
The Advanced page as well as several others are referenced in the table of contents header seen at the top of the page. Advanced is only meant in that context, as a content section. That's why the links aren't there (they're already above in the TOC). -Matt 03:17, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * So I see, but that header is not visible when you are looking at the little list of advanced topics so it isn't exactly reader friendly. --kwhitefoot 17:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

=Coding Cookbook=

This surely overlaps with the http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Source_code which is also much more extensive and has more comments attached to the code. Without explanatory comments it surely doesn't qualify as a textbook or even an instruction manual. Is there any point in having both? --kwhitefoot 12:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Good question! Well, to begin with, before I started I searched to find a similar project and didn't find anything. I haven't search Wikisource, since (quote from Help:How to start a book) "Original, finished work should go to Wikisource. Wikibooks is a place to develop books", and this seems to me something that will never be finished. I have taken a quick look at Source code and must say I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the missing links and unclear structure... -- Peter 12:47, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

=Hit counters=

We should press for hit count sampling using Wikibook's own counters. They used to have counters on each page when the project was started but all we need is access to occasional sampling of single pages. RobinH 10:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * You are right. And the load shouldn't be very great if only a small proportion of pages are sampled at anyone time.  --kwhitefoot 10:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks
Thank you for the note on my talk page about my userpage link. I actually discovered that when I visited the old site, but I appreciate the attention and good will. It really is the thought that counts. I must admit that I am slightly boggled at how you found out I worked there. Even going through the many userpages there would take serious amounts of time. I am also glad you didn't bother to tell me on each of my userpages, since that would simply have been a waste of time. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 05:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I can't remember for sure what prompted me to track you down but thanks to Google it wasn't in the least bit challenging. cromwellt gets 11 700 hits and your user pages are the first 22 hits.  Even less certain why I picked any particular hit to follow.  I hope the trouble over simple English gets resolved in your favour.  --kwhitefoot 13:44, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Image deletions
I note your posting on another editors page. In practice this was widely advertised and discussed for in October and November with even the "mast head" notice changed to that effect for quite sometime (the fact that links were removed as well was unfortunate however) -- Herby talk thyme 11:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Image:VBClassicSimpleGraphicsExample.png is missing a fair use rationale

 * The entire book may be deleted if you wish. I have copied all my my contributions to http://www.wikiknowledge.net/wiki/VB_Classic --kwhitefoot (talk) 12:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)