Yeah, I currently have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Book 3 Pro 360, and a Kindle Scribe Colorsoft as well as a Wacom One attached to a MacBook and more styluses scattered around my house and bags than I could easily count, but this makes me at least a little curious about switching away from Wacom EMR.
Since then, I attempted that with Tolkien's _Old English Exodus_ but was rebuffed on the grounds that I was a "Tolkien Nut" and not an academic --- that text has since been reprinted by Harper Collins in a #2 box set, which I anxiously pre-ordered and waited for, only to find that from the Select Bibliography to then end of the re-set poem (22 pages) there were almost as many typos (20) on a quick first reading:
really wish all authors did as DEK and offered a bounty on typos... I could use a check for $51.20 even if it wouldn't fully offset the cost of the boxed set (though arguably, I should sell the other 4 books as dupes of texts I already own).
There wasn't much to it --- I contacted the Univ. of Missouri Press, they set a price in terms of initial fee and on-going royalty payments, I returned a signed copy of the contract and they sent a DVD w/ the files.
The only wrinkle was I failed to communicate clearly that I wanted to do a hardcover reprint and they assumed I was doing a softcover (apparently rights are different?) but they decided that the modest quantity I wanted (100) was okay for hardcover (within the variance of unprinted copies from first run?) and allowed it.
I contacted a (sort of) local printer with a digital press to send the files, proofed them, then once approved and printed, I drove in my truck and picked them up (should have parked closer, a couple of boxes took a tumble), stored them in my entry closet and sold them over the course of a couple of years, sending a statement and check each year until the last copy I was selling was sold and I closed the books.
The notable afterthought was that I should have bought used copies at the price that they were then set at by my re-issue and re-sold them after, but I couldn't bring myself to be quite that mercenary.
From uncertain organic memory royalty was a set percentage (7%? came out to a $1,000 check plus a fee $500?).
Print $3,500 as two checks.
Books sold for $70 ea. and if sold on Amazon had $12.83 for their fees.
Sold a few in person, handed out too many for marketing, and did okay on shipping 'cause I re-used packaging. In the end, came out ahead, and would be willing to revisit this sort of thing in the future.
That is an interesting argument --- maybe there could be a tax credit for publishing specifications/keys when a product is end-of-lifed and support is cut off? Or, maybe a company could be required to pay for disposal if that is not done?
I'm actually rather fond of OpenSCAD --- it has the advantage of being completely safe in terms of security/execution, so no worries about downloading a random .scad file and wondering what it might do.
If one wants a full-fledge programming language for this, I found Python a lot more comfortable:
For my part, I've been working the CNC router angle, so have a much larger kerf to cope with (and the added advantage of controllable partial depth and no char):
Recently I've been on a kick making bracelets with that frame loom. The rotating heddle bar makes it super quick to warp up. I've written about how to go from woven rectangle to bracelet here:
The best programming course I had in college was one on comparative programming languages (and not just 'cause I was the only student who was able to do all of the Lisp exercises solo) --- it was quite striking getting an overview of the history of computer science and to see the myriad approaches which had been used.
Until the stack got too large, or one forgot the ID of the card one wanted to link to or the search text which would allow one to make it a target, &c.
HyperCard was _amazing_ (and I still have my copy of _The Manhole: Where Alice would have gone if Alice had HyperCard_ which was the predecessor for _Myst_) and it kills me that we lost MacBasic:
and that HyperCard was such a mess of licensing that one had to use the "magic" word, or a command to enable Developer Mode and that it took so long to be developed/released:
(though one wonders what would have happen if it had instead been a NeXT product)
and then of course that the various alternatives had such tortured histories and of course the infamous "rug pull" when Live Code went closed source --- is there a viable free/opensource implementation which is nicer and more usable than Decker?
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