Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2023 June 22

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June 22

What would happen if you dialed 911 on a 2G device in the United States in 2023?

I want to make a short video demonstrating how emergency call back mode worked on archaic CDMA devices in the United States, but without it actually going through to the PSAP and bothering call takers. To my knowledge, there are no 2G signals anymore where I live (Charlotte County, Florida). The device says “searching for signal”. Without considering the legal aspect (I know this forum doesn’t give legal advice; even if it did go through I’m fairly confident in my jurisdiction telling them it was an accidental dial would be sufficient to avoid legal trouble anyway because I’ve actually dialed by accident before), is this safe to do? 71.208.76.56 (talk) 01:46, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

It will depend on your carrier. T-Mobile and Cellcom have not yet shutdown 2G service. See [1] and 2G#Phase-out. Unclear what will happen if your phone has a different carrier. RudolfRed (talk) 04:00, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Generally if your phone is still capable of connecting to a network whatever the carrier, it will for emergency calls. There should be some sign of this on the phone without needing to even try to dial out. Nil Einne (talk) 08:15, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

2G CDMA service has been shut down in the US as of 2022, including the 911 service. 2G GSM phones may still function in some locations. 98.116.249.122 (talk) 20:58, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Slight correction, there is one remaining 2G CDMA service that covers a small portion of Wisconsin. 98.116.249.122 (talk) 21:01, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Does a computer read a 5 MB text document the same speed as a 5 MB image document?

If text document and image file are exactly the same amount of bits in 5 MB, it should be able to read and load the text document, and image file, at the same speed? But ChatGPT says no, and doesn't quite explain why. So if it isn't, which 1 is faster and why. 170.76.231.162 (talk) 17:45, 22 June 2023 (UTC).

What exactly do you mean by "read and load". If you are talking about a simple download from the internet to disk, then there will be no difference, they are both 5 MB of binary. If however you are talking about displaying the text or image, then it will depend upon the software you are using. For example, to load text into a text editor - fast; into a wordprocessor - far slower. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:06, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I wrote a discussion of this but deleted it because I was getting out of my depth. Here's some thoughts, though:

• ChatGPT is full of shit, for a start, but it might be correct anyway by accident.
• There might be optimizations (in ... routers?) for the transfer of certain types of data over the internet. I vaguely remember something like this being proposed for text, back when the majority of traffic was text. Somebody observed that it would be possible to say, for instance, "right, this is an email" or maybe even "this is an email in English" and thus send it using a protocol (?) to compress it in a simple way based on things that are true of all emails, or all English. I don't think this plan was ever carried out. But there might be on-the-fly data compression for internet data? It seems reasonable: and then some kinds of data are more compressible that others, and text might be more compressible than images (which are probably already compressed).
• But there are things like bandwidth throttling and web caches to confuse matters. Maybe we should be thinking about reading from media like a drive, rather than from the internet.
• If the data is read in a stream, that might take several operations. Hard drives are going out of fashion, but accessing a hard disk always piles on the milliseconds and it's better to transfer all the data to memory in one go. Often though the program doesn't want to do that: instead it wants to interpret the data as it goes along and organize it into different memory locations, depending what it discovers. But probably the stream is taken care of by the system, which might transfer the whole file to memory anyway. If it doesn't, though, then reading a text file (such as configuration data for a game with a complicated world) could take longer than reading an image file of the same size.
• Which relates to the next point, the fine distinction between reading (just lumping the data straight into a block of memory) and loading (putting it in the right places in memory), not to mention decompressing and processing and displaying. If you include these things then there could be all sorts of reasons for the image to take longer than the text (maybe it's an svg file, those always seem to take a long time to render, although they can also be viewed as text in which case you can see them quickly!) ... or for text to take longer than an image (maybe you want to display it in an obscure font, and then your system has to do something complicated to load the font into memory).
• It also struck me that nobody ever looks at an entire 5 MB text document all at once, so the software might choose to read from disk only the part the user is currently looking at. I don't know if seeking around with a 5 MB file on disk and reading (say) 10k at a time would actually be any faster, though, than just reading the whole thing into 5 MB of memory.

 Card Zero  (talk) 23:36, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Putting music on website help.

15 years ago, I devised this code.

<!--[if !IE]>--><embed src=" music file " height="0" width="0"></embed><!--<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE]><bgsound src=" music file " /><![endif]-->

Now, IE is out of the picture. And so, the above code only works on Google Chrome and not Firefox or Surf.

And, it only works on Google Chrome, if the page was clicked on, from a prior site. If you go to the page directly, the music will not work. (Which could be a good thing, what is this concept called?).

ChatGPT gave me this code, <audio type="audio/mpeg" autoplay="autoplay" src=" music file" controls>

Which is a workaround. But the autoplay="autoplay" part also only works for Google Chrome, not the others, but for the others, it does work if the user clicks on the play button, just that it auto-plays only on Chrome. 170.76.231.162 (talk) 18:23, 22 June 2023 (UTC).

Yes, Firefox blocks all media with sound from playing automatically, by default.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:05, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

autoplay is not allowed by browsers any longer, because this can be very unexpected and annoying to users. As to why it works in Google Chrome; You have likely at one time given permanent permission in to Chrome to allow autoplay on that one specific website. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:55, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Creating pictures and wallpapers online

First- All the digital wallpapers, how are they created?

Second- Online comics and graphic novels, are they directly created online or hand drawn first and then modified online?

Every artist have their own style. In hand drawing that is possible, but how is that done online? Ajay Sharma 2014. rxx (talk) 18:24, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Artists use a variety of methods and techniques. Until not that long ago, almost all digitally available art was first created by hand on physical material (paper, canvas, ...) using traditional techniques and then scanned and possibly digitally retouched. Today, many digital artists use digital painting applications. These can be used for creating digital wallpaper and comics and graphic novels alike. Many other artists still prefer traditional techniques.  --Lambiam 21:51, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Regarding webcomics, I found a (very old) description of a webcomic artist's workflow. (Everything Lambiam mentioned is involved, including both the traditional techniques and the digital painting.) For digital wallpapers, one (equally old) amusing technique is camera tossing. I found Clip Studio Paint (aka Manga Studio) as a comic-oriented graphics application which supports the use of a graphics tablet. (In fact it also runs on mobile operating systems, which means that you could plug a tablet into your tablet, if you really wanted to.)

I'm confused by your repeated use of the word "online". There are online applications such as Fotor, although these are generally inferior to software that you install on your computer (and they're even inferior to apps that you install on your device). There's Adobe Photoshop which is now delivered as Software as a service, although I suspect the only beneficiary of the service is Adobe: I don't see why the end users would want it this way.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:24, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Looking for a verb describing the switching to a keyboard state which is valid only for the next keystroke

Imagine you are unable to press two keys simultaneously on your keyboard, but have access to a software that enables you to press the Shift key first, then pressing a letter key alone to get the uppercase letter.
This can be implemented in two ways:

1. You "switch" to the Shift state, i.e. you get uppercase letters until you invoke another function to "switch" back. (In fact, this is the way the CapsLock key works.)
2. You "???? (the verb looked for here)" to the Shift state, thus it is valid only for the neyt keystroke, i.e. the overnext keystoke and subsequent ones will yield lowercase letters without any need to "switch" back.

In fact, my question yields on a problem in ISO/IEC 9995-9, which is due to revision. There, special keyboard states (like "Greek" or "superscript") are addressed, and in the definition part of this standard is stated:

• 4.23 switch to <a group>: select a group or a mode which then stays in effect until another group or mode is selected, be it by switching to another group or selecting another reference group
• 4.12 latch to <a group> select a group in such a manner that only the next key actuation is affected, with the group reverting to the previously selected group (reference group) afterwards

In the ISO working group for this standard, we now have the request that we have to replace the verb "to latch" as the use defined in the standard is not compatible with the everyday meaning of this word.

For me, "to bounce" or "to leap" comes in mind, but at this time there is no native English speaker in the ISO working group, and we do not want to make an inappropriate decision again. Does someone have advice which verb is appropriate here? Thank you. -- Karl432 (talk) 21:16, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Additional information: The standard has a French edition, where the verbs basculer (in 4.23) and enclencher (in 4.12) where used; probably to latch came in as an imprecise translation of enclencher (at the time of the edition, the majority of the workgroup members came from France and Québec, and nobody was there from USA or Great Britain). -- Karl432 (talk) 09:35, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Though I'm coming up with words for events which are triggered once, none of them clearly distinguish between events which are quickly over and then return to being as before, and events which are ongoing states. So for instance machinery can be primed for use (but the use is then ongoing, unless it's something like a firework display), a gun can be cocked and then triggered (but this isn't a verb you'd transfer to anything else), a trap can be set and then sprung (but "set" is very ambiguous, and anyway the sprung trap does not return to its previous state), and a trip switch can be latched (latching is mentioned in this section) and then tripped. Like a trap, a trip switch stays in its new state, so both of those metaphors are unsuitable. The most applicable out of all these is cock, so you might say "cock the group", but that's an uncommon verb and violates the principle of least surprise. I wonder what the best word (or phrase) is. I'm looking through Category:Switches for something that behaves in the same way, to see what verb it takes.

I think the preposition to in "latch to a group" is out of place, anyway. That sounds like "latch onto a group" and brings to mind an image of the user's fingers being tied to the keyboard with some sort of metal hook. If the verb is latch, it should be simply "latch a group", meaning that the group is prepared for triggering.

I've also found arm, which could apply to a torpedo, a land mine, or an alarm system.

Moving away from weapons and machinery, there's Accidental (music), which works the right way (only affects the next item ... well, the rest of the bar) but has no associated verb.

There's also deviate to and stray to, which suggest the change is temporary. Perhaps vary to, so that it sounds intentional.  Card Zero  (talk) 22:19, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Does it need to be a one-word verb? Otherwise you might consider temporarily switch (or temp-switch). Or, if you wish, coin a new technical meaning of the verb twitch (⇪ Caps Lock is "switch to upper case"; ⇧ Shift is "twitch to upper case").

A remark about other terminology. The use of "group or mode" versus just "group" is slightly inconsistent. In 4.23 above, "group" in the phrase after the comma obviously is meant to include "mode", and the sense of "group" in 4.12 is almost certainly the same as "group or mode" in 4.23. Standards are often hard to interpret; a strictly consistent use of terms contributes a great deal to making them intelligible. If the effect of key actuations depends on the selected (reference) group, then the currently selected group defines (an aspect of) the current mode.  --Lambiam 22:28, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, a verb is needed. In the current edition, "latch" is used 57 times in this way. -- Karl432 (talk) 09:35, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
• The terms "group" and "mode" are also defined in the standard and used according to these definitions. Simplified: "group" is a set of key-character pairings (the "group 0" is the pairing of the keys with the characters labelled on it, another "groups" are e.g. Greek characters associated to the Latin characters labelled on the keytops, or superscript variants of the labelled characters). So, you "switch" when you want to enter a longer Greek phrase, while you "latch" when you want to enter a single Greek letter as in "β-radiation". "Mode" is a set of rules which affect the effect of keystrokes in other ways, e.g. using the digit keys and the "a"…"f" keys to enter Unicode characters by their code. In fact, there is no instance of a "latching" to a "mode" in the standard, therefore "latching" is only defined for "groups". -- Karl432 (talk) 09:35, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Or "temp-select", to make it transitive. "Temp-select group 2" is fine, really. Ugly but functional.  Card Zero  (talk) 22:51, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, until now I consider this as the best solution, as it is "ugly" but unambiguous. -- Karl432 (talk) 09:35, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

In Unicode something like that would probably be called a modifier. NadVolum (talk) 22:34, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Thinking around the word/phrase "one-shot", I wondered about "one-time" (eg one-time password) but used as a verb, as in "one-time shift". Perhaps the existing meanings of one-time are too strong, so then I wondered about "one-set", as in "one-set shift". That seems to be sufficiently new not to cause confusion, and it makes clear that only a single application is intended. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 16:24, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

From Windows 95 documentation on sticky keys, it uses software to produce a "latch." By that, it means that pressing shift key once, latches down the shift key in the software as though you are still holding it down. Pressing it again unlatches it. So, the verb they are using is "latch." I couldn't find mention of sticky keys in our Windows 10 books. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 18:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Among the various keyboard accessibility features in ISO 9241-171 there is sticky keys as well as toggle keys. StickyKeys is specifically the software feature you are describing above (i.e., press one key to adjust how the next key will be interpreted).

In describing StickyKeys, clause 9.3.3 uses "latch":

"Software shall enable users to lock or latch modifier keys (e.g. Shift, Control, Alt, Option, Command) so that

multiple key combinations and key-plus-mouse button combinations can be entered sequentially rather than

by simultaneously pressing multiple keys"

In Annex E, ISO 9241-171 says that StickyKeys has both a "latch" and a "lock" mode. Meaning the change in how the next key is interpreted can be fired once or it can continue until "unlocked".

This standard was written with multiple native English speakers, including the patent owner of StickyKeys.

The word "toggle" (or one of its synonyms) might fit here in the sense of "a setting that can be switched between two different options by performing a single action" (dictionary definition). However, this word may cause confusion since, according to ISO 9241-171, the "ToggleKeys" feature provides the user an auditory signal to warn that a modifier key (e.g., CapsLock) is locked or unlocked. AnotherPoint (talk) 14:39, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Note added to archived discussion:
At the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC35/WG1 meeting of 2023 September 13, the term "single-select" was coined for this behaviour to be used in the ISO/IEC 9995 standard series. -- Karl432 (talk) 04:34, 14 September 2023 (UTC)