Microsoft Makes Their C++ Standard Library Open-Source (STL)

[starshipeleven]

MS Office use to come with a decent paper manual then for a while had a decent offline manual. Then downgraded the offline manual so forcing using more of the online manual. Then removed the offline manual completely. Now the online manual is going bad as well.

Dunno, never found any "integrated help" in MS products useful from XP onwards. Remember the animated thing talking to you?

No I have done support in businesses for a long time. I have been supporting those people using MS Office. So I do understand what they are using it for.

Well, I could say the same. I guess my flock is different than your flock.

[oiaohm]

Dunno, never found any "integrated help" in MS products useful from XP onwards. Remember the animated thing talking to you?

O yes animated thing was the first thing you turned off. MS Office 2000 was the last with truly decent offline help. MS Office XP was when they first added online help and took sections out of the offline help and put those on the website only. So when complete sections of the offline help is gone its not going to be as useful. Yes each release of MS Office they systematically has been cutting more and more out the offline help until they could remove it.

I do wonder if Microsoft is planning on cutting the online help down now so they can sell how to use books again.

Yes XP was when the offline help started being degraded. XP onwards was when they were wanting to get you use to using online help and not expecting offline help to be useful.

Well, I could say the same. I guess my flock is different than your flock.

I would not say different. I would say I have noticed how Microsoft has been slowly cooking everyone.

[mbrf]

I wonder, what happened to M$, that they are open-sourcing their solutions?

With the world coming to needing more and more energy effeciency, and things like being able to have RISC-V CPU's tailored to your specific needs, software having to be modular, reliable, scalable, changable, - hardware too, for that matter - backwards compatibility, and such, an OS is a huge codebase to maintain, keep up to date, keep functional, and functional with a lot of hardware, and combinations of hardware, and since you can't compile Windows yourself, it's really hard to keep the installation small and relevant, and so on - so by opening up, they could make it easier for people to tailor Windows to what they need, where they need it, and how they need it. With Linux running on everything from routers, to smart devices, to desktops, to servers, basically every device, and odd devices, it's by far the most natively compatible hardware/software layer on the planet, and if you can build on top of that, and not have to worry about the support, and you can make the UI's, the software that goes on top of, and so on, then I'd assume that that's a relatively easy way of making money. Windows, rebased on Linux. I know that a lot of the reasons against software supporting Linux, is typically the endless potential combinations of bits and pieces that can make up a distro, but if Windows essentially becomes a Linux distro, then they can just stick to supporting "Winux" (Windux/WindowX(Windows 10?)/Lindows) on their Microsoft products. In other words, they're free of dealing with hardware, and they're free of dealing with having to be compatible with all the combinations of software, because they have their own, and they're free of dealing with supporting a host of haerdware, because it's already in the kernel, and it doesn't get in there, unless it's of a reasonable quality, meaning better stability.

[starshipeleven]

I would not say different. I would say I have noticed how Microsoft has been slowly cooking everyone.

I said different because people I support don't need most of the advanced features or even irrelevant garbage like templates that are disappearing in the MS effort to "cook everyone", so I'm not sure it's really going to do anything apart from piss off power users.

As I said the only thing that would have been useful would have been the integrated help, and that is so long since gone (XP is basicallly stone age by now). Anything else they removed since then is barely making a dent, imho.

I do wonder if Microsoft is planning on cutting the online help down now so they can sell how to use books again.

They might sure try, but there are already very good third party manuals so the competition would be very fierce.

[oiaohm]

As I said the only thing that would have been useful would have been the integrated help, and that is so long since gone (XP is basicallly stone age by now). Anything else they removed since then is barely making a dent, imho.

The fact they are still removing things. Sooner or latter they will hit something important

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/windows-insider-build-17083/

Like maybe having to pay for fonts in future.

They might sure try, but there are already very good third party manuals so the competition would be very fierce.

Its really interesting if you look at those third party manuals how many are in fact written by either current or X Microsoft staff., So I am not sure competition would be fierce. More likely to be false competition.

[starshipeleven]

The fact they are still removing things. Sooner or latter they will hit something important

I sure hope so. It's time they shoot themselves in the foot hard like they did back in Ballmer days.

Its really interesting if you look at those third party manuals how many are in fact written by either current or X Microsoft staff., So I am not sure competition would be fierce. More likely to be false competition.

I never investigated this, and I somehow doubt your statement at face value. Who took the time to look at the authors of dozens of manuals

[skeevy420]

I never investigated this, and I somehow doubt your statement at face value. Who took the time to look at the authors of dozens of manuals

Dude, you'z on teh internets and we haz videeoz of peoples playing teh game teh fastest evers for 29 yeerz to beat it 3 milliseconds fasta.

[starshipeleven]

Dude, you'z on teh internets and we haz videeoz of peoples playing teh game teh fastest evers for 29 yeerz to beat it 3 milliseconds fasta.

Ok ok ok you are right I wrote it wrong. There is some seriously hardcore autistic people out there that can do anything but I didn't thought oiaohm was one of them.

[pal666]

so much naming confusion. stl is "standard template library", it is a part of "c++ standard library" consisting of containers/iterators/algorithms. they certainly opensourced more than stl, probably whole c++ standard library

[pal666]

Their solution to problem that everyone has - to have standard C++ library.

everyone already has one coming with his c++ compiler. it's their solution to having just one library developer, they need community help