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August 27

Resource for 'soft' float conversion between 'single' and 'extended' precision...?

Does anyone have a link to a document or (more likely) a repository than gives an outline of how to convert single precision (32bit) to Extended precision 80 bit floating point number? I know on ia32(80x86) This can be done with fp instructions, but I was looking for a platform irrelevant version ( The context if it helps is connection with translating function returns in 3D graphics.) Thanks. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 14:34, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This describes the 32-bit single-precision floating-point format. This interprets the fields of the 80-bit format in the Intel 8087 math coprocessor and processors based on the x86 design. DroneB (talk) 17:35, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A question about licenses

Suppose there is an open source (Apache License) implementation of X in Java. There exist other implementations in different languages (say JavaScript and Python) in different licenses (Unlicensed, CC-BY-SA, MIT, etc.)

It just happened that I translated the Java implementation to JavaScript and heavily edited it, so that even its functionality is practically different.

Noting that my derivation would be the exact same regardless of what implementation I started with, do I still need to respect the Apache License? Or (for my project's purposes) can I re-license it to something like CC0?

(I'm not trying to rip off anybody. These legal stuff confuse me.)

--إلياس الجزائري^Elias 14:45, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Like most questions about licenses, you should consult an attorney experienced in software licensing. The ultimate answer, if a dispute arises, will be determined by whomever can make a convincing case in a court or other settlement. Nimur (talk) 23:36, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Did you build a derivative of some original creative work? You can change it, you can even change the implementation language - but it will still be a derivative work.

If you had an original work under a licence which permitted these and didn't specifically forbid derivatives (i.e. not a CC-nd), then you can do, but you may need to comply with some restrictions. These may be either requirements (Apache has some of these) such as retaining attribution for the original and redistributing copies of the licence itself with any code. There may be prohibitions on doing some things (Apache is light on these). Some - notably Gnu licences - will have stringent requirements on you making source for any derivative versions freely available.

It's rare to find a restriction on derivatives for open source software (CC-nd does this, but CC- licences aren't a god fit for software). However it would be an issue for commercial non-free software. In such a case, clean-room development might be a requirement, where you not only don't base you new work on the old work, but you do this in such a way that you can legally demonstrate that you did this, and there is thus no legal impediment to your new product. It's very common to need to do this where a protocol is open sourced or free, but an existing implementation is commercial, yet accessible. A second developer might need to show that they used the protocol, but not any of the copyrighted and unlicensed other implementation. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:58, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 28

How can I grab all archived versions of a Google Sheet?

I want to turn the set of historical versions of a Google Sheet into one temporal database. (I only want a one-time process; once achieved the temporal database will become my master version.) I can pull the current data into another Google Sheet with ImportRange but to access an earlier version I only know how to manually select it and restore it and then run ImportRange again at a different place in my destination Google Sheet. (Once I have slapped all the versions into the destination Google Sheet with some kind of nearby timestamps I will be able to parse it into a useful structure.) I wonder how to automate finding and selecting earlier versions and knowing their date in order to time stamp my new copies.

If this cannot be done, or if I don't have the skills to follow suggestions, I suppose I could manually find and restore each version and paste it into a new sheet and record that sheet's URL and build up a destination sheet that uses ImportRange for each URL ... but there are a lot of tabs in a lot of versions so I'd like an easier method that I can also learn from.

I can imagine I haven't explained it quite well enough and would be happy to answer questions.

Hayttom (talk) 13:20, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia describes Google Sheets in the article Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Google further provides this guide and an article See what’s changed in a file. You may try describing your issue at Docs Editors Help at the last named link.DroneB (talk) 15:57, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 29

Is there a Compiler of ACCESS files?

How can one create MDE/ADE/ACCDE Files? By compiling regular ACCESS files? How can one compile them?

HOTmag (talk) 17:11, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Does this help? Ruslik_Zero

Thank you, but this can only help in Access 2007 (as indicated ibid.), whereas I have the 2013 version, which unfortunately seems to lack the tool for compiling MDB files, but I still wonder if I'm right... HOTmag (talk) 22:14, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 31

Help repairing text of the website.

Hello, request help to repair text on this website. If you can click "English List" on the right side of the website, and then click - Authonomy 1920-36 and - Regions of KazSSR, you would see a website full of question marks. There are also a picture of the Emblem of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The website provides a very precious and valuable information about the article, if the error can be repaired.--Jeromi Mikhael (talk) 16:13, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's an encoding error. Not something we can fix from here.

The pages are being served as:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

because the web server is (not unreasonably) serving a HTTP response header of UTF-8. However the pages also have an embedded

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1251">

in them.

At a rough guess, you had a website built in 2004 using the (now rather quaintly obsolescent) windows-1251 (Cyrillic) encoding. Recently you changed the server hosting and they switched to a modern and internationalised UTF-8 encoding (this is broadly a good thing). However the web page content should also have been converted in its encoding to match. Now the content and the descriptor don't match and so it's broken.

There are two ways to fix this. One quick, one better.

Quickly, reconfigure the web server to serve the content as Windows-1251. Some hosting companies don't permit this.

Better, load each content file (from the file system behind the web server) and convert them to a UTF-8 encoding.

You shoudl do the second, but it needs access to the server. We can't do it from outside. Maybe it would be possible to load these pages (as broken documents) and fix the encoding, then send them back. But that's an awkward process (I used to do it a lot, haven't needed to do it for a while). Andy Dingley (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Andy Dingley: Can you extract the text from the website?--Jeromi Mikhael (talk) 00:29, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not offhand, no. When I retrieve the text it is mis-encoded. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:11, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I get the correct display if I just set the page encoding to "Cyrillic (Windows)" in the browser. I'd say the pages are served intact, it's the browser's trying to auto-detect the encoding that's messing things up. I also downloaded the index page with wget and fed it to iconv -f cp1251 -t utf-8 and could read the text in the terminal as well.Asmrulz (talk) 14:25, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Raspberry Pi computing power

I am writing up a document that contains the following claim:

"A Raspberry Pi is a low cost (from $5 to $35 USD, depending on the model) computer. Depending on the model, it ranges from roughly the size of a credit card (87.0mm x 58.5mm x 18.0mm / 3.4" x 2.3" x 0.7", 49.7g / 1.8oz) to roughly the size of a stick of gum (65.0mm x 31.0mm x 5.0mm / 2.6" x 1.2" x 0.2", 9.0g / 0.3oz) and runs on half a watt to three watts (up to six watts when you give it a lot if work to do).

"But don't be fooled: this is a real computer, While it can't compete with gaming machines that costs thousands of dollars and uses hundreds of watts, a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B plus is more powerful than the PCs many people use at work and more powerful than the average destop PC available in [when? 1995? 2000? 2005? 2010?]

So, how far back in time do I really have to go before today's top of the line Raspberry Pi is more powerful than that year's average desktop PC?

I could change it to make the comparison be with a laptop PC if someone has the answer for that. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:11, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can read here. The original model was comparable to 300MHz PII from 1997. Ruslik_Zero 11:38, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

September 1

Taufeek — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:A005:FB53:DB50:A95E:9EC6:7BFD (talk) 05:18, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]