Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

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November 22

Font increase in Chrome Android

Hi everyone. This is the second time that Chrome on my Samsung increased font size out of the blue. Can't zoom out, this is the smallest possible font which is ridiculous, looks like the phone is used by a senior citizen. The first time this happened it had reverted after three days to my preferred very small letters. This time round tried updating and uninstalling to no avail. What's going on? Other browsers are poor compared to Chrome, would really like to fix this issue. Splićanin (talk) 14:24, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know why that has happened, but under Settings - Accessibility there's an option to set font scaling. Sorry you now have to access accessibility features when you still think you're fit and able 😁 NadVolum (talk) 17:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]


November 24

Google Glitch

What causes glitches like that on Google Earth/ Map coordinate 1°54'44"N 31°14'03"E ? The more you zoom in, the weirder it becomes. ExclusiveEditor Notify Me! 15:59, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't Google Maps. It is Maxar Technologies Imagery. This is a well-known issue when taking satellite images over water. Sun glint messes with the color sensors in the camera, causing strange artifiacts. That is why you see it over the water, but it stops when you hit land. What makes it worse is that the area's imagery is clearly cobbled together from multiple passes of various satellites at rather different times with very different capabilities. You see some areas with detail and other areas with weird colors and no detail. Zoom just right and you can see the borders of each of the original images used to cobble it all together. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 19:16, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What doesn't help is the way these satellite sensors are made. A system of mirrors and/or lenses projects the light on a series of linear sensors, placed parallel to each other, one for each colour. The movement of the satellite moves the image over the sensor array. These scan the Earth's surface for half an orbit (it doesn't work on the night side of the Earth). The result is that the images in different colours are taken at slightly different times and directions. Sun glint is highly directional, so that leaves coloured artefacts. Rapidly moving objects like aeroplanes also cause coloured artefacts. The issue doesn't appear on satellites that point a camera and take pictures one by one, but those non-scanning satellites are only used for high-resolution images of places of special interest, or low-resolution images of the entire Earth. Most of the high-resolution images on Google Earth come from aeroplanes, using pretty standard cameras pointing straight down and taking a picture every few seconds. On those, rapidly moving objects often show up as duplicates. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:12, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]


November 26

Excel Question

Assume we have two columns 'ID' and 'Score' in an Excel spreadsheet, both entered as numbers. There can be multiple entries of the same ID in the ID column, each with an associated score, so ID 4 might appear 50 times. What is the easiest way in Excel to sum all the scores for a particular ID? 2.100.107.194 (talk) 12:37, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are multiple ways of doing this, but for me the easiest is to select the whole table, click the Data tab and then the Filter icon. You should see small arrows on the column headings. Click the arrow to select the value of ID you want. Then go to the cell below the Score entries (or, more clearly, leave one cell gap between the scores and the selected cell) and go to the Home tab. Click the autosum icon. Done. You can repeat this with different ID values selected. Phil Holmes (talk) 13:13, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I've got rather a lot of IDs and would ideally like to automate this process. Is it possible for me to generate a distinct list of IDs from the first table, enter this list into a separate second table (so all IDs are present in the second table precisely once) and then do some sort of 'sum if' where for each unique ID in the second table Excel searches the first table for all references to it, sums the corresponding scores, and then places this summed value against the given ID in the second table? 2.100.107.194 (talk) 14:42, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is called a pivot table. Don't try to reinvent a pivot table. Just highlight the data and insert a pivot table. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 20:13, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would select the table, then go to insert-pivot table. In the pivot table dialog, select scores with the function "sum". Done. It will make a new table that has each ID with the associated total score. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 14:37, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

November 27

Text in SVG file not appearing

SVG version of file with broken text

I tried to make an SVG version of File:Jade gisements.jpg, it works when the file is opened as a page but the text did not show up in Media Viewer, I tried converting the text into paths but that did not work either. How can I fix this? Svenurban (talk) 05:19, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When I open https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jade_gisements.svg#/media/File:Jade_gisements.svg, the text shows up just fine (in Chrome, Firefox and Safari on macOS).  --Lambiam 12:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, that does not apply to the in-image country name labels 'Canada (n)', 'Guatemala (j)', 'Russie (j, n)', etc. But these do also not show up for me on the page File:Jade gisements.svg. Can you convert first to png and then to SVG?  --Lambiam 12:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The original picture file is File:Jade gisements.jpg. Svenurban (talk) 13:11, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
When I look at it on Firefox on Windows, the text is white, and when it is on a white background does not show up. Even over the grey sea, it is very hard to read. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:56, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest telling it to save as a "Plain SVG" instead of an "Inkscape SVG" file. Many of the tags and attributes in the file are clearly Inkscape-only. It is a possibiliity that one or more of them are causing errors on non-Inkscape image viewers. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 15:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

November 28