English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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drachenstern

4:00 PM

Yeah, tell me about it. I have Firefox 3.6.13 installed and open atm on this box

Cerberus

Yay!

drachenstern

@Cerberus to save any picture anywhere? I'm sure such a thing exists, but I haven't looked for it. For opening links in the background? I haven't tried, but yes you can drag a link to open a new tab...

google selected text is natively part of Chrome (it being a g product)

Cerberus

Ok, if you happen to know the names of these extensions?

But I mean, I just select a word, drag it up; that doesn't work in native Chrome.

I can't be bothered with any menus.

drachenstern

No, I don't personally. I know that drag a link to the + sign opens a new tab with that link

bah, a right click menu doesn't add that much delay, but I've not tried searching for a word by draggin up, lemme test that

Cerberus

Yeah but what I like is that I can just flick it upwards without any thought or accuracy.

drachenstern

4:02 PM

yeah that works, just tested it

highlight some text, drag it to the bar and release

Cerberus

No no, no bars!

drachenstern

no, the address bar

where are you dragging it to atm?

Cerberus

I must be able to drag it upwards anywhere, no target.

drachenstern

oh hell, that's an odd request to my ears. I hadn't heard of that. I would just drag it to the URL bar that is omnipresent

I think I understand your concern tho, and no, I don't personally know of such an extension.

Cerberus

It feels like grabbing it and throwing it up without looking, extremely convenient; you won't know how addictive that is until you try - unless you dislike mouse gestures in general.

drachenstern

4:04 PM

I'm not a mouse gesture person in general, so that may be why

Cerberus

Yeah, that must be it.

Robusto

I still prefer FireBug to Chrome's dev tools, sorry.

Cerberus

Non-mouse-gesture people fascinate me, that is, most of the world fascinates me: how can it be that the thing I miss most on someone else's PC is disliked by 99% of the people?

drachenstern

@Robusto Now that I agree with 110% and it's primarily why this is still installed ;)

Cerberus

Either the world is crazy or I am. And yes FB is pretty good.

Kosmonaut

4:06 PM

I deleted a bunch of obvious deletes.

Cerberus

Does anyone here use mouse gestures, or finds them remotely convenient?

Good work on the deleting.

What do you think of all the "how do I use hyphens" questions?

RegDwight

@Kosmonaut: yeah, just noticed, thanks for that.

Robusto

I find mouse gestures annoying.

RegDwight

My wife uses mouse gestures all the time.

Kosmonaut

I use trackpad gestures...

Cerberus

4:08 PM

Really?

Trackpad, is that like a touch pad?

Robusto

I use mouse gestures on my Mac when using the Air Mouse, but I only use a very few.

Cerberus

@Robusto, could you explain what it is that annoys you about them?

Robusto

Mainly the ones I'd be using the scroll wheel for if there was one on that mouse.

Cerberus

Ah.

Robusto

I don't want to have to remember complicated sequences of gestures just to navigate a Web page.

Kosmonaut

4:09 PM

Trackpad is a touch pad, yes.

Cerberus

Well I agree that it is bad practice to use too many different gestures.

Robusto

If this were a game, no problem. But when I'm working I don't want to have to think.

Kosmonaut

I use three finger swipe to go forward and back in my browser window all the time.

Robusto

At least about trivial shit like that.

drachenstern

going back to lurking mode, ttyl

Kosmonaut

4:10 PM

And four finger swipe to get windows out of the way

Cerberus

But going back to a previous web page with a "left" gesture is doable? I mean, the 4 simplest gestures are the ones that save me 80% of the total time that gestures save me.

RegDwight

@Cerberus is there a particular hyphen question you're referring to?

Cerberus

Bye Drach.

@Reg: I have marked several of them as duplicates some time ago, I think they were all about compound adjectives, though I can't remember their titles off the top of my head.

@Kosmonaut: the typical gestures used with various touch screens and touch pads, like the ones on mobile devices, are an excellent example of how much time they could save you.

RegDwight

Yeah, there've been quite a few. Can't be sure if the ones you close-voted got closed.

BTW @Kosmonaut: here's a question that's at 4 close-votes atm:

Q: Creating a new word

If you invent a new word, how do you go about getting this recognised as a real word in dictionaries?

Cerberus

OK it's not that I really want them closed (I'd be fine with keeping closed questions), I was just wondering whether you had spotted that category.

Kosmonaut

4:14 PM

@RegDwight Yeah, I was just looking at that.

Is it really off-topic?

I feel like it would be a duplicate question, if anything.

Cerberus

Hmm that question looks bad, but hard to say why.

Kosmonaut

He's got the wrong premise, kind of, but it is a legitimate question at its core.

I think.

RegDwight

Well, it doesn't ask how long it takes a word to catch on.

Or which language it would be.

Cerberus

It might be more of a prank question, but vaguely related to language.

Kosmonaut

It is basically asking "how did the dictionary words get there?"

Cerberus

4:16 PM

Could be.

Kosmonaut

"How is this decided?"

Cerberus

If only we knew what he really meant! Hehe.

RegDwight

Hmmm... you might be giving the OP too much credit, @Kosmonaut.

He previously posted this:

Cerberus

Is there a function anywhere on SE to reject a question and send it back the the OP so that he may edit it, in order to make it acceptable?

RegDwight

Q: Why does spelling matter?

If I write mispelling as supposed to misspelling why does it matter? The meaning still exists. Everyone knows what I meant to write. There is no ambiguity. Why do some people consider the proper use so important? Isn't language flexible? Can't I use it as I wish? I don't say these things ...

usage meaning spelling language-evolution

Cerberus

4:17 PM

There it happened!

Kosmonaut

It doesn't matter if the OP is asking out of ignorance.

I am just thinking about if the question and answer could be useful to someone.

Cerberus

@Reg: I saw your line "he previously posted this" appear above my line, while my line was already there for at least a second.

Kosmonaut

In the past, people have asked questions that have a completely flawed premise, but the question represents a common misconception people have

And the answer can clarify this.

Cerberus

Hmm good point.

RegDwight

@Cerberus: that's not what I saw, so this might be indeed a caching issue.

Cerberus

4:18 PM

Ah! Ok, interesting.

I will take note of this on my faster PC at home.

Or perhaps it won't happen there at all.

RegDwight

Not arguing about that @Kosmonaut. It's just that I'm trying to think of an answer that would be on-topic for this site, and I don't see one.

I mean, it literally asks "how do you go about getting this recognised as a real word"

Any answer to that would be subjective and argumentative, I'm afraid.

Cerberus

True. But one could give an answer that doesn't really answer the question but still is a good answer, if the question is badly formulated.

Kosmonaut

To me the answer is "that is not how words become part of the dictionary — this is"

Cerberus

Right, something like that.

Kosmonaut

brb

Cerberus

4:22 PM

Then again, how far do we want to go with giving answers that do not truly answer the question?

There must be a line.

RegDwight

Kosmonaut does have a point. As a matter of fact, he has turned crappy questions into wells of knowledge in the past.

Cerberus

Exactly.

RegDwight

There's even a badge for that.

Reversal

Cerberus

But we can't do this to the extreme, like "is fish bad?" - "The word fish stems from the PIE root hagsh- and exists in the following languages: ...".

drachenstern

@Cerberus if the answer given is contributory to the amassed pool of knowledge and is not entirely off-subject (meaning there should exist some tangent to the question and the answer), then the answer should be considered acceptable for the question. The goal of SE is to accumulate as much knowledge and information about various topics as can be accumulated in a useful way.

Cerberus

4:25 PM

@Drach: I think I agree.

drachenstern

But I concur that the site needs to establish a policy on what's acceptable and what's right out. (for both questions and answers)

Cerberus

For questions you mean, or answers?

There is some policy for questions.

Oh dang I should be finishing this paper, got to go...

RegDwight

CU later.

Cerberus

Bye!

RegDwight

I'll be leaving soon, too. Gotta get some flowers.

Robusto

5:23 PM

You are a slave to commercialism, @RegDwight!

RegDwight

I overcompensate.

And now I'm out!

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