Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#171

Post by jimmaswell » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:12 AM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #134

jimmaswell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The home page is clearly organized and readable, only having some text and links. What more do you want from a website that only exists to distribute one program? There's a link to the download page right on top. It's more than good enough. Do you need flashy CSS animations and a Konami Code to find a website cool enough for you? There's not a single thing wrong with PuTTY's UX either. The terminal area is just a ter…

Clearly Stockholm Syndrome has set in here. That page is awful. Period. What do I want from a website that exists to distribute one program? Some effort. Some class. Something more than the software equivalent of being wrapped in greasy newspaper. When you say "its UX because it's already optimal" you're basically saying "I do not value fit and finish, I am purely interested in functionality, I also make my own under…

Have you ever actually used an awful web page? Open a current website in IE4 or something. Awful means "doesn't work".

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#172

Post by cturner » Fri, May 22, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #146

jimmaswell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The home page is clearly organized and readable, only having some text and links. What more do you want from a website that only exists to distribute one program? There's a link to the download page right on top. It's more than good enough. Do you need flashy CSS animations and a Konami Code to find a website cool enough for you? There's not a single thing wrong with PuTTY's UX either. The terminal area is just a ter…

> There's not a single thing wrong with PuTTY's UX either. Yes, there is. It garbles some characters. Ncurses-based applications sometimes look like a hot mess.

This symptom can point to your translation being incompatible with the text stream the terminal is being presented with. That problem may be overcome by switching putty's 'character code' setting to UTF8.

I wonder how much of the hate here is from people who don't understand the problems that are inherent to writing a terminal emulator. It makes sense to be frustrated by it, but it's not putty's fault.

I've been using putty for about fifteen years, and use ncurses extensively. The only thing I've wanted to do in PuTTY that I've been unable to (that I can remember) is to get 24-bit colour working. It may be that I'm making the situation artificially simple for myself because I run everything in tmux, which may filter some translation issues.

Your point in another thread about the putty defaults being non-standard is a good point, and the only meaningful criticism I can see if it here. Not defaulting to UTF8 may be another.

Re: Downloading PuTTY Safely Is Nearly Impossible (2014)

#173

Post by gnachman » Sat, May 23, 2015, 4:33 AM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #94

pdabbadabba wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that if the Putty dev created a Patreon for code signing, and posted it on HN and Reddit, he'd almost immediately have that $73/yr covered for the foreseeable future.

No doubt but we all need to remember that sometimes accepting money is more trouble than it's worth. I know that sounds crazy but people taking donations have to declare that on their taxes and some people don't want to deal with that. Also while crowdfunding platforms have gotten really easy they still take effort and sometimes some sort of verification process. It's obvious the putty dev is not a designer (I don't…

Oh, FFS, I write a free terminal emulator with a fraction of the users of PuTTY, I pay $100/year to sign it, and O($100)/year in hosting + CA fees. Donations cover it easily.