index.md (10930B)
1 suckless conference 2016, Hofheim am Taunus, Germany 2 ========================================================= 3 4 slcon 2016 was held in Hofheim am Taunus near Frankfurt am Main on 5 2016-09-(23-25). 6 7 [](slcon2016.png) 8 9 Friday, 2016-09-23 10 ================== 11 Arrival day. 12 13 (19:30) *Gathering in the "Waldgeist"* 14 15 > We gathered together in and checked out the 16 > [Waldgeist](http://www.derwaldgeist.de/) restaurant that was within 17 > walking distance of the hotel. 18 19 Saturday, 2016-09-24 20 ==================== 21 (10:00-10:05) *Welcome*, Anselm R Garbe 22 23 > Anselm opened the slcon 2016 talk session 24 25 Video: 26 27 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-00-agarbe-welcome.webm) 28 29 30 (10:10-10:40) libzahl -- simple bignum arithmetic, Mattias Andrée 31 32 > The quality of algorithms usually increases with their complexity. 33 > Can we, despite that, compete with GNU MP and other libraries 34 > and still provide suckless solution? This talk discussed libzahl's 35 > design and future. 36 37 Video: 38 39 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-01-mandree-libzahl.webm) 40 41 42 (10:50-11:15) XML damage control, Silvan Jegen ([slides](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-02-sjegen-xml_damage_control.pdf)) 43 44 > XML is a horrendously abused file format that severely suffers from 45 > over-engineering. However, there is an arguably legitimate use case for 46 > a subset of it: Text markup. This talk gave reasons for that and showed 47 > how to deal with XML in these circumstances. 48 > The presenter, forced to work with XML every day, first gave an 49 > overview of different XML parsing strategies and presented a few decent 50 > libraries for this purpose. To allow comparison, he benchmarked the 51 > most sensible XML libraries and discussed alternative parsing approaches 52 > as well as their implementation. 53 54 Video: 55 56 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-02-sjegen-xml_damage_control.webm) 57 58 59 (11:20-11:35) Stali Pi B+, Manu Raster ([slides](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-03-mraster-stali_pi_bplus.pdf)) 60 61 > This talk gave a report on readying stali for the Raspberry Pi B+ 62 > (32 bit) and is also a story about monsters and maiden, as it compared 63 > the stali approach to other codebases (kernels, distros, etc.) and their 64 > build systems, evaluating portability concerns encountered along the way 65 > on a scale from "depraved" over "naive" to "not too bad". 66 67 Video: 68 69 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-03-mraster-stali_pi_bplus.webm) 70 71 72 (11:40-12:05) farbfeld and color spaces, Laslo Hunhold 73 74 > This talk discussed the future role of color management in computing 75 > in light of recent developments and gave a future perspective on 76 > necessary changes to the handling of image formats like farbfeld. 77 78 > Are you already affected by the limitations of sRGB? You can find out 79 > by looking at the saturated RGB triplets below. The one on the right 80 > shows the saturated reds, greens and blues of sRGB, the one on the left 81 > shows the saturated reds, greens and blues of your monitor. If you only 82 > see continuous lines it means that you're not working within a color 83 > managed environment (e.g. using Firefox with colord and xiccd), or your 84 > screen is really old. 85 86  87 88 Video: 89 90 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-04-lhunhold-farbfeld_and_color_spaces.webm) 91 92 93 (12:05-13:25) Lunch break 94 95 96 (13:25-14:10) scc and qbe for practical compilation, Roberto E. Vargas Caballero 97 98 > For decades we have been witnessing a dramatic increase in compiler 99 > complexity. Popular compilers have become huge C++ programs trying 100 > to incorporate every aspect of state-of-the-art research. 101 > This talk proposed scc and qbe as a new approach to compilation, where 102 > simplicity and predictability are the primary objective over reckless 103 > efficiency and optimization. 104 > It presented the security benefits resulting from this alternative design 105 > approach, that is also advocated by the "boring crypto" movement, and 106 > demonstrated how it allows easier bootstrapping of new systems. 107 108 Video: 109 110 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-05-rvargasc-scc_and_qbe_for_practical_compilation.webm) 111 112 113 (14:10-15:15) The Myrddin Programming Language, Ori Bernstein ([slides](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-06-obernstein-the_myrddin_programming_language.pdf)) 114 115 > This talk presented the Myrddin programming language that was written 116 > in the interest of a saner and easier to use programming environment 117 > the presenter, inventor of the language, deems more pleasant than C. 118 > The presenter elaborated on its position between C and the ML 119 > programming language by design using concepts like parametric 120 > polymorphism, type inference, closures and pattern matching, concluding 121 > that it can be thought of as a suckless Rust. In this context, 122 > examples were presented using a replacement for many standard libraries 123 > on a number of popular (and less popular) platforms. 124 125 Video: 126 127 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-06-obernstein-the_myrddin_programming_language.webm) 128 129 130 (15:20-15:50) ii-like chatting improvements, Jan Klemkow 131 132 > Since the last conference, the presenter had made several improvements 133 > in his ii-like chat infrastructure and in this talk gave an overview of 134 > his various activities in this area, presenting new features of his 135 > [UCSPI tools](https://github.com/younix/ucspi), a new modular frontend 136 > [lchat](https://github.com/younix/lchat) and the idea of runit 137 > integration. 138 139 Video: 140 141 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-07-jklemkow-ii-like_chatting_improved.webm) 142 143 144 (15:50-16:25) text engine, Francesc Hervada-Sala 145 146 > The right approach to software systems was introduced by the Unix 147 > programming environment over forty years ago with a file system that 148 > opened access to data across all applications and with a universal 149 > interface model based on strings. 150 > This talk claimed that this approach should be deepened by defining 151 > "text" as the semantic data structure that results from parsing 152 > strings, theorizing a software system with a "text engine" at its 153 > kernel and discussing improvements it can bring to modern data 154 > processing and user experience. 155 156 Video: 157 158 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-08-fhervadas-text_engine.webm) 159 160 161 (16:25-16:35) Coffee break 162 163 164 (16:35-17:15) Suckless Image Processing, EML ([slides](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-09-emeinhardtl-suckless_image_processing.pdf)) 165 166 167 > This talk picked up the conception of an image being an array of numbers 168 > and deduced that C is well suited for image processing algorithms, 169 > given arrays of numbers are natively representable in it. 170 > It also elaborated on and exemplified how many complex image processing 171 > algorithms are pipelines of simple, independent steps, making the Unix 172 > programming environment an ideal platform for image processing with 173 > several simple programs written in C sharing information through 174 > pipes. 175 > In this context, the problem of selecting a proper file format for 176 > pipe interchange is discussed and claimed that the farbfeld image 177 > format is not suitable for this task and general image processing. 178 179 Video: 180 181 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-09-emeinhardtl-suckless_image_processing.webm) 182 183 184 (17:20-17:45) shared farbfeld, Jan Klemkow 185 186 > This talk explored farbfeld as a basis for general purpose image 187 > processing based on the idea of cooperative image processing tools, 188 > presenting a shared memory interface that speeds up the usage of 189 > these tools. Based on this foundation, the architecture of a 190 > Photoshop-like image editor is presented with the proof of concept 191 > implementation [shmff](https://github.com/younix/shmff) and benchmarks 192 > supporting this idea. 193 194 Video: 195 196 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-10-jklemkow-shared_farbfeld.webm) 197 198 199 (17:45-17:50) Display servers, Mattias Andrée 200 201 Video: 202 203 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-11-mandree-display_servers.webm) 204 205 206 (17:50-18:30) stali learnings and beehive observation, Anselm R Garbe 207 208 > This talk presented the experience gained with stali since the last 209 > slcon, discussing new goals and why self-bootstrappability is a bad 210 > idea in particular. As a proof of concept, the presenter demonstrated 211 > stali as a platform for observing his beehives. 212 213 Video: 214 215 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-12-agarbe-stali_learnings_and_beehive_observation.webm) 216 217 218 Official slcon 2016 talk session end. 219 220 221 (18:55-19:20) suckless.org e.V. Mitgliederversammlung (suckless.org e.V. general assembly) 222 223 > The yearly general assembly consisted of the report of the chairs, 224 > Anselm R Garbe and Laslo Hunhold, the report of the treasurer, 225 > Jan Klemkow, and the discussion of topics raised by members. 226 227 Video: 228 229 [](//dl.suckless.org/slcon/2016/slcon-2016-13-all-vote.webm) 230 231 232 (19:30-) Social event in Frankfurt am Main City 233 234 Sunday, 2016-09-25 235 ================== 236 No talk session plans, hack sessions and departure day. 237 238 Acknowledgment 239 ============== 240 We kindly thank [](http://www.genua.eu) for 241 lending us the equipment to record the slcon 2016 conference videos. 242 243 Previous conferences 244 ==================== 245 * [slcon 2015](../2015/) 246 * [slcon 2013](../2013/)