Seeking Soarer - evidence thread

[Muirium]

We have that, it's called TMK. Takes like 30 seconds to flash, is open source, and continually updated.

And can’t do macros without editing the source code.

For most of us, that’s functionally equivalent to No Macros At All. I’ve certainly never managed it. And I also love TMK. User friendly macros just aren’t available there.

[depletedvespene]

We have that, it's called TMK. Takes like 30 seconds to flash, is open source, and continually updated.

TMK and Soarer have fundamentally different approaches, which means some things are easier in one than in the other, and viceversa. BOTH are good and have their uses (and I, indeed, use both). Soarer being, FAIAP, abandonware, is a problem, because the gamut of programmability options is diminished.

And if last year shirt show had not been such a [piece of garment]... perhaps Soarer could have been revived, or a clone ("Suárez") duly sanctioned?

[Muirium]

"Sanctioned?" What does that look like, short of Soarer himself showing up and giving the open source clone his endorsement?

That would be the dream scenario, of course, and I quite agree with you. But who else could give it the seal of authority besides the author?

[depletedvespene]

"Sanctioned?" What does that look like, short of Soarer himself showing up and giving the open source clone his endorsement?

That would be the dream scenario, of course, and I quite agree with you. But who else could give it the seal of authority besides the author?

Indeed, therein lies the problem. Even if Soarer wouldn't come out, the "Suárez" option was a good one, until last year's shirt show put a... damper, to say it mildly... to that.

BTW, I'm trying out a couple "tricks" that could be done with Soarer's Converters (as they stand now). If they do work, I'll make a post about it.

[melka]

So, did those attorney and IP compliance officer at esr's hyperscale Internet company find Soarer's or not ?

[dotdash]

So, did those attorney and IP compliance officer at esr's hyperscale Internet company find Soarer's or not ?

No, they ended up using QMK for their controller, probably due to the idiot behavior on this shitshow thread.
https://gitlab.com/esr/m-star/-/blob/ma ... ation.adoc
So now it's a fork of old QMK that doesn't merge cleanly with the current version, making it a nightmare to change a keymap for the average user, where Soarer would have been dead nuts easy. Yes, quite a service to the community done by a bunch of users who were only active in this thread. Well done.

[zrrion]

M-Star appears to be attempting to solve a problem of converting old boards, a problem which is already solved decently and with Vial the problem is solved fantastically well. Instead of trying to solve it fantastically well, or even to solve it decently, M-Star is trying to solve the problem by making bad decisions. Which is bad.

You can't piss the bed and blame the mess on people who told you not to shit the bed.

[dotdash]

Vial is yet another separate codebase, requiring work to merge even if you have the QMK part done.
If we had an open sourced Soarer's, the community would have more choices, which is a good thing. Instead we have another messy layer on the QMK/VIA/VIAL shit sandwich.

[Muirium]

Looking at the final product, they don't seem to be doing anything particularly interesting. Drop-in Model M controllers (note: NOT converters) are dime a dozen already; it's very much a solved problem. An unmaintained QMK fork sounds just about right for them.

Converters are where Soarer really shines. You can throw a whole hell of a lot of different layouts at a converter, which can take very little for granted. A converter really needs good defaults for you to build out from. Throw in easily understood macros and the shapeshifting power of sets, and now you're talking.

[zrrion]

Honestly why isn't this thread locked?

[Muirium]

It's not really the DT way to lock threads. You very seldom see stuff locked here. Can't say their lasting read-write status particularly offends me.