What can be found on this site?

• Color design tutorial: learn how to work with HSL colors
• HyperCard stack: statistical functions
• HyperCard stack: interest calculations
• HyperCard stack: ALL known time zones
• Additions and corrections for Excalibur dictionary: NEDERLANDS.dict
• Unicode characters and browsers: Unicode test page
• Unicode UTF-8 encoding: how does this work? UTF-8 explanations
• Overviews of the Macintosh & Windows character sets and the Symbol font

Were you looking for entertainment? "Oh dear, how sad, never mind", like sergeant-major Williams of the TV series It ain't half hot mum used to say. The same goes for Windows computer users. Many web statistics logs show that about 75% of the visitors have a Windows 98 machine and merely 3% a Macintosh. Confusingly, the most used operating system on the internet is Unix in one of its flavours (see e.g. Netcraft webserver stats). The information and programs on this site have to be positioned within the 3% Mac OS segment. Still interested? Read on. Since the author is Dutch, you'll find after most paragraphs summary information in the Dutch language.

 

Ever wondered how to find contrasting colors? A palette of matching pastel colors? Shadow and highlight color variants for one and the same object? All this type of questions can be answered if you switch your color thinking to HSL - hue, saturation and lightness. It's not difficult and it's far more productive than thinking RGB - red, green and blue. The Color design tutorial explains how colors work, what a color space is, what the HSL color space is and how to work within this space. The relative nonsense of web safe colors will be explained. There are three pages with 7300 color patches each for you to download. Programmers will find algorithms for converting between RGB, HSL, CIE-XYZ and CIE-L*h*s*. NL: Syllabus vormgeving met HSL kleuren (tint, verzadiging, helderheid)..

Statistics. One of the things you can find here is a Macintosh HyperCard program for calculating many otherwise difficult to compute probability density functions, cumulative distribution functions and some related special functions. See my page with a Read Me and download URLs for the latest version of the HyperCard stack StatistFunctions. HyperCard is a development environment for the Mac OS from Apple Computer. Some HyperCard 'stacks' can be imported in MetaCard, a Windows development environment. I haven't tested this. NL: HyperCard stapel voor statistische kansfuncties.

Financial mathematics: interest. Another application you will find here is a HyperCard stack with all kinds of interest calculations. One of the calculations is for mortgages, or more precise for annuities because tax effects, closing fees etcetera will not be taken into account, but the effective interest rate will. Huh? You know, an interest of 12 per cent a year is not equal to 1 per cent a month; it should be 0.94888%. This HyperCard stack can be downloaded from the interest information page. HyperCard is a development environment for the Mac OS from Apple Computer. Some HyperCard 'stacks' can be imported in MetaCard, a Windows development environment. I haven't tested this. NL: HyperCard stapel voor renteberekeningen.

TimeZonesHC is the name of a HyperCard stack with which you can show the correct time for any place on earth. Aren't there already many other applications and even websites for that, even fancier than my application? Yes, but my TimeZonesHC is extremely complete; ALL known timezones are in the program's database, including all information about summer/wintertime. The information is the most up to date information you can find. Somewhere in the Internet there is a site (ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/) with a public domain database and Unix software. See my page with a Read Me and download URLs for the latest version of the stack TimeZonesHC. HyperCard is a development environment for the Mac OS from Apple Computer. Some HyperCard 'stacks' can be imported in MetaCard, a Windows development environment. I haven't tested this. Bonus pages: Time zones and the millennium crossing, a short overview. A list with all starting and ending dates/times of daylight saving time in the world. NL: HyperCard stapel voor het tonen van de tijd in álle tijdzones.

Excalibur is a nice Macintosh spelling checker program, not made by me. I converted a Dutch words list, made by the 'Nederlandstalige TeX Gebruikersgroep', to Excalibur format and posted it over there. Corrections and additions to the words list can be found at the corrections page, in Mac & Unix format. NL: Correcties en aanvullingen voor de Nederlandse woordenlijst bij Macintosh spellingcontroleprogramma Excalibur.

The latest browser versions can do something with Unicode, a standard for all conceivable characters and signs. In theory it should be possible to make multilingual web pages with many script types. Currently that's virtually impossible with the two most used Macintosh browsers. Take a look at the Unicode test page to see what you get. NL: Meer talen met Unicode op een Macintosh browser?

UTF-8. With Unicode it is possible to use more than sixty thousand different characters and symbols in texts. Especially for use in web pages these characters have to be encoded, otherwise they are not transportable. The most used encoding scheme is the Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set Transformation Format 8, UTF-8 for short. I have a page with an explanation of the UTF-8 encoding scheme. NL: Uitleg over de Unicode UTF-8 coderingsmethode.

Difficult characters. A special page with pop-up links to many picture-tables tells you exactly what the differences are between the Macintosh and the Windows and the ISO 8859-1 character encodings. Skip this section if you never want to use any characters with diacritics. Use your 'Back' button quickly if you have no plans for using the Symbol font. Click on the link above if you want to know all horrible details. NL: Wat zijn de verschillen tussen de lettertekenposities op een Macintosh en een Windows computer?

And now for something completely different...

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© Oscar van Vlijmen, 2000
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or http://home-4.worldonline.nl/~t876506/index.html Last update: 2001-04-23