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Stack OverflowHelp building a website using punched cards?
[+124] [20] Faruz
[2010-04-01 05:13:03]
[ web-development google-chrome fun april-fools ]
[ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2558252] [DELETED]

My punched card looks like this:

*     *    *        *    *
*          *    *        *
      *    *    *
      *    *    *    *
*     *    *        *    *
*          *    *        *

My website looks OK on explorer, but on Chrome it's terrible. ideas?

(8) What about Firefox or Safari? Firefox can be slow to render punchole'd pages, and Safari has some security issues with them. - alex
(9) Personally, I think you should just wait for W3C to approve the Punchcard Markup Language, and then life will be a bit easier for you. - Noon Silk
(3) It's funny someone bothered to tag the question with the "chrome" tag.. :) - Faruz
(3) Vote for re-open!!! - Stustu
(71) The people who closed this need to file a bug against their sense of humor. - Mark Allen
(4) @Mark Allen: Or look at the calendar. - David Thornley
Is this UTF8 actually? - Vili
(2) Oh please. It's an april fools question! if we can't tolerate a few of those, then.... - RCIX
(3) Reopened for the sake of my first ever reopened question where I was the final vote - Carson Myers
Screenshot or it didn't happen. - Amadiere
(1) ahh! You missed one *. chrome hates that... see here chrome.com/missing-asterisk-error - Reigel
Am I seeing the letters M S in the punched card or is it the Rorschach test? - kinokijuf
[+83] [2010-04-01 05:19:00] Thilo [ACCEPTED]

You've got a security HOLE there...


(73) You beat me to the punch. - RafaƂ Dowgird
(7) Ungh. Surrounded by cards. - Dave Jarvis
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[+39] [2010-04-01 05:27:52] Egor Pavlikhin

You could use a library called punchQuery, it has most of the hole patterns already punched.


(23) I just realized that "library" in this case could mean an actual library with you know, punch cards. - Egor Pavlikhin
(5) The meme is "you should totally drop that and use punchQuery". - tvanfosson
hahahah <more to go> - acidzombie24
+1, first one that made me laugh! :D - missingfaktor
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[+38] [2010-04-01 05:19:34] Alex Korban

It's a simple fix. What you need to do is this:

*     *    *        *    *
*          *    *        *
   *  *    *    *  *
      *    *    *    *
*     *    *        *    *
*          *    *        *

(12) Note: You've got a spelling error on line 4. - Noon Silk
(19) You should also check for * after * or Firefox will thrown an error. - Egor Pavlikhin
silky: That's only one line - Gabe
(1) Could you add some semicolons or some other character as an end of line-marker? I'm trying to copy this to paper to see if it actually work, but I'm unsure how long lines I should have on my paper. - wasatz
(1) With punchcards there is no need for an end of line marker. Just make sure you use 80 columns. - Don Roby
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[+32] [2010-04-01 14:22:54] gnovice

You should first make sure you don't have any uncaught exceptions [1], like exception:hangingChad or exception:pregnantChad. These can result in undefined behavior [2].

I suggest using the following debugger:

alt text

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_%28paper%29#Partially-punched_chad
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election

(2) ROTFL!! You really made me laugh when scrolling down... - Harmen
Thanks Marc. I fixed the problematic image link. - gnovice
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[+21] [2010-04-01 05:20:06] dreamlax

One of your holes looks mis-punched, it is probably being interpreted as half a bit.


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[+13] [2010-07-29 06:03:42] SpliFF

Internet Explorer uses non-standard star-shaped holes that only work with other Microsoft(tm) products. Try:

o     o    o        o    o
o          o    o        o
      o    o    o
      o    o    o    o
o     o    o        o    o
o          o    o        o

As you can see, these are actual holes and can be validated as such on the W3C site.


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[+11] [2010-04-01 05:16:34] Noon Silk

From the look of things you haven't set the doctype correctly. Have you got some sticky-tape handy?


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[+11] [2010-04-01 15:07:35] Edwin Buck

Use HTML (High Tensile Manila Laminate) version 4.0 strict. Strict cards tend to have higher quality standards to pass, and so they less likely to warp, twist, and tear during construction and use of the website.

The key to the actual construction of the site is planning, and a very steady table. Study other website designs, but not too closely as people tend to get upset if you destabilize or collapse their sites with unusual usage patterns.

If that doesn't work, you can patch it together with clear scotch tape. Colored tapes may be easier for you to track and catalog, but you'll constantly get complaints from passers by that your website isn't using valid CSS (Card Stacking Sequence), and the clear tape makes cheating the CSS standard less obvious. Never point out the patched areas, while they might strengthen the site's ability to withstand some very odd browsers, "a patchy" website tends to cast doubts on the site's designers.

I managed to get my website up to valid CSS level 3, but then a slip of the finger and it all came crashing down.


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[+10] [2010-04-06 17:25:17] jasonk
  **   
 * **  
 ****  
 * **  
** *** 


****  
 ** * 
 ** * 
 ***  
***   


*****  
 ** ** 
 ****  
 ** *  
*** ** 


**** 
 **  
 **  
 **  
**** 


***   
 **   
 **   
 ** * 
***** 






***** 
 **   
 **** 
 **   
****  


 ***  
** ** 
** ** 
** ** 
 ***  


 ***  
** ** 
** ** 
** ** 
 ***  


***   
 **   
 **   
 ** * 
***** 


   ** 
   ** 
    * 


 **** 
***   
 ***  
  *** 
****

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[+7] [2010-04-01 05:37:51] crowne

Are you sure thats your punch-card, and just not a piece of cardboard that someone stood on while wearing spiked golf-shoes?


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[+5] [2010-04-01 05:23:47] Stustu

IE doesn't support HTML5. That's probably it.


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[+5] [2010-04-01 05:18:06] Jim Lewis

Chrome is more strict about the standard orientation parameters. Try face-down, 9-edge forward.


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[+5] [2010-04-01 05:29:38] OffBySome

Did you try re-writing in cobol?


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[+4] [2010-04-01 05:22:42] N 1.1

It looks fine on my Chrome 7.0.436 dev on Ubuntu 12.10 ( Tamed Tiger )


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[+4] [2010-04-01 17:05:37] user307080

My website looks OK on explorer, but on Chrome it's terrible. ideas?

That is quite interesting.


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[+3] [2010-04-01 06:11:37] Stustu

Are you using Apache? Coz I don't think it supports punched-cards. Try IIS instead


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[+2] [2010-04-01 18:12:45] Danny

Clearly it's because one of your holes is misaligned (debugger says line 4, column 5) !


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[+2] [2010-04-02 04:00:32] canadiancreed

Are you sure your using standard compliant punch cards? Cards that were made before FORTRAN 77 wont' work with Chrome's new 77 parser that they are using.


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[0] [2010-04-01 20:20:29] adamcodes

Explorer... That's killer.


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[0] [2010-04-01 16:38:27] Paul Nathan

You need to contact IBM and request an updated Hollerith reader, the data is coming out corrupted and Chrome won't take it.


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