Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 July 19

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July 19

Can Ipad Pro 12.9" watch netflix?

I wanted to buy a Ipad Pro 12.9" to watch netflix but when I looked into the wiki article about ipad it did not mention whether ipad pro 12.9" can watch netflix. I rather not spend $969 just to find out that it cannot watch netflix. Has anyone managed to watch netflix on it yet? 175.45.116.99 (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Any iOS device, including the iPad, should be able to watch Netflix streams using the Netflix app. iOS is a platform officially supported by Netflix. (You need a Netflix account of course.) --71.110.8.102 (talk) 03:43, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I see. But can I watch Netflix using the split screen function where I can watch Netflix on one half of the screen while playing Pokemon Go on the other half of the screen? 175.45.116.99 (talk) 06:43, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Netflix is definitely available on iPad, including iPad Pro. It works perfectly well in full-screen mode, and the Netflix software app has limited support for some of the newest iOS multitasking features.

Presently, (as of Netflix 8.9.1 (9)) for iOS, split screen is not supported by Netflix's software application. The iPad Pro hardware is powerful enough to smoothly display other video applications in split-screen or in Picture-in-Picture mode, and you can multitask (including using the camera or playing Pokemon Go) while watching videos from other apps (including web-based videos in Safari). Here's official documentation: Multitasking on your iPad....

But Netflix will pause video playback when you enable any multitasking features. As far as I am aware, Netflix requires full-screen playback on all other competitive mobile platforms, too. (I really suspect this mandate for full-screen-only playback is a bizarre artifact of their content license agreements, but I have little actual evidence to support that suspicion).

Perhaps in the long term, Netflix will make software changes to permit split-screen multitasking. If you are a Netflix subscriber, you can provide feedback to Netflix's customer support team to politely ask them to expedite this feature, via their in-application feedback system.

For now, when I need to watch Netflix while playing Pokemon Go, I have to use two iPad Pros, which can be a bit of a handful.

Nimur (talk) 13:02, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Folders in Eclipse

Hi, I have a lot of Java projects in Eclipse, and I want to organize them into categories, using "folders" (maybe there's other name for this in Eclipse?). For example, in one folder I'll put Java projects that I've created for homework, in other folder I'll put Java projects that I've created just for fun, etc. How to create such folders in Eclipse? Thanks in advance!31.154.81.50 (talk) 07:10, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

In project view, right click > New > Folder.Hofhof (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Development environment for remote text-only linux system

I have custom software that runs on a remote linux-based system without X windows enabled. Most of the time when I am doing development I mirror the software on a local machine and use a natural development environment for whatever I am working on. However, it isn't always practical to run everything locally. So sometimes I end up either repeatedly A) editing locally, saving, copying to the remote machine, then running, or B) editing on the remote machine using a basic text editor. Either approach works, but isn't wonderful. In the first case, I have extra steps copying over files constantly and in the second case I'm stuck with a basic editor without syntax highlighting or other helpful aids. What are some tools to make this easier? I'm thinking an editor that allows files to be opened and saved directly over SFTP might just be a good start. I'm supporting three different programming languages right now, so something more general would probably be best (perhaps with plugins that aid specific languages). Dragons flight (talk) 13:19, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Just to throw out some options you might not have already covered:

• GNU Screen permits session persistence and terminal multi-tasking (on the remote server). It is incredibly powerful, but it has the user-friendliness you would expect from a mishmash of emacs- and bash-. GNU Screen is not for novices; novices will invariably confuse themselves amidst the numerous invisible backgrounded contexts.
• rsync lets you efficiently synchronize data and documents between machines, transferring only the changed parts of large files (if bandwidth is an issue). It can work over ssh, so it is as secure as the rest of your system.
• sshfs works very well (on some versions of *nix, *dows, and other *OSes...). It makes any ssh server appear to be a local file system. It has a great user-experience if and only if you have a very fast, low-latency connection to your server
• Lots of text editors support sftp out of the box. Kate (text editor) works on KDE and has fantastic and intuitive shell integration, too. This simple editor is the core of my home-made integrated development environment when I need to work on "other-than-default" languages and operating-systems, because it's very lightweight and can easily be modified or scripted. Basic syntax highlighting for "unsupported languages" can be easily added: it is trivial to create a brand-new syntax highlighting file and you can make that process as simple or as complicated as you wish, from providing a custom, simple list of keywords that should be colorized, all the way up to whatever level of language parsing theory you want to learn and apply. Shell integration is easy, so you can write a script to, say, rsync local data to the server and then execute it remotely - all from inside your text editor. (If you have a Sun keyboard, by default, the special Enter key on the numeric keypad turns any line of any text-file into a bash shell! This feature can be emulated on some other operating systems and keyboards - use with caution!) You can muck with the command line and the external tools plugin. Similar text editors, like gEdit, provide comparable feature sets - it boils down to user preference.
• If you have not yet mastered the art of ssh public key exchange (for initiating secure, password-free ssh sessions), learn how to use ssh-keygen (or your *nix system's equivalent, if you're using a different SSL tool set). Here's one tutorial from Berkeley, SSH Public Key Authentication HOWTO (or check your system's man page). Next, be sure you're comfortable with remote command-execution using ssh: this lets you seamlessly blend local- and remote- execution in scripts that execute on your development machine.

A lot of people use fad-of-the-week tools to deploy scripts and executable code to remote programs; but the old tried-and-true methods of source-code management like git and svn tend to be more reliable.

Nimur (talk) 13:36, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Nimur, that's very useful. Dragons flight (talk) 15:01, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

In addition to all of Nimur's suggestions:

• Some people advocate tmux rather than GNU Screen
• Both emacs and VIM have pretty nice text-mode features, including syntax highlighting, and neither is remotely basic. Personally I use emacs in text mode (emacs -nw) even when editing locally, as I find its X11 interface rather naff. You you can just plain ssh to the remote machine and run either of them and have a nice enough experience.
• Emacs has tramp mode, and vim has netrw mode, which work like the feature of Kate Nimur describes.
• If the "remote" machine is still pretty local (such as a server in a chilly server room downstairs, that you'd rather not spend the day beside) you can forward X clients from it (to your desktop's display) with ssh -X. That requires that the remote machine have X libraries, but not that it have a graphics card, display, or a running X server. I can't say I'd recommend running a heavy IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans over that, even on a decent LAN or CAN, but needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle.

In general, ssh and rsync are really powerful - combined they are the giant Japanese robot of productivity. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 14:14, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Server is about 9500 km away. Dragons flight (talk) 15:01, 19 July 2016 (UTC)