Context: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.office.core.msotristate
Note that there are actually 5 values, not three. Also True is -1, and the value that equals 1 isn't supported.
@mdiluz My gateway into AI was using Claude to try to figure out MS's XML configuration files for their now deprecated Azure B2C identity provider. Their documentation is really bad.
https://claude.ai/share/97c73874-6981-4ebc-b473-19f5bdddd1bd
@ratsnakegames @astrashe @mdiluz
Its started https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-025-00430-y

Historical documents from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages often suffer from degraded image quality due to aging, inadequate preservation, and environmental factors, presenting significant challenges for paleographical analysis. These documents contain crucial graphical symbols representing administrative, economic, and cultural information, which are time-consuming and error-prone to interpret manually. This research investigates image processing algorithms and deep learning models for enhancing these historical documents. Using image processing techniques, we improve symbol readability and visibility, while our deep learning approach aids in reconstructing degraded content and identifying patterns. This work contributes to improving the quality of historical document analysis, particularly for graphical symbol interpretation in paleographical studies.
Oh, gods… 😵
True, but it's not a long way from using generative AI to do the upscaling — and from there we've kind of let the vampire into the house…
… With due apologies to vampires.
Personally, I sure hope it won't go there, but my expectations aren't high.
It's the same slippery slope. Images today, words tomorrow
@ratsnakegames @mdiluz Everybody knows that the three real Boolean values are True, False, and FileNotFound.

The problem with "logic" is that it makes things out to be nothing but simple dualities. Proponents of logic want us to believe that everything is true or false, black or white, yes or no, paper or plastic, etc. Thankfully, there are some among us, like Mark Harrison's colleague, who are not afraid to stand up to these logic advocates and shout "no, I will not succumb to your false dichotomies!" Today, I think we all should salute those few brave people ...
@landelare @ratsnakegames @mdiluz and off-by-one of course
- of course
#xkcd2501Probably
@leeloo BASIC simply didn't distinguish between logical and bitwise operators; as a side effect, there is no short-circuiting of logical expressions
Visual Basic 5 was one of my starter languages and in retrospect, I understand why Dijkstra hated BASIC so much that he considered programming students with previous exposure to the language damaged beyond healing: it teaches you all sorts of wrong lessons on what's possible in programming and how to achieve it. The one serious Visual Basic book, Hardcore Visual Basic, was mostly about how to implement bog standard computer science concepts in a language that was completely hostile to... programming. If I remember correctly, among other things it explained the concept of short-circuiting logical expressions, and how to implement them manually
The beauty (in my eyes) is the fact that only two out of the five states are actually supported.
Somebody signed off on that, presumably on a Friday afternoon. 🤷♂️
There is a real (and serious) True/False/Unknown logic system; it's usually called ternary and has actual uses.
There are actually several, if one's a little pedant, depending on how exactly one defines the interactions; it's usually refers tho just one of a few of them, and one in particular is much more common than the others.
Microsoft's… is not any of them, though.
bool? my "beloved"@mdiluz did they update the page? It just says "Specifies a tri-state value" now. But the date in the footer didn't change. 🤔
Edit: Actually never mind. Turns out there's a *second* MsoTriState enum with the same values but different documentation.
… that just manages to make it worse yet…
Which is admittedly quite a feat, but not one to be proud of.