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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 13, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 13, 2013Popular ReleasesBrightstarDB: BrightstarDB 1.3.40613: This is the first "official" BrightstarDB release under the MIT open source license. The code base has been reworked to replace / remove the use of third-party closed-source tools and has been updated to use a patched version of dotNetRDF 1.0 that includes the most recent updates for SPARQL 1.1 and Turtle. We have also extended the core RDF API to support targeting a specific graph with an update or query operation and made a change to the core profiling code to disable it by default, leadin...Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2.1 RTM: - Dynamic text localization - A new application wide message busPokemon Battle Online: ETV: ETV???2012?12??????，????。 ???? Server??????，?????。 ?????????，?????????????，?????????。 ????????，????，?????????，???????????（??）??。 ???????180?，??????????TimeUp?18000?，???????????????????????。 ???? ????????????。 ???????。 ???PP????，????????????????????PP????，??3。 ?????????????，??????????。 ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????????、???????????，??“???????”??。 ???bug ???Web Pages CMS: 0.5.0.5: Added empty media directoryModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This samples illustrates the use of ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Microsoft Ente...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1.BETA Unit test Generator Documentation: Welcome to the Unit Test Generator Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a dev to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test framewor...SFDL.NET: SFDL.NET v1.1.0.4: Changelog: Ciritical Bug Fixed : Downloading of Files not possibleMapWinGIS ActiveX Map and GIS Component: MapWinGIS v4.8.8 Release Candidate - 32 Bit: This is the first release candidate of MapWinGIS. Please test it thoroughly.MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.SimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesWsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.09: Add more verifications on certificate validation. WPP will not let user to try publishing an update until the certificate is valid. Add certificate expiration date on the 'About' form. Filter Approbation to avoid a user to try to approve an update for uninstallation when the update do not support uninstallation. Add the server and console version on the 'About' form. WPP will not let user to publish an update until the server and console are not at the same level. WPP do not let user ...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2013 Release Version 7.0607June 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...Rawr: Rawr 5.2.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 6: New feature - Added serialized/deserialized JSON to verbose tracing New feature - Added support for using type name handling with ISerializable content Fix - Fixed not using default serializer settings with primitive values and JToken.ToObject Fix - Fixed error writing BigIntegers with JsonWriter.WriteToken Fix - Fixed serializing and deserializing flag enums with EnumMember attribute Fix - Fixed error deserializing interfaces with a valid type converter Fix - Fixed error deser...New Projects.NET Code Migrator for Dynamics CRM: This project is designed to assist the .NET developer who is migrating their C# code from the CRM 4.0 object model to the CRM 2011 object model.ChronoScript: Programming languageColaBBS: ColaBBS for .NET FrameworkColly: Project for Col col wayFIOCaseRU: ?????? ?????????? ??? ????????? ??? ?? ??????? ?? ??????? ?????.Java Jos - Learning Javanese ( Bahasa Jawa ) with Fun !: Java Jos, a learning Javanese application aims to help kids 7-12 years old learn Javanese character as well as enrich their cultural experienceJavaScript PersianDatePicker: A lightweight (3.5 kb) javascript persian date picker that shows server date.NOH-I Webapplicaties 2013 - Quaack groep 2: Study-projectPrimeLand Accounting: Sistem Informasi Akunting PT Prime Land SemarangPuffy: Project for puf puf ga meSIOGDE: Only test, not to download. This software is not stableTask Manager DNN: Projecto teste, DNN Task Manager video series.TinCan.NET: Using the TinCan specifications, this C# MVC project attempts to provide endpoints for TinCan compliant clients. wBudget: wBudget is a simple budgeting app for windows 8 developed for learning purposes by students.Windows 8 App Design Reference Template: Education Guide: Education Guide template will help if you want to build an app which has the following sections a. Tutorials b. Subjects c. Section in each subject Windows 8 App Design Reference Template: Magazine: Magazine Template will help if you want to build an app which has the following ingredients a. Current Section b. Articles c. Articles details Windows 8 App Design Reference Template: Music and video: Music and Video Template will help if you want to build an app which has place holders for Featured Songs,Top Music,Top Movies, Lyrics section etc.Windows 8 App Design Reference Template: Music Zone: Music Zone Template will help if you want to build an app which has the following ingredients a. Top Songs b. Top Albums c. Genre d. Playlists e. Latest Added Windows 8 App Design Reference Template: Trekking Planner: Trekking Planner template will help if you want to build an app which has the following sections a. Booking Options b. Packages c. Area Details

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• alot questings since i wanted to make a new SSB game or mario game(that use 3d models) [closed]

  - by user20465

  i have just started to study programming and i know already ppl will say why make a so big project like as a SSB game for a noob game development? cuz i always wanted a SSB engine like as Mugen is a fighter game engine but is not like as SSB´s gameplay + is not using 3d models too so i will call it SSBmugen(until i find a better title for it i got afew ideas for titles) also i wanted to make this game so it can use SSBbrawl files(models+animations mainly) the moveset+Stage coding files i wanted to redo cuz so anything can be possible like make a teleporter or a pipe teleporter(like as Super mario bros game) on a stag e or make some stuff there is impossible in SSBbrawl for moveset coding but is not in SSBmugen like make so a char. summon a Clone and the clone will do a attack and then is gone or some attacks/moves also i will make a moveset/stage Coding editor so it will be really easy to make moveset/stages coding for yours 3d models/animations moveset+stage Coding i mean: hitboxes/hurtboxes/moving Stuff/moving bones like cape or hair bones that is moving by wind effects or falling or other stuff like that/other stuff that needed to be coded i have planed to make a editor(for moveset/char. coding) or add the editor in brawlbox for my game so other ppl can easy make moveset/stages Coding to they´s models/animations so it will be easy so even kids can make a custom movesets/stages why using SSBbrawl files?: cuz ppl have made alot of models or textures/custom movesets/custom stages like goku/other anime/not brawl stuff for super smash bros brawl hacking(a.k.a modding) so ppl dont have to redo anything if they wanted to have the custom models or textures/custom movesets/custom stages from SSBbrawl to SSBmugen +there is the program named brawlbox that can open brawl files like model/animations and can edit models or animations and import models from 3ds max to be the right model format for SSBbrawl and i also wanted it so easy to add(a.k.a installer) Recolours or alt. models(like as oneslot doctor mario model over mario´s boneset) or textures/Movesets/new char. slots/new stages so easy so you only needing to download themplace them in right foldername them the right nameStart the gameRecolours or alt. models or textures/Movesets/new char. slots/new stages works an loading right so you wont needing to edit any files for add something so kids/not so smart ppl can easy use the mods other ppl is making/uploading for this game here is the file format i wanted to know if they can be readed/opened if making a game that use these files: .mld0(brawl model file) .chr0(model animation for moving/scale/rota the bones) .srt0(animations for texture like moving eyes or blinking) .vis0(Animations for get polygons to hide/show with visibilitybones on the model there is also some polygons there ) .brres(a file format where stuff like model files or textures or animations is inside) .pac(a file format where the .brres is inside to keep model+textures+model for the shadow in 1 file) .wav (for SoundFX effects or voices to char. or stages) i am sure that one is possible the .wav files is inside a other file format for brawl but that file can´t you add more .wav files inside only replace so i wanted the .wav files outside so its easy to add/replace/remove SoundFX effects or voices to char. or stages .brstm(brawl music file so the music is looped perfect so it loop in middel of the music and not start over again then the music is done) afew more file formats (mainly for the Graphics effects like fire/aura/hit effects if not needing to redo them)so only coding in the editor i will make is needed to be done for port a SSBB hack(a.k.a mod)(moveset/stage coding) to this game wanted the game to be able to load these files and load them right like if loading wait1.chr0(idle animation) it will also load at same time wait1.srt0/wait1.vis0 and all kinda of animations is inside the same .brres file i am needing since it to be able to load the file format i wanted cuz: -the animations can´t be converted to any other animation file format and i dont think ppl want to redo these animations(inc. me for Goku to SSBbrawl) -models can be converted but then they lose all the shader/materials stuff like a shine effect or lighting on the model -.brstm can be converted to .wav but then there will be no loop so i prefer it can load this file format too for the music to stage/menu -brawlbox is really easy to use for make animation for the char. and import models from 3ds max so even around "not too stupid" 10 year kids can make SSBB mods(not try to be rude but to say how easy it is) also i wanted the folder setup for characters/stages/moveset/other stuff to be like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2oolm5z5ri234tz/SSBmugen%20Folder%20setup.txt just uploaded a txt file since it is a wall of text and this post is already a wall of test so it easy to place stuff (if not i do a program for to that so it auto place the stuff on right place) not 100% sure what to use of game engine to make this possible but i got a dll file from that brawlbox program that can open/read/edit these file formats if that helps i also got open source of brawlbox i have kinda learned programming(since its kinda the same thing but still not 100% same) from Super smash bros modding/hacking like coding a moveset for the new animations/models + have readed alittle about it but i am soon starting for real to study it for ppl who is alittle confuse for what i am asking for here is the list: -what game engine should i use to make a SSB clone? but at same time to make all this stuff i just said possible so ppl can make they own mods and share them and use the already made mods from SSBbrawl? and easy to use aswell so noob programmors can use it? -where to learning programming on internet to be even more ready to make a game like this? and dont wanted to start in the small like making small boring 2d games that no one care about anyway ps. i am also planing a other project like as SSBmugen but it will be Super mario bros open (again tittle unsure but open means open source) i will make a Mario game engine that also use 3d models and can have 2d or 3d gameplay with any mario powerups/gameplay(from any mario platform games) there is ever made multiplayer like as in New super mario bros wii maybe multiplay over lan or online but for now over 1 PC also alittle planed for that to my SSBmugen a Level/world map editor for it too(easy to use so even kids can use it and make levels for it) so it just place the objects/enemies and options for them enemies since they are not 100% same AI in all mario game like to choose a goomba have AI from SM64 the Editor will be able to change the gameplay on a level while have a other gameplay on a other level like this: 1 level have Super mario bros 3 gameplay (then it will be a 3d model remake) a other level have super mario galaxy gameplay but in a Super mario 3d land level yet a other level have super mario 64 gameplay but with powerups from a other mario game like powerups from mario 3d land or can ride on Yoshi so you can easy remake your fav. level from a old mario game in this mario engine/editor or just make a custom one with yours fav. mario gameplay/powerups so it will be like turn off/on: walljump/triple jump/other kinda or jumps/2x punch and 1 kick+Air kick/SMG spin attack/Fludd/other stuff like that so you can make the gameplay from the first mario game to the newest or make custom gameplay on a level also the star(from 64/sunshine/galaxy) will be replaced with the flag from new super mario bros/mario 3d land since the game is not so much about getting stars its more about making/download the levels you wanted and share them to other ppl and play these level so after have killed like the boss from SM64 bomb omb field(if one have made that) you will get the flag instead of star since i wanted it to be simple to make levels in the editor to make the bosses/new enemies/new powerups/custom char. idk what to do to make that simple yet also thinking the mario game will use brawl files since it almost already got all needed animations/models for this since i dont wanted to redo animations/models and if needing more animations i can just make them easy in brawlbox since thats the program i am most used to make animations but that will be after my SSBmugen project if not this game will be easyer then SSBmugen to make since i am planing then 1 of them is done i use the that game as base to make the other (since both is kinda platfrom games and possible using same file format for both) also wanted to ask what is best to start with out of these 2 games? also will maybe make a DLC site(or ingame) for both of these games if they get done so it wont end up like as Mugen where you needing to look all over the internet to find the stuff you wanted but for my game all the mods for my game is on same place not sure about online mode for SSBmugen or super mario bros open but i can always add that then i get better at programming both games also need to have options on controls/if using joystick also that i have planed these game for a long time and got even more ideas for them but first i wanted to get them to work so i can add the other stuff later(like DLC or online mode or some other stuff later) right now i know 0,0001% to programming(in my option) maybe i know more then that since i have been study it alittle but i learning while making stuff like this that was also my plan for make these game learn while making them and get better to programming so again i say it i kinda dont want to hear dont do these projects cuz i already know it will be hard so dont wanted so much to heard stuff like: you can´t do it since you just started learning programming or this project will fail since somewhere i needing to get started with programming and this is where i want to start to make my dream games(possible other´s dream games too) and i dont think this project will fail if i work hard on it (as i possible will) and ppl will maybe help i think this was all my questing/ideas for now (sorry for it sounds more like ideas then questings) but i needing to say my ideas so you ppl can see what i needing to use for make this possible

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• Problem displaying tiles using tiled map loader with SFML

  - by user1905192

  I've been searching fruitlessly for what I did wrong for the past couple of days and I was wondering if anyone here could help me. My program loads my tile map, but then crashes with an assertion error. The program breaks at this line: spacing = atoi(tilesetElement-Attribute("spacing")); Here's my main game.cpp file. #include "stdafx.h" #include "Game.h" #include "Ball.h" #include "level.h" using namespace std; Game::Game() { gameState=NotStarted; ball.setPosition(500,500); level.LoadFromFile("meow.tmx"); } void Game::Start() { if (gameState==NotStarted) { window.create(sf::VideoMode(1024,768,320),"game"); view.reset(sf::FloatRect(0,0,1000,1000));//ball drawn at 500,500 level.SetDrawingBounds(sf::FloatRect(view.getCenter().x-view.getSize().x/2,view.getCenter().y-view.getSize().y/2,view.getSize().x, view.getSize().y)); window.setView(view); gameState=Playing; } while(gameState!=Exiting) { GameLoop(); } window.close(); } void Game::GameLoop() { sf::Event CurrentEvent; window.pollEvent(CurrentEvent); switch(gameState) { case Playing: { window.clear(sf::Color::White); window.setView(view); if (CurrentEvent.type==sf::Event::Closed) { gameState=Exiting; } if ( !ball.IsFalling() &&!ball.IsJumping() &&sf::Keyboard::isKeyPressed(sf::Keyboard::Space)) { ball.setJState(); } ball.Update(view); level.Draw(window); ball.Draw(window); window.display(); break; } } } And here's the file where the error happens: /********************************************************************* Quinn Schwab 16/08/2010 SFML Tiled Map Loader The zlib license has been used to make this software fully compatible with SFML. See http://www.sfml-dev.org/license.php This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required. 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution. *********************************************************************/ #include "level.h" #include <iostream> #include "tinyxml.h" #include <fstream> int Object::GetPropertyInt(std::string name) { int i; i = atoi(properties[name].c_str()); return i; } float Object::GetPropertyFloat(std::string name) { float f; f = strtod(properties[name].c_str(), NULL); return f; } std::string Object::GetPropertyString(std::string name) { return properties[name]; } Level::Level() { //ctor } Level::~Level() { //dtor } using namespace std; bool Level::LoadFromFile(std::string filename) { TiXmlDocument levelFile(filename.c_str()); if (!levelFile.LoadFile()) { std::cout << "Loading level \"" << filename << "\" failed." << std::endl; return false; } //Map element. This is the root element for the whole file. TiXmlElement *map; map = levelFile.FirstChildElement("map"); //Set up misc map properties. width = atoi(map->Attribute("width")); height = atoi(map->Attribute("height")); tileWidth = atoi(map->Attribute("tilewidth")); tileHeight = atoi(map->Attribute("tileheight")); //Tileset stuff TiXmlElement *tilesetElement; tilesetElement = map->FirstChildElement("tileset"); firstTileID = atoi(tilesetElement->Attribute("firstgid")); spacing = atoi(tilesetElement->Attribute("spacing")); margin = atoi(tilesetElement->Attribute("margin")); //Tileset image TiXmlElement *image; image = tilesetElement->FirstChildElement("image"); std::string imagepath = image->Attribute("source"); if (!tilesetImage.loadFromFile(imagepath))//Load the tileset image { std::cout << "Failed to load tile sheet." << std::endl; return false; } tilesetImage.createMaskFromColor(sf::Color(255, 0, 255)); tilesetTexture.loadFromImage(tilesetImage); tilesetTexture.setSmooth(false); //Columns and rows (of tileset image) int columns = tilesetTexture.getSize().x / tileWidth; int rows = tilesetTexture.getSize().y / tileHeight; std::vector <sf::Rect<int> > subRects;//container of subrects (to divide the tilesheet image up) //tiles/subrects are counted from 0, left to right, top to bottom for (int y = 0; y < rows; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < columns; x++) { sf::Rect <int> rect; rect.top = y * tileHeight; rect.height = y * tileHeight + tileHeight; rect.left = x * tileWidth; rect.width = x * tileWidth + tileWidth; subRects.push_back(rect); } } //Layers TiXmlElement *layerElement; layerElement = map->FirstChildElement("layer"); while (layerElement) { Layer layer; if (layerElement->Attribute("opacity") != NULL)//check if opacity attribute exists { float opacity = strtod(layerElement->Attribute("opacity"), NULL);//convert the (string) opacity element to float layer.opacity = 255 * opacity; } else { layer.opacity = 255;//if the attribute doesnt exist, default to full opacity } //Tiles TiXmlElement *layerDataElement; layerDataElement = layerElement->FirstChildElement("data"); if (layerDataElement == NULL) { std::cout << "Bad map. No layer information found." << std::endl; } TiXmlElement *tileElement; tileElement = layerDataElement->FirstChildElement("tile"); if (tileElement == NULL) { std::cout << "Bad map. No tile information found." << std::endl; return false; } int x = 0; int y = 0; while (tileElement) { int tileGID = atoi(tileElement->Attribute("gid")); int subRectToUse = tileGID - firstTileID;//Work out the subrect ID to 'chop up' the tilesheet image. if (subRectToUse >= 0)//we only need to (and only can) create a sprite/tile if there is one to display { sf::Sprite sprite;//sprite for the tile sprite.setTexture(tilesetTexture); sprite.setTextureRect(subRects[subRectToUse]); sprite.setPosition(x * tileWidth, y * tileHeight); sprite.setColor(sf::Color(255, 255, 255, layer.opacity));//Set opacity of the tile. //add tile to layer layer.tiles.push_back(sprite); } tileElement = tileElement->NextSiblingElement("tile"); //increment x, y x++; if (x >= width)//if x has "hit" the end (right) of the map, reset it to the start (left) { x = 0; y++; if (y >= height) { y = 0; } } } layers.push_back(layer); layerElement = layerElement->NextSiblingElement("layer"); } //Objects TiXmlElement *objectGroupElement; if (map->FirstChildElement("objectgroup") != NULL)//Check that there is atleast one object layer { objectGroupElement = map->FirstChildElement("objectgroup"); while (objectGroupElement)//loop through object layers { TiXmlElement *objectElement; objectElement = objectGroupElement->FirstChildElement("object"); while (objectElement)//loop through objects { std::string objectType; if (objectElement->Attribute("type") != NULL) { objectType = objectElement->Attribute("type"); } std::string objectName; if (objectElement->Attribute("name") != NULL) { objectName = objectElement->Attribute("name"); } int x = atoi(objectElement->Attribute("x")); int y = atoi(objectElement->Attribute("y")); int width = atoi(objectElement->Attribute("width")); int height = atoi(objectElement->Attribute("height")); Object object; object.name = objectName; object.type = objectType; sf::Rect <int> objectRect; objectRect.top = y; objectRect.left = x; objectRect.height = y + height; objectRect.width = x + width; if (objectType == "solid") { solidObjects.push_back(objectRect); } object.rect = objectRect; TiXmlElement *properties; properties = objectElement->FirstChildElement("properties"); if (properties != NULL) { TiXmlElement *prop; prop = properties->FirstChildElement("property"); if (prop != NULL) { while(prop) { std::string propertyName = prop->Attribute("name"); std::string propertyValue = prop->Attribute("value"); object.properties[propertyName] = propertyValue; prop = prop->NextSiblingElement("property"); } } } objects.push_back(object); objectElement = objectElement->NextSiblingElement("object"); } objectGroupElement = objectGroupElement->NextSiblingElement("objectgroup"); } } else { std::cout << "No object layers found..." << std::endl; } return true; } Object Level::GetObject(std::string name) { for (int i = 0; i < objects.size(); i++) { if (objects[i].name == name) { return objects[i]; } } } void Level::SetDrawingBounds(sf::Rect<float> bounds) { drawingBounds = bounds; cout<<tileHeight; //Adjust the rect so that tiles are drawn just off screen, so you don't see them disappearing. drawingBounds.top -= tileHeight; drawingBounds.left -= tileWidth; drawingBounds.width += tileWidth; drawingBounds.height += tileHeight; } void Level::Draw(sf::RenderWindow &window) { for (int layer = 0; layer < layers.size(); layer++) { for (int tile = 0; tile < layers[layer].tiles.size(); tile++) { if (drawingBounds.contains(layers[layer].tiles[tile].getPosition().x, layers[layer].tiles[tile].getPosition().y)) { window.draw(layers[layer].tiles[tile]); } } } } I really hope that one of you can help me and I'm sorry if I've made any formatting issues. Thanks!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 12, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 12, 2014Popular ReleasesAD4 Application Designer for flow based .NET applications: AD4.AppDesigner.23.26: AD4.Iteration.23.26(Advanced Rendering Features) DesignAttribute to format wire caption of pin (Custom Position): RaiseAlarmFlow of AlarmClockSample.10 extended to test the new attribute RenderWiresCaptions improved to handle LabelPosition parameter Next tutorial finished: Synchronizer Pattern (Version V6) (AD4.AlarmClockSample.V6.Sourcecode) ToDo: Some tutorials are unfinished but coming soon ... Refacturing (I'm not satisfied with the caption rendering steps) Note: The gluing code of...EWSEditor: EwsEditor 1.10 Release: • Export and import of items as a full fidelity steam works - without proxy classes! - I used raw EWS POSTs. • Turned off word wrap for EWS request field in EWS POST windows. • Several windows with scrolling texts boxes were limiting content to 32k - I removed this restriction. • Split server timezone info off to separate menu item from the timezone info windows so that the timezone info window could be used without logging into a mailbox. • Lots of updates to the TimeZone window. • UserAgen...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.1 RC: Release notes for PTVS 2.1 RC We’re pleased to announce the release candidate for Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, editing, IntelliSense, interactive debugging, profiling, Microsoft Azure, IPython, and cross-platform debugging support. PTVS 2.1 RC is available for: Visual Studio Expre...Aspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SS - v 1.2: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SS SDK in comparison with Aspose.Cells What's New ? Following Examples: Create Pivot Charts Detect Merged Cells Sort Data Printing Workbooks Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesPublic Key Infrastructure PowerShell module: PowerShell PKI Module v3.0: Important: I would like to hear more about what you are thinking about the project? I appreciate that you like it (2000 downloads over past 6 months), but may be you have to say something? What do you dislike in the module? Maybe you would love to see some new functionality? Tell, what you think! Installation guide:Use default installation path to install this module for current user only. To install this module for all users — enable "Install for all users" check-box in installation UI ...Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...jQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialBraintree Client Library: Braintree 2.32.0: Allow credit card verification options to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Allow billingaddress parameters and billingaddress_id to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Add Subscriptions to paypal accounts Add PaymentMethod.update Add failonduplicatepaymentmethod option to PaymentMethod.create Add support for dispute webhooksThe Mario Kart 8 App: V1.0.2.1: First Codeplex release. WINDOWS INSTALLER ONLYAspose Java for Docx4j: Aspose.Words vs Docx4j - v 1.0: Release contain the Code Comparison for Features in Docx4j SDK and Aspose.Words What's New ?Following Examples: Accessing Document Properties Add Bookmarks Convert to Formats Delete Bookmarks Working with Comments Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.File System Security PowerShell Module: NTFSSecurity 2.4.1: Add-Access and Remove-Access now take multiple accoutsYourSqlDba: YourSqlDba 5.2.1.: This version improves alert message that comes a while after script installation to check for a newer version. Also, it says now to get it from YourSqlDba.CodePlex.com If you don't want to update now, just-rerun the script from your installed version. To get info on actual version running, just run stored procedure YourSqlDba.install.PrintVersionInfo. . You can go to source code / history and click on change set 72957 to see changes in the script.Manipulator: Manipulator: manipulatorXNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: Paint.NET XNB plugin v0.4.0.0: CHANGELOG Reverted old incomplete changes. Updated library for compatibility with Paint .NET 4. Updated project to NET 4.5. Updated version to 0.4.0.0. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS Extract the ZIP file to your Paint.NET\FileTypes folder.EdiFabric: Release 4.1: Changed MessageContextWix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX: Release 1.0.0.0: Release 1.0.0.0 Custom UI Custom MSI Dialog Custom CLR Dialog External UIMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v3.2.0: Linear Algebra: Vector.Map2 (map2 in F#), storage-optimized Linear Algebra: fix RemoveColumn/Row early index bound check (was not strict enough) Statistics: Entropy ~Jeff Mastry Interpolation: use Array.BinarySearch instead of local implementation ~Candy Chiu Resources: fix a corrupted exception message string Portable Build: support .Net 4.0 as well by using profile 328 instead of 344. .Net 3.5: F# extensions now support .Net 3.5 as well .Net 3.5: NuGet package now contains pro...New ProjectsAll Pony Radio - The next generation: This is a third-party mobile application for accessing the Ponyville Live! radio streams. That's all I can think of right now. More later!AngularGo (SPA Project Template): AngularGo is a Visual Studio 2013 Web Project Template for creating SPA web project by integrating ASP.NET MVC + WebApi and AngularJS framework.BasketballRoster app: The BasketballRoster app from the Head First C# book.Code Bank: Code BankDeepSearch: Tool to search for text in multiple files Also searches inside archives recursivelyIIS AutoDeploy Tool: Tool that automates the deployment of IIS sites on machines that are inaccessible to MSBUILD, TFS etc. Includes web.config diff, dependency deploy and much moreIsaachomeEn: infomation of my websiteMWO User Code: User code for working with data for the game - MechWarriror: OnlineNFC First Steps: Work in progress!OpenWebERP.NET: Open Web ERP project created for users to use web based open source ERPPerrypheral Framework : M-V-VM ++: General Purpose C# and WPF / M-V-VM class libraries IOC inside!Sem.BrickPi: C# library to interact with the hardware module BrickPi from mono.Sharepoint geolocation field: Sharepoint geolocation fieldSSRS Deployment Center: The SSRS Deployment Center was created to ease SSRS report and data source deployments.Xaml Development Project's Repository: Colección de todo el código fuente de los distintos Cursos de xamldevelopment.blogspot.com.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 15, 2012Popular ReleasesTFS Workbench: TFS Workbench v2.2.0.10: Compiled installers for TFS Workbench 2.2.0.10 Bug Fix Fixed bug that stopped the change workspace action from working.MoltenMercury: MoltenMercury 1.0 beta 1: This is initial implementation of the MoltenMercury with everything running but not throughoutly tested. Release contains a zip file with program binaries and a zip file containing resources. Before using please create a new directory named data in the same directory with program executables and extract DefaultCharacter zip file in there. If you have ???????????, you can simply place executables into the same directory with the program mentioned above. MoltenMercury supports character resour...SharePoint Column & View Permission: SharePoint Column and View Permission v1.0: Version 1.0 of this project. If you will find any bugs please let me know at enti@zoznam.sk or post your findings in Issue TrackerSPListViewFilter: Version 1.6: Layout selection: http://blog.vitalyzhukov.ru/imagelibrary/120815/Settings_Layouts.pngConsoleHoster: ConsoleHoster Version 1.2: Cleanup some logging UI impreovements: Fixed the bug with _ character in project-name Fixed the bug with tab close button to be X style Fixed the style of search content bar Fixed the bug with disappearing Edit project window Moved the Clear History button to the taskbar and added also a menu item Changed the QC button to CH Applied project colors to tab headersMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.60: Allow for CSS3 grid-column and grid-row repeat syntax. Provide option for -analyze scope-report output to be in XML for easier programmatic processing; also allow for report to be saved to a separate output file.Diablo III Drop Statistics Service: 1.0: Client OnlyClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.67.2: v0.67.2 Fix when copying conditional formats with relative formulas v0.67.1 Misc fixes to the conditional formats v0.67.0 Conditional formats now accept formulas. Major performance improvement when opening files with merged ranges. Misc fixes.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.8.1: Whats newBug fixes: Fixed: When upgrading to 4.8.0, the database upgrade didn't run Update: unfortunately, upgrading with SQLCE is problematic, there's a workaround here: http://bit.ly/TEmMJN The changes to the <imaging> section in umbracoSettings.config caused errors when you didn't apply them during the upgrade. Defaults will now be used if any keys are missing Scheduled unpublishes now only unpublishes nodes set to published rather than newest Work item: 30937 - Fixed problem with Fi...MySqlBackup.NET - MySQL Backup Solution for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET: MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.4 Beta: MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.4 beta Fix bug: If the target database's default character set is not UTF8, UTF8 character will be encoded wrongly during Import. Now, database default character set will be recorded into Dump File at line of "SET NAMES". During import(restore), MySqlBackup will again detect and use the target database default character char set. MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.2 beta Fix bug: MySqlConnection is not closed when AutoCloseConnection set to true after Export or Import completed/halted. M...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET 4.5 and WinRT - Preview: The Unity 3.0.1208.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. This is an updated version of the port after the .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows 8 have RTM'ed. Please see the Release Notes Providing feedback Post your feedback on the Unity forum Submit and vote on new features for Unity on our Uservoice site.LiteBlog (MVC): LiteBlog 1.31: Features of this release Windows8 styled UI Namespace and code refactoring Resolved the deployment issues in the previous release Added documentation Help file Help file is HTML based built using SandCastle Help file works in all browsers except IE10Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 2.0.0 for VS11: Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight v 2.0.0 for Entity Framework 5.0 and Visual Studio 2012Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.0: New Stuff ImageTile Control - think People Tile MicrophoneRecorder - Coding4Fun.Phone.Audio GzipWebClient - Coding4Fun.Phone.Net Serialize - Coding4Fun.Phone.Storage this is code I've written countless times. JSON.net is another alternative ChatBubbleTextBox - Added in Hint TimeSpan languages added: Pl Bug Fixes RoundToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected OpacityToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected Prompts VS Crash fix for IsPrompt=true More...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.2 Unnamed: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to pack it. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Added 3rd person Added mario jumps Fixed nextprimary code exploit ...NPOI: NPOI 2.0: New features a. Implement OpenXml4Net (same as System.Packaging from Microsoft). It supports both .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0 b. Excel 2007 read/write library (NPOI.XSSF) c. Word 2007 read/write library(NPOI.XWPF) d. NPOI.SS namespace becomes the interface shared between XSSF and HSSF e. Load xlsx template and save as new xlsx file (partially supported) f. Diagonal line in cell both in xls and xlsx g. Support isRightToLeft and setRightToLeft on the common spreadsheet Sheet interface, as per existin...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...????: ????2.0.5: 1、?????????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.01: changes NEW: Added Support for Clipboard Function in Mono Version NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" links FIXED: "ImgChili.com" links FIXED: Kitty-Kats Forum loginPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 5): Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version Support for Windows 8 RTM ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SD...New ProjectsA Java Open Platform: A Java Open PlatformAutomation Tools: noneAzManPermissions: Allows AzMan (Authorization Manager) operation permission checks declaratively and imperatively. It can connect to AzMan stores directly or through a service.Configuration Manager 2012 Automation: Configuration Manager 2012 Automation is a powershell project to help perform the basic implementation of a CM12 infrastructure...Dynamicweb Blog Engine 2012: A simple blog engine built on Dynamicweb.E Lixo: Projeto E_LIXOEasy Windows Service Manager: Easy Windows Service Manager (ewsm) is a desktop utility that enables the easily management of Windows services. flexwork: A Flex Pluggable Extension FrameworkGit On Codeplex: Just trying git on CodePlexGT.BlogBox: Blogsite-Webtemplate for SharePoint 2010gvPoco: gvPoco is a .NET class library for the Google Visualization Charts API. IAllenSoft: IAllenSoft is a silverlight control library, which originates from some idea. Its target is to improve development productivity for silverlight projects. ListNetRanker: ListNetRanker is a listwise ranker based on machine learning. Given documents and query's feature set, ListNetRanker will rank these documents by ranking score.lvyao: stillMetro Tic-Tac-Toe: Tic-Tac-Toe is a Windows 8 developed using MonoGame for Windows 8. The intent of this code is to help XNA developers with porting their XNA apps to Windows 8myProject: my private code Nintemulator: Nintemulator is a work in progress multi-system emulator. Plans for emulated systems are NES, SNES, GB/GBC, GBA.Picnic Game: Picnic Game is a 2D game written in Small Basic. The objective is to get the pizza to the basket before you get stung or time runs out.Picnic Level Editor: Picnic Game is a 2D 3rd person game where you are an ant, and you have to gather the pizza and bring it to the basket before you get stung by a bee.ResCom: ResCom is a community response system for Windows Phone 8Scalable Object Persistence (SOP) Framework: Scalable object persistence (SOP) framework. RDBMS "index" like performance and scale on data Stores but without the unnecessary baggage, fine grained control.self-balancing-avl-tree: Self balancing AVL tree with Concat and Split operations.SEMS(synthetical evaluation management system): that's itsergionadal-mvc: Mvc para sistemas AndroidTFS Test Plan Builder: TFS Test plan builder is a tool to assis users of Microst Test Manager to build new test plans then moving from sprint to sprint or release to release The Excel Library: DExcelLibrary is a project that allows you to load and display "any" excel file given a specificaction of with areas/grids to loadTimePunch Metro Wpf Library: This library contains WPF controls and MVVM Implementation to create touch optimized applications in the new Windows 8 UI style formerly known as "Metro". UniPie: UniPie is a system wide pie menu system for sending key-mouse button combinations to certain applications. It can also convert one combo to another.xref: This is an extension of the classic FizzBuzz problem.ZombieRPG: Basic Zombie RPG game made using Game Maker??????: ZHJP

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 16, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 16, 2013Popular ReleasesEmployee Info Starter Kit: v6.0 - ASP.NET MVC Edition: Release Home - Getting Started - Hands on Coding Walkthrough – Technology Stack - Design & Architecture EISK v6.0 – ASP.NET MVC edition bundles most of the greatest and successful platforms, frameworks and technologies together, to enable web developers to learn and build manageable and high performance web applications with rich user experience effectively and quickly. User End SpecificationsCreating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee reco...OLAP PivotTable Extensions: Release 0.8.1: Use the 32-bit download for... Excel 2007 Excel 2010 32-bit (even Excel 2010 32-bit on a 64-bit operating system) Excel 2013 32-bit (even Excel 2013 32-bit on a 64-bit operating system) Use the 64-bit download for... Excel 2010 64-bit Excel 2013 64-bit Just download and run the EXE. There is no need to uninstall the previous release. If you have problems getting the add-in to work, see the Troubleshooting Installation wiki page. The new features in this release are: View #VALUE! Err...VidCoder: 1.4.22: New in 1.4.22 Added Xbox 360 preset, thanks to Relhak. Added Spanish translation, thanks to fantasmanegro. Added Basque translation, thanks to azpidatziak. Fixed behavior of custom anamorphic auto display width and max width/height. Fixed double-logging on local encodes. Fixed remote encoder not using libdvdnav even when enabled, which had caused some problems with multi-angle DVDs. New in 1.4 Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.9 Blu-ray subtitle (PGS) support Additional framerates: 30...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 3.0.0.440: Version: 3.0.0.440 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Please build the whole solution before you start one of the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2012) Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete Samples: Use ValueConverters via StaticResource instead of x:Static. Other Downloads Downloads OverviewSFDL.NET: SFDL.NET v1.1.0.5: Changelog: Implemeted SFDL Container v4 (AES Encryption, Set Character Set) Added Stopwatch (download time) Many Bugfixes and ImprovementsBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.1: 2013.06.13 Ver5.9.1 (1) Web??????SSI?#include???、CGI?????????????????????? (2) ???????????????????????????Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2.1 RTM: - Dynamic text localization - A new application wide message busFree language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 3.3: some bug fixes and a new link to video tutorials on Youtube.Pokemon Battle Online: ETV: ETV???2012?12??????，????，???????$/PBO/branches/PrivateBeta??。 ???????bug???????。 ???? Server??????，?????。 ?????????，?????????????，?????????。 ????????，????，?????????，???????????（??）??。 ???? ????????????。 ???????。 ???PP????，????????????????????PP????，??3。 ?????????????，??????????。 ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????????、???????????，??“???????”??。 ???bug ???Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This set contains 2 samples that illustrates the use of: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (W...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1.BETA Unit test Generator Documentation: Welcome to the Unit Test Generator Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a dev to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test framewor...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.VR Player: VR Player 0.3.1 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesNew ProjectsADJD-S311-CR99 Colour Sensor Arduino: Integrating the Avago ADJD-s311-CR999 with ArduinoBerkeley Algorithm: student project for DS course Berkeley Algorithm C#Code Kata - HarryPotter Win8: HarryPotter Series discount programming excerciseHad CMS: Had CMSjean0615mercurialmm: ddjet.version.Incrementor: It's a console tool parse AssemblyInfo.cs files in given directory and set AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion attribtes to given version. It can be easilyLogger - logging for your .NET project using file, mail, debug output: A light weight yet competent logger for .NET with configurable output modules, such as log file, e-mail and debug log. Easy to add your own output module if needed.MatUtils: Um projecto onde se incluem algumas ferramentas matemáticas.MoGo Mobile: The first makings of an open source Mobile Game!myFirstHTML5: Project was to create a mobile responsive websiteNeTools: This Tool Allows You To Know & Monitor Your Network Better. You'l Be Able To Hijack The Network's Traffic, Poison The Network, Kick Devices From It & Many More.Prism Photo Browser: This is a functioning photo browser written in C# for a WPF platform implementing the Model View View-Model (MVVM) design pattern and PrismQuesTime: This is a quiz projectSM130 Arduino Integration: A project to integrate an SM130 RFID module with Arduino.SQL Server Analysis Services Cube Status Web Part for SharePoint: The Cube Status project provides a SharePoint Web Part that connects to a SQL Server Analysis Services instance and shows the status of a specific cubeSQLite Sync for Windows Phone 8: Project Description This project is the Windows Phone 8 implementation of the Sync Framework Toolkit to enable synchronization with Windows Phone 8 and SQLite.Test Project: testTool To Recover or Restore Windows 7 Files: Impossible Is Nothing!: Get easy to use Windows 2007 Recovery software which is fully helpful application that can easily recover or restore Windows 2007 files with full of quality.Vitus Localization: An Orchard module containing a collection of features useful for localized or multilingual Orchard websites.Wedn.Net: Blog ????: ????? ??? ?????? ????? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ?? ??? ???????

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 2): Dependencies

  - by Simon Cooper

  In developing Schema Compare for Oracle, one of the issues we came across was the size of the databases. As detailed in my last blog post, we had to allow schema pre-filtering due to the number of objects in a standard Oracle database. Unfortunately, this leads to some quite tricky situations regarding object dependencies. This post explains how we deal with these dependencies. 1. Cross-schema dependencies Say, in the following database, you're populating SchemaA, and synchronizing SchemaA.Table1: SOURCE   TARGET CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER REFERENCES SchemaB.Table1(Col1));   CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100) REFERENCES SchemaB.Table1(Col1)); CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER PRIMARY KEY);   CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100) PRIMARY KEY); We need to do a rebuild of SchemaA.Table1 to change Col1 from a VARCHAR2(100) to a NUMBER. This consists of: Creating a table with the new schema Inserting data from the old table to the new table, with appropriate conversion functions (in this case, TO_NUMBER) Dropping the old table Rename new table to same name as old table Unfortunately, in this situation, the rebuild will fail at step 1, as we're trying to create a NUMBER column with a foreign key reference to a VARCHAR2(100) column. As we're only populating SchemaA, the naive implementation of the object population prefiltering (sticking a WHERE owner = 'SCHEMAA' on all the data dictionary queries) will generate an incorrect sync script. What we actually have to do is: Drop foreign key constraint on SchemaA.Table1 Rebuild SchemaB.Table1 Rebuild SchemaA.Table1, adding the foreign key constraint to the new table This means that in order to generate a correct synchronization script for SchemaA.Table1 we have to know what SchemaB.Table1 is, and that it also needs to be rebuilt to successfully rebuild SchemaA.Table1. SchemaB isn't the schema that the user wants to synchronize, but we still have to load the table and column information for SchemaB.Table1 the same way as any table in SchemaA. Fortunately, Oracle provides (mostly) complete dependency information in the dictionary views. Before we actually read the information on all the tables and columns in the database, we can get dependency information on all the objects that are either pointed at by objects in the schemas we’re populating, or point to objects in the schemas we’re populating (think about what would happen if SchemaB was being explicitly populated instead), with a suitable query on all_constraints (for foreign key relationships) and all_dependencies (for most other types of dependencies eg a function using another function). The extra objects found can then be included in the actual object population, and the sync wizard then has enough information to figure out the right thing to do when we get to actually synchronize the objects. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough. 2. Dependency chains The solution above will only get the immediate dependencies of objects in populated schemas. What if there’s a chain of dependencies? A.tbl1 -> B.tbl1 -> C.tbl1 -> D.tbl1 If we’re only populating SchemaA, the implementation above will only include B.tbl1 in the dependent objects list, whereas we might need to know about C.tbl1 and D.tbl1 as well, in order to ensure a modification on A.tbl1 can succeed. What we actually need is a graph traversal on the dependency graph that all_dependencies represents. Fortunately, we don’t have to read all the database dependency information from the server and run the graph traversal on the client computer, as Oracle provides a method of doing this in SQL – CONNECT BY. So, we can put all the dependencies we want to include together in big bag with UNION ALL, then run a SELECT ... CONNECT BY on it, starting with objects in the schema we’re populating. We should end up with all the objects that might be affected by modifications in the initial schema we’re populating. Good solution? Well, no. For one thing, it’s sloooooow. all_dependencies, on my test databases, has got over 110,000 rows in it, and the entire query, for which Oracle was creating a temporary table to hold the big bag of graph edges, was often taking upwards of two minutes. This is too long, and would only get worse for large databases. But it had some more fundamental problems than just performance. 3. Comparison dependencies Consider the following schema: SOURCE   TARGET CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER REFERENCES SchemaB.Table1(col1));   CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100)); CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER PRIMARY KEY);   CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100)); What will happen if we used the dependency algorithm above on the source & target database? Well, SchemaA.Table1 has a foreign key reference to SchemaB.Table1, so that will be included in the source database population. On the target, SchemaA.Table1 has no such reference. Therefore SchemaB.Table1 will not be included in the target database population. In the resulting comparison of the two objects models, what you will end up with is: SOURCE  TARGET SchemaA.Table1 -> SchemaA.Table1 SchemaB.Table1 -> (no object exists) When this comparison is synchronized, we will see that SchemaB.Table1 does not exist, so we will try the following sequence of actions: Create SchemaB.Table1 Rebuild SchemaA.Table1, with foreign key to SchemaB.Table1 Oops. Because the dependencies are only followed within a single database, we’ve tried to create an object that already exists. To fix this we can include any objects found as dependencies in the source or target databases in the object population of both databases. SchemaB.Table1 will then be included in the target database population, and we won’t try and create objects that already exist. All good? Well, consider the following schema (again, only explicitly populating SchemaA, and synchronizing SchemaA.Table1): SOURCE   TARGET CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER REFERENCES SchemaB.Table1(col1));   CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100)); CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER PRIMARY KEY);   CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100) PRIMARY KEY); CREATE TABLE SchemaC.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER);   CREATE TABLE SchemaC.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100) REFERENCES SchemaB.Table1); Although we’re now including SchemaB.Table1 on both sides of the comparison, there’s a third table (SchemaC.Table1) that we don’t know about that will cause the rebuild of SchemaB.Table1 to fail if we try and synchronize SchemaA.Table1. That’s because we’re only running the dependency query on the schemas we’re explicitly populating; to solve this issue, we would have to run the dependency query again, but this time starting the graph traversal from the objects found in the other database. Furthermore, this dependency chain could be arbitrarily extended.This leads us to the following algorithm for finding all the dependencies of a comparison: Find initial dependencies of schemas the user has selected to compare on the source and target Include these objects in both the source and target object populations Run the dependency query on the source, starting with the objects found as dependents on the target, and vice versa Repeat 2 & 3 until no more objects are found For the schema above, this will result in the following sequence of actions: Find initial dependenciesSchemaA.Table1 -> SchemaB.Table1 found on sourceNo objects found on target Include objects in both source and targetSchemaB.Table1 included in source and target Run dependency query, starting with found objectsNo objects to start with on sourceSchemaB.Table1 -> SchemaC.Table1 found on target Include objects in both source and targetSchemaC.Table1 included in source and target Run dependency query on found objectsNo objects found in sourceNo objects to start with in target Stop This will ensure that we include all the necessary objects to make any synchronization work. However, there is still the issue of query performance; the CONNECT BY on the entire database dependency graph is still too slow. After much sitting down and drawing complicated diagrams, we decided to move the graph traversal algorithm from the server onto the client (which turned out to run much faster on the client than on the server); and to ensure we don’t read the entire dependency graph onto the client we also pull the graph across in bits – we start off with dependency edges involving schemas selected for explicit population, and whenever the graph traversal comes across a dependency reference to a schema we don’t yet know about a thunk is hit that pulls in the dependency information for that schema from the database. We continue passing more dependent objects back and forth between the source and target until no more dependency references are found. This gives us the list of all the extra objects to populate in the source and target, and object population can then proceed. 4. Object blacklists and fast dependencies When we tested this solution, we were puzzled in that in some of our databases most of the system schemas (WMSYS, ORDSYS, EXFSYS, XDB, etc) were being pulled in, and this was increasing the database registration and comparison time quite significantly. After debugging, we discovered that the culprits were database tables that used one of the Oracle PL/SQL types (eg the SDO_GEOMETRY spatial type). These were creating a dependency chain from the database tables we were populating to the system schemas, and hence pulling in most of the system objects in that schema. To solve this we introduced blacklists of objects we wouldn’t follow any dependency chain through. As well as the Oracle-supplied PL/SQL types (MDSYS.SDO_GEOMETRY, ORDSYS.SI_COLOR, among others) we also decided to blacklist the entire PUBLIC and SYS schemas, as any references to those would likely lead to a blow up in the dependency graph that would massively increase the database registration time, and could result in the client running out of memory. Even with these improvements, each dependency query was taking upwards of a minute. We discovered from Oracle execution plans that there were some columns, with dependency information we required, that were querying system tables with no indexes on them! To cut a long story short, running the following query: SELECT * FROM all_tab_cols WHERE data_type_owner = ‘XDB’; results in a full table scan of the SYS.COL$ system table! This single clause was responsible for over half the execution time of the dependency query. Hence, the ‘Ignore slow dependencies’ option was born – not querying this and a couple of similar clauses to drastically speed up the dependency query execution time, at the expense of producing incorrect sync scripts in rare edge cases. Needless to say, along with the sync script action ordering, the dependency code in the database registration is one of the most complicated and most rewritten parts of the Schema Compare for Oracle engine. The beta of Schema Compare for Oracle is out now; if you find a bug in it, please do tell us so we can get it fixed!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 07, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 07, 2013Popular ReleasesASP.NET MVC Forum: MVCForum v1.3.5: This is a bug release version, with a couple of small usability features and UI changes. All the small amount of bugs reported in v1.3 have been fixed, no upgrade needed just overwrite the files and everything should just work.Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 6: New feature - Added serialized/deserialized JSON to verbose tracing New feature - Added support for using type name handling with ISerializable content Fix - Fixed not using default serializer settings with primitive values and JToken.ToObject Fix - Fixed error writing BigIntegers with JsonWriter.WriteToken Fix - Fixed serializing and deserializing flag enums with EnumMember attribute Fix - Fixed error deserializing interfaces with a valid type converter Fix - Fixed error deser...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.3 for VS2012: V2.3 - Release Date 6/5/2013 Items addressed in this 2.3 release Fixed bad namespace for BusinessController in one of the C# templates. Updated documentation in all templates. Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesPulse: Pulse 0.6.7.0: A number of small bug fixes to stabilize the previous Beta. Sorry about the never ending "New Version" bug!ZXMAK2: Version 2.7.5.3: - debugger: add LPC indicator (last executed opcode pc) - add host joystick support (written by Eltaron) - change file extension for CMOS PENTEVO to "cmos" - add hardware value monitor (see Memory Map for PENTEVO/ATM/PROFI)QlikView Extension - Animated Scatter Chart: Animated Scatter Chart - v1.0: Version 1.0 including Source Code qar File Example QlikView application Tested With: Browser Firefox 20 (x64) Google Chrome 27 (x64) Internet Explorer 9 QlikView QlikView Desktop 11 - SR2 (x64) QlikView Desktop 11.2 - SR1 (x64) QlikView Ajax Client 11.2 - SR2 (based on x64)BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 7.2: Warning: HTTP Tunnel is not compatible with version 6.x and prior, HTTP packet format has been changed. Check Version History for more information about this release.SuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.8: This release includes these changes below: Upgrade SuperSocket to 1.5.3 which is much more stable Added handshake request validating api (WebSocketServer.ValidateHandshake(TWebSocketSession session, string origin)) Fixed a bug that the m_Filters in the SubCommandBase can be null if the command's method LoadSubCommandFilters(IEnumerable<SubCommandFilterAttribute> globalFilters) is not invoked Fixed the compatibility issue on Origin getting in the different version protocols Marked ISub...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.0: 2013.06.04 Ver5.9.0 (1) ?????????????????????????????????($Remote.ini Tmp.ini) (2) ThreadBaseTest?? (3) ????POP3??????SMTP???????????????? (4) Web???????、?????????URL??????????????? (5) Ftp???????、LIST?????????????? (6) ?????????????????????Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.569b: New* Movies - Autoscrape/Batch Rescrape extra fanart and or extra thumbs. * Movies - Alternative editor can add manually actors. * TV - Batch Rescraper, AutoScrape extrafanart, if option enabled. Fixed* Movies - Slow performance switching to movie tab by adding option 'Disable "Not Matching Rename Pattern"' to Movie Preferences - General. * Movies - Fixed only actors with images were scraped and added to nfo * Movies - Fixed filter reset if selected tab was above Home Movies. * Updated Medi...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v9.0: Version 9.0 of Nearforums with great new features for users and developers: SQL Azure support Admin UI for Forum Categories Avoid html validation for certain roles Improve profile picture moderation and support Warn, suspend, and ban users Web administration of site settings Extensions support Visit the Roadmap for more details. Webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 9.0.0.0: e687ee0438cd2b1df1d3e95ecb9d66e7c538293b Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.93: Added -esc:BOOL switch (CodeSettings.AlwaysEscapeNonAscii property) to always force non-ASCII character (ch > 0x7f) to be escaped as the JavaScript \uXXXX sequence. This switch should be used if creating a Symbol Map and outputting the result to the a text encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 (ASCII, for instance). Fixed a bug where a complex comma operation is the operand of a return statement, and it was looking at the wrong variable for possible optimization of = to just .VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.42: changes NEW: Added Support for "GatASexyCity.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgCloud.co" links NEW: Added Support for "ImGirl.info" links NEW: Added Support for "SexyImg.com" links FIXED: "ImageBam.com" linksDocument.Editor: 2013.22: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.22: Improved Bullet List support Improved Number List support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCarrotCake, an ASP.Net WebForms CMS: Binaries and PDFs - Zip Archive (v. 4.3 20130528): Features include a content management system and a robust featured blogging engine. This includes configurable date based blog post URLs, blog post content association with categories and tags, assignment/customization of category and tag URL patterns, simple blog post feedback collection and review, blog post pagination/indexes, designation of default blog page (required to make search, category links, or tag links function), URL date formatting patterns, RSS feed support for posts and pages...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.9: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.10 Beta: Fixed issue with some people having a folder called "android-4.2.2" in their build-tools path. - 16223 Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.402: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.4. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop3 2013.05.31: Drop 3DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 3.0.1 Added new chart types: Arearange, Areasplinerange, Columnrange, Gauge, Boxplot, Waterfall, Funnel and Bubble Added new type PercentageOrPixel which represents value of number or number with percentage. Used for sizes, width, height, length, etc. Removed inheritances in YAxis option classes. Closed issues: 682: Missing property - XAxisPlotLinesLabel.Text 688: backgroundColor and plotBackgroundColor are...New ProjectsAccountingTest: just to learn asp.net mvc 3 Agile Poker Cards for Windows Mobile: During a scrum or other agile processes, you have to estimate the size of a user story during a planning session. With the Agile Poker Cards program there is no need for using real cards anymore!Buildinator: Buildinator generates TFS Build definitions from an XML file, enabling canonical "templates" that make it easy to add or copy build definitions.Clipboard Capture Plugin: Captures an image in the clipboard and gives you more options to insert the image into Live WriterComercial HS: Commercial hsCommonExtranet: CommonExtranet is a basis for an Extranet web site with a user authentication mechanism that incorporates password aging and various features expected on a domain LogOnDataVeryLite: DataVeryLite is a lightweight *Persistence Framework*. DataVeryLite???????*?????*. ??????Nhibernate?????,??Linq to sql???????,?????DataVeryLite.daydayup: snd\realdamon_cpDNN Extension Url Providers: The DNN Extension Url Providers project contains installable extensions for extending DNN URL functionality.DotNetNuke Kitchen Sink: A sample module project for DotNetNuke with a variety of different scenarios covered.Football Team Management: Manage team, player, match and staffFreePiano: Play piano using your computer keyboard.GIF animator: Dev in progessI'm Feeling Lucky Plugin: Lets you put a link in that acts as though doing an I'm Feeling Lucky search.Insert Video Jnr: This is a baby version of my Video plugin, it is intended for Hosted Wordpress blogs only and shouldn't be used with other blog providers.jabbrmercurial: 22Kax.WebControls.RadioButtonList: Web Custom Control that extend RadioButtonList to allow uncheckable state.Kinect Screen Aware: Kinect Screen Aware uses a Kinect to detect touch, hover, gestures, and voice on a standard television display. It's designed to be low cost and easy to setuplppbop: Aplikasi Laporan Bantuan Operasional PendidikanmobiSms: mobismsnga: National Geography of AzerothRadminPassword: ????????? ??? ??????????????? ????? ??????? ? ????????? ????????? ?????????? ?????????? ?? Radmin. A program to automatically enter the passwords in the famous PC remote control software Radmin.Rx Heat: Rx Heat is a library of helper classes that complements the Reactive Extensions Library with additional features. Schema Generator: The basic idea behind this utility is to emit the database schema from an existing SQL Server database. From a developer perspective, it is sometimes very much handy to quickly take a printout of the database structure for creating the UI layout.SharePoint Packager: Perform the instalation, upgrade and retraction of Ms Sharepoint Applications fast, easy and efficientsmartTouch: :-)SpotifyLync: A small tray application that reports your Spotify status to your Microsoft Lync client. Alos contains additional Spotify / Lync features.Syngine: A simple to use game framework using MonoGame and Farseer Physicstest060601CM: testtestMC053003: testToSic.Eav: A powerfull EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) system created by 2sic Internet Solutions in Switzerland. It's currently mainly used inside 2SexyContent for DotNetNukeTraceLight: <project name> TraceLight ray tracer </project name> <programming language> C# </programming language>trakr: minimalist webtracking software written in python and twistedTwitterXML: A .NET wrapper library for the Twitter REST API. Currently, all of the methods return an XMLDocument. Also included are classes for Users, Statuses, and Direct Messages that use XML serialization for converting the XML responses to objects with a Deserialize() call.Universal Parking Centre: Universal Parking Centre is a website-based software developed by Center Code to help you in organizing your parking business.Velocity OS: Be fast, Be strong. It's Velocity.WinKeGen Code Samples: This project will allow beginning developers a close look at some code samples and variations of how to use those samples in their own code.WinRT Synth lib: Project Description this project aims to provide an easy-to-use API, for sound synthesis under winrt, in c#. It use the XAudio2 api for the playback of the sounWpfCollaborative3D: WpfCollaborative3DX-Parking: Our online parking sites , try at : x-parking.pemrogramaninternet.infoYnote Plugins: Ynote Classic Plugins which help in transforming Ynote Classic into a powerful HTML / XML Editor or an IDE.

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• How Mature is Your Database Change Management Process?

  - by Ben Rees

  .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database Delivery Patterns & Practices Further Reading Organization and team processes How do you get your database schema changes live, on to your production system? As your team of developers and DBAs are working on the changes to the database to support your business-critical applications, how do these updates wend their way through from dev environments, possibly to QA, hopefully through pre-production and eventually to production in a controlled, reliable and repeatable way? In this article, I describe a model we use to try and understand the different stages that customers go through as their database change management processes mature, from the very basic and manual, through to advanced continuous delivery practices. I also provide a simple chart that will help you determine “How mature is our database change management process?” This process of managing changes to the database – which all of us who have worked in application/database development have had to deal with in one form or another – is sometimes known as Database Change Management (even if we’ve never used the term ourselves). And it’s a difficult process, often painfully so. Some developers take the approach of “I’ve no idea how my changes get live – I just write the stored procedures and add columns to the tables. It’s someone else’s problem to get this stuff live. I think we’ve got a DBA somewhere who deals with it – I don’t know, I’ve never met him/her”. I know I used to work that way. I worked that way because I assumed that making the updates to production was a trivial task – how hard can it be? Pause the application for half an hour in the middle of the night, copy over the changes to the app and the database, and switch it back on again? Voila! But somehow it never seemed that easy. And it certainly was never that easy for database changes. Why? Because you can’t just overwrite the old database with the new version. Databases have a state – more specifically 4Tb of critical data built up over the last 12 years of running your business, and if your quick hotfix happened to accidentally delete that 4Tb of data, then you’re “Looking for a new role” pretty quickly after the failed release. There are a lot of other reasons why a managed database change management process is important for organisations, besides job security, not least: Frequency of releases. Many business managers are feeling the pressure to get functionality out to their users sooner, quicker and more reliably. The new book (which I highly recommend) Lean Enterprise by Jez Humble, Barry O’Reilly and Joanne Molesky provides a great discussion on how many enterprises are having to move towards a leaner, more frequent release cycle to maintain their competitive advantage. It’s no longer acceptable to release once per year, leaving your customers waiting all year for changes they desperately need (and expect) Auditing and compliance. SOX, HIPAA and other compliance frameworks have demanded that companies implement proper processes for managing changes to their databases, whether managing schema changes, making sure that the data itself is being looked after correctly or other mechanisms that provide an audit trail of changes. We’ve found, at Red Gate that we have a very wide range of customers using every possible form of database change management imaginable. Everything from “Nothing – I just fix the schema on production from my laptop when things go wrong, and write it down in my notebook” to “A full Continuous Delivery process – any change made by a dev gets checked in and recorded, fully tested (including performance tests) before a (tested) release is made available to our Release Management system, ready for live deployment!”. And everything in between of course. Because of the vast number of customers using so many different approaches we found ourselves struggling to keep on top of what everyone was doing – struggling to identify patterns in customers’ behavior. This is useful for us, because we want to try and fit the products we have to different needs – different products are relevant to different customers and we waste everyone’s time (most notably, our customers’) if we’re suggesting products that aren’t appropriate for them. If someone visited a sports store, looking to embark on a new fitness program, and the store assistant suggested the latest $10,000 multi-gym, complete with multiple weights mechanisms, dumb-bells, pull-up bars and so on, then he’s likely to lose that customer. All he needed was a pair of running shoes! To solve this issue – in an attempt to simplify how we understand our customers and our offerings – we built a model. This is a an attempt at trying to classify our customers in to some sort of model or “Customer Maturity Framework” as we rather grandly term it, which somehow simplifies our understanding of what our customers are doing. The great statistician, George Box (amongst other things, the “Box” in the Box-Jenkins time series model) gave us the famous quote: “Essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful” We’ve taken this quote to heart – we know it’s a gross over-simplification of the real world of how users work with complex legacy and new database developments. Almost nobody precisely fits in to one of our categories. But we hope it’s useful and interesting. There are actually a number of similar models that exist for more general application delivery. We’ve found these from ThoughtWorks/Forrester, from InfoQ and others, and initially we tried just taking these models and replacing the word “application” for “database”. However, we hit a problem. From talking to our customers we know that users are far less further down the road of mature database change management than they are for application development. As a simple example, no application developer, who wants to keep his/her job would develop an application for an organisation without source controlling that code. Sure, he/she might not be using an advanced Gitflow branching methodology but they’ll certainly be making sure their code gets managed in a repo somewhere with all the benefits of history, auditing and so on. But this certainly isn’t the case (yet) for the database – a very large segment of the people we speak to have no source control set up for their databases whatsoever, even at the most basic level (for example, keeping change scripts in a source control system somewhere). By the way, if this is you, Red Gate has a great whitepaper here, on the barriers people face getting a source control process implemented at their organisations. This difference in maturity is the same as you move in to areas such as continuous integration (common amongst app developers, relatively rare for database developers) and automated release management (growing amongst app developers, very rare for the database). So, when we created the model we started from scratch and biased the levels of maturity towards what we actually see amongst our customers. But, what are these stages? And what level are you? The table below describes our definitions for four levels of maturity – Baseline, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. As I say, this is a model – you won’t fit any of these categories perfectly, but hopefully one will ring true more than others. We’ve also created a PDF with a flow chart to help you find which of these groups most closely matches your team:  Download the Database Delivery Maturity Framework PDF here   Level D1 – Baseline Work directly on live databases Sometimes work directly in production Generate manual scripts for releases. Sometimes use a product like SQL Compare or similar to do this Any tests that we might have are run manually Level D2 – Beginner Have some ad-hoc DB version control such as manually adding upgrade scripts to a version control system Attempt is made to keep production in sync with development environments There is some documentation and planning of manual deployments Some basic automated DB testing in process Level D3 – Intermediate The database is fully version-controlled with a product like Red Gate SQL Source Control or SSDT Database environments are managed Production environment schema is reproducible from the source control system There are some automated tests Have looked at using migration scripts for difficult database refactoring cases Level D4 – Advanced Using continuous integration for database changes Build, testing and deployment of DB changes carried out through a proper database release process Fully automated tests Production system is monitored for fast feedback to developers   Does this model reflect your team at all? Where are you on this journey? We’d be very interested in knowing how you get on. We’re doing a lot of work at the moment, at Red Gate, trying to help people progress through these stages. For example, if you’re currently not source controlling your database, then this is a natural next step. If you are already source controlling your database, what about the next stage – continuous integration and automated release management? To help understand these issues, there’s a summary of the Red Gate Database Delivery learning program on our site, alongside a Patterns and Practices library here on Simple-Talk and a Training Academy section on our documentation site to help you get up and running with the tools you need to progress. All feedback is welcome and it would be great to hear where you find yourself on this journey! This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 09, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 09, 2011Popular ReleasesEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.10 BETA: 2.2.10 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Removed the part...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 7: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 7 ChangesFixes the regression issue in OAuth from Preview 6 Preview 6 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.0.6: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 3.5 Release 8: http://json.codeplex.comExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...sNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9d: added elementclient coordinate catcher to catch coordinates select a target (ingame) i.e. your char, npc or monster than click the button and coordinates+direction will be transfered to the selected row in the table corrected labels from Rot to Direction (because it is a vector)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.2: Implemented the Auto Updater Fix: Your settings will no longer be cleared with new releases of AutoLoL The mastery Editor and Browser now have their own tabs instead of nested tabs The Browser tab will only show the masteries matching ALL filters instead of just one Added a 'Browse' button in the Mastery Editor tab to open the Masteries Directory The Browser tab now shows a message when there are no mastery files in the Masteries Directory Fix: Fixed the Save As dialog again, for ...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance.SSH.NET Library: 2011.1.6: Fixes CommandTimeout default value is fixed to infinite. Port Forwarding feature improvements Memory leaks fixes New Features Add ErrorOccurred event to handle errors that occurred on different thread New and improve SFTP features SftpFile now has more attributes and some operations Most standard operations now available Allow specify encoding for command execution KeyboardInteractiveConnectionInfo class added for "keyboard-interactive" authentication. Add ability to specify bo....NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...EFMVC - ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: EFMVC 0.5- ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: Demo web app ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code FirstVidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffAllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1 It is a minor update from version 1.2xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7 Beta: xUnit.net release 1.7 betaBuild #1533 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision)...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...ASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.2: Atomic CMS 2.1.2 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide N2 CMS: 2.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) All-round improvements and bugfixes File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open the proj...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.10: IMPORTANT CHANGESThis release changes the way some WURFL capabilities and attributes are exposed to .NET developers. If you cast MobileCapabilities to return some values then please read the Release Note before implementing this release. The following code snippet can be used to access any WURFL capability. For instance, if the device is a tablet: string capability = Request.Browser["is_tablet"]; SummaryNew attributes have been added to the redirect section: originalUrlAsQueryString If se...New Projects[OOBL] Projekt: Projekt iz kolegija Objektno Oblikovanje na Fakultetu Elektrotehnike i Racunarstva u Zagrebu.Aikido Glossary Reader: The Aikido Glossary Reader application makes it easier for Aikido students to search for Japanese terms used in martial arts training.AsyncFunc: AsyncFunc makes it easy to implement Event-based Asynchronous Pattern in .NET.BeijingAgricultureScience: ???????????BizTalk 5010 999 Generation: Create 5010 999 acknowledgement from the default 997 Generated by BizTalk ServerCheck if Knowledge Base fix is installed script: A handy script that checks if a knowledge base fix is installed or not.Coproject - rich project management: Coproject is a sample Silverlight application built on WCF RIA Services and Caliburn.Micro framework. It should demonstrate typical scenarios in business applications.DeskNote: DeskNote, makes taking and displaying a notes a lot easier. Have your notes on your desktop, write your notes in a text file and it will be automatically displayed on the desktop. DriveBackup: Are you tired of losing data? And do you sometimes forget to backup your data? Then this program is right for you, one-time setup with each new removable disk and after that Drive Backup instantly backs up your data in the background, without you pushing a button.ELSEngine XNA Game OS Engine: XNA Game Operating System Engine, designed to handle and make easy to use Interface, Interface assets, game screens, menus, controls, and more. Designed to be adaptable to XBOX or Windows, and to ANY style game.FermaProject: Team Ferma ProjectHalfNetworkNET: HalfNetworkNET makes it easier for <target user group> to <activity>. You'll no longer have to <activity>. It's developed in C++/CLILFS Record: LFS Record is a camera animation and video recording tool for Live for Speed users. It doesn't replace programs like Fraps 100%, but in most cases you'll find LFS Record allows a lot more freedom and control. It's developed in C# using WPF .net 4.MPC HC Web remote: A Web interface for Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Designed especialy for smart phones. Tested on Nokia 5800, but in theory it works on all smart phones with wifi & a browser.MSMS2CMP: Very simple application to swap particular strings (MSMS and CMPD number) in .mgf files (results from Mascot search engine used to identify proteins by mass spectrometry data). This might be a kind of example of using Regex and Text File I/OMy Now Playing to Twitter: A Simple WinForm Program that can get what user is playing in Winamp and send a status to Twitter. It's wrote in VB.Net but some source code is port of MiniTwitter(http://minitwitter.codeplex.com)and uses tagLib-sharp library(https://github.com/mono/taglib-sharp)RPM Header for .NET: RPM Header for .NET allows a developer to access the headers of RPM Package Manager files. It's developed in C#.SilverMenu: SilverMenu brings some of the menu functionality of Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 to the XNA world.Smartgrid Smartmeter GRYD: The GRYD smartgrid and Smartmeter project shows features and capabilities like Demand Response, Smart Home Appliance Load Curtailments, DMS integration with SCADA etc. GRYD, Gryd.org is to teach you the technology, this is only for personal use and not commercial use.WakeMeQt: WakeMeQt is a smart alarm for the Nokia n810 (and probably n800) internet tablets. Using a Nintendo Wii remote as the sensor it monitors your movements during sleep and chooses the optimal time to wake you. It's developed in C++ using the Qt framework.WPF SplitButton & MenuButton: This WPF SplitButton and MenuButton implementation aims to be more robust and visual attractive than the other WPF split buttons available on CodePlex and elsewhere. The code is based on David Anson's implementation made available on his blog.Y2XMas: Merry Chirstmas - Happy New Year 2011 software

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• Xml Serialization and the [Obsolete] Attribute

  - by PSteele

  I learned something new today: Starting with .NET 3.5, the XmlSerializer no longer serializes properties that are marked with the Obsolete attribute.  I can’t say that I really agree with this.  Marking something Obsolete is supposed to be something for a developer to deal with in source code.  Once an object is serialized to XML, it becomes data.  I think using the Obsolete attribute as both a compiler flag as well as controlling XML serialization is a bad idea. In this post, I’ll show you how I ran into this and how I got around it. The Setup Let’s start with some make-believe code to demonstrate the issue.  We have a simple data class for storing some information.  We use XML serialization to read and write the data: public class MyData { public int Age { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public List<String> Hobbies { get; set; }   public MyData() { this.Hobbies = new List<string>(); } } Now a few simple lines of code to serialize it to XML: static void Main(string[] args) { var data = new MyData {    FirstName = "Zachary", LastName = "Smith", Age = 50, Hobbies = {"Mischief", "Sabotage"}, }; var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof (MyData)); serializer.Serialize(Console.Out, data); Console.ReadKey(); } And this is what we see on the console: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="IBM437"?> <MyData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Age>50</Age> <FirstName>Zachary</FirstName> <LastName>Smith</LastName> <Hobbies> <string>Mischief</string> <string>Sabotage</string> </Hobbies> </MyData>   The Change So we decided to track the hobbies as a list of strings.  As always, things change and we have more information we need to store per-hobby.  We create a custom “Hobby” object, add a List<Hobby> to our MyData class and we obsolete the old “Hobbies” list to let developers know they shouldn’t use it going forward: public class Hobby { public string Name { get; set; } public int Frequency { get; set; } public int TimesCaught { get; set; }   public override string ToString() { return this.Name; } } public class MyData { public int Age { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } [Obsolete("Use HobbyData collection instead.")] public List<String> Hobbies { get; set; } public List<Hobby> HobbyData { get; set; }   public MyData() { this.Hobbies = new List<string>(); this.HobbyData = new List<Hobby>(); } } Here’s the kicker: This serialization is done in another application.  The consumers of the XML will be older clients (clients that expect only a “Hobbies” collection) as well as newer clients (that support the new “HobbyData” collection).  This really shouldn’t be a problem – the obsolete attribute is metadata for .NET compilers.  Unfortunately, the XmlSerializer also looks at the compiler attribute to determine what items to serialize/deserialize.  Here’s an example of our problem: static void Main(string[] args) { var xml = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""IBM437""?> <MyData xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"" xmlns:xsd=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema""> <Age>50</Age> <FirstName>Zachary</FirstName> <LastName>Smith</LastName> <Hobbies> <string>Mischief</string> <string>Sabotage</string> </Hobbies> </MyData>"; var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyData)); var stream = new StringReader(xml); var data = (MyData) serializer.Deserialize(stream);   if( data.Hobbies.Count != 2) { throw new ApplicationException("Hobbies did not deserialize properly"); } } If you run the code above, you’ll hit the exception.  Even though the XML contains a “<Hobbies>” node, the obsolete attribute prevents the node from being processed.  This will break old clients that use the new library, but don’t yet access the HobbyData collection. The Fix This fix (in this case), isn’t too painful.  The XmlSerializer exposes events for times when it runs into items (Elements, Attributes, Nodes, etc…) it doesn’t know what to do with.  We can hook in to those events and check and see if we’re getting something that we want to support (like our “Hobbies” node). Here’s a way to read in the old XML data with full support of the new data structure (and keeping the Hobbies collection marked as obsolete): static void Main(string[] args) { var xml = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""IBM437""?> <MyData xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"" xmlns:xsd=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema""> <Age>50</Age> <FirstName>Zachary</FirstName> <LastName>Smith</LastName> <Hobbies> <string>Mischief</string> <string>Sabotage</string> </Hobbies> </MyData>"; var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyData)); serializer.UnknownElement += serializer_UnknownElement; var stream = new StringReader(xml); var data = (MyData)serializer.Deserialize(stream);   if (data.Hobbies.Count != 2) { throw new ApplicationException("Hobbies did not deserialize properly"); } }   static void serializer_UnknownElement(object sender, XmlElementEventArgs e) { if( e.Element.Name != "Hobbies") { return; }   var target = (MyData) e.ObjectBeingDeserialized; foreach(XmlElement hobby in e.Element.ChildNodes) { target.Hobbies.Add(hobby.InnerText); target.HobbyData.Add(new Hobby{Name = hobby.InnerText}); } } As you can see, we hook in to the “UnknownElement” event.  Once we determine it’s our “Hobbies” node, we deserialize it ourselves – as well as populating the new HobbyData collection.  In this case, we have a fairly simple solution to a small change in XML layout.  If you make more extensive changes, it would probably be easier to do some custom serialization to support older data. A sample project with all of this code is available from my repository on bitbucket. Technorati Tags: XmlSerializer,Obsolete,.NET

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 30, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 30, 2013Popular ReleasesWDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.5apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.5apifix-alpha updated to fix the imdb look up problem. working on other problems but wanted this out there for testing.Visual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0Random searcher i pochodne: Generatorek playlisty: Generuje playlisty w formacie .m3u. Na razie beta z bety - ale juz dziala i mozna uzywac.sb0t v.5: sb0t 5.15: Fixed bug in join filter. Fixed bug in pm blocking. Added new Crypto and Entities static classes to scripting. Updated the default node list.Trace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Trace Reader (1.2013.9.29): Initial releaseAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features -------- list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed ----- case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download end...HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: HD-Trailer.Net Downloader v 2.1.5: This started out as an effort to improve the search for the corr3ct IMDB page for the movie. I think I have done that here. I have run about 200 movies and the correct movie was identified in all cases including some entries that were problematic in the past. I also swatted several bugs that popped up under special circumstances and resulted in exceptions. This version should be quite a bit better than previous versions. Let me know if there are any issues.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34288 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-0-0-34288-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of ...C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...Rawr: Rawr 5.4.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Sample MVC4 EF Codefirst Architecture: RazMVCWebApp ver 1.1: Signal R sample is added.CODE Framework: 4.0.30923.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.New ProjectsBeerStats: Beeeeeeer!CodeSet: ttfishteam: Connecting people by their music interestsGassFlow: This is a Computational Method for Genome Annotation based on Species Similarity.GasTeam: connecting peopleHermess Branch: testhermesbranchHyperPage: HyperPage is a HTML\PHP\CSS programming studio. Written in VB12 features folders, files, intellisense, file searching and color selector.JPEG Auto-rotate: A shell extension that automatically rotates JPEG images based on the orientation stored in their EXIF tag (pictures taken with modern smartphones/cameras).Lu?n van t?t nghi?p K09: Phân tích thái d? c?m xúc ngu?i dùng m?ng xã h?iMixDoS: MixDoS is an application who helps you control your computer and helps you collect all your batch applications! This application is easier to use than X3ME!NeoLua: A Lua implementation for the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR).SharePoint Helpers: A cross product JavaScript and .NET library to simplify SharePoint (2007, 2010, 2013, Office 365) development and make migration easier.Snake Board Game: Childhood is always a happy time, Classical game will never left out from our Memories here is my first game that i have created when i was studying....spmisframework: SpmisFrameworkTFSTest: Just for testTrace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Trace reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps you reading the trace files generated by Microsoft Dynamics CRM (4.0, 2011 and 2013) on a graphical interfaceTuple Edit: Editor/IDE for multiple languages.ultvast: utlimus for vastUser Cloner for Dynamics CRM 2011: User Cloner for Dynamics CRM 2011 User Cloner for Dynamics CRM 2011 is utility for all CRM administrators, consultant who have to deal with user issues on CRM WHKY: testWhoIs.dart: Tool to query Whois servers, implemented in Dart.winchrome: Provides different types of window chrome for NavigationWindowsYLH_CRM_Project: This is used to reconstruct ylh of crm

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 15, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 15, 2013Popular ReleasesNuPattern: NuPattern 1.3.22.0: Just download the 'NuPattern Installer.msi' above to install NuPattern for both VS2010 and VS2012. All the extensions listed above are included within this installer. This release includes a version of the 'NuPattern Toolkit Builder' tools and 'NuPattern Toolkit Builder Hands-On Labs' VSIXes for both VS2010 and for VS2012. Both of these extensions are installed in to both VS2010 and VS2012 in the combined MSI installer. Once NuPattern has been installed, please go to the Getting Started pag...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.1: 2013.06.13 Ver5.9.1 (1) Web??????SSI?#include???、CGI?????????????????????? (2) ???????????????????????????Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2.1 RTM: - Dynamic text localization - A new application wide message busFree language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 3.3: some bug fixes and a new link to video tutorials on Youtube.Pokemon Battle Online: ETV: ETV???2012?12??????，????，???????$/PBO/branches/PrivateBeta??。 ???????bug???????。 ???? Server??????，?????。 ?????????，?????????????，?????????。 ????????，????，?????????，???????????（??）??。 ???? ????????????。 ???????。 ???PP????，????????????????????PP????，??3。 ?????????????，??????????。 ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????????、???????????，??“???????”??。 ???bug ???Web Pages CMS: 0.5.0.5: Added empty media directoryModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This set contains 2 samples that illustrates the use of: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (W...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1.BETA Unit test Generator Documentation: Welcome to the Unit Test Generator Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a dev to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test framewor...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.VR Player: VR Player 0.3.1 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesWsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.09: Add more verifications on certificate validation. WPP will not let user to try publishing an update until the certificate is valid. Add certificate expiration date on the 'About' form. Filter Approbation to avoid a user to try to approve an update for uninstallation when the update do not support uninstallation. Add the server and console version on the 'About' form. WPP will not let user to publish an update until the server and console are not at the same level. WPP do not let user ...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2013 Release Version 7.0607June 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...Rawr: Rawr 5.2.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...New Projects3000????C?????????: 3000??C??????????AspTestPage: asp test Chiroredactie voor MS Word 2010: Chiroredactie voor MS Word dient om medewerkers en vrijwilligers van de Chiro te helpen wanneer ze teksten schrijven en/of eindredactie doen.Coastal Climbing: Coastal Climbing is the best bouldering gym in the south east!Data Moving Plug-in Examples: Examples of usage of the Data Moving Plug-in, of the Mvc Controls toolkit. The Data Moving Plug-in is an advanced set of controls and tools for Asp.net Mvc.Dynamics AX Admin Utilities: Dynamics AX Admin Utilities provide the utilities missing for Dynamics AX 2012: silent install, client and server configuration, AOS and Model Store management.Epilog Blogging Framework: A customisable, editable blogging framework based on MVC4 and written in C#.fashion photomania: fashion photomaniaGetemp: Gerenciador do Tempo de ProduçãoGlobal Tracker: Solução para rastreamento de dispositivos móveis composta por: - Uma Aplicação ASP.NET; - Um Web Service; - Uma Aplicação utilizando o plugin Xamarin.HyperLinkTagEditor: URL Appender using regexisotopos2: otra vez se borro, dejate de joder codeplexxlatex-tools: Latex supports, including syntax highlight.Lighter: Text to Braille: Lighter is an extensible and flexible Thai/English and further language translation to Braille format.Lock Screen Switcher: Change your Windows Logon or Lock Screen background image. Specify a directory and it will choose an image from that directory for your background.Patient Database Planning: The Patient Information Database will lower design costs for the Health Care Industry and the software will be user to use / understand for the average user.PERRS: perrsPHPReport: PHP ReportrapSharp: lightweight Audio PlayerRedmine Task List: Redmine Task List Visual Studio Package.RoHuay - 2013: Desarrollo del sistema web logistico para RoHuaySkautSIS: SkautSIS is a web based information system for Czech scouting centers which helps them manage their agenda and present their activities on the Web.test061501jabbr: testThorMVR: ThorMVRWindows Azure Cloud Sensor Sample for Windows Embedded Compact 2013: Windows Azure Cloud Sensor Sample for Windows Embedded Compact 2013, Windows CEWindows Phone 8 Mapping Samples: This project contains a set of code for basic location acquisition, location updates and mapping in Windows Phone 8.

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• Why unhandled exceptions are useful

  - by Simon Cooper

  It’s the bane of most programmers’ lives – an unhandled exception causes your application or webapp to crash, an ugly dialog gets displayed to the user, and they come complaining to you. Then, somehow, you need to figure out what went wrong. Hopefully, you’ve got a log file, or some other way of reporting unhandled exceptions (obligatory employer plug: SmartAssembly reports an application’s unhandled exceptions straight to you, along with the entire state of the stack and variables at that point). If not, you have to try and replicate it yourself, or do some psychic debugging to try and figure out what’s wrong. However, it’s good that the program crashed. Or, more precisely, it is correct behaviour. An unhandled exception in your application means that, somewhere in your code, there is an assumption that you made that is actually invalid. Coding assumptions Let me explain a bit more. Every method, every line of code you write, depends on implicit assumptions that you have made. Take this following simple method, that copies a collection to an array and includes an item if it isn’t in the collection already, using a supplied IEqualityComparer: public static T[] ToArrayWithItem( ICollection<T> coll, T obj, IEqualityComparer<T> comparer) { // check if the object is in collection already // using the supplied comparer foreach (var item in coll) { if (comparer.Equals(item, obj)) { // it's in the collection already // simply copy the collection to an array // and return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); return array; } } // not in the collection // copy coll to an array, and add obj to it // then return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count+1]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); array[array.Length-1] = obj; return array; } What’s all the assumptions made by this fairly simple bit of code? coll is never null comparer is never null coll.CopyTo(array, 0) will copy all the items in the collection into the array, in the order defined for the collection, starting at the first item in the array. The enumerator for coll returns all the items in the collection, in the order defined for the collection comparer.Equals returns true if the items are equal (for whatever definition of ‘equal’ the comparer uses), false otherwise comparer.Equals, coll.CopyTo, and the coll enumerator will never throw an exception or hang for any possible input and any possible values of T coll will have less than 4 billion items in it (this is a built-in limit of the CLR) array won’t be more than 2GB, both on 32 and 64-bit systems, for any possible values of T (again, a limit of the CLR) There are no threads that will modify coll while this method is running and, more esoterically: The C# compiler will compile this code to IL according to the C# specification The CLR and JIT compiler will produce machine code to execute the IL on the user’s computer The computer will execute the machine code correctly That’s a lot of assumptions. Now, it could be that all these assumptions are valid for the situations this method is called. But if this does crash out with an exception, or crash later on, then that shows one of the assumptions has been invalidated somehow. An unhandled exception shows that your code is running in a situation which you did not anticipate, and there is something about how your code runs that you do not understand. Debugging the problem is the process of learning more about the new situation and how your code interacts with it. When you understand the problem, the solution is (usually) obvious. The solution may be a one-line fix, the rewrite of a method or class, or a large-scale refactoring of the codebase, but whatever it is, the fix for the crash will incorporate the new information you’ve gained about your own code, along with the modified assumptions. When code is running with an assumption or invariant it depended on broken, then the result is ‘undefined behaviour’. Anything can happen, up to and including formatting the entire disk or making the user’s computer sentient and start doing a good impression of Skynet. You might think that those can’t happen, but at Halting problem levels of generality, as soon as an assumption the code depended on is broken, the program can do anything. That is why it’s important to fail-fast and stop the program as soon as an invariant is broken, to minimise the damage that is done. What does this mean in practice? To start with, document and check your assumptions. As with most things, there is a level of judgement required. How you check and document your assumptions depends on how the code is used (that’s some more assumptions you’ve made), how likely it is a method will be passed invalid arguments or called in an invalid state, how likely it is the assumptions will be broken, how expensive it is to check the assumptions, and how bad things are likely to get if the assumptions are broken. Now, some assumptions you can assume unless proven otherwise. You can safely assume the C# compiler, CLR, and computer all run the method correctly, unless you have evidence of a compiler, CLR or processor bug. You can also assume that interface implementations work the way you expect them to; implementing an interface is more than simply declaring methods with certain signatures in your type. The behaviour of those methods, and how they work, is part of the interface contract as well. For example, for members of a public API, it is very important to document your assumptions and check your state before running the bulk of the method, throwing ArgumentException, ArgumentNullException, InvalidOperationException, or another exception type as appropriate if the input or state is wrong. For internal and private methods, it is less important. If a private method expects collection items in a certain order, then you don’t necessarily need to explicitly check it in code, but you can add comments or documentation specifying what state you expect the collection to be in at a certain point. That way, anyone debugging your code can immediately see what’s wrong if this does ever become an issue. You can also use DEBUG preprocessor blocks and Debug.Assert to document and check your assumptions without incurring a performance hit in release builds. On my coding soapbox… A few pet peeves of mine around assumptions. Firstly, catch-all try blocks: try { ... } catch { } A catch-all hides exceptions generated by broken assumptions, and lets the program carry on in an unknown state. Later, an exception is likely to be generated due to further broken assumptions due to the unknown state, causing difficulties when debugging as the catch-all has hidden the original problem. It’s much better to let the program crash straight away, so you know where the problem is. You should only use a catch-all if you are sure that any exception generated in the try block is safe to ignore. That’s a pretty big ask! Secondly, using as when you should be casting. Doing this: (obj as IFoo).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = obj as IFoo; ... foo.Method(); when you should be doing this: ((IFoo)obj).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = (IFoo)obj; ... foo.Method(); There’s an assumption here that obj will always implement IFoo. If it doesn’t, then by using as instead of a cast you’ve turned an obvious InvalidCastException at the point of the cast that will probably tell you what type obj actually is, into a non-obvious NullReferenceException at some later point that gives you no information at all. If you believe obj is always an IFoo, then say so in code! Let it fail-fast if not, then it’s far easier to figure out what’s wrong. Thirdly, document your assumptions. If an algorithm depends on a non-trivial relationship between several objects or variables, then say so. A single-line comment will do. Don’t leave it up to whoever’s debugging your code after you to figure it out. Conclusion It’s better to crash out and fail-fast when an assumption is broken. If it doesn’t, then there’s likely to be further crashes along the way that hide the original problem. Or, even worse, your program will be running in an undefined state, where anything can happen. Unhandled exceptions aren’t good per-se, but they give you some very useful information about your code that you didn’t know before. And that can only be a good thing.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 12, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 12, 2013Popular ReleasesWeb Pages CMS: 0.5.0.5: Added empty media directoryWindows 8 App Desing Reference Template: Education Big Picture: EducationBigPicture: Download includes the following -> Source (C# and JS) -> Package -> Snapshots -> DocumentationModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This samples illustrates the use of ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Microsoft Ente...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...SFDL.NET: SFDL.NET v1.1.0.4: Changelog: Ciritical Bug Fixed : Downloading of Files not possibleMapWinGIS ActiveX Map and GIS Component: MapWinGIS v4.8.8 Release Candidate - 32 Bit: This is the first release candidate of MapWinGIS. Please test it thoroughly.MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.VR Player: VR Player 0.3 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesWsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.09: Add more verifications on certificate validation. WPP will not let user to try publishing an update until the certificate is valid. Add certificate expiration date on the 'About' form. Filter Approbation to avoid a user to try to approve an update for uninstallation when the update do not support uninstallation. Add the server and console version on the 'About' form. WPP will not let user to publish an update until the server and console are not at the same level. WPP do not let user ...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2013 Release Version 7.0607June 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...Rawr: Rawr 5.2.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.13: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageJumbo.com" links FIXED: Ripping of Threads with multiple pagesJson.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 6: New feature - Added serialized/deserialized JSON to verbose tracing New feature - Added support for using type name handling with ISerializable content Fix - Fixed not using default serializer settings with primitive values and JToken.ToObject Fix - Fixed error writing BigIntegers with JsonWriter.WriteToken Fix - Fixed serializing and deserializing flag enums with EnumMember attribute Fix - Fixed error deserializing interfaces with a valid type converter Fix - Fixed error deser...Biller: Biller 1.49: This release fixes company sales statisticsNew Projectsapiviewer: Documentation viewer for your service API.ArgusLib: Set of libraries I use in most of my projects.arwani: this is armani project.Blue Mercs Data Gateway: The Data Gateway is an open source project which simplifies coding fluently database SQL statements, stored procedure, connections and transactions.Convert Hashtable Rows into DataTable Columns in C#: Simplest way to convert a Hashtable into a DataTable with all the Hashtable rows converted into DataTable columns.everynet: EveryNet is an internet service provider servicing homes Fraktalysator: Software to visualize fractals such as the Mandelbrot Set. Still in early development state.Free BarCode API for .NET: Freee BarCode API for .NETGraphic filters in WPF: FiltersGrid Plugin: Grid Plugin , Turn your <table> into a fully functional price grid.mediamonitor: this is mediamonitor project.MyCodingStuffs: This solution includes C#, WCF, MVC4.0, ASP.net libraries.OpenErp .Net Connector: Access to OpenErp from .NetPhong and Flat shading: Phong shadingPixel Replacer: The Pixel Replacer is a simple library for replacing pixel colors with a new color, by setting a filter rule.plainetl in vb.net: a one db to another db transform, threaded, commandline tool, ... initially created to get a flat-File db (FoxPro) into a mssql.Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3: Contains material developed while visiting a Microsoft course for the MCSD exam 70-480ProjectLinker2012: This tool helps to automatically create and maintain links from a source project to a target project to share code that is common to Silverlight and WPF.SALDERA Project: SALDERA TEST Project Summary Mire lesz ez jó? Majd Kiderül.TCPMessageServer: Simple TCP Client/Server used to pass an object between client and serverThats-Me Dot Net API: Thats-Me Dot Net API is a library which implements the Thats-Me.ch API for the Dot Net Framework.T-Sql Code Documentor: Document T-SQL Code and Extract Comments for all objects in a database.Windows 8 App Design Reference Template: Measurement: Measurement template will help if you want to build an app which addresses Mass/Weight, Distance/Length, Capacity/Volume etc. measurement placeholders.Windows 8 App Design Reference Template: Weather Clock: Weather Clock Template will help if you want to build an app which has the features to add Current/Previous day temperatures and add cities for coverage. Windows 8 App Desing Reference Template: Education Big Picture: Education Big Picture Template will help if you want to build an app which has an option for showcasing campus details, courses, student life etc dataWinodws 8 App Design Reference Template: Social Feed: Social Feed template will help if you want to build an app which has the Messaging, Facebook, twitter feeds sections. WP7FlacPlayer: Implemented JFlacLib in C# A simple player to play flac in windows phone system

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• Contract Work - Lessons Learned

  - by samerpaul

  I thought I would write a post of a different nature today, but still relevant to the tech world. I do a lot of contract jobs myself and really enjoy it. It's nice to keep jumping from project to project, and not having to go to an office or keep regular hours, etc. I really enjoy it. I have learned a lot in the past few years of doing it (both from experience and from help given to me from others, and the internet) so I thought I'd share some of that knowledge/experience today.So here's my own personal "lesson's learned" that hopefully will help you if you find yourself doing contract work:Should I take the job?Ok, so this is the first step. Assuming you were given sufficient information about what they want, then you should really think about what you're capable of doing and whether or not you should take this job. Personally, my rule is, if I know it's possible, I'll say yes, even if I don't yet know how to do it. That's because the internet is such a great help, it would be rare to run into an issue that you can't figure out with some help. So if your clients are asking for something that you don't yet know how to program, but you know you can do it on the platform then go for it. How else are you going to learn?Use this rule with some limitation, however. If you're really lacking the expertise or foundation in something, then unless you have tons of time to complete the project, then I wouldn't say yes. For example, I haven't personally done any 3d/openGL programming yet so I wouldn't say yes to a project that extensively uses it. OK, so I want the job, but how much do I charge?This part can be tricky. There is no set formula really, but I have some tips for pricing that will hopefully give you a better idea on how to confidently ask your price and have them accept. Here are some personal guidelinesHow much time do you have to complete the project? If it's shorter than average, then charge more. You can even make a subtle note about this (or not so subtle if they still don't get it.) If it seems too short of a time (i.e. near impossible to complete), be sure to say that. It looks bad to promise a time that you can't keep--and it makes it less likely for them to return to you for work.Your Hourly rate: How long have you been working in that language? Do you have existing projects to back you up? Or previous contacts that can vouch for your work? Are there very few people with your particular skill set? All of these things will lend themselves to setting an hourly rate. I'd also try out a quick google search of what your line of work is, to see what the industry standard is at that point in time.I wouldn't price too low, because you want to make your time worth it. You also want them to feel like they're paying for quality work (assuming you can deliver it :) ). Finally, think about your client. If it's a small business, then don't price it too high if you want the job. If it's an enterprise (like a Fortune company), then don't be afraid to price higher. They have the budget for it.Fixed price: If they want a fixed price project, then you need to think about how many hours it will take you to complete it and multiply it by the hourly rate you set for yourself. Then, honestly, I would add 10-20% on top of that. Why? Because nothing ever works exactly how you want it to. There are lots of times that something "trivial" is way harder than it should be, or something that "should work" doesn't for hours and it eats away at your hourly rate. I can't count the number of times I encountered a logical bug that took away an entire's day work because debuggers don't help in those cases. By adding that padding in, it's still OK to have those days where you don't get as much done as you want. And another useful tip: Depending on your client, and the scope, you most likely want to set that you both sign off on a specification sheet before doing any work, and that any changes will result in a re-evaulation of the price. This is to help protect you from being handed a huge new addition to the project half-way in, without any extra payment.Scope of project: Finally, is it a huge project? Is it really small/fast? This affects how much your client will be willing to pay. If it sounds big, they will be willing to pay more for it. If it seems really small, then you won't be able to get away with a large asking price (as easily).Ok, I priced it, now what?So now that you have the price, you want to make sure it feels justified to your client. I never set a price before I can really think about everything. For example, if you're still in your introduction phase, and they want a price, don't give one! Just comment that you will send them a proposal sheet with all the features outlined, and a price for everything. You don't want to shout out a low number and then deliver something that is way higher. You also don't want to shock them with a big number before they feel like they are getting a great product.Make up a proposal document in a word editor. Personally, I leave the price till the very end. Why? Because by the time they reach the end, you've already discussed all the great features you plan to implement, and how it's the best product they'll ever use, etc etc...so your price comes off as a steal! If you hit them up front with a price, they will read through the document with a negative bias. Think about those commercials on TV. They always go on about their product, then at the end, ask "What would you pay for something like this? $100? $50? How about $20!!". This is not by accident.Scenario: I finished the job way earlier than expectedYou have two options then. You can either polish the hell out of the application, and even throw in a few bonus features (assuming they are in-line with the customer's needs) or you can sit and wait on it until you near your deadline. Why don't you want to turn it in too early? Because you should treat that extra time as a surplus. If you said it is going to take you 3 weeks, and it took you only 1, you have a surplus of 2 weeks. I personally don't want to let them know that I can do a 3 week project in 1 week. Why not? Because that may not always be the case! I may later have a 3 week project that takes all 3 weeks, but if I set a precedent of delivering super early, then the pressure is on for that longer project. It also makes it harder to quote longer times if you keep delivering too early.Feel free to deliver early, but again, don't do it too early. They may also wonder why they paid you for 3 weeks of work if you're done in 1. They may further wonder if the product sucks, or what is wrong with it, if it's done so early, etc.I would just polish the application. Everyone loves polish in their applications. The smallest details are what make an application go from "functional" to "fantastic". And since you are still delivering on time, then they are still going to be very happy with you.Scenario: It's taking way too long to finish this, and the deadline is nearing/here!So this is not a fun scenario to be in, but it'll happen. Sometimes the scope of the project gets out of hand. The best policy here is OPENNESS/HONESTY. Tell them that the project is taking longer than expected, and give a reasonable time for when you think you'll have it done. I typically explain it in a way that makes it sound like it isn't something that I did wrong, but it's just something about the nature of the project. This really goes for any scenario, to be honest. Just continue to stay open and communicative about your progress. This doesn't mean that you should email them every five minutes (unless they want you to), but it does mean that maybe every few days or once a week, give them an update on where you're at, and what's next. They'll be happy to know they are paying for progress, and it'll make it easier to ask for an extension when something goes wrong, because they know that you've been working on it all along.Final tips and thoughts:In general, contract work is really fun and rewarding. It's nice to learn new things all the time, as mandated by the project ,and to challenge yourself to do things you may not have done before. The key is to build a great relationship with your clients for future work, and for recommendations. I am always very honest with them and I never promise something I can't deliver. Again, under promise, over deliver!I hope this has proved helpful!Cheers,samerpaul

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 14, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 14, 2013Popular ReleasesBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.1: 2013.06.13 Ver5.9.1 (1) Web??????SSI?#include???、CGI?????????????????????? (2) ???????????????????????????BrightstarDB: BrightstarDB 1.3.40613: This is the first "official" BrightstarDB release under the MIT open source license. The code base has been reworked to replace / remove the use of third-party closed-source tools and has been updated to use a patched version of dotNetRDF 1.0 that includes the most recent updates for SPARQL 1.1 and Turtle. We have also extended the core RDF API to support targeting a specific graph with an update or query operation and made a change to the core profiling code to disable it by default, leadin...Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2.1 RTM: - Dynamic text localization - A new application wide message busPokemon Battle Online: ETV: ETV???2012?12??????，????，???????$/PBO/branches/PrivateBeta??。 ???????bug???????。 ???? Server??????，?????。 ?????????，?????????????，?????????。 ????????，????，?????????，???????????（??）??。 ???? ????????????。 ???????。 ???PP????，????????????????????PP????，??3。 ?????????????，??????????。 ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????????、???????????，??“???????”??。 ???bug ???Web Pages CMS: 0.5.0.5: Added empty media directoryModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This samples illustrates the use of ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Microsoft Ente...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1.BETA Unit test Generator Documentation: Welcome to the Unit Test Generator Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a dev to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test framewor...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.VR Player: VR Player 0.3.1 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesWsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.09: Add more verifications on certificate validation. WPP will not let user to try publishing an update until the certificate is valid. Add certificate expiration date on the 'About' form. Filter Approbation to avoid a user to try to approve an update for uninstallation when the update do not support uninstallation. Add the server and console version on the 'About' form. WPP will not let user to publish an update until the server and console are not at the same level. WPP do not let user ...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2013 Release Version 7.0607June 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...Rawr: Rawr 5.2.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.13: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageJumbo.com" links FIXED: Ripping of Threads with multiple pagesNew ProjectsControl de stock: sistema para control de stockEmails Outlook Mac Recovery Software That Is Provenly Better Than Others: Recover OLM Emails with Outlook Mac Recovery Software that restore Mac OLM files as well as Convert OLM files in EML and DBX file format. Horarios e Disciplinas: O projeto de Grade Horária do CEPE é desenvolvido por um analista programador experiente e dois estagiários ciosos de conhecimento nas linguagens C#, Razor, Entity Framework, AJAX.Hyper-v VHost and VM Inventory Reports: Get a detailed inventory/report from your VHost and it's VMs. Powershell script that dumps the report as a test file.jean0614changbranch: ddjean0614jabbrchangebranch: dLandscape: Planned Maintenance System, is a system being used for any fleet of assets where a regular maintenance is required.MongoCamp: MongoCamp for MongoDBNo-nonsense Flickr Uploader: Simple, easy to-use, stable, flickr uploader for large batch uploads.Outlook PST Converter to Export, Convert & Save PST in Other Formats: Outlook PST Converter to export Outlook emails in other formats from PST format which will be a better option to change format of Outlook PST file to PDF, MSG.Penrose Tiles: A simple windows forms based penrose tile generator.Ranch Master - an Object Oriented Progamming 2013 College Project: Raise the sheep by maintaining the Hunger & Thirst level low, keep the condition to 'Healthy', collect wools produced, trade the wools into points.SH Demo App: Summary!Stock Right: Initial releaseTesting Project: testingtestjabbr0613: testUnits of Measure: Simple solution to cope with units of measure in C# applications. You can develop your own unit system, be it SI-based or anything else that suits your needs.User Friendly Registration Plugin for DotNetNuke: This plugin makes DotNetNuke registration process more user friendly. Main idea is to inform user about possible mistakes in the registration form immediately,

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 03, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 03, 2013Popular ReleasesEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.Iteration.52: Iteration 52 (Feature): Improve edit of flow step definition by validating input. (empty type name, type name contains space, type name starts with illegal char., custom name contains space, custom name is unique) Renamed: EditSingleStepDefinitionFlow => EditStepDefinitionFlow Improved: EditSubFlowDefinitionFlow (No code was changed. All necessary parts already existed. Only improvement of flow definitions.)DNN® Form and List: DNN Form and List 06.00.07: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.7•Fixed an error in datatypes.config that caused calculated fields to be missing in 6.0.6 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext C...SpiderSync: SpiderSync 0.5: Initial releaseSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.RDFSharp - Start playing with RDF!: RDFSharp-0.6.6: GENERAL (NEW) Introduction of INT64 hashing engine (codenamed "Greta"); QUERY (FIX) Incorrect query evaluation due to faulty detection of optional patterns (v0.6.5 regression); (FIX) Missing update of PatternGroupID information after adding patterns and filters to a pattern group; (FIX) Ensure Context information of a pattern is not null before trying to collect it as variable; (MISC) Changed semantics of Context information of a pattern: if not provided, it will be ignored; (MISC...Ela, functional programming language: Ela, dynamic functional language (PDF, book, 0.6): A book about Ela, dynamic functional language in PDF format.DrivenDb: DrivenDb 1.6.0.1 Release: Removed untyped ReadValue(s) methods specifically for strings. The typed version (ReadValue<T>) works with ReadValue<string> now.Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.7.1: - smart indentation - document formatting To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++: Release v1.0.7.1: - smart indentation - document formatting To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.State of Decay Save Manager: Version 1.0.2: Added Start/Stop button for timer to manually enable/disable Quick save routine updated to force it to refresh the folder date Quick save added to backup listing Manual update button Lower level hooking for F5 and F9 buttons workingBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release (Updated) Version 7.1002September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Important UpdateThis release has been updated to fix two issues: Upda...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0AudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download ends. word lis...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...New ProjectsBootstrap 3.0 WebPages Helpers: Bootstrap 3.0 WebPages Helpers offre direttamente la forza del pattern responsive e la semplicità di controlli facili d’uso e riuso. Compact Framework 3.9 Templates for Windows Embedded Compact 2013: This project provides Visual Studio 2012 Templates for Compact Framework Version 3.9 in the context of a Windows Embedded Compact 2013 OS project SDK.ganda: naGSpeak (Gesture Speak): Code generation through speech/gesture for everyone (Including individuals with disabilities).Importing Microsoft Project Files: Using mpjx to read microsoft project filesMoppet.Lapa: Very light parser generator based on combinations of lambda functions. Without language of grammar descriptions. Defining parsers in the code directly.NotifyPilot for TFS: NotifyPilot is a simple bridge between TFS and a group of clients (eg : Yammer, SignalR, ect..).SimCa: Simple Image Cacher for WP7.SIMPLE: We are aiming to create an easy to use machine learning framework in C++ which includes the tools you need to make modules for the included learning environmentSpiderSync: Command line application for providing one-way real-time synchronization between two folders.StrontiumTeam: An client-side application based on Kendo UI. It provides the means for car owners to make offers and lure potential buyers through the sleek interface.StudentSystem: A learning system comprising students, teachers, courses and lectures.TelerikExams: Solutions of the tasks for the exams in ThelerikAcademy (http://telerikacademy.com)Thewhy: Just Test CreateUser Stories: proyecto academicoWindows Embedded Compact 2013 Tools: Some applications to add to Compact 2013 OS that were available in previous versions of Windows Embedded Compact/CE but not part of the current version.

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• Snake Game Help

  - by MuhammadA

  I am making a snake game and learning XNA at the same time. I have 3 classes : Game.cs, Snake.cs and Apple.cs My problem is more of a conceptual problem, I want to know which class is really responsible for ... detecting collision of snake head on apple/itself/wall? which class should increase the snakes speed, size? It seems to me that however much I try and put the snake stuff into snake.cs that game.cs has to know a lot about the snake, like : -- I want to increase the score depending on size of snake, the score variable is inside game.cs, which means now I have to ask the snake its size on every hit of the apple... seems a bit unclean all this highly coupled code. or -- I DO NOT want to place the apple under the snake... now the apple suddenly has to know about all the snake parts, my head hurts when I think of that. Maybe there should be some sort of AppleLayer.cs class that should know about the snake... Whats the best approach in such a simple scenario? Any tips welcome. Game.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Design; namespace Snakez { public enum CurrentGameState { Playing, Paused, NotPlaying } public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { private GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics; private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch; private readonly Color _niceGreenColour = new Color(167, 255, 124); private KeyboardState _oldKeyboardState; private SpriteFont _scoreFont; private SoundEffect _biteSound, _crashSound; private Vector2 _scoreLocation = new Vector2(10, 10); private Apple _apple; private Snake _snake; private int _score = 0; private int _speed = 1; public Game1() { _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); _scoreFont = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("Score"); _apple = new Apple(800, 480, Content.Load<Texture2D>("Apple")); _snake = new Snake(Content.Load<Texture2D>("BodyBlock")); _biteSound = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Bite"); _crashSound = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Crash"); } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { Content.Unload(); } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { KeyboardState newKeyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Escape)) { this.Exit(); // Allows the game to exit } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Up); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Down); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Left); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Right); } _oldKeyboardState = newKeyboardState; _snake.Update(); if (_snake.IsEating(_apple)) { _biteSound.Play(); _score += 10; _apple.Place(); } base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(_niceGreenColour); float frameRate = 1 / (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; _spriteBatch.Begin(); _spriteBatch.DrawString(_scoreFont, "Score : " + _score, _scoreLocation, Color.Red); _apple.Draw(_spriteBatch); _snake.Draw(_spriteBatch); _spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } Snake.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Snakez { public enum Direction { Up, Down, Left, Right } public class Snake { private List<Rectangle> _parts; private readonly Texture2D _bodyBlock; private readonly int _startX = 160; private readonly int _startY = 120; private int _moveDelay = 100; private DateTime _lastUpdatedAt; private Direction _direction; private Rectangle _lastTail; public Snake(Texture2D bodyBlock) { _bodyBlock = bodyBlock; _parts = new List<Rectangle>(); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + bodyBlock.Width, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + (bodyBlock.Width) * 2, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + (bodyBlock.Width) * 3, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _direction = Direction.Right; _lastUpdatedAt = DateTime.Now; } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { foreach (var p in _parts) { spriteBatch.Draw(_bodyBlock, new Vector2(p.X, p.Y), Color.White); } } public void Update() { if (DateTime.Now.Subtract(_lastUpdatedAt).TotalMilliseconds > _moveDelay) { //DateTime.Now.Ticks _lastTail = _parts.First(); _parts.Remove(_lastTail); /* add new head in right direction */ var lastHead = _parts.Last(); var newHead = new Rectangle(0, 0, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height); switch (_direction) { case Direction.Up: newHead.X = lastHead.X; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y - _bodyBlock.Width; break; case Direction.Down: newHead.X = lastHead.X; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y + _bodyBlock.Width; break; case Direction.Left: newHead.X = lastHead.X - _bodyBlock.Width; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y; break; case Direction.Right: newHead.X = lastHead.X + _bodyBlock.Width; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y; break; } _parts.Add(newHead); _lastUpdatedAt = DateTime.Now; } } public void SetDirection(Direction newDirection) { if (_direction == Direction.Up && newDirection == Direction.Down) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Down && newDirection == Direction.Up) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Left && newDirection == Direction.Right) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Right && newDirection == Direction.Left) { return; } _direction = newDirection; } public bool IsEating(Apple apple) { if (_parts.Last().Intersects(apple.Location)) { GrowBiggerAndFaster(); return true; } return false; } private void GrowBiggerAndFaster() { _parts.Insert(0, _lastTail); _moveDelay -= (_moveDelay / 100)*2; } } } Apple.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Snakez { public class Apple { private readonly int _maxWidth, _maxHeight; private readonly Texture2D _texture; private readonly Random random = new Random(); public Rectangle Location { get; private set; } public Apple(int screenWidth, int screenHeight, Texture2D texture) { _maxWidth = (screenWidth + 1) - texture.Width; _maxHeight = (screenHeight + 1) - texture.Height; _texture = texture; Place(); } public void Place() { Location = GetRandomLocation(_maxWidth, _maxHeight); } private Rectangle GetRandomLocation(int maxWidth, int maxHeight) { // x and y -- multiple of 20 int x = random.Next(1, maxWidth); var leftOver = x % 20; x = x - leftOver; int y = random.Next(1, maxHeight); leftOver = y % 20; y = y - leftOver; return new Rectangle(x, y, _texture.Width, _texture.Height); } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw(_texture, Location, Color.White); } } }

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• StreamInsight 2.1, meet LINQ

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  Someone recently called LINQ “magic” in my hearing. I leapt to LINQ’s defense immediately. Turns out some people don’t realize “magic” is can be a pejorative term. I thought LINQ needed demystification. Here’s your best demystification resource: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mattwar/archive/2008/11/18/linq-links.aspx. I won’t repeat much of what Matt Warren says in his excellent series, but will talk about some core ideas and how they affect the 2.1 release of StreamInsight. Let’s tell the story of a LINQ query. Compile time It begins with some code: IQueryable<Product> products = ...; var query = from p in products             where p.Name == "Widget"             select p.ProductID; foreach (int id in query) {     ... When the code is compiled, the C# compiler (among other things) de-sugars the query expression (see C# spec section 7.16): ... var query = products.Where(p => p.Name == "Widget").Select(p => p.ProductID); ... Overload resolution subsequently binds the Queryable.Where<Product> and Queryable.Select<Product, int> extension methods (see C# spec sections 7.5 and 7.6.5). After overload resolution, the compiler knows something interesting about the anonymous functions (lambda syntax) in the de-sugared code: they must be converted to expression trees, i.e.,“an object structure that represents the structure of the anonymous function itself” (see C# spec section 6.5). The conversion is equivalent to the following rewrite: ... var prm1 = Expression.Parameter(typeof(Product), "p"); var prm2 = Expression.Parameter(typeof(Product), "p"); var query = Queryable.Select<Product, int>(     Queryable.Where<Product>(         products,         Expression.Lambda<Func<Product, bool>>(Expression.Property(prm1, "Name"), prm1)),         Expression.Lambda<Func<Product, int>>(Expression.Property(prm2, "ProductID"), prm2)); ... If the “products” expression had type IEnumerable<Product>, the compiler would have chosen the Enumerable.Where and Enumerable.Select extension methods instead, in which case the anonymous functions would have been converted to delegates. At this point, we’ve reduced the LINQ query to familiar code that will compile in C# 2.0. (Note that I’m using C# snippets to illustrate transformations that occur in the compiler, not to suggest a viable compiler design!) Runtime When the above program is executed, the Queryable.Where method is invoked. It takes two arguments. The first is an IQueryable<> instance that exposes an Expression property and a Provider property. The second is an expression tree. The Queryable.Where method implementation looks something like this: public static IQueryable<T> Where<T>(this IQueryable<T> source, Expression<Func<T, bool>> predicate) {     return source.Provider.CreateQuery<T>(     Expression.Call(this method, source.Expression, Expression.Quote(predicate))); } Notice that the method is really just composing a new expression tree that calls itself with arguments derived from the source and predicate arguments. Also notice that the query object returned from the method is associated with the same provider as the source query. By invoking operator methods, we’re constructing an expression tree that describes a query. Interestingly, the compiler and operator methods are colluding to construct a query expression tree. The important takeaway is that expression trees are built in one of two ways: (1) by the compiler when it sees an anonymous function that needs to be converted to an expression tree, and; (2) by a query operator method that constructs a new queryable object with an expression tree rooted in a call to the operator method (self-referential). Next we hit the foreach block. At this point, the power of LINQ queries becomes apparent. The provider is able to determine how the query expression tree is evaluated! The code that began our story was intentionally vague about the definition of the “products” collection. Maybe it is a queryable in-memory collection of products: var products = new[]     { new Product { Name = "Widget", ProductID = 1 } }.AsQueryable(); The in-memory LINQ provider works by rewriting Queryable method calls to Enumerable method calls in the query expression tree. It then compiles the expression tree and evaluates it. It should be mentioned that the provider does not blindly rewrite all Queryable calls. It only rewrites a call when its arguments have been rewritten in a way that introduces a type mismatch, e.g. the first argument to Queryable.Where<Product> being rewritten as an expression of type IEnumerable<Product> from IQueryable<Product>. The type mismatch is triggered initially by a “leaf” expression like the one associated with the AsQueryable query: when the provider recognizes one of its own leaf expressions, it replaces the expression with the original IEnumerable<> constant expression. I like to think of this rewrite process as “type irritation” because the rewritten leaf expression is like a foreign body that triggers an immune response (further rewrites) in the tree. The technique ensures that only those portions of the expression tree constructed by a particular provider are rewritten by that provider: no type irritation, no rewrite. Let’s consider the behavior of an alternative LINQ provider. If “products” is a collection created by a LINQ to SQL provider: var products = new NorthwindDataContext().Products; the provider rewrites the expression tree as a SQL query that is then evaluated by your favorite RDBMS. The predicate may ultimately be evaluated using an index! In this example, the expression associated with the Products property is the “leaf” expression. StreamInsight 2.1 For the in-memory LINQ to Objects provider, a leaf is an in-memory collection. For LINQ to SQL, a leaf is a table or view. When defining a “process” in StreamInsight 2.1, what is a leaf? To StreamInsight a leaf is logic: an adapter, a sequence, or even a query targeting an entirely different LINQ provider! How do we represent the logic? Remember that a standing query may outlive the client that provisioned it. A reference to a sequence object in the client application is therefore not terribly useful. But if we instead represent the code constructing the sequence as an expression, we can host the sequence in the server: using (var server = Server.Connect(...)) {     var app = server.Applications["my application"];     var source = app.DefineObservable(() => Observable.Range(0, 10, Scheduler.NewThread));     var query = from i in source where i % 2 == 0 select i; } Example 1: defining a source and composing a query Let’s look in more detail at what’s happening in example 1. We first connect to the remote server and retrieve an existing app. Next, we define a simple Reactive sequence using the Observable.Range method. Notice that the call to the Range method is in the body of an anonymous function. This is important because it means the source sequence definition is in the form of an expression, rather than simply an opaque reference to an IObservable<int> object. The variation in Example 2 fails. Although it looks similar, the sequence is now a reference to an in-memory observable collection: var local = Observable.Range(0, 10, Scheduler.NewThread); var source = app.DefineObservable(() => local); // can’t serialize ‘local’! Example 2: error referencing unserializable local object The Define* methods support definitions of operator tree leaves that target the StreamInsight server. These methods all have the same basic structure. The definition argument is a lambda expression taking between 0 and 16 arguments and returning a source or sink. The method returns a proxy for the source or sink that can then be used for the usual style of LINQ query composition. The “define” methods exploit the compile-time C# feature that converts anonymous functions into translatable expression trees! Query composition exploits the runtime pattern that allows expression trees to be constructed by operators taking queryable and expression (Expression<>) arguments. The practical upshot: once you’ve Defined a source, you can compose LINQ queries in the familiar way using query expressions and operator combinators. Notably, queries can be composed using pull-sequences (LINQ to Objects IQueryable<> inputs), push sequences (Reactive IQbservable<> inputs), and temporal sequences (StreamInsight IQStreamable<> inputs). You can even construct processes that span these three domains using “bridge” method overloads (ToEnumerable, ToObservable and To*Streamable). Finally, the targeted rewrite via type irritation pattern is used to ensure that StreamInsight computations can leverage other LINQ providers as well. Consider the following example (this example depends on Interactive Extensions): var source = app.DefineEnumerable((int id) =>     EnumerableEx.Using(() =>         new NorthwindDataContext(), context =>             from p in context.Products             where p.ProductID == id             select p.ProductName)); Within the definition, StreamInsight has no reason to suspect that it ‘owns’ the Queryable.Where and Queryable.Select calls, and it can therefore defer to LINQ to SQL! Let’s use this source in the context of a StreamInsight process: var sink = app.DefineObserver(() => Observer.Create<string>(Console.WriteLine)); var query = from name in source(1).ToObservable()             where name == "Widget"             select name; using (query.Bind(sink).Run("process")) {     ... } When we run the binding, the source portion which filters on product ID and projects the product name is evaluated by SQL Server. Outside of the definition, responsibility for evaluation shifts to the StreamInsight server where we create a bridge to the Reactive Framework (using ToObservable) and evaluate an additional predicate. It’s incredibly easy to define computations that span multiple domains using these new features in StreamInsight 2.1! Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 13, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 13, 2014Popular ReleasesLozzi's SharePoint 2013 Scripts: Lozzi.Fields (without Site Col Admin): This file is the same as the primary download, however I've removed the override allowing Site Collection Administrators access regardless of groups. This applies to the disableWithAllowance and hideWithAllowance functions.bitboxx bbcontact: 01.00.00: Release Notes bitboxx bbcontact 01.00.00bbcontact 01.00.00 will work for any DNN version 6.1.0 and up. - Initial releaseAD4 Application Designer for flow based .NET applications: AD4.AppDesigner.23.27: AD4.Iteration.23.27(Advanced Rendering Features) Refacturing: RenderStepPinsCaptions simplified by extending FlowChartStepPinDecoratorExtensions RenderFlowChartPinsCaptions simplified by FlowChartFlowPinDecoratorExtensions RenderWiresCaptions simplified by FlowChartWireDecoratorExtensions Design of tutorial samples updated Next tutorial finished: ThreadAsynchronizer Pattern (Version V7) ToDo: Some tutorials are unfinished but coming soon ... Note: The gluing code of the AD4.AppDesig...OooPlayer: 1.1: Added: Support for speex, TAK and OptimFrog files Added: An option to not to load cover art Added: Smaller package size Fixed: Unable to drag&drop audio files to playlist Updated: FLAC, WacPack and Opus playback libraries Updated: ID3v1 and ID3v2 tag librariesEWSEditor: EwsEditor 1.10 Release: • Export and import of items as a full fidelity steam works - without proxy classes! - I used raw EWS POSTs. • Turned off word wrap for EWS request field in EWS POST windows. • Several windows with scrolling texts boxes were limiting content to 32k - I removed this restriction. • Split server timezone info off to separate menu item from the timezone info windows so that the timezone info window could be used without logging into a mailbox. • Lots of updates to the TimeZone window. • UserAgen...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.1 RC: Release notes for PTVS 2.1 RC We’re pleased to announce the release candidate for Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, editing, IntelliSense, interactive debugging, profiling, Microsoft Azure, IPython, and cross-platform debugging support. PTVS 2.1 RC is available for: Visual Studio Expre...Aspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SS - v 1.2: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SS SDK in comparison with Aspose.Cells What's New ? Following Examples: Create Pivot Charts Detect Merged Cells Sort Data Printing Workbooks Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.AngularGo (SPA Project Template): AngularGo.VS2013.vsix: First ReleaseDaphne 2014 - application for playing Czech Draughts: Daphne 2014 verze 0.9.0.21: Daphne 2014 verze 0.9.0.21MFCBDAINF: MFCBDAINF: Added recognition of TBS, Hauppauge, DVBWorld and FireDTV proprietary GUID'sFluffy: Fluffy 0.3.35.4: Change log: Text editorSKGL - Serial Key Generating Library: SKGL Extension Methods 4 (1.0.5.1): This library contains methods for: Time change check (make sure the time has not been changed on the client computer) Key Validation (this will use http://serialkeymanager.com/ to validate keys against the database) Key Activation (this will, depending on the settings, activate a key with a specific machine code) Key Activation Trial (allows you to update a key if it is a trial key) Get Machine Code (calculates a machine code given any hash function) Get Eight Byte Hash (returns an...Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesPublic Key Infrastructure PowerShell module: PowerShell PKI Module v3.0: Important: I would like to hear more about what you are thinking about the project? I appreciate that you like it (2000 downloads over past 6 months), but may be you have to say something? What do you dislike in the module? Maybe you would love to see some new functionality? Tell, what you think! Installation guide:Use default installation path to install this module for current user only. To install this module for all users — enable "Install for all users" check-box in installation UI ...Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...Roll20 Custom Power Card Macro Generator: R20CPCMG 0.2.0.0 Public Beta: This is the beta release for version 0.2.0.0. Its still very much a work in progress, but I'd rather get this out now before another lapse in updates so we can solicit feedback from the community. The two main updates for this version is that you can now import macros and you can customize the tag buttons and group them by game system. The Import Macro function turns the raw text, like the following, into something you can easily edit inside the program. !power --name|Whirling Assault --us...Utility Database: UtilityDB.2.0: Release Notes: Version 2.0 This is the second release of the UtilityDB, it builds on top of and includes the Version 1.8 of code. This release focus on performance metrics in particular Disk I/O. The deployment scripts have been rewritten to utilize transactions to insure completeness of script execution. This project releases the source code as a SQL Server 2012 project file. The intended way to deliver the scripts to the database is through the execution of the @BuildScript.sql in the ...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...jQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialNew Projectsangle.works: Sample AngularJS projectArtezio spTree for SharePoint 2013: spTree is a jQuery plugin to display SharePoint websites and lists in a tree view. It uses jsTree plugin to display data, expand and complement its settings.DigitalProject: no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no popenelecmedicrec: its an open source emrPetriFlow: A new solution for workflow using Petri NetReflexive .Net: Stream transformation over durable and transient channelsrunner-prototype: Small game prototype for self-practicing, likely no use at all for anyone else.Spizzi PowerShell Module: This project provides different PowerShell CmdLet's combined into one module to extend the built-in PowerShell Modules.Testill: Test Web Fabricator: A highly composable web fabricwingate log parser: wingate log parser

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• Faster, Simpler access to Azure Tables with Enzo Azure API

  - by Herve Roggero

  After developing the latest version of Enzo Cloud Backup I took the time to create an API that would simplify access to Azure Tables (the Enzo Azure API). At first, my goal was to make the code simpler compared to the Microsoft Azure SDK. But as it turns out it is also a little faster; and when using the specialized methods (the fetch strategies) it is much faster out of the box than the Microsoft SDK, unless you start creating complex parallel and resilient routines yourself. Last but not least, I decided to add a few extension methods that I think you will find attractive, such as the ability to transform a list of entities into a DataTable. So let’s review each area in more details. Simpler Code My first objective was to make the API much easier to use than the Azure SDK. I wanted to reduce the amount of code necessary to fetch entities, remove the code needed to add automatic retries and handle transient conditions, and give additional control, such as a way to cancel operations, obtain basic statistics on the calls, and control the maximum number of REST calls the API generates in an attempt to avoid throttling conditions in the first place (something you cannot do with the Azure SDK at this time). Strongly Typed Before diving into the code, the following examples rely on a strongly typed class called MyData. The way MyData is defined for the Azure SDK is similar to the Enzo Azure API, with the exception that they inherit from different classes. With the Azure SDK, classes that represent entities must inherit from TableServiceEntity, while classes with the Enzo Azure API must inherit from BaseAzureTable or implement a specific interface. // With the SDK public class MyData1 : TableServiceEntity {     public string Message { get; set; }     public string Level { get; set; }     public string Severity { get; set; } } //  With the Enzo Azure API public class MyData2 : BaseAzureTable {     public string Message { get; set; }     public string Level { get; set; }     public string Severity { get; set; } } Simpler Code Now that the classes representing an Azure Table entity are defined, let’s review the methods that the Azure SDK would look like when fetching all the entities from an Azure Table (note the use of a few variables: the _tableName variable stores the name of the Azure Table, and the ConnectionString property returns the connection string for the Storage Account containing the table): // With the Azure SDK public List<MyData1> FetchAllEntities() {      CloudStorageAccount storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(ConnectionString);      CloudTableClient tableClient = storageAccount.CreateCloudTableClient();      TableServiceContext serviceContext = tableClient.GetDataServiceContext();      CloudTableQuery<MyData1> partitionQuery =         (from e in serviceContext.CreateQuery<MyData1>(_tableName)         select new MyData1()         {            PartitionKey = e.PartitionKey,            RowKey = e.RowKey,            Timestamp = e.Timestamp,            Message = e.Message,            Level = e.Level,            Severity = e.Severity            }).AsTableServiceQuery<MyData1>();        return partitionQuery.ToList();  } This code gives you automatic retries because the AsTableServiceQuery does that for you. Also, note that this method is strongly-typed because it is using LINQ. Although this doesn’t look like too much code at first glance, you are actually mapping the strongly-typed object manually. So for larger entities, with dozens of properties, your code will grow. And from a maintenance standpoint, when a new property is added, you may need to change the mapping code. You will also note that the mapping being performed is optional; it is desired when you want to retrieve specific properties of the entities (not all) to reduce the network traffic. If you do not specify the properties you want, all the properties will be returned; in this example we are returning the Message, Level and Severity properties (in addition to the required PartitionKey, RowKey and Timestamp). The Enzo Azure API does the mapping automatically and also handles automatic reties when fetching entities. The equivalent code to fetch all the entities (with the same three properties) from the same Azure Table looks like this: // With the Enzo Azure API public List<MyData2> FetchAllEntities() {        AzureTable at = new AzureTable(_accountName, _accountKey, _ssl, _tableName);        List<MyData2> res = at.Fetch<MyData2>("", "Message,Level,Severity");        return res; } As you can see, the Enzo Azure API returns the entities already strongly typed, so there is no need to map the output. Also, the Enzo Azure API makes it easy to specify the list of properties to return, and to specify a filter as well (no filter was provided in this example; the filter is passed as the first parameter).  Fetch Strategies Both approaches discussed above fetch the data sequentially. In addition to the linear/sequential fetch methods, the Enzo Azure API provides specific fetch strategies. Fetch strategies are designed to prepare a set of REST calls, executed in parallel, in a way that performs faster that if you were to fetch the data sequentially. For example, if the PartitionKey is a GUID string, you could prepare multiple calls, providing appropriate filters ([‘a’, ‘b’[, [‘b’, ‘c’[, [‘c’, ‘d[, …), and send those calls in parallel. As you can imagine, the code necessary to create these requests would be fairly large. With the Enzo Azure API, two strategies are provided out of the box: the GUID and List strategies. If you are interested in how these strategies work, see the Enzo Azure API Online Help. Here is an example code that performs parallel requests using the GUID strategy (which executes more than 2 t o3 times faster than the sequential methods discussed previously): public List<MyData2> FetchAllEntitiesGUID() {     AzureTable at = new AzureTable(_accountName, _accountKey, _ssl, _tableName);     List<MyData2> res = at.FetchWithGuid<MyData2>("", "Message,Level,Severity");     return res; } Faster Results With Sequential Fetch Methods Developing a faster API wasn’t a primary objective; but it appears that the performance tests performed with the Enzo Azure API deliver the data a little faster out of the box (5%-10% on average, and sometimes to up 50% faster) with the sequential fetch methods. Although the amount of data is the same regardless of the approach (and the REST calls are almost exactly identical), the object mapping approach is different. So it is likely that the slight performance increase is due to a lighter API. Using LINQ offers many advantages and tremendous flexibility; nevertheless when fetching data it seems that the Enzo Azure API delivers faster.  For example, the same code previously discussed delivered the following results when fetching 3,000 entities (about 1KB each). The average elapsed time shows that the Azure SDK returned the 3000 entities in about 5.9 seconds on average, while the Enzo Azure API took 4.2 seconds on average (39% improvement). With Fetch Strategies When using the fetch strategies we are no longer comparing apples to apples; the Azure SDK is not designed to implement fetch strategies out of the box, so you would need to code the strategies yourself. Nevertheless I wanted to provide out of the box capabilities, and as a result you see a test that returned about 10,000 entities (1KB each entity), and an average execution time over 5 runs. The Azure SDK implemented a sequential fetch while the Enzo Azure API implemented the List fetch strategy. The fetch strategy was 2.3 times faster. Note that the following test hit a limit on my network bandwidth quickly (3.56Mbps), so the results of the fetch strategy is significantly below what it could be with a higher bandwidth. Additional Methods The API wouldn’t be complete without support for a few important methods other than the fetch methods discussed previously. The Enzo Azure API offers these additional capabilities: - Support for batch updates, deletes and inserts - Conversion of entities to DataRow, and List<> to a DataTable - Extension methods for Delete, Merge, Update, Insert - Support for asynchronous calls and cancellation - Support for fetch statistics (total bytes, total REST calls, retries…) For more information, visit http://www.bluesyntax.net or go directly to the Enzo Azure API page (http://www.bluesyntax.net/EnzoAzureAPI.aspx). About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting, a company specialized in cloud computing products and services. Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" from Apress and runs the Azure Florida Association (on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4177626). For more information on Blue Syntax Consulting, visit www.bluesyntax.net.

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• Processing Kinect v2 Color Streams in Parallel

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2014/08/20/processing-kinect-v2-color-streams-in-parallel.aspxProcessing Kinect v2 Color Streams in Parallel I've really been enjoying being a part of the Kinect for Windows Developer's Preview. The new hardware has some really impressive capabilities. However, with great power comes great system specs. Unfortunately, my little laptop that could is not 100% up to the task; I've had to get a little creative. The most disappointing thing I've run into is that I can't always cleanly display the color camera stream in managed code. I managed to strip the code down to what I believe is the bear minimum: using( ColorFrame _ColorFrame = e.FrameReference.AcquireFrame() ) { if( null == _ColorFrame ) return;   BitmapToDisplay.Lock(); _ColorFrame.CopyConvertedFrameDataToIntPtr( BitmapToDisplay.BackBuffer, Convert.ToUInt32( BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride * BitmapToDisplay.PixelHeight ), ColorImageFormat.Bgra ); BitmapToDisplay.AddDirtyRect( new Int32Rect( 0, 0, _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.Width, _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.Height ) ); BitmapToDisplay.Unlock(); } With this snippet, I'm placing the converted Bgra32 color stream directly on the BackBuffer of the WriteableBitmap. This gives me pretty smooth playback, but I still get the occasional freeze for half a second. After a bit of profiling, I discovered there were a few problems. The first problem is the size of the buffer along with the conversion on the buffer. At this time, the raw image format of the data from the Kinect is Yuy2. This is great for direct video processing. It would be ideal if I had a WriteableVideo object in WPF. However, this is not the case. Further digging led me to the real problem. It appears that the SDK is converting the input serially. Let's think about this for a second. The color camera is a 1080p camera. As we should all know, this give us a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. This produces 2,073,600 pixels. Yuy2 uses 4 bytes per 2 pixel, for a buffer size of 4,147,200 bytes. Bgra32 uses 4 bytes per pixel, for a buffer size of 8,294,400 bytes. The SDK appears to be doing this on one thread. I started wondering if I chould do this better myself. I mean, I have 8 cores in my system. Why can't I use them all? The first problem is converting a Yuy2 frame into a Bgra32 frame. It is NOT trivial. I spent a day of research of just how to do this. In the end, I didn't even produce the best algorithm possible, but it did work. After I managed to get that to work, I knew my next step was the get the conversion operation off the UI Thread. This was a simple process of throwing the work into a Task. Of course, this meant I had to marshal the final write to the WriteableBitmap back to the UI thread. Finally, I needed to vectorize the operation so I could run it safely in parallel. This was, mercifully, not quite as hard as I thought it would be. I had my loop return an index to a pair of pixels. From there, I had to tell the loop to do everything for this pair of pixels. If you're wondering why I did it for pairs of pixels, look back above at the specification for the Yuy2 format. I won't go into full detail on why each 4 bytes contains 2 pixels of information, but rest assured that there is a reason why the format is described in that way. The first working attempt at this algorithm successfully turned my poor laptop into a space heater. I very quickly brought and maintained all 8 cores up to about 97% usage. That's when I remembered that obscure option in the Task Parallel Library where you could limit the amount of parallelism used. After a little trial and error, I discovered 4 parallel tasks was enough for most cases. This yielded the follow code: private byte ClipToByte( int p_ValueToClip ) { return Convert.ToByte( ( p_ValueToClip < byte.MinValue ) ? byte.MinValue : ( ( p_ValueToClip > byte.MaxValue ) ? byte.MaxValue : p_ValueToClip ) ); }   private void ColorFrameArrived( object sender, ColorFrameArrivedEventArgs e ) { if( null == e.FrameReference ) return;   // If you do not dispose of the frame, you never get another one... using( ColorFrame _ColorFrame = e.FrameReference.AcquireFrame() ) { if( null == _ColorFrame ) return;   byte[] _InputImage = new byte[_ColorFrame.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels * _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.BytesPerPixel]; byte[] _OutputImage = new byte[BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride * BitmapToDisplay.PixelHeight]; _ColorFrame.CopyRawFrameDataToArray( _InputImage );   Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { ParallelOptions _ParallelOptions = new ParallelOptions(); _ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 4;   Parallel.For( 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels / 2, _ParallelOptions, ( _Index ) => { // See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd206750(v=vs.85).aspx int _Y0 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 0] - 16; int _U = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 1] - 128; int _Y1 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 2] - 16; int _V = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 3] - 128;   byte _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 0] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 1] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 2] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 3] = 0xFF; // A   _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 4] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 5] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 6] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 7] = 0xFF; } );   Application.Current.Dispatcher.Invoke( () => { BitmapToDisplay.WritePixels( new Int32Rect( 0, 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Width, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Height ), _OutputImage, BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride, 0 ); } ); } ); } } This seemed to yield a results I wanted, but there was still the occasional stutter. This lead to what I realized was the second problem. There is a race condition between the UI Thread and me locking the WriteableBitmap so I can write the next frame. Again, I'm writing approximately 8MB to the back buffer. Then, I started thinking I could cheat. The Kinect is running at 30 frames per second. The WPF UI Thread runs at 60 frames per second. This made me not feel bad about exploiting the Composition Thread. I moved the bulk of the code from the FrameArrived handler into CompositionTarget.Rendering. Once I was in there, I polled from a frame, and rendered it if it existed. Since, in theory, I'm only killing the Composition Thread every other hit, I decided I was ok with this for cases where silky smooth video performance REALLY mattered. This ode looked like this: private byte ClipToByte( int p_ValueToClip ) { return Convert.ToByte( ( p_ValueToClip < byte.MinValue ) ? byte.MinValue : ( ( p_ValueToClip > byte.MaxValue ) ? byte.MaxValue : p_ValueToClip ) ); }   void CompositionTarget_Rendering( object sender, EventArgs e ) { using( ColorFrame _ColorFrame = FrameReader.AcquireLatestFrame() ) { if( null == _ColorFrame ) return;   byte[] _InputImage = new byte[_ColorFrame.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels * _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.BytesPerPixel]; byte[] _OutputImage = new byte[BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride * BitmapToDisplay.PixelHeight]; _ColorFrame.CopyRawFrameDataToArray( _InputImage );   ParallelOptions _ParallelOptions = new ParallelOptions(); _ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 4;   Parallel.For( 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels / 2, _ParallelOptions, ( _Index ) => { // See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd206750(v=vs.85).aspx int _Y0 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 0] - 16; int _U = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 1] - 128; int _Y1 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 2] - 16; int _V = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 3] - 128;   byte _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 0] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 1] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 2] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 3] = 0xFF; // A   _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 4] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 5] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 6] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 7] = 0xFF; } );   BitmapToDisplay.WritePixels( new Int32Rect( 0, 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Width, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Height ), _OutputImage, BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride, 0 ); } }

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• LINQ to Twitter Maintenance Feedback

  - by Joe Mayo

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WinAZ/archive/2013/06/16/linq-to-twitter-maintenance-feedback.aspxIt’s always fun to receive positive feedback on your work. If you receive a sufficient amount of positive feedback, you know you’re doing something right. Sometimes, people provide negative feedback too. There are a couple ways to handle it: come back fighting or engage for clarification. The way you handle the negative feedback depends on what your goals are. Feedback Approaches If you know the feedback is incorrect and you need to promote your idea or product, you might want to come back fighting. The feedback might just be comments by a troll or competitor wanting to spread FUD. However, this could be the totally wrong approach if you misjudge the source and intentions of the feedback. In a lot of cases, feedback is a golden opportunity. Sometimes, a problem exists that you either don’t know about or don’t realize the true impact of the problem. If you decide to come back fighting, you might loose the opportunity to learn something new. However, if you engage the person providing the feedback, looking for clarification, you might learn something very important. Negative feedback and it’s clarification can lead to the collection of useful and actionable data. In my case, something that prompted this blog post, I noticed someone who tweeted a negative comment about LINQ to Twitter. Normally, any less than stellar comments are usually from folks that need help – so I help if I can. This was different. I was like “Don’t use LINQ to Twitter”. This is an open source project, the comment didn’t come from a competing project, and  sounded more like an expression of frustration. So I engaged. Not only did the person respond, but I got some decent quality feedback. What’s also interesting is a couple other side conversations sprouted on the subject, which gave me more useful data. LINQ to Twitter Thread Actions Essentially, this particular issue centered around maintenance. There are actually several sub-issues at play here: dependencies, error handling, debugging, and visibility. I’ll describe each one and my interpretation. Dependencies Dependencies are where a library has references to other libraries. This means that when you build your application, you need DLLs for the entire dependency graph for your application. There are several potential problems with this that include more libraries for configuration management, potential versioning mismatches, and lack of cross-platform support. In the early days of LINQ to Twitter, I allowed developers to contribute and add dependencies, but it became very problematic (for reasons stated). It was like a ball and chain that kept me from moving forward. So, I refactored and pulled other open-source into my project to eliminate external dependencies. This lets me fix the code in my project without relying on someone else to upgrade or fix their DLL. The motivation for this was from early negative feedback that translated as important data and acted on it. Today, LINQ to Twitter has zero dependencies. Note: Rejecting good code from community members who worked hard to make your project better is a painful experience in itself. I have to point out that any contribution was not in vain because they had a positive influence on my subsequent refactoring that resulted in a better developer experience. Error Handling Error handling has been a problem in the past. I have this combination of supporting both synchronous and asynchronous (APM) processing that can be complex at times. Within the last 6 months, I did a fair amount of refactoring to detect errors and process them properly. I also refactored TwitterQueryException so it includes important data from Twitter. During this refactoring, I’ve made breaking changes that I felt would improve the development experience (small things like renaming a callback property to Exception, rather than Error). I think the async error handling is much better than it was a year ago. For all the work I’ve done, there is more to do. I think that a combination of more error handling support, e.g. improving semantics, and education through documentation and samples will improve the error handling story. Because of what I’ve done so far, it isn’t bad, but I see opportunities for improvement. Debugging Debugging can be painful. Here’s why: you have multiple layers of technology to navigate and figure out where the real problem is – Twitter API, Security, HTTP, LINQ to Twitter, and application. You can probably add your own nuances to that list, but the point is that debugging in this environment can be complex. I think that my plans for error handling will contribute to making the debugging process easier. However, there’s more I can do in the way of documentation and guidance. Some of the questions to be answered revolve around when something goes wrong, how does the developer figure out that there is a problem, what the problem is, and what to do about it. One example that has gone a long way to helping LINQ to Twitter developers is the 401 FAQ. A 401 Unauthorized is the error that the Twitter API returns when a use isn’t able to authenticate and is one of the most difficult problems faced by LINQ to Twitter developers. What I did was read guidance from Twitter and collect techniques from my own development and actions helping other developers to compile an extensive list of reasons for the 401 and ways to fix the problem. At one time, over half of the questions I answered in the forums were to help solve 401 issues. After publishing the 401 FAQ, I rarely get a 401 question and it’s because the person didn’t know about the FAQ. If the person is too lazy to read the FAQ, that’s not my issue, but the results in support issues have been dramatic. I think debugging can benefit from the education and documentation approach, but I’m always open to suggestions on whatever else I can do. Visibility Visibility is a nuance of the error handling/debugging discussion but is deeply rooted in comfort and control. The questions to ask in this area are what is happening as my code runs and how testable is the code. In support of these areas, LINQ to Twitter does have logging and TwitterContext properties that help see what’s happening on requests. The logging functionality allows any developer to connect a TextWriter to the Log property of TwitterContext to see what’s happening. Further, TwitterContext has a Headers property to see the headers Twitter returns and a RawResults property to show the Json string Twitter returns. From a testing perspective, I’ve been able to write hundreds of unit tests, over 600 when this post is published, and growing. If you write your own library, you have full control over all of these aspects. The tradeoff here is that while you have access to the LINQ to Twitter source code and modify it for all the visibility, LINQ to Twitter *will* change (which is good) and you will have to figure out how to merge that with your changes (which is hard). The fact is that this is a limitation of any 3rd party library, not just LINQ to Twitter. So, it’s a design decision where the tradeoff is between control and productivity. That said, there are things I can do with LINQ to Twitter to make the visibility story more compelling. I think there are opportunities to improve diagnostics. This would be a ton of work because it would need to provide multi-level logging that can be tuned for production and support any logging provider you want to attach. I’ve considered approaches such as how the new Semantic Logging application block connects to Windows Error Reporting as a potential target. Whatever I do would need to be extensible without creating native external dependencies. e.g. how many 3rd party libraries force a dependency on a logging framework that you don’t use. So, this won’t be an easy feat, but I believe it can be part of the roadmap. I think that a lot of developers are unaware of existing visibility features, so the first step would be to provide more documentation and guidance. My thought are that this would lead to more feedback that will help improve this area. Summary Recent feedback highlights some of items that are important to LINQ to Twitter developers, such as dependencies, error handling, debugging, and visibility. I know that there are maintenance issues that have been problems for LINQ to Twitter developers in the past. I’ve done a lot of work in this area, such as improving error handling, adding visibility features, and providing extensive API documentation. That said, there is more to be done to make LINQ to Twitter the best Twitter API experience available for .NET developers and I welcome anyone’s thoughts on what I’ve written here or new improvements. @JoeMayo

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• Object array updates one instance repeatedly [on hold]

  - by MGN001

  I'm making a 2D shooter, and the player object holds an array of bullets that represent how many shots the player can have on screen at once. At least, this is what I'm trying for. What's happening is that each time any of the objects in the array is called, it seems to update a single object in memory. So, if I fire and then fire again, the object "starts over" from where I shot from and moves twice as fast. I've spent weeks trying to fix this and I've managed nothing. Hopefully another pair of eyes will see something I've missed. Player.cpp #include "Player.h" const int startLives = 3; const int maxHealth = 2; const float speed = 1; const int maxVelocity = 500; const int topBound = WINDOW_HEIGHT / 5 * 3; const int slowRate = 500; const int accRate = 1000; const int maxBullets = 5; const float spriteWidth = 99; const float spriteHeight = 75; const Vector2f startPosition = { (WINDOW_WIDTH / 2) - (spriteWidth / 2), (WINDOW_HEIGHT / 4 * 3) - (spriteHeight / 2) }; Bullet bullets[maxBullets]; Bullet * bulletPointers[maxBullets]; SDL_Texture * playerHealthy; SDL_Texture * playerDamaged; SDL_Texture * currentSprite; SDL_Rect * rect; Vector2f position; Vector2f velocity; int Health; int Lives; Player::Player() { rect = new SDL_Rect(); } Player::~Player() { SDL_DestroyTexture(playerHealthy); SDL_DestroyTexture(playerDamaged); SDL_DestroyTexture(currentSprite); rect = NULL; } void Player::Initialize(SDL_Renderer * renderer) { SDL_Surface * temp; temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\player.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } playerHealthy = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\playerDamaged.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } playerDamaged = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\laserGreen.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } SDL_Texture * bullet = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\laserGreenShot.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } SDL_Texture * explosion = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; i++) { bullets[i].Initialize(renderer, bullet, explosion); bulletPointers[i] = NULL; } temp = NULL; rect->h = spriteHeight; rect->w = spriteWidth; Reset(); } void Player::Update(Input input, float deltaTime) { if (abs(velocity.x) < slowRate * deltaTime) { velocity.x = 0; } else if (velocity.x > 0) { velocity.x -= slowRate * deltaTime; } else if (velocity.x < 0) { velocity.x += slowRate * deltaTime; } if (abs(velocity.y) < slowRate * deltaTime) { velocity.y = 0; } if (velocity.y > 0) { velocity.y -= slowRate * deltaTime; } else if (velocity.y < 0) { velocity.y += slowRate * deltaTime; } if (Health <= 0) { --Lives; Spawn(); } velocity.x += UnitVector(input.InputNew.movement).x * accRate * deltaTime; velocity.y += UnitVector(input.InputNew.movement).y * accRate * deltaTime; if (Magnitude(velocity) > maxVelocity) { velocity.x = UnitVector(velocity).x * maxVelocity; velocity.y = UnitVector(velocity).y * maxVelocity; } position.x += velocity.x * deltaTime * speed; position.y += velocity.y * deltaTime * speed; if (input.InputNew.JumpLeft && !input.InputOld.JumpLeft) { position.x -= spriteWidth; } if (input.InputNew.JumpRight && !input.InputOld.JumpRight) { position.x += spriteWidth; } Boundaries(); rect->x = position.x; rect->y = position.y; if (input.InputNew.Fire && !input.InputOld.Fire) { Fire(); } for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; ++i) { if (bulletPointers[i] != NULL) { bullets[i].Update(deltaTime); if (bullets[i].getPosition().y < -33) { bulletPointers[i] = NULL; } } } } void Player::Draw(SDL_Renderer * renderer) { for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; ++i) { if (bulletPointers[i] != NULL) { bullets[i].Draw(renderer); } } SDL_RenderCopy(renderer, currentSprite, NULL, rect); } void Player::Spawn() { position = startPosition; Health = maxHealth; currentSprite = playerHealthy; rect->x = position.x; rect->y = position.y; } void Player::Boundaries() { if (position.x < 0) { position.x = 0; velocity.x *= -1; } else if (position.x > WINDOW_WIDTH - spriteWidth) { position.x = WINDOW_WIDTH - spriteWidth; velocity.x *= -1; } if (position.y < topBound) { position.y = topBound; velocity.y *= -1; } else if (position.y > WINDOW_HEIGHT - spriteHeight) { position.y = WINDOW_HEIGHT - spriteHeight; velocity.y *= -1; } } int Player::getLives() { return Lives; } void Player::Reset() { Lives = startLives; Spawn(); } void Player::Fire() { for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; ++i) { if (bulletPointers[i] == NULL) { bulletPointers[i] = &bullets[i]; bullets[i].Fire(position,velocity.x/2); break; } } } Bullet.cpp #include "Bullet.h" const int speed = 500; Vector2f bulletVelocity; float ExplosionMax = 0.5f; float ExplosionTimer; const Vector2f fireOffset = { 45.5f, 10.0f }; const Vector2f explosionOffset = { 23.5f, -27.0f }; const Vector2i bulletSize = { 9, 33 }; const Vector2i explosionSize = { 56, 54 }; Vector2f bulletPosition; SDL_Texture * bulletSprite; SDL_Texture * explosionSprite; SDL_Texture * bulletCurrentSprite; SDL_Rect * bulletRect; Bullet::Bullet() { } Bullet::~Bullet() { } void Bullet::Initialize(SDL_Renderer * renderer, SDL_Texture * bullet, SDL_Texture * explosion) { bulletSprite = bullet; explosionSprite = explosion; bulletRect = new SDL_Rect(); } void Bullet::Update(float deltaTime) { bulletPosition.y -= bulletVelocity.y * deltaTime; bulletPosition.x += bulletVelocity.x * deltaTime; bulletRect->x = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.x); bulletRect->y = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.y); } void Bullet::Draw(SDL_Renderer * renderer) { SDL_RenderCopy(renderer, bulletCurrentSprite, NULL, bulletRect); } void Bullet::Fire(Vector2f pos, float xSpeed) { bulletPosition.x = pos.x + fireOffset.x; bulletPosition.y = pos.y + fireOffset.y; bulletVelocity.x = xSpeed; bulletVelocity.y = speed; bulletCurrentSprite = bulletSprite; bulletRect->h = bulletSize.y; bulletRect->w = bulletSize.x; bulletRect->x = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.x); bulletRect->y = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.y); } Vector2f Bullet::getPosition() { return bulletPosition; } void Bullet::Hit() { bulletCurrentSprite = explosionSprite; bulletVelocity = { 0.0f, 0.0f }; ExplosionTimer = ExplosionMax; bulletPosition.x += explosionOffset.x; bulletPosition.y += explosionOffset.y; bulletRect->w = explosionSize.x; bulletRect->h = explosionSize.y; }

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