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• "Mega Menus" for SEO [duplicate]

  - by Thought Space Designs

  This question already has an answer here: How do I handle having to many links on a webpage because of my menu 4 answers I'm using the term "Mega Menus" loosely here. I'm redesigning my WordPress site (it's going to be responsive), and as part of the redesign, I was debating incorporating some sort of descriptive menu setup. For example, normal navigation drop down menus come in the form of unordered lists of links like so: <nav> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Link1</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Link2</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Link3</a> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Sub Link1</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Sub Link2</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Sub Link3</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="#">Link4</a> </li> </ul> </nav> What I'm looking to do is build my drop down menus with more information than your standard menu. For example, I have a top level link named "Team", and under that link, I want to make a large drop down that contains head shots, headers (in the form of styled p tags) and brief (<100 words) descriptions of each team member (only 2 currently). I want to accompany this with a "Read More" link that takes you to their actual team page. This is just one example, of course, and the other top level links would also have descriptive drop downs in the same fashion. On mobile, I was planning on hiding the "mega menu", and delivering a standard unordered list of links. Here's what I was thinking for overall structure and syntax: <nav> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Home</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">About</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Team</a> <ul> <!-- DESKTOP --> <li class="mega-menu row"> <a class="col-sm-6" href="#"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-4"> <img src="#" alt="Team Member 1" /> </div> <div class="col-sm-8"> <p class="header">Team Member 1</p> <p>Short description goes here.</p> </div> </div> </a> <a class="col-sm-6" href="#"> <!-- OTHER TEAM MEMBER INFO --> </a> </li> <!-- END DESKTOP --> <!-- MOBILE --> <li> <a href="#">Team Member 1</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Team Member 2</a> </li> <!-- END MOBILE --> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="#">Contact</a> </li> </ul> </nav> Can anybody think of any potential SEO ramifications of doing this? I'm not going to be loading these menus full of links, so it shouldn't hurt page rank, but what are the effects of having a good bit of text and maybe even forms within nav elements? Is there such a thing as overloading nav with HTML? EDIT: Here's an example of what the menu would look like rendered on desktop. I'm currently hovering the "Team" menu, but you can't see because my mouse went away when I took the screenshot. EDIT 2: This question is not a duplicate. I'm not going to have "too many" links in my menus. I'm wondering how having images and text inside of header navigation will affect my menus. Also, I don't just want "yes, this is bad" answers. Please cite your sources and be specific with reasoning.

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• Need some help on how to replay the last game of a java maze game

  - by Marty

  Hello, I am working on creating a Java maze game for a project. The maze is displayed on the console as standard output not in an applet. I have created most of hte code I need, however I am stuck at one problem and that is I need a user to be able to replay the last game i.e redraw the maze with the users moves but without any input from the user. I am not sure on what course of action to take, i was thinking about copying each users move or the position of each move into another array, as you can see i have 2 variables which hold the position of the player, plyrX and plyrY do you think copying these values into a new array after each move would solve my problem and how would i go about this? I have updated my code, apologies about the textIO.java class not being present, not sure how to resolve that exept post a link to TextIO.java [TextIO.java][1] My code below is updated with a new array of type char to hold values from the original maze (read in from text file and displayed using unicode characters) and also to new variables c_plyrX and c_plyrY which I am thinking should hold the values of plyrX and plyrY and copy them into the new array. When I try to call the replayGame(); method from the menu the maze loads for a second then the console exits so im not sure what I am doing wrong Thanks public class MazeGame { //unicode characters that will define the maze walls, //pathways, and in game characters. final static char WALL = '\u2588'; //wall final static char PATH = '\u2591'; //pathway final static char PLAYER = '\u25EF'; //player final static char ENTRANCE = 'E'; //entrance final static char EXIT = '\u2716'; //exit //declaring member variables which will hold the maze co-ordinates //X = rows, Y = columns static int entX = 0; //entrance X co-ordinate static int entY = 1; //entrance y co-ordinate static int plyrX = 0; static int plyrY = 1; static int exitX = 24; //exit X co-ordinate static int exitY = 37; //exit Y co-ordinate //static member variables which hold maze values //used so values can be accessed from different methods static int rows; //rows variable static int cols; //columns variable static char[][] maze; //defines 2 dimensional array to hold the maze //variables that hold player movement values static char dir; //direction static int spaces; //amount of spaces user can travel //variable to hold amount of moves the user has taken; static int movesTaken = 0; //new array to hold player moves for replaying game static char[][] mazeCopy; static int c_plyrX; static int c_plyrY; /** userMenu method for displaying the user menu which will provide various options for * the user to choose such as play a maze game, get instructions, etc. */ public static void userMenu(){ TextIO.putln("Maze Game"); TextIO.putln("*********"); TextIO.putln("Choose an option."); TextIO.putln(""); TextIO.putln("1. Play the Maze Game."); TextIO.putln("2. View Instructions."); TextIO.putln("3. Replay the last game."); TextIO.putln("4. Exit the Maze Game."); TextIO.putln(""); int option; //variable for holding users option TextIO.put("Type your choice: "); option = TextIO.getlnInt(); //gets users option //switch statement for processing menu options switch(option){ case 1: playMazeGame(); case 2: instructions(); case 3: if (c_plyrX == plyrX && c_plyrY == plyrY)replayGame(); else { TextIO.putln("Option not available yet, you need to play a game first."); TextIO.putln(); userMenu(); } case 4: System.exit(0); //exits the user out of the console default: TextIO.put("Option must be 1, 2, 3 or 4"); } } //end of userMenu /**main method, will call the userMenu and get the users choice and call * the relevant method to execute the users choice. */ public static void main(String[]args){ userMenu(); //calls the userMenu method } //end of main method /**instructions method, displays instructions on how to play * the game to the user/ */ public static void instructions(){ TextIO.putln("To beat the Maze Game you have to move your character"); TextIO.putln("through the maze and reach the exit in as few moves as possible."); TextIO.putln(""); TextIO.putln("Your characer is displayed as a " + PLAYER); TextIO.putln("The maze exit is displayed as a " + EXIT); TextIO.putln("Reach the exit and you have won escaped the maze."); TextIO.putln("To control your character type the direction you want to go"); TextIO.putln("and how many spaces you want to move"); TextIO.putln("for example 'D3' will move your character"); TextIO.putln("down 3 spaces."); TextIO.putln("Remember you can't walk through walls!"); boolean insOption; //boolean variable TextIO.putln(""); TextIO.put("Do you want to play the Maze Game now? (Y or N) "); insOption = TextIO.getlnBoolean(); if (insOption == true)playMazeGame(); else userMenu(); } //end of instructions method /**playMazeGame method, calls the loadMaze method and the charMove method * to start playing the Maze Game. */ public static void playMazeGame(){ loadMaze(); plyrMoves(); } //end of playMazeGame method /**loadMaze method, loads the 39x25 maze from the MazeGame.txt text file * and inserts values from the text file into the maze array and * displays the maze on screen using the unicode block characters. * plyrX and plyrY variables are set at their staring co ordinates so that when * a game is completed and the user selects to play a new game * the player character will always be at position 01. */ public static void loadMaze(){ plyrX = 0; plyrY = 1; TextIO.readFile("MazeGame.txt"); //now reads from the external MazeGame.txt file rows = TextIO.getInt(); //gets the number of rows from text file to create X dimensions cols = TextIO.getlnInt(); //gets number of columns from text file to create Y dimensions maze = new char[rows][cols]; //creates maze array of base type char with specified dimnensions //loop to process the array and read in values from the text file. for (int i = 0; i<rows; i++){ for (int j = 0; j<cols; j++){ maze[i][j] = TextIO.getChar(); } TextIO.getln(); } //end for loop TextIO.readStandardInput(); //closes MazeGame.txt file and reads from //standard input. //loop to process the array values and display as unicode characters for (int i = 0; i<rows; i++){ for (int j = 0; j<cols; j++){ if (i == plyrX && j == plyrY){ plyrX = i; plyrY = j; TextIO.put(PLAYER); //puts the player character at player co-ords } else{ if (maze[i][j] == '0') TextIO.putf("%c",WALL); //puts wall block if (maze[i][j] == '1') TextIO.putf("%c",PATH); //puts path block if (maze[i][j] == '2') { entX = i; entY = j; TextIO.putf("%c",ENTRANCE); //puts entrance character } if (maze[i][j] == '3') { exitX = i; //holds value of exit exitY = j; //co-ordinates TextIO.putf("%c",EXIT); //puts exit character } } } TextIO.putln(); } //end for loop } //end of loadMaze method /**redrawMaze method, method for redrawing the maze after each move. * */ public static void redrawMaze(){ TextIO.readFile("MazeGame.txt"); //now reads from the external MazeGame.txt file rows = TextIO.getInt(); //gets the number of rows from text file to create X dimensions cols = TextIO.getlnInt(); //gets number of columns from text file to create Y dimensions maze = new char[rows][cols]; //creates maze array of base type char with specified dimnensions //loop to process the array and read in values from the text file. for (int i = 0; i<rows; i++){ for (int j = 0; j<cols; j++){ maze[i][j] = TextIO.getChar(); } TextIO.getln(); } //end for loop TextIO.readStandardInput(); //closes MazeGame.txt file and reads from //standard input. //loop to process the array values and display as unicode characters for (int i = 0; i<rows; i++){ for (int j = 0; j<cols; j++){ if (i == plyrX && j == plyrY){ plyrX = i; plyrY = j; TextIO.put(PLAYER); //puts the player character at player co-ords } else{ if (maze[i][j] == '0') TextIO.putf("%c",WALL); //puts wall block if (maze[i][j] == '1') TextIO.putf("%c",PATH); //puts path block if (maze[i][j] == '2') { entX = i; entY = j; TextIO.putf("%c",ENTRANCE); //puts entrance character } if (maze[i][j] == '3') { exitX = i; //holds value of exit exitY = j; //co-ordinates TextIO.putf("%c",EXIT); //puts exit character } } } TextIO.putln(); } //end for loop } //end redrawMaze method /**replay game method * */ public static void replayGame(){ c_plyrX = plyrX; c_plyrY = plyrY; TextIO.readFile("MazeGame.txt"); //now reads from the external MazeGame.txt file rows = TextIO.getInt(); //gets the number of rows from text file to create X dimensions cols = TextIO.getlnInt(); //gets number of columns from text file to create Y dimensions mazeCopy = new char[rows][cols]; //creates maze array of base type char with specified dimnensions //loop to process the array and read in values from the text file. for (int i = 0; i<rows; i++){ for (int j = 0; j<cols; j++){ mazeCopy[i][j] = TextIO.getChar(); } TextIO.getln(); } //end for loop TextIO.readStandardInput(); //closes MazeGame.txt file and reads from //standard input. //loop to process the array values and display as unicode characters for (int i = 0; i<rows; i++){ for (int j = 0; j<cols; j++){ if (i == c_plyrX && j == c_plyrY){ c_plyrX = i; c_plyrY = j; TextIO.put(PLAYER); //puts the player character at player co-ords } else{ if (mazeCopy[i][j] == '0') TextIO.putf("%c",WALL); //puts wall block if (mazeCopy[i][j] == '1') TextIO.putf("%c",PATH); //puts path block if (mazeCopy[i][j] == '2') { entX = i; entY = j; TextIO.putf("%c",ENTRANCE); //puts entrance character } if (mazeCopy[i][j] == '3') { exitX = i; //holds value of exit exitY = j; //co-ordinates TextIO.putf("%c",EXIT); //puts exit character } } } TextIO.putln(); } //end for loop } //end replayGame method /**plyrMoves method, method for moving the players character * around the maze. */ public static void plyrMoves(){ int nplyrX = plyrX; int nplyrY = plyrY; int pMoves; direction(); //UP if (dir == 'U' || dir == 'u'){ nplyrX = plyrX; nplyrY = plyrY; for(pMoves = 0; pMoves <= spaces; pMoves++){ if (maze[nplyrX][nplyrY] == '0'){ TextIO.putln("Invalid move, try again."); } else if (pMoves != spaces){ nplyrX =plyrX + 1; } else { plyrX = plyrX-spaces; c_plyrX = plyrX; movesTaken++; } } }//end UP if //DOWN if (dir == 'D' || dir == 'd'){ nplyrX = plyrX; nplyrY = plyrY; for (pMoves = 0; pMoves <= spaces; pMoves ++){ if (maze[nplyrX][nplyrY] == '0'){ TextIO.putln("Invalid move, try again"); } else if (pMoves != spaces){ nplyrX = plyrX+1; } else{ plyrX = plyrX+spaces; c_plyrX = plyrX; movesTaken++; } } } //end DOWN if //LEFT if (dir == 'L' || dir =='l'){ nplyrX = plyrX; nplyrY = plyrY; for (pMoves = 0; pMoves <= spaces; pMoves++){ if (maze[nplyrX][nplyrY] == '0'){ TextIO.putln("Invalid move, try again"); } else if (pMoves != spaces){ nplyrY = plyrY + 1; } else{ plyrY = plyrY-spaces; c_plyrY = plyrY; movesTaken++; } } } //end LEFT if //RIGHT if (dir == 'R' || dir == 'r'){ nplyrX = plyrX; nplyrY = plyrY; for (pMoves = 0; pMoves <= spaces; pMoves++){ if (maze[nplyrX][nplyrY] == '0'){ TextIO.putln("Invalid move, try again."); } else if (pMoves != spaces){ nplyrY += 1; } else{ plyrY = plyrY+spaces; c_plyrY = plyrY; movesTaken++; } } } //end RIGHT if //prints message if player escapes from the maze. if (maze[plyrX][plyrY] == '3'){ TextIO.putln("****Congratulations****"); TextIO.putln(); TextIO.putln("You have escaped from the maze."); TextIO.putln(); userMenu(); } else{ movesTaken++; redrawMaze(); plyrMoves(); } } //end of plyrMoves method /**direction, method * */ public static char direction(){ TextIO.putln("Enter the direction you wish to move in and the distance"); TextIO.putln("i.e D3 = move down 3 spaces"); TextIO.putln("U - Up, D - Down, L - Left, R - Right: "); dir = TextIO.getChar(); if (dir =='U' || dir == 'D' || dir == 'L' || dir == 'R' || dir == 'u' || dir == 'd' || dir == 'l' || dir == 'r'){ spacesMoved(); } else{ loadMaze(); TextIO.putln("Invalid direction!"); TextIO.put("Direction must be one of U, D, L or R"); direction(); } return dir; //returns the value of dir (direction) } //end direction method /**spaces method, gets the amount of spaces the user wants to move * */ public static int spacesMoved(){ TextIO.putln(" "); spaces = TextIO.getlnInt(); if (spaces <= 0){ loadMaze(); TextIO.put("Invalid amount of spaces, try again"); spacesMoved(); } return spaces; } //end spacesMoved method } //end of MazeGame class

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• jqgrid with asp.net webmethod and json working with sorting, paging, searching and LINQ

  - by aimlessWonderer

  THIS WORKS! Most topics covering jqgrid and asp.net seem to relate to just receiving JSON, or working in the MVC framework, or utilizing other handlers or web services... but not many dealt with actually passing parameters back to an actual webmethod in the codebehind. Furthermore, scarce are the examples that contain successful implementation the AJAX paging, sorting, or searching along with LINQ to SQL for asp.net jqGrid. Below is a working example that may help others who need help to pass parameters to jqGrid in order to have correct paging, sorting, filtering.. it uses pieces from here and there... ================================================== First, THE JAVASCRIPT <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { var grid = $("#list"); $("#list").jqGrid({ // setup custom parameter names to pass to server prmNames: { search: "isSearch", nd: null, rows: "numRows", page: "page", sort: "sortField", order: "sortOrder" }, // add by default to avoid webmethod parameter conflicts postData: { searchString: '', searchField: '', searchOper: '' }, // setup ajax call to webmethod datatype: function(postdata) { mtype: "GET", $.ajax({ url: 'PageName.aspx/getGridData', type: "POST", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", data: JSON.stringify(postdata), dataType: "json", success: function(data, st) { if (st == "success") { var grid = jQuery("#list")[0]; grid.addJSONData(JSON.parse(data.d)); } }, error: function() { alert("Error with AJAX callback"); } }); }, // this is what jqGrid is looking for in json callback jsonReader: { root: "rows", page: "page", total: "totalpages", records: "totalrecords", cell: "cell", id: "id", //index of the column with the PK in it userdata: "userdata", repeatitems: true }, colNames: ['Id', 'First Name', 'Last Name'], colModel: [ { name: 'id', index: 'id', width: 55, search: false }, { name: 'fname', index: 'fname', width: 200, searchoptions: { sopt: ['eq', 'ne', 'cn']} }, { name: 'lname', index: 'lname', width: 200, searchoptions: { sopt: ['eq', 'ne', 'cn']} } ], rowNum: 10, rowList: [10, 20, 30], pager: jQuery("#pager"), sortname: "fname", sortorder: "asc", viewrecords: true, caption: "Grid Title Here" }).jqGrid('navGrid', '#pager', { edit: false, add: false, del: false }, {}, // default settings for edit {}, // add {}, // delete { closeOnEscape: true, closeAfterSearch: true}, //search {} ) }); </script> ================================================== Second, THE C# WEBMETHOD [WebMethod] public static string getGridData(int? numRows, int? page, string sortField, string sortOrder, bool isSearch, string searchField, string searchString, string searchOper) { string result = null; MyDataContext db = null; try { //--- retrieve the data db = new MyDataContext("my connection string path"); var query = from u in db.TBL_USERs select u; //--- determine if this is a search filter if (isSearch) { searchOper = getOperator(searchOper); // need to associate correct operator to value sent from jqGrid string whereClause = String.Format("{0} {1} {2}", searchField, searchOper, "@" + searchField); //--- associate value to field parameter Dictionary<string, object> param = new Dictionary<string, object>(); param.Add("@" + searchField, searchString); query = query.Where(whereClause, new object[1] { param }); } //--- setup calculations int pageIndex = page ?? 1; //--- current page int pageSize = numRows ?? 10; //--- number of rows to show per page int totalRecords = query.Count(); //--- number of total items from query int totalPages = (int)Math.Ceiling((decimal)totalRecords / (decimal)pageSize); //--- number of pages //--- filter dataset for paging and sorting IQueryable<TBL_USER> orderedRecords = query.OrderBy(sortfield); IEnumerable<TBL_USER> sortedRecords = orderedRecords.ToList(); if (sortorder == "desc") sortedRecords= sortedRecords.Reverse(); sortedRecords= sortedRecords .Skip((pageIndex - 1) * pageSize) //--- page the data .Take(pageSize); //--- format json var jsonData = new { totalpages = totalPages, //--- number of pages page = pageIndex, //--- current page totalrecords = totalRecords, //--- total items rows = ( from row in sortedRecords select new { i = row.USER_ID, cell = new string[] { row.USER_ID.ToString(), row.FNAME.ToString(), row.LNAME } } ).ToArray() }; result = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(jsonData); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine(ex); } finally { if (db != null) db.Dispose(); } return result; } ================================================== Third, NECESSITIES In order to have dynamic OrderBy clauses in the LINQ, I had to pull in a class to my AppCode folder called 'Dynamic.cs'. You can retrieve the file from downloading here. You will find the file in the "DynamicQuery" folder. That file will give you the ability to utilized dynamic ORDERBY clause since we don't know what column we're filtering by except on the initial load. To serialize the JSON back from the C-sharp to the JS, I incorporated the James Newton-King JSON.net DLL found here : http://json.codeplex.com/releases/view/37810. After downloading, there is a "Newtonsoft.Json.Compact.dll" which you can add in your Bin folder as a reference Here's my USING's block using System; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; using System.Web.Services; using System.Linq.Dynamic; For the Javascript references, I'm using the following scripts in respective order in case that helps some folks: 1) jquery-1.3.2.min.js ... 2) jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js ... 3) json.min.js ... 4) i18n/grid.locale-en.js ... 5) jquery.jqGrid.min.js For the CSS, I'm using jqGrid's necessities as well as the jQuery UI Theme: 1) jquery_theme/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css ... 2) ui.jqgrid.css The key to getting the parameters from the JS to the WebMethod without having to parse an unserialized string on the backend or having to setup some JS logic to switch methods for different numbers of parameters was this block postData: { searchString: '', searchField: '', searchOper: '' }, Those parameters will still be set correctly when you actually do a search and then reset to empty when you "reset" or want the grid to not do any filtering Hope this helps some others!!!! Please reply if you find major issues or ways of refactoring or doing better that I haven't considered.

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• Openlayers - Redraw() layer. Add / Remove layer.

  - by Ozaki

  TLDR: I have an Openlayers map with a layer called 'track' I want to remove track and add track back in. I have an image 'imageFeature' on a layer that rotates on load to the direction being set. I want it to update this rotation that is set in 'styleMap' on a layer called 'tracking'. I set the var 'stylemap' to apply the external image & rotation. The 'imageFeature' is added to the layer at the coords specified. 'imageFeature' is removed. 'imageFeature' is added again in its new location. Rotation is not applied.. As the 'styleMap' applies to the layer I think that I have to remove the layer and add it again rather than just the 'imageFeature' Layer: var tracking = new OpenLayers.Layer.GML("Tracking", "coordinates.json", { format: OpenLayers.Format.GeoJSON, styleMap: styleMap }); styleMap: var styleMap = new OpenLayers.StyleMap({ fillOpacity: 1, pointRadius: 10, rotation: heading, }); Now wrapped in a timed function the imageFeature: map.layers[3].addFeatures(new OpenLayers.Feature.Vector( new OpenLayers.Geometry.Point(longitude, latitude), {rotation: heading, type: parseInt(Math.random() * 3)} )); Type refers to a lookup of 1 of 3 images.: styleMap.addUniqueValueRules("default", "type", lookup); var lookup = { 0: {externalGraphic: "Image1.png", rotation: heading}, 1: {externalGraphic: "Image2.png", rotation: heading}, 2: {externalGraphic: "Image3.png", rotation: heading} } I have tried the 'redraw()' function: but it returns "tracking is undefined" or "map.layers[2]" is undefined. tracking.redraw(true); map.layers[2].redraw(true); Heading is a variable: from a JSON feed. var heading = 13.542; But so far can't get anything to work it will only rotate the image onload. The image will move in coordinates as it should though. So what am I doing wrong with the redraw function or how can I get this image to rotate live? Thanks in advance -Ozaki Add: I managed to get map.layers[2].redraw(true); to sucessfully redraw layer 2. But it still does not update the rotation. I am thinking because the stylemap is updating. But it runs through the style map every n sec, but no updates to rotation and the variable for heading is updating correctly if i put a watch on it in firebug.

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• Using FFmpeg in c#?

  - by daniel

  So i know its a fairly big challenge but i want to write a basic movie player/converter in c# using the FFmpeg library. However the first obstacle i need to overcome is wrapping the FFmpeg library in c#. I downloaded ffmpeg but couldn't compile it on windows, so i downloaded a precompiled version for me. Ok awesome. Then i started looking for c# wrappers. I have looked around and have found a few wrappers such as SharpFFmpeg (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sharpffmpeg/) and ffmpeg-sharp (http://code.google.com/p/ffmpeg-sharp/). First of all i wanted to use ffmpeg-sharp as its LGPL and SharpFFmpeg is GPL. However it had quite a few compile errors. Turns out it was written for the mono compiler, i tried compiling it with mon but couldn't figure out how. I then started to manually fix the compiler errors myself, but came across a few scary ones and thought i'd better leave those alone. So i gave up on ffmpeg-sharp. Then i looked at SharpFFmpeg and it looks like what i want, all the functions P/Invoked for me. However its GPL? Both the AVCodec.cs and AVFormat.cs files look like ports of avcodec.c and avformat.c which i reckon i could port myself? Then not have to worry about licencing. But i wan't to get this right before i go ahead and start coding. Should I: Write my own c++ library for interacting with ffmpeg, then have my c# program talk to the c++ library in order to play/convert videos etc. OR Port avcodec.h and avformat.h (is that all i need?) to c# by using a whole lot of DllImports and write it entirely in c#? First of all consider that i'm not great at c++ as i rarely use it but i know enough to get around. The reason i'm thinking #1 might be the better option is that most FFmpeg tutorials are in c++ and i'd also have more control over memory management that if i was to do it in c#. What do you think? Also would you happen to have any usefull links (perhaps a tutorial) for using FFmpeg? EDIT: spelling mistakes

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• Fluent NHibernate: mapping complex many-to-many (with additional columns) and setting fetch

  - by HackedByChinese

  I need a Fluent NHibernate mapping that will fulfill the following (if nothing else, I'll also take the appropriate NHibernate XML mapping and reverse engineer it). DETAILS I have a many-to-many relationship between two entities: Parent and Child. That is accomplished by an additional table to store the identities of the Parent and Child. However, I also need to define two additional columns on that mapping that provide more information about the relationship. This is roughly how I've defined my types, at least the relevant parts (where Entity is some base type that provides an Id property and checks for equivalence based on that Id): public class Parent : Entity { public virtual IList<ParentChildRelationship> Children { get; protected set; } public virtual void AddChildRelationship(Child child, int customerId) { var relationship = new ParentChildRelationship { CustomerId = customerId, Parent = this, Child = child }; if (Children == null) Children = new List<ParentChildRelationship>(); if (Children.Contains(relationship)) return; relationship.Sequence = Children.Count; Children.Add(relationship); } } public class Child : Entity { // child doesn't care about its relationships } public class ParentChildRelationship { public int CustomerId { get; set; } public Parent Parent { get; set; } public Child Child { get; set; } public int Sequence { get; set; } public override bool Equals(object obj) { if (ReferenceEquals(null, obj)) return false; if (ReferenceEquals(this, obj)) return true; var other = obj as ParentChildRelationship; if (return other == null) return false; return (CustomerId == other.CustomerId && Parent == other.Parent && Child == other.Child); } public override int GetHashCode() { unchecked { int result = CustomerId; result = Parent == null ? 0 : (result*397) ^ Parent.GetHashCode(); result = Child == null ? 0 : (result*397) ^ Child.GetHashCode(); return result; } } } The tables in the database look approximately like (assume primary/foreign keys and forgive syntax): create table Parent ( id int identity(1,1) not null ) create table Child ( id int identity(1,1) not null ) create table ParentChildRelationship ( customerId int not null, parent_id int not null, child_id int not null, sequence int not null ) I'm OK with Parent.Children being a lazy loaded property. However, the ParentChildRelationship should eager load ParentChildRelationship.Child. Furthermore, I want to use a Join when I eager load. The SQL, when accessing Parent.Children, NHibernate should generate an equivalent query to: SELECT * FROM ParentChildRelationship rel LEFT OUTER JOIN Child ch ON rel.child_id = ch.id WHERE parent_id = ? OK, so to do that I have mappings that look like this: ParentMap : ClassMap<Parent> { public ParentMap() { Table("Parent"); Id(c => c.Id).GeneratedBy.Identity(); HasMany(c => c.Children).KeyColumn("parent_id"); } } ChildMap : ClassMap<Child> { public ChildMap() { Table("Child"); Id(c => c.Id).GeneratedBy.Identity(); } } ParentChildRelationshipMap : ClassMap<ParentChildRelationship> { public ParentChildRelationshipMap() { Table("ParentChildRelationship"); CompositeId() .KeyProperty(c => c.CustomerId, "customerId") .KeyReference(c => c.Parent, "parent_id") .KeyReference(c => c.Child, "child_id"); Map(c => c.Sequence).Not.Nullable(); } } So, in my test if i try to get myParentRepo.Get(1).Children, it does in fact get me all the relationships and, as I access them from the relationship, the Child objects (for example, I can grab them all by doing parent.Children.Select(r => r.Child).ToList()). However, the SQL that NHibernate is generating is inefficient. When I access parent.Children, NHIbernate does a SELECT * FROM ParentChildRelationship WHERE parent_id = 1 and then a SELECT * FROM Child WHERE id = ? for each child in each relationship. I understand why NHibernate is doing this, but I can't figure out how to set up the mapping to make NHibernate query the way I mentioned above.

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• Ajax comments form in ASP.NET MVC2

  - by Artiom Chilaru

  I've been playing around with different aspects of MVC for some time now, and I've reached a situation where I'm not sure what would be the best way to solve a problem. I'm hoping that the SO community will help me out here :P I've seen a number of examples of Ajax.BeginForm on the internet, and it seems like a very nifty idea. E.g. you have a dropdown where you select a customer - and on selecting one it will load this client's details in some placeholder on the page. This works perfectly fine. But what to do if you want to tie in some validation in the box? Just hypothetically, imagine an article page, and user comments in the bottom. Below the comments area there's an ajax-y "Add comment" box. When a user adds a comment, it will appear in the comments area, below the last comment there. If I set the Ajax.BeginForm to Append the result of the call to the Comments area, it will work fine. But what if the data posted is not valid? Instead of appending a "successful" comment to the comments area I have to show the user validation errors. At this point I decided that the area INSIDE the Ajax.BeginForm will be inside a partial, and the form's submits will return this partial. Validation works fine. On each submit we reload the contents inside the form element. But how to add the successful comment to the top? Other things to consider: The comment form also has a "Preview" button. When the user clicks on Preview, I should load the rendered comment into a preview box. This will probably be inside the form area as well. I was thinking of using Json results instead. When the user submits the form, the server code will generate a Json object with a Success value, and html rendered partials as some properties. Something like { "success": true, "form": "<html form data>", "comment": "successful comment html to inject into the page" } This would be a perfect solution, except there's no way in MVC to render a partial into a string, inside the controller (separation of context, remember?). So.. what should I do then? Any "correct" way to implement this?

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• <msbuild/> task fails while <devenv/> succeeds for MFC application in CruiseControl.NET?

  - by ee

  The Overview I am working on a Continuous Integration build of a MFC appliction via CruiseControl.net and VS2010. When building my .sln, a "Visual Studio" CCNet task (<devenv/>) works, but a simple MSBuild wrapper script (see below) run via the CCNet <msbuild/> task fails with errors like: error RC1015: cannot open include file 'winres.h'.. error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'afxwin.h': No such file or directory error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'afx.h': No such file or directory The Question How can I adjust the build environment of my msbuild wrapper so that the application builds correctly? (Pretty clearly the MFC paths aren't right for the msbuild environment, but how do i fix it for MSBuild+VS2010+MFC+CCNet?) Background Details We have successfully upgraded an MFC application (.exe with some MFC extension .dlls) to Visual Studio 2010 and can compile the application without issue on developer machines. Now I am working on compiling the application on the CI server environment I did a full installation of VS2010 (Professional) on the build server. In this way, I knew everything I needed would be on the machine (one way or another) and that this would be consistent with developer machines. VS2010 is correctly installed on the CI server, and the devenv task works as expected I now have a wrapper MSBuild script that does some extended version processing and then builds the .sln for the application via an MSBuild task. This wrapper script is run via CCNet's MSBuild task and fails with the above mentioned errors The Simple MSBuild Wrapper <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project ToolsVersion="4.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <Target Name="Build"> <!-- Doing some versioning stuff here--> <MSBuild Projects="target.sln" Properties="Configuration=ReleaseUnicode;Platform=Any CPU;..." /> </Target> </Project> My Assumptions This seems to be a missing/wrong configuration of include paths to standard header resources of the MFC persuasion I should be able to coerce the MSBuild environment to consider the relevant resource files from my VS2010 install and have this approach work. Given the vs2010 msbuild support for visual c++ projects (.vcxproj), shouldn't msbuilding a solution be pretty close to compiling via visual studio? But how do I do that? Am I setting Environment variables? Registry settings? I can see how one can inject additional directories in some cases, but this seems to need a more systemic configuration at the compiler defaults level. Update 1 This appears to only ever happen in two cases: resource compilation (rc.exe), and precompiled header (stdafx.h) compilation, and only for certain projects? I was thinking it was across the board, but indeed it appears only to be in these cases. I guess I will keep digging and hope someone has some insight they would be willing to share...

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• Computer science undergraduate project ideas

  - by Mehrdad Afshari

  Hopefully, I'm going to finish my undergraduate studies next semester and I'm thinking about the topic of my final project. And yes, I've read the questions with duplicate title. I'm asking this from a bit different viewpoint, so it's not an exact dupe. I've spent at least half of my life coding stuff in different languages and frameworks so I'm not looking at this project as a way to learn much about coding and preparing for real world apps or such. I've done lots of those already. But since I have to do it to complete my degree, I felt I should spend my time doing something useful instead of throwing the whole thing out. I'm planning to make it an open source project or a hosted Web app (depending on the type) if I can make a high quality thing out of it, so I decided to ask StackOverflow what could make a useful project. Situation I've plenty of freedom about the topic. They also require 30-40 pages of text describing the project. I have the following points in mind (the more satisfied, the better): Something useful for software development Something that benefits the community Having academic value is great Shouldn't take more than a month of development (I know I'm lazy). Shouldn't be related to advanced theoretical stuff (soft computing, fuzzy logic, neural networks, ...). I've been a business-oriented software developer. It should be software oriented. While I love hacking microcontrollers and other fun embedded electronic things, I'm not really good at soldering and things like that. I'm leaning toward a Web application (think StackOverflow, PasteBin, NerdDinner, things like those). Technology It's probably going to be done in .NET (C#, F#) and Windows platform. If I really like the project (cool low level hacking), I might actually slip to C/C++. But really, C# is what I'm efficient at. Ideas Programming language, parsing and compiler related stuff: Designing a domain specific programming language and compiler Templating language compiled to C# or IL Database tools and related code generation stuff Web related technologies: ASP.NET MVC View engine doing something cool (don't know what exactly...) Specific-purpose, small, fast ASP.NET-based Web framework Applications: Visual Studio plugin to integrate with Bazaar (it's too much work, I think). ASP.NET based, jQuery-powered issue tracker (and possibly, project lifecycle management as a whole - poor man's TFS) Others: Something related to GPGPU Looking forward for great ideas! Unfortunately, I can't help on a currently existing project. I need to start my own to prevent further problems (as it's an undergrad project, nevertheless).

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• SSRS Report from Oracle DB - Use stored procedure

  - by Emtucifor

  I am developing a report in Sql Server Reporting Services 2005, connecting to an Oracle 11g database. As you post replies perhaps it will help to know that I'm skilled in MSSQL Server and inexperienced in Oracle. I have multiple nested subreports and need to use summary data in outer reports and the same data but in detail in the inner reports. In order to spare the DB server from multiple executions, I thought to populate some temp tables at the beginning and then query just them the multiple times in the report and the subreports. In SSRS, Datasets are evidently executed in the order they appear in the RDL file. And you can have a dataset that doesn't return a rowset. So I created a stored procedure to populate my four temp tables and made this the first Dataset in my report. This SP works when I run it from SQLDeveloper and I can query the data from the temp tables. However, this didn't appear to work out because SSRS was apparently not reusing the same session, so even though the global temporary tables were created with ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS my Datasets were empty. I switched to using "real" tables and am now passing in an additional parameter, a GUID in string form, uniquely generated on each new execution, that is part of the primary key of each table, so I can get back just the rows for this execution. Running this from Sql Developer works fine, example: DECLARE ActivityCode varchar2(15) := '1208-0916 '; ExecutionID varchar2(32) := SYS_GUID(); BEGIN CIPProjectBudget (ActivityCode, ExecutionID); END; Never mind that in this example I don't know the GUID, this simply proves it works because rows are inserted to my four tables. But in the SSRS report, I'm still getting no rows in my Datasets and SQL Developer confirms no rows are being inserted. So I'm thinking along the lines of: Oracle uses implicit transactions and my changes aren't getting committed? Even though I can prove that the non-rowset returning SP is executing (because if I leave out the parameter mapping it complains at report rendering time about not having enough parameters) perhaps it's not really executing. Somehow. Wrong execution order isn't the problem or rows would appear in the tables, and they aren't. I'm interested in any ideas about how to accomplish this (especially the part about not running the main queries multiple times). I'll redesign my whole report. I'll stop using a stored procedure. Suggest anything you like! I just need help getting this working and I am stuck. If you want more details, in my SSRS report I have a List object (it's a container that repeats once for each row in a Dataset) that has some header values and then contains a subreport. Eventually, there will be four total reports: one main report, with three nested subreports. Each subreport will be in a List on the parent report.

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• Long-running ASP.NET tasks

  - by John Leidegren

  I know there's a bunch of APIs out there that do this, but I also know that the hosting environment (being ASP.NET) puts restrictions on what you can reliably do in a separate thread. I could be completely wrong, so please correct me if I am, this is however what I think I know. A request typically timeouts after 120 seconds (this is configurable) but eventually the ASP.NET runtime will kill a request that's taking too long to complete. The hosting environment, typically IIS, employs process recycling and can at any point decide to recycle your app. When this happens all threads are aborted and the app restarts. I'm however not sure how aggressive it is, it would be kind of stupid to assume that it would abort a normal ongoing HTTP request but I would expect it to abort a thread because it doesn't know anything about the unit of work of a thread. If you had to create a programming model that easily and reliably and theoretically put a long running task, that would have to run for days, how would you accomplish this from within an ASP.NET application? The following are my thoughts on the issue: I've been thinking a long the line of hosting a WCF service in a win32 service. And talk to the service through WCF. This is however not very practical, because the only reason I would choose to do so, is to send tasks (units of work) from several different web apps. I'd then eventually ask the service for status updates and act accordingly. My biggest concern with this is that it would NOT be a particular great experience if I had to deploy every task to the service for it to be able to execute some instructions. There's also this issue of input, how would I feed this service with data if I had a large data set and needed to chew through it? What I typically do right now is this SELECT TOP 10 * FROM WorkItem WITH (ROWLOCK, UPDLOCK, READPAST) WHERE WorkCompleted IS NULL It allows me to use a SQL Server database as a work queue and periodically poll the database with this query for work. If the work item completed with success, I mark it as done and proceed until there's nothing more to do. What I don't like is that I could theoretically be interrupted at any point and if I'm in-between success and marking it as done, I could end up processing the same work item twice. I might be a bit paranoid and this might be all fine but as I understand it there's no guarantee that that won't happen... I know there's been similar questions on SO before but non really answers with a definitive answer. This is a really common thing, yet the ASP.NET hosting environment is ill equipped to handle long-running work. Please share your thoughts.

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• How to avoid open-redirect vulnerability and safely redirect on successful login (HINT: ASP.NET MVC

  - by Brad B.

  Normally, when a site requires that you are logged in before you can access a certain page, you are taken to the login screen and after successfully authenticating yourself, you are redirected back to the originally requested page. This is great for usability - but without careful scrutiny, this feature can easily become an open redirect vulnerability. Sadly, for an example of this vulnerability, look no further than the default LogOn action provided by ASP.NET MVC 2: [HttpPost] public ActionResult LogOn(LogOnModel model, string returnUrl) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { if (MembershipService.ValidateUser(model.UserName, model.Password)) { FormsService.SignIn(model.UserName, model.RememberMe); if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(returnUrl)) { return Redirect(returnUrl); // open redirect vulnerability HERE } else { return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home"); } } else { ModelState.AddModelError("", "User name or password incorrect..."); } } return View(model); } If a user is successfully authenticated, they are redirected to "returnUrl" (if it was provided via the login form submission). Here is a simple example attack (one of many, actually) that exploits this vulnerability: Attacker, pretending to be victim's bank, sends an email to victim containing a link, like this: http://www.mybank.com/logon?returnUrl=http://www.badsite.com Having been taught to verify the ENTIRE domain name (e.g., google.com = GOOD, google.com.as31x.example.com = BAD), the victim knows the link is OK - there isn't any tricky sub-domain phishing going on. The victim clicks the link, sees their actual familiar banking website and is asked to logon Victim logs on and is subsequently redirected to http://www.badsite.com which is made to look exactly like victim's bank's website, so victim doesn't know he is now on a different site. http://www.badsite.com says something like "We need to update our records - please type in some extremely personal information below: [ssn], [address], [phone number], etc." Victim, still thinking he is on his banking website, falls for the ploy and provides attacker with the information Any ideas on how to maintain this redirect-on-successful-login functionality yet avoid the open-redirect vulnerability? I'm leaning toward the option of splitting the "returnUrl" parameter into controller/action parts and use "RedirectToRouteResult" instead of simply "Redirect". Does this approach open any new vulnerabilities? Side note: I know this open-redirect may not seem to be a big deal compared to the likes of XSS and CSRF, but us developers are the only thing protecting our customers from the bad guys - anything we can do to make the bad guys' job harder is a win in my book. Thanks, Brad

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• How can you add a UIGestureRecognizer to a UIBarButtonItem as in the common undo/redo UIPopoverContr

  - by SG

  Problem In my iPad app, I cannot attach a popover to a button bar item only after press-and-hold events. But this seems to be standard for undo/redo. How do other apps do this? Background I have an undo button (UIBarButtonSystemItemUndo) in the toolbar of my UIKit (iPad) app. When I press the undo button, it fires it's action which is undo:, and that executes correctly. However, the "standard UE convention" for undo/redo on iPad is that pressing undo executes an undo but pressing and holding the button reveals a popover controller where the user selected either "undo" or "redo" until the controller is dismissed. The normal way to attach a popover controller is with presentPopoverFromBarButtonItem:, and I can configure this easily enough. To get this to show only after press-and-hold we have to set a view to respond to "long press" gesture events as in this snippet: UILongPressGestureRecognizer *longPressOnUndoGesture = [[UILongPressGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(handleLongPressOnUndoGesture:)]; //Broken because there is no customView in a UIBarButtonSystemItemUndo item [self.undoButtonItem.customView addGestureRecognizer:longPressOnUndoGesture]; [longPressOnUndoGesture release]; With this, after a press-and-hold on the view the method handleLongPressOnUndoGesture: will get called, and within this method I will configure and display the popover for undo/redo. So far, so good. The problem with this is that there is no view to attach to. self.undoButtonItem is a UIButtonBarItem, not a view. Possible solutions 1) [The ideal] Attach the gesture recognizer to the button bar item. It is possible to attach a gesture recognizer to a view, but UIButtonBarItem is not a view. It does have a property for .customView, but that property is nil when the buttonbaritem is a standard system type (in this case it is). 2) Use another view. I could use the UIToolbar but that would require some weird hit-testing and be an all around hack, if even possible in the first place. There is no other alternative view to use that I can think of. 3) Use the customView property. Standard types like UIBarButtonSystemItemUndo have no customView (it is nil). Setting the customView will erase the standard contents which it needs to have. This would amount to re-implementing all the look and function of UIBarButtonSystemItemUndo, again if even possible to do. Question How can I attach a gesture recognizer to this "button"? More specifically, how can I implement the standard press-and-hold-to-show-redo-popover in an iPad app? Ideas? Thank you very much, especially if someone actually has this working in their app (I'm thinking of you, omni) and wants to share...

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• Delphi TBytesField - How to see the text properly - Source is HIT OLEDB AS400

  - by myitanalyst

  We are connecting to a multi-member AS400 iSeries table via HIT OLEDB and HIT ODBC. You connect to this table via an alias to access a specific multi-member. We create the alias on the AS400 this way: CREATE ALIAS aliasname FOR table(membername) We can then query each member of the table this way: SELECT * FROM aliasname We are testing this in Delphi6 first, but will move it to D2010 later We are using HIT OLEDB for the AS400. We are pulling down records from a table and the field is being seen as a tBytesField. I have also tried ODBC driver and it sees as tBytesField as well. Directly on the AS400 I can query the data and see readable text. I can use the iSeries Navigation tool and see readable text as well. However when I bring it down to the Delphi client via the HIT OLEDB or HIT ODBC and try to view via asString then I just see unreadable text.. something like this: ñðð@ðõñððððñ÷@õôððõñòøóóöøñðÂÁÕÒ@ÖÆ@ÁÔÅÙÉÃÁ@@@@@@@@ÂÈÙÉâãæÁðòñè@ÔK@k@ÉÕÃK@@@@@@@@@ç I jumbled up the text above, but that is the character types that show up. When I did a test in D2010 the text looks like japanse or chinese characters, but if I display as AnsiString then it looks like what it does in Delphi 6. I am thinking this may have something to do with code pages or character sets, but I have no experience in this are so it is new to me if it is related. When I look at the Coded Character Set on the AS400 it is set to 65535. What do I need to do to make this text readable? We do have a third party component (Delphi400) that makes things behave in a more native AS400 manner. When I use its AS400 connection and AS400 query components it shows the field as a tStringField and displays just fine. BUT we are phasing out this product (for a number of reasons) and would really like the OLEDB with the ADO components work. Just for clarification the HIT OLEDB with tADOQuery do have some fields showing as tStringFields for many of the other tables we use... not sure why it is showing as a tBytesField in this case. I am not an AS400 expert, but looking at the field definititions on the AS400 the ones showing up as tBytesField look the same as the ones showing up as tStringFields... but there must be a difference. Maybe due to being a multi-member? So... does anyone have any guidance on how to get the correct string data that is readable? If you need more info please ask. Greg

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• Application Architecture using WCF and System.AddIn

  - by Silverhalide

  A little background -- we're designing an application that uses a client/server architecture consisting of: A server which loads server-side modules, potentially developed by other teams. A client which loads corresponding client-side modules (also potentially developed by those other teams; each client module corresponds with a server module). The client side communicates with the server side for general coordination, and as well as module specific tasks. (At this point, I think that means client talks to server, client modules talk to server modules.) Environment is .NET 3.5, and client side is WPF. The deployment scenario introduces the potential to upgrade the server, any server-side module, the client, and any client-side module independently. However, being able to "work" using mismatched versions is required. I'm therefore concerned about versioning issues. My thinking so far: A Windows Service for the server. Using System.AddIn for the server to load and communicate with the server modules will give us the greatest flexibility in terms of version compatability between server and server modules. The server and each server module vend WCF services for communication to the client side; communication between the server and a server module, or between two server modules use the AddIn contracts. (One advantage of this is that a module can expose a different interface within the server and outside it.) Similarly, the client uses System.AddIn to find, load, and communicate with the client modules. Client communications with client modules is via the AddIn interface; communications from the client and from client modules to the server side are via WCF. For maximum resilience, each module will run in a separate app-domain. In general, the system has modest performance requirements, so marshalling and crossing process boundaries is not expected to be a performance concern. (Performance requirement is basically summed up by: don't get in the way of the other parts of the system not described here.) My questions are around the idea of having two different communication and versioning models to work with which will be an added burden on our developers. System.AddIn seems quite powerful, but also a little unwieldly. (I'm also unsure of Microsoft's commitment to it in the future.) On the other hand, I'm not thrilled with WCF's versioning capabilities. I have a feeling that it would be possible to implement the System.AddIn view/adapter/contract system within WCF, but being fairly new to both technologies, I would have no idea of where to start. So... Am I on the right track here? Am I doing this the hard way? Are there gotchas I need to be aware of on this road? Thanks.

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• Best programming aids for a quadriplegic programmer

  - by Peter Rowell

  Before you jump to conclusions, yes, this is programming related. It covers a situation that comes under the heading of, "There, but for the grace of God, go you or I." This is brand new territory for me so I'm asking for some serious help here. A young man, Honza Ripa, in a nearby town did the classic Dumb Thing two weeks after graduating from High School -- he dove into shallow water in the Russian River and had a C-4/C-5 break, sometimes called a Swimming Pool break. In a matter of seconds he went from an exceptional golfer and wrestler to a quadriplegic. (Read the story ... all of us should have been so lucky as to have a girlfriend like Brianna.) That was 10 months ago and he has regained only tiny amounts of control of his right index finger and a couple of other hand/foot motions, none of them fine-grained. His total control of his computer (currently running Win7, but we can change that as needed) is via voice command. Honza's not dumb. He had a 3.7 GPA with AP math and physics. The Problems: Since all of his input is via voice command, he is concerned that the predominance of special characters in programming will require vast amount of verbose commands. Does anyone know of any well done voice input system specifically designed for programmers? I'm thinking about something that might be modal--e.g. you say "Python input" and it goes into a macro mode for doing class definitions, etc. Given all of the RSI in programmer-land there's got to be something out there. What OS(es) does it run on? I am planning on teaching him Python, which is my preferred language for programming and teaching. Are there any applications / whatevers that are written in Python and would be a particularly good match for engaging him mentally while supporting his disability? One of his expressed interests is in stock investing, but that not might be a good starting point for a brand-new programmer. There are a lot of environments (Flash, JavaScript, etc) that are not particularly friendly to people with accessibility challenges. I vaguely remember (but cannot find) a research project that basically created an overlay system on top of a screen environment and then allowed macro command construction on top of the screen image. If we can get/train this system, we may be able to remove many hurdles to using the net. I am particularly interested in finding open source Python-based robotics and robotic prostheses projects so that he can simultaneously learn advanced programming concepts while learning to solve some of his own immediate problems. I've done a ton of googling on this, but I know there things I'm missing. I'm asking the SO community to step up to the plate here. I know this group has the answers, so let me hear them! Overwhelm me with the opportunities that any of us might have/need to still program after such a life-changing event.

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• Properly clean up excel interop objects revisited: Wrapper objects

  - by chiccodoro

  Hi all, Excel 2007 Hangs When Closing via .NET How to properly clean up Excel interop objects in C# How to properly clean up interop objects in C# All of these struggle with the problem that C# does not release the Excel COM objects properly after using them. There are mainly two directions of working around this issue: Kill the Excel process when Excel is not used anymore. Take care to assign each COM object used explicitly to a variable and to Marshal.ReleaseComObject all of these. Some have stated that 2 is too tedious and there is always some uncertainty whether you forget to stick to this rule at some places in the code. Still 1 seems dirty and dangerous to me, also I could imagine that in an environment with restricted access killing processes is not allowed. So I've been thinking about solving 2 by creating another proxy object model which mimics the Excel object model (for me, it would suffice to implement the objects I actually need). The principle would look as follows: Each Excel Interop class has its proxy which wraps an object of that class. The proxy releases the COM object in its destructor. The proxy mimics the interface of the Interop class (maybe by inheriting it). Any methods that usually return another COM object return a proxy instead. The other methods simply delegate the implementation to the inner COM object. This is a rough sketch of the code: public class Application : Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application { private Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application innerApplication = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application innerApplication(); ~Application() { Marshal.ReleaseCOMObject(innerApplication); } public Workbooks Workbooks { get { return new Workbooks(innerApplication.Workbooks); } } } public class Workbooks { private Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbooks innerWorkbooks; Workbooks(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbooks innerWorkbooks) { this.innerWorkbooks = innerWorkbooks; } ~Workbooks() { Marshal.ReleaseCOMObject(innerWorkbooks); } } My questions to you are in particular: Who finds this a bad idea and why? Who finds this a gread idea? If so, why hasn't anybody implemented/published such a model yet? Just due to the effort, or am I missing a killing problem with that idea? Is it impossible/bad/dangerous to do the ReleaseCOMObject in the destructor? (I've only seen proposals to put it in a Dispose() rather than in a destructor - why?) If the approach makes sense, any suggestions to improve it?

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• UITableView: Juxtaposing row, header, and footer insertions/deletions

  - by jdandrea

  Consider a very simple UITableView with one of two states. First state: One (overall) table footer One section containing two rows, a section header, and a section footer Second state: No table footer One section containing four rows and no section header/footer In both cases, each row is essentially one of four possible UITableViewCell objects, each containing its own UITextField. We don't even bother with reuse or caching, since we're only dealing with four known cells in this case. They've been created in an accompanying XIB, so we already have them all wired up and ready to go. Now consider we want to toggle between the two states. Sounds easy enough. Let's suppose our view controller's right bar button item provides the toggling support. We'll also track the current state with an ivar and enumeration. To be explicit for a sec, here's how one might go from state 1 to 2. (Presume we handle the bar button item's title as well.) In short, we want to clear out our table's footer view, then insert the third and fourth rows. We batch this inside an update block like so: // Brute forced references to the third and fourth rows in section 0 NSUInteger row02[] = {0, 2}; NSUInteger row03[] = {0, 3}; [self.tableView beginUpdates]; state = tableStateTwo; // 'internal' iVar, not a property self.tableView.tableFooterView = nil; [self.tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObjects: [NSIndexPath indexPathWithIndexes:row02 length:2], [NSIndexPath indexPathWithIndexes:row03 length:2], nil] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; [self.tableView endUpdates]; For the reverse, we want to reassign the table footer view (which, like the cells, is in the XIB ready and waiting), and remove the last two rows: // Use row02 and row03 from earlier snippet [self.tableView beginUpdates]; state = tableStateOne; self.tableView.tableFooterView = theTableFooterView; [self.tableView deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObjects: [NSIndexPath indexPathWithIndexes:row02 length:2], [NSIndexPath indexPathWithIndexes:row03 length:2], nil] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; [self.tableView endUpdates]; Now, when the table asks for rows, it's very cut and dry. The first two cells are the same in both cases. Only the last two appear/disappear depending on the state. The state ivar is consulted when the Table View asks for things like number of rows in a section, height for header/footer in a section, or view for header/footer in a section. This last bit is also where I'm running into trouble. Using the above logic, section 0's header/footer does not disappear. Specifically, the footer stays below the inserted rows, but the header now overlays the topmost row. If we switch back to state one, the section footer is removed, but the section header remains. How about using [self.tableView reloadData] then? Sure, why not. We take care not to use it inside the update block, per Apple's advisement, and simply add it after endUpdates. This time, good news! The section 0 header/footer disappears. :) However ... Toggling back to state one results in a most exquisite mess! The section 0 header returns, only to overlay the first row once again (instead of appear above it). The section 0 footer is placed below the last row just fine, but the overall table footer - now reinstated - overlays the section footer. Waaaaaah … now what? Just to be sure, let's toggle back to state two again. Yep, that looks fine. Coming back to state one? Yecccch. I also tried sprinkling in a few other stunts like using reloadSections:withRowAnimation:, but that only serves to make things worse. NSRange range = {0, 1}; NSIndexSet *indexSet = [NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndexesInRange:range]; ... [self.tableView reloadSections:indexSet withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; Case in point: If we invoke reloadSections... just before the end of the update block, changing to state two hides the first two rows from view, even though the space they would otherwise occupy remains. Switching back to state one returns section 0's header/footer to normal, but those first two rows remain invisible. Case two: Moving reloadSections... to just after the update block but before reloadData results in all rows becoming invisible! (I refer to the row as being invisible because, during tracing, tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: is returning bona-fide cell objects for those rows.) Case three: Moving reloadSections... after tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: brings us a bit closer, but the section 0 header/footer never returns when switching back to state one. Hmm. Perhaps it's a faux pas using both reloadSections... and reloadData, based on what I'm seeing at trace-time, which brings us to: Case four: Replacing reloadData with reloadSections... outright. All cells in state two disappear. All cells in state one remain missing as well (though the space is kept). So much for that theory. :) Tracing through the code, the cell and view objects, as well as the section heights, are all where they should be at the opportune times. They just aren't rendering sanely. So, how to crack this case? Clues welcome/appreciated!

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• Lots of questions about file I/O (reading/writing message strings)

  - by Nazgulled

  Hi, For this university project I'm doing (for which I've made a couple of posts in the past), which is some sort of social network, it's required the ability for the users to exchange messages. At first, I designed my data structures to hold ALL messages in a linked list, limiting the message size to 256 chars. However, I think my instructors will prefer if I save the messages on disk and read them only when I need them. Of course, they won't say what they prefer, I need to make a choice and justify the best I can why I went that route. One thing to keep in mind is that I only need to save the latest 20 messages from each user, no more. Right now I have an Hash Table that will act as inbox, this will be inside the user profile. This Hash Table will be indexed by name (the user that sent the message). The value for each element will be a data structure holding an array of size_t with 20 elements (20 messages like I said above). The idea is to keep track of the disk file offsets and bytes written. Then, when I need to read a message, I just need to use fseek() and read the necessary bytes. I think this could work nicely... I could use just one single file to hold all messages from all users in the network. I'm saying one single file because a colleague asked an instructor about saving the messages from each user independently which he replied that it might not be the best approach cause the file system has it's limits. That's why I'm thinking of going the single file route. However, this presents a problem... Since I only need to save the latest 20 messages, I need to discard the older ones when I reach this limit. I have no idea how to do this... All I know is about fread() and fwrite() to read/write bytes from/to files. How can I go to a file offset and say "hey, delete the following X bytes"? Even if I could do that, there's another problem... All offsets below that one will be completely different and I would have to process all users mailboxes to fix the problem. Which would be a pain... So, any suggestions to solve my problems? What do you suggest?

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• Clickable widgets in android

  - by Leif Andersen

  The developer documentation has seemed to have failed me here. I can create a static widget without thinking, I can even create a widget like the analogue clock widget that will update itself, however, I can not for the life of me figure out how to create a widget that reacts to when a user clicks on it. Here is the best code sample that the developer documentation gives to what a widget activity should contain (the only other hint being the API demos, which only creates a static widget): public class ExampleAppWidgetProvider extends AppWidgetProvider { public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds) { final int N = appWidgetIds.length; // Perform this loop procedure for each App Widget that belongs to this provider for (int i=0; i<N; i++) { int appWidgetId = appWidgetIds[i]; // Create an Intent to launch ExampleActivity Intent intent = new Intent(context, ExampleActivity.class); PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, intent, 0); // Get the layout for the App Widget and attach an on-click listener to the button RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), R.layout.appwidget_provider_layout); views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.button, pendingIntent); // Tell the AppWidgetManager to perform an update on the current App Widget appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, views); } } } from: The Android Developer Documentation's Widget Page So, it looks like pending intent is called when the widget is clicked, which is based off of an intent (I'm not quite sure what the difference between an intent and a pending intent is), and the intent is for the ExampleActivity class. So I made my sample activity class a simple activity that when created, would create a mediaplayer object, and start it (it wouldn't ever release the object, so it would eventually crash, here is it's code: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); MediaPlayer mp = MediaPlayer.create(getApplicationContext(), R.raw.sound); mp.start(); } However, when I added the widget to the home screen, and clicked on it, nothing played, in fact, nothing played when I set the update timer to just a few hundred milliseconds (in the appwidget provider xml file). Furthermore, I set break points and found out that not only was it never reaching the activity, but no break points I set would ever get triggered. (I still haven't figured out why that is), however, logcat seemed to indicate that the activity class file was being run. So, is there anything I can do to get an appwidget to respond to a click? As the onClickPendingIntent() method is the closest I have found to a onClick type of method. Thank you very much.

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• C# Monte Carlo Incremental Risk Calculation optimisation, random numbers, parallel execution

  - by m3ntat

  My current task is to optimise a Monte Carlo Simulation that calculates Capital Adequacy figures by region for a set of Obligors. It is running about 10 x too slow for where it will need to be in production and number or daily runs required. Additionally the granularity of the result figures will need to be improved down to desk possibly book level at some stage, the code I've been given is basically a prototype which is used by business units in a semi production capacity. The application is currently single threaded so I'll need to make it multi-threaded, may look at System.Threading.ThreadPool or the Microsoft Parallel Extensions library but I'm constrained to .NET 2 on the server at this bank so I may have to consider this guy's port, http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/aforge_parallel.aspx. I am trying my best to get them to upgrade to .NET 3.5 SP1 but it's a major exercise in an organisation of this size and might not be possible in my contract time frames. I've profiled the application using the trial of dotTrace (http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler). What other good profilers exist? Free ones? A lot of the execution time is spent generating uniform random numbers and then translating this to a normally distributed random number. They are using a C# Mersenne twister implementation. I am not sure where they got it or if it's the best way to go about this (or best implementation) to generate the uniform random numbers. Then this is translated to a normally distributed version for use in the calculation (I haven't delved into the translation code yet). Also what is the experience using the following? http://quantlib.org http://www.qlnet.org (C# port of quantlib) or http://www.boost.org Any alternatives you know of? I'm a C# developer so would prefer C#, but a wrapper to C++ shouldn't be a problem, should it? Maybe even faster leveraging the C++ implementations. I am thinking some of these libraries will have the fastest method to directly generate normally distributed random numbers, without the translation step. Also they may have some other functions that will be helpful in the subsequent calculations. Also the computer this is on is a quad core Opteron 275, 8 GB memory but Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 32 bit. Should I advise them to upgrade to a 64 bit OS? Any links to articles supporting this decision would really be appreciated. Anyway, any advice and help you may have is really appreciated.

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• Synchronized Enumerator in C#

  - by Dan Bryant

  I'm putting together a custom SynchronizedCollection<T> class so that I can have a synchronized Observable collection for my WPF application. The synchronization is provided via a ReaderWriterLockSlim, which, for the most part, has been easy to apply. The case I'm having trouble with is how to provide thread-safe enumeration of the collection. I've created a custom IEnumerator<T> nested class that looks like this: private class SynchronizedEnumerator : IEnumerator<T> { private SynchronizedCollection<T> _collection; private int _currentIndex; internal SynchronizedEnumerator(SynchronizedCollection<T> collection) { _collection = collection; _collection._lock.EnterReadLock(); _currentIndex = -1; } #region IEnumerator<T> Members public T Current { get; private set;} #endregion #region IDisposable Members public void Dispose() { var collection = _collection; if (collection != null) collection._lock.ExitReadLock(); _collection = null; } #endregion #region IEnumerator Members object System.Collections.IEnumerator.Current { get { return Current; } } public bool MoveNext() { var collection = _collection; if (collection == null) throw new ObjectDisposedException("SynchronizedEnumerator"); _currentIndex++; if (_currentIndex >= collection.Count) { Current = default(T); return false; } Current = collection[_currentIndex]; return true; } public void Reset() { if (_collection == null) throw new ObjectDisposedException("SynchronizedEnumerator"); _currentIndex = -1; Current = default(T); } #endregion } My concern, however, is that if the Enumerator is not Disposed, the lock will never be released. In most use cases, this is not a problem, as foreach should properly call Dispose. It could be a problem, however, if a consumer retrieves an explicit Enumerator instance. Is my only option to document the class with a caveat implementer reminding the consumer to call Dispose if using the Enumerator explicitly or is there a way to safely release the lock during finalization? I'm thinking not, since the finalizer doesn't even run on the same thread, but I was curious if there other ways to improve this.

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• Why does the interpreted order seem different from what I expect?

  - by inspectorG4dget

  I have a problem that I have not faced before: It seems that the order of interpretation in my program is somehow different from what I expect. I have written a small Twitter client. It takes a few seconds for my program to actually post a tweet after I click the "GO" button (which can also be activated by hitting ENTER on the keyboard). I don't want to click multiple times within this time period thinking that I hadn't clicked it the first time. Therefore, when the button is clicked, I would like the label text to display something that tells me that the button has been clicked. I have implemented this message by altering the label text before I send the tweet across. However, for some reason, the message does not display until the tweet has been attempted. But since I have a confirmation message after the tweet, I never get to see this message and my original problem goes unsolved. I would really appreciate any help. Here is the relevant code: class SimpleTextBoxForm(Form): def __init__(self): # set window properties self.Text = "Tweeter" self.Width = 235 self.Height = 250 #tweet away self.label = Label() self.label.Text = "Tweet Away..." self.label.Location = Point(10, 10) self.label.Height = 25 self.label.Width = 200 #get the tweet self.tweetBox = TextBox() self.tweetBox.Location = Point(10, 45) self.tweetBox.Width = 200 self.tweetBox.Height = 60 self.tweetBox.Multiline = True self.tweetBox.WordWrap = True self.tweetBox.MaxLength = 140; #ask for the login ID self.askLogin = Label() self.askLogin.Text = "Login:" self.askLogin.Location = Point(10, 120) self.askLogin.Height = 20 self.askLogin.Width = 60 self.login = TextBox() self.login.Text= "" self.login.Location = Point(80, 120) self.login.Height = 40 self.login.Width = 100 #ask for the password self.askPass = Label() self.askPass.Text = "Password:" self.askPass.Location = Point(10, 150) self.askPass.Height = 20 self.askPass.Width = 60 # display password box with character hiding self.password = TextBox() self.password.Location = Point(80, 150) self.password.PasswordChar = "x" self.password.Height = 40 self.password.Width = 100 #submit button self.button1 = Button() self.button1.Text = 'Tweet' self.button1.Location = Point(10, 180) self.button1.Click += self.update self.AcceptButton = self.button1 #pack all the elements of the form self.Controls.Add(self.label) self.Controls.Add(self.tweetBox) self.Controls.Add(self.askLogin) self.Controls.Add(self.login) self.Controls.Add(self.askPass) self.Controls.Add(self.password) self.Controls.Add(self.button1) def update(self, sender, event): if not self.password.Text: self.label.Text = "You forgot to enter your password..." else: self.tweet(self.tweetBox.Text, self.login.Text, self.password.Text) def tweet(self, msg, login, password): self.label.Text = "Attempting Tweet..." # this should be executed before sending the tweet is attempted. But this seems to be executed only after the try block try: success = 'Tweet successfully completed... yay!\n' + 'At: ' + time.asctime().split()[3] ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = False Twitter().UpdateAsXML(login, password, msg) except: error = 'Unhandled Exception. Tweet unsuccessful' self.label.Text = error else: self.label.Text = success self.tweetBox.Text = ""

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• Why does the interpretted order seem different from what I expect?

  - by inspectorG4dget

  I have a problem that I have not faced before: It seems that the order of interpretation in my program is somehow different from what I expect. I have written a small Twitter client. It takes a few seconds for my program to actually post a tweet after I click the "GO" button (which can also be activated by hitting ENTER on the keyboard). I don't want to click multiple times within this time period thinking that I hadn't clicked it the first time. Therefore, when the button is clicked, I would like the label text to display something that tells me that the button has been clicked. I have implemented this message by altering the label text before I send the tweet across. However, for some reason, the message does not display until the tweet has been attempted. But since I have a confirmation message after the tweet, I never get to see this message and my original problem goes unsolved. I would really appreciate any help. Here is the relevant code: class SimpleTextBoxForm(Form): def init(self): # set window properties self.Text = "Tweeter" self.Width = 235 self.Height = 250 #tweet away self.label = Label() self.label.Text = "Tweet Away..." self.label.Location = Point(10, 10) self.label.Height = 25 self.label.Width = 200 #get the tweet self.tweetBox = TextBox() self.tweetBox.Location = Point(10, 45) self.tweetBox.Width = 200 self.tweetBox.Height = 60 self.tweetBox.Multiline = True self.tweetBox.WordWrap = True self.tweetBox.MaxLength = 140; #ask for the login ID self.askLogin = Label() self.askLogin.Text = "Login:" self.askLogin.Location = Point(10, 120) self.askLogin.Height = 20 self.askLogin.Width = 60 self.login = TextBox() self.login.Text= "" self.login.Location = Point(80, 120) self.login.Height = 40 self.login.Width = 100 #ask for the password self.askPass = Label() self.askPass.Text = "Password:" self.askPass.Location = Point(10, 150) self.askPass.Height = 20 self.askPass.Width = 60 # display password box with character hiding self.password = TextBox() self.password.Location = Point(80, 150) self.password.PasswordChar = "x" self.password.Height = 40 self.password.Width = 100 #submit button self.button1 = Button() self.button1.Text = 'Tweet' self.button1.Location = Point(10, 180) self.button1.Click += self.update self.AcceptButton = self.button1 #pack all the elements of the form self.Controls.Add(self.label) self.Controls.Add(self.tweetBox) self.Controls.Add(self.askLogin) self.Controls.Add(self.login) self.Controls.Add(self.askPass) self.Controls.Add(self.password) self.Controls.Add(self.button1) def update(self, sender, event): if not self.password.Text: self.label.Text = "You forgot to enter your password..." else: self.tweet(self.tweetBox.Text, self.login.Text, self.password.Text) def tweet(self, msg, login, password): self.label.Text = "Attempting Tweet..." # this should be executed before sending the tweet is attempted. But this seems to be executed only after the try block try: success = 'Tweet successfully completed... yay!\n' + 'At: ' + time.asctime().split()[3] ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = False Twitter().UpdateAsXML(login, password, msg) except: error = 'Unhandled Exception. Tweet unsuccessful' self.label.Text = error else: self.label.Text = success self.tweetBox.Text = ""

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• realtime logging

  - by Ion Todirel

  I have an application which has a loop, part of a "Scheduler", which runs at all time and is the heart of the application. Pretty much like a game loop, just that my application is a WPF application and it's not a game. Naturally the application does logging at many points, but the Scheduler does some sensitive monitoring, and sometimes it's impossible just from the logs to tell what may have gotten wrong (and by wrong I don't mean exceptions) or the current status. Because Scheduler's inner loop runs at short intervals, you can't do file I/O-based logging (or using the Event Viewer) in there. First, you need to watch it in real-time, and secondly the log file would grow in size very fast. So I was thinking of ways to show this data to the user in the realtime, some things I considered: Display the data in realtime in the UI Use AllocConsole/WriteConsole to display this information in a console Use a different console application which would display this information, communicate between the Scheduler and the console app using pipes or other IPC techniques Use Windows' Performance Monitor and somehow feed it with this information ETW Displaying in the UI would have its issues. First it doesn't integrate with the UI I had in mind for my application, and I don't want to complicate the UI just for this. This diagnostics would only happen rarely. Secondly, there is going to be some non-trivial data protection, as the Scheduler has it's own thread. A separate console window would work probably, but I'm still worried if it's not too much threshold. Allocating my own console, as this is a windows app, would probably be better than a different console application (3), as I don't need to worry about IPC communication, and non-blocking communication. However a user could close the console I allocated, and it would be problematic in that case. With a separate process you don't have to worry about it. Assuming there is an API for Performance Monitor, it wouldn't be integrated too well with my app or apparent to the users. Using ETW also doesn't solve anything, just a random idea, I still need to display this information somehow. What others think, would there be other ways I missed?

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