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• How can a code editor effectively hint at code nesting level - without using indentation?

  - by pgfearo

  I've written an XML text editor that provides 2 view options for the same XML text, one indented (virtually), the other left-justified. The motivation for the left-justified view is to help users 'see' the whitespace characters they're using for indentation of plain-text or XPath code without interference from indentation that is an automated side-effect of the XML context. I want to provide visual clues (in the non-editable part of the editor) for the left-justified mode that will help the user, but without getting too elaborate. I tried just using connecting lines, but that seemed too busy. The best I've come up with so far is shown in a mocked up screenshot of the editor below, but I'm seeking better/simpler alternatives (that don't require too much code). [Edit] Taking the heatmap idea (from: @jimp) I get this and 3 alternatives - labelled a, b and c: The following section describes the accepted answer as a proposal, bringing together ideas from a number of other answers and comments. As this question is now community wiki, please feel free to update this. NestView The name for this idea which provides a visual method to improve the readability of nested code without using indentation. Contour Lines The name for the differently shaded lines within the NestView The image above shows the NestView used to help visualise an XML snippet. Though XML is used for this illustration, any other code syntax that uses nesting could have been used for this illustration. An Overview: The contour lines are shaded (as in a heatmap) to convey nesting level The contour lines are angled to show when a nesting level is being either opened or closed. A contour line links the start of a nesting level to the corresponding end. The combined width of contour lines give a visual impression of nesting level, in addition to the heatmap. The width of the NestView may be manually resizable, but should not change as the code changes. Contour lines can either be compressed or truncated to keep acheive this. Blank lines are sometimes used code to break up text into more digestable chunks. Such lines could trigger special behaviour in the NestView. For example the heatmap could be reset or a background color contour line used, or both. One or more contour lines associated with the currently selected code can be highlighted. The contour line associated with the selected code level would be emphasized the most, but other contour lines could also 'light up' in addition to help highlight the containing nested group Different behaviors (such as code folding or code selection) can be associated with clicking/double-clicking on a Contour Line. Different parts of a contour line (leading, middle or trailing edge) may have different dynamic behaviors associated. Tooltips can be shown on a mouse hover event over a contour line The NestView is updated continously as the code is edited. Where nesting is not well-balanced assumptions can be made where the nesting level should end, but the associated temporary contour lines must be highlighted in some way as a warning. Drag and drop behaviors of Contour Lines can be supported. Behaviour may vary according to the part of the contour line being dragged. Features commonly found in the left margin such as line numbering and colour highlighting for errors and change state could overlay the NestView. Additional Functionality The proposal addresses a range of additional issues - many are outside the scope of the original question, but a useful side-effect. Visually linking the start and end of a nested region The contour lines connect the start and end of each nested level Highlighting the context of the currently selected line As code is selected, the associated nest-level in the NestView can be highlighted Differentiating between code regions at the same nesting level In the case of XML different hues could be used for different namespaces. Programming languages (such as c#) support named regions that could be used in a similar way. Dividing areas within a nesting area into different visual blocks Extra lines are often inserted into code to aid readability. Such empty lines could be used to reset the saturation level of the NestView's contour lines. Multi-Column Code View Code without indentation makes the use of a multi-column view more effective because word-wrap or horizontal scrolling is less likely to be required. In this view, once code has reach the bottom of one column, it flows into the next one: Usage beyond merely providing a visual aid As proposed in the overview, the NestView could provide a range of editing and selection features which would be broadly in line with what is expected from a TreeView control. The key difference is that a typical TreeView node has 2 parts: an expander and the node icon. A NestView contour line can have as many as 3 parts: an opener (sloping), a connector (vertical) and a close (sloping). On Indentation The NestView presented alongside non-indented code complements, but is unlikely to replace, the conventional indented code view. It's likely that any solutions adopting a NestView, will provide a method to switch seamlessly between indented and non-indented code views without affecting any of the code text itself - including whitespace characters. One technique for the indented view would be 'Virtual Formatting' - where a dynamic left-margin is used in lieu of tab or space characters. The same nesting-level data used to dynamically render the NestView could also used for the more conventional-looking indented view. Printing Indentation will be important for the readability of printed code. Here, the absence of tab/space characters and a dynamic left-margin means that the text can wrap at the right-margin and still maintain the integrity of the indented view. Line numbers can be used as visual markers that indicate where code is word-wrapped and also the exact position of indentation: Screen Real-Estate: Flat Vs Indented Addressing the question of whether the NestView uses up valuable screen real-estate: Contour lines work well with a width the same as the code editor's character width. A NestView width of 12 character widths can therefore accommodate 12 levels of nesting before contour lines are truncated/compressed. If an indented view uses 3 character-widths for each nesting level then space is saved until nesting reaches 4 levels of nesting, after this nesting level the flat view has a space-saving advantage that increases with each nesting level. Note: A minimum indentation of 4 character widths is often recommended for code, however XML often manages with less. Also, Virtual Formatting permits less indentation to be used because there's no risk of alignment issues A comparison of the 2 views is shown below: Based on the above, its probably fair to conclude that view style choice will be based on factors other than screen real-estate. The one exception is where screen space is at a premium, for example on a Netbook/Tablet or when multiple code windows are open. In these cases, the resizable NestView would seem to be a clear winner. Use Cases Examples of real-world examples where NestView may be a useful option: Where screen real-estate is at a premium a. On devices such as tablets, notepads and smartphones b. When showing code on websites c. When multiple code windows need to be visible on the desktop simultaneously Where consistent whitespace indentation of text within code is a priority For reviewing deeply nested code. For example where sub-languages (e.g. Linq in C# or XPath in XSLT) might cause high levels of nesting. Accessibility Resizing and color options must be provided to aid those with visual impairments, and also to suit environmental conditions and personal preferences: Compatability of edited code with other systems A solution incorporating a NestView option should ideally be capable of stripping leading tab and space characters (identified as only having a formatting role) from imported code. Then, once stripped, the code could be rendered neatly in both the left-justified and indented views without change. For many users relying on systems such as merging and diff tools that are not whitespace-aware this will be a major concern (if not a complete show-stopper). Other Works: Visualisation of Overlapping Markup Published research by Wendell Piez, dated from 2004, addresses the issue of the visualisation of overlapping markup, specifically LMNL. This includes SVG graphics with significant similarities to the NestView proposal, as such, they are acknowledged here. The visual differences are clear in the images (below), the key functional distinction is that NestView is intended only for well-nested XML or code, whereas Wendell Piez's graphics are designed to represent overlapped nesting. The graphics above were reproduced - with kind permission - from http://www.piez.org Sources: Towards Hermenutic Markup Half-steps toward LMNL

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• Which is more user friendly: TortoiseGIT or TortoiseHG?

  - by hamishmcn

  I have been experimenting with using Mercurial and TortoiseHG to track my work when I am working remotely (with a slow VPN I don't want to commit to SVN unless I have something that works). I have found TortoiseHG a bit hard to use - or at least it often doesn't work the way I expect it to, so I am considering switching to GIT and TortoiseGIT. (For example I had problems rolling back source code to an earlier version and I still don't know what I did wrong) My question whether they have a similar level of functionality / user friendliness or whether one is better than the other. What has your experience been?

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• SSL Login in iFrame

  - by Karsten

  My UI prototype requires me to show the sites login info all the time. Either I should show the usual username and password textbox or "you are logged in as". The last bit don't have to be secure, as it's only info to the user, nothing I will use server side. But the first part should send secure to the server. It seems that I would have to use https for all pages on the site then. I would like to only use ssl for the things that are required to be secure. One way is putting the login information into a https://../login.aspx and show it on my mainpage as an IFrame. One disadvantage I can see is that the user won't know that https is being used, unless they read the IFrame src in the source code. What do you think?

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• Database design - alternatives for Entity Attribute Value (EAV)

  - by Bob

  Hi, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/695752/product-table-many-kinds-of-product-each-product-has-many-parameters for similar topic. My question: i want to design a database, that will be used for a production facility of different types of products where each product has its own (number of) parameters. because i want the serial numbers to be in one tabel for overview purposes i have a problem with these different paraeters . One solution could be EAV, but it has its downsides, certainly because we have +- 5 products with every product +- 20.000 serial numbers (records). it looks a bit overkill to me... I just don't know how one could design a database so that you have an attribute in a mastertable that says: 'hey, you could find details of this record in THAT detail-table". 'in a way that you qould easely query the results) currenty i am using Visual Basic & Acces 2007. but i'm going to Visual Basic & MySQL. thanks for your help. Bob

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• Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {XXXX} failed due to the following error:

  - by gopal

  I developed a Windows service using C#.NET to generate PDF report. To generate PDF file I am using a third party dll. The application is running in my Windows XP platform. When I deployed the service in Windows Server 2008 64 bit version, I got this error: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {46521B1F-0A5B-4871-A4C2-FD5C9276F4C6} failed due to the following error: 80040154. I registered the DLL using the regsvr32 command. I able to see this CLSID in the registry. But the problem persists. What could be the problem?

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• AjaxSubmit File Upload - Trying to get response $(document).ready() to fire

  - by ncyankee

  I'm using the jquery form plugin (http://malsup.com/jquery/form/) to upload a file via ajax which is processed in the background. The upload is working correctly, and I am using ASP.Net MVC to return a partial view which contains a $(document).ready call to setup a 'timer' to check on the status of the upload file's processing status. When I return the partial view which contains a script block wit ha $(document).ready call, it is never fired, therefore the 'timer' to check for the status of the upload is never started. When I do this via a regular $.post call (without upload) the function fires correctly after the html is loaded into the DOM. Is there anything else I need to do when calling the ajaxSubmit function to get this to fire? Just a sample bit of code: $('form').live('submit', function () { $(this).ajaxSubmit({ success: function (data) { $('#statusDiv').html(data); } }); return false; });

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• How to call web service with Android

  - by BobbyShaftoe

  I am having a lot of trouble finding good information on how to call a standard SOAP/WSDL web service with Android. All I've been able to find are either very convoluted documents and references to "kSoap2" and then some bit about parsing it all manually with SAX. ... Ok, that's fine but it's 2008 so I figured there should be some good library for calling standard web services. The Web Service is just basically one created in NetBeans. I would like to have IDE support for generating the plumbing classes. I just need the easiest/most-elegant way to contact a WSDL based web service from an Android based phone. Thanks.

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• Suggestion for dragster/dropzone like dock menu

  - by Ger Teunis

  I'd like to create a dragster/dropzone like dock menu. Looks a bit like a stack with a nsview in it. After a lot if documentation searching and googling I've found a way to determine a dock icon's location. (http://cocoadev.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=1431) Is nzbdrop creating a view which just looks like an stack to display it's menu or is there a better way of creating this? Additional info: I'm not looking for the drop like functionality just the nice way the DropBox window is displayed as an bubble/stack menu on top of it's app icon.

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• Observations in Migrating from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0

  - by user12608080

  Observations in Migrating from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0 Introduction Having been available for a few years now, there is a decent body of work written for JavaFX using the JavaFX Script language. With the general availability announcement of JavaFX 2.0 Beta, the natural question arises about converting the legacy code over to the new JavaFX 2.0 platform. This article reflects on some of the observations encountered while porting source code over from JavaFX Script to the new JavaFX API paradigm. The Application The program chosen for migration is an implementation of the Sudoku game and serves as a reference application for the book JavaFX – Developing Rich Internet Applications. The design of the program can be divided into two major components: (1) A user interface (ideally suited for JavaFX design) and (2) the puzzle generator. For the context of this article, our primary interest lies in the user interface. The puzzle generator code was lifted from a sourceforge.net project and is written entirely in Java. Regardless which version of the UI we choose (JavaFX Script vs. JavaFX 2.0), no code changes were required for the puzzle generator code. The original user interface for the JavaFX Sudoku application was written exclusively in JavaFX Script, and as such is a suitable candidate to convert over to the new JavaFX 2.0 model. However, a few notable points are worth mentioning about this program. First off, it was written in the JavaFX 1.1 timeframe, where certain capabilities of the JavaFX framework were as of yet unavailable. Citing two examples, this program creates many of its own UI controls from scratch because the built-in controls were yet to be introduced. In addition, layout of graphical nodes is done in a very manual manner, again because much of the automatic layout capabilities were in flux at the time. It is worth considering that this program was written at a time when most of us were just coming up to speed on this technology. One would think that having the opportunity to recreate this application anew, it would look a lot different from the current version. Comparing the Size of the Source Code An attempt was made to convert each of the original UI JavaFX Script source files (suffixed with .fx) over to a Java counterpart. Due to language feature differences, there are a small number of source files which only exist in one version or the other. The table below summarizes the size of each of the source files. JavaFX Script source file Number of Lines Number of Character JavaFX 2.0 Java source file Number of Lines Number of Characters ArrowKey.java 6 72 Board.fx 221 6831 Board.java 205 6508 BoardNode.fx 446 16054 BoardNode.java 723 29356 ChooseNumberNode.fx 168 5267 ChooseNumberNode.java 302 10235 CloseButtonNode.fx 115 3408 CloseButton.java 99 2883 ParentWithKeyTraversal.java 111 3276 FunctionPtr.java 6 80 Globals.java 20 554 Grouping.fx 8 140 HowToPlayNode.fx 121 3632 HowToPlayNode.java 136 4849 IconButtonNode.fx 196 5748 IconButtonNode.java 183 5865 Main.fx 98 3466 Main.java 64 2118 SliderNode.fx 288 10349 SliderNode.java 350 13048 Space.fx 78 1696 Space.java 106 2095 SpaceNode.fx 227 6703 SpaceNode.java 220 6861 TraversalHelper.fx 111 3095 Total 2,077 79,127 2531 87,800 A few notes about this table are in order: The number of lines in each file was determined by running the Unix ‘wc –l’ command over each file. The number of characters in each file was determined by running the Unix ‘ls –l’ command over each file. The examination of the code could certainly be much more rigorous. No standard formatting was performed on these files.  All comments however were deleted. There was a certain expectation that the new Java version would require more lines of code than the original JavaFX script version. As evidenced by a count of the total number of lines, the Java version has about 22% more lines than its FX Script counterpart. Furthermore, there was an additional expectation that the Java version would be more verbose in terms of the total number of characters.  In fact the preceding data shows that on average the Java source files contain fewer characters per line than the FX files.  But that's not the whole story.  Upon further examination, the FX Script source files had a disproportionate number of blank characters.  Why?  Because of the nature of how one develops JavaFX Script code.  The object literal dominates FX Script code.  Its not uncommon to see object literals indented halfway across the page, consuming lots of meaningless space characters. RAM consumption Not the most scientific analysis, memory usage for the application was examined on a Windows Vista system by running the Windows Task Manager and viewing how much memory was being consumed by the Sudoku version in question. Roughly speaking, the FX script version, after startup, had a RAM footprint of about 90MB and remained pretty much the same size. The Java version started out at about 55MB and maintained that size throughout its execution. What About Binding? Arguably, the most striking observation about the conversion from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0 concerned the need for data synchronization, or lack thereof. In JavaFX Script, the primary means to synchronize data is via the bind expression (using the “bind” keyword), and perhaps to a lesser extent it’s “on replace” cousin. The bind keyword does not exist in Java, so for JavaFX 2.0 a Data Binding API has been introduced as a replacement. To give a feel for the difference between the two versions of the Sudoku program, the table that follows indicates how many binds were required for each source file. For JavaFX Script files, this was ascertained by simply counting the number of occurrences of the bind keyword. As can be seen, binding had been used frequently in the JavaFX Script version (and does not take into consideration an additional half dozen or so “on replace” triggers). The JavaFX 2.0 program achieves the same functionality as the original JavaFX Script version, yet the equivalent of binding was only needed twice throughout the Java version of the source code. JavaFX Script source file Number of Binds JavaFX Next Java source file Number of “Binds” ArrowKey.java 0 Board.fx 1 Board.java 0 BoardNode.fx 7 BoardNode.java 0 ChooseNumberNode.fx 11 ChooseNumberNode.java 0 CloseButtonNode.fx 6 CloseButton.java 0 CustomNodeWithKeyTraversal.java 0 FunctionPtr.java 0 Globals.java 0 Grouping.fx 0 HowToPlayNode.fx 7 HowToPlayNode.java 0 IconButtonNode.fx 9 IconButtonNode.java 0 Main.fx 1 Main.java 0 Main_Mobile.fx 1 SliderNode.fx 6 SliderNode.java 1 Space.fx 0 Space.java 0 SpaceNode.fx 9 SpaceNode.java 1 TraversalHelper.fx 0 Total 58 2 Conclusions As the JavaFX 2.0 technology is so new, and experience with the platform is the same, it is possible and indeed probable that some of the observations noted in the preceding article may not apply across other attempts at migrating applications. That being said, this first experience indicates that the migrated Java code will likely be larger, though not extensively so, than the original Java FX Script source. Furthermore, although very important, it appears that the requirements for data synchronization via binding, may be significantly less with the new platform.

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• Trapping Error Status in MSBuild

  - by Ruben Bartelink

  As part of some build automation of running xUnit.net tests with MSBuild, I'm running into a case where I need to loop over a batch of items. Inside the loop, I need to detect whether an iteration failed, but I want to continue executing regardless. Then after the batched bit, I need to know whether one or more errors have occurred in order to report the outcome to TeamBuild. IOW, in pseudocode: Task Name=RunTests CreateItems ForEach item CallTarget Target=RunTest ContinueOnError=true CombineNUnitResults Report success/failure Task Name=RunTest XUnit item I'm hoping this can be achieved without a custom task (or hacking the xunit.net MSBuild task as Jonne did). (But willing to use MSBuild Community or Sdc tasks) And @BradWilson: I this is isnt possible to do cleanly, I'll be looking for Jonne's change a la the NUnit task to also make it into the xunit task See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/517560/how-do-i-get-team-build-to-show-test-results-and-coverage-for-xunit-net-test-suit

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• How to get pixel data from a UIImage (Cocoa Touch) or CGImage (Core Graphics)?

  - by Olie

  I have a UIImage (Cocoa Touch). From that, I'm happy to get a CGImage or anything else you'd like that's available. I'd like to write this function: - (int)getRGBAFromImage:(UIImage *)image atX:(int)xx andY:(int)yy { // [...] // What do I want to read about to help // me fill in this bit, here? // [...] int result = (red << 24) | (green << 16) | (blue << 8) | alpha; return result; } Thanks!

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• MongoDb vs Ehcache caching advise for speeding up read only mysql Database

  - by paddydub

  I'm building a Route Planner Webapp using Spring/Hibernate/Tomcat and a mysql database, I have a database containing read only data, such as Bus Stop Coordinates, Bus times which is never updated. I'm trying to make the app run faster, each time the application is run it will preform approx 1000 reads to the database to calculate a route. I have setup a Ehcache which greatly improves the read from database times. I'm now setting terracotta + Ehcache distributed caching to share the cache with multiple Tomcat JVMs. This seems a bit complicated. I've tried memcached but it was not performing as fast as ehcache. I'm wondering if a MongoDb would be better suited. I have no experience with nosql but I would appreciate if anyone has any ideas. All i need is quick access to the read only database.

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• Using LINQ to fetch result from nested SQL queries

  - by Shantanu Gupta

  This is my first question and first day in Linq so bit difficult day for me to understand. I want to fetch some records from database i.e. select * from tblDepartment where department_id in ( select department_id from tblMap where Guest_Id = @GuestId ) I have taken two DataTable. i.e. tblDepartment, tblMap Now I want to fetch this result and want to store it in third DataTable. How can I do this. I have been able to construct this query up till now after googling. var query = from myrow in _dtDepartment.AsEnumerable() where myrow.Field<int>("Department_Id") == _departmentId select myrow; Please provide me some link for learning Linq mainly for DataTables and DataSets. EDIT: I have got a very similar example here but i m still not able to understand how it is working. Please put some torch on it.

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• Ruby GUI (non-complex layouts)

  - by Ruby Novice

  I've done quite a bit of research on Ruby GUI design, and it appears to be the one area where Ruby tends to be behind the curve. I've explored the options of MonkeyBars, wxRuby, fxRuby, Shoes, etc. and was just wanted to get some input from the Ruby community. While they're definitely usable, the development on each seems to have fallen off. There is not a great deal of useful documentation or user bases that I could find on any (minus the fxRuby book). I'm just looking to make a simple GUI, so I don't really want to spend hundreds of hours learning the intricacies of the more complex tools or attempt to use something that is no longer even being developed (Shoes is the type of application I'm looking for, but it's extremely buggy and not being actively developed.) Out of all of the options, which would you guys recommend as being the quickest to pick up and that still has some sort of development base? Thanks!

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• Export JPG out of Dicom File With mDCM

  - by Ross Peoples

  Hello, I'm using mDCM with C# to view dicom tags, but I'm trying to convert the pixel data to a Bitmap and eventually out to a JPG file. I have read all of the posts on the mDCM Google Group on the subject and all of the code examples either don't work or are missing important lines of code. The image I am working with is a 16 bit monochrome1. I have tried using LockBits, SetPixel, and unsafe code in order to convert the pixel data to a Bitmap but all attempts fail. Does anyone have any code that could make this work. Thanks in advance P.S. Before anyone suggests trying something else like ClearCanvas, know that mDCM is the only library that suits my needs and ClearCanvas is WAY too bloated for what I need to do.

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• Azure WNS to Win8 - Push Notifications for Metro Apps

  - by JoshReuben

  Background The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 allows you to build a Windows Azure Cloud Service that can send Push Notifications to registered Metro apps via Windows Notification Service (WNS). Some configuration is required - you need to: Register the Metro app for Windows Live Application Management Provide Package SID & Client Secret to WNS Modify the Azure Cloud App cscfg file and the Metro app package.appxmanifest file to contain matching Metro package name, SID and client secret. The Mechanism: These notifications take the form of XAML Tile, Toast, Raw or Badge UI notifications. The core engine is provided via the WNS nuget recipe, which exposes an API for constructing payloads and posting notifications to WNS. An application receives push notifications by requesting a notification channel from WNS, which returns a channel URI that the application then registers with a cloud service. In the cloud service, A WnsAccessTokenProvider authenticates with WNS by providing its credentials, the package SID and secret key, and receives in return an access token that the provider caches and can reuse for multiple notification requests. The cloud service constructs a notification request by filling out a template class that contains the information that will be sent with the notification, including text and image references. Using the channel URI of a registered client, the cloud service can then send a notification whenever it has an update for the user. The package contains the NotificationSendUtils class for submitting notifications. The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 (WAT) provides the PNWorker sample pair of solutions - The Azure server side contains a WebRole & a WorkerRole. The WebRole allows submission of new push notifications into an Azure Queue which the WorkerRole extracts and processes. Further background resources: http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/ - Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Push%20Notification%20Worker%20Sample - WAT WNS sample setup http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Using%20the%20Windows%208%20Cloud%20Application%20Services%20Application – using Windows 8 with Cloud Application Services A bit of Configuration Register the Metro apps for Windows Live Application Management From the current app manifest of your metro app Publish tab, copy the Package Display Name and the Publisher From: https://manage.dev.live.com/Build/ Package name: <-- we need to change this Client secret: keep this Package Security Identifier (SID): keep this Verify the app here: https://manage.dev.live.com/Applications/Index - so this step is done "If you wish to send push notifications in your application, provide your Package Security Identifier (SID) and client secret to WNS." Provide Package SID & Client Secret to WNS http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465407.aspx - How to authenticate with WNS https://appdev.microsoft.com/StorePortals/en-us/Account/Signup/PurchaseSubscription - register app with dashboard - need registration code or register a new account & pay $170 shekels http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh868184.aspx - Registering for a Windows Store developer account http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh868187.aspx - Picking a Microsoft account for the Windows Store The WNS Nuget Recipe The WNS Recipe is a nuget package that provides an API for authenticating against WNS, constructing payloads and posting notifications to WNS. After installing this package, a WnsRecipe assembly is added to project references. To send notifications using WNS, first register the application at the Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect portal to obtain Package Security Identifier (SID) and a secret key that your cloud service uses to authenticate with WNS. An application receives push notifications by requesting a notification channel from WNS, which returns a channel URI that the application then registers with a cloud service. In the cloud service, the WnsAccessTokenProvider authenticates with WNS by providing its credentials, the package SID and secret key, and receives in return an access token that the provider caches and can reuse for multiple notification requests. The cloud service constructs a notification request by filling out a template class that contains the information that will be sent with the notification, including text and image references.Using the channel URI of a registered client, the cloud service can then send a notification whenever it has an update for the user. var provider = new WnsAccessTokenProvider(clientId, clientSecret); var notification = new ToastNotification(provider) {     ToastType = ToastType.ToastText02,     Text = new List<string> { "blah"} }; notification.Send(channelUri); the WNS Recipe is instrumented to write trace information via a trace listener – configuratively or programmatically from Application_Start(): WnsDiagnostics.Enable(); WnsDiagnostics.TraceSource.Listeners.Add(new DiagnosticMonitorTraceListener()); WnsDiagnostics.TraceSource.Switch.Level = SourceLevels.Verbose; The WAT PNWorker Sample The Azure server side contains a WebRole & a WorkerRole. The WebRole allows submission of new push notifications into an Azure Queue which the WorkerRole extracts and processes. Overview of Push Notification Worker Sample The toolkit includes a sample application based on the same solution structure as the one created by theWindows 8 Cloud Application Services project template. The sample demonstrates how to off-load the job of sending Windows Push Notifications using a Windows Azure worker role. You can find the source code in theSamples\PNWorker folder. This folder contains a full version of the sample application showing how to use Windows Push Notifications using ASP.NET Membership as the authentication mechanism. The sample contains two different solution files: WATWindows.Azure.sln: This solution must be opened with Visual Studio 2010 and contains the projects related to the Windows Azure web and worker roles. WATWindows.Client.sln: This solution must be opened with Visual Studio 11 and contains the Windows Metro style application project. Only Visual Studio 2010 supports Windows Azure cloud projects so you currently need to use this edition to launch the server application. This will change in a future release of the Windows Azure tools when support for Visual Studio 11 is enabled. Important: Setting up the PNWorker Sample Before running the PNWorker sample, you need to register the application and configure it: 1. Register the app: To register your application, go to the Windows Live Application Management site for Metro style apps at https://manage.dev.live.com/build and sign in with your Windows Live ID. In the Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect page, enter the following information. Package Display Name PNWorker.Sample Publisher CN=127.0.0.1, O=TESTING ONLY, OU=Windows Azure DevFabric 2. 3. Once you register the application, make a note of the values shown in the portal for Client Secret,Package Name and Package SID. 4. Configure the app - double-click the SetupSample.cmd file located inside the Samples\PNWorker folder to launch a tool that will guide you through the process of configuring the sample. setup runs a PowerShell script that requires running with administration privileges to allow the scripts to execute in your machine. When prompted, enter the Client Secret, Package Name, and Package Security Identifier you obtained previously and wait until the tool finishes configuring your sample. Running the PNWorker Sample To run this sample, you must run both the client and the server application projects. 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 as an administrator. Open the WATWindows.Azure.sln solution. Set the start-up project of the solution as the cloud project. Run the app in the dev fabric to test. 2. Open Visual Studio 11 and open the WATWindows.Client.sln solution. Run the Metro client application. In the client application, click Reopen channel and send to server. à the application opens the channel and registers it with the cloud application, & the Output area shows the channel URI. 3. Refresh the WebRole's Push Notifications page to see the UI list the newly registered client. 4. Send notifications to the client application by clicking the Send Notification button. Setup 3 command files + 1 powershell script: SetupSample.cmd –> SetupWPNS.vbs –> SetupWPNS.cmd –> SetupWPNS.UpdateWPNSCredentialsInServiceConfiguration.ps1 appears to set PackageName – from manifest Client Id package security id (SID) – from registration Client Secret – from registration The following configs are modified: WATWindows\ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg WATWindows\ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg WATWindows.Client\package.appxmanifest WatWindows.Notifications A class library – it references the following WNS DLL: C:\WorkDev\CountdownValue\AzureToolkits\WATWindows8\Samples\PNWorker\packages\WnsRecipe.0.0.3.0\lib\net40\WnsRecipe.dll NotificationJobRequest A DataContract for triggering notifications:     using System.Runtime.Serialization; using Microsoft.Windows.Samples.Notifications;     [DataContract]     [KnownType(typeof(WnsAccessTokenProvider))] public class NotificationJobRequest     {               [DataMember] public bool ProcessAsync { get; set; }          [DataMember] public string Payload { get; set; }         [DataMember] public string ChannelUrl { get; set; }         [DataMember] public NotificationType NotificationType { get; set; }         [DataMember] public IAccessTokenProvider AccessTokenProvider { get; set; }         [DataMember] public NotificationSendOptions NotificationSendOptions{ get; set; }     } Investigated these types: WnsAccessTokenProvider – a DataContract that contains the client Id and client secret NotificationType – an enum that can be: Tile, Toast, badge, Raw IAccessTokenProvider – get or reset the access token NotificationSendOptions – SecondsTTL, NotificationPriority (enum), isCache, isRequestForStatus, Tag   There is also a NotificationJobSerializer class which basically wraps a DataContractSerializer serialization / deserialization of NotificationJobRequest The WNSNotificationJobProcessor class This class wraps the NotificationSendUtils API – it periodically extracts any NotificationJobRequest objects from a CloudQueue and submits them to WNS. The ProcessJobMessageRequest method – this is the punchline: it will deserialize a CloudQueueMessage into a NotificationJobRequest & send pass its contents to NotificationUtils to SendAsynchronously / SendSynchronously, (and then dequeue the message).     public override void ProcessJobMessageRequest(CloudQueueMessage notificationJobMessageRequest)         { Trace.WriteLine("Processing a new Notification Job Request", "Information"); NotificationJobRequest pushNotificationJob =                 NotificationJobSerializer.Deserialize(notificationJobMessageRequest.AsString); if (pushNotificationJob != null)             { if (pushNotificationJob.ProcessAsync)                 { Trace.WriteLine("Sending the notification asynchronously", "Information"); NotificationSendUtils.SendAsynchronously( new Uri(pushNotificationJob.ChannelUrl),                         pushNotificationJob.AccessTokenProvider,                         pushNotificationJob.Payload,                         result => this.ProcessSendResult(pushNotificationJob, result),                         result => this.ProcessSendResultError(pushNotificationJob, result),                         pushNotificationJob.NotificationType,                         pushNotificationJob.NotificationSendOptions);                 } else                 { Trace.WriteLine("Sending the notification synchronously", "Information"); NotificationSendResult result = NotificationSendUtils.Send( new Uri(pushNotificationJob.ChannelUrl),                         pushNotificationJob.AccessTokenProvider,                         pushNotificationJob.Payload,                         pushNotificationJob.NotificationType,                         pushNotificationJob.NotificationSendOptions); this.ProcessSendResult(pushNotificationJob, result);                 }             } else             { Trace.WriteLine("Could not deserialize the notification job", "Error");             } this.queue.DeleteMessage(notificationJobMessageRequest);         } Investigation of NotificationSendUtils class - This is the engine – it exposes Send and a SendAsyncronously overloads that take the following params from the NotificationJobRequest: Channel Uri AccessTokenProvider Payload NotificationType NotificationSendOptions WebRole WebRole is a large MVC project – it references WatWindows.Notifications as well as the following WNS DLL: \AzureToolkits\WATWindows8\Samples\PNWorker\packages\WnsRecipe.0.0.3.0\lib\net40\NotificationsExtensions.dll Controllers\PushNotificationController.cs Notification related namespaces:     using Notifications;     using NotificationsExtensions;     using NotificationsExtensions.BadgeContent;     using NotificationsExtensions.RawContent;     using NotificationsExtensions.TileContent;     using NotificationsExtensions.ToastContent;     using Windows.Samples.Notifications; TokenProvider – initialized from the Azure RoleEnvironment:   IAccessTokenProvider tokenProvider = new WnsAccessTokenProvider(         RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("WNSPackageSID"),         RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("WNSClientSecret")); SendNotification method – calls QueuePushMessage method to create and serialize a NotificationJobRequest and enqueue it in a CloudQueue [HttpPost]         public ActionResult SendNotification(             [ModelBinder(typeof(NotificationTemplateModelBinder))] INotificationContent notification,             string channelUrl,             NotificationPriority priority = NotificationPriority.Normal)         {             var payload = notification.GetContent();             var options = new NotificationSendOptions()             {                 Priority = priority             };             var notificationType =                 notification is IBadgeNotificationContent ? NotificationType.Badge :                 notification is IRawNotificationContent ? NotificationType.Raw :                 notification is ITileNotificationContent ? NotificationType.Tile :                 NotificationType.Toast;             this.QueuePushMessage(payload, channelUrl, notificationType, options);             object response = new             {                 Status = "Queued for delivery to WNS"             };             return this.Json(response);         } GetSendTemplate method: Create the cshtml partial rendering based on the notification type     [HttpPost]         public ActionResult GetSendTemplate(NotificationTemplateViewModel templateOptions)         {             PartialViewResult result = null;             switch (templateOptions.NotificationType)             {                 case "Badge":                     templateOptions.BadgeGlyphValueContent = Enum.GetNames(typeof( GlyphValue));                     ViewBag.ViewData = templateOptions;                     result = PartialView("_" + templateOptions.NotificationTemplateType);                     break;                 case "Raw":                     ViewBag.ViewData = templateOptions;                     result = PartialView("_Raw");                     break;                 case "Toast":                     templateOptions.TileImages = this.blobClient.GetAllBlobsInContainer(ConfigReader.GetConfigValue("TileImagesContainer")).OrderBy(i => i.FileName).ToList();                     templateOptions.ToastAudioContent = Enum.GetNames(typeof( ToastAudioContent));                     templateOptions.Priorities = Enum.GetNames(typeof( NotificationPriority));                     ViewBag.ViewData = templateOptions;                     result = PartialView("_" + templateOptions.NotificationTemplateType);                     break;                 case "Tile":                     templateOptions.TileImages = this.blobClient.GetAllBlobsInContainer(ConfigReader.GetConfigValue("TileImagesContainer")).OrderBy(i => i.FileName).ToList();                     ViewBag.ViewData = templateOptions;                     result = PartialView("_" + templateOptions.NotificationTemplateType);                     break;             }             return result;         } Investigated these types: ToastAudioContent – an enum of different Win8 sound effects for toast notifications GlyphValue – an enum of different Win8 icons for badge notifications · Infrastructure\NotificationTemplateModelBinder.cs WNS Namespace references     using NotificationsExtensions.BadgeContent;     using NotificationsExtensions.RawContent;     using NotificationsExtensions.TileContent;     using NotificationsExtensions.ToastContent; Various NotificationFactory derived types can server as bindable models in MVC for creating INotificationContent types. Default values are also set for IWideTileNotificationContent & IToastNotificationContent. Type factoryType = null;             switch (notificationType)             {                 case "Badge":                     factoryType = typeof(BadgeContentFactory);                     break;                 case "Tile":                     factoryType = typeof(TileContentFactory);                     break;                 case "Toast":                     factoryType = typeof(ToastContentFactory);                     break;                 case "Raw":                     factoryType = typeof(RawContentFactory);                     break;             } Investigated these types: BadgeContentFactory – CreateBadgeGlyph, CreateBadgeNumeric (???) TileContentFactory – many notification content creation methods , apparently one for every tile layout type ToastContentFactory – many notification content creation methods , apparently one for every toast layout type RawContentFactory – passing strings WorkerRole WNS Namespace references using Notifications; using Notifications.WNS; using Windows.Samples.Notifications; OnStart() Method – on Worker Role startup, initialize the NotificationJobSerializer, the CloudQueue, and the WNSNotificationJobProcessor _notificationJobSerializer = new NotificationJobSerializer(); _cloudQueueClient = this.account.CreateCloudQueueClient(); _pushNotificationRequestsQueue = _cloudQueueClient.GetQueueReference(ConfigReader.GetConfigValue("RequestQueueName")); _processor = new WNSNotificationJobProcessor(_notificationJobSerializer, _pushNotificationRequestsQueue); Run() Method – poll the Azure Queue for NotificationJobRequest messages & process them:   while (true)             { Trace.WriteLine("Checking for Messages", "Information"); try                 { Parallel.ForEach( this.pushNotificationRequestsQueue.GetMessages(this.batchSize), this.processor.ProcessJobMessageRequest);                 } catch (Exception e)                 { Trace.WriteLine(e.ToString(), "Error");                 } Trace.WriteLine(string.Format("Sleeping for {0} seconds", this.pollIntervalMiliseconds / 1000)); Thread.Sleep(this.pollIntervalMiliseconds);                                            } How I learned to appreciate Win8 There is really only one application architecture for Windows 8 apps: Metro client side and Azure backend – and that is a good thing. With WNS, tier integration is so automated that you don’t even have to leverage a HTTP push API such as SignalR. This is a pretty powerful development paradigm, and has changed the way I look at Windows 8 for RAD business apps. When I originally looked at Win8 and the WinRT API, my first opinion on Win8 dev was as follows – GOOD:WinRT, WRL, C++/CX, WinJS, XAML (& ease of Direct3D integration); BAD: low projected market penetration,.NET lobotomized (Only 8% of .NET 4.5 classes can be used in Win8 non-desktop apps - http://bit.ly/HRuJr7); UGLY:Metro pascal tiles! Perhaps my 80s teenage years gave me a punk reactionary sense of revulsion towards the Partridge Family 70s style that Metro UX seems to have appropriated: On second thought though, it simplifies UI dev to a single paradigm (although UX guys will need to change career) – you will not find an easier app dev environment. Speculation: If LightSwitch is going to support HTML5 client app generation, then its a safe guess to say that vnext will support Win8 Metro XAML - a much easier port from Silverlight XAML. Given the VS2012 LightSwitch integration as a thumbs up from the powers that be at MS, and given that Win8 C#/XAML Metro apps tend towards a streamlined 'golden straight-jacket' cookie cutter app dev style with an Azure back-end supporting Win8 push notifications... --> its easy to extrapolate than LightSwitch vnext could well be the Win8 Metro XAML to Azure RAD tool of choice! The hook is already there - :) Why else have the space next to the HTML Client box? This high level of application development abstraction will facilitate rapid app cookie-cutter architecture-infrastructure frameworks for wrapping any app. This will allow me to avoid too much XAML code-monkeying around & focus on my area of interest: Technical Computing.

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• ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET membership template provider

  - by rem

  In a standard ASP.NET MVC template application that is created by default in Visual Studio when starting a new ASP.NET MVC application there is already a built-in membership / authentication / authorization system. Using web search one can find lots of info about how to work with a built-in ASP.NET membership system, but very often this material is a bit of an old and refer to ASP.NET only, not mentioning ASP.NET MVC framework. Just for example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998347.aspx#paght000022%5Fmembershipapis or http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/091207-1.aspx To what extent all that applies to ASP.NET built-in membership system applies also to ASP.NET MVC ready template membership system?

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• How to draw semi-transparent text on a graphics object?

  - by awe

  I want to draw a text with 32 bit transparency on a graphics object. When I try, I only get black color in the result. If I try to draw a line with the same semitransparent color, it works perfectly. I have this code: lBitmap As New Bitmap(32, 32, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb) lGraphic As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(lBitmap) lGraphic.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.HighQuality lGraphic.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.HighQualityBicubic lGraphic.Clear(Color.Transparent) Dim lTestTransparencyColor As Color = Color.FromArgb(100, 140, 0, 230) lGraphic.DrawLine(New Pen(lTestTransparencyColor), 0, 0, 32, 32) lBrush As New SolidBrush(lTestTransparencyColor) lGraphic.DrawString("A", New Font("Arial", 12), lBrush, 0, 0) Dim lImage As Image = lBitmap lImage.Save("D:\Test.png", Imaging.ImageFormat.Png) The line is drawn with the transparency applied correctly, but the text is black with no transparency. I was thinking it may be that SolidBrush does not support transparency, but I found a predefined brush named Transparent (Brushes.Transparent) that was a SolidBrush when I looked at it in debug. I tried to use Brushes.Transparent as the brush when drawing the text, and it was successfully not showing at all. That means I get full transparency to work, but not partial transparency.

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• Convert Bitmap Files into JPEG using the GD library in PHP

  - by Daniel P

  I have been trying to figure out a way to convert bitmap files into a JPEG using the GD library in PHP. I have tried numerous implementations but nothing seems to work. I have tried to tell my client that they should not use Bitmap files but he insists and quite frankly does not comprehend enough about computers to convert them to JPG on his own. I can not use ImageMagick on this server and I need a pure GD solution. Thank you in advance for any and all help. EDIT: The bitmap images that are being used are 16-bit and that is where the problem is occurring. I have this function that I have working .... kinda: function ImageCreateFromBMP($filename) { if (! $f1 = fopen($filename,"rb")) return FALSE; $FILE = unpack("vfile_type/Vfile_size/Vreserved/Vbitmap_offset", fread($f1,14)); if ($FILE['file_type'] != 19778) return FALSE; $BMP = unpack('Vheader_size/Vwidth/Vheight/vplanes/vbits_per_pixel'. '/Vcompression/Vsize_bitmap/Vhoriz_resolution'. '/Vvert_resolution/Vcolors_used/Vcolors_important', fread($f1,40)); $BMP['colors'] = pow(2,$BMP['bits_per_pixel']); if ($BMP['size_bitmap'] == 0) $BMP['size_bitmap'] = $FILE['file_size'] - $FILE['bitmap_offset']; $BMP['bytes_per_pixel'] = $BMP['bits_per_pixel']/8; $BMP['bytes_per_pixel2'] = ceil($BMP['bytes_per_pixel']); $BMP['decal'] = ($BMP['width']*$BMP['bytes_per_pixel']/4); $BMP['decal'] -= floor($BMP['width']*$BMP['bytes_per_pixel']/4); $BMP['decal'] = 4-(4*$BMP['decal']); if ($BMP['decal'] == 4) $BMP['decal'] = 0; $PALETTE = array(); if ($BMP['colors'] < 16777216 && $BMP['colors'] != 65536) { $PALETTE = unpack('V'.$BMP['colors'], fread($f1,$BMP['colors']*4)); } $IMG = fread($f1,$BMP['size_bitmap']); $VIDE = chr(0); $res = imagecreatetruecolor($BMP['width'],$BMP['height']); $P = 0; $Y = $BMP['height']-1; while ($Y >= 0) { $X=0; while ($X < $BMP['width']) { if ($BMP['bits_per_pixel'] == 24) $COLOR = unpack("V",substr($IMG,$P,3).$VIDE); elseif ($BMP['bits_per_pixel'] == 16) { $COLOR = unpack("v",substr($IMG,$P,2)); $blue = ($COLOR[1] & 0x001f) << 3; $green = ($COLOR[1] & 0x07e0) >> 3; $red = ($COLOR[1] & 0xf800) >> 8; $COLOR[1] = $red * 65536 + $green * 256 + $blue; } elseif ($BMP['bits_per_pixel'] == 8) { $COLOR = unpack("n",$VIDE.substr($IMG,$P,1)); $COLOR[1] = $PALETTE[$COLOR[1]+1]; } elseif ($BMP['bits_per_pixel'] == 4) { $COLOR = unpack("n",$VIDE.substr($IMG,floor($P),1)); if (($P*2)%2 == 0) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] >> 4) ; else $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x0F); $COLOR[1] = $PALETTE[$COLOR[1]+1]; } elseif ($BMP['bits_per_pixel'] == 1) { $COLOR = unpack("n",$VIDE.substr($IMG,floor($P),1)); if (($P*8)%8 == 0) $COLOR[1] = $COLOR[1] >>7; elseif (($P*8)%8 == 1) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x40)>>6; elseif (($P*8)%8 == 2) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x20)>>5; elseif (($P*8)%8 == 3) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x10)>>4; elseif (($P*8)%8 == 4) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x8)>>3; elseif (($P*8)%8 == 5) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x4)>>2; elseif (($P*8)%8 == 6) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x2)>>1; elseif (($P*8)%8 == 7) $COLOR[1] = ($COLOR[1] & 0x1); $COLOR[1] = $PALETTE[$COLOR[1]+1]; } else return FALSE; imagesetpixel($res,$X,$Y,$COLOR[1]); $X++; $P += $BMP['bytes_per_pixel']; } $Y--; $P+=$BMP['decal']; } fclose($f1); return $res; } The resulting image is this: If you look at the image on the left hand side you can see that the resulting image is not correctly lined up. The little sliver belongs on the right hand side. Where is the code going wrong? The problem is occurring in the 16-bit else-if. Thank you again for all the help.

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• error A2070: invalid instruction operands IN SSE MASM64

  - by Green

  when compiling this in ml64.exe 64bit (masm64) the SSE command give me an error what do i need to do to include the SSE commands in 64 bit? .code test PROC movlps [rdx], xmm7 ;;error A2070: invalid instruction operands ;//Inc in vec ptr add rsi, 16 movhlps xmm6, xmm7 movss [rdx+8], xmm6 ;;rror A2070: invalid instruction operands ret test ENDP end i get the error: 1>Performing Custom Build Step 1> Assembling: extasm.asm 1>extasm.asm(6) : error A2070: invalid instruction operands 1>extasm.asm(10) : error A2070: invalid instruction operands 1>Microsoft (R) Macro Assembler (x64) Version 8.00.50727.215 1>Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. 1>Project : error PRJ0019: A tool returned an error code from "Performing Custom Build Step"

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• One row is skipped each time the program scans a matrix from file !

  - by ZaZu

  Hello there, I had this code working yesterday, but it seems like I edited it a bit and lost the working version. I cant get this to work anymore. I basically want to scan a matrix from a .txt file. But each time it scans the first row, the second one is skipped, and it reads the third instead :( Here is my code : for(i=0;i<=test->rowmat1;i++){ for(j=0;j<=test->colmat1;j++){ fscanf(fin,"%f\t",&test->mat[i][j]); } fscanf(fin,"%*[^\n]",&test->mat[i][j]); } For example, for a matrix of : 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00 11.00 12.00 If I extract 3 rows and 3 cols, I get : 1.00 2.00 3.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 Then fails, it wants to skip over the second line but there is nothing after 10 11 12 Why did it stop working ? What do I have wrong ? Please help, Thanks in advance.

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• Converting JSON into Python dict

  - by GrumpyCanuck

  I've been searching around trying to find an answer to this question, and I can't seem to track it down. Maybe it's too late in the evening to figure the answer out, so I turn to the excellent readers here. I have the following bit of JSON data that I am pulling out of a CouchDB record: "{\"description\":\"fdsafsa\",\"order\":\"1\",\"place\":\"22 Plainsman Rd, Mississauga, ON, Canada\",\"lat\":43.5969175,\"lng\":-79.7248744,\"locationDate\":\"03/24/2010\"},{\"description\":\"sadfdsa\",\"order\":\"2\",\"place\":\"50 Dawnridge Trail, Brampton, ON, Canada\",\"lat\":43.7304774,\"lng\":-79.8055435,\"locationDate\":\"03/26/2010\"}," This data is stored inside a Python dict under the key 'locations' in a dict called 'my_plan'. I want to covert this data from CouchDB into a Python dict so I can do the following in a Django template: {% for location in my_plan.locations %} <tr> <td>{{ location.place }}</td> <td>{{ location.locationDate }}</td> </tr> {% endfor %} I've found lots of info on converting dicts to JSON, but nothing on going back the other way Thanks in advance for the help!

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• Video on Architecture and Code Quality using Visual Studio 2012&ndash;interview with Marcel de Vries and Terje Sandstrom by Adam Cogan

  - by terje

  Find the video HERE. Adam Cogan did a great Web TV interview with Marcel de Vries and myself on the topics of architecture and code quality.  It was real fun participating in this session.  Although we know each other from the MVP ALM community,  Marcel, Adam and I haven’t worked together before. It was very interesting to see how we agreed on so many terms, and how alike we where thinking.  The basics of ensuring you have a good architecture and how you could document it is one thing.  Also, the same agreement on the importance of having a high quality code base, and how we used the Visual Studio 2012 tools, and some others (NDepend for example)  to measure and ensure that the code quality was where it should be.  As the tools, methods and thinking popped up during the interview it was a lot of “Hey !  I do that too!”.  The tools are not only for “after the fact” work, but we use them during the coding.  That way the tools becomes an integrated part of our coding work, and helps us to find issues we may have overlooked.  The video has a bunch of call outs, pinpointing important things to remember. These are also listed on the corresponding web page. I haven’t seen that touch before, but really liked this way of doing it – it makes it much easier to spot the highlights.  Titus Maclaren and Raj Dhatt from SSW have done a terrific job producing this video.  And thanks to Lei Xu for doing the camera and recording job.  Thanks guys ! Also, if you are at TechEd Amsterdam 2012, go and listen to Adam Cogan in his session on “A modern architecture review: Using the new code review tools” Friday 29th, 10.15-11.30 and Marcel de Vries session on “Intellitrace, what is it and how can I use it to my benefit” Wednesday 27th, 5-6.15 The highlights points out some important practices.  I’ll elaborate on a few of them here: Add instructions on how to compile the solution.  You do this by adding a text file with instructions to the solution, and keep it under source control.  These instructions should contain what is needed on top of a standard install of Visual Studio.  I do a lot of code reviews, and more often that not, I am not even able to compile the program, because they have used some tool or library that needs to be installed.  The same applies to any new developer who enters into the team, so do this to increase your productivity when the team changes, or a team member switches computer. Don’t forget to document what you have to configure on the computer, the IIS being a common one. The more automatic you can do this, the better.  Use NuGet to get down libraries. When the text document gets more than say, half a page, with a bunch of different things to do, convert it into a powershell script instead.  The metrics warning levels.  These are very conservatively set by Microsoft.  You rarely see anything but green, and besides, you should have color scales for each of the metrics.  I have a blog post describing a more appropriate set of levels, based on both research work and industry “best practices”.  The essential limits are: Cyclomatic complexity and coupling:  Higher numbers are worse On method levels: Green :  From 0 to 10 Yellow:  From 10 to 20  (some say 15).   Acceptable, but have a look to see if there is something unneeded here. Red: From 20 to 40:   Action required, get these down. Bleeding Red: Above 40   This is the real red alert.  Immediate action!  (My invention, as people have asked what do I do when I have cyclomatic complexity of 150.  The only answer I could think of was: RUN! ) Maintainability index:  Lower numbers are worse, scale from 0 to 100. On method levels: Green:  60 to 100 Yellow:  40 – 60.    You will always have methods here too, accept the higher ones, take a look at those who are down to the lower limit.  Check up against the other metrics.) Red:  20 – 40:  Action required, fix these. Bleeding red:  Below 20.  Immediate action required. When doing metrics analysis, you should leave the generated code out.  You do this by adding attributes, unfortunately Microsoft has “forgotten” to add these to all their stuff, so you might have to add them to some of the code.  It most cases it can be done so that it is not overwritten by a new round of code generation.  Take a look a my blog post here for details on how to do that. Class level metrics might also be useful, at least for coupling and maintenance.  But it is much more difficult to set any fixed limits on those.  Any metric aggregations on higher level tend to be pretty useless, as the number of methods vary pretty much, and there are little science on what number of methods can be regarded as good or bad.  NDepend have a recommendation, but they say it may vary too.  And in these days of data binding, the number might be pretty high, as properties counts as methods.  However, if you take the worst case situations, classes with more than 20 methods are suspicious, and coupling and cyclomatic complexity go red above 20, so any classes with more than 20x20 = 400 for these measures should be checked over. In the video we mention the SOLID principles, coined by “Uncle Bob” (Richard Martin). One of them, the Dependency Inversion principle we discuss in the video.  It is important to note that this principle is NOT on whether you should use a Dependency Inversion Container or not, it is about how you design the interfaces and interactions between your classes.  The Dependency Inversion Container is just one technique which is based on this principle, but which main purpose is to isolate things you would like to change at runtime, for example if you implement a plug in architecture.  Overuse of a Dependency Inversion Container is however, NOT a good thing.  It should be used for a purpose and not as a general DI solution.  The general DI solution and thinking however is useful far beyond the DIC.   You should always “program to an abstraction”, and not to the concreteness.  We also talk a bit about the GRASP patterns, a term coined by Craig Larman in his book Applying UML and design patterns. GRASP patterns stand for General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns and describe fundamental principles of object design and responsibility assignment.  What I find great with these patterns is that they is another way to focus on the responsibility of a class.  One of the things I most often found that is broken in software designs, is that the class lack responsibility, and as a result there are a lot of classes mucking around in the internals of the other classes.  We also discuss the term “Code Smells”.  This term was invented by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler when they worked with Fowler’s “Refactoring” book. A code smell is a set of “bad” coding practices, which are the drivers behind a corresponding set of refactorings.  Here is a good list of the smells, and their corresponding refactor patterns. See also this.

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• Can you access registers from python functions in vim

  - by Michael Anderson

  It seems vims python sripting is designed to edit buffer and files rather than work nicely with vims registers. You can use some of the vim packages commands to get access to the registers but its not pretty. My solution for creating a vim function using python that uses a register is something like this. function printUnnamedRegister() python >> EOF print vim.eval('@@') EOF Setting registers may also be possible using something like function setUnnamedRegsiter() python >> EOF s = "Some \"crazy\" string\nwith interesting characters" vim.command('let @@="%s"' % myescapefn(s) ) EOF However this feels a bit cumbersome and I'm not sure exactly what myescapefn should be. So I've never been able to get the setting version to work properly. So if there's a way to do something more like function printUnnamedRegister() python >> EOF print vim.getRegister('@') EOF function setUnnamedRegsiter() python >> EOF s = "Some \"crazy\" string\nwith interesting characters" vim.setRegister('@',s) EOF Or even a nice version of myescapefn I could use then that would be very handy.

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• C# Pragma to suppress break on thrown error

  - by Courtney de Lautour

  First off I run my applications with exceptions thrown on any error (handled or not). Second I am using a TypeConverter to convert from a user input string to the actual object. Third TypeConverter offers no TryConvert method so I'm stuck using exceptions for validation, using this rather ugly bit of code here: try { this._newValue = null; #pragma Magic_SuppressBreakErrorThrown System.Exception this._newValue = this.Converter.ConvertFromString(this._textBox.Text); #pragma Magic_ResumeBreakErrorThrown System.Exception this.HideInvalidNotification(); } catch (Exception exception) { if (exception.InnerException is FormatException) { this.ShowInvalidNotification(this._textBox.Text); } else { throw; } } I'm finding it rather distracting to have VS break execution every-time I type the - of -1, or some other invalid character. I could use something similar to this but not all the types I'm converting to have a TryParse method either. I'm hoping there may be some way to disable breaking for the section of code within the try without changing my exception settings.

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