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Customer Service Experience, Oracle e Cels insieme per innovare le strategie.

- by Claudia Caramelli-Oracle

Si è svolto oggi il workshop Oracle "Customer Service Experience. Strategie per progettare un Servizio eccellente e profittevole." che ha visto il contributo del gruppo di ricerca CELS (Research Group on Industrial Engineering, Logistics and Service Operations) e della sezione ASAP SMF dell’Università degli Studi di Bergamo. Giuditta Pezzotta (PhD - Cels) e Roberto Pinto (PhD - Cels) ci hanno presentato la Service Engineering Methodology (SEEM), innovativa piattaforma metodologica che permette di ottimizzare la creazione di valore sia per il cliente finale sia per l’azienda, partendo dalla progettazione del prodotto e arrivando alla progettazione della soluzione prodotto-servizio, e valutando la bontà del prodotto-servizio ipotizzato attraverso strumenti concettuali e di simulazione dei processi. Armando Janigro, CX Strategy Director EMEA - Oracle ha invece parlato di Modern Customer Service, ovvero di come adattarsi in modo agile e veloce alle mutevoli necessità dei clienti, ipotizzando l’adozione in chiave strategica di nuovi strumenti di differenziazione e di leadership come la Customer Experience (CX) e sfruttando le nuove dinamiche di relazione azienda-singolo consumatore per ottimizzare l’esperienza multicanale e per render più efficiente il Customer Service, creando ulteriore valore. A seguire è stata mostrata da PierLuigi Coli, Principal Sales Consultant - Oracle, una demo sui prodotti Service Cloud offerti da Oracle, a supporto di tutti i concetti raccontati nelle sessioni precedenti. Il workshop è stato un’occasione unica per definire i percorsi da intraprendere per sviluppare efficaci strategie di Customer Experience grazie ad approcci e metodologie innovative alla base di uno sviluppo sostenibile del business. Le slide proiettate sono disponibili su richiesta: scrivi a Claudia Caramelli per ogni informazione o chiarimento.

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Using unordered_multimap as entity and component storage

- by natebot13

The Setup I've made a few games (more like animations) using the Object Oriented method with base classes for objects that extend them, and objects that extend those, and found I couldn't wrap my head around expanding that system to larger game ideas. So I did some research and discovered the Entity-Component system of designing games. I really like the idea, and thoroughly understood the usefulness of it after reading Byte54's perfect answer here: Role of systems in entity systems architecture. With that said, I have decided to create my current game idea using the described Entity-Component system. Having basic knowledge of C++, and SFML, I would like to implement the backbone of this entity component system using an unordered_multimap without classes for the entities themselves. Here's the idea: An unordered_mulitmap stores entity IDs as the lookup term, while the value is an inherited Component object. Examlpe: ____________________________ |ID |Component | ---------------------------- |0 |Movable | |0 |Accelable | |0 |Renderable | |1 |Movable | |1 |Renderable | |2 |Renderable | ---------------------------- So, according to this map of objects, the entity with ID 0 has three components: Movable, Accelable, and Renderable. These component objects store the entity specific data, such as the location, the acceleration, and render flags. The entity is simply and ID, with the components attached to that ID describing its attributes. Problem I want to store the component objects within the map, allowing the map have full ownership of the components. The problem I'm having, is I don't quite understand enough about pointers, shared pointers, and references in order to get that set up. How can I go about initializing these components, with their various member variables, within the unordered_multimap? Can the base component class take on the member variables of its child classes, when defining the map as unordered_multimap<int, component>? Requirements I need a system to be able to grab an entity, with all of its' attached components, and access members from the components in order to do the necessary calculations and reassignments for position, velocity, etc. Need a clarification? Post a comment with your concerns and I will gladly edit or comment back! Thanks in advance! natebot13

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Painting with pixel shaders

- by Gustavo Maciel

I have an almost full understanding of how 2D Lighting works, saw this post and was tempted to try implementing this in HLSL. I planned to paint each of the layers with shaders, and then, combine them just drawing one on top of another, or just pass the 3 textures to the shader and getting a better way to combine them. Working almost as planned, but I got a little question in the matter. I'm drawing each layer this way: GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(lighting); GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); //... Setup shader SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.LinearClamp, DepthStencilState.None, RasterizerState.CullNone, lightingShader); SpriteBatch.Draw(texture, fullscreen, Color.White); SpriteBatch.End(); GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(darkMask); GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); //... Setup shader SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.LinearClamp, DepthStencilState.None, RasterizerState.CullNone, darkMaskShader); SpriteBatch.Draw(texture, fullscreen, Color.White); SpriteBatch.End(); Where lightingShader and darkMaskShader are shaders that, with parameters (view and proj matrices, light pos, color and range, etc) generate a texture meant to be that layer. It works fine, but I'm not sure if drawing a transparent quad on top of a transparent render target is the best way of doing it. Because I actually just need the position and params. Concluding: Can I paint a texture with shaders without having to clear it and then draw a transparent texture on top of it?

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Static "LoD" hack opinions

- by David Lively

I've been playing with implementing dynamic level of detail for rendering a very large mesh in XNA. It occurred to me that (duh) the whole point of this is to generate small triangles close to the camera, and larger ones far away. Given that, rather than constantly modifying or swapping index buffers based on a feature's rendered size or distance from the camera, it would be a lot easier (and potentially quite a bit faster), to render a single "fan" or flat wedge/frustum-shaped planar mesh that is tessellated into small triangles close to the near or small end of the frustum and larger ones at the far end, sort of like this (overhead view) (Pardon the gap in the middle - I drew one side and mirrored it) The triangle sizes are chosen so that all are approximately the same size when projected. Then, that mesh would be transformed to track the camera so that the Z axis (center vertical in this image) is always aligned with the view direction projected into the XZ plane. The vertex shader would then read terrain heights from a height texture and adjust the Y coordinate of the mesh to match a height field that defines the terrain. This eliminates the need for culling (since the mesh is generated to match the viewport dimensions) and the need to modify the index and/or vertex buffers when drawing the terrain. Obviously this doesn't address terrain with overhangs, etc, but that could be handled to a certain extent by including a second mesh that defines a sort of "ceiling" via a different texture. The other LoD schemes I've seen aren't particularly difficult to implement and, in some cases, are a lot more flexible, but this seemed like a decent quick-and-dirty way to handle height map-based terrain without getting into geometry manipulation. Has anyone tried this? Opinions?

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Should a model binder populate all of the model?

- by Richard

Should a model binder populate all of the model, or only the bits that are being posted? For example, I am adding a product in my system and on the form i want the user to select which sites the new product will appear on. Therefore, in my model I want to populate a collection called "AllAvailableSites" to render the checkboxes for the user to choose from. I also need to populate the model with any chosen sites on a post in case the form does not validate, and I need to represent the form showing the initial selections. It would seem that I should let the model binder set the chosen sites on the model, and (once in the controller method) I set the "AllAvailableSites" on the model. Does that sound right? It seems more efficient to set everything in the model binder but someone is suggesting it is not quite right. I am grateful for any advice; I have to say that all the MVC model binding help online seems to cite really simple examples, nothing complicated. Do I really need a GET and a POST version of a method? Can't they just take the same view model? Then I check in my model binder if it is a GET/POST, and populate all the model accordingly.

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Starting an HTML canvas game with no graphics skills

- by Jacob

I want to do some hobby game development, but I have some unfortunate handicaps that have me stuck in indecision; I have no artistic talent, and I also have no experience with 3D graphics. But this is just a hobby project that might not go anywhere, so I want to develop the stuff I care about; if the game shows good potential, my graphic "stubs" can be replaced with something more sophisticated. I do, however, want my graphics engine to render something approximate to the end goal. The game is tile-based, with each tile being a square. Each tile also has an elevation. My target platform (subject to modification) is JavaScript rendering to the HTML 5 canvas, either with a 2D or WebGL context. My question to those of you with game development experience is whether it's easier to develop an isometric game using a 2D graphics engine and sprites or a 3D game using rudimentary 3D primitives and basic textures? I realize that there are limitations to isometric projection, but if it makes developing my throwaway graphics engine easier, I'm OK with the visual warts that would be introduced. Or is representing a 3D world with an actual 3D engine easier?

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The best way to structure/design game code

- by Edward

My question is quite broad and related to the 2D game code design/architecture/structure. Usually the main game consists of the main loop where you update & render your world states. However, it's recommended for many purposes to separate rendering from the game-logic and so on. I am kinda confused about the whole situation. Many game engines/libs/sdks don't follow separation schema. They propagate a way where you define some scenes/stages and they contain some objects and the scene/stage controls the user input and so on. For example, in cocos2d(-x) and libgdx (stage2d) the games are usually done the way that the update logic happens at the same time/place as rendering. Also, the propagated way is to have a structure where an object knows how to draw itself - which is not a separation of updating & rendering. The same with Flash based games, they are usually done the way when an object (class) contains a swf or a texture and some data and holds some update logic itself, or updated from main Scene. And again this object already knows how to draw itself via "addChild". Also, some people recommend to use MVC pattern, which will require to completely obey the structure of those engines/libs/sdks. Maybe I am overthinking everything, but I am totally confused. I would be grateful if somebody could point me to a correct direction with the game code structures. What is your way of doing things in libgdx/cocos2d/flash?

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Allow access to WordPress site only by links in email newsletters

- by Shane

I send out a personal email newsletter, and have been looking into sending it via some service like MailChimp, or sendy.co. Many of these email services suggest, or require, the email newsletter content to be available online, in case the recipient's email app doesn't render it properly, or at all. The thing is I don't want my newsletter contents visible to the whole world. Nor do I want to require existing recipients to make accounts/be assigned accounts, with passwords. So, the question is: How can my WordPress site content be viewable only by clicking on the link to it in the email newsletter. It can't be found in a Google search; but once at the site the visitor can view previous newsletter contents. It seems an .htaccess file would do the trick, but I have been unable to figure out the syntax for this. Thanks for your help. I have copied below two other questions, and answers, which have helped me word my question clearly. Similar to this request about allowing access to a certain group while still restricting access to the world: Is there a way to password protect directory only in cpanel. But the user should not be prompted the password, when they try to access it via web? This persons question is the closest I could find to my situation: Restrict direct folder access via .htaccess except via specific links

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How can I unit test rendering output?

- by stephelton

I've been embracing Test-Driven Development (TDD) recently and it's had wonderful impacts on my development output and the resiliency of my codebase. I would like to extend this approach to some of the rendering work that I do in OpenGL, but I've been unable to find any good approaches to this. I'll start with a concrete example so we know what kinds of things I want to test; lets say I want to create a unit cube that rotates about some axis, and that I want to ensure that, for some number of frames, each frame is rendered correctly. How can I create an automated test case for this? Preferably, I'd even be able to write a test case before writing any code to render the cube (per usual TDD practices.) Among many other things, I'd want to make sure that the cube's size, location, and orientation are correct in each rendered frame. I may even want to make sure that the lighting equations in my shaders are correct in each frame. The only remotely useful approach to this that I've come across involves comparing rendered output to a reference output, which generally precludes TDD practice, and is very cumbersome. I could go on about other desired requirements, but I'm afraid the ones I've listed already are out of reach.

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Determinism in multiplayer simulation with Box2D, and single computer

- by Jake

I wrote a small test car driving multiplayer game with Box2D using TCP server-client communcations. I ran 1 instance of server.exe and 2 instance of client.exe on the same machine that I code and compile the executables. I type inputs (WASD for a simple car movement) into one of the 2 clients and I can get both clients to update the simulation. There are 2 cars in the simulation. As long as the cars do not collide, I get the same identical output on both client.exe. I can run the car(s) around for as long as I could they still update the same. However, if I start to collide the cars, very quickly they go out of sync. My tools: Windows 7, C++, MSVS 2010, Box2D, freeGlut. My Psuedocode: // client.exe void timer(int value) { tcpServer.send(my_inputs); foreach(i = player including myself) inputs[i] = tcpServer.receive(); foreach(i = player including myself) players[i].process(inputs[i]); myb2World.step(33, 8, 6); // Box2D world step simulation foreach(i = player including myself) renderer.render(player[i]); glutTimerFunc(33, timer, 0); } // server.exe void serviceloop { while(all clients alive) { foreach(c = clients) tcpClients[c].receive(&inputs[c]); // send input of each client to all clients foreach(source = clients) { foreach(dest = clients) { tcpClients[dest].send(inputs[source]); } } } } I have read all over the internet and SE the following claims (paraphrased): Box2D is deterministic as long as floating point architecture/implementation is the same. (For any deterministic engine) Determinism is gauranteed if playback of recorded inputs is on the same machine with exe compiled using same compiler and machine. Additionally my server.exe and client.exe gameloop is single thread with blocking socket calls and fixed time step. Question: Can anyone explain what I did wrong to get different Box2D output?

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Strange 3D game engine camera with X,Y,Zoom instead of X,Y,Z

- by Jenko

I'm using a 3D game engine, that uses a 4x4 matrix to modify the camera projection, in this format: r r r x r r r y r r r z - - - zoom Strangely though, the camera does not respond to the Z translation parameter, and so you're forced to use X, Y, Zoom to move the camera around. Technically this is plausible for isometric-style games such as Age Of Empires III. But this is a 3D engine, and so why would they have designed the camera to ignore Z and respond only to zoom? Am I missing something here? I've tried every method of setting the camera and it really seems to ignore Z. So currently I have to resort to moving the main object in the scene graph instead of moving the camera in relation to the objects. My question: Do you have any idea why the engine would use such a scheme? Is it common? Why? Or does it seem like I'm missing something and the SetProjection(Matrix) function is broken and somehow ignores the Z translation in the matrix? (unlikely, but possible) Anyhow, what are the workarounds? Is moving objects around the only way? Edit: I'm sorry I cannot reveal much about the engine because we're in a binding contract. It's a locally developed engine (Australia) written in managed C# used for data visualizations. Edit: The default mode of the engine is orthographic, although I've switched it into perspective mode. Its probably more effective to use X, Y, Zoom in orthographic mode, but I need to use perspective mode to render everyday objects as well.

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Redirecting to a dynamic page

- by binarydev

I have a page displaying blog posts (latest_posts.php) and another page that display single blog posts (blog.php) . I intend to link the image title in latest_posts.php so that it redirects to blog.php where it would display the particular post that was clicked. latest_posts.php:  <h2 class="underline"> <span>What's new</span> <span></span> </h2>   <ul class="post-list post-list-1"> <?php /* Fetches Date/Time, Post Content and title */ include 'dbconnect.php'; $sql = "SELECT * FROM wp_posts"; $res = mysql_query($sql); while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($res) ) { ?>  <li class="clear-fix">  <div class="post-list-date"> <div class="post-date-box"> <?php //Timestamp broken down to show accordingly $timestamp = $row['post_date']; $datetime = new DateTime($timestamp); $date = $datetime->format("d"); $month = $datetime->format("M"); ?> <h3> <?php echo $date; ?> </h3> <span> <?php echo $month; ?> </span> </div> </div>   <div class="post-list-image">  <div class="image image-overlay-url image-fancybox-url"> <a href="post.php" class="preloader-image"> <?php echo '<img src="', $row['image'], '" alt="' , $row['post_title'] , '\'s Blog Image" />'; ?> </a> </div>  </div>   <div class="post-list-content"> <div>  <h4> <a href="post.php? . $row['ID'] . "> <?php echo $row['post_title']; ?> </a> </h4>   <p> <?php echo $row ['post_content']; }?> </p>  </div> </div>  </li>  </ul>  <a href="blog.php" class="button-browse">Browse All Posts</a> </div> <?php require_once('include/twitter_user_timeline.php'); ?> blog.php: <?php require_once('include/header.php'); ?> <body class="blog"> <?php require_once('include/navigation_bar_blog.php'); ?> <div class="blog"> <div class="main">  <h2 class="underline"> <span>What's new</span> <span></span> </h2>   <div class="layout-p-66x33 clear-fix">    <ul class="post-list post-list-2"> <?php /* Fetches Date/Time, Post Content and title with Pagination */ include 'dbconnect.php'; //sets to default page if(empty($_GET['pn'])){ $page=1; } else { $page = $_GET['pn']; } // Index of the page $index = ($page-1)*3; $sql = "SELECT * FROM `wp_posts` ORDER BY `post_date` DESC LIMIT " . $index . " ,3"; $res = mysql_query($sql); //Loops through the values while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($res) ) { ?>  <li class="clear-fix">  <div class="post-list-date"> <div class="post-date-box"> <?php //Timestamp broken down to show accordingly $timestamp = $row['post_date']; $datetime = new DateTime($timestamp); $date = $datetime->format("d"); $month = $datetime->format("M"); ?> <h3> <?php echo $date; ?> </h3> <span> <?php echo $month; ?> </span> </div> </div>   <div class="post-list-image">  <div class="image image-overlay-url image-fancybox-url"> <a href="post.php" class="preloader-image"> <?php echo '<img src="', $row['image'], '" alt="' , $row['post_title'] , '\'s Blog Image" />'; ?> </a> </div>  </div>   <div class="post-list-content"> <div> <?php $id = $_GET['ID']; $post = lookup_post_somehow($id); if($post) { // render post } else { echo 'blog post not found..'; } ?>  <h4> <a href="post.php"> <?php echo $row['post_title']; ?> </a> </h4>   <p> <?php echo $row ['post_content']; ?> </p>  </div> </div>  </li>  <?php } // close while loop ?> </ul>  <div> <ul class="blog-pagination clear-fix"> <?php //Count the number of rows $numberofrows = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(ID) FROM `wp_posts`"); //Do ciel() to round the result according to number of posts $postsperpage = 4; $numOfPages = ceil($numberofrows / $postsperpage); for($i=1; $i < $numOfPages; $i++) { //echos links for each page $paginationDisplay = '<li><a href="blog.php?pn=' . $i . '">' . $i . '</a></li>'; echo $paginationDisplay; } ?>  </ul> </div>   </div>  </div> </div> <?php require_once('include/twitter_user_timeline.php'); ?> <?php require_once('include/footer_blog.php'); ?> How do I render?

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OpenGL ES 2.0 texture distortion on large geometry

- by Spruce

OpenGL ES 2.0 has serious precision issues with texture sampling - I've seen topics with a similar problem, but I haven't seen a real solution to this "distorted OpenGL ES 2.0 texture" problem yet. This is not related to the texture's image format or OpenGL color buffers, it seems like it's a precision error. I don't know what specifically causes the precision to fail - it doesn't seem like it's just the size of geometry that causes this distortion, because simply scaling vertex position passed to the the vertex shader does not solve the issue. Here are some examples of the texture distortion: Distorted Texture (on OpenGL ES 2.0): http://i47.tinypic.com/3322h6d.png What the texture normally looks like (also on OpenGL ES 2.0): http://i49.tinypic.com/b4jc6c.png The texture issue is limited to small scale geometry on OpenGL ES 2.0, otherwise the texture sampling appears normal, but the grainy effect gradually worsens the further the vertex data is from the origin of XYZ(0,0,0) These texture issues do not occur on desktop OpenGL (works fine under Windows XP, Windows 7, and Mac OS X) I've only seen the problem occur on Android, iPhone, or WebGL(which is similar to OpenGL ES 2.0) All textures are power of 2 but the problem still occurs Scaling the vertex data - The values of a vertex's X Y Z location are in the range of: -65536 to +65536 floating point I realized this was large, so I tried dividing the vertex positions by 1024 to shrink the geometry and hopefully get more accurate floating point precision, but this didn't fix or lessen the texture distortion issue Scaling the modelview or scaling the projection matrix does not help Changing texture filtering options does not help Disabling mipmapping, or using GL_NEAREST/GL_LINEAR does nothing Enabling/disabling anisotropic does nothing The banding effect still occurs even when using GL_CLAMP Dividing the texture coords passed to the vertex shader and then multiplying them back to the correct values in the fragment shader, also does not work precision highp sampler2D, highp float, highp int - in the fragment or the vertex shader didn't change anything (lowp/mediump did not work either) I'm thinking this problem has to have been solved at one point - Seeing that OpenGL ES 2.0 -based games have been able to render large-scale, highly detailed geometry

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Java Applet or Unity3D for Cross-Platform 3D Surveying App

- by Jake M

Do you think a Java Applet or Unity3D Application is the best option to make a cross-browser 3d web-app? I intend to make a web application that displays 3d environments that can be navigated by dragging(with a finger or mouse depending on the platform). The web app will render 3d environments of development sites including contours, water pipeline locations, buildings etc. The application must work on Windows Desktop, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. So this is why I am tending towards a web-app as opposed to cross-platform smart phone library(like Mosync or Marmalade). The 3d environments will be navigable(by dragging around) and contain simple(not detailed) 3d objects like buildings, mountains, pipelines, etc. One thing I know is that WebGL is out because it doesn't work on IE and has limited support on Smart Phones(am I correct to completely disregard WebGL?). Will future Smart Phone browsers continue to support Java Applets? Also is it really true I can write ONE Application/Game in Unity3D and simply compile it to run on Windows Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, iPad, iPhone and Android? Would you suggest the Unity3D application path or the Unity3D Web Player path? Concerning Unity3D, there's one thing I am unsure about: do all Unity3D features work on iOS and Android?

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Can anyone recommend an AI sandbox?

- by user19433

I'm passionate person, who has been around AI from a long time [1] but never going in deep enough. Now it's time! I've been really looking for some way to concentrate on AI coding but couldn't succeeded to find an AI environment I can focus on. I just want to use an AI sandbox environment which would let me have tools like: visibility information character controller able to easily define a level, with obstacles of course physics collider management triggers management don't need to be a shiny, eye candy graphical render : this is about pathfinding, tactical reasoning, etc.. I have tried : Unreal Dev Kit : while the new release announce is about C++ coding, this is about external tools and will be released in 2013 Cry Engine : really interesting as AI is presents here but coding with it appears to be an hell: did I got it wrong ? Half Life source, C4, Torque, Dx Studio : either quite old, not very useful or costly these imply to dig in documentation (when provided) to code everything, graphics included. Unity 3D : the most promising platform. While you also need to create your own environment, there are lot of examples. The disadvantage is, in addition to spend time to have this env. working, is the languages choice : C#, Javascript or Boo. C# is not that hard, but this implies you'll allways have to convert papers (I love those from Lars Linden) books codes, or anything you can have in Aigamedev are most often in C++. This is extra work. I've look at "Simple Path", the very good Arong Greenberg work but no source provided and AngryAnt work. AI Sandbox : this seems to be exactly what as AI coder I want to use. I saw some preview but from 2009 we still don't know what it will be about precisely, will it be opensource or free (I strongly doubt), will I be able to buy it? will it really provide me tools I need to focus on AI ? That being said, what is the best environment to be able to focus on AI coding only, is it even possible?

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Seeking solution for printing-reporting .NET

- by Parhs

I am developing an application that prints in separate threads in extreme cases about 20-25 pages per minute to various thermal printers. Currently templates for these are XAML xps documents. All printers have graphics drivers that support EMF/GDI printing. So GDI-EMF is done by operating system resulting in slower performance. Sending raw text for printing is another good solution but doesnt work always , because some clients have old chinese thermal printer that nobody support thus impossible to change codepage / emulation. So it doesnt work always. Also most computers running my software are low end ATOM CPU. So I am thinking to return to GDI, EMF printing and have both Text-Only reports and EMF reports. Another reason i want EMF is because here receipts are signed by Electronic Fiscal Memory device.Most of these dont do good job extracting text from XPS as they dont follow the standard but how windows convert GDI to XPS.Even with text-only mode some of them dont support all character encodings and are impossible to send paper cut command after the sign. I know that using a reporting engine would solve rendering problem but I dont want to buy one. All I want is to be able to show tabular data and insert an image and replaced text.I know there is StringTemplate that could do the generation of template but the problem is i should parse somehow the template and render it using GDI commands. Is there any other solution/approach for this ? Or is there anything ready ?

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(Abstract) Game engine design

- by lukeluke

I am writing a simple 2D game (for mobile platforms) for the first time. From an abstract point of view, i have the main player controlled by the human, the enemies, elments that will interact with the main player, other living elements that will be controlled by a simple AI (both enemies and non-enemies). The human player will be totally controlled by the player, the other actors will be controlled by AI. So i have a class CActor and a class CActorLogic to start with. I would define a CActor subclass CHero (the main player controlled with some input device). This class will probably implement some type of listener, in order to capture input events. The other players controlled by the AI will be probably a specific subclass of CActor (a subclass per-type, obviously). This seems to be reasonable. The CActor class should have a reference to a method of CActorLogic, that we will call something like CActorLogic::Advance() or similar. Actors should have a visual representation. I would introduce a CActorRepresentation class, with a method like Render() that will draw the actor (that is, the right frame of the right animation). Where to change the animation? Well, the actor logic method Advance() should take care of checking collisions and other things. I would like to discuss the design of a game engine (actors, entities, objects, messages, input handling, visualization of object states (that is, rendering, sound output and so on)) but not from a low level point of view, but from an high level point of view, like i have described above. My question is: is there any book/on line resource that will help me organize things (using an object oriented approach)? Thanks

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What am I doing wrong in my config for MySql?

- by Knight Hawk3

When I load my my.conf with the config at the bottom Mysql fails to start and prints no errors. I am running Arch Linux (Updated) with the latest MySQL (5.5) and the latest nginx (Well latest in the repository, Not sure how to check. Only installed it today) I will give you any info you ask for. Thanks for helping! # The following options will be passed to all MySQL clients [client] #password = your_password port = 3306 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock # Here follows entries for some specific programs # The MySQL server [mysqld] port = 3306 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock skip-locking key_buffer = 16K max_allowed_packet = 1M table_cache = 4 sort_buffer_size = 64K read_buffer_size = 256K read_rnd_buffer_size = 256K net_buffer_length = 2K thread_stack = 64K # Don’t listen on a TCP/IP port at all. This can be a security enhancement, # if all processes that need to connect to mysqld run on the same host. # All interaction with mysqld must be made via Unix sockets or named pipes. # Note that using this option without enabling named pipes on Windows # (using the “enable-named-pipe” option) will render mysqld useless! # #skip-networking server-id = 1 # Uncomment the following if you want to log updates #log-bin=mysql-bin # Uncomment the following if you are NOT using BDB tables skip-bdb # Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables #innodb_data_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/ #innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend #innodb_log_group_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/ #innodb_log_arch_dir = /var/lib/mysql/ # You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 – 80 % # of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high #innodb_buffer_pool_size = 16M #innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 2M # Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size #innodb_log_file_size = 5M #innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M #innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1 #innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50 skip-innodb [mysqldump] quick max_allowed_packet = 16M [mysql] no-auto-rehash # Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL #safe-updates [isamchk] key_buffer = 1M sort_buffer_size = 1M [myisamchk] key_buffer = 1M sort_buffer_size = 1M [mysqlhotcopy] interactive-timeout So what is my silly error?

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How to handle URLs with diacritic characters

- by user359650

I am wondering how to handle URLs which correspond to strings containing diacritic (á, u, ´...). I believe what we're seeing mostly are URLs where diacritic characters where converted to their closest ASCII equivalent, for instance Rånades på Skyttis i Ö-vik converted to ranades-pa-skyttis-i-o-vik. However depending on the corresponding language, such conversion might be incorrect. For instance in German, ü should be converted to ue and not just u, as seen with the below URL representing the Bayern München string as bayern-muenchen: http://www.bundesliga.de/en/liga/clubs/fc-bayern-muenchen/index.php However what I've also noticed, is that browsers can render non-ASCII characters when they are percent-encoded in the URL, which is the approach Wikipedia has chosen, for instance http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Bayern_M%C3%BCnchen which is rendered as: Therefore I'm considering the following approach for creating URL slugs: -(1) convert strings while replacing non-ASCII characters to their recommended ASCII representation: Bayern München - bayern-muenchen -(2) also convert strings to percent encoding: Bayern München - bayern_m%C3%BCnchen -create a 301 redirect from version (1) to version (2) Version (1) URLs could be used for marketing purposes (e.g. mywebsite.com/bayern-muenchen) but the URLs that would end being displayed in the browser bar would be version (2) URLs (e.g. mywebsite.com/bayern-münchen). Can you foresee particular problems with this approach? (Wikipedia is not doing it and I wonder why, apart from the fact that they don't need to market their URLs)

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Simple monitoring of a Raspberry Pi powered screen - Part 2

- by Chris Houston

If you have read my previous blog post Raspberry Pi entrance signed backed by Umbraco - Part 1 which describes how we used a Raspberry Pi to drive an Entrance sign for QV Offices you will have seen I mentioned a follow up post about monitoring the sign.As the sign is mounted in the entrance of the building on the ground floor and the reception is on the 1st floor, this meant that if there was a fault of any kind showing on the screen, the first person to see this was inevitably one of QV Offices' clients as they walked into the building.Although the QV Offices' team were able to check the Umbraco website address that the sign uses, this did not always mean that everything was working as expected. We noticed a couple of times that the sign had Wifi issues (it is now hard wired) and this caused the Chromium browser to render a 404 error when it tried to refresh the screen.The simple monitoring solutionWe added the following line to our refresh script, so that after the sign had been refreshed a screen shot of the Raspberry Pi would be taken:import -display :0 -window root ~/screenshot.jpgFinally we wrote a small Crontab task that ran on a QV Offices Mac that grabs this screen shot and saved it on the desktop, admittedly we have used a package that it not mega secure, but in reality this is an internal system that only runs an office sign, so we are not to concerned about it being hacked.*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/sshpass -p 'password' /usr/bin/scp [email protected]:screenshot.jpg Desktop/QVScreenShot.jpgAs the file icon updates, if the image changes, this gives a quick visual indication of the status of the sign, if for some reason the icon does not look correct the QV Offices administrator can just click on the file to see the exact image currently displayed on the sign.Sometimes a quick and easy solution is better than a more complex and expensive one.

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MonoGame not all letters being drawn with DrawString

- by Lex Webb

I'm currently making a dynamic user interface for my game and are setting up having text on my buttons. I'm having an odd issue where, when i use a specific piece of code to determine the text position, it will not render all of the text passed to DrawString. Even weirder, is if i insert another DrawString after this, drawing more text at a different place, different parts of the text will be drawn. The code for drawing my button with the text attached is: public override void Draw(SpriteBatch sb, GameTime gt) { sb.Draw(currentImage, GetRelativeRectangle(), Color.White); sb.DrawString(font, text, new Vector2(this.GetRelativeDrawOffset().X + this.Width / 2 - font.MeasureString(text).X / 2, this.GetRelativeDrawOffset().Y + this.Height / 2 - font.MeasureString(text).Y / 2), textColor); } The methods in the creation of the Vector2 simply get the draw position of the button. I'm then doing some calculation to center the text. This produces this when the text is set to 'Test': And when i enter this piece of code below the first DrawString: sb.DrawString(font, "test", new Vector2(500, 50), Color.Pink); I should mention that that grey square is being drawn in the same spritebatch, before the button and the text. Any ideas as to what could be causing this? I have a feeling it may be due to draw order, but i have no idea how to control that.

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Light mask map and camera for static lights in XNA Platformer

- by JiminyCricket

Using the example for some basic light maps found here : http://blog.josack.com/2011/07/xna-2d-dynamic-lighting.html, I've managed to create a lightmap texture using individual lightmaps and display it over a 2D tiled world as in the Platformer example. I'm using the very basic 2D camera example as found here : http://www.david-amador.com/2009/10/xna-camera-2d-with-zoom-and-rotation/, and the problem is that the lightmap texture scrolls with the player sprite. This looks pretty good and would be excellent for lighting the player sprite as it moves. But, I also want to be able to place static lights (or some initial position for the lights) that do not move with the player or camera. When I turn off the camera or give it a static position, it works as a series of static lights so I believe it's probably caused by the camera transformation matrix following the player around. I'm using RenderTarget2Ds, one for the main game screen after all the backgrounds and tiles are rendered, and one for the "lightmap" which consists of a black background and a bunch of lighting textures which are merged with it using additive blending. For now, I'm doing all of this in PlatformerGame.cs where the camera transformation and position is set and the level.Draw() call is made. I can't figure out how to separate the drawing of the lightmap and the camera following the player. I was thinking it would be better to render the shadows and lighting directly in the drawing of the level itself, but I'm not sure how to do that either because this technique requires RenderTarget2Ds and calling SpriteBatch.Begin()/End().

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JPEG images not loading on PlayBook (Marmalade + iwgame)

- by Vexille

I'm using iwgame on a test project and I was trying to render different resolutions of JPG and PNG images. Everything works fine on the Marmalade Simulator, however once I deploy the game to our PlayBook and run it, only the PNG images are shown. I have declared the images in the MKB file and on a XML file iwgame's using to load the images. I've checked the deployments folder and all images are present in the intermediatefiles/native folder. We're currently using a BlackBerry only license, so we can only test this on the PlayBook, but we do intend to get a Community license and deploy to iOS and Android devices eventually (I'm not sure if this is a problem exclusive to the PlayBook). I really don't know if this is a Marmalade or a iwgame issue. I have a different test project without iwgame and it simply won't run with jpg images (I get the error: 'Could not find handler for extension "jpg"'). While searching for a sollution, I've seen people talking about using libjpg, but I've also found that Marmalade supposedly has integrated native jpeg support (and because of that iwgame has abandoned their jpeg loading support since v0.340), so I don't know what to think. I'm currently using the most recent versions of both Marmalade and iwgame, I believe: Marmalade 6.1.2 and iwgame 0.400. Also, please let me know if there's an easier or better way to do this, such as linking libjpg or something (I'm not exactly sure how to do this). I really would appreciate some help with this, there's a huge difference in size for the images we're planning to use, from a ~500kb jpg file to a ~3.5mb png file. Thanks, guys.

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Effortlessly resize images in Orchard 1.7

- by Bertrand Le Roy

I’ve written several times about image resizing in .NET, but never in the context of Orchard. With the imminent release of Orchard 1.7, it’s time to correct this. The new version comes with an extensible media pipeline that enables you to define complex image processing workflows that can automatically resize, change formats or apply watermarks. This is not the subject of this post however. What I want to show here is one of the underlying APIs that enable that feature, and that comes in the form of a new shape. Once you have enabled the media processing feature, a new ResizeMediaUrl shape becomes available from your views. All you have to do is feed it a virtual path and size (and, if you need to override defaults, a few other optional parameters), and it will do all the work for you of creating a unique URL for the resized image, and write that image to disk the first time the shape is rendered: <img src="@Display.ResizeMediaUrl(Path: img, Width: 59)"/> Notice how I only specified a maximum width. The height could of course be specified, but in this case will be automatically determined so that the aspect ratio is preserved. The second time the shape is rendered, the shape will notice that the resized file already exists on disk, and it will serve that directly, so caching is handled automatically and the image can be served almost as fast as the original static one, because it is also a static image. Only the URL generation and checking for the file existence takes time. Here is what the generated thumbnails look like on disk: In the case of those product images, the product page will download 12kB worth of images instead of 1.87MB. The full size images will only be downloaded as needed, if the user clicks on one of the thumbnails to get the full-scale. This is an extremely useful tool to use in your themes to easily render images of the exact right size and thus limit your bandwidth consumption. Mobile users will thank you for that.

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Rendering text with stb_font results in glitches

- by Fabian Fritz

I'm trying to render text with OpenGL and an "inline"-font taken from the stb_fonts The relevant code for initializing the font & rendering: LabelFactory::LabelFactory() { static unsigned char fontpixels [STB_SOMEFONT_BITMAP_HEIGHT][STB_SOMEFONT_BITMAP_WIDTH]; STB_SOMEFONT_CREATE(fontdata, fontpixels, STB_SOMEFONT_BITMAP_HEIGHT); glGenTextures(1, &texture); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture); glTexEnvf(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_MODULATE); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_ALPHA, STB_SOMEFONT_BITMAP_WIDTH, STB_SOMEFONT_BITMAP_HEIGHT, 0, GL_ALPHA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, fontdata); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); } void LabelFactory::renderLabel(Label * label) { int x = label->x; int y = label->y; const char * str = label->text; glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture); glEnable(GL_BLEND); glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); glEnable(GL_ALPHA_TEST); glColor4f(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glBegin(GL_QUADS); while (*str) { int char_codepoint = *str++; stb_fontchar *cd = &fontdata[char_codepoint - STB_FONT_arial_14_usascii_FIRST_CHAR]; glTexCoord2f(cd->s0, cd->t0); glVertex2i(x + cd->x0, y + cd->y0); glTexCoord2f(cd->s1, cd->t0); glVertex2i(x + cd->x1, y + cd->y0); glTexCoord2f(cd->s1, cd->t1); glVertex2i(x + cd->x1, y + cd->y1); glTexCoord2f(cd->s0, cd->t1); glVertex2i(x + cd->x0, y + cd->y1); x += cd->advance_int; } glEnd(); } However this results in weird glitches I guess I'm doing something wrong with the alpha blending, however I was unable to improve it by changing the parameters. The size and length of the outline of the text that should be shown seems about right (it should read "Test Test Test").

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