I am writing a protocol for my Game, and I am not sure what software to use for that.
I been trying writing it in Microsoft Word, and Excel, but it's not always easy to read or edit it.
Is there any good practices or tools that can help me with it?
The standard tool for describing protocols is message sequence chart which has been used by the telecom industry (and others) for decades.
It is a really powerful tool you most certainly should learn and use. I recommend using http://sourceforge.net/projects/msc-generator/ to edit and generate charts.
You can use doxygen for this. You either can implement the doc of your protocol somewhere in your source or create a stand-alone-file. Doxygen is used for source-documentation normaly but should also work well for this.
Doxygen also implements mscgen, which should become handy for your purpose.
Related
I'm looking for a nice library for editing and/or generating Excel documents on our Windows server. I feel that the open xml sdk is probably the way to go, but to me the learning curve seems steep and our dev time is limited. I think that it just shouldn't be that difficult to edit an Excel document. I'm ready to reinvent the wheel, but thought it would be worthwhile to ask first whether there is a good project/library out there that wraps open xml and makes interacting with Excel easier.
In this official MS tutorial, the code that retrieves the value of a cell is dozens of lines long.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb739834.aspx?cs-save-lang=1&cs-lang=vb#ManipulateOpenXMLExcelPowerPoint_RetrievetheValueofaCellinaWorksheet
That seems incredibly unwieldy, and I'm hoping for a better interface to this functionality.
Note: I've puzzled about how to make this question more StackOverflow friendly, but I don't know of a better way.
One of the comments mentioned a wrapper library that is exactly what I've been looking for. closedxml.codeplex.com
Try SpreadsheetLight. Disclaimer: I wrote SpreadsheetLight.
And this question is possibly a duplicate of this:
OpenXML libraries (alternatives to ClosedXML)
I use Simple OOXML and it's quite neat. And free.
I need to develop a large set of tools to be run from the server command line (i.e. not client-server architecture). The systems does not have to be high-performance; I just want something that is easy to develop with.
Which technologies are out there I can use to build simple GUI to be run from the command line? I need only menus where I can select a line/check-box/enter free text in a dialog.
Edit: forgot to add, access to Mysql (i.e. drivers available) is essential.
Shell, with dialog, the old stand-by - http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2807
EDIT- If it's MySQL-related, take a look at PERL-Tk and DBI.
python + ncurses would be a good combo here.
i like using perl's re.pl from the Devel::REPL library for quickie cli interfaces. read on a bit for my rationale before downvoting!
in this type of app it sounds like you will be doing query-type operations. these naturally lend themselves to a "repl" style interraction. re.pl gives you all of the goodies, namely command editing and history. all you need to write are the functions that users will call. the nice thing is that users who know perl will realize they can use any installed module to extend the functionality of your system on their own. i my case, i used re.pl to create a mysqlclient-like tool to access and display data that was being compressed in a way that the standard mysqlclient couldn't deal with.
i cite perl because it's DBI is the best database abstraction and it is what i have used....but the rationale can be extended to other tools. python's repl or any other would provide the same benefit.
You could use Mono for Linux and write your program in C# .NET, then make it work for Linux, since Mono allows so.
As far as graphic command line interfaces go, one of the best frameworks is ncurses. It abstracts away most of the ugliness associated with graphic command line applications.
I have to say, use Python, because I like it.
But text-based interfaces are pretty much not worth it, because they seem like a good idea until you look at the details:
There isn't really a standard keyboard navigation model for text-UIs; they all use their own scheme
How is unicode supported? (Hint: this is nontrivial)
What about different keyboard layouts? What key does someone press if their keyboard doesn't have, say, a "home", "end", or "Escape" ?
ncurses does not provide a widget set, only low-level operations. The answers to the above questions aren't easy.
It really shows that nobody has put much thought into keyboard-and-text-driven terminal-based UIs recently, or these would all have been solved.
Web interfaces have them solved, in fact, you can use a text-mode web browser if you like.
Modern devices like i(phone|pad)s and even cheap mobile phones have a web browser which is good enough.
It is easy to write a web application which uses a very simple style (few images, little Javascrfipt) and have it work without much effort on a variety of devices.
So I would say go with dmckee's comment "go with what you know".
By building your own terminal-based interface, you are going to box yourself into a corner in the long term.
I'm interested in creating a visual programming language which can aid non-programmers(like children) to write simple programs, much like Labview or Simulink allows engineers to connect functional blocks together without the knowledge of how they are internally built. Is this called programming by demonstration? What are example applications?
What would be an ideal platform which can allow me to do this(it can be a desktop or a web app)
Check out Google Blockly. Blockly allows a developer to create their own blocks, translations (generators) to virtually any programming language (or even JSON/XML) and includes a graphical interface to allow end users to create their own programs.
Brief summary:
Blockly was influenced by App Inventor, which itself was based off Scratch
App Inventor now uses Blockly (?!)
So does the BBC microbit
Blockly itself runs in a browser (typically) using javascript
Focused on (visual) language developers
language independent blocks and generators
includes a Block Factory - which allows visual programming to create new Blocks (?!) - I didn't find this useful myself...except for understanding
includes generators to map blocks to javascript/python
e.g. These blocks:
Generated this code:
See https://developers.google.com/blockly/about/showcase for more details
Best wishes - Andy
The adventure on which you are about to embark is the design and implementation of a visual programming language. I don't know of any good textbooks in this area, but there are an IEEE conference and refereed journal devoted to this field. Margaret Burnett of Oregon State University, who is a highly regarded authority, has assembled a bibliography on visual programming languages; I suggest you start there.
You might consider writing to Professor Burnett for advice. If you do, I hope you will report the results back here.
There is Scratch written by MIT which is much like what you are looking for.
http://scratch.mit.edu/
A restricted form of programming is dataflow (aka. flow-based) programming, where the application is built from components by connecting their ports. Depending on the platform and purpose, the components are simple (like a path selector) or complex (like an image transformator). There are several dataflow systems (just I've made two), some of them has no visual editor, some of them are just a part of a bigger system, and there're some which don't even mention the approach. (Did you think, that make, MS-Excel and Unix Shell pipes are some kind of this?)
All modern digital synths based on dataflow approach, there's an amazing visual example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc
AFAIK, there's no dataflow system for definitly educational purposes. For more information, you should check this site: http://flowbased.org/start
There is a new open source library out there: TUM.CMS.VPLControl. Get it here. This library may serve as a basis for your purposes.
There is Snap written by UC Berkeley. It is another option to understand VPL.
Pay attention on CoSpaces Edu. It is an online platform that enables the creation of virtual worlds and learning experiences whilst providing a more flexible approach to the learning curriculum.
There is visual coding named "CoBlocks".
Learners can animate and code their creations with "CoBlocks" before exploring and sharing them in mobile VR.
Also It is possible to use JavaScript or TypeScript.
If you want to go ahead with this, the platform that I suggest is the one used to implement Scratch (which already does what you want, IMHO), which is Squeak Smalltalk. The Squeak environment was designed with visual programming explicitly in mind. It's free, and Smalltalk syntax can learned in half an hour. Learning the gigantic class library may take just a little longer.
The blocks editor which was most support and development for microbit is microsoft makecode
Scratch is a horrible language to teach programming (i'm biased, but check out Pipes Visual Programming Language)
What you seem to want to do sounds a lot like Functional Block programming (as in functional block programming language IEC 61499 and other VPLs for mechatronics development). There is already a lot of research into VPLs so you might want to make sure that A) what your are trying to do has an audience and B) what you are trying to do can be done easily.
It sounds a bit negative in tone, but a good place to start to test the plausibility of your idea is by reading Davor Babic's short blog post at http://blog.davor.se/blog/2012/09/09/Visual-programming/
As far as what platform to use - you could use pretty much anything, just make sure it has good graphic libraries (You could use Java with Swing - if you like pain - or Python with TKinter) just depends what you are familiar with. Just keep in mind who you want to eventually launch the language to (if its iOS, then look at using Objective-C, etc.)
everybody out there!
I'm currently seeking for a technical solution to create a nice literate programming environment. Unfortunately, most editors are too much hard coded, and their functionalities just cover most famous needs, and can't cleanly cover special needs.
I came to Emacs (later after some others), but I also came to numerous troubles with Emacs (I will not talk about these, this is not the topic).
However, there is one thing I like with Emacs and which was indeed matching what I was looking for: it exposes a full text model to a scriptable environment, and the overall UI is designed so it is well suited to either graphical UIs or text UIs (because it is mostly text based). And last but not least, this is scriptable with a kind of LISP, and LISP indeed seems a good choice to me, in the area of text manipulation and interpretation.
I've searched the web for a text editor which would expose a full text model to a scriptable environment, but I have not found anything. I guess this is not an everyday request on the web, so it is probably better to ask some humans about it, better than to ask a robot.
I was, but in short, I'm looking for: an editor which exposes a full text model [*], and which exposes this model to a script engine (preferably LISP, but I would enjoy Python as well, or any others after all).
[*] Talking about text model, I mean: text attributes (optionally font face), text visibility, text read-write property, and text content iteration, at a level as low as the character basis.
Have a nice day! :)
--
Yannick Duchêne
JEdit seems to be very scriptable with Java, BeanShell, Jython and other languages targeting the JVM. Most of its functionality is implemented with OSGI plugins. If you really like LISP, maybe you could even try with Clojure! :-)
Emacs, Climacs, Portable Hemlock (and to some extent Hemlock).
I am sure there are other editors around that exposes a full text model to a script engine that are NOT in "the emacs family", but I don't know them.
Oh, yes, there's the VMS editor framework, but I cannot recall its name.
What Vatine said, plus there's a very minimal Scheme editor built into Fluxus, which I extended with Emacs key-bindings (in my personal copy), so I know it would work as something close to a stubbed implementation (if you rip out all the OpenGL stuff).
Edit:
Looks like I was working with fluxus-0.8, which doesn't even seem to be on the site anymore. If you end up needing to go that low-level to start, let me know and I'll send it over.
Not sure if this is useful, but there is a long list of Emacs-like editors: http://www.finseth.com/emacs.html
Btw., Craig A. Finseth also wrote a book on implementing an Emacs-like editor: http://www.finseth.com/craft/
The Book as PDF.
Report of an (unsuccessfully) ending quest :
Although a possible technical choice I could figure will not work for me (see later), I still point it here, if this can ever be useful to someone running UNIX-Like (I'm running Windows).
Context and state of the “ art ” : near to all (or all) so called Emacsen and Emacs clone, has nothing to compare with Emacs. They just mimics terms like major mode an minor mode, mimics key-bindings, and most of time also, the UI look and feel. But the core is not there. I've learned these are called “ Emacs Ersatz ”.
Disclaimer : for some reasons, I have not tested Climax and Hemlock, so the latter comment does not apply to these.
EFuns : the last one I came to, was EFuns, but unfortunately, I could not compile it on Windows (I suspect something is wrong with the sources, some directory are missing in the archive). Interested parties may get it here : EFuns, an Emacs-like scripted in OCaml. Fortunately for UNIX-Like users, binaries are provided (not for Windows).
Implementations List : to complete the list Rainer Joswig pointed to, here is another one, shorter, but more up-to-date : [ Sorry I can't post this link, it seems I'm not allowed to post more than one link - I'm sorry for interested parties (sad) ]
I have written a little script which retrieves pictures and movies from my camera and renames them based on their date and then copies them on my harddrive, managing conflicts automatically (same name? same size? same md5?)
Works pretty well.
But this is ONE script.
From time to time I need to check if a picture is already hidden somewhere in a volume, so I'd like to apply the "conflict manager" only. I guess if I had properly followed the unix spirit of tiny single-task tools, I could do that.
What are the best resources, best practices and your experience on the subject?
Thank you.
Edit : Although I'd love to read unix books and have a deep understanding of the subject, I am looking for the Great Principles first. Plus I tend to limit myself to online resources.
I would look at the book called The Art of Unix Programming.
I've found that most code doesn't start out being reusable, it evolves to be. Take your existing code and factor out the "conflict manager" portion into its own function or program, then call that program instead of having it be a part of your original application. After that you'll be able to reuse that part of your code that you have a need to reuse. Sometimes it's impossible to design software up front for reusability because you simply don't know which parts you'll want to reuse.
As for resources, it seems like the store shelves are packed with books for Linux desktop users and system administrators, but it's hard to find good Linux programming books. A few good ones:
Beginning Linux Programming
Professional Linux Programming
Linux Programming by Example: The Fundamentals
The Linux Programmer's Toolbox
Lastly, Eric Raymond has made The Art of Unix Programming available online for free.
Check out this book:
The Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond
http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/0131429019
Here is his website:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/
Personally, whenever I see that the script I'm planning to write will be longer than a dozen lines, I use python instead of shell script. One neat trick with python scripting is that it's very easy to program in a style where you create both "unix spirit" command-line tools and libraries. E.g. for your "conflict manager", create a file (python module) and put the functionality in functions and/or classes, and then at the end you can put a python "main" function (the usual if __name__=='__main__': dance) where you parse command line options (use the builtin OptionParser module for this, it's very nice!) and use the functionality in the functions/classes.
This way you can use the utility both as a stand-alone command line program, or you can import the module in another python script and use the functionality defined there via functions/classes rather than parsing input.
Start with wikipedia (Dataflow programming)
The book Software Tools (amazon) by Kernighan and Plauger is a classic on this subject. I think it should be required reading for any serious student of software development.
- the art of UNIX programming - is quite a nice book ok "the unix way", in so far as one exists. OTOH if the way is "do as little work as gets your job done", you may already be there. :)
I think some of the keys for good gnu code, are:
Handling the system signals properly, like deattaching hard drive files if SIGTERM is received.
Proper use of pipes and standard input/output
Follwing common command line flag rules
I would also recommend this book. Pretty old, but I think is quite clear explaining the principles of unix.