March 2005 - Arch-projects - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-projects] projects
by Dusty Phillips 31 Mar '05

31 Mar '05

Hey, What's everybody working on these days? ;-) I officially deleted the AL forums from my bookmarks today, its starting to annoy me. I don't really have better things to do with my time, but I'd rather do nothing than get involved with some of that. My personal project is, of course Ensmer. I've made a few changes, not ready for another devel release. Development has slowed down since I don't have a school timeline anymore. I'm also working more on things that seem important than things that seem like they're worth marks. ;-) I'm thinking of voice recognition... don't know how to actually implement it. I'm looking at sphinx-4: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/sphinx4/ Any ideas on that? I thought it might be neat to add voice commands as alternative form of input. Hard to implement in a modular fashion though. And then there's internationalization... Dusty

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[arch-projects] WM standards
by Aaron Griffin 31 Mar '05

31 Mar '05

Can anyone here explain all the different WM standards briefly? ICCCM NETWM EWMH (? ehwm? *shrug*) any others? I'm not sure what each one is for, and the docs for all of them are long - so I was trying to get a nice summary of each before I delved into them...

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[arch-projects] Forum to mailing list
by Rasatmakananda 22 Mar '05

22 Mar '05

Hi, This is related to Dusty's suggestion on user-contributions.org forum to explore a forum to mailing list system where both forum discussions, which does an excellent job keeping discussions well organised, and mailing list allowing an ease of usage and speed. http://user-contributions.org/forums/userproject/viewtopic.php?t=97 I have installed M2F (Mail2Forum) in usercb forum and works fine. http://user-contributions.org/forums/userproject/viewtopic.php?t=98 If arch-projects mailing list wants to install this system, I am ready to help. If you want use usercb forum is also fine with me. I don't know what you all would think having user-contributions.org joined to this list. http://user-contributions.org/index.html Markku (rasat)

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[arch-projects] XML holocaust
by Dusty Phillips 22 Mar '05

22 Mar '05

Was wondering if anybody here actually *likes* XML. You'll probably be shocked to find out I can't stand the language, since Java programmers seem to be inextricably married to the language. In fact, the link to XML, and not Java itself is what often makes me feel embarrassed to be a Java programmer! Enter Groovy. Between GPath/XmlSlurp (http://groovy.codehaus.org/GPath) and GroovyMarkup(http://groovy.codehaus.org/GroovyMarkup), I'm finding that its practically painless to interface to XML coming and going. While working on the weather applet yesterday, I found that I could read the weather.com XML file using dot syntax _without having to parse it_. I've also experimented with GroovyMarkup and the XML builder. Again, you can use dot syntax and basic Groovy/Java code to create an XML file, and can also use typical programming language constructs (loops, conditionals) to simplify the task. Ok, you can probably do similar stuff with Python, Ruby, or any other scripting langugae. If you can't somebody should write a module that does it. ;-) Being able to ignore/abstract XML is great, but I started thinking it should be possible in some cases to completely discard it. My first example is ant. Those who don't code Java probably still use make (with the antiquated Makefile syntax), or that neat Python distribution tool, or something similar. or dissimilar. In my case, I've been taught to use ant. I hate the XML build files. Groovy allows me to script ant, but I figure I should be able to ignore the ant dependency and write a build toolkit in Java and Groovy. Haven't thought about it much, but I'm thinking each target could be a Groovy closure. The build file is a groovy script that extends a Java (or Groovy) class and manages a bunch of closures/targets in some way. That will probably be my next project. :-D Another item is TestNG. This was a framework that I chose to never use because of the XML scripts, its supposed to be the 'next generation' to JUnit tests. (http://www.beust.com/testng/) I have issues with JUnit though. I'm thinking I can do the same thing and overcome TestNG's "limitation" (XML) by writing test framework in groovy. Happily, this has already been done (http://groovy.codehaus.org/Unit+Testing) But I like TestNG's annotation-based configuration, so maybe someday I'll expand the Groovy Unit Testing to include that. It could happen. I'm also thinking of ways to code XHTML in GroovyMarkup so I never have to look at another angle bracket ever again! Thoughts? Anybody want to defend XML? Dusty

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[arch-projects] Two small projects
by Dusty Phillips 22 Mar '05

22 Mar '05

Ok, I had my break from coding last night. After having spent some eight months on the same project, I'm looking at some really small ones to scratch little itches i've developed. To be honest, I doubt anybody else would be interested, but I wanted to present the ideas. If people are interested, it means I'll put more work into it, and may affect my choice of languages. ;-) First, I've been looking for a CLI weather station. This started when I used XFCE4 for a while and it had the neat little weather applet. Now I'm using WMI. I wrote a simple script that uses PyMETAR (http://www.schwarzvogel.de/software-pymetar.shtml) to download weather, and I run this with WMI remote in my status bar. The problem with this solution is that METAR data doesn't seem to be quite as reliable as weather.com data, at least, not in my area. To that end, I found "CurseTheWeather" (http://opensource.hld.ca/trac.cgi/wiki/CurseTheWeather) an ncurses based weather app that includes a weather.com module I can use for the same script. There's another problem with this solution though, and that is that it doesn't allow me to easily get the forecast. What I want is an app that allows me to get the current weather conditions on the command line, using a formatting string very much like the format of the date command (man date). However, I ALSO want it to provide me with CLI AND GUI options to view a five day forecast. I haven't found any programs that do this. The GUI version is more important to me; I want to have current conditions on my WMI status bar, and have the forecast available in a window at the press of a key. So I'm planning on writing a script that does all this. If anybody was interested, I'd go the full mile and implement everything I just described. If nobody is interested, I'll probably skip the 'formatted like date' command and do the formatting inside the script and stuff like that. Depending on whether or not anybody is interested, I will either do this in Python, using the weather.com module from CurseTheWeather, or will do it in Groovy, writing my own Weather.com data parsing unit from scratch. I lose either way, really. I hate doing GUI work in Python. But I also hate working with XML, and weather.com data is in XML; CurseTheWeather has already taken care of messing with the XML. But I'll probably use Groovy for that unless other people are interested -- if they are, I'm sure most people would be more likely to use a Python app than Groovy one. My second mini-project is probably about a half hour's work, so lets call it a subcompact mini-project. I've noticed all good text editors allow you to access the console, either directly, or via a plugin that simulates a console within the editor. I think this is kind of dumb, I'd rather use a terminal on the side and not have it run by the editor. Keeps things neater and smaller. The only thing is, I love being able to change to the current buffer's directory. For example, in JEdit, if you use the console plugin, you can type cd ${d} to change to the open buffer's directory. If I use an xterm on the side, I can't do this. That's what I aim to fix. Here's how I propose to do it: I'll write a JEdit plugin that writes the location of the current file out to $HOME/.currentbuffer or something like that. Then all I have to do is add something like B=$(cat $HOME/.currentbuffer) to my ~/.bashrc, and I can type cd $B any time I want to go to the directory of the current buffer. So the only hard part is writing a plugin for JEdit. By hard, I mean half hour's work. ;-) Again, NOBODY is interested in this because they don't use JEdit, but I thought it might be interesting to present the idea, since some people might theoretically want to use the same idea with their chosen editor, and it would make sense to settle on a filename (ie: $HOME/.currentbuffer). More importantly, somebody may know that such a mechanism already exists, and can tell me a better way to code it for JEdit. :-) Dusty

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[arch-projects] Why do we choose the programming languages that we do?
by Dusty Phillips 21 Mar '05

21 Mar '05

This is a weird-ass philosophical post. I'm sick and bored right now and my eyes hurt too much to look at the monitor, but I need something to do (*watches fingers typing...*). I was just wondering why programmers choose the languages they choose... and why there is so much zealotry in this area. I mean, naturally, some languages are better suited to certain applications than others. But over all, I think we tend to choose a language more for aesthetic value than how useful it is! And aesthetics all depend on the user. Take scripting languages. For some reason, I haven't been able to get the hang of Python. I think its a great language and I can code in it (who can't!?), but I don't find it really fun or enjoyable. On the other hand, I find coding in Groovy to be a great joy. Perl gives me the greatest of headaches, I can't stand scripting in it, I avoid it at all costs. I haven't tried Ruby, so I can't compare. There are numerous other scripting languages. They are all designed for more or less the same tasks (arguable, yes). You can code the same scripts in Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Lua, Groovy, etc with approximately equal results. Yet if asked to code a particular generic problem, each of us would choose a different language! I guess when it comes down to it, it all depends what you *like* to code in. Its a lot like music. When I was a kid, I played piano for a few years. I wasn't very good at it, and I didn't enjoy it all that much. Then one day I picked up a guitar and a teach yourself book... I enjoyed it. I guess some people are piano people and some people are guitar people and some people are clarinet people... This is the only explanation I can come up with, thoughts? Also, I'd really like to have an explanation for the language nazism that goes on all the time. I can't understand that one at all. ;-) Dusty

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[arch-projects] GroovyWeather
by Dusty Phillips 20 Mar '05

20 Mar '05

I don't think I've ever enjoyed a scripting language so much. I know nobody'll use this but I thought I'd post it anyway... its kind of an interesting example of Groovy code, it uses XMLSlurp, SwingBuilder, and what little Groovy-specific syntax I know... http://www.buchuki.com/groovyweather.html Dusty

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[arch-projects] hyperbolic scarf anyone?
by Aaron Griffin 18 Mar '05

18 Mar '05

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4531695

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[arch-projects] c coding assiatance
by z4ziggy 17 Mar '05

17 Mar '05

any c coder out there willing to contribute some c coding to Archie project, here is what currently is needed, hope to find someone intrested : syslinux advanced menus are part of the syslinux tarball. they provide textual "dialog like" menus for building the boot cmdline without manually typing long cmdlines. problem is, they dont support long menus thus menus with more than screen height will get scrambled. only solutions are to cut menus into several sub menus, or - patch the menus system to allow scrolling and "height" limit to the menus. this is currently on my todo list, but unless someone will do this instead, it will remain there for the next month or so... so i would appreciate any assistance. tnx in advance, Elia Yehuda, aka z4ziggy

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[arch-projects] grab, drop and clone
by Dusty Phillips 17 Mar '05

17 Mar '05

Posting about pushd in that last post reminded me of some scripts I wrote a while back. I am certain there MUST be something like this available out there, probably built into bash, but I never found it, so I wrote these scripts. Let me know what I missed. ;-) Basically, they behave as 'cut and paste files' on the command line. I can cd into a directory, 'grab' a file or list of files, cd or pushd to another directory, and 'clone' (copy) or 'drop' (move) those files into that directory without having to type the full path to different directories in a mv or cp command. Here's the scripts: ################## grab #################### #!/bin/sh grabfile=~/.grab if [ $# -le 0 ]; then echo "Usage: grab filename (filename...)" echo echo "copies filenames to the grabboard to be moved/copied using drop/clone" exit 1 fi if [ -e $grabfile ]; then rm $grabfile fi while [ "$#" -ne "0" ]; do if [ -e $1 ]; then if [ $(echo $1 | grep -e "^\/") ]; then echo -n $1" " >> $grabfile else echo -n $(pwd)/$1" " >> $grabfile fi fi shift done ##################### clone ############## #!/bin/sh grabfile=~/.grab function usage() { echo "Usage: drop [mv|cp]" echo echo "copy/move file[s] specified in a grab statement to the current directory" exit 1 } if [ $# -eq 1 ]; then if [ $1 = "cp" -o $1="mv" ]; then command=$1 else usage fi elif [ $# -eq 0 ]; then command=cp else usage fi if [ $command = cp ]; then command="cp -r" fi if [ -e $grabfile ]; then eval $command $(cat $grabfile) . else echo "no files to drop" exit 1 fi ##################### drop ################## #!/bin/sh clone mv Somebody please tell me I'm not the first to think of this and that I overlooked some simple bash built-in or pacman package... Its so simple... but sometimes very useful. NOTE: I have had trouble with some of these with files that have names beginning with a dash or number. Dusty

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