Search Results

Search found 7740 results on 310 pages for 'split sound'.

Page 231/310 | < Previous Page | 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238  | Next Page >

• The importance of Unit Testing in BI

  - by Davide Mauri

  One of the main steps in the process we internally use to develop a BI solution is the implementation of Unit Test of you BI Data. As you may already know, I’ve create a simple (for now) tool that leverages NUnit to allow us to quickly create Unit Testing without having to resort to use Visual Studio Database Professional: http://queryunit.codeplex.com/ Once you have a tool like this one, you can start also to make sure that your BI solution (DWH and CUBE) is not only structurally sound (I mean, the cube or the report gets processed correctly), but you can also check that the logical integrity of your business rules is enforced. For example let’s say that the customer tell you that they will never create an invoice for a specific product-line in 2010 since that product-line is dismissed and will never be sold again. Ok we know that this in theory is true, but a lot of this business rule effectiveness depends on the fact the people does not do a mistake while inserting new orders/invoices and the ERP used implements a check for this business logic. Unfortunately these last two hypotesis are not always true, so you may find yourself really having some invoices for a product line that doesn’t exists anymore. Maybe this kind of situation in future will be solved using Master Data Management but, meanwhile, how you can give and idea of the data quality to your customers? How can you check that logical integrity of the analytical data you produce is exactly what you expect? Well, Unit Testing of a DWH or a CUBE can be a solution. Once you have defined your test suite, by writing SQL and MDX queries that checks that your data is what you expect to be, if you use NUnit (and QueryUnit does), you can then use a tool like NUnit2Report to create a nice HTML report that can be shipped via email to give information of data quality: In addition to that, since NUnit produces an XML file as a result, you can also import it into a SQL Server Database and then monitor the quality of data over time. I’ll be speaking about this approach (and more in general about how to “engineer” a BI solution) at the next European SQL PASS Adaptive BI Best Practices http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/eu2010/Agenda/ProgramSessions/AdaptiveBIBestPratices.aspx I’ll enjoy discussing with you all about this, so see you there! And remember: “if ain't tested it's broken!” (Sorry I don’t remember how said that in first place :-)) Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• xsltproc killed, out of memory

  - by David Parks

  I'm trying to split up a 13GB xml file into small ~50MB xml files with this XSLT style sheet. But this process kills xsltproc after I see it taking up over 1.7GB of memory (that's the total on the system). Is there any way to deal with huge XML files with xsltproc? Can I change my style sheet? Or should I use a different processor? Or am I just S.O.L.? <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0" xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common" extension-element-prefixes="exsl" xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions"> <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/> <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> <xsl:param name="block-size" select="75000"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="mysqldump/database/table_data/row[position() mod $block-size = 1]" /> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="row"> <exsl:document href="chunk-{position()}.xml"> <add> <xsl:for-each select=". | following-sibling::row[position() &lt; $block-size]" > <doc> <xsl:for-each select="field"> <field> <xsl:attribute name="name"><xsl:value-of select="./@name"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </field> <xsl:text>&#xa;</xsl:text> </xsl:for-each> </doc> </xsl:for-each> </add> </exsl:document> </xsl:template>

  Read the article

• Action delegate in C#

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  In last few posts about I have written lots of things about delegates and this post is also part of that series. In this post we are going to learn about Action delegates in C#.  Following is a list of post related to delegates. Delegates in C#. Multicast Delegates in C#. Func Delegates in C#. Action Delegates in c#: As per MSDN action delegates used to pass a method as parameter without explicitly declaring custom delegates. Action Delegates are used to encapsulate method that does not have return value. C# 4.0 Action delegates have following different variants like following. It can take up to 16 parameters. Action – It will be no parameter and does not return any value. Action(T) Action(T1,T2) Action(T1,T2,T3) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14,T15) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14,T15,T16) So for this Action delegate you can have up to 16 parameters for Action.  Sound interesting!!… Enough theory now. It’s time to implement real code. Following is a code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace DelegateExample { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Action<String> Print = p => Console.WriteLine(p); Action<String,String> PrintAnother = (p1,p2)=> Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} {1}",p1,p2)); Print("Hello"); PrintAnother("Hello","World"); } } } In the above code you can see that I have created two Action delegate Print and PrintAnother. Print have one string parameter and its printing that. While PrintAnother have two string parameter and printing both the strings via Console.Writeline. Now it’s time to run example and following is the output as expected. That’s it. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more updates!!

  Read the article

• To Serve Man?

  - by Dave Convery

  Since the announcement of Windows 8 and its 'Metro' interface, the .NET community has wondered if the skills they've spent so long developing might be swept aside,in favour of HTML5 and JavaScript. Mercifully, that only seems to be true of SilverLight (as Simon Cooper points out), but it did leave me thinking how easy it is to impose a technology upon people without directly serving their needs. Case in point: QR codes. Once, probably, benign in purpose, they seem to have become a marketer's tool for determining when someone has engaged with an advert in the real world, with the same certainty as is possible online. Nobody really wants to use QR codes - it's far too much hassle. But advertisers want that data - they want to know that someone actually read their billboard / poster / cereal box, and so this flawed technology is suddenly everywhere, providing little to no value to the people who are actually meant to use it. What about 3D cinema? Profits from the film industry have been steadily increasing throughout the period that digital piracy and mass sharing has been possible, yet the industry cinema chains have forced 3D films upon a broadly uninterested audience, as a way of providing more purpose to going to a cinema, rather than watching it at home. Despite advances in digital projection, 3D cinema is scarcely more immersive to us than were William Castle's hoary old tricks of skeletons on wires and buzzing chairs were to our grandparents. iTunes - originally just a piece of software that catalogued and ripped music for you, but which is now multi-purpose bloatware; a massive, system-hogging behemoth. If it was being built for the people that used it, it would have been split into three or more separate pieces of software long ago. But as bloatware, it serves Apple primarily rather than us, stuffed with Music, Video, Various stores and phone / iPad management all bolted into one. Why? It's because, that way, you're more likely to bump into something you want to buy. You can't even buy a new laptop without finding that a significant chunk of your hard drive has been sold to 'select partners' - advertisers, suppliers of virus-busting software, and endless bloatware-flogging pop-ups that make using a new laptop without reformatting the hard drive like stepping back in time. The product you want is not the one you paid for. This is without even looking at services like Facebook and Klout, who provide a notional service with the intention of slurping up as much data about you as possible (in Klout's case, whether you create an account with them or not). What technologies do you find annoying or intrusive, and who benefits from keeping them around?

  Read the article

• Handy SQL Server Function Series: Part 1

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  I've been preparing to give a presentation on SQL Server for a while now, and a topic that was recommended was SQL Server functions.  More specifically, the lesser-known functions (like @@OPTIONS), and maybe some interesting ways to use well-known functions (like using PARSENAME to split IP addresses)  I think this is a veritable goldmine of useful information, and researching for the presentation has confirmed that beyond my initial expectations.I even found a few undocumented/underdocumented functions, so for the first official article in this series I thought I'd start with 2 of each, COLLATIONPROPERTY() and COLLATIONPROPERTYFROMID().COLLATIONPROPERTY() provides information about (wait for it) collations, SQL Server's method for handling foreign character sets, sort orders, and case- or accent-sensitivity when sorting character data.  The Books Online entry for  COLLATIONPROPERTY() lists 4 options for code page, locale ID, comparison style and version.  Used in conjunction with fn_helpcollations():SELECT *, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'LCID') LCID, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'CodePage') CodePage, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'ComparisonStyle') ComparisonStyle, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'Version') Version FROM fn_helpcollations()You can get some excellent information. (c'mon, be honest, did you even know about fn_helpcollations?)Collations in SQL Server have a unique name and ID, and you'll see one or both in various system tables or views like syscolumns, sys.columns, and INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS.  Unfortunately they only link the ID and name for collations of existing columns, so if you wanted to know the collation ID of Albanian_CI_AI_WS, you'd have to declare a column with that collation and query the system table.While poking around the OBJECT_DEFINITION() of sys.columns I found a reference to COLLATIONPROPERTYFROMID(), and the unknown property "Name".  Not surprisingly, this is how sys.columns finds the name of the collation, based on the ID stored in the system tables.  (Check yourself if you don't believe me)Somewhat surprisingly, the "Name" property also works for COLLATIONPROPERTY(), although you'd already know the name at that point.  Some wild guesses and tests revealed that "CollationID" is also a valid property for both functions, so now:SELECT *, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'LCID') LCID, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'CodePage') CodePage, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'ComparisonStyle') ComparisonStyle, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'Version') Version, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'CollationID') CollationID FROM fn_helpcollations() Will get you the collation ID-name link you…probably didn't know or care about, but if you ever get on Jeopardy! and this question comes up, feel free to send some of your winnings my way. :)And last but not least, COLLATIONPROPERTYFROMID() uses the same properties as COLLATIONPROPERTY(), so you can use either one depending on which value you have available.Keep an eye out for Part 2!

  Read the article

• URL routing similar to Facebook (related to AJAX and the URL)

  - by Guilherme Cardoso

  In this article i'm gonna show you how i do when i have to update some content with AJAX and i have to change the URL. First, let's see an example to understand it better. If the user is reading a News with Id 1 and he clicked on another News with Id 2, if we update the content with AJAX the user is now reading the News Id 2 but the URL remains the same, for example: http://localhost/News/Read/1 Now let's see another example from Facebook. If i'm reading my profile and i click on Photos, Facebook updates it with AJAX and the URL switch to: http://www.facebook.com/guilhermegeek#!/guilhermegeek?sk=photos If we enter on that URL, it's mapped to: http://www.facebook.com/guilhermegeek?sk=photos The trick here is the parameters that we use after the #!. Those parameters are never sent to the server side, so we handle them on the client side (javascript).In the example of Facebook, he receives my profile name (guilhermegeek) and the action is to read photos. A few time ago i've written an article in my Portuguese blog explaining how to use an alternative to clients with javascript disabled. Like this: <a onclick="javascript:ReadNews(id);" href="#!News/Read/@id/">Title</a> When the user enter the link of that news, my function Read(); fills the News in the page. Then, i add the #!News/Read/@id/ to my URL. It's gonna stay something like this: http://localhost/News/Read/1#!News/Read/2 As i explained before, the News that the user is reading has the Id 2.The next step is to use javascript to check if the URL that the user typed has other News Id, because if we enter on the above URL our controller will get the Id 1 (everything after to the # isn't sent to the server side). $(document).ready(function () {             var h = window.location.hash;             if (h != null) {                 var parts = window.location.href.split('#!');                 if (parts.length > 1) {                     window.location.replace("http://localhost/" + parts[1]);                 }             }    }); It's pretty simple. I'm cutting everything after the #!, then i redirect the user to a new page. So, it's gonna stay:http://localhost/News/Read/2

  Read the article

• Java - 2d Array Tile Map Collision

  - by Corey

  How would I go about making certain tiles in my array collide with my player? Like say I want every number 2 in the array to collide. I am reading my array from a txt file if that matters and I am using the slick2d library. Here is my code if needed. public class Tiles { Image[] tiles = new Image[3]; int[][] map = new int[500][500]; Image grass, dirt, mound; SpriteSheet tileSheet; int tileWidth = 32; int tileHeight = 32; public void init() throws IOException, SlickException { tileSheet = new SpriteSheet("assets/tiles.png", tileWidth, tileHeight); grass = tileSheet.getSprite(0, 0); dirt = tileSheet.getSprite(7, 7); mound = tileSheet.getSprite(2, 6); tiles[0] = grass; tiles[1] = dirt; tiles[2] = mound; int x=0, y=0; BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("assets/map.txt")); String line; while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) { String[] values = line.split(","); for (String str : values) { int str_int = Integer.parseInt(str); map[x][y]=str_int; //System.out.print(map[x][y] + " "); y=y+1; } //System.out.println(""); x=x+1; y = 0; } in.close(); } public void update() { } public void render(GameContainer gc) { for(int x = 0; x < 50; x++) { for(int y = 0; y < 50; y ++) { int textureIndex = map[y][x]; Image texture = tiles[textureIndex]; texture.draw(x*tileWidth,y*tileHeight); } } } } I tried something like this, but I it doesn't ever "collide". X and y are my player position. if (tiles.map[(int)x/32][(int)y/32] == 2) { System.out.println("Collided"); }

  Read the article

• Separating a "wad of stuff" utility project into individual components with "optional" dependencies

  - by romkyns

  Over the years of using C#/.NET for a bunch of in-house projects, we've had one library grow organically into one huge wad of stuff. It's called "Util", and I'm sure many of you have seen one of these beasts in your careers. Many parts of this library are very much standalone, and could be split up into separate projects (which we'd like to open-source). But there is one major problem that needs to be solved before these can be released as separate libraries. Basically, there are lots and lots of cases of what I might call "optional dependencies" between these libraries. To explain this better, consider some of the modules that are good candidates to become stand-alone libraries. CommandLineParser is for parsing command lines. XmlClassify is for serializing classes to XML. PostBuildCheck performs checks on the compiled assembly and reports a compilation error if they fail. ConsoleColoredString is a library for colored string literals. Lingo is for translating user interfaces. Each of those libraries can be used completely stand-alone, but if they are used together then there are useful extra features to be had. For example, both CommandLineParser and XmlClassify expose post-build checking functionality, which requires PostBuildCheck. Similarly, the CommandLineParser allows option documentation to be provided using the colored string literals, requiring ConsoleColoredString, and it supports translatable documentation via Lingo. So the key distinction is that these are optional features. One can use a command line parser with plain, uncolored strings, without translating the documentation or performing any post-build checks. Or one could make the documentation translatable but still uncolored. Or both colored and translatable. Etc. Looking through this "Util" library, I see that almost all potentially separable libraries have such optional features that tie them to other libraries. If I were to actually require those libraries as dependencies then this wad of stuff isn't really untangled at all: you'd still basically require all the libraries if you want to use just one. Are there any established approaches to managing such optional dependencies in .NET?

  Read the article

• Should CSS be listed on your resume under Languages?

  - by Sandeepan Nath

  I have some doubts like Whether CSS should be put under Languages or not? Although Wikipedia says Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language ... But do they write CSS under the languages section of the resume, along with PHP, etc? Similarly what about HTML? I have some doubt and I don't want to sound like someone who is not aware of the trends. Just to give an example, currently I have the following languages,frameworks, technologies, etc. listed under the "Technical Expertise" section of my resume - Technical Expertise * Languages - Proficient - PHP 5, Javascript, HTML ?*,CSS ?*,Sass ?*. Beginner - Linux Bash. * Databases - MySQL 5. * Technologies - AJAX. * Frameworks/Libraries - Symfony, jQuery. * CMSes - Wordpress. Although my domain is Web-development/design, I welcome domain-agnostic answers which can provide some generic ideas/reasoning. I have seen, a lot of people messing up these sections (even more serious than my doubts :) ), putting things under wrong sub-headings and thus putting a big question mark on their understanding of those things. I don't know much about XML, Comet Technology etc. Considering those are included too, What things should be put under Languages? E.g. Should CSS be put under Languages? Please give some reasoning to support your views. Where should the others (XML, Comet, cURL etc. ) be put? I welcome some examples of how you put it. Or do you have an additional Keywords section where you write all the unsortables ? Considering a set of standards like W3C standards, etc. do you have a standards sub-heading? I guess I have put the contents of other sections Okay. But do let me know about your ideas and reasoning. After all, I understand there may not be a single answer to this, but let's see what is the trend. Thanks Updates Further, do you mention design patters you have used? Web Services etc.? Where do you mention SOAP, XML etc...

  Read the article

• What are the software design essentials? [closed]

  - by Craig Schwarze

  I've decided to create a 1 page "cheat sheet" of essential software design principles for my programmers. It doesn't explain the principles in any great depth, but is simply there as a reference and a reminder. Here's what I've come up with - I would welcome your comments. What have I left out? What have I explained poorly? What is there that shouldn't be? Basic Design Principles The Principle of Least Surprise – your solution should be obvious, predictable and consistent. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) - the simplest solution is usually the best one. You Ain’t Gonna Need It (YAGNI) - create a solution for the current problem rather than what might happen in the future. Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) - rigorously remove duplication from your design and code. Advanced Design Principles Program to an interface, not an implementation – Don’t declare variables to be of a particular concrete class. Rather, declare them to an interface, and instantiate them using a creational pattern. Favour composition over inheritance – Don’t overuse inheritance. In most cases, rich behaviour is best added by instantiating objects, rather than inheriting from classes. Strive for loosely coupled designs – Minimise the interdependencies between objects. They should be able to interact with minimal knowledge of each other via small, tightly defined interfaces. Principle of Least Knowledge – Also called the “Law of Demeter”, and is colloquially summarised as “Only talk to your friends”. Specifically, a method in an object should only invoke methods on the object itself, objects passed as a parameter to the method, any object the method creates, any components of the object. SOLID Design Principles Single Responsibility Principle – Each class should have one well defined purpose, and only one reason to change. This reduces the fragility of your code, and makes it much more maintainable. Open/Close Principle – A class should be open to extension, but closed to modification. In practice, this means extracting the code that is most likely to change to another class, and then injecting it as required via an appropriate pattern. Liskov Substitution Principle – Subtypes must be substitutable for their base types. Essentially, get your inheritance right. In the classic example, type square should not inherit from type rectangle, as they have different properties (you can independently set the sides of a rectangle). Instead, both should inherit from type shape. Interface Segregation Principle – Clients should not be forced to depend upon methods they do not use. Don’t have fat interfaces, rather split them up into smaller, behaviour centric interfaces. Dependency Inversion Principle – There are two parts to this principle: High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules. Both should depend on abstractions. Abstractions should not depend on details. Details should depend on abstractions. In modern development, this is often handled by an IoC (Inversion of Control) container.

  Read the article

• Is there a better term than "smoothness" or "granularity" to describe this language feature?

  - by Chris

  One of the best things about programming is the abundance of different languages. There are general purpose languages like C++ and Java, as well as little languages like XSLT and AWK. When comparing languages, people often use things like speed, power, expressiveness, and portability as the important distinguishing features. There is one characteristic of languages I consider to be important that, so far, I haven't heard [or been able to come up with] a good term for: how well a language scales from writing tiny programs to writing huge programs. Some languages make it easy and painless to write programs that only require a few lines of code, e.g. task automation. But those languages often don't have enough power to solve large problems, e.g. GUI programming. Conversely, languages that are powerful enough for big problems often require far too much overhead for small problems. This characteristic is important because problems that look small at first frequently grow in scope in unexpected ways. If a programmer chooses a language appropriate only for small tasks, scope changes can require rewriting code from scratch in a new language. And if the programmer chooses a language with lots of overhead and friction to solve a problem that stays small, it will be harder for other people to use and understand than necessary. Rewriting code that works fine is the single most wasteful thing a programmer can do with their time, but using a bazooka to kill a mosquito instead of a flyswatter isn't good either. Here are some of the ways this characteristic presents itself. Can be used interactively - there is some environment where programmers can enter commands one by one Requires no more than one file - neither project files nor makefiles are required for running in batch mode Can easily split code across multiple files - files can refeence each other, or there is some support for modules Has good support for data structures - supports structures like arrays, lists, and especially classes Supports a wide variety of features - features like networking, serialization, XML, and database connectivity are supported by standard libraries Here's my take on how C#, Python, and shell scripting measure up. Python scores highest. Feature C# Python shell scripting --------------- --------- --------- --------------- Interactive poor strong strong One file poor strong strong Multiple files strong strong moderate Data structures strong strong poor Features strong strong strong Is there a term that captures this idea? If not, what term should I use? Here are some candidates. Scalability - already used to decribe language performance, so it's not a good idea to overload it in the context of language syntax Granularity - expresses the idea of being good just for big tasks versus being good for big and small tasks, but doesn't express anything about data structures Smoothness - expresses the idea of low friction, but doesn't express anything about strength of data structures or features Note: Some of these properties are more correctly described as belonging to a compiler or IDE than the language itself. Please consider these tools collectively as the language environment. My question is about how easy or difficult languages are to use, which depends on the environment as well as the language.

  Read the article

• Code review recommendations and Code Smells

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  Some time ago Twitter told that I am similar to Boris Lipschitz . Indeed he is also .Net programmer from Russia living in Australia. I‘ve read his list of Code Review points and found them quite comprehensive. A few points  were not clear for me, and it forced me for a further reading.In particular the statement “Exception should not be used to return a status or an error code.” wasn’t fully clear for me, because sometimes we store an exception as an object with all error details and I believe it’s a valid approach. However I agree that throwing exceptions should be avoided, if you expect to return error as a part of a normal flow. Related link: http://codeutopia.net/blog/2010/03/11/should-a-failed-function-return-a-value-or-throw-an-exception/ Another point slightly puzzled me“If Thread.Sleep() is used, can it be replaced with something else, ei Timer, AutoResetEvent, etc” . I believe, that there are very rare cases, when anyone using Thread.Sleep in any production code. Usually it is used in mocks and prototypes.I had to look further to clarify “Dependency injection is used instead of Service Location pattern”.Even most of articles has some preferences to Dependency injection, there are also advantages to use Service Location. E.g see http://geekswithblogs.net/KyleBurns/archive/2012/04/27/dependency-injection-vs.-service-locator.aspx. http://www.cookcomputing.com/blog/archives/000587.html  refers to Concluding Thoughts of Martin Fowler The choice between Service Locator and Dependency Injection is less important than the principle of separating service configuration from the use of services within an applicationThe post had a link to excellent article Code Smells of Jeff Atwood, but the statement, that “code should not pass a review if it violates any of the  code smells” sound too strict for my environment. In particular, I disagree with “Dead Code” recommendation “Ruthlessly delete code that isn't being used. That's why we have source control systems!”. If there is a chance that not used code will be required in a future, it is convenient to keep it as commented or #if/#endif blocks with appropriate explanation, why it could be required in the future. TFS is a good source control system, but context search in source code of current solution is much easier than finding something in the previous versions of the code.I also found a link to a good book “Clean Code.A.Handbook.of.Agile.Software”

  Read the article

• Executable execution path. Does it depends of the place the executable is called from?

  - by Valkea

  as I'm still a new Linux user, I still discover some behaviours and I'm unable to tell if they are "normals" or not. I searched the Internet but as I can't really find an answer I guess it's time to ask here. Few weeks ago I installed a small game called "Machinarium" and I played it... but few days later when I wanted to continue my game I was unable to make the game start correctly. And as I didn't had the time to search I given up. But yesterday as I was working on a program of mine, I had the exactly same behaviour. So I searched a bit and I discovered that when using Nautilus with the "List view", I was able to run the program (ie: the program does find the sound, images etc resources) when I was literally "inside" the executable folder, but unable when I was in a parent folder and expanding it to the executable folder to run it. To illustrate the behaviour here are two screen shots. It doesn't works if the executable is double clicked from here It does works if the executable is double clicked from here This is indeed the same "place", but the Nautilus view is slightly different as the current folder is not the same and it seems to make a difference for the program. Furthermore, when I create a menu items via System Settings/Main Menu to the executable, it behaves just like if the executable can't find the resources (that's why I was unable to play Machinarium the second time as I created a menu short-cut after my first game). So I asked my program to generate a text file at it's root when running, and I started to launch it from different "parent" folders to see where is generated the text file. Each time the file was generated on the top folder of the current Nautilus view. I was expected to see it appears in the same folder of the executable (well not as I was guessing what as happening, but before that I would have expected to see it appears in the exe folder). Does anyone can explain me why it does works like this (I guess it's normal) ? How I'm supposed to solve this when creating programs (Should I detect the executable path in my C++ code or should I organize the resources files another way than on windows ?)

  Read the article

• What source code organization approach helps improve modularity and API/Implementation separation?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  Few languages are as restrictive as Java with file naming standards and project structure. In that language, the file name must match the public class declared in the file, and the file must live in a directory structure matching the class package. I have mixed feelings about that approach. While I never have to guess where a file lives, there's still a lot of empty directories and artificial constraints. There's several languages that define everything about a class in one file, at least by convention. C#, Python (I think), Ruby, Erlang, etc. The commonality in most these languages is that they are object oriented, although that statement can probably be rebuffed (there is one non-OO language in the list already). Finally, there's quite a few languages mostly in the C family that have a separate header and implementation file. For C I think this makes sense, because it is one of the few ways to separate the API interface from implementations. With C it seems that feature is used to promote modularity. Yet, with C++ the way header and implementation files are split seems rather forced. You don't get the same clean API separation that you do with C, and you are forced to include some private details in the header you would rather keep only in the implementation. There's quite a few languages that have a concept that overlaps with interfaces like Java, C#, Go, etc. Some languages use what feels like a hack to provide the same concept like C# using pure virtual abstract classes. Still others don't really have an interface concept and rely on "duck" typing--for example Ruby. Ruby has modules, but those are more along the lines of mixing in behaviors to a class than they are for defining how to interact with a class. In OO terms, interfaces are a powerful way to provide separation between an API client and an API implementation. So to hurry up and ask the question, from a personal experience point of view: Does separation of header and implementation help you write more modular code, or does it get in the way? (it helps to specify the language you are referring to) Does the strict file name to class name scheme of Java help maintainability, or is it unnecessary structure for structure's sake? What would you propose to promote good API/Implementation separation and project maintenance, how would you prefer to do it?

  Read the article

• What tools exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?

  - by Eric Smith

  I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in-house maintained applications: Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production; The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next; A situation where everyone seems to be in a "fire-fighting" mode a lot of the time; Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; ("operational" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the "usual suspects" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do uncomfortable things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures: Accounting; IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that that mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: Do any tools or methodologies (free or commercial) exist that would assist me in completing this assessment?

  Read the article

• Send raw data to USB parallel port after upgrading to 11.10

  - by zaphod

  I have a laser cutter connected via a generic USB to parallel adapter. The laser cutter speaks HPGL, as it happens, but since this is a laser cutter and not a plotter, I usually want to generate the HPGL myself, since I care about the ordering, speed, and direction of cuts and so on. In previous versions of Ubuntu, I was able to print to the cutter by copying an HPGL file directly to the corresponding USB "lp" device. For example: cp foo.plt /dev/usblp1 Well, I just upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric, and I can't find any "lp" devices in /dev anymore. D'oh! What's the preferred way to send raw data to a parallel port in Ubuntu? I've tried System Settings Printing + Add, hoping that I might be able to associate my device with some kind of "raw printer" driver and print to it with a command like lp -d LaserCutter foo.plt But my USB to parallel adapter doesn't seem to show up in the list. What I do see are my HP Color LaserJet, two USB-to-serial adapters, "Enter URI", and "Network Printer". Meanwhile, over in /dev, I do see /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 devices for the 2 USB-to-serial adapters. I don't see anything obvious corresponding to the HP printer (which was /dev/usblp0 prior to the upgrade), except for generic USB stuff. For example, sudo find /dev | grep lp produces no output. I do seem to be able to print to the HP printer just fine, though. The printer setup GUI gives it a device URI starting with "hp:" which isn't much help for the parallel adapter. The CUPS administrator's guide makes it sound like I might need to feed it a device URI of the form parallel:/dev/SOMETHING, but of course if I had a /dev/SOMETHING I'd probably just go on writing to it directly. Here's what dmesg says after I disconnect and reconnect the device from the USB port: [ 924.722906] usb 1-1.1.4: USB disconnect, device number 7 [ 959.993002] usb 1-1.1.4: new full speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd And here's how it shows up in lsusb -v: Bus 001 Device 008: ID 1a86:7584 QinHeng Electronics CH340S Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x1a86 QinHeng Electronics idProduct 0x7584 CH340S bcdDevice 2.52 iManufacturer 0 iProduct 2 USB2.0-Print iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 32 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0x80 (Bus Powered) MaxPower 96mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 2 bInterfaceClass 7 Printer bInterfaceSubClass 1 Printer bInterfaceProtocol 2 Bidirectional iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes bInterval 0 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered)

  Read the article

• Devoxx!!

  - by Yolande

  0 0 1 350 2000 Oracle Corporation 16 4 2346 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Announcing Devoxx London! Taking place on  March 26th and 27th, 2013 right before Devoxx  France on March 28th and 29th, this will be the first  edition of Devoxx UK!. The call for papers begins  on December 1st for Devoxx in London and Paris.  Speakers will be able to present at the two  conferences in the same week. Oracle committed  to fully sponsor the three Devoxx conferences in  2013 with a platinum sponsorship. Over 5,000 developers are expected to attend those conferences. Five dancing NAO robots welcomed attendees at the keynote. Stephan Janssen offers the JUGs to replicate Devoxx4kids workshops using his content and web infrastructure.  He recommended organizing kid events because “the workshops were really fun and such rewarding experience.” Stephan also announced the redesign of Parleys with Html 5 and GlassFish. Friendlier to speakers, they will be able to post their slides online before their talks and then sync the talk's sound track with the slides. Nandini Ramani, VP of product development explained in her keynote address the growing role of Java from enterprise application development to cloud computing to embedded machine-to-machines systems. “Java continues to drive the applications and devices that enrich our interactivity with the world around us” she said. The Java platform has expanded its reach with the OS X and Linux ARM support on Java SE and with two new releases, Java SE embedded and Java embedded Suite 7.0 middleware platform.  Coming up next year is JDK 8, which will include Project Lambda, Project Nashorn and more. As part of that release, JavaFX will offer 3D and third-party component integration. At Devoxx, the slick and interactive schedules were designed with JavaFX. The earliest version of the Java EE 7 SDK is available for download and has WebSocket support, improved JSON support and more.  Stephen Chin arrived on stage with his bike, ending his European NightHacking tour. Check the hacking sessions online here

  Read the article

• JUDCon 2013 Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  JUDCon (JBoss Users and Developers Conference) 2013 was held in historic Boston on June 9-11 at the Hynes Convention Center. JUDCon is the largest get together for the JBoss community, has gone global in recent years but has it's roots in Boston. The JBoss folks graciously accepted a Java EE 7 talk from me and actually referenced my talk in their own sessions. I am proud to say this is my third time speaking at JUDCon/the Red Hat Summit over the years (this was the first time on behalf of Oracle). I had great company with many of the rock stars of the JBoss ecosystem speaking such as Lincoln Baxter, Jay Balunas, Gavin King, Mark Proctor, Andrew Lee Rubinger, Emmanuel Bernard and Pete Muir. Notably missing from JUDCon were Bill Burke, Burr Sutter, Aslak Knutsen and Dan Allen. Topics included Java EE, Forge, Arquillian, AeroGear, OpenShift, WildFly, Errai/GWT, NoSQL, Drools, jBPM, OpenJDK, Apache Camel and JBoss Tools/Eclipse. My session titled "JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond" went very well and it was a full house. This is our main talk covering the changes in JMS 2, the Java API for WebSocket (JSR 356), the Java API for JSON Processing (JSON-P), JAX-RS 2, JPA 2.1, JTA 1.2, JSF 2.2, Java Batch, Bean Validation 1.1, Java EE Concurrency and the rest of the APIs in Java EE 7. I also briefly talked about the possibilities for Java EE 8. The slides for the talk are here: JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond from reza_rahman Besides presenting my talk, it was great to catch up with the JBoss gang and attend a few interesting sessions. On Sunday night I went to one of my favorite hangouts in Boston - the exalted Middle East Club as Rolling Stone refers to it (other cool spots in an otherwise pretty boring town is "the Church"). As contradictory as it might sound to the uninitiated, the Middle East Club is possibly the best place in Boston to simultaneously get great Middle Eastern (primarily Lebanese) food and great underground metal. For folks with a bit more exposure, this is probably not contradictory at all given bands like Acrassicauda and documentaries like Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Luckily for me they were featuring a few local Thrash metal bands from the greater Boston area. It wasn't too bad considering it was primarily amateur twenty-something guys (although I'm not sure I'm a qualified critic any more since I all but stopped playing about at that age). It's great Boston has the Middle East as an incubator to keep the rock, metal, folk, jazz, blues and indie scene alive. I definitely enjoyed JUDCon/Boston and hope to be part of the conference next year again.

  Read the article

• Enhance Your Gmail Account in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of items like the Chat and Invite Boxes cluttering up your Gmail account? Then join us as we look at the Better Gmail extension for Google Chrome. Before Here are some examples of items that you may be tired of looking at in your Gmail account such as the “Footer” below your “Inbox”, the “Chat Box”, and the “Invitation Box”. Perhaps you would also like to have the “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” moved elsewhere. And of course there is everyone’s “favorite” sponsored links… Time to do some cleaning up and reorganizing. Better Gmail in Action As soon as you have installed Better Gmail a new tab will automatically open and present you with the available options. Place a “checkmark” in the box for each option that you would like activated and click on “Save” when finished. Note: The final option entry is a tie-in with two other “linked” extensions (Folders4Gmail & HTML Signature) while the middle listing is a link to an article for disabling Google Buzz. Once you have saved your changes in the “Options” you will be prompted to refresh your Gmail tab to see the changes. Going back to our “Inbox Area” everything looks so much more streamlined and clean now. Goodbye clutter! The “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” definitely look a lot nicer as a small toolbar above our e-mail. And the right side…you can see for yourself just how much better that looks. No more distractions there to bother you as you read your e-mail. Conclusion If you have been wanting to get rid of the undesirable elements visible in your Gmail account then hurry over to the Better Gmail page, grab the extension and enjoy the better view. Links Download the Better Gmail extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Figure out which Online accounts are selling your email to spammersAdd a Remember The Milk Task Pane to Gmail in ChromeHow to Send and Receive Hotmail from Your Gmail AccountAdd Your Gmail To Windows Live MailOpen Your Gmail Account in a Popup Window TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

  Read the article

• Are SQL Injection vulnerabilities in a PHP application acceptable if mod_security is enabled?

  - by Austin Smith

  I've been asked to audit a PHP application. No framework, no router, no model. Pure PHP. Few shared functions. HTML, CSS, and JS all mixed together. I've discovered numerous places where SQL injection would be easily possible. There are other problems with the application (XSS vulnerabilities, rampant inline CSS, code copy-pasted everywhere) but this is the biggest. Sometimes they escape inputs, not using a prepared query or even mysql_real_escape_string(), mind you, but using addslashes(). Often, though, their queries look exactly like this (pasted from their code but with columns and variable names changed): $user = mysql_query("select * from profile where profile_id='".$_REQUEST["profile_id"]."'"); The developers in question claimed that they were unable to hack their application. I tried, and found mod_security to be enabled, resulting in HTTP 406 for some obvious SQL injection attacks. I believe there to be sophisticated workarounds for mod_security, but I don't have time to chase them down. They claim that this is a "conceptual" matter and not a "practical" one since the application can't easily be hacked. Their internal auditor agreed that there were problems, but emphasized the conceptual nature of the issues. They also use this conceptual/practical argument to defend against inline CSS and JS, absence of code organization, XSS vulnerabilities, and massive amounts of repetition. My client (rightly so, perhaps) just wants this to go away so they can launch their product. The site works. You can log in, do what you need to do, and things are visibly functional, if slow. SQL Injection would indeed be hard to do, given mod_security. Further, their talk of "conceptual vs. practical" is rhetorically brilliant, considering that my client doesn't understand web application security. I worry that they've succeeded in making me sound like an angry puritan. In many ways, this is a problem of politics, not technology, but I am at a loss. As a developer, I want to tell them to toss the whole project and start over with a new team, but I face a strong defense from the team that built it and a client who really needs to ship their product. Is my position here too harsh? Even if they fix the SQL Injection and XSS problems can I ever endorse the release of an unmaintainable tangle of spaghetti code?

  Read the article

• What can a Service do on Windows?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  If you open up Task Manager or Process Explorer on your system, you will see many services running. But how much of an impact can a service have on your system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a curious reader’s questions. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Forivin wants to know how much impact a service can have on a Windows system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware: What kind malware/spyware could someone put into a service that does not have its own process on Windows? I mean services that use svchost.exe for example, like this: Could a service spy on my keyboard input? Take screenshots? Send and/or receive data over the internet? Infect other processes or files? Delete files? Kill processes? How much impact could a service have on a Windows installation? Are there any limits to what a malware ‘corrupted’ service could do? The Answer SuperUser contributor Keltari has the answer for us: What is a service? A service is an application, no more, no less. The advantage is that a service can run without a user session. This allows things like databases, backups, the ability to login, etc. to run when needed and without a user logged in. What is svchost? According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in English please? Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective, this makes more sense for reusability…but the problem is that you can not launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born. So, essentially a service which uses svchost is just calling a .dll and can do pretty much anything with the right credentials and/or permissions. If I remember correctly, there are viruses and other malware that do hide behind the svchost process, or name the executable svchost.exe to avoid detection. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

  Read the article

• SceneManagers as systems in entity system or as a core class used by a system?

  - by Hatoru Hansou

  It seems entity systems are really popular here. Links posted by other users convinced me of the power of such system and I decided to try it. (Well, that and my original code getting messy) In my project, I originally had a SceneManager class that maintained needed logic and structures to organize the scene (QuadTree, 2D game). Before rendering I call selectRect() and pass the x,y of the camera and the width and height of the screen and then obtain a minimized list containing only visible entities ordered from back to front. Now with Systems, originally in my first attempt my Render system required to get added all entities it should handle. This may sound like the correct approach but I realized this was not efficient. Trying to optimize It I reused the SceneManager class internally in the Renderer system, but then I realized I needed methods such as selectRect() in others systems too (AI principally) and make the SceneManager accessible globally again. Currently I converted SceneManager to a system, and ended up with the following interface (only relevant methods): /// Base system interface class System { public: virtual void tick (double delta_time) = 0; // (methods to add and remove entities) }; typedef std::vector<Entity*> EntitiesVector; /// Specialized system interface to allow query the scene class SceneManager: public System { public: virtual EntitiesVector& cull () = 0; /// Sets the entity to be used as the camera and replaces previous ones. virtual void setCamera (Entity* entity) = 0; }; class SceneRenderer // Not a system { vitual void render (EntitiesVector& entities) = 0; }; Also I could not guess how to convert renderers to systems. My game separates logic updates from screen updates, my main class have a tick() method and a render() method that may not be called the same times. In my first attempt renderers were systems but they was saved in a separated manager, updated only in render() and not in tick() like all other systems. I realized that was silly and simply created a SceneRenderer interface and give up about converting them to systems, but that may be for another question. Then... something does not feel right, isn't it? If I understood correctly a system should not depend on another or even count with another system exposing an specific interface. Each system should care only about its entities, or nodes (as optimization, so they have direct references to relevant components without having to constantly call the component() or getComponent() method of the entity).

  Read the article

• Investment scheme for a PC game the project

  - by Alex Kamen

  Good day everyone, I am working on a PC game project that has 3 phases planned, micro, macro and mmo versions [if confused, see a brief description at the bottom]. I have found a potential investor for the micro version of the game, but naturally, he requested a detailed plan of how the game will pay back. And the problem is that micro version itself is not supposed to be monetized much, other than some ads and limited in-game currency utilization. The idea is that with this combat demo already at hand, it should be possible to get a really large enough investment (millions of dollars) and use it to pay back the initial small one (thousands of dollars) and take the project into macro phase, which will really make profit. This way, everybody is going to win, provided that I can deliver the end-product. Yet while I am confident of that both the conception of the macro and the real game-play of the micro versions are going to be appealing, I don’t know how to obtain any guarantee of that I will be able to get funded once I have the prototype ready. And without that, I won’t receive the funds for the prototype in the first place! To summarize, my question is: how to figure out my future possibilities of getting funded once I have combat demo out, basically “whom to write to and what”. Ideally, I would like some sort of a preliminary agreement with a game publisher, something that would basically state “If the developer provides the product in time and in quality corresponding to the specifications given, the publisher guarantees to allocate funds for distribution and further development, thereby acquiring the right to X part of all future profits”. Does this sound sane? It’s just that I don’t want to sell all of my rights out straight away by taking a big outside investment while the project is in such early stage. I would appreciate if you would share your thoughts on this kind of scheme, and be sure to ask questions as I am sure I must have forgotten to mention a ton of important things, like the fact that initial funds are going to be spent on outsourcing (living in Siberia is really just great). [here’s a brief outline of what each version will feature] [micro] 1) turn based tactical combat rules 2) character development 3) arena/tournament system [macro] 4) ai-ruled dynamic interactive worlds 5) global map adventuring 6) strategic rpg + god simulator gameplay [mmo] 7) Persistent worlds system 8) Social structures system (“guilds/clans”) 9) god-simulation on the mmo scale P.S. Obviously, these features are incremental, so that mmo version has all 9.

  Read the article

• Will polishing my current project be a better learning experience than starting a new one?

  - by Alejandro Cámara

  I started programming many years ago. Now I'm trying to make games. I have read many recommendations to start cloning some well known games like galaga, tetris, arkanoid, etc. I have also read that I should go for the whole game (including menus, sound, score, etc.). Yesterday I finished the first complete version of my arkanoid clone. But it is far from over. I can still work on it for months (I program as a hobby in my free time) implementing a screen resolution switcher, remap of the control keys, power-ups falling from broken bricks, and a huge etc. But I do not want to be forever learning how to clone ONE game. I have the urge to get to the next clone in order to apply some design ideas I have come upon while developing this arkanoid clone (at the same time I am reading the GoF book and much source code from Ludum Dare 21 game contest). So the question is: Should I keep improving the arkanoid clone until it has all the features the original game had? or should I move to the next clone (there are almost infinite games to clone) and start mending the things I did wrong with the previous clone? This can be a very subjective question, so please restrain the answers to the most effective way to learn how to make my own games (not cloning someone ideas). Thank you! CLARIFICATION In order to clarify what I have implemented I make this list: Features implemented: Bouncing capabilities (the ball bounces on walls, on bricks, and on the bar). Sounds when bouncing on bricks and the bar, and when the player wins or loses. Basic title menu (new game and exit only). Also in-game menu and win/lose menus. Only three levels, but the map system is so easy I do not think it will teach me much (am I wrong?). Features not-implemented: Power-ups when breaking the bricks. Complex bricks (with more than one "hit point" and invincible). Better graphics (I am not really good at it). Programming polishing (use more intensively the design patterns). Here's a link to its (minimal) webpage: http://blog.acamara.es/piperine/ I kind of feel ashamed to show it, so please do not hit me too hard :-) My question was related to the not-implemented features. I wondered what was the fastest (optimal) path to learn. 1) implement the not-implemented features in this project which is getting big, or 2) make a new game which probably will teach me those lessons and new ones. ANSWER I choose @ashes999 answer because, in my case, I think I should polish more and try to "ship" the game. I think all the other answers are also important to bear in mind, so if you came here having the same question, before taking a rush decision read all the discussion. Thank you all!

  Read the article

• Referencing a picture in another DLL in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  This one has burned me a few times, so here is how it works for future reference: Usually, when I add an Image control into a Silverlight application, and the picture it shows is local (as opposed to loaded from the web), I set the picture’s Build Action to Content, and the Copy to Output Directory to Copy if Newer. What the compiler does then is to copy the picture to the bin\Debug folder, and then to pack it into the XAP file. In XAML, the syntax to refer to this local picture is: <Image Source="/Images/mypicture.jpg" Width="100" Height="100" /> And in C#: return new BitmapImage(new Uri( "/Images/mypicture.jpg", UriKind.Relative)); One of the features of Silverlight is to allow referencing content (pictures, resource dictionaries, sound files, movies etc…) located in a DLL directly. This is very handy because just by using the right syntax in the URI, you can do this in XAML directly, for example with: <Image Source="/MyApplication;component/Images/mypicture.jpg" Width="100" Height="100" /> In C#, this becomes: return new BitmapImage(new Uri( "/MyApplication;component/Images/mypicture.jpg", UriKind.Relative)); Side note: This kind of URI is called a pack URI and they have been around since the early days of WPF. There is a good tutorial about pack URIs on MSDN. Even though it refers to WPF, it also applies to Silverlight Side note 2: With the Build Action set to Content, you can rename the XAP file to ZIP, extract all the files, change the picture (but keep the same name), rezip the whole thing and rename again to XAP. This is not possible if the picture is embedded in an assembly! So what’s the catch? Well the catch is that this does not work if you set the Build Action to Content. It’s actually pretty simple to explain: The pack URI above tells the Silverlight runtime to look within an assembly named MyOtherAssembly for a file named MyPicture.jpg in the Images folder. If the file is included as Content, however, it is not in the assembly. Silverlight does not find it, and silently returns nothing. The image is not displayed. And the fix? The fix, for class libraries, is to set the Build Action to Resource. With this, the picture will gets packed into the DLL itself. Of course, this will increase the size of the DLL, and any change to the picture will require recompiling the class library, which is not ideal. But in the cases where you want to distribute pictures (icons etc) together with a plug-in assembly, well, this is a good way to have everything in the same place Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238  | Next Page >