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• Do your own design jobs and make it look professional

  - by Webgui

  Looks and design is becoming more and more important for customers and organizations event when we deal with internal enterprise applications. However,  many web developers who work on business apps end up not investing resources on the design. The reason may be that they ran out of time so with their client's pressure there was no choice but to skip past the design process. In some cases, especially in sall software houses, there are no trained professional designers and the developers have to do both jobs. Since designing web applications can be very complex and requires mastering several languages and concepts, unless a big budget was allocated to the project it is very hard to produce a professional custom design. For that exact reasons, Visual WebGui integrated Point & Click Design Tools within its Web/Cloud Development Platform. Those tools allow developers to customize the UI look of the applications they build in a visual way that is fairly simple and doesn't require coding or mastering HTML, CSS and JavaScript in order to design. The development tools also allow professional designers easier work interface with the developers and quicly create new skins. So if you are interested in getting your design job done much easier, you should probably tune in for about an hour and find out how. Click here to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/740450625

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• How do I use an API?

  - by GRardB

  Background I have no idea how to use an API. I know that all APIs are different, but I've been doing research and I don't fully understand the documentation that comes along with them. There's a programming competition at my university in a month and a half that I want to compete in (revolved around APIs) but nobody on my team has ever used one. We're computer science majors, so we have experience programming, but we've just never been exposed to an API. I tried looking at Twitter's documentation, but I'm lost. Would anyone be able to give me some tips on how to get started? Maybe a very easy API with examples, or explaining essential things about common elements of different APIs? I don't need a full-blown tutorial on Stack Overflow; I just need to be pointed in the right direction. Update The programming languages that I'm most fluent in are C (simple text editor usually) and Java (Eclipse). In an attempt to be more specific with my question: I understand that APIs (and yes, external libraries are what I was referring to) are simply sets of functions. Question I guess what I'm trying to ask is how I would go about accessing those functions. Do I need to download specific files and include them in my programs, or do they need to be accessed remotely, etc.?

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• Seperation of drawing and logic in games

  - by BFree

  I'm a developer that's just now starting to mess around with game development. I'm a .Net guy, so I've messed with XNA and am now playing around with Cocos2d for the iPhone. My question really is more general though. Let's say I'm building a simple Pong game. I'd have a Ball class and a Paddle class. Coming from the business world development, my first instinct is to not have any drawing or input handling code in either of these classes. //pseudo code class Ball { Vector2D position; Vector2D velocity; Color color; void Move(){} } Nothing in the ball class handles input, or deals with drawing. I'd then have another class, my Game class, or my Scene.m (in Cocos2D) which would new up the Ball, and during the game loop, it would manipulate the ball as needed. The thing is though, in many tutorials for both XNA and Cocos2D, I see a pattern like this: //pseudo code class Ball : SomeUpdatableComponent { Vector2D position; Vector2D velocity; Color color; void Update(){} void Draw(){} void HandleInput(){} } My question is, is this right? Is this the pattern that people use in game development? It somehow goes against everything I'm used to, to have my Ball class do everything. Furthermore, in this second example, where my Ball knows how to move around, how would I handle collision detection with the Paddle? Would the Ball need to have knowledge of the Paddle? In my first example, the Game class would have references to both the Ball and the Paddle, and then ship both of those off to some CollisionDetection manager or something, but how do I deal with the complexity of various components, if each individual component does everything themselves? (I hope I'm making sense.....)

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• Recursion in F#

  - by MarkPearl

  Things are slowly coming together – I was able to look at a bit of F# code and intuitively know what it was going to do (yay)… So today I saw a blog post by Bob Palmer on Fibonacci numbers in F# which inspired me to look at bit into recursion. First the C# example… class Program { public static void CountDown(int n) { switch (n) { case 0: Console.WriteLine("End of Count"); break; default: Console.WriteLine(n); CountDown(n-1); break; } } static void Main(string[] args) { CountDown(10); Console.ReadLine(); } }   In F#, the equivalent would look something like this… open System let rec CountDown n = match n with | 0 -> Console.WriteLine("End of Count"); | n -> Console.WriteLine(n); CountDown (n-1); CountDown 10 Console.ReadLine()   Pretty simple stuff. With F# you when making recursive calls you need to explicitly declare that the function is recursive with the “rec” keyword. Otherwise the code is pretty easy to read and self explanatory.

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• Splitting Pygame functionality between classes or modules?

  - by sec_goat

  I am attempting to make my pygame application more modular so that different functionalities are split up into different classes and modules. I am having some trouble getting pygame to allow me to draw or load images in secondary classes when the display has been set and pygame.init() has been done in my main class. I have typically used C# and XNA to accomplish this sort of behavior, but this time I need to use python. How do I init pygame in class1, then create an instance of class2 which loads and converts() images. I have tried pygame.init() in class 2 but then it tells me no display mode has been set, when it has been set in class1. I am under the impression i do not wnat to create multiple pygame.displays as that gets problematic I am probably missing something pythonic and simple but I am not sure what. How do I create a Display class, init python and then have other modules do my work like loading images, fonts etc.? here is the simplest version of what I am doing: class1: def __init__(self): self.screen = pygame.display.set_mode((600,400)) self.imageLoader = class2() class2: def __init__(self): self.images = ['list of images'] def load_images(): self.images = os.listdir('./images/') #get all images in the images directory for img in self.images: #read all images in the directory and load them into pygame new_img = pygame.image.load(os.path.join('images', img)).convert() scale_img = pygame.transform.scale(new_img, (pygame.display.Info().current_w, pygame.display.Info().current_h)) self.images.append(scale_img) if __name__ == "__main__": c1 = class1() c1.imageLoader.load_images() Of course when it tries to load an convert the images it tells me pygame has not been initialized, so i throw in a pygame.init() in class2 ( i have heard it is safe to init multiple times) and then the error goes to pygame.error: No video mode has been set

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• Entry level engineer question regarding memory mangement

  - by Ealianis

  It has been a few months since I started my position as an entry level software developer. Now that I am past some learning curves (e.g. the language, jargon, syntax of VB and C#) I'm starting to focus on more esoteric topics, as to write better software. A simple question I presented to a fellow coworker was responded with "I'm focusing on the wrong things." While I respect this coworker I do disagree that this is a "wrong thing" to focus upon. Here was the code (in VB) and followed by the question. Note: The Function GenerateAlert() returns an integer. Dim alertID as Integer = GenerateAlert() _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, NewErrorInfo(Now(), alertID)) vs... _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, New ErrorInfo(Now(), GenerateAlert())) I originally wrote the ladder and rewrote it with the "Dim alertID" so that someone else might find it easier to read. But here was my concern and question. "Should one write this with the Dim AlertID, it would in fact take up more memory; finite but more, and should this method be called many times could it lead to an issue? How will .NET handle this object AlertID. Outside of .NET should one manually dispose of the object after use (near the end of the sub)." I want to ensure I become a knowledgeable programmer that does not just rely upon garbage collection. Am I over thinking this? Am I focusing on the wrong things?

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• What do I need to Mod a Unreal Engine 3 game?

  - by RoadSideWarrior

  what I am looking for is some advise making a mod for a certain game and how I would go about making it. The game I am talking about is Blacklight: Retribution and what I wan't to know is; Is it possible? And if so, what programs will I need? It is an online only game so I was unsure how plausible a mod would be for it. Plus I have never made a video game before, but I do like the game and I wanted to do some things with it. Additionally, this will be my first time making anything video game related so I would appreciate any advise. To expand a bit, I plan to add something simple at first. A mod that would let you spectate another player in the first person. Then I plan do something a bit more complex where I want to make so the game optionally always records you playing (in short intervals most likely or you would run quickly out of memory). After all that is done I would add items, armor, weapons, and maybe make a map or not I am not sure but this in a shell what I hope to do. I don't know much about these things but I am reading anything I can get my hands on. So if this is overly ambitious or just plain out not a possibility any advise on what I should look to instead will be welcomed warmly. Thank you.

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• How did we get saddled with the (hierarchical) filesystem as the basic data structure?

  - by user1936

  I'm self-taught and I don't have a CS degree. The more I've been learning about data structure, the more I wonder, in this day and age, how are we still saddled with the filesystem, with directories and files, as the basic data storage structure on the OS? I understand the simplicity of it, but it seems nowadays that there could be more options available natively. As far as I'm aware, the only project to improve the basic functionality of the filesystem was ReiserFS, where you could tell what line of a file was changed by whom, and when. For instance, if I could have native tagging for files, where I could tag images, diagrams, word-processing documents, an entire code repository, all as belonging to a single project, that would really be helpful to me. Since I'm stuck in the filesystem paradigm, I know that I could put all those into a single folder/directory, but what if they already exist in disparate directories, and they need to stay there? I know there are programs out there that can do this, but why aren't they on the filesystem? Something that would be nice to have is some kind of relational feature in the filesystem, like you get with RDBMSes. I understand that that was supposed to be part of Vista/7, but that fell off the feature list too. Sure, any program can store a binary file and have any data structure it wants in it, by why couldn't the OS offer more complex ways of storing data, beyond the simple heirarchy of the filesystem?

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• What is the simplest way to render video into memory (for drawing to a texture) in .NET?

  - by sebf

  In my project I would like to be able to play back video on surfaces in the world. I intend to do this by having the video frames rendered to a block of memory, then use this to update a texture each frame. Everything is in place - except for the part that actually gets the video. I have looked on Google and found that the video library world is very expansive (and geared towards video processing), and am having trouble finding a suitable one. FFMpeg is very comprehensive, but is an entire suite and would take a good amount of work to integrate. So far the most promising library I've found is the one based on the VLC player libraries - by virtue of it using the same resources as VLC Player it is known to be very capable; it also renders to blocks of memory, but the API (at least of the one on Codeplex) is more of a port of the C++ API rather than a managed wrapper. The 'solution' can be any wrapper/API/library, but with characteristics that make it suitable for use in a rendering engine, namely: Renders the video frame data to memory, so it can be picked up and passed to a texture on the GPU easily. Super simple - all that is needed is a way to load, jump and render a frame programatically - ideally it would use the systems codecs and not require an assortment of plugins. Permissive license (LGPL or more free-er) .NET bindings at least; all the better if it is natively managed Can anyone suggest a lightweight, (.NET) library, that can take a video file, and spit out some frames into a byte[]?

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• Serializing network messages

  - by mtsvetkov

  I am writing a network wrapper around boost::asio and was wondering what is a good and simple way to serialize my messages. I have a message factory which can take care of dispatching the data to the correct builder, but I want to know if there are any established solutions for getting the binary data on the sender side and consequently passing the data for deserialization on the receiver end. Some options I've explored are: passing a pointer to a char[] to the serialize/deserialize functions (for serialize to write to, and deserialize to read from), but it's difficult to enforce buffer size this way; building on that, I decided to have the serialize function return a boost::asio::mutable_buffer, however ownership of the memory gets blurred between multiple classes, as the network wrapper needs to clean up the memory allocated by the message builder. I have also seen solutions involving streambuf's and stringstream's, but manipulating binary data in terms of its string representation is something I want to avoid. Is there some sort of binary stream I can use instead? What I am looking for is a solution (preferrably using boost libs) that lets the message builder dictate the amount of memory allocated during serialization and what that would look like in terms of passing the data around between the wrapper and message factory/message builders. PS. Messages contain almost exclusively built-in types and PODs and form a shallow but wide hierarchy for the sake of going through a factory. Note: a link to examples of using boost::serialization for something like this would be appreciated as I'm having difficulties figuring out the relation between it and buffers.

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• implementing dynamic query handler on historical data

  - by user2390183

  EDIT : Refined question to focus on the core issue Context: I have historical data about property (house) sales collected from various sources in a centralized/cloud data source (assume info collection is handled by a third party) Planning to develop an application to query and retrieve data from this centralized data source Example Queries: Simple : for given XYZ post code, what is average house price for 3 bed room house? Complex: What is estimated price for an house at "DD,Some Street,XYZ Post Code" (worked out from average values of historic data filtered by various characteristics of the house: house post code, no of bed rooms, total area, and other deeper insights like house building type, year of built, features)? In addition to average price, the application should support other property info ** maximum, or minimum price..etc and trend (graph) on a selected property attribute over a period of time**. Hence, the queries should not enforce the search based on a primary key or few fixed fields In other words, queries can be What is the change in 3 Bed Room house price (irrespective of location) over last 30 days? What kind of properties we can get for X price (irrespective of location or house type) The challenge I have is identifying the domain (BI/ Data Analytical or DB Design or DB Query Interface or DW related or something else) this problem (dynamic query on historic data) belong to, so that I can do further exploration My findings so far I could be wrong on the following, so please correct me if you think so I briefly read about BI/Data Analytics - I think it is heavy weight solution for my problem and has scalability issues. DB Design - As I understand RDBMS works well if you know Data model at design time. I am expecting attributes about property or other entity (user) that am going to bring in, would evolve quickly. hence maintenance would be an issue. As I am going to have multiple users executing query at same time, performance would be a bottleneck Other options like Graph DB (http://www.tinkerpop.com/) seems to be bit complex (they are good. but using those tools meant for generic purpose, make me think like assembly programming to solve my problem ) BigData related solution are to analyse data from multiple unrelated domains So, Any suggestion on the space this problem fit in ? (Especially if you have design/implementation experience of back-end for property listing or similar portals)

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• Being stupid to get better productivity?

  - by loki2302

  I've spent a lot of time reading different books about "good design", "design patterns", etc. I'm a big fan of the SOLID approach and every time I need to write a simple piece of code, I think about the future. So, if implementing a new feature or a bug fix requires just adding three lines of code like this: if(xxx) { doSomething(); } It doesn't mean I'll do it this way. If I feel like this piece of code is likely to become larger in the nearest future, I'll think of adding abstractions, moving this functionality somewhere else and so on. The goal I'm pursuing is keeping average complexity the same as it was before my changes. I believe, that from the code standpoint, it's quite a good idea - my code is never long enough, and it's quite easy to understand the meanings for different entities, like classes, methods, and relations between classes and objects. The problem is, it takes too much time, and I often feel like it would be better if I just implemented that feature "as is". It's just about "three lines of code" vs. "new interface + two classes to implement that interface". From a product standpoint (when we're talking about the result), the things I do are quite senseless. I know that if we're going to work on the next version, having good code is really great. But on the other side, the time you've spent to make your code "good" may have been spent for implementing a couple of useful features. I often feel very unsatisfied with my results - good code that only can do A is worse than bad code that can do A, B, C, and D. Are there any books, articles, blogs, or your ideas that may help with developing one's "being stupid" approach?

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• Why does Android make good coding so difficult?

  - by metacircle

  my daily work is writing tools in C#/WPF. After over more than 1 year on the job now, I came to love MVVM, IoC Containers, XAML (and more). It's pure fun to write code, since simple, maintainable and extendable code just comes naturally when you follow a few basic patterns. In my free time I really want to write some apps, mainly for my own personal use. I want to write apps for fun and not to make money or anything, that being said, paying an annual fee to be allowed to use my own apps on my own device is a total no-go for me. So I am not able to code for Windows Phone and am also not able to use Xamarin on Android (which is sad since Visual Studio + Resharper is programmers heaven). So I am stuck with Android "classic" Java development. Everytime I sit down at home to create an app, or improve some of the code I have already written I get annoyed very quick because getting good, decoupled code is just so hard to accomplish. It feels like everything you have to do in Android to create a good architecture is a workaround instead of being the way things are meant to be. Writing the UI in xml is fine, but everything else is one big code mess. Even all the tutorials do all their coding in the code behind. For 'hello world' this is fine, but for anything bigger this gets messy very very quick. This is where the fun for me ends. It's just no fun anymore because I just spend 90% of my time refactoring and thinking of workarounds how to make my code more maintainable with all the restrictions Android puts on me. Am I missing a crucial part or is this just the way Android is meant to be? Do you have any suggestions how to learn 'the fun way' of Android programming.

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• Testing a codebase with sequential cohesion

  - by iveqy

  I've this really simple program written in C with ncurses that's basically a front-end to sqlite3. I would like to implement TDD to continue the development and have found a nice C unit framework for this. However I'm totally stuck on how to implement it. Take this case for example: A user types a letter 'l' that is captured by ncurses getch(), and then an sqlite3 query is run that for every row calls a callback function. This callback function prints stuff to the screen via ncurses. So the obvious way to fully test this is to simulate a keyboard and a terminal and make sure that the output is the expected. However this sounds too complicated. I was thinking about adding an abstraction layer between the database and the UI so that the callback function will populate a list of entries and that list will later be printed. In that case I would be able to check if that list contains the expected values. However, why would I struggle with a data structure and lists in my program when sqlite3 already does this? For example, if the user wants to see the list sorted in some other way, it would be expensive to throw away the list and repopulate it. I would need to sort the list, but why should I implement sorting when sqlite3 already has that? Using my orginal design I could just do an other query sorted differently. Previously I've only done TDD with command line applications, and there it's really easy to just compare the output with what I'm expected. An other way would be to add CLI interface to the program and wrap a test program around the CLI to test everything. (The way git.git does with it's test-framework). So the question is, how to add testing to a tightly integrated database/UI.

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• Oracle Solaris 11 How To Guides

  - by glynn

  Over the past year or so I've been writing a lot of How To Guides for different technologies. While we have really excellent product documentation (including the best set of manual pages available on any UNIX or Linux platform), the various How To Guides we have help to complement some of that learning, giving administrators a chance to learn the motivations for different technologies with a simple set of examples. Not only are they fun to research and write, they're also one of the more popular items on our Oracle Solaris 11 technology pages on OTN. So here's a link to bookmark and come back to on a regular basis: Oracle Solaris 11 How To Guides. We've got an excellent line up of articles there, and below is a list of the ones I've been involved in writing. Let us know if there are technologies that you think a How To Guide would help with and we'd be happy to get them onto our list! TitleLink Taking your First Steps with Oracle Solaris 11An introduction to installing Oracle Solaris 11, including the steps for installing new software and administering other system configuration. Introducing the basics of IPS on Oracle Solaris 11How to administer an Oracle Solaris 11 system using IPS, including how to deal with software package repositories, install and uninstall packages, and update systems. Advanced administration with IPS on Oracle Solaris 11Take a deeper look at advanced IPS to learn how to determine package dependencies, explore manifests, perform advanced searches, and analyze the state of your system. How to create and publish packages with IPS on Oracle Solaris 11How to create new software packages for Oracle Solaris 11 and publish them to a network package repository. How to update your Oracle Solaris 11 systems using Support Repository UpdatesThe steps for updating an Oracle Solaris 11 system with software packages provided by an active Oracle support agreement, plus how to ensure the update is successful and safe. Introducing the basics of SMF on Oracle Solaris 11Simple examples of administering services on Oracle Solaris 11 with the Service Management Facility. Advanced administration with SMF on Oracle Solaris 11Advanced administrative tasks with SMF, including an introduction to service manifests, understanding layering within the SMF configuration repository, and how best to apply configuration to a system.

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• No Thank You &ndash; Yours Truly &ndash; F#

  - by MarkPearl

  I am plodding along with my F# book. I have reached the part where I know enough about the syntax of the language to understand something if I read it – but not enough about the language to be productive and write something useful. A bit of a frustrating place to be. Needless to say when you are in this state of mind – you end up paging mindlessly through chapters of my F# book with no real incentive to learn anything until you hit “Exceptions”. Raising an exception explicitly So lets look at raising an exception explicitly – in C# we would throw the exception, F# is a lot more polite instead of throwing the exception it raises it, … (raise (System.InvalidOperationException("no thank you"))) quite simple… Catching an Exception So I would expect to be able to catch an exception as well – lets look at some C# code first… try { Console.WriteLine("Raise Exception"); throw new InvalidOperationException("no thank you"); } catch { Console.WriteLine("Catch Exception and Carry on.."); } Console.WriteLine("Carry on..."); Console.ReadLine();   The F# equivalent would go as follows… open System; try Console.WriteLine("Raise Exception") raise (System.InvalidOperationException("no thank you")) with | _ -> Console.WriteLine("Catch Exception and Carry on..") Console.WriteLine("Carry on...") Console.ReadLine();   In F# there is a “try, with” and a “try finally” Finally… In F# there is a finally block however the “with” and “finally” can’t be combined. open System; try Console.WriteLine("Raise Exception") raise (System.InvalidOperationException("no thank you")) finally Console.WriteLine("Finally carry on...") Console.ReadLine()

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• Binding BoundingSpheres to a world matrix in XNA

  - by NDraskovic

  I made a program that loads the locations of items on the scene from a file like this: using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(OpenFileDialog1.FileName)) { String line; while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null) { red = line.Split(','); model = row[0]; x = row[1]; y = row[2]; z = row[3]; elements.Add(Convert.ToInt32(model)); data.Add(new Vector3(Convert.ToSingle(x), Convert.ToSingle(y), Convert.ToSingle(z))); sfepheres.Add(new BoundingSphere(new Vector3(Convert.ToSingle(x), Convert.ToSingle(y), Convert.ToSingle(z)), 1f)); } I also have a list of BoundingSpheres (called spheres) that adds a new bounding sphere for each line from the file. In this program I have one item (a simple box) that moves (it has its world matrix called matrixBox), and other items are static entire time (there is a world matrix that holds those elements called simply world). The problem i that when I move the box, bounding spheres move with it. So how can I bind all BoundingSpheres (except the one corresponding to the box) to the static world matrix so that they stay in their place when the box moves?

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• GTK app: How do I create a working indicator with Qt/C++?

  - by hakermania

  I've tried in 2 forums, but I had no luck so far. So, I am using Qt IDE in order to build my application so as to participate to the Ubuntu Showdown contest. In my application, I've done the following: void show_app(MainWindow *data) { //this works fine: app_indicator_set_status(appindicator, APP_INDICATOR_STATUS_PASSIVE); //this crashes the application: data->show(); } void MainWindow::make_indicator() { if(appindicator){ //appindicator has already been created return; } appindicator = app_indicator_new("Format Junkie Indicator", "formatjunkie", APP_INDICATOR_CATEGORY_APPLICATION_STATUS); GtkWidget* showapp_option; GtkWidget* indicatormenu = gtk_menu_new(); GtkWidget* item = gtk_menu_item_new_with_label("Format Junkie main menu"); gtk_menu_item_set_submenu(GTK_MENU_ITEM(item), indicatormenu); showapp_option = gtk_menu_item_new_with_label("Show App!"); g_signal_connect(showapp_option, "activate", G_CALLBACK(show_app), this); gtk_menu_shell_append(GTK_MENU_SHELL(indicatormenu), showapp_option); gtk_widget_show_all(indicatormenu); app_indicator_set_status(appindicator, APP_INDICATOR_STATUS_ACTIVE); app_indicator_set_attention_icon(appindicator, "dialog-warning"); app_indicator_set_menu(appindicator, GTK_MENU (indicatormenu)); } So, basically I am trying to make a simple indicator entry, which, on click, it will hide the indicator and display the application. The indicator can be successfully hidden using the PASSIVE thingy over there, but, during the call data-show();, the application crashes. Any help on what I am doing wrong would be appreciated! Also, please help me to correct this problem I'm facing (alternatively, I will migrate to the old and good tray icon (it works fine in 12.04, anyway) which I can handle very easily and efficiently)

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• Event handler generation in Visual Studio 2012

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  This post will be a part of Visual Studio 2012 feature series There are lots of new features there in visual studio 2012. Event handler generation is one of them. In earlier version of visual studio there was no way to create event handler from source view directly.  Now visual studio 2012 have event handler generation functionality. So if you are editing an event view in source view intellisense will display add new event handler template and once you click on it. It will create a new event handler in the cs file. It will also put a eventhandler name against event name so you don’t need to write that. So, let’s take a simple example of button click event so once I write onclick attribute their smart intellisense will pop up . Now once you click on <Create New Event> It will create event handler in .cs file like following. It will also put submitButton_Click on onClick attribute. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more. Till then happy programming..

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• When can I publish a software tool written at work?

  - by AlexMA

  I'm working on a software problem at work that is fairly generic, but I can't find a library I like to solve it, so I'm considering writing one myself (at least a bare-bones version). I'll be writing some if not all of the 1.0 version at work, since I need it for the project. If turns out well I might want to bring the work home and polish it up just for fun, and maybe release it as an open-source project. However, I'm concerned that if I wrote the 1.0 version at work I may not be allowed to do this from a legal sense. Obviously I could ask my boss (who probably won't care), but I'm curious how other programmers have dealt with this issue and where the law stands here. My one sentence question is, When is it okay (legally/ethically) to open-source a software tool originally written by you for work at work? What if you have expanded the original source significantly during off-hours? Follow-up: Suppose I write the whole thing at home on my time then simply use it at work, does that change things drastically? Follow-up 2: Note that I'm not trying to rip off my employer (I understand that they're paying me to build products that they own)--I'm just wondering if there's a fair way of doing this for all involved... It would be nice if some nonprofit down the road could use my code and save them some time. Also, there's another issue at stake. If I write the library for a very simple, generic thing (like HTML tables in Javascript), does that mean I can never again do so on my own time without putting myself at legal risk (even if it was a whole new fresh rewrite or a segment of a larger project). Am I surrendering my right to write code for this sort of project for the rest of my life (without this company's permission), since the code at work might still be somewhere in my brain influencing me? This seems related to software patents, as a side-note.

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• How to disable the text shadow in plasma widgets KDE 4.6?

  - by piedro

  I just switched completely to Kubuntu for the sake of the more suitable applications for my purposes and their overall integration in the system. But I'm not very happy with all those desktop effects and tranparent looks everywhere. Some things a matter of taste I guess. Some things just unbearable for me having weak eyes. One of them is that about every light theme seems to be using a text shadow effect on the plasma widgets. A white "spilled milk" effect underneath dark text on light grey or glassy background. Drives my eyes nuts! I can remove this effect on the desktop folder by unselecting "shadow" as text effect. I can't find any way to switch it of in the panel and the plasma widgets. My second, related question is, is there a plasma theme matching the oxygen look of the default desktop in light colors that uses the same colors as the ones chosen in the KDE color settings, - simple, opaque, no effects, gnome-like? Plz help someone! thx, piedro

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• Is there a common programming term for the problems of adding features to an already-featureful program?

  - by Jeremy Friesner

  I'm looking for a commonly used programming term to describe a software-engineering phenomenon, which (for lack of a better way to describe it) I'll illustrate first with a couple of examples-by-analogy: Scenario 1: We want to build/extend a subway system on the outskirts of a small town in Wyoming. There are the usual subway-problems to solve, of course (hiring the right construction company, choosing the best route, buying the subway cars), but other than that it's pretty straightforward to implement the system because there aren't a huge number of constraints to satisfy. Scenario 2: Same as above, except now we need to build/extend the subway system in downtown Los Angeles. Here we face all of the problems we did in case (1), but also additional problems -- most of the applicable space is already in use, and has a vocal constituency which will protest loudly if we inconvenience them by repurposing, redesigning, or otherwise modifying the infrastructure that they rely on. Because of this, extensions to the system happen either very slowly and expensively, or they don't happen at all. I sometimes see a similar pattern with software development -- adding a new feature to a small/simple program is straightforward, but as the program grows, adding further new features becomes more and more difficult, if only because it is difficult to integrate the new feature without adversely affecting any of the large number of existing use-cases or user-constituencies. (even with a robust, adaptable program design, you run into the problem of the user interface becoming so elaborate that the program becomes difficult to learn or use) Is there a term for this phenomenon?

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• Question on methods in Object Oriented Programming

  - by mal

  I’m learning Java at the minute (first language), and as a project I’m looking at developing a simple puzzle game. My question relates to the methods within a class. I have my Block type class; it has its many attributes, set methods, get methods and just plain methods. There are quite a few. Then I have my main board class. At the moment it does most of the logic, positioning of sprites collision detection and then draws the sprites etc... As I am learning to program as much as I’m learning to program games I’m curious to know how much code is typically acceptable within a given method. Is there such thing as having too many methods? All my draw functionality happens in one method, should I break this into a few ‘sub’ methods? My thinking is if I find at a later stage that the for loop I’m using to cycle through the array of sprites searching for collisions in the spriteCollision() method is inefficient I code a new method and just replace the old method calls with the new one, leaving the old code intact. Is it bad practice to have a method that contains one if statement, and place the call for that method in the for loop? I’m very much in the early stages of coding/designing and I need all the help I can get! I find it a little intimidating when people are talking about throwing together a prototype in a day too! Can’t wait until I’m that good!

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• How do I boot to a windows recovery partition from GRUB in a Toshiba computer?

  - by Andy Groff

  This should be simple but I cannot figure out how to do it. I've been dual booting ubuntu and vista for a while. About 8 months ago, I realized my windows partition got corrupt and does not boot. This wasn't a problem since I didn't need it anyways, but now I do need windows. Using the disk manager I can see a partition called Toshiba System Volume which is 1.6 GB and one called HDD Recovery which is 7.8 GB. I assume the second one is what I need and i'm not sure what the first one is for. Anyways, how do I boot to this one? Is it a matter of configuring GRUB to boot to it? Once I do boot to it will it let me only reformat my windows partition, or is it going to restore the entire hard drive to factory condition? I assume I'll get the general windows installer which lets me choose the partition but, as you can probably tell, I've never used a recover partition. Should I burn the contents of the partition to a disk and boot to that? Sorry if this is obvious but I'm confused and cannot figure this out.

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• What is the best way to store meshes or 3d models in a class

  - by Robse

  I am wondering, how I should store my mesh into memory after loading it from whatever file. I have Questions floating in my head: Should a mesh could have sub meshes or does the 3d model just store a list of meshes all on the same level Is there one material assigned to one mesh 1:1? What do I have to consider, if I want to store skeletal animations? Btw it's a OpenGL|ES2 iOS game using GLKit. I came up with some basic struct types: (But I think they are way to simple and I need to add padding or change the vector3 to vector4.) typedef union _N3DShortVector2 { struct { short x, y; }; struct { short s, t; }; short v[2]; } N3DShortVector2; typedef union _N3DShortVector3 { struct { short x, y, z; }; struct { short r, g, b; }; struct { short s, t, p; }; short v[3]; } N3DShortVector3; typedef GLKVector3 N3DFloatVector3; typedef struct _N3DMeshRecordSV3 { N3DShortVector3 v1, v2, v3; } N3DMeshRecordSV3; typedef struct _N3DMeshRecordSV3FN3ST2 { N3DShortVector3 v1, v2, v3; N3DFloatVector3 n1, n2, n3; N3DShortVector2 t1, t2, t3; } N3DMeshRecordSV3FN3ST2;

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