D&D Player's Companion Journal

Port to Coffeescript

2011-10-19T05:55:00.001-04:00

A new part of the v7 plan is a port to Coffeescript. I'd like to jump directly to Dart, but that's a long way off.I'm also looking to write some test code using some of the JS/CS testing frameworks: http://macwright.org/2011/10/18/adventures-in-testing.html, http://docs.jquery.com/Qunit. Refactoring has become more difficult and error prone, and I can't put off best practice forever.

Resumption of Activities

2011-09-02T06:33:00.000-04:00

After a long hiatus, development of the Player's Companion has resumed:

http://charmgr.stepnext.net

This version (0.7) is a port to the Pathfinder rules. The Ranger class is complete, and Sorcerer is coming along. Also damage reduction and special saves (eg v petrification, poison, etc) is now implemented. Skills with subtypes (eg. Knowledge, Perform, etc) are now correctly handled.

The application is hosted on a Amazon EC2 instance, served by node.js. The code is now hosted on Github, using (predictably) git for SCM. Development has been massively simplified by these changes.

Also, I got a Macbook Air. It is wunderbar.

SharePoint via Java

2011-03-18T11:11:00.001-04:00

God bless you, sir!

http://davidsit.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/reading-a-sharepoint-list-with-java-tutorial/

Another Scintilla Editor

2011-02-12T08:02:00.000-05:00

http://caladbolg.net/luadoc/textadept/manual/1_Introduction.html

require 'textadept'

local keys = _G.keys
local b, v = 'buffer', 'view'
local gui = gui

keys.can = { new_buffer }
keys.cl = { 'char_right', b }
keys.cL = { 'char_right_extend', b }
keys.cal = { 'word_right', b }
keys.caL = { 'word_right_extend', b }
keys.cj = { 'char_left', b }
keys.cJ = { 'char_left_extend', b }
keys.caj = { 'word_left', b }
keys.caJ = { 'word_left_extend', b }
keys.ck = { 'line_down', b }
keys.cak = { 'line_down', b }
keys.cK = { 'line_down_extend', b }
keys.caK = { 'line_down_extend', b }
keys.ci = { 'line_up', b }
keys.cai = { 'line_up', b }
keys.cI = { 'line_up_extend', b }
keys.caI = { 'line_up_extend', b }
keys.ch = { 'vc_home', b }
keys.cah = { 'vc_home', b }
keys.cH = { 'home_extend', b }
keys.caH = { 'home_extend', b }
keys['c;'] = { 'line_end', b }
keys['ca;'] = { 'line_end', b }
keys['c:'] = { 'line_end_extend', b }
keys['ca:'] = { 'line_end_extend', b }
keys.cd = { 'clear', b }
keys.caN = { gui.switch_buffer }
keys.cn = { 'goto_buffer', v, 1, false }
keys.cN = { 'goto_buffer', v, -1, false }
keys.ce = {
function()
buffer:line_end_extend()
buffer:cut()
end
}

Installing a Bluetooth Headset on Windows 7

2011-01-03T14:40:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Komeil Bahmanpour I can use my LG HBM-235 bluetooth earpiece with GMail phone calling.

(Windows will install the device but can't find the driver.)

Building a CLASSPATH in Windows

2010-12-31T08:47:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Real's How To:

@echo off
setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
if defined CLASSPATH (set CLASSPATH=%CLASSPATH%;.) else (set CLASSPATH=.)
FOR /R .\lib %%G IN (*.jar) DO set CLASSPATH=!CLASSPATH!;%%G
Echo The Classpath definition is %CLASSPATH%
 ... 
java MyClass

Notepad++, The New Editor King (or, jEdit Dethroned)

2010-12-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

I finally gave Notepad++ an honest going over, and it is unquestionably the most flexible tool for editing text the internet has to offer. It:

handles my keybinding scheme
is fast(er than jEdit)
handles large files without choking

You can customize it to a ridiculous degree, and because it uses Scintilla for the editor, schemes should be portable across platforms (Geany, others).

Notepad++'s only real deficiency is its lack of full regex support.

Generalizing for Pathfinder Compatibility

2010-12-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

I've looking at Pathfinder for a while (bought the core rulebooks and a few modules), but since listening the Chronicles: Pathfinder Podcast I'm energized to fix up the Grendel to be compatible with the core rules.

As always, I need knowledgeable testers to validate my suspicions (also some data entry help would be a huge help):

http://backdraft.cs.binghamton.edu:8080/cm-dev/unferth/grendel.html (short link: http://goo.gl/LbwE4)

If you're unfamiliar with Pathfinder, it's essentially a light extension of the 3.5 rules in a well-articulated campaign setting. It's published by the old publishing arm of Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing.

Interesting fact about Paizo: the publisher writes modules.

Fixing XP

2010-10-04T07:54:00.000-04:00

Here's a list of utility programs that make Windows XP a little nicer:

Alwact Clock: Onscreen click-through clock

AutoHotkey: keyboard mapping and scripting

SetCapsLockState, AlwaysOff

CapsLock & a::
IfWinExist jEdit
WinActivate
else
Run C:\PROGRA~1\jEdit\jedit.bat
return

CapsLock & q::
IfWinExist ahk_class Chrome_WidgetWin_0
WinActivate
else
Run "C:\Program Files\Chrome\chrome.exe" --enable-accelerated-compositing
return

CapsLock & s::
IfWinExist xplorer²
WinActivate
else
Run "C:\Program Files\zabkat\xplorer2_lite\xplorer2_lite.exe""
return

PathTooLong: If you can't delete a directory because the path is too long
Power Menu: Window always-on-top
Power Resizer: Windows 7-style window resizing (half-screen on edge)
WizMouse: Scroll the window under the mouse

Also, Character Sheets

2010-09-06T15:01:00.000-04:00

Here it is, a character sheet:

The nice thing is, if you don't like it, they're easy to make and easy to fill in with character data.

multi-class in motion

2010-08-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

Help me test v0.6!

http://backdraft.cs.binghamton.edu:8080/cm-dev/wiglaf/grendel.html

This version is undergoing regular development, so the usual caveats apply. If you find what think is a bug, please create an issue on my Google Code project site, or leave a comment on a recent blog posting.

Batch upload script for CouchDB (using curl and jsawk)

2010-08-14T08:53:00.000-04:00

I looked all over for something small and simple like this, but couldn't find anything.

Dependencies:
spidermonkey (required by jsawk)
libmozjs2d (required by spidermonkey)
jsawk (for parsing CouchDB response)
curl

Ubuntu doesn't include spidermonkey in the repositories (it uses rhino instead) so you'll have to grab spidermonkey from the Debian.

Copy the below script (change http://localhost:5984/cm-dev/hrothgar to your server/db/document) and save yourself a lot of clicks in Futon.


Usage: upload.sh [path containing the files to upload]


hput () {
  eval hash"$1"='$2'
}

hget () {
  eval echo '${hash'"$1"'#hash}'
}
hput js javascript
hput html html
hput css css

directory=$@
if [ -z "$directory" ]
then
 directory="."
fi

filetypes="$directory/*.css
$directory/*.html
$directory/*.js"

for file in $filetypes
do
 filename=`basename "$file"`
 ext=`hget ${filename##*.}`
 rev=`curl -sX GET 'http://grendel.cloudant.com/cm-dev/hrothgar/' | jsawk 'return this._rev'`
 echo File              : $file
 echo Current revision  : $rev
 echo Uploading document: $filename
 echo "${ext}"
 echo curl              : curl -X PUT http://grendel.cloudant.com/cm-dev/hrothgar/$filename?rev=$rev --data-binary @$file -H 'Content-Type: text/'$ext
 
 curl -X PUT http://grendel.cloudant.com/cm-dev/hrothgar/$filename?rev=$rev --data-binary @$file -H 'Content-Type: text/'$ext
 echo --------------------------------------------
 echo
done

Thanks to Micha for jsawk.

Multi-class support

2010-07-20T20:53:00.000-04:00

The major feature for v0.6 will be multi-class character support.

Post your thoughts on what to put in the space created by the edit page rearrangement.

chardata.class_name => chardata.classes[name]=level

edit: current look

Flexible UI

2010-05-26T09:27:00.000-04:00

I'm cooking the new UIs for v0.6, starting with 768x1024 (and 1024x768), since that's the iPad resolution, and I know a couple people with iPads (it also maps nicely to a sheet of paper). Everyone has opinions on what makes a good character sheet and pretty much everybody can draw, I'd appreciate some feedback on the new layout.

If you're feeling particularly contributory, send me a note and I'll add you to the drawing so you manipulate the bits yourself.

Ideas for v0.6

2010-05-16T19:06:00.000-04:00

If I ever get v0.5 to run on an iPhone, here are some ideas for v0.6:

Expandable UI
Depending on the size of browser viewport, the UI will reconfigure itself to better utilize the available space. Thinking the 2-column sections go 3 or 4, eliminate multiple edit screens (leaving just main and edit).

Also, the Google Drawing app is just about "good enough". Still needs connectors.

Multi-class support

See later post for details.

Fast character switching

Currently, switching between characters requires a full reload of the webapp, should be able to change change character data without loading all the application data.

Use Google CDN for JQuery resources

The images for the JQueryUI haven't displayed correctly since I moved to CouchDB. Hopefully will fix that.

Firebug to the rescue

2010-05-14T06:33:00.000-04:00

Firebug has a more readable and perhaps more insightful profiler than Chrome:

My reckless use of TaffyDB is the biggest offender, with isNumeric() way out of proportion (I mean, is it a number, or isn't it?).

UPDATE:
It appears the horrendous performance suction was caused my ordering of all static data elements:

  spells.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  feats.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  races.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  domains.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  classs.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  schools.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  weapons.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  armors.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  skills.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  languages.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  deitys.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  specials.orderBy({name:"logical"});
  favored_enemys.orderBy({name:"logical"});

I found the offending block by starting and stopping the Firebug profiler between breakpoints. It posts the results in the console, in the context of the logging. Just phenomenal tool.
Down to 4 secs:This doesn't mean it will work on the iPhone, but it can't hurt.

localStorage for offline use

2010-05-13T06:50:00.001-04:00

I've put in some caching for the static data using the HTML5 feature "localStorage", localStorage is essentially a cookie, but without a cookie's size limit, and it will not get sent to the server (something I didn't even know about cookies). The Player's Companion should now be able to function offline, but unfortunately it does not appear to have any impact on load performance.

v0.5 in Testing

2010-05-02T08:46:00.001-04:00

v0.5 involved a complete rewrite of the data load scheme, and the way rules are handled. Basically, to add feat attack effects before, I had to add some JS to the calc_attack function (messy and does not scale). Now, I ask for all feats with an attack attribute (which is a function), and execute that block of code:

feat description:


 attack: "if(weapon.category == 'exotic') { attacks.weapon_proficiency = 0; } return attacks;",


function calc_attack() {
 ...
 char_feats.get({ attack : { "!is": null } }).forEach( function(feat, i) {
   // TODO - can we do this by reference
  console.log("attack: " + feat.name);
  attacks = feat.attack(attacks, weapon);
  return attacks;
 });

While it's probably technically better, an unfortunate side-effect is that it no longer works on my friends' iPhones or my Android emulator. Must be my IBM training to write software for next-next generation hardware (I'm still waiting for a machine to run Lotus Notes).

jEdit, Lord of the Text Editors

2010-04-02T07:29:00.000-04:00

After a brief dalliance Sublime Text, I'm back to jEdit. Faster with large files, customizable keybinding, cross platform, truly awesome find/replace and it's Open Source (Sublime Text costs $60).

Plugins:
JDiffPlugin
TextTools
FirstMate (http://www.rutherfurd.net/jedit/plugins/firstmate/)
Minimap
Whitespace
Beauty

Two features I'm missing are next/previous recent buffer, and true full screen (a la Darkroom).

Thank you, jEdit!

jEdit Maths

2010-03-10T20:52:00.000-05:00

Search: ^(\s+)"(.+?)" : ([0-9])(,?)
Replace: _1 + "\"" + _2 + "\":" + (Integer.parseInt(_3) + 1) + _4

Favored Enemies

2010-02-09T07:11:00.000-05:00

"Operational" favored enemies for Ranger class are now on http://bit.ly/wiglaf.

Remote Storage, Part II

2010-01-24T10:16:00.000-05:00

The remote store is up and running at:

http://bit.ly/wiglaf

The practical effect of this is the ability to create your character on a computer, and load it on your portable device. Character data is automatically synced to the remote store, and can be retrieved using the char->load menu by entering the character name.

At this time (since I'm the only one using it), THERE IS NO OVERWRITE PROTECTION!!! If you create a character named "Bob" and some other dood creates a "Bob", the last guy's data will blow away the Bob data. I have a fix in mind where you enter an owner name to distinguish your Bob the other guy.

Storing data online with CouchDB

2010-01-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

I'm looking at using a remote CouchDB as a store for character data. With some sync code, characters should be transparently available on any device you're using.

CouchDB looks cool, but the documentation is horrible (at least for starting out using Javascript).

Something I didn't fully appreciate is that you can't call out to different a server from Javascript directly (this is "cross-site scripting", and there are workarounds). Essentially, it's assumed any connections will be performed on the server side and the client (browser) connects to a single server. The quick-and-dirty solution is to host the Player's Companion from my local CouchDB instance:

Create a database (charmgr) to host the files

Create a document (id: "charmgr")

Upload all the files as attachments to the document

Go to: http://localhost:5984/charmgr/charmgr/charmgr.html, et voila!

In the code, writing out the data is direct:


  var db = new CouchDB(cookie_name.toLowerCase(), {"X-Couch-Full-Commit":"false"});
  db.createDb();
  db.save(data);

Thanks to Justin Walgran: http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-user/200812.mbox/%3Cf893e2810812262119k3163421ds372d4b7a2eac22c1@mail.gmail.com%3E

Useful: http://sitr.us/2009/06/30/database-queries-the-couchdb-way.html

Multi-character Support

2010-01-10T17:06:00.000-05:00

Some refactoring and now I can switch between multiple character sheets. Basically names the cookie after the character name, and lists all "named cookies" in the file menu.

Addition of the file menu is something of a failure, since now it's no longer a toaster.

Testing on Android

2009-12-01T06:13:00.000-05:00

I got a BlackBerry device from work, but unfortunately the included (or any other) browser is not up to the strenuous demands of the Grendel. Using the AVD, I have a much better idea of real-world usage:

Close a JQuery Dialog by clicking outside of it

2009-12-01T06:07:00.000-05:00

Thank you David Little: http://www.littled.net/new/2009/11/30/how-to-close-a-jquery-dialog-box-by-clicking-outside-of-it/

function show_dialog(title, content) {
  // close dialog when clicking outside of it
  $(".ui-widget-overlay").live("click", function() {  $("#mydialog").dialog("close"); } );
  $("#mydialog").html(content);
  $('#mydialog').dialog('option', 'title', title);
  $("#mydialog").dialog( {
    modal : true,
    autoOpen : false,
    title : title,
    position: 'left'
  });

Tags location on Tiddlywiki

2009-11-24T10:19:00.000-05:00

To move the tags box from the top right corner to the bottom:

<div class='tagged...

Must be moved below <div class='viewer... And above <div class='tagClear...

v0.3.2 available for download

2009-11-01T09:11:00.000-05:00

v0.3.2 features:

* Logging - Save game notes with xp, hp context
* Equipment - Magic items may have skill, ability, or other (fort, att, ac, etc) numerical benefits
* Monk special abilities - Flurry of blows
* Rogue special abilities
* Spell data complete
* Skill data complete
* Special ability (non-operational) data complete

Plenty of bug fixes (and probably plenty introduced).

Taking a break until I get a superphone, or even one human being besides myself shows some interest.

v0.3 available for download

2009-10-06T00:07:00.000-04:00

After fixing the Load character data functionality, I felt a small celebration was in order. Thus a new zip is available for download. This release has some boring improvements, like Special Abilities (though this isn't data-complete) and more spell and skill data, but the major change was a refactoring of how weapon and armor selector work on the edit page.

Javascript's flexible typing and giant hash object reference model(?) lets you do some neat tricks to reuse code. Essentially you can pass in the string names of attributes or functions to be acted on, rather than defining interfaces as you would in Java. For example, weapons and armor have a similar structure, and the edit UI for both behaves in exactly the same way. Some stuff about the code below.


function populate_data_part(chardata, data_name, id_name) {
 for (var j in chardata[data_name]) {
  var item = window[data_name].first( {
   id : chardata[data_name][j][id_name + '_id']
  });
  $("#" + id_name + "_" + j + " option[id='" + id_name + "_" + j + "_option_" + item.id + "']").attr("selected", true);
  // TODO - this part might be better in recalc
  for(var i in window[id_name + "_edit_data"]) {
   var edit_attr_name = window[id_name + "_edit_data"][i];
   var value = chardata[data_name][j][edit_attr_name] == null ? item[edit_attr_name] : chardata[data_name][j][edit_attr_name];
   $("#" + id_name + "_" + j + edit_attr_name).val(value == null ? "" : value);
  }
 }
}

For 0.4, I'll refactor the steaming pile that is feats.

Windows 7 window tricks in XP

2009-10-03T10:35:00.000-04:00

The most (only?) compelling feature of Windows 7 for me is the automatic window resizing. When you grab a window and bang it against an edge, the window is resized to fill half the screen (either horizontally or vertically).

You can get the same functionality for XP with PowerResizer. Brilliant.

Motorola Razr V3 keys not working

2009-09-22T10:25:00.000-04:00

I had to look around for a bit to find the answer, so maybe this will save somebody some time:

The keys (except for the red on/off button) on my Motorola Razr V3 stopped working during our trip to the beach. Turns out the phone is sensitive to humidity, so putting the phone on the air conditioning vent for a little bit got it working again.

Safari Books Online

2009-08-21T04:47:00.000-04:00

I recently got a Safari Books subscription from work, and it is awesome. I don't enjoy reading long form content on the computer screen, but having access to concise, correct examples and solutions is a revelation when compared to sifting through the Google.
I loathe subscription fees but access to this technical library would be worth it, even if I had to (ugh) pay for it myself.

Javascript Development Environment

2009-08-17T06:51:00.000-04:00

Doing this for a couple weeks, I now have a stable environment for javascript development:

Eclipse 3.5 - Web Tools, XML Tools, Javascript, Subclipse
Firefox - Firebug
Chrome

Development is leagues away from the effortless task of Java development, where Eclipse gives such an enormous lift it's hard to adjust to the basic help you get with dynamic languages. The Javascript editor is very good, but because of the language, there are no sophisticated refactoring tools included. This important, especially when working on a new project, because you learn the specifics of the problem domain as you go. With Java + Eclipse, agile development of sort "get it to work, get it work right, get it work fast" is perfectly natural.

In any case, Firebug is immensely powerful as a debugging tool. Critically, it has mouseover variable information. There are some bridges between Eclipse and Firebug, but I could not get them to reliabily work on Linux, so it's: make a small change in the IDE, switch to Firefox reload, inspect. Firebug has one annoying bug in that it shows errors in red over the top of the text of the line that is causing the problem. If your lines are long you can't read them. So I load the page in Google Chrome and inspect the code in its very pretty but less sophisticated debugging environment, and get the error in the console. Chrome is also damned fast, and formats things slightly different, so it useful if only as a second opinion.

Even if Eclipse had no Javascript editor, context help, large file support, great search capabilities, intuitive diff comparison, unparalleled Team support, SVN integration, or Mylyn task tracking, its ludicrously configurable keybindings have me hooked. I've configured a rational homerow editor navigation scheme that makes all others (emacs, vi, etc) blush in shame:

(I'm happy to send the key prefs to any who request it).

The house was decorated by an evil dolphin

2009-08-15T06:53:00.000-04:00

I now have weapon deletion working (but not with the fancy JQueryUI blind effect I want), but I had to do something weird with my weapons array. Simple remove of the weapon from the array:

chardata.weapons.splice(weapon_idx, 1);

does not "reorder" the array. Eg.,

[{foo}, {bar}, {monkey}].(splice(1))

does not just create [{foo}, {monkey}]. It's stored as

["0":{foo}, "2":{monkey}]

which causes a problem with the way I'm handling the UI. My solution was to copy the array with slice(), then reassign it back to the real chardata object:

chardata.weapons.splice(weapon_idx, 1);
var foo = chardata.weapons.slice();
chardata.weapons = foo;

The indexes are sequential with no gaps. Weird, but it works.

Extracting a JSON array from a cookie

2009-08-10T07:56:00.000-04:00

Knowing nothing, I had assumed that when you JSON-ify an array, then parse it back into an object, it comes out exactly as it went in. No so, gentle reader. Arrays are stored as named objects:

 "spells":{"0":{"0":113,"1":135},"1":{},"2":{"0":227},"3":{"0":209,"1":186}}

This means all arrays must be reconstituted manually:

 // spells     
 if (chardata.spells != null) {  
  char_spells = [];  
  for (spell_lvl_idx in chardata.spells) {  
   char_spells.push([]);  
  for (char_spell in chardata.spells[spell_lvl_idx]) {  
  char_spells[parseInt(spell_lvl_idx)].push(parseInt(chardata.spells[spell_lvl_idx][char_spell]));  
  }  
  }  
  chardata.spells = char_spells;  
 }

In this case, a multi-dimensional array of [spell level[spells per level]].

v0.1

2009-08-10T07:43:00.000-04:00

After solving a particularly nasty scoping issue (my loop counter i was being used and updated in a nested function), v0.1 is out! Everything basically works, provided you have the right browser and cookie permissions. To circumvent smartphone limitations, I've hosted it on my friends (slow) site:

http://chambery.subfire.org/charmgrjs/edit.html

I created a branch (thanks to dougr for help with this):

http://charactermanager.googlecode.com/svn/branches/v0_1/

The only trick is to create your branches/ directory first in the SVN Repository Explorer, before creating your tag.

Further on down the road:
0.2: Consolidate the separate .html files, make the javascript purely functional (no global data apart from the cookie which is loaded on initialization)
0.3: Implement feats (yikes!)

Along the way, I'll be transcribing the skill and spell data into the DB when I need a thinking break. If anyone would like to help with this simple (though less than rewarding) task, shoot me an email.

Dialog for to show detail info

2009-08-07T06:49:00.000-04:00

Got the JQueryUI Dialog working (for some reason this was quite a struggle for me). Clicking a spell, feat, or skill brings up a model dialog containing the full details of the selected element.

The issue was the title. The title is set on creation, and dialog doesn't get recreated on invocation(?), so you have to do some special thing to set it after initialization. In any case, here's the code:

   
   content = '';
   title = name;

   $("#mydialog").html(content);  
   $('#mydialog').dialog('option', 'title', title);  
   $("#mydialog").dialog({  
     modal: true,  
     autoOpen: false,  
     title: title  
   });  
   $("#mydialog").dialog('open');

Loading and Saving TaffyDB data from cookies

2009-08-07T06:22:00.001-04:00

I flopped around a good long time over this one:

I'm using cookies as a datastore, but had an issue with TaffyDB not stringify correctly. The TaffyDB author, Ian Smith provided some critical help, and here is the working (though probably not ideal solution):

 function clone(o) {  
   if(typeof(o) != 'object') return o;  
   if(o == null) return o;  
   var newO = new Object();  
   for(var i in o) newO[i] = clone(o[i]);  
    return newO;  
 }  
 function sav(){  
   var cookieData = clone(chardata);  
   cookieData.skills = cookieData.skills.get();  
   cookieData = TAFFY.JSON.stringify(cookieData);  
   var d = new Date(2020, 02, 02);  
   document.cookie = 'chardata=' + cookieData + ';expires=' + d.toUTCString();  
 }  
 function lod(){  
   if (document.cookie.length > 0) {  
     c_start = document.cookie.indexOf("chardata=");  
     if (c_start != -1) {  
       c_start = c_start + 9 //c_name.length + 1;  
       c_end = document.cookie.indexOf(";", c_start);  
       if (c_end == -1) {  
         c_end = document.cookie.length;  
       }  
       cookie_data = document.cookie.substring(c_start, c_end);  
       chardata = TAFFY.JSON.parse(unescape(cookie_data));  
       chardata.skills = TAFFY(chardata.skills);  
     }  
   }  
 }

The biggest stumbling block came from the fact that assigning chardata to a temporary var (and then stringify-ing it) changed my Taffy object into a string. Cloning the db fixed the issue.

Iterate over object attributes using JQuery

2009-08-02T19:20:00.000-04:00

 var obj = {  
 foo: "bar",  
 baz: "quux"  
 };  
 jQuery.each(obj, function(name, value) {  
 alert(name + ": " + value);  
 });

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1096924/iterating-a-javascript-objects-properties-using-jquery

Edit spells screen

2009-08-01T12:23:00.000-04:00

Spells screen loads the available spells for the class, and prevents you from selecting more spells than allowed by the "spells known" table.

Biking in Pisgah National Forest

2009-07-31T07:10:00.000-04:00

I've spent a good chunk of my vacation pounding on this project (it's fun, really), but took a break to bike a small part of the Pisgah National Forest near the Fish Hatchery. Just amazing fun: downhill in a rainstorm on a modern mountain bike (my Trek 920 is so old it was Made in the USA).

Thanks to Bio-Wheels in Asheville for the expert and friendly advice that came with the bike rental.

Javascript isNumeric()

2009-07-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

After flopping around looking for a Javascript isNumeric() function, Rosetta Code came to the rescue with isFinite(num):

 string value = "123.45e7";  
 if (isFinite(value))   
 {  
  // do something  
 }  
 //Or, in web browser in URL box:  
 // javascript:value="123.45e4"; if(isFinite(value)) {alert('numeric')} else {alert('non-numeric')}

Getting a value from JQuery .each()

2009-07-29T06:55:00.001-04:00

I struggled mightily trying to get an attribute out of what gets returned from the JQuery .each() function, but eventually tried this and it works:

 <td id="skill_0_ranks" skill_id="0" align="right">0a</td>  
 // update skill mods  
 $('td[skill_id]').each(function(i, element){  
  skill_id = $(element).attr('skill_id')  
  update_skill(skill_id)  
 })

Incidentally, found a cool site for code formatting: http://codeformatter.blogspot.com/2009/06/about-code-formatter.html

Edit Screen

2009-07-23T08:30:00.000-04:00

The Edit and Main screens as they are today. The should be functional on a 320x smartphone screen.

From the top, but this time with feeling

2009-07-20T00:14:00.000-04:00

A character manager for a smartphone actually makes sense, so I'm writing it over again in Javascript. By the time I finish I may actually own one of these phones. What finally sent me over the edge was TaffyDB, a "database" for the browser. I can store all the data in these hashes, and Taffy gives you a nice way way to pull the data you're interested in. I think of the databases as Excel sheets (or Calc sheets, for the FOSS folks), and there are goodly number of Excel-based character managers out there, so I should be able to pull this off.

This is the end (for now)

2007-06-26T08:55:00.000-04:00

The thing is done. The database is fairly stable, the edit perspective is basically done, and most importantly, I'll never use it.

Todos:

Feat special rules need to be implemented

MainPerspective calculated values (melee, damage, etc.)

Create charactersheet print out

CheckboxTableViewer.setChecked() fails silently

2007-06-25T16:42:00.000-04:00

Took me a while to figure this out:

If you have a CheckboxTableViewer and want to set the initial state of the table contents as (un)checked, you cannot do the initialization in the LabelProvider. It seemed like the most logical place, and the viewer does enter the code for setChecked(element, true), but nothing is displayed. Turns you have to let the table draw first (I don't understand why):

 public void update() {
  // inputs the same
  tableViewer.setInput("");
  tableViewer.refresh();

  List weapons = WeaponHome.inst.findAll();
  for (DAO weapon : weapons) {
   if (Ctx.getChar().weapons.contains(weapon)) {
    ((CheckboxTableViewer) tableViewer).setChecked(weapon, true);
   }
  }
 }

For the record, this is the code that does not work:

  public String getColumnText(Object element, int columnIndex) {
   String value = "";
   Weapon weapon = (Weapon) element;
   if (isEditable()) {
    if (Ctx.getChar().weapons.contains(weapon)) {
     ((CheckboxTableViewer) tableViewer).setChecked(element, true);
    }
   }

Expandable SWT/JFace Dialog

2007-05-29T18:57:00.001-04:00

This confounded me for a while, so here's the short:

Extend JFace Dialog
Keep a handle to the content of your expandable section
Do this (from ErrorDialog):

    private void toggleDetailsArea() {
        Point windowSize = getShell().getSize();
        Point oldSize = getShell().computeSize(SWT.DEFAULT, SWT.DEFAULT);
        if (listCreated) {
            list.dispose();
            listCreated = false;
            detailsButton.setText(IDialogConstants.SHOW_DETAILS_LABEL);
        } else {
            list = createDropDownList((Composite) getContents());
            detailsButton.setText(IDialogConstants.HIDE_DETAILS_LABEL);
        }
        Point newSize = getShell().computeSize(SWT.DEFAULT, SWT.DEFAULT);
        getShell()
                .setSize(
                        new Point(windowSize.x, windowSize.y
                                + (newSize.y - oldSize.y)));
    }

Working with Checkboxes in TreeItems

2007-05-20T08:39:00.000-04:00

I spent some time working out how to get my Tree checkboxes functional. I'm reusing the SpellsView across the display and edit view (with AbstractSpellsView:


 public void createPartControl(Composite parent) {
...
  if (isEditable()) {
   // select checkbox
   TreeColumn treeColumn11 = new TreeColumn(tree, SWT.NONE);
   treeColumn11.setWidth(60);
  }
  TreeColumn nameCol = new TreeColumn(tree, SWT.NONE);
  nameCol.setWidth(60);
  nameCol.setText("Name");

The subclasses override the getInput(), the abstract view includes a switch in the create and LabelProviders to update or ignore the checkbox.

One Perspective to Rule Them All

2007-05-12T10:56:00.000-04:00

I've had a few discussion about the "failings" of the Eclipse perspective model to effectively deal with the complexity of information management within an IDE. While most of his arguments are perfectly loony, he made the point that Eclipse imposes a "Debug Perspective" on you while coding, causing the developer to lose focus as you switch from whatever his main work perspective is. This bugged me enough in the past to create a new window to house the Debug perspective. The new solution:

Porting to RCP

2007-05-12T09:49:00.000-04:00

After taking the charmgr as far as I could with PyGTK, I've decided to port it over to the Eclipse RCP. Whatever its failings, I love the frameworks and architecture, and expertise in Eclipse is marketable. The philosophy is about 180 degrees from Python (I've read many posts lauding Python's lack of rigid frameworks), but being from Java, the RCP is my comfort zone.

Porting the UI was trivial using the Visual Editor (though not nearly as simple as Glade):

I used Derby as a replacement for SQLite, and after populating the Spell tree using straight SQL, I thought I'd look into Hibernate for data access. The Hibernate framework hides the SQL from the code, provides a lot of connection management functionality, and has the added benefit of generating most of the boilerplate DAO code. Unfortunately I ran into an access problem when trying to initialize Hibernate from the RCP:

 private Object getInput() {
  logger.debug("getInput()");

  HibernateUtil.currentSession();

Basically get a ClassNotFoundException on Session. This solved by creating a plugin from the jar and registering it in the MANIFEST.MF.

After flopping around for a bit, I violated good practice and copied the hibernate.cfg.xml file to the root of the org.hibernate plugin. This solved the problem for the short term. I then moved all the dependent jars to their rightful place in the hibernate plugin and as well the creating an org.apache.logging plugin for those libs (so both hibernate and charmgr can access the logging). I cheated again by copying the log4j.xml to the logging plugin to resolve that little classpath issue.

So my current workspace looks like this:

and the main view is now functional:

TiddlyWiki Customization Notes

2007-03-11T17:37:00.000-04:00

TiddlyWiki rocks the house, of course. Fantastic tool for a professional diary, and it's been tweaked for all kinds of tasks. I'm experimenting with using it as an content manager for static media, so I want to remove/hide the sidebar (what contains the search, options, tabs, etc):

1. remove the <div> sidebar stuff:

<div id='sidebar'>\n<div id='sidebarOptions' refresh='content' tiddler='SideBarOptions'></div>\n<div id='sidebarTabs' refresh='content' force='true' tiddler='SideBarTabs'></div>\n</div>\n (249:780)

2. recover the space for the content area:

#displayArea {\n margin: 1em 0em 0em 14em;\n} (247:4250)

The search box is the only thing I'm interested in keeping from the sidebar, so I move it to the MainMenu (right sidebar) simply by adding <<search>> to the content of MainMenu.

Because the content of the wiki will be static (it will eventually be the gateway to CD of deliverable documentation), I want to remove the editor and creation/modification date information on tiddler subtitle found on the ViewTemplate:

\n<div class='subtitle'><span macro='view modifier link'></span>, <span macro='view modified date [[DD MMM YYYY]]'></span> (<span macro='message views.wikified.createdPrompt'></span> <span macro='view created date [[DD MMM YYYY]]'></span>)</div>

I also changed all refs to "tiddler" to "entry" to grow things up a little bit.

I don't like the way the heading are formatted by default, viz. the blue background, so that's the next to go:

background: [[ColorPalette::PrimaryPale]];\n(246,446)

Getting text from a TextView

2007-02-18T11:52:00.000-05:00

It took some searching to see how to get the string contained in a TextView with a string (hint: there's no textview.get_text()), but here's the snippet I came up with:


notes_txt = self.widgets.get_widget('notesTxt').get_buffer()
startiter, enditer = notes_txt.get_bounds()
character = dbaccess.fetch_character(self.char_id)
notes_file = open(character['name'] + "-notes.txt", "w")
notes_file.write(notes_txt.get_text(startiter, enditer))
notes_file.close()

Basically, you have to find the start and end Iters to set the bounds of the text you want.

Populating is trivial:


try:
  notes_file = open(character['name'] + "-notes.txt", "r")
  text = self.widgets.get_widget('notesTxt').get_buffer()
  text.set_text(notes_file.read())
  notes_file.close()
except:
  print "No notes file found: ", character['name'] + \
    "-notes.txt"

Setting the active text on a ComboBox

2007-02-10T12:19:00.000-05:00

I had some trouble finding this on the Interweb, so here's how you set the active text on a ComboBox:

def set_combo_value(self, combo, value):
model=combo.get_model()
for item in model:
if item[0]==value:
combo.set_active_iter(item.iter)
break

Setting the active item by index you can get right off the ComboBox API.

SQLLite Database Browser

2007-02-07T15:04:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice tool for browsing the contents of the Character Manager db:

SQLLite Database Browser

Runs as a single .exe, no dependency downloading nonsense. Excellent work, guys!

Populating a ComboBox

2007-02-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

I'm using Glade to design my UI, which introduced some difficulty in figuring out how to populate my ComboBox (of which there are 2 versions in PyGTK). The PyGTK Tutorial was helpful, and the PyGTK IRC Channel took me the last mile.

The short of it is, a ComboBox works like a TreeView:

# create a store
weapon_store=gtk.ListStore(gobject.TYPE_STRING)
# populate the store
for w in weapon_names:
row=weapon_store.insert_after(None, None)
weapon_store.set_value(row, 0, w)
# get the Glade widget
left_hand_weapon_cbo=self.widgets.get_widget('leftHandWeapon')
left_hand_weapon_cbo.set_model(weapon_store)
# the business bit
cell=gtk.CellRendererText()
left_hand_weapon_cbo.pack_start(cell)
left_hand_weapon_cbo.add_attribute(cell, 'text', 0)
left_hand_weapon_cbo.set_wrap_width(3)

It would be nice if the Glade/PyGTK infrastructure would do more of the work of setting up the widgets with sensible defaults.

Edit Character Screenshot

2007-02-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

Screenshot

2007-01-23T07:06:00.000-05:00

First pass with by-level spell table populated from the character file.

First Thoughts

2007-01-22T13:47:00.000-05:00

Glade is quite nice apart from the GIMP-style multi window UI. It's incredibly frustrating to have a web page with instructions (or another app with a mockup) underneath Glade, then click that app and then have to raise each of the four Glade windows separately. Makes absolutely no sense. A friend of mine suggests that's what multiple desktops are for, but this is a clumsy workaround.

Found a good tutorial on Glade + Python. It's all text, and somewhat outdated, but was the most helpful of the stuff I read.

Kicking the Java Desktop

2007-01-22T10:28:00.000-05:00

This guy makes some disparaging (but empty) comments about Java on the Desktop. It's early days, but my own experience with Python + Glade leaves much to be desired. Java tools are massive levers of productivity, Eclipse foremost among them. Why anyone would prefer working in a bare text editor + commandline is beyond me.

First Post

2007-01-22T10:25:00.000-05:00

This is experimental blog tied to the development Character Manager application. This will be the journal for development (containing editorial content), leaving the wiki for "factual" data. The Character Manager application is a simple UI for managing characters used in the Dungeons and Dragons game. It is inspired by RedBlade, but it's chief purpose is to teach me Python + GTK UI development.