Just to change a bit (and follow Danilo's advice), I've been really busy but I've submitted the article at last.
The last weekend has been quite insane. Sleeping around 2 or 3 hours per night and working the rest of them on this article for the Eclipse Technology eXchange conference to take place at the OOPSLA 2007. The last result was not the best thing ever produced but I am quite happy about it.
Even if it is not accepted, the parallel developed with IDEs and CADs looks promising. Even more since I've read this article (http://sigchi.org/cdg/cdg2.html) where programming environments (IDEs) and CADs/CAMs are joined together in a design software category. Maybe with this kind of support, I can have stronger arguments further on to support my theory that CADs should have a platform to be built on, just like Eclipse is a platform to build IDEs.
I'm sorry since revisions won't help to submit the article since it is gone already but I'm sure Mariana and Alfredo (my co-authors) would be glad if the article was improved only for its own good. For those interested, the article is published at http://nightao.googlepages.com/ArchimedesETX.pdf and you can send me comments, critics and suggestions to my email, through here or any other way you can find.
With the article madness I haven't been able to do anything else so today I've taken my agenda and solved a couple things. Messages about Archimedes at the sourceforge form have been answered at last, emails are almost all solved but I still have to read about 20 articles and hear some 10 podcasts besides the university works that still need to be done. So don't expect many updates here in the next few days.
Changing of subject abruptly: this morning, while coming back from my run (to keep my not-so-round shape), I got this crazy idea. Since Ohloh is being such a success, I was thinking about a trip network just like the Lions club has but for FOSS developers to attend to FOSS conferences all over the world with reduced costs.
The idea is that most FOSS developers really love what they do and would certain attend to every single event where they can meet their idols developers or just their friends. Problem is that this costs more than a lot can afford: plane tickets, hotels, meals, conference entrance, etc...
On the other hand, when there is a FOSS event somewhere in the world, there ought to be more than a couple FOSS developers living in that place. Being so, some of them might be able to host a developer for the conference period. The campaign "Host a FOSS developer" can even be spreaded to FOSS friends or even FOSS grandmothers.
In return of being hosted, the FOSS developer could repay the hosting with commits to some project the hoster points. This way both sides benefit and even get to understand each other's world a bit better. If I get to ellaborate this idea a bit better, I will try to contact Ohloh's guys and maybe organize this. I'm sure some well known developers would love to contribute to such an initiative.
Just to finish this post, the WSL article accepted at the FISL 2007 is already translated. I just need Mariana to revise it because my english is a real crap. As soon as it is decent, I will publish it somewhere and post the link here.
Once I get more info to talk about, I will post again. Let's hope it's not too far from now.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Late as always
Well,
As usual I am very late with everything. But this time, things are a bit more dangerous. I haven't finished the article about archimedes to submit to the Eclipse Technology eXchange (ETX). Worse than that, I am quite stuck with it. Can't write more than 1 paragraph per day currently. A big problem.
Also, I stopped working on last thursday so I should be a bit more active and present from now on. Got a lot of things to do but still I will make an effort to keep this up to date.
I have very few news at the moment about anything. Just a couple things that might interest people from around here:
I've been going to a Coding Dojo that just started in São Paulo (http://groups.google.com/group/dojo_sp). It is a very nice practice that aims to make programmer train their talent just like musicians and sportists do. Our meetings have been very nice and it is helping most of us to learn python and also to be more disciplined. We just changed our schedule to have meetings weekly on wednesday at 20:00 local time.
Also, I just became a student sponsored by the Qualipso project. I will be doing my masters on the lines of the project and, therefore, hope to finish my studies providing a nice set of practices based on agile methods to develop open source software. And, if possible, I hope I will participate in some nice open source development on the next couple years.
Last, but not least, I just joined as a junior member a very nice group called Agilcoop. The groups main purpose is to spread agile methods into the industry to improve the quality of software produced. Got a few nice tasks to do such as learning some Java FX (that's why I've been having codeaches with the eclipse plugin) and learning to write some classes. It promisses to give me work and fun.
Well, I guess this is all I can get you guys now. I hope to write more often from now on but let's see right?
Hugo
As usual I am very late with everything. But this time, things are a bit more dangerous. I haven't finished the article about archimedes to submit to the Eclipse Technology eXchange (ETX). Worse than that, I am quite stuck with it. Can't write more than 1 paragraph per day currently. A big problem.
Also, I stopped working on last thursday so I should be a bit more active and present from now on. Got a lot of things to do but still I will make an effort to keep this up to date.
I have very few news at the moment about anything. Just a couple things that might interest people from around here:
I've been going to a Coding Dojo that just started in São Paulo (http://groups.google.com/group/dojo_sp). It is a very nice practice that aims to make programmer train their talent just like musicians and sportists do. Our meetings have been very nice and it is helping most of us to learn python and also to be more disciplined. We just changed our schedule to have meetings weekly on wednesday at 20:00 local time.
Also, I just became a student sponsored by the Qualipso project. I will be doing my masters on the lines of the project and, therefore, hope to finish my studies providing a nice set of practices based on agile methods to develop open source software. And, if possible, I hope I will participate in some nice open source development on the next couple years.
Last, but not least, I just joined as a junior member a very nice group called Agilcoop. The groups main purpose is to spread agile methods into the industry to improve the quality of software produced. Got a few nice tasks to do such as learning some Java FX (that's why I've been having codeaches with the eclipse plugin) and learning to write some classes. It promisses to give me work and fun.
Well, I guess this is all I can get you guys now. I hope to write more often from now on but let's see right?
Hugo
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Selection service, archimedes and docs
Once again I am too late to keep my old pace. Anyway, the end of the semester is always very time consuming.
Anyway, I would like to comment on a few things about RCP today.
I learned a few stuff about it lately. First thing is that there is a very nice tutorial about it at http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-WorkbenchSelections/article.html. The other thing is that this selection service can be quite useful if you start working with it from scratch.
Archimedes didn't, until now, had anything to do with that service and refactoring it to use the service will be another big work. With this, there are now 5 tasks that have top importance:
I should be getting more time to write here and to code during the next semester since I am quitting my job to dedicate to my masters.
The development speed, however, will probably not improve a lot since I am now almost on my own to code. I might get some help from one or two volunteers but it won't be enough to keep the pace from last semester.
Apart from that, regarding documentation. I finished translating an article I wrote with Mariana last semester for the FISL. She needs to read it and correct all my numerous mistakes but the big boring part (translating) is done.
In the same subject, we are preparing another article in English to present Archimedes at the Eclipse Technology eXchange that will be held at the OOPSLA 2007 in October at Montreal. Once we finished it, I will release it somewhere on the net and post the link. If I can, I will try to do it one week before the submission date so that I can hear critics.
Basically that is it. I wish I would write here more often since I probably don't post all I could and would like to. But, hey, it's life right? So seen you soon (hopefully).
Anyway, I would like to comment on a few things about RCP today.
I learned a few stuff about it lately. First thing is that there is a very nice tutorial about it at http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-WorkbenchSelections/article.html. The other thing is that this selection service can be quite useful if you start working with it from scratch.
Archimedes didn't, until now, had anything to do with that service and refactoring it to use the service will be another big work. With this, there are now 5 tasks that have top importance:
- Remodel the intersection finder system
- Re implement persistence support with XML/Arc, images, pdf and svg.
- Refactor Archimedes to make it profit from RCP's selection service.
- Adapt Archimedes and its plugins to be built with maven.
- Improve Developer support and User support.
I should be getting more time to write here and to code during the next semester since I am quitting my job to dedicate to my masters.
The development speed, however, will probably not improve a lot since I am now almost on my own to code. I might get some help from one or two volunteers but it won't be enough to keep the pace from last semester.
Apart from that, regarding documentation. I finished translating an article I wrote with Mariana last semester for the FISL. She needs to read it and correct all my numerous mistakes but the big boring part (translating) is done.
In the same subject, we are preparing another article in English to present Archimedes at the Eclipse Technology eXchange that will be held at the OOPSLA 2007 in October at Montreal. Once we finished it, I will release it somewhere on the net and post the link. If I can, I will try to do it one week before the submission date so that I can hear critics.
Basically that is it. I wish I would write here more often since I probably don't post all I could and would like to. But, hey, it's life right? So seen you soon (hopefully).
Monday, June 25, 2007
ToolBar paths and Archimedes news
The end of the semester is always a disaster. Tons of things to do and not enough time.
For once I don't have tons of tests, the only hard work is to maintain the job, the work on Archimedes, the studies and the corrections going.
Anyway, enough complaining.
I got some news about Archimedes:
This release is coming to an end but I am proud to say that most of the work that should have been done is complete. There are a few details missing but those are mostly related to difficulties we are finding with RCP.
Both the import and the export feature that will become the save and open one are finished, all that is left to do is to integrate this with the platform so that the users can enjoy all the flexibility of Eclipse's wizards.
Also, Mariana is now responsible for releasing updates for the old 0.17.x version and get our bug fixes and new features ported to that platform until the RCP one is not perfect. I wish her luck and hope to see a lot of report from you guys when she does.
Most of the reported bugs have been correct so far and I even learned how to organize the action icons on the toolbar. This means that, from now on, Archimedes' toolbar will be a bit more organized than it was before.
Since I found absolutely NO documentation about this, I wanted to write a little bit about how to make it work. It is quite simple but worth saying.
Mainly, when you extend
Regarding the latter, you will find almost nothing. I've search a lot and very little is published to explain you one very tiny and simple thing: It works EXACTLY the same way. May sound stupid for me to say it like that but if you have no documentation or example, this may not be evident because when you create
I am pasting a simplified version of the
and
With those method set up, you can add plugins (or just your RCP application xml descriptor) that use those paths:
If you just add a couple more of those plugins, you will see that all the actions will be grouped both on the menu and on the toolbar.
And that's about it for now. Have fun guys.
For once I don't have tons of tests, the only hard work is to maintain the job, the work on Archimedes, the studies and the corrections going.
Anyway, enough complaining.
I got some news about Archimedes:
This release is coming to an end but I am proud to say that most of the work that should have been done is complete. There are a few details missing but those are mostly related to difficulties we are finding with RCP.
Both the import and the export feature that will become the save and open one are finished, all that is left to do is to integrate this with the platform so that the users can enjoy all the flexibility of Eclipse's wizards.
Also, Mariana is now responsible for releasing updates for the old 0.17.x version and get our bug fixes and new features ported to that platform until the RCP one is not perfect. I wish her luck and hope to see a lot of report from you guys when she does.
Most of the reported bugs have been correct so far and I even learned how to organize the action icons on the toolbar. This means that, from now on, Archimedes' toolbar will be a bit more organized than it was before.
Since I found absolutely NO documentation about this, I wanted to write a little bit about how to make it work. It is quite simple but worth saying.
Mainly, when you extend
org.eclipse.ui.actionSet and create an action, you can add two attributes: menubarPath and toolbarPath. The first one is quite decently documented so you can find several tutorial that will explain you that you should add some MenuManagers in your ApplicationActionBarAdvisor and then refer to the paths you set on those managers to decide where the actions should appear.Regarding the latter, you will find almost nothing. I've search a lot and very little is published to explain you one very tiny and simple thing: It works EXACTLY the same way. May sound stupid for me to say it like that but if you have no documentation or example, this may not be evident because when you create
ToolBarManagers, you cannot add slots within those to specify boxes where the actions should appear. However, you must pretend that you did. In most cases, this will mean that you will simply copy paste whatever you did on the menubarPath to the toolbarPath.I am pasting a simplified version of the
fillMenuBar method and the fillCoolBar one as well as a couple of plugins that add actions to those slots.
protected void fillCoolBar (ICoolBarManager coolBar) {
IToolBarManager fileBar = new ToolBarManager(coolBar.getStyle());
coolBar.add(new ToolBarContributionItem(fileBar, "file"));
}
and
protected void fillMenuBar (IMenuManager menuBar) {
MenuManager fileMng = new MenuManager("File", "file");
fileMng.add(new GroupMarker("start"));
fileMng.add(new Separator());
fileMng.add(new GroupMarker("end"));
menuBar.add(fileMng);
}
With those method set up, you can add plugins (or just your RCP application xml descriptor) that use those paths:
<actionSet description="The action set containing some file actions."
id="br.org.archimedes.example.actionSet" label="File Action Set"
visible="true">
<action icon="icons/my_icon.png" style="push"
id="br.org.archimedes.example.action"
label="My Action" tooltip="An example action"
menubarPath="file/end"
class="br.org.archimedes.example.MyAction"
toolbarPath="file/end"/>
</actionset>
If you just add a couple more of those plugins, you will see that all the actions will be grouped both on the menu and on the toolbar.
And that's about it for now. Have fun guys.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
A tutorial for programmer
I think I will just have to admit that no mather how often I hope to publish news on this blog, I will always be late. But the fact is, running late is the only thing that pushes me to write here so I will keep trying to keep a reasonable pace and I will keep complaining about being late. I hope you guys don't mind.
As for now, I have some news although not many. Archimedes is quite stuck this week since today (thursday) is a holiday and it was half of our programming time. The other half was monday and we didn't used it to program for once. It was burned down making up a talk and a demonstration about how to develop plugins for Archimedes.
I've tried to keep all the documents in english so I could share them later on the internet but I still have a big work to do: the screencast.
The talk was composed of three parts, two of which I made and the first one was made by an Archimedes collaborator (Julien Renaut). It is mostly focused on programming problems and how people can add features to Archimedes. His talk was about extensions and extension points which are some concepts used by eRCP to allow plugins to add functionality to the main software. His work was done in Portuguese but I will translate it and insert it into the main talk I will upload.
The second part was my talk which was a lot more about Archimedes and how our main structure works. It tries to let people understand the flow of information within the software. It has a couple of "UML" (those are not really UML but kind of) figures and a nice review about Archimedes' main classes. I need to add the notes on this talk so that people can look at the talk and understand what I was trying to talk about.
The third and last part was a small example of how to create a plugin project that would add a new element to the software. This is quite a long work and I want to have a screencast of that with my voice explaining what is going on. So it will probably take me some time (maybe a month) to have it all working fine.
Also, there is a volunteer architect building up a user guide much better than anything we could ever produce. It is currently ongoing and is in Portuguese but as soon as it is finished, I will ask for help on translating this to several languages.
Speaking of languages, I am getting desperate to have Archimedes' build system working with maven 2 has said before. This would allow me to have a src.zip deploy once more as well as a nice translation zip file to have people translating the software more frequently and easily.
So that's what I've been doing. I've also been working hard to try to solve the problems from the uva gadget but I've been failing a lot which is not really keeping my moral up. :( Also, my desktop seems to have died on me. This doesn't means many loses at the moment but makes me quite upset and will probably take me some precious time to fix. Until then I might just not have anything to test Archimedes on Windows or Linux so I hope you guys keep sending us reports.
That's it. Bye bye!
As for now, I have some news although not many. Archimedes is quite stuck this week since today (thursday) is a holiday and it was half of our programming time. The other half was monday and we didn't used it to program for once. It was burned down making up a talk and a demonstration about how to develop plugins for Archimedes.
I've tried to keep all the documents in english so I could share them later on the internet but I still have a big work to do: the screencast.
The talk was composed of three parts, two of which I made and the first one was made by an Archimedes collaborator (Julien Renaut). It is mostly focused on programming problems and how people can add features to Archimedes. His talk was about extensions and extension points which are some concepts used by eRCP to allow plugins to add functionality to the main software. His work was done in Portuguese but I will translate it and insert it into the main talk I will upload.
The second part was my talk which was a lot more about Archimedes and how our main structure works. It tries to let people understand the flow of information within the software. It has a couple of "UML" (those are not really UML but kind of) figures and a nice review about Archimedes' main classes. I need to add the notes on this talk so that people can look at the talk and understand what I was trying to talk about.
The third and last part was a small example of how to create a plugin project that would add a new element to the software. This is quite a long work and I want to have a screencast of that with my voice explaining what is going on. So it will probably take me some time (maybe a month) to have it all working fine.
Also, there is a volunteer architect building up a user guide much better than anything we could ever produce. It is currently ongoing and is in Portuguese but as soon as it is finished, I will ask for help on translating this to several languages.
Speaking of languages, I am getting desperate to have Archimedes' build system working with maven 2 has said before. This would allow me to have a src.zip deploy once more as well as a nice translation zip file to have people translating the software more frequently and easily.
So that's what I've been doing. I've also been working hard to try to solve the problems from the uva gadget but I've been failing a lot which is not really keeping my moral up. :( Also, my desktop seems to have died on me. This doesn't means many loses at the moment but makes me quite upset and will probably take me some precious time to fix. Until then I might just not have anything to test Archimedes on Windows or Linux so I hope you guys keep sending us reports.
That's it. Bye bye!
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
A new release for Archimedes
Hello,
I'm amost late AGAIN. At least this proves me something: I surely prefer tons of things before writing down to this blog. Sad but true, I'm not a writter, I'm a programmer.
Anyway, yesterday I've released the latest version of Archimedes concentrating several features I've been talking about such as Text, dimension, layers, etc...
We already found about 6 or 7 bugs during our demonstration to the architects that help us but this is only a proof that we should release unstable versions and have more people testing it. I hope make this possible by using maven to control Archimedes build and tests as well as the deploy system. Don't know for sure when this is going to happen but I will work on it in July.
I've tried to test the install system and the zip files on all three platforms and I believe everything is working fine but PLEASE tell me if something goes wrong.
Changing the subject, I've found out today how to write google gadgets and how fun this can be. I felt the need to find a gadget that would show me a UVa problem from the ACM contest each day so I could train a bit more since I wish to show a better performance on the local contest here in São Paulo this year. Looking up on their search system gave me nothing so I decided I could write my create my own gadget since Google has been asking people to do so since they renamed the personalized home to iGoogle. Checking out that feature I discovered it is only a very limited gadget factory aimed to non programmers but there I found the link I added at the begining of the paragraph.
I understood how the system worked (quite simple, it is just xml parsed into HTML code with javascript) and wrote my own gadget. I used google's users page to upload my gadget and there you go: http://nightao.googlepages.com/uvaGadget.xml. I still wish to add tons of features such as a user id preference that would make the gadget load only problems you haven't solved. Maybe parse the site to create 3 tabs with description, input, output and maybe another one to submit a solution. I got tons of ideas and with Javascript, almost anything can be done (although it is very hard to design and debug it). For those of you who use google's personalized home, I do suggest you take a look on how to build your own gadget because I can bet there are gadget you would like to have that does not exists.
That's it for now,
Bye bye
I'm amost late AGAIN. At least this proves me something: I surely prefer tons of things before writing down to this blog. Sad but true, I'm not a writter, I'm a programmer.
Anyway, yesterday I've released the latest version of Archimedes concentrating several features I've been talking about such as Text, dimension, layers, etc...
We already found about 6 or 7 bugs during our demonstration to the architects that help us but this is only a proof that we should release unstable versions and have more people testing it. I hope make this possible by using maven to control Archimedes build and tests as well as the deploy system. Don't know for sure when this is going to happen but I will work on it in July.
I've tried to test the install system and the zip files on all three platforms and I believe everything is working fine but PLEASE tell me if something goes wrong.
Changing the subject, I've found out today how to write google gadgets and how fun this can be. I felt the need to find a gadget that would show me a UVa problem from the ACM contest each day so I could train a bit more since I wish to show a better performance on the local contest here in São Paulo this year. Looking up on their search system gave me nothing so I decided I could write my create my own gadget since Google has been asking people to do so since they renamed the personalized home to iGoogle. Checking out that feature I discovered it is only a very limited gadget factory aimed to non programmers but there I found the link I added at the begining of the paragraph.
I understood how the system worked (quite simple, it is just xml parsed into HTML code with javascript) and wrote my own gadget. I used google's users page to upload my gadget and there you go: http://nightao.googlepages.com/uvaGadget.xml. I still wish to add tons of features such as a user id preference that would make the gadget load only problems you haven't solved. Maybe parse the site to create 3 tabs with description, input, output and maybe another one to submit a solution. I got tons of ideas and with Javascript, almost anything can be done (although it is very hard to design and debug it). For those of you who use google's personalized home, I do suggest you take a look on how to build your own gadget because I can bet there are gadget you would like to have that does not exists.
That's it for now,
Bye bye
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Last week of release
Ok! I AM late!
I admit it. But at least I remembered.
Anyways...
Haven't got tons of news. We are entering the last week of iteration and basically this will be devoted to improve the software in a programmer point of view. This means we won't be adding features. The work planned is to improve the software's tests (that are kind of messy since the migration) and maybe focus on a better build system using maven2. I should release the version 0.52.0 late on Sunday or maybe early on Monday.
I could already give some insights. The first one is that we will be using the recently published truetype fonts from RedHat since they are compatible with the Windows core fonts and are GPL compatible. Those will be distributed with Archimedes to ensure full compatibility across platforms. I would like to thank gtroza for this tip.
The other one is not so good. We will not be delivering any persistence system yet. The old xml persistence system that existed previously is not yet ported to this new architecture because we are figuring a way to make it flexible enough to fit all our requirements. The PDF export is not ready either... Those will probably be the highest priority in the next release so it should be done in a month.
Mainly that is it about Archimedes. The rest I have talked about on the last few weeks.
I will probably not post any other news for the rest of the week since I will focus on having the release decently ready and tested not to have as many problems as last time. Again, no screenshot since you will be able to see the news by yourselves!
Bye Bye!
I admit it. But at least I remembered.
Anyways...
Haven't got tons of news. We are entering the last week of iteration and basically this will be devoted to improve the software in a programmer point of view. This means we won't be adding features. The work planned is to improve the software's tests (that are kind of messy since the migration) and maybe focus on a better build system using maven2. I should release the version 0.52.0 late on Sunday or maybe early on Monday.
I could already give some insights. The first one is that we will be using the recently published truetype fonts from RedHat since they are compatible with the Windows core fonts and are GPL compatible. Those will be distributed with Archimedes to ensure full compatibility across platforms. I would like to thank gtroza for this tip.
The other one is not so good. We will not be delivering any persistence system yet. The old xml persistence system that existed previously is not yet ported to this new architecture because we are figuring a way to make it flexible enough to fit all our requirements. The PDF export is not ready either... Those will probably be the highest priority in the next release so it should be done in a month.
Mainly that is it about Archimedes. The rest I have talked about on the last few weeks.
I will probably not post any other news for the rest of the week since I will focus on having the release decently ready and tested not to have as many problems as last time. Again, no screenshot since you will be able to see the news by yourselves!
Bye Bye!
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