Update

My life continues apace. At the moment, I’m looking for a job for the summer and onward1 , hopes fairly high. Going to Hawaii on Tuesday2.

Trends:

  • obsessive behavior
  • competence?
  • health?

An example of the first is the playing of this game. Probably I get in at least one game a day, usually more. A game will usually last an hour, but some games go much longer. Also, my computer is supposed to prevent me from typing/mousing for more than hour, and I will click to bypass its 3 minute break message for hours on end. You read me? Sometimes, say at periods like this when I’m trying to get on to the next thing, I “invest” my mind in the internet, just as during the semester I invested it in academic philosophy. That is, I try to catchup with the flow of information, trends, etc., at least in the domains I care about (mostly opensource software and some world affairs). What really happens is that my hands start hurting and I lose my attention span.

My sense of the second comes from a sudden improvement in my ability to “see” code. I made this portfolio site to show potential employers. It’s in PHP, which I don’t really know, but it’s logic, so I can hack out something like that with a little investigation of the syntax and standard libraries. I’ve also been writing a userspace driver for a usb device (the famous AgileLamp USB Lava Lamp!), which has been a really mysterious, frustrating process where I’ve ended up experimenting with several language bindings for the woefully under-documented libusb library. I ended up falling back to the original C library itself, and found that it’s no more or less understandable as logic than Ruby or Python (although as human-readable code C sucks). So it’s a sense of, if it’s code then it’s hackable. During the spring semester I got this way with writing philosophy papers, since these papers are all supposedly supposed to be publishable. I can take apart a topic and discuss it in a learned fashion for 15+ pages3. I’d like to get this way with electronics and maybe languages4.

By the last I only mean that I really enjoy riding around town on my bike. I have a route to school and can get to a couple interesting neighborhoods from my home. By health I do not mean not eating Jalapeno Cheetoses. Also, Amy and I found a very cheap pizza place that delivers, called Maximum Flavor. Their flavor truly cannot be surpassed. Attempts have been made, and all have failed, with tragic, often fatal, results. Pretty good pizza.

Anyways5, I’ll try to write here more, generally on more limited, technical topics, because “I’m just not that disclosive”6. Look at the timestamp on this post and you’ll get a sense of where I’m at, psychophysically. My wrists hurt and my eyes are burning/droopy.

---

  1. I will learn the formal rule for when to use onward vs. onwards. [back]
  2. Because I am wealthy and carefree. [back]
  3. Which points to how silly “philosophy” is as a discrete academic domain. So just say this: all knowledge-endeavor is in the domain of philosophy, but not all endeavors are sufficiently philosophically reflective. This means: there shouldn’t be any philosophy grads, but other disciplines should be required to be much deeper about what they’re doing, e.g., law. [back]
  4. I know my best years for this are behind me. sniff [back]
  5. I will learn the formal rule for when to use anyway vs. anyways. [back]
  6. As Joe is wont to say about himself [back]

Setup for Alexandria Development: III

The following code requires Alexandria trunk. For more information see Cathal’s article. You can get this file here or as a full gem source package through svn:

svn co http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/svn/alexandria/trunk/readinglist .
$:.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__)
 
=begin
 
This is a sample (but useable) app for maintaining a reading list that takes
its reading options directly from Alexandria. At the moment it allows you to
move books to the reading list, remove them, mark them as read, and reorder
them. It's commented so as to be a kind of tutorial. The reader is encouraged
to play with it and try to add functionality. 
 
This code demonstrates some of the most common operations in a Gtk app:
creating menus, hooking up a treeview and syncing it to data, and widget
packing. Of these, working with the TreeView will probably be the most
confusing. The basic concept behind treeviews is that a treeview is the
graphical widget that administers a "store" or short-term database (usually
either a ListStore or a TreeStore) which in turn is concerned with managing
either a list-like or tree-like structure of TreeIters. In the case of a
ListStore, a TreeIter represents a row that you see in the TreeView, and the
indices of the TreeIter (like iter[0], etc.) return the values for the columns
in that row. One thing to know about GTK Iter objects is that they like to get
"invalidated" whenever the managing View changes, so for example if you get the
iter for the user's selection of the third row of a TreeView and store it for
later, you'll find that the iter itself (as opposed to its TreePath, or
"absolute" location) is no longer available. Clear? It's definitely recommended
that you take a look at this tutorial:
 
http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?tut-treeview
 
=end
 
module Readinglist
  require 'yaml'
  require 'alexandria'
  require 'gtk2'
 
  class ReadingListApp
    FILE_FORMAT = {:to_read => [], :have_read => []}
    READING_LIST_FILE = File.join(ENV["HOME"], ".reading_list.yml" )
 
    # I try to decompose methods as much as possible to show the procedural
    # skeleton of the program. I name the methods to read like sentences. 
 
    def initialize
      load_reading_list
      get_books
      setup_gui
      load_books_into_listview
    end
 
    # We use YAML as the "serialization" strategy. That is, we make sure a hash
    # is stored in a file in the user's home directory. We load it into memory,
    # manipulate it, and always make sure to sync it back to the file. This is
    # exactly how books are loaded in Alexandria. Alexandria even stores the
    # class instance to the file. 
 
    def load_reading_list
      unless File.exist?(READING_LIST_FILE)
        File.open(READING_LIST_FILE, 'w') do |file|
          file.write(FILE_FORMAT.to_yaml)
        end
      end
      database = YAML.load_file(File.join(ENV["HOME"], ".reading_list.yml" ))
      @reading_list = database[:to_read]
      @have_read = database[:have_read]
      puts @reading_list.inspect
    end
 
    # I have to make sure the listview and the data store are in sync, and I
    # want to make sure that when the program finishes the latest changes are
    # committed to file. This could get too expensive with enough books,
    # though. In Alexandria, some changes happen immediately (changes in book
    # attributes, covers) while others only occur on a clean program shutdown
    # (deleting, saving certain preferences).
 
    def save_to_yaml
      database = FILE_FORMAT
      database[:to_read] = @reading_list 
      database[:have_read] = @have_read 
      File.open(READING_LIST_FILE, 'w') do |file|
        file.write(database.to_yaml)
      end
    end
 
    # I initialize the Libraries simpleton (available through the above
    # require) and ask it to reload its list of libaries. Then the loadall class
    # method on Library gives me an array of arrays of books, which I then
    # flatten; that is, make into one long array. 
 
    def get_books
      libraries_simpleton = Alexandria::Libraries.instance
      libraries_simpleton.reload
      libraries = Alexandria::Library.loadall
      @books = libraries.flatten
    end
 
    # More declarative-style methods for erecting the GUI. This type of code
    # ends up being very mechanical to write, which is why people like to use
    # tools like Glade. In fact, keeping this gui layout code in the open is
    # probably a better idea for long-term maintenance. 
 
    def setup_gui
      setup_window
      setup_menus
      setup_current_reading_list
      setup_available_books_list 
      refresh_reading_list
      Alexandria::UI::Icons.init
      setup_callbacks
      @window.show_all # This needs to be called after widgets are packed. 
    end
 
    # For information on packing, see
    # http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?tut-gtk2-packing-intro . Here
    # @window, which can only contain one child widget, gets a VBox. I'll put
    # several widgets inside @vbox, including more "container" widgets (like
    # HBox), in which I put yet more widgets.
 
    def setup_window
      @window = Gtk::Window.new("Reading List")
      @window.set_width_request(800)
      @window.set_height_request(600)
      @window.add(@vbox = Gtk::VBox.new)
    end
 
    # For information on callbacks in Gtk see
    # http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?tut-gtk-signals . Ruby-gnome2
    # callbacks use the Ruby do/end block syntax. Since I don't like to define
    # the callback method inside the block, I use the method() function to turn
    # the method into a proc, and use the & syntax for passing in a "proc"
    # object to the block.
 
    def setup_callbacks
      @available_treeview.signal_connect("row-activated", &method(:on_row_activated))
      @window.signal_connect("delete-event", &method(:on_quit))      
    end
 
    # Pretty straight-forward, if wordy. The ImageMenuItems can use a
    # Gtk::Stock:: constant to save some work and get pretty icons. :expand =>
    # false is used to keep widgets from bulging out.
 
    def setup_menus
      @vbox.add(menubar = Gtk::MenuBar.new, :expand => false)
      menubar.append(file_menu = Gtk::MenuItem.new("_File"))
      menubar.append(edit_menu = Gtk::MenuItem.new("_Edit"))
      menubar.append(help_menu = Gtk::MenuItem.new("_Help"))
      file_menu.submenu = file_submenu = Gtk::Menu.new 
      edit_menu.submenu = edit_submenu = Gtk::Menu.new 
      help_menu.submenu = help_submenu = Gtk::Menu.new 
      file_submenu.add(Gtk::ImageMenuItem.new(Gtk::Stock::SAVE_AS))
      file_submenu.add(quit_item = Gtk::ImageMenuItem.new(Gtk::Stock::QUIT))
      quit_item.signal_connect("activate", &method(:on_quit))
      edit_submenu.add(Gtk::MenuItem.new("Mark selected _read"))
      help_submenu.add(about_submenu = Gtk::ImageMenuItem.new(Gtk::Stock::ABOUT))
    end
 
    # To setup the "current reading list" on top. The TreeView is connected
    # directly to the ListStore, but the TreeViewColumns and the CellRenderer*s
    # connected to them are responsible for telling the TreeView _how_ to
    # display the data within the ListStore. The argument :text => n is a
    # shorthand to tell the TreeViewColumn to associate with a position or
    # index in the TreeIter (row).
 
    def setup_current_reading_list
      @vbox.add(Gtk::Label.new("Books I am reading:"), :expand => false)
      @vbox.add(hbox = Gtk::HBox.new)
      hbox.add(scrolley1 = Gtk::ScrolledWindow.new)
      hbox.add(@button_vbox = Gtk::VButtonBox.new, :expand => false)
      setup_side_buttons
      scrolley1.add(@reading_treeview = Gtk::TreeView.new)
      @reading_treeview.model = @reading_store = Gtk::ListStore.new(Integer, String, String)
      renderer = Gtk::CellRendererText.new 
      reading_column1 = Gtk::TreeViewColumn.new("Order", renderer, :text => 0)
      @reading_treeview.append_column(reading_column1)
      reading_column2 = Gtk::TreeViewColumn.new("Title", renderer, :text => 1)
      @reading_treeview.append_column(reading_column2)
      reading_column3 = Gtk::TreeViewColumn.new("Author", renderer, :text => 2)
      @reading_treeview.append_column(reading_column3)
    end
 
    def setup_side_buttons
      @button_vbox.layout_style = Gtk::VButtonBox::START 
      @button_vbox.add(up_button = Gtk::Button.new(Gtk::Stock::GO_UP))
      @button_vbox.add(down_button = Gtk::Button.new(Gtk::Stock::GO_DOWN))
      @button_vbox.add(read_button = Gtk::Button.new("Read"))
      @button_vbox.add(remove_button = Gtk::Button.new(Gtk::Stock::REMOVE))
      up_button.signal_connect("clicked", &method(:on_click_up))
      down_button.signal_connect("clicked", &method(:on_click_down))
      remove_button.signal_connect("clicked", &method(:on_click_remove))
      read_button.signal_connect("clicked", &method(:on_click_read))
    end
 
    # Same as above, except with the added wrinkle that a TreeModelSort, using
    # a TreeModelFilter, is acting as a kind of proxy for the ListStore. This
    # is to support sorting of columns. This code is ripped off wholesale from
    # Alexandria.  
 
    def setup_available_books_list
      @vbox.add(Gtk::Label.new("Available books:"), :expand => false)
      @vbox.add(scrolley2 = Gtk::ScrolledWindow.new)
      scrolley2.add(@available_treeview = Gtk::TreeView.new)
 
      @list_store = Gtk::ListStore.new(Gdk::Pixbuf, String, String)
      @filter = Gtk::TreeModelFilter.new(@list_store)
      @available_treeview.model = @available_books_model = Gtk::TreeModelSort.new(@filter)
 
      setup_available_books_title_column
 
      renderer = Gtk::CellRendererText.new
      column2 = Gtk::TreeViewColumn.new("Author", renderer, :text => 2)
      column2.resizable = true
      column2.sort_column_id = 2
      @available_treeview.append_column(column2)
    end
 
    # This TreeViewColumn has two widgets, a CellRendererPixbuf for the book's
    # icon, and a regular CellRendererText for the book's Title. I have to tell
    # the CellRendererPixBuf how to display itself int the set_cell_data_func.
    # The convert_iter_to_child_iter is some kind of bookkeeping for the
    # TreeModelFilter.
 
    def setup_available_books_title_column
      column = Gtk::TreeViewColumn.new("Title")
 
      renderer = Gtk::CellRendererPixbuf.new 
      column.sizing = Gtk::TreeViewColumn::FIXED
      column.fixed_width = 200 
      column.widget = Gtk::Label.new("Title").show
      column.pack_start(renderer, expand = false)
      column.set_cell_data_func(renderer) do |column, cell, model, iter|
        iter = @available_treeview.model.convert_iter_to_child_iter(iter)
        iter = @filter.convert_iter_to_child_iter(iter)
        cell.pixbuf = iter[0]
      end
 
      renderer = Gtk::CellRendererText.new
      renderer.ellipsize = Pango::ELLIPSIZE_END if Pango.ellipsizable?
      column.pack_start(renderer, expand = true)
      column.add_attribute(renderer, :text, 1)
      column.sort_column_id = 1
      column.resizable = true
 
      @available_treeview.append_column(column)
    end
 
    # This supplies the actual data to @available_treeview. Icons.cover creates
    # a Gdk::PixBuf (image object) from cover files stored in the .alexandria
    # directory.
 
    def load_books_into_listview
      @books.each do |book|
        icon = Alexandria::UI::Icons.cover(book.library, book)
        icon = icon.scale(20,25) 
        iter= @list_store.append
        iter[0] = icon 
        iter[1] = book.title
        iter[2] = book.authors.join(" ")
      end
    end
 
    # Call this when you want to repopulate and reorder the reading_list. 
 
    def refresh_reading_list 
      @count = 0
      @reading_store.clear
      @reading_list.each do |item| 
        iter = @reading_store.append # Gets a new iter (row) to work with.
        iter[0] = @count += 1
        iter[1] = item[0]
        iter[2] = item[1]
      end
    end
 
    # @reading_treeview.selection.selected is the iter of the selected row. 
 
    def on_click_remove widget
      selection = @reading_treeview.selection.selected
      @reading_list.delete_at(selection[0].to_i - 1)
      save_to_yaml
      refresh_reading_list
    end
 
    def on_click_read widget
      selection = @reading_treeview.selection.selected
      @have_read << @reading_list.delete_at(selection[0].to_i - 1)
      save_to_yaml
      refresh_reading_list
    end
 
    # The idea is to swap the iters in the TreeView and mirror the swap in the
    # reading list. The iter's path is like its current map coordinates. Since
    # iters are always getting invalidated, it's a good plan to work with the
    # path. 
 
    def on_click_up widget
      selection = @reading_treeview.selection.selected
      position = selection[0].to_i - 1
      previous_path = selection.path
      previous_path.prev!
      previous = @reading_store.get_iter(previous_path)
      @reading_store.move_before(selection, previous)
      unless (position - 1) < 0
        @reading_list.insert(position - 1, @reading_list.delete_at(position))
        refresh_reading_list
      end
      @reading_treeview.selection.select_path(previous_path)
    end
 
    # on_click_up and on_click_down call for refactoring to reduce duplicated
    # code. Try it for yourself if you're interested.  
 
    def on_click_down widget
      selection = @reading_treeview.selection.selected
      position = selection[0].to_i - 1
      previous_path = selection.path
      after_path = selection.path 
      after_path.next!
      after = @reading_store.get_iter(after_path) 
      unless (position + 1) == @reading_list.length
        @reading_store.move_after(selection, after)
        @reading_list.insert(position + 1, @reading_list.delete_at(position))
        refresh_reading_list
        @reading_treeview.selection.select_path(after_path)
      end
    end
 
    # This is the callback for when a row in the lower available books listview
    # gets clicked.
 
    def on_row_activated widget, path, column
      iter = @available_treeview.model.get_iter(path)
      puts "#{iter[0]} #{iter[1]} #{iter[2]}"
      reading_list_item = []
      reading_iter = @reading_store.append 
      reading_iter[0] = @count += 1
      reading_iter[1] = iter[1]
      reading_list_item << iter[1]
      reading_iter[2] = iter[2]
      reading_list_item << iter[2]
      @reading_list << reading_list_item 
      save_to_yaml
    end
 
    # This method is called when the window is closed and when the quit menu
    # option is activated. Event is used for when the window connects to the
    # 'delete-event' signal and requires both parameters. Gtk.main_quit kills
    # the Gtk.main loop. 
 
    def on_quit widget, event = nil
      Gtk.main_quit
    end
  end
 
  def self.main
    ReadingListApp.new
    Gtk.main
  end
end
 
=begin
 
Some features that could be added: 
 
* connect up menu items 
* figure out how save to... works; does it export to one specific format or
  several?  
* Not a feature, but can the code be made cleaner, cleaner, more testable? 
* Something indescribably awesome...
 
A couple random tips: 
 
install ruby-debug gem to step through this code to see how it works
See http://cheat.errtheblog.com/s/rdebug/ for more information
 
install the utility_belt gem for colorized irb and add  
 
require 'rubygems'
require 'utility_belt'
 
to a file ~/.irbrc
 
=end
 
if __FILE__ == $0
  Readinglist.main
end

Setup for Alexandria Development: Part II

(…after too much grief today installing Mephisto and mucking with Apache virtualhosts; I’ll get Part I back from the ether eventually) Update: Done. Update: This is a post moved over from the short-lived Mephisto blog, and ported back in time.

First of all, the alexandria binary is just a ruby script that does a require ‘alexandria’ and runs Alexandria.main.

Alexandria.main is a method on the Alexandria ‘module’ that is used throughout the code (modules are ‘namespaces’ to avoid naming conflicts). This method is found in lib/alexandria.rb:

As you should be able to see, this method isn’t doing anything but setting up some global variables (like $DEBUG) and logging, and doing something weird with http_proxy. The real line is Alexandria::UI.main. That’s in lib/alexandria/ui.rb:

module Pango
  def self.ellipsizable?
    @ellipsizable ||= Pango.constants.include?('ELLIPSIZE_END')
  end
end
 
module Alexandria
  module UI
    def self.main
      Gnome::Program.new('alexandria', VERSION).app_datadir =
        Config::MAIN_DATA_DIR
      Icons.init
      MainApp.new
      Gtk.main
    end
  end
end

Gtk.main is the main loop of a gtk program. You set up your windows and widgets before running it, and it makes them all spin until you exit. So, after Icons.init runs (guess what that does), MainApp.new does all the work from now on.

The Pango code above this is interesting for seeing some Ruby syntax and features. Pango is a text-rendering and layout library inside gtk. The code is adding an elipsizable? “question” method (return true/false) to the Pango module. self.elipsizable? means that it’s defining a class method, a method on a class that doesn’t depend on instance data. ||= is a way of saying, “set the variable to this unless it’s already been set to something else (ie, it’s not nil)”.

Unfortunately, MainApp.new is in the massive MainApp class at lib/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb. This class does a lot (too much). The main thing it does is handle all the callbacks from the main window and its widgets. Let’s just take a look at the top:

 
module Alexandria
  module UI
    class MainApp < GladeBase
      attr_accessor :main_app, :actiongroup, :appbar
      include Logging
      include GetText
      GetText.bindtextdomain(Alexandria::TEXTDOMAIN, nil, nil, "UTF-8")
 
      module Columns
        COVER_LIST, COVER_ICON, TITLE, TITLE_REDUCED, AUTHORS,
        ISBN, PUBLISHER, PUBLISH_DATE, EDITION, RATING, IDENT,
        NOTES, REDD, OWN, WANT, TAGS = (0..16).to_a
      end
 
      # The maximum number of rating stars displayed.
      MAX_RATING_STARS = 5
 
      def initialize
        super("main_app.glade")
        @prefs = Preferences.instance
        load_libraries
        initialize_ui
        on_books_selection_changed
        restore_preferences
      end
    #... snip
    end
    # ... snip
  end
end

A couple points here. MainApp inherits from GladeBase. The attr_accessor is a declaration that makes the @main_app, @actiongroup and @appbar instance variables publicly readable and settable. super(“main_app.glade”) calls the initialize method on GladeBase with the glade file that contains the definitions for all the widgets Alexandria uses. The names of the methods tell you about what they do (good!). Because these methods need to know about what the user’s preferences are, @prefs has been made available before they are called.

To understand what MainApp is doing, it seems like we need to understand what GladeBase is.

module Alexandria
  module UI
    class GladeBase
      def initialize(filename)
        file = File.join(Alexandria::Config::DATA_DIR, 'glade', filename)
        glade = GladeXML.new(file, nil, Alexandria::TEXTDOMAIN) { |handler| method(handler) }
        glade.widget_names.each do |name|
          begin
            instance_variable_set("@#{name}".intern, glade[name])
          rescue
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

So GladeBase is using GladeXML to get the widgets out of the xml file and load them into memory. It then iterates through them, *adding them to MainApp (instance_variable_set is doing the work). So if there’s a widget called @main_menu, MainApp will get this variable to work with. These widgets work exactly as though they had been created “by hand”.

If you’ve been following, take a look at load_libraries and see if the code there makes sense. Here’s a short snippet:

      def load_libraries
        completion_models = CompletionModels.instance
        if @libraries
          @libraries.all_regular_libraries.each do |library|
            if library.is_a?(Library)
              library.delete_observer(self)
              completion_models.remove_source(library)
            end
          end
          @libraries.reload
        else
          #On start
 
          @libraries = Libraries.instance
          @libraries.reload
# ...

This is where things start to get confusing. load_libraries is also being used to reload libraries, so first it checks to see if @library has been defined already (refactoring opportunity). In the normal case, Libraries gets called by by invoking Libraries.instance. To understand this, you have to know that Libraries uses a factory class method to make sure that Libraries only gets created once (making the Libraries instance a “singleton”).

At the bottom of load_libraries is some interesting code:

# ...
        @libraries.all_regular_libraries.each do |library|
          library.add_observer(self)
          completion_models.add_source(library)
        end
# ...

This is telling each library in @libraries (the Libraries singleton) to add self as an “observer”. What does this mean? It means that class Library is “observable”. To see what that means you have to look at Library. First let’s look at Libraries, in lib/alexandria/library.rb:

  class Libraries
    attr_reader :all_libraries, :ruined_books
 
    include Observable
    include Singleton
 
# ... snip
 
    #######
    private
    #######
 
    def initialize
      @all_libraries = []
    end
 
    def notify(action, library)
      changed
      notify_observers(self, action, library)
    end
  end
end

Libraries is including the Observable and Singleton modules to give it special methods (in Python these are called “mixins”). Singleton gave it the instance method. Observable is giving it the notify_observers method. What this method does is “call up” all the observers of this instance by calling their update methods.

Libraries has many Librarys (it’s a little weird to give a class a plural name). Each library is an observer of Libraries. Library is also Observable:

 
  class Library < Array
    include Logging
# ...
    include Observable

As we saw above, MainApp adds itself as an observer to each library. If you look on MainApp you’ll see that it has an update method:

def update(*ary)
# ...
  end

*ary means that it accepts an array as its argument. This method gets called from many places in Library, like this:

        source_library.notify_observers(source_library,
                                        BOOK_REMOVED,
                                        book)

That’s all for now. To learn more about Observers read this.

Setup for Alexandria Development: Part I

This is the first in a series of brain-dumps of my knowledge about Alexandria and related development issues. Be warned, the approach I will take in these posts will be to discuss boring and perhaps obvious details as they occur to me. You are advised to skim.

Getting the code

First things first, you should be able to checkout a copy of Alexandria from subversion. You can find instructions here, but unless you want to pull down the entire tree this is the actual URL you want:

svn co svn+ssh://method@rubyforge.org/var/svn/alexandria/trunk/alexandria

Btw, this is worth looking at if you want to play around with code without committing to a central repository.

Initial setup

Let’s look at the directory structure of the checked out copy (called the working directory).

(alexandria root)
alexandria.desktop.in (Used to add Alexandria to the Gnome menu)
Rakefile                         (The `rake` command looks for this)
/spec                            (Specs go in here)
alexandria.xcodeproj        (MacOS XCode project file)
/data                            (Configuration files go here)
/lib                               (Alexandria code libraries are here)
tasks.rb                        (Rakefile uses this file)
/bin                              (Actual system-wide alexandria command goes here)
/debian                         (Contains templates needed to create debs)
/tests                           (For old 'test/unit' tests)
/doc                             (Docs go here)
/po                               (Language files go here)
/schemas                       (Used in gconf, configuration file like Windows registry)

You will need to get a copy of rubygems. For some reason, the Ubuntu packaged rubygem never seems to actually work, so you should just compile and install rubygems from here. On Ubuntu or Debian, you should run sudo apt-get install build-essential ruby1.8-dev because some gems will need to build “extensions”. You can use either your distro’s rake or install rake from gem. You install gems with:

sudo gem install (package)

You should install rake, rspec, rcov and zentest (autotest):

sudo gem install rake rspec rcov zentest

To work on the website you will also need staticmatic.

Rake and Testing

In the root of your working directory you should now be able to type rake -T and you will see a long list of rake “tasks” defined in the Rakefile and tasks.rb. The most important tasks for development purposes are sudo rake install to install to your system (it installs in /usr/lib/ so be careful) and rake spec, for running the test suite.

Rspec is super cool, but you’ll have to study the tutorials to learn how to use it. A great way to learn Ruby and Rspec at the same time is to ‘spec out’ basic Ruby types! For example, if you’re unsure about how an array method works, you can do this:

describe Array do
   it "should sort strings alphabetically" do
      ["b", "a", "c"].sort.first.should == "a"
   end
end

Just don’t get confused by the pattern of writing specs to cover code that’s already been written. The basic idea behind Behavior-Driven Development is that you write tests that show how your code will behave before writing the code. The only way to really learn how to do this is to force yourself to write some code this way.

Because BDD is supposed to happen before you write code, Alexandria has very poor test “coverage” at the moment, and its not easy to add specs to the code the way it is now. Still, it’s good practice to try and understand the behavior of a method on a class and write a spec for it. Take a look at the files in specs/alexandria for examples.

When a project has good test coverage it’s possible to work according to a very fast “red-to-green” development cycle. Autotest is a tool that will run ‘rake spec’ every time you change a file that’s being monitored. This is great because, again if the test suite is good, you can know the second you break the code! It’s even better if you use desktop notifications with Autotest. This is the version I use with Ubuntu Gutsy. One note: the file he links to is only good for Gentoo, you want this one.

That’s all for now. I’ll do another one tomorrow.

What’s this?

I just got this at the top of a search for “ruby rake” on Google.

Ruby — Rake: 4
According to http://jimweirich.umlcoop.net/index.cgi/Tech/Ruby - More sources »

The url under “More sources” goes here. All I can figure is that this is some kind of authority thing, or like the wtf feature on Technorati. jimweirich is a 4 or something. Maybe this is nothing, or maybe this is the beginning of semantic categorization on Google!!! ??? Why is this important? Well, if you search for Martin Luther King, one of the top links goes to a white supremacist hate page. It may be that Google is moving away from its raw algorithm, which can be gamed, and toward a trustweb system. Actually, it just occurred to me that that result could be from the Google search results tagging system that is already in place. So, is this old news?

religion.

12:00 PM me: Does [your company] use whitespace or tabs?

12:01 PM Ian: you mean spaces?

everyone uses spaces.

four spaces, in fact.

It’s Guido gospel.

me: But spaces suck.

12:02 PM Ian: not even remotely.

me: I know that’s the gospel, but it doesn’t make sense.

Ian: It makes excellent sense.

Easier to deal with. Only one kind of whitespace.

me: Do Windows and Linux use different tab characters?

Ian: no.

12:03 PM me: Dude, two-space tabs.

Google uses two-space whitespace, btw.

Ian: well, nobody else does.

me: I know. It drives me crazy.

12:04 PM

Ian: I like four. Everything lines up properly.


def myfunc():
____blah

me: Eh. I use two-space tabs in Ruby, and I don’t like to change when I program in Python. Gajim uses tabs, though.

Ian: We were never told this, it’s just the general rule.

12:05 PM me: Well, it’ll break if you mix them.

Ian: I am aware.

me: That’s retarded.

Ian: Not really. It has to break.

12:06 PM me: I know, but it’s still retarded.

12:07 PM

Ian: I mean, it’s been the standard forever. Tabs are bloody annoying, since they look like spaces but aren’t.

me: But tabs are semantic! Just turn on printer’s symbols if it bothers you.

12:08 PM What’s annoying is backspacing and it goes back…one…character…at...a..time.

12:10 PM I swear, future generation will look back on this as utter madness.


6 minutes

12:17 PM Ian: well. I don’t have to do that.

Vim does tht for me.

12:18 PM me: I thought so.

Ian: it backspaces a tab at a time if appropriate, otherwise space. It’s perfectly natural.

me: Well, that’s not so bad.

Ian: but my code will always render in exactly the same way on everyone’s machine. Lines will have the same length.

12:19 PM if it’s 79 chars, it won’t wrap on somebody else’s editor who has their tabs set to 8 or something

me: I’m right, though. But it is utter gibbering insanity.

What is sacred in web pages is verboten in code. This is ridiculous to me.

12:20 PM Ian: what is sacred in web pages?

whitespace is ignored.

me: Tab means indent!

Ian: tab doesn’t mean a damn thing in a web page

me: User sets the indent!

I know. Using space is like using <br /> in webpages.

12:21 PM You’re trying to control display.

And you call it a virtue.

Ian: well, yeah. html isn’t for content.

me: Madness.

Ian: indentation is set in CSS

me: Yes!

That’s my point.

12:22 PM Tab means <indent />

Ian: But it doesn’t.

In a web page, “beginning of paragraph” means <indent/>

12:23 PM there’s no tabbing.

You can’t artificially insert a tab character.

me: If someone said, don’t use <p>, use <br />, some users change the margins on paragraphs, you’d say he was an idiot.

Ian: You can’t double-tab.

no users change the margins on paragraphs. My own CSS does.

me: I understand. I’m saying tab means indent, a semantic element. It means level of scope in Python.

12:24 PM Ian: but it doesn’t. whitespace means level of scope.

me: But if they wanted to, they could. Then it wouldn’t display properly. Best to use <br />

Ian: no, they couldn’t.

me: Ahh!!!

12:25 PM Yes, they could. They could change the default stylesheet, and make it !important.

Ian: The end user doesn’t control the display of a web page, except for text size.

me: Ugh.

They have a degenerative sight disorder that requires the paragraphs to be widely spaced.

12:27 PM I’m saying the principle that is sacred in web pages is considered a liability in code, and only really in Python and shell scripts, because indentation is just for looks in C++, Ruby, Java, etc.

Ian: But no one will ever do that. I don’t understand how this is at all relevant. Code display has nothing to do with layout. The goal is to do it the same way as everybody else.

and that sacred principle is…?

i still don’t get it.

Since there are no tab characters in web pages.

12:28 PM me: Let the user determine presentation. That’s the principle. If they want to apply another stylesheet that makes your page look stupid, so be it.

Ian: But that isn’t a sacred principle in web pages.

me: Yes it is.

It’s why we don’t use tables and <br /> for everything. It’s why we don’t compose web pages in Word.

12:29 PM Ian: No, it isn’t.

We don’t do it that way because it’s extremely limited.

And it won’t display the way /we/ want it to.

me: Dude, wtf? Use flash if you want to control display.

12:30 PM Ian: But that’s totally wrong! That’s warped!

me: I understand that the user usually views a page the way you want him to.

But he doesn’t have to.

Ian: Always. Unless they’re hacking it.

In which case I don’t care.

12:31 PM Build the page to deal with big text and small viewports, but otherwise whatever.

me: What are you talking about? They can view a page in Lynx, or with a screen reader, or using a Greasemonkey script, or whatever.

12:32 PM

Ian: There aren’t other variations, except for the extreme outliers where people hack your CSS.

me: If it’s important to have code displayed with a certain size tab, you could include a hint at the top.

Ian: People using greasemonkey scripts know the page will be fucked up. Lynx doesn’t apply, since it strips CSS. Screen readers are a completely different thing.

12:33 PM me: I am horrified.

Ian: I dunno where you get this insane idea.

me: I don’t know why you’re fighting me on this. The whitespace thing, sure. But not this principle.

12:34 PM Ian: You can’t account for all users. Especially not if they are making up their own CSS.

me: <br />This is a paragraph.<br /> See, it’s better? Works every time, no matter what the user does.

Ian: It’s impossible to predict that.

Except you can’t do anything. That’s idiotic.

12:35 PM me: Yes, because it’s attempting to define display with markup.

Ian: but <p> tags aren’t for the benefit of the user

they are boxes with default CSS that you, the designer, change.

12:36 PM They’re roughly semantic, but you don’t use them wherever you have text.

me: Okay, I get you.

But a screen reader would use the paragraphs to know where to pause, for example.

Ian: They certainly don’t mean “paragraph,” and they’re only indented if you explicitly set text-indent.

If it’s a screen reader, you have a different style sheet

12:37 PM me: Yes!

Ian: and you use pause-before:blah

in the CSS

me: Do you define a css audio stylesheet for your pages?

Ian: Hell no.

me: So they use the default settings.

Ian: Certainly not for [my company].

12:38 PM me: It’s whatever they want.

And you can override stylesheet settings with !important.

Ian: Also it strips out all layout, so it’s irrelevant.

me: Huh? That’s layout. It doesn’t read them in any order.

12:39 PM Ian: WHO can?

The blind greasemonkey users?

me: Yes.

Ian: I will never, ever design a page for a blind greasemonkey user.

me: Argh.

Please see the analogy.

12:40 PM

Ian: I see what you’re getting at, but I think you’re totally wrong.

The user /can/ define presentation, but only by /breaking/ the original code and rewriting it.

Or using an application that discards certain things, like a screen reader.

me: “As god is my witness, I will never allow another programmer to view my code at anything but four spaces to an indent level. I would rather die.”

Ian: Or lynx.

12:41 PM So if you really want to, you can, before editing any code, translate all spaces into tabs, then do your editing, then retranslate and save.

That is roughly comparable.

It’s a simple greasemonkey script.

me: You’re saying it’s something freaky, because it’s rare. But it’s just rare. It’s something that’s built in to html.

12:42 PM

Ian: if you just have to have your indentation be a certain width, you can. But who the hell cares? The end user of code is the computer.

You make it useful for future coders, of course

me: You do know that all the CSS Zen Garden sheets refer to the same page, right?

Ian: Make it readable and whatnot

Yes.

It’s a basic HTML structure.

12:44 PM divs with some ps and uls

me: Anyways, I can’t change the whitespace to tabs. People would yell at me.

Ian: Well, then you change it back, before saving.

me: Whywhywhy?

Ian: Because code isn’t written for you.

It’s written for everyone.

12:45 PM I take that back: it isn’t written for anyone.

it’s written to be run.

You make it readable, not pretty

more to the point: you make it /editable/

12:46 PM (which web pages aren’t)

me: What’s so bad about tabs??? They only occur at the beginning of the line. If there’s one, it means one level of indent, two two levels, etc.

If the user chooses to view them at 4 spaces per tab, they display like that, if 2, then that.

12:47 PM

Ian: Nothing in particular, except it’s a whole nother character to deal with. If “whitespace=space” it’s easier.

From a coding perspective.

I don’t have to wonder if there are tabs anywhere, because they’re all spaces.

12:48 PM me: The thing is, it doesn’t even matter in Ruby! I can write the whole script without any beginning of line spaces at all! It’s only Python that cares! And Guido bases it on the C++ coding standard, where it also doesn’t matter!

Ian: If I want to indent only one space, I can.

If I want to line up my dictionary values, I can.

12:49 PM me: In Gedit, tabs are arrows and spaces are dots.

Ian: If you turn that shit on. But most people don’t. Most people use emacs and vim.

me: Well, okay, there’s something.

12:50 PMThings only get out of whack if you mix tabs and spaces, it’s true.

Ian: mostly it’s just annoying to have arrows and dots scattered throughout your code.

me: It makes it clear for me.

12:51 PM I don’t understand why “knowing if whitespace is a tab or a space” is more important than knowing that you haven’t accidentally backspaced and set a line to three space indent instead of four.

That happens all the time.

12:52 PM Ian: that never happens.

I have autoindentation on.

me: It’s happened to me. It’s happened in code that I’ve downloaded.

Ian: Then someone wrote it poorly.

12:53 PM That happened to me when I used gedit, which is a stupid application.

or notepad or something.

me: All this effort for a marginal problem of “knowing whether a character is a whitespace or tab” when it introduces another marginal problem.

Ian: But there are no problems.

12:54 PM My code is always clean, no matter who looks at it.

me: Just like there were no problems with the five year plans!

Umm.

12:55 PM Ian: Unless they have their line width set to something short. But then they would be an iiot.

idiot

me: Google uses two spaces! Four spaces is too much!

12:56 PM Ian: Google uses two spaces because fewer spaces translate into less downloaded.

me: Let the programmer decide!

Ian: Any web programmer worth his or her salt packs their code before uploading.

12:57 PM me: No, because code shouldn’t be nested beyond more than two or three levels anyway.

So it should be easy enough to read at two spaces.

Ian: ?

12:58 PM I mean, yeah, code rarely gets that deep

Except not really, when you have vars inside functions inside functions inside classes.

me: Most Ruby code uses two spaces and it’s easy to read.

12:59 PM About four or five levels.

Ian: Well, if Ruby takes over the world, perhaps other people will do it that way.

Idea

I just had an idea, similar to the Atmosphere concept (good picture here) from the My Dream App contest. It’s an added wrinkle, actually. Your desktop changes your wallpaper and window theme based on whether you’re at work or not. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah.

No, really. Just imagine it. It’s mainly neat for people who use the same system at home and for work. So you get up in the morning, and let’s say there’s a picture of a cup of coffee and a newspaper — with functioning news feeds. God, I’m a genius. Then it rolls around to the time when work starts. A cartoon work whistle blows. Suddenly your desktop resembles a cubicle wall, featuring a randomly selected Dilbert cartoon and a humorous or sentimental clipping of your own choice1. If you use MacOS2, the interface for all applications now looks like Windows 98. Access is restricted to all websites except www.howtobeabetteremployeetoyouremployer.com. Noon comes. A dialog appears, asking if you “brownbagged it today”, or if you want Rich down the hall to include you in his lunch run to Wendy’s. An old-fashioned TV with rabbit ears airs all the relevant clips from last night’s Dancing with the Stars for you to talk about in the lunch room. Okay, and then at 5:30, your desktop just goes crazy. It becomes a total disco inferno, with wacky strobing special effects and fake confetti and everything. Like, for a minute. And then it becomes this chill space jazz lounge, with cool relaxing music…

I sorted of pissed on this, but it might actually be cool to have your desktop bring up certain programs at different times of the day, and maybe use different configurations based on whether you’re in work-mode or not.

Update: I am a stupid idea god. This article says that Apple filed a patent for this. Ahem: “For example, the color gradation may be computed based on the time of day to mimic the changes in the colors of the sky.” This is kind of a bullshit thing to patent, btw.

---

  1. No, it doesn’t look like a physical desktop. That would be stupid. [back]
  2. or Ubuntu, yo. [back]

Using xsl to import a phpmyadmin xml file

Yep, following the last post I have to explain what I just did for the LazyWeb1 . This is going to be boring and technical, folks.

If you’re like me, you’ve exported a MySQL database as an xml file through PhpMyAdmin. In general, you shouldn’t do this. You want the SQL file. I don’t entirely understand it, but phpmyadmin does not import the format that it exports. If you throw away the database, you’ll be stuck with an xml file that can’t be easily imported. Okay, and if you already threw away the database? In my case, it’s an old Texpattern db that I want to get into a WordPress db, so if I can just get it into RSS form I’m home free. Here’s what you do:

  • Take a look at this explanation of XSL (XML Stylesheets).
  • Create an XSL stylesheet like this (name it stylesheet.xsl for this example):
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="/">
    <rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <channel>
    <title>Stupididea</title>
    <link>http://www.stupididea.com/</link>
    <description></description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <xsl:for-each select="stupidid_text/textpattern">
    <item>
    <title><xsl:value-of select="Title"/></title>
    <link></link>
    <description><xsl:value-of select="Body_html"/></description>
    <dc:creator><xsl:value-of select="AuthorID"/></dc:creator>
    <dc:date><xsl:value-of select="Posted"/></dc:date>
    </item>
    </xsl:for-each>
    </channel>
    </rss>
    </xsl:template>
    </xsl:stylesheet>
  • Include a line like this at the top of the xml file you exported from phpmyadmin:
    <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="stylesheet.xsl"?>
  • Open an xsl-aware browser (most of them) and try to save the page as an rss file. Note: this was quirky for me. Sometimes the browser would just save the original file, sometimes it would save the stylesheeted output. Try with different browsers.
  • (WordPress) Import the RSS file after checking that it is valid.

This is the general solution for any case where you can recover your database by transforming the phpmyadmin xml into an importable format. You’ll have to play around with the options based on your use-case.

---

  1. Ironically, there doesn’t appear to be an entry on Wikipedia for Lazyweb. I understand it as asking on your blog for help with answering a question (“Dear Lazyweb, …”), i.e., you’re too lazy to research the topic yourself. I’m extending the concept of LazyWeb here to include the posts and forum threads that help you when you’re out googling for a solution to a problem. [back]

A minor victory.

For a long time now I’ve been somewhat of a GTD guy, although I’m not religious about it and I’ve never been quite able or willing to implement it fully. Basically, all this means is that I keep a todo list that I review when I’m feeling conscientious about my life1. One of the tasks that has been sitting in my list for a long time is Migrate old blog articles. Now I can cross it off! Look, I’m crossing it off: Migrate old blog articles. God, that was satisfying.

Yes, I finally managed to import all the posts from my old Textpattern blog2. These go back to the days when I was working at National Geographic in DC, and had a lot of free time during work hours to do fun things like investigate cmses and purchase web domains.3 Some of them are written in a half-ironic high philosophic tone, others are intended to express minimalist pathos.

This minor victory was achieved not without some casualties. I have a peculiar knack for smashing up virtual servers4 , clobbering databases and borking filesystems. So, uhh, I’m very sorry but we lost the old comments.

---

  1. Actually, I keep several todo lists, which is a big no-no in GTD. I use Tomboy on my laptop and stikkit.com when I’m at work. [back]
  2. Some of them reference pictures that I’ll have to dig up and upload. [back]
  3. That’s the origin of the name Stupid Idea. The original stupid idea was to create a website that would be a kind of clearing house for “stupid” ideas — ideas that were deeply flawed but worth preserving on and improving. There was a MediaWiki installation that held about 100 articles before I switched web hosts. [back]
  4. Try this on a Linux host that you have root access on: `sudo rm -rf /`. Note: please don’t. [back]