Older blog entries for fxn (starting at number 358)

23 Nov 2004 (updated 23 Nov 2004 at 00:55 UTC) »

Upgraded

Well, Master! There's an intergalactic distance between the conditions in the definition of Master and my very humble contributions, but there's an algorithm behind the scenes in the end. I noticed yesterday I had an Apprentice removed by someone, my current subtotals are 38 Apprentice, 107 Journeyer, 3 Master, so the level looks technically suspicious, doesn't it?

Andale Mono in GNU Emacs/Cocoa with Latin-1

Thanks to a hint jao gave me yesterday I can enter accented words in GNU Emacs/Cocoa using Andale Mono. A fontset needs to be defined:

    (set-language-environment "Latin-1")
    (create-fontset-from-fontset-spec
     "-apple-andale mono-medium-r-normal--0-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-andale,
       ascii:-apple-andale mono-medium-r-normal--0-*,
       latin-iso8859-1:-apple-andale mono-medium-r-normal--0-*")
    (setq default-frame-alist '((font . "fontset-andale")))
    (setq initial-frame-alist default-frame-alist)

Magnific!

Perl Source Filters Talk

I've worked in the talk for Barcelona.pm again today. I'm learning a lot of stuff while preparing this topic. Oh, Keynote rocks.

Geeky Breakfast

I met with jao this morning. Among other things we talked about his new personal project, which is a Scheme-based build system. Interesting!

Talk

I've started to write the talk about Perl source filters for the next Barcelona.pm meeting.

12 Nov 2004 (updated 12 Nov 2004 at 18:33 UTC) »

Mostly testing SPE on Mac OS X these days. There was some garbage in some places of the interface that disappeared upgrading wxPythonOSX. Anti-aliasing is now on in the editor as well.

Two important bugs have been found: the toolbar does not show up, and a couple of tabs in the preferences grab the focus and do not release it. For instance, in the middle one the textfield with the font name gets the focus and you cannot press any button or checkbox inside the tab. Of course those work just fine in Linux or Windows, so we need to figure out what happens in Mac OS X.

By now Stani and I are exchanging mails, screenshots, and patched files. Next week we plan to do some VNC session so that he can edit and test directly on my desktop.

9 Nov 2004 (updated 9 Nov 2004 at 04:44 UTC) »

I received an email today from Stani Michiels, the author of SPE. He asked whether I would like to collaborate in the port of the editor to Mac OS X. Sure! I'm delighted to help.

From the list of features and screenshots SPE looks like a useful environment for Python development. Since I like to use one IDE for everything (was GNU Emacs, now Eclipse) my choice nowadays is PyDev, which is getting better and better, but more Python editors are needed on the Mac for people to choose, so I am glad to help. In addition I will learn.

I did today a few basic tests he asked for, and sent a handful of screenshots. By now everything seems to work fine with the last version of wxPython except for the tool bar, which doesn't show up.

6 Nov 2004 (updated 6 Nov 2004 at 05:50 UTC) »

I rarely blog about my job here, but I think it is worth writing in this diary that after about 5 years of existence, the company I work for has finally released something under the GPL. That's a library that has been developed in the R&D department (which is mostly specialised in Semantic Web).

This is a good thing, lots of open source have been leveraged by us, Apache, Linux, Perl, Jython, Emacs, Tomcat, Eclipse, ..., you name them. That library is a humble contribution, but is a contribution, and, well, you never know that, but I'd say the motivation is to give something back.

1 Nov 2004 (updated 1 Nov 2004 at 00:18 UTC) »

Perl Quiz of the Week

Today I wrote the summary for the current quiz, which was about writing a Tk roller coaster simulator. Four solutions were submitted, one of them uses POV-Ray instead of Tk, and another one is written in Python. There were several custom extensions: trains, parameterized gravities and time scales, data display, etc. It was fun. I sent the draft to Mark.

Tkinter under Mac OS X

When I tried to run the Python solution I saw neither the Python that comes with Panther, nor my compiled Python could run Tk.

After searching a bit I saw that the python from Fink supports it, good, at least I could play with it a bit launching the X server. Nevertheless, I wanted Python to use Tcl/Tk Aqua, and so I tried to compile the sources again with --enable-framework. Unfortunately, though, make frameworkinstall gave an error:

    ./python.exe ./Mac/scripts/cachersrc.py -v /Library/Frameworks/
    Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/plat-mac /Library/
    Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/Mac/Tools
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "./Mac/scripts/cachersrc.py", line 7, in ?
        import macresource
      File "/Users/fxn/src/Python-2.3.4/Lib/plat-mac/macresource.py", line 3, in ?
        from Carbon import Res
      File "/Users/fxn/src/Python-2.3.4/Lib/plat-mac/Carbon/Res.py", line 4, in ?
        from _Res import *
    ImportError: Failure linking new module: : dyld: ./python.exe Undefined symbols:
    /Users/fxn/src/Python-2.3.4/build/lib.darwin-7.5.0-Power_Macintosh-2.3/
    _Res.so undefined reference to _CtlObj_New expected to be defined in the 
    executable
    /Users/fxn/src/Python-2.3.4/build/lib.darwin-7.5.0-Power_Macintosh-2.3/
    _Res.so undefined reference to _MenuObj_New expected to be defined in the 
    executable
    /Users/fxn/src/Python-2.3.4/build/lib.darwin-7.5.0-Power_Macintosh-2.3/
    _Res.so undefined reference to _PyArg_ParseTuple expected to
    make[1]: *** [installmacsubtree] Error 1
    make: *** [frameworkinstallmaclib] Error 2
Google didn't help there. Is that build broken?

chalst, well, unfortunately I am not a specialist in agent-based programming. What I've read from experts is that there is no consensus in the field except perhaps in a common denominator. If you liked to read a bit more about it there is a course in slides by Michael Wooldridge here.

In the conference I attended there were people from the industry. My impression was that they were serious about it. I mean, they saw this paradigm as a way to understand some problems better. And they applied it in real applications. It is just an abstraction, nothing magic. It helps in thinking the problem and build a solution when the problem fits the paradigm. Well, that's what I've seen, but let me insist those are impressions of an outsider.

In a panel discussion at the end it was recognized that unfortunately the term is a buzzword sometimes and that hurts the field.

23 Oct 2004 (updated 23 Oct 2004 at 19:38 UTC) »

Random stuff

  • After reading this article (Spanish) I ordered this book about intelligence by the founder of Palm Computing. (Seen in Barrapunto.)
  • I just discovered Angie Stone, a friend of mine recommended her. I am a big fan of black music (in the line of Erykah Badu or D'Angelo for example), how could I miss her?
  • The ADSL has doubled its speed at home automatically. I saw a 40Kb/s in a download. The main telco in Spain is doing a nation-wide upgrade for free.

After a few more interations the quiz is out.

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