SRD 3.5 Update - Browsing (HTML, CHM) and Data (XML, MySQL, MS)

[azhrei_fje]

Andargor, you've said you're building a browser because of the PITA's with cross-browser javacript... I'm guessing that you're not interested in frame issues, then?

In both Konqueror and Firefox, the left side has a bunch of frames created that seem to be empty. Looking at the HTML, I don't see an obvious connection between the code and what I see on the screen. I was going to offer to troubleshoot it and see if I could get it working, but if you're going to create a separate browser it's probably moot, eh?

I noticed in the email you sent (I've made correction contributions in the past), that you mention using wxWidgets. That's probably a good choice, given that it's cross-platform. And it's totally free, which Java isn't (that's "free as in freedom", not "free as in beer").

Does the wxWidgets framework include an HTML rendering agent? Otherwise, you'd need to choose gecko or KHTML or something. (I seem to recall KHTML being ported to Windoze. And gecko is in Mozilla -- and also Firefox -- so those will be available on Windoze also.) It's also possible to use Qt4 from TrollTech, but I'm not thrilled with their licensing...

Thanks for the update!

 

[andargor]

Nice work

Well, Lex and teknohippy did this part. But thanks

Andargor, you've said you're building a browser because of the PITA's with cross-browser javacript... I'm guessing that you're not interested in frame issues, then?

In both Konqueror and Firefox, the left side has a bunch of frames created that seem to be empty. Looking at the HTML, I don't see an obvious connection between the code and what I see on the screen. I was going to offer to troubleshoot it and see if I could get it working, but if you're going to create a separate browser it's probably moot, eh?

The empty frames are the only mechanism I could find to store more data in cookies for bookmarks on IE and others. Under Mozilla engines, it should as for permission and then store bookmarks to disk.

It's a huge kludge to get around browser security.

I might drop the whole bookmark approach for 1.4 since it seems to cause more problems than anything else.

The browser app probably won't make it for 1.4. I'll have a later 2.0 release with that, so it doesn't make much sense working on trying to find a solution for the current "architecture". Any new browser version can easily break everything.

I noticed in the email you sent (I've made correction contributions in the past), that you mention using wxWidgets. That's probably a good choice, given that it's cross-platform. And it's totally free, which Java isn't (that's "free as in freedom", not "free as in beer").

Does the wxWidgets framework include an HTML rendering agent? Otherwise, you'd need to choose gecko or KHTML or something. (I seem to recall KHTML being ported to Windoze. And gecko is in Mozilla -- and also Firefox -- so those will be available on Windoze also.) It's also possible to use Qt4 from TrollTech, but I'm not thrilled with their licensing...

Thanks for the update!

Yes, wxHTML is part of the wxWidgets distribution, but it is terribly limited in the current form. I'll be using wxMozilla with an embedded Firefox browser instead. It should compile on both Linux and Windows, although Mac support is up in the air. The 2.0 browser app should allow printing, HTML editing, DocBook XML imports, search indexing, etc. There are some features that I'd like to see, but that are a bit difficult to implement, like the ability to create campaign specific documents (e.g. the rule text relative to a character in one document, composed of copy-and-pastes from different sections from the rules). So I'll have to see what I put in, or allow plugins so people can work on them.


I'm aiming for Windows first. My group already has a version of the browser app to consult and search for things. However, it's buggy, and I'm not ready for hundreds of bug reports for stuff I am already aware about.

Eventually, I'll probably start a Sourceforge group to get myself out of the bottleneck seat.

All of this is part of the same process to convert material to HTML/XML/Database form, so programmers will be able to modify my tools to suit their needs. Cleaning everything up will be challenging, though.

A lot of ideas, but as usual time is my main problem. I just have too many projects at once. It'll come when it'll come.

Andargor

 

[andargor]

The few last weeks have been... interesting (in the Chinese sense of the word).

Yesterday, my development machine's power supply blew. Unfortunately, it took one of my hard disks with it into oblivion. And it so happens this is where my SRD stuff is. To top it all off, it was the only disk I wasn't replicating or backing up, as I was running out of space elsewhere.

Combined with assorted recent incidents like a car accident, I can say that I indeed live in interesting times.

I can still read the disk, somewhat, but it is definitely badly damaged (bad sectors galore). I am attemping to recover as much as my stuff as possible, but it is taking a painfully long time.

I have a backup, but it is dated Jan 2005 (version 1.3 of my stuff, basically)

Bottom line: I'm crossing my fingers, but the worst case scenario is that I've lost all the progress I've made on 1.4, and I will have to restart from scratch. The best case scenario is that there are no bad sectors where this particular piece of code resides, and I can continue. The realistic scenario is somewhere in between: I'll have lost some things but recovered some others.

So the 1.4 version is indefinitely on hold. I should have more news this weekend when it finally finishes scraping data off the remains of my drive...

Advice: DO YOUR BACKUPS!

Andargor

 

[Vascant]

Kind of ironic, last night after thinking about the WW hacking and such I realized I had not backed up the site in quite a long time and the code was a few weeks old from the projects I work on..

Took less then a few minutes to update the images and burn them to a DVD and yet I avoid it like a disease.

Sorry to hear about all the issues and work loss, hope everything takes a turn for the better for you soon

Just some extra words, the way you luck seems to be at the moment.. no matches in the house might be in order

 

[andargor]

Thanks for the kind words. I avoid being depressed by realizing that there are people in the world with far more important problems to worry about than a busted car or hard disk.

I see these things as opportunities: get a new car, get some sort of data redundancy implemented at home!

On a side note, a colleague of mine has a copy of SpinRite, which supposedly works on Linux as well. It's a data recovery software. I'll check it out.

Andargor

 

[Vascant]

Well, from a programmer's point of view. There is nothing worse then recoding something you already coded. Car can be replaced, house can be rebuilt.. but code!! You have to do it all from scratch again and hope you can recall all the different thoughts that make it work in the first place.

 

[Firzair]

I'm sorry to hear that Andargor. And I hope you can recover your code...
As an advice I can say I do all my backups to USB stick... inexpensive and easy to use...

Good luck
Firzair

 

[azhrei_fje]

I bought a USB-to-IDE converter specifically for backups. (Not mine, my wife's!)

However, the chip that converts the USB signals to an IDE cable seems to require a special driver (nothing for it on my SUSE Linux 9.2 laptop). I may have to upgrade the OS on the laptop because more recent kernel releases are supposed to have better support for (custom) USB...

 

[andargor]

Well, I decided to buy myself a christmas present: a new mobo with 4 SATA ports and 3 x 200 GB drives. RAID-5, here I come! In line with the suspenders and belt concept, I got another DVD+/-RW for that box. Of course, the offsite rsyncs will continue, but this time I'll make sure my critical stuff is included.

In the meantime, my initial attempt to get my data off the drive failed. I got some, but not what I wanted. The drive is seriously screwed up and seems to deteriorate. Not surprisingly, it seems to be a problem with the electronics: if I put it on a bus with, say, a CDROM, I can't boot from it... It screws up the bus.

As the Romans would say, I'm "at the triarii", and SpinRite is doing its stuff. 11 hours, 24 minutes to go before the moment of truth.

Andargor