http://phpxref.sourceforge.net/PHPXref is a great tool which builds an HTML-based outline of your source code. It's been an indespensible tool for working on a very large project, http://www.moodle.org/Moodle), especially when getting my hands dirty with a new section of code I haven't used yet as it makes following an execution path very easy to do.
From the site description:
* Minimal requirements, minimal setup.
* No web server required to view output.
* Cross-references PHP classes, functions, variables, constants and require/include usage.
* Extracts phpdoc style documentation from source files.
* Javascript enhanced output provides:
o Mouse-over information for classes and functions in the source view.
o Hot-jump to the source of any class/function definition.
o Instant lookup of classes, functions, constants and tables by name.
o Search/lookup history.
* Pretty-prints PHP files from the browser.
* Stays crunchy in milk.
That's interesting, because recently I was receiving a hit on my server from a specific host, trying to access/robots.txt from me. I thought that it was most likely a search engine just indexing a site, but it occured rather frequently over the span of about two weeks.
Web Monkey has been, and continues to be, an excellent resource not only on web development at the code/backend level, but also with aspects to good design practices. Unfortunately just because you can write some wicked perl scripts for a web site, does not mean you can design a pretty interface to them. It's much easier for a graphic designer to learn how to create a web page than it is for a coder to learn good design principles. Web Monkey has a nice blend to help both groups out.
I've heard of CG (Computer Graphics) but I've never heard of it referred to as CGI (Common Gateway Interface????), except in rare cases. If that is actually an acronym for Computer Graphics, what the hell does it stand for?
If you actually examine the RELNOTES.TXT file on the X.org ftp site, apparently you can build an Xserver for XFree86 so I think I'm just going to download the source and try just that.
AFAIK, XFree86 takes the code that the X Consortium has developed and changes it in such a way as to make it x86 native. I'm not sure if that's the way it is.... is it?
Either way it's nice to know that a new version has been released and it's exciting even if it doesn't directly effect XFree86, yet.
...about that funny little graphic in the upper left-hand corner. You know, the one which says "SLASHDOT: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
Now, I'm going to point out that "NERDS" part and then we can start talking about what kind of humour is appreciated by the readers of this site. I thought that comment was funny, I guess you just have to go into nerd training for a while and do some background research or something like that.
I believe that Apple is in the right with what they are doing on this one. No matter how you look at it, there were a group of people trusted to keep some very important secrets and they broke that bond of trust. They deserve to be punished for what they've done.
If you had a secret you confided in a friend, who in turn told everyone they knew about the secret, how would you feel? Now try to scale that up to a level of someone telling secrets about your company's projects.
I think that speech recognition and being able to command your computer via simple voice commands will make them easier to use for the majority of people. Those who do not have a willingness to learn how to use a computer because they feel it will be too difficult would find talking to it and having it respond back to be much easier. People say that eBooks will never take off because there is something very personal, perhaps spiritual, about holding a paper book and turning the pages. I think that using a computer is, for the most part, regarded as a very IMpersonal way of doing things. People like to hear a person's voice. If a piece of software was written well enough to put inflection into it's synthesized speech, to put fire and emotion into it, people would be able to easier relate to it. If you talk to a computer and it's response sounds like Dr. Sbaitso, that is going to turn people off very quickly.
If computers are shifted to using speech as a method for I/O, does this mean that we will have no choice but to use speech to control our computers?
OF COURSE NOT!
The fact that you can control a system such as Linux without ever using a GUI (and that most programs w/ a GUI will have a console interface anyhow) means that speech will simply be another option. For some tasks, such as word processing, or IRC-type applications, using speech recognition would be a great benefit. It would speed up things immensely. Imagine never having to proof-read your written work for typos ever again. It would save me a lot of time and headaches, that I know.
Simply put, UI's are not the end-all and be-all of computers. Solutions exist for Linux that you can really do whatever you want as far as UI to your system(s) goes. Certain people don't want things made easier and certain people do. The population at large falls into the latter category and should be considered when designing UIs for programs. If you're writing programs for use by the general public, it's not enough to simply say "I can understand it, that's good enough." You have to make it so that that everyone can pick up your program and say "Oh, this makes sense." It's something to keep in mind and I don't pretend to have the answers as to HOW to solve that particular problem. I guess the only way to go about it is to accept user feed-back and to continue to try new things.
Actually, I didn't really have to try much because after the final source was finished compiling, everything ran without a problem.
I'm very pleased with it, actually. Too bad NVIDIA's DRI driver wasn't released yet, but such is life and I'm happy to accept increaesed 2D performance.
Last night I compiled 3.9.18 and installed it today. Netscape wouldn't work at all, Mozilla M14 would still work, though. The Gimp failed and an attempt to recompile it with the new Xlib failed.
The error in Netscape was something to do with locale's in Xlib. Hopefully these errors have been sorted out by now.
Slashdot Mirror
http://phpxref.sourceforge.net/PHPXref is a great tool which builds an HTML-based outline of your source code. It's been an indespensible tool for working on a very large project, http://www.moodle.org/Moodle), especially when getting my hands dirty with a new section of code I haven't used yet as it makes following an execution path very easy to do.
From the site description:
* Minimal requirements, minimal setup.
* No web server required to view output.
* Cross-references PHP classes, functions, variables, constants and require/include usage.
* Extracts phpdoc style documentation from source files.
* Javascript enhanced output provides:
o Mouse-over information for classes and functions in the source view.
o Hot-jump to the source of any class/function definition.
o Instant lookup of classes, functions, constants and tables by name.
o Search/lookup history.
* Pretty-prints PHP files from the browser.
* Stays crunchy in milk.
*I* live in Ontario, thank you very much!
Here is a torrent download for this PDF.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/193558
That's interesting, because recently I was receiving a hit on my server from a specific host, trying to access /robots.txt from me. I thought that it was most likely a search engine just indexing a site, but it occured rather frequently over the span of about two weeks.
Does this have something to do with that?
Web Monkey has been, and continues to be, an excellent resource not only on web development at the code/backend level, but also with aspects to good design practices. Unfortunately just because you can write some wicked perl scripts for a web site, does not mean you can design a pretty interface to them. It's much easier for a graphic designer to learn how to create a web page than it is for a coder to learn good design principles. Web Monkey has a nice blend to help both groups out.
Plus, they also have a great name. =)
That makes sense, so does 'Computer Graphics Integration' for integrating CG w/ live action.
Thanks! =)
I've heard of CG (Computer Graphics) but I've never heard of it referred to as CGI (Common Gateway Interface????), except in rare cases. If that is actually an acronym for Computer Graphics, what the hell does it stand for?
Thank you.
Reading about things like this gives me the urge to sit through boring physics lectures wondering when we start creating black hole models.
Go team smart kids!
If you actually examine the RELNOTES.TXT file on the X.org ftp site, apparently you can build an Xserver for XFree86 so I think I'm just going to download the source and try just that.
AFAIK, XFree86 takes the code that the X Consortium has developed and changes it in such a way as to make it x86 native. I'm not sure if that's the way it is.... is it?
Either way it's nice to know that a new version has been released and it's exciting even if it doesn't directly effect XFree86, yet.
...about that funny little graphic in the upper left-hand corner. You know, the one which says "SLASHDOT: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
Now, I'm going to point out that "NERDS" part and then we can start talking about what kind of humour is appreciated by the readers of this site. I thought that comment was funny, I guess you just have to go into nerd training for a while and do some background research or something like that.
I believe that Apple is in the right with what they are doing on this one. No matter how you look at it, there were a group of people trusted to keep some very important secrets and they broke that bond of trust. They deserve to be punished for what they've done.
If you had a secret you confided in a friend, who in turn told everyone they knew about the secret, how would you feel? Now try to scale that up to a level of someone telling secrets about your company's projects.
I think that speech recognition and being able to command your computer via simple voice commands will make them easier to use for the majority of people. Those who do not have a willingness to learn how to use a computer because they feel it will be too difficult would find talking to it and having it respond back to be much easier. People say that eBooks will never take off because there is something very personal, perhaps spiritual, about holding a paper book and turning the pages. I think that using a computer is, for the most part, regarded as a very IMpersonal way of doing things. People like to hear a person's voice. If a piece of software was written well enough to put inflection into it's synthesized speech, to put fire and emotion into it, people would be able to easier relate to it. If you talk to a computer and it's response sounds like Dr. Sbaitso, that is going to turn people off very quickly.
If computers are shifted to using speech as a method for I/O, does this mean that we will have no choice but to use speech to control our computers?
OF COURSE NOT!
The fact that you can control a system such as Linux without ever using a GUI (and that most programs w/ a GUI will have a console interface anyhow) means that speech will simply be another option. For some tasks, such as word processing, or IRC-type applications, using speech recognition would be a great benefit. It would speed up things immensely. Imagine never having to proof-read your written work for typos ever again. It would save me a lot of time and headaches, that I know.
Simply put, UI's are not the end-all and be-all of computers. Solutions exist for Linux that you can really do whatever you want as far as UI to your system(s) goes. Certain people don't want things made easier and certain people do. The population at large falls into the latter category and should be considered when designing UIs for programs. If you're writing programs for use by the general public, it's not enough to simply say "I can understand it, that's good enough." You have to make it so that that everyone can pick up your program and say "Oh, this makes sense." It's something to keep in mind and I don't pretend to have the answers as to HOW to solve that particular problem. I guess the only way to go about it is to accept user feed-back and to continue to try new things.
All praise variety.
Actually, I didn't really have to try much because after the final source was finished compiling, everything ran without a problem.
I'm very pleased with it, actually. Too bad NVIDIA's DRI driver wasn't released yet, but such is life and I'm happy to accept increaesed 2D performance.
Last night I compiled 3.9.18 and installed it today. Netscape wouldn't work at all, Mozilla M14 would still work, though. The Gimp failed and an attempt to recompile it with the new Xlib failed.
The error in Netscape was something to do with locale's in Xlib. Hopefully these errors have been sorted out by now.