ciacob.tk

So I’m a prostitute.. Essentially

ciacob — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:59:51 +0000

The quoted text is no novelty, in fact it’s a classic, as it’s been flowing around the net for some good years now. I just happened to stumble upon it these days – well, in fact I got a link to some fresh, funny, new thingy to read ;) – and I felt it’s still funny enough and still true enough to give it a republish.

I would love to give credit to the author, if I only new who it was…

The truth about working in the IT industry

We work weird (night) shifts…
Just like prostitutes.

They pay you to make the client happy…
Just like a prostitute.

The client pays a lot of money, but your employer keeps almost every penny…
Just like a prostitute.

You are rewarded for fulfilling the client’s dreams…
Just like a prostitute.

Your friends fall apart and you end up hanging out with people in the same profession as you…
Just like a prostitute.

When you have to meet the client you always have to be perfectly groomed…
Just like a prostitute.

But when you go back home it seems like you are coming back from hell…
Just like a prostitute.

The client always wants to pay less but expects incredible things from you…
Just like a prostitute.

When people ask you about your job, you have difficulties to explain it…
Just like a prostitute.

Everyday when you wake up, you say: “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life doing this.”
Just like a prostitute …

…remotely compile FLA files for Flex Builder debugging

ciacob — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:37:15 +0000

This is a follow-up to this two-years old post by Daryl Joseph Ducharme.

While Daryl explains how to use Ant and a *.jsfl file to remotely open Flash IDE, have it compile a given *.fla, and then close, his approach creates a release *.swf file, one that contains no debug information. If you want to actually step-debug trough your code using the Flex Builder’s built-in debugger, some changes are in order.

To start with, we need to use fl.getDocumentDOM().debugMovie() instead of fl.getDocumentDOM().exportSWF() in the *.jsfl file template:

/**
* Exports file "%fla%" to "%swf%" using current settings.
*/
// Open given file:
fl.openDocument ("file:///%fla%");
// Export to *.swf, includding debugging information:
fl.getDocumentDOM().debugMovie();
// Close the running movie which also ends the debugging session (this didn’t work
// for me):
// fl.closeAllPlayerDocuments();
// Close Flash IDE as well:
fl.saveAll();
fl.quit (false);

In my case, a Flash Player window remained open after running the above script in Flash IDE, and there was no way of getting rid of it via the *.jsfl file.

Therefore, I needed to add some code in the build.xml file, in order to close it "by hand". This is what I’ve come up with:

default="start">
<!– Set Properties –>
name="flashIDE"
value="my/path/to/Flash.exe" />
name="moviePrefix" value="MyFla" />
name="srcDir" value="path/to/project/source/folder" />
name="destDir" value="path/to/project/bin/folder" />
name="jsflFile" value="compile.jsfl" />
name="jsflTemplate" value="automation.jsfl" />
name="publicUsersFolder"
value="path/to/a/public/folder/on/your/system" />
name="batFile" value="killFP.bat" />
name="batFileTemplate" value="automation.bat" />
name="waitTime" value="12" />
<!– Starts the build –>
name="start">
<!– After running the debugMovie() command in Flash, Flash Player is
launched to show the compiled movie; it will never close by
itself, which, in turn, will make the "build" target never exit.
This is why we need to run the "waitForBuild" target in
parallel. It simply waits a number of seconds, and then forcibly
closes all running Flash Player instances.
–>
>
target="waitForBuild" />
target="build" />
>
>
<!– Waits a number of seconds before calling the "cleanup" target. –>
name="waitForBuild">
seconds="${waitTime}"/>
target="cleanup" />
>
<!– Attempts to kill all Flash Player instances (see above). –>
name="cleanup">
tofile="${publicUsersFolder}/${batFile}"
file="${srcDir}/${batFileTemplate}" />
executable="cmd" dir="C:/Windows">
value="/c"/>
value="${publicUsersFolder}/${batFile}"/>
>
>
<!– Invokes Flash IDE with a generated JSFL file as argument. –>
name="build" depends="writeJSFL">
executable="${flashIDE}" failonerror="true">
value="${srcDir}/${jsflFile}"/>
>
>
<!– Generates a JSFL file to pass as an argument to Flash IDE. –>
name="writeJSFL" >
destfile="${srcDir}/${jsflFile}">
files="${jsflTemplate}" />
>
file="${jsflFile}">
token="%fla%"
value="${srcDir}/${moviePrefix}.fla"/>
token="%swf%"
value="${destDir}/${moviePrefix}.swf"/>
>
>
>

The batFileTemplate file the build.xml mentions only contains:

:: Kills all running instances of Flash Player. Must be run as
:: administrator, from the local machine. It will NOT work if run from
:: a network location.
taskkill /F /IM FlashPlayer*

All the above worked just fine for my particular configuration, which was: Windows Vista Enterprise 64, Flash CS4, and Flex Builder 3.0.2 (standalone version); it may or may not work in your case.

You’ll definitely need to change a few things: the waitTime property (to accommodate your project compile time); all dummy paths with real ones on your system; and, if you are on a Mac or on a Linux box, then you’ll need to rewrite from scratch the cleanup target.

That’s about it. And, again, thanks Daryl!

…tell apart missing XML attributes from empty ones

ciacob — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:31:18 +0000

This might be tricky using E4X, which, in an attempt to make the overall XML handling a lot easier, apparently also took some useful “garbage” away: there is no getAttributeNode() method (or similar) in E4X, as it is in DOM.

var dataProvider1 : XML = ;
var dataProvider2 : XML = "" />;
// Suppose you want to see whether there actually is a "prompt" attribute set on your node,
// and do something clever if it isn’t:
var hasPromptAttribute : Boolean = (dataProvider1.@prompt != null); // guess what: TRUE
var hasPromptAttribute : Boolean = (dataProvider1.@[‘prompt’] != null); // just fancier: TRUE
// Maybe a predicate will do?
var hasPromptAttribute : Boolean = (dataProvider1.(attribute (‘prompt’))[0] != null) // TRUE
// Count elements in the returning XMLList?
trace (dataProvider1.(attribute (‘prompt’)).length()); // this is "1"; you knew that, right?

The point is, you’re essentially just wasting your time with E4X here. You need to get to the roots, and recall the Object object of ActionScript3. Remember the hasOwnProperty method?

var hasDp1PromptAttribute : Boolean = (dataProvider1.hasOwnProperty(‘prompt’)); // FALSE
var hasDp2PromptAttribute : Boolean = (dataProvider2.hasOwnProperty(‘prompt’)); // TRUE

Phew… :-)

Smarter i18n platform

ciacob — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:58:35 +0000

I am, these days, sporadically, working at translating the UI of the MuseScore music notation software into Romanian.

The software itself is opensource, written in C++ against the QT platform, and translation, up to a few days ago, was made via the QTLinguist application.

The QTLinguist has a rather priceless feature, called suggestions (or the like), which saves much of translator’s precious time. It simply recognizes strings that you have previously translated and prompts you to choose (one of) the translation(s) you already entered for it.

Recently, the project’s stakeholder decided to switch to a web based translation tool (I’m not sure if it’s a home-made web application or a dedicated/commercial one). While this speeds things a lot, the suggestions feature QT had is, of course, missing, and I’m actually missing it the most.

Which brings me to the point I wanted to state when I first decided to put together this post: Isn’t there a smarter i18n tool/platform/API that would prevent the programmer from redundantly entering the same string several times in an application’s UI? I’d really like to know.

…convert a decimal Number to a hexadecimal String?

ciacob — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:30:45 +0000

Don’t go about writing your own decimal to hexadecimal converter. In AS3, the Number.toString(radix : Number) method is all that you need:

var myDeci : Number = 16711680;
var myHexa : String = myDeci.toString (16); // myHexa now holds "ff0000"

Note that you may still need to left pad the resulting value, if you’re operating with color triplets – as, for instance, 0 in decimal will still be "0" as a hexadecimal string, and not "000000".

…scroll an element into view in Flex?

ciacob — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:12:43 +0000

This worked for me:

var myButtonBounds : Rectangle = myButton.getBounds (this);
verticalScrollPosition = myButtonBounds.bottom;

In the above, myButton was the Flex component I needed to bring into view by scrolling up the content of its container.