Gregor R. Peisker http://peisker.net/ Gregor R. Peisker's Site gregor@peisker.de © Gregor R. Peisker Sun, 3 Oct 2004 07:44:35 Sun, 3 Oct 2004 12:44:36 WebEdit.NET Gregor R. Peisker http://peisker.net/favicon.ico http://peisker.net/ 16 16 Gregor R. Peisker <![CDATA[ Happy New Year 2009 ]]> I wish you all the best for the new year. May your dreams come true, but be careful what you wish for.

It's just a box of rain
I don't know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
Or leave it if you dare
But it's just a box of rain
Or a ribbon for your hair
Such a long long time to be gone
And a short time to be there

Permanent Link

]]> Fri, 2 January 2009 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Fourty-Two K ]]> Today, I finally cracked the fourty-two-dot-one-eight-something kilometers limit, aka, marathon distance. The walk wasn't so bad, really. Not too much pain, plenty of sunshine, cool air, and a bit of wind.

As far as I know, I'm still alive, at least I'm aware of typing this now in my favorite text editor. I'm having water and bananas with my favorite Hot Tuna music, and I won't be of much use for anything else today.

Permanent Link

]]> Sat, 26 April 2008 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Happy New Year 2008 ]]> A happy new year 2008, and a good time offline whenever you dare.

WebEdit.NET runs on Vista, indeed (with CLR v2.0.50727).

Permanent Link

]]> Thu, 3 January 2008 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Boxing In The Dark ]]> Since I've addressed various aspects of .NET delegates at this site in the past, I thought I'd share another piece of trivia, if only for the sake of completeness:

If you point a delegate to an instance method of a value type, then that value gets boxed. The boxed object can then only be retrieved through the Target property of the delegate.

This is not an issue in properly designed code: Structs are used when the focus is on simple data, not complex data structures and loads of tricky interactions. Normally, there's no reason for a delegate to point to any instance unless the data in that instance is either used or changed by the call. Since value types follow value, aka copy, semantics, it's hard to know which data the call will operate on. This means that using a value type instance method for a delegate is a bad idea to begin with, so the implicit boxing doesn't really make things worse.

Permanent Link

]]> Sat, 15 September 2007 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Parameterizing Event Subscriptions ]]> When registering for an event, the subscriber normally uses syntax like this:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 28 July 2007 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Parse Tree Visualization ]]> Check out the the FCodeTree form in the Gregor.NetConsole project. The form consists of a tree view and a text box. You can load code into the form, then it's parsed, and whenever you navigate in the tree, the selection in the text box updates to highlight the code that corresponds to that node in the parse tree. Vice versa, if you move the caret in the text box, the corresponding node is selected.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 1 April 2007 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Calling Open Instance Delegates in .NET Console ]]> Have a look at the filter user function, coded in WebEdit.NET for evaluation with the built-in code interpreter (.NET Console):

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 11 March 2007 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Flexible Binary Searches ]]> Suppose you need to perform a binary search under the following conditions:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 3 February 2007 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ 2006 Summary ]]> 2006 has been my best year up to now, by far, and that's it.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 25 December 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Open Instance Delegates and Weak References ]]> Let's run this code:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 19 November 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ New Project: Gregor.Media ]]> I'm delighted to welcome a new project in the Gregor.NET application framework: Gregor.Media is the latest entry.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 5 November 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Syntax Highlighting for Embedded Code ]]> How's that for syntax highlighting? Just configure a language in WebEdit.NET so that it uses Gregor.Editing.Coloring.CEmbeddedLanguageParser as its syntax parser, specify the tokens that mark embedded code, and optionally say which language information to use for the embedded and embedding code, respectively.

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 1 November 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Concurrent Document Views ]]> WebEdit.NET has been supporting multiple document views for some time now. From now on, users may also view them concurrently. See here.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 28 October 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Resource Storage Provider ]]> WebEdit.NET offers a new built-in storage provider: the Resource Storage Provider allows users to read embedded textual resources:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 21 October 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Wave That Flag ]]> Have a look at the FlagSet8 struct in Gregor.Core, which is supposed to compact boolean flags into a more memory-efficient structure. It works like a flags enum, but it's got a more convenient interface, one that can safely be exposed to clients, too.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 8 October 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Implementing ToString ]]> The ToString() method can be used for several purposes, as practice proves. In the case of using it for diagnostic purposes, as is the original purpose, you'd typically want to look at all of an object's properties.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 4 September 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Walkin' Blues ]]> Right now, I'm listening to Walkin' Blues, followed by Invitation, (off America's Choice, by Hot Tuna), for what must be the twentieth time.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 27 August 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Vacation ]]> I'm taking a vacation from web publishing, until further (implicit?) notice.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 22 May 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Up and Running ]]> Just to let you know that I'm still up and running, notice that the Gregor.NET Framework Version 2005 (Whidbey) doesn't run if Visual Studio isn't installed, because of a dependency on the C runtime debug version. I'll fix it some time.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 21 March 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Universal Callbacks ]]> The CHandler class of Gregor.Core, which is a universal handler for any event that follows the common event signature pattern used in dynamicscenarios, has attracted a more general companion that allows routing any callback to a single handler, also for dynamic scenarios: CCallback(Of DelegateType).

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 26 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Anonymous Methods and Exceptions ]]> I have outed myself on believing that event handlers are not only to handle events, but should also handle any exceptions that pop up.

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 22 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Tuples and Projection ]]> Suppose you have a list of people:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 19 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Enums and Generics ]]> Recall that we cannot constrain generic parameters to enumerations. In other words, we can't use System.Enum as a type constraint. The best we can do is use the value type constraint (where T : struct), as well as further constrain T to the interfaces we know every enumerated type happens to implement.

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 16 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Walking Arrays ]]> Question: How do you walk through all elements in a .NET array?

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 12 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Check the Flow ]]> The methods in the Check and Flow modules in Gregor.Core are very similiar. In the first case, an ArgumentException is thrown if some criterion is not met; in the second case, a boolean value returned. There are two problems with this approach:

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 7 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Multi-Level Sorting ]]> Let's talk about sorting again. Our goal is to set up ad-hoc multi-level comparisons in a simplified, but type-safe fashion. Recall the problem of not having a suitable comparer, or items that are not comparable at all. With Whidbey, I've settled on two techniques:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 5 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Templated Text Generation, Simplified ]]> In recent posts, I have introduced the text generation facilities in the Gregor.Core library. These are quite a complex beast: an entire graph of objects is used as input for the text generation, and that graph being shaped by path information contained in an XML document, with further assistance by a code interpreter (like .NET Console).

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 1 February 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Closed Delegates ]]> I've talked about open instance and closed static delegates recently. What if we could close in on all arguments used in a delegate invocation, not just the first one? This is handy when you need to save some context, namely, local variables, for later use.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 28 January 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Generic Method Support ]]> From now on, .NET Console supports calls to generic methods. It was not all that hard to do, because:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 22 January 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Searching for Text in WebEdit.NET ]]> I've reworked the text searching features in WebEdit.NET. So far, searching text was limited to the current document (using the Find Text tool window), or given folders in the file system (with the Find Files tool window).

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 18 January 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Using Shell Context Menus ]]> Gregor.WinShell, which brings the Windows Shell to .NET applications, provides the CShellContextMenu class that let's an application retrieve context menu items for any item in the Shell Namespace. This post gives some into how to use it.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 15 January 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ More Fun With Callbacks ]]> A common pattern in programming is using callbacks. Callbacks come in various forms, such as function pointers, delegates, overridden virtual methods, interface implementations, or event handlers. What's common is that a general algorithm exists, with the callback providing some form of behavioural detail.

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 12 January 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Implementing Equals ]]> One of the rules for implementing the Equals() method is that that it should be reflexive, that is, if object a considers itself equal to object b, then object b should deem itself equal to a in reverse. And vice versa.

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 5 January 2006 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ 2005, Anyway ]]> I'm so much at peace. Snow is falling outside, and colder temparatures have been promised. The heating in my room is humming; it is the background noise of my happiness.

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 28 December 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Open Instance Delegates, Finally ]]> So I've finally figured out how to use open instance delegates, which are available in .NET 2.0 (Whidbey). For some background on this, read this post.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 19 December 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Whidbey Migration ]]> I have upgraded all projects of the Gregor.NET framework to .NET 2.0, aka Whidbey. Things have gone rather smoothly, and so I have even migrated Gregor.WinShell, a C++ project, from Managed Extensions syntax to the new C++/CLI syntax.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 3 December 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ .NET Console on the Console ]]> I've started work on console application utilities, with a console app infrastructure as the ultimate goal in mind. Every console app should have easy access to the its environment, to the command line, including simple validation facilities. You can see how far I have progressed in the classes in Gregor.Core.Configuration.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 14 November 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Reshaping The Site ]]> As non-IE users will have noticed, I have decided to reshape my web site into a very different design. I'm moving away from the complex, scripted, and framed configuration, though it's hard to give it up. Therefore, for the foreseeable future, there are going to be two versions of the site: the old complex one for IE, the new simple one for everybody else.

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 3 November 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ New .NET Console Features ]]> .NET Console has been the focus of attention this weekend:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 30 October 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Nulls ]]> Wesner Moise has a detailed and insightful post comparing how C# and VB.NET treat null values (System.Nullable).

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 20 October 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Text Generation ]]> In my last post on object graphs I've hinted at code and document generation and the CTextGenerator class. This article provides more details.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 10 October 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Killing Projects ]]> I've killed the Gregor.Scripting project, because VSA (Visual Studio for Applications) has been deprecated; yes, there's now Visual Tools for Applications, but I won't have any part in it. Also, there has been a great deal of functionality overlap - AddIns, .NET Console, code editing and building features in WebEdit.NET.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 8 October 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Short Updates Note ]]> Today, just for the record, a few notes on recent updates:

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 4 October 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Flexibly Navigated Object Graphs ]]> Remember that I introduced a general API for navigating among objects using reflection this spring? This is implemented at two levels:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 25 September 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Orcas ]]> Whidbey (.NET 2.0) has not even shipped yet, but there's already a lot of excitement over the next major version, code-named Orcas. The biggest thing promised is data integration.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 20 September 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Visual Studio to Command Line ]]> Suppose you have a Visual Studio 2002 or 2003 project, but not Visual Studio, and need to build the project. It's easy to invoke the compiler on the command line for C# or VB.NET sources - you can simply pass wildcards for the sources, and a few options.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 17 September 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Identifier Confusion in VB.NET ]]> Understanding the semantics of a VB.NET program is sometimes hard. Sure, the language has got many descriptive keywords, and the names exported by its libraries actually make sense.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 13 September 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Outlining Documents in WebEdit.NET ]]> There's another member in the family of configurable language objects in WebEdit: Outline Providers. They scan documents for interesting places, like headings or method signatures, all depending. The results are displayed in a new tool window (the Outline Window).

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 7 September 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Creating Web Articles ]]> Today, I'll give a little insight into how I create my web site articles, Journal entries mainly, using WebEdit.NET. The focus is on template-based editing, with the help of the code interpreter.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 4 September 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Fixup Providers ]]> Lately, I have moved some functionality that wrappes code snippets for compilation as Script AddIns from WebEdit.NET to the Gregor.Core project. For C# and VB.NET, there exist so-called fixup providers, which wrap certain types of code (like method header, types, or using statements) arround snippets of code. They're part of the language objects now, which means things are extensible for other languages, and configurable.

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 31 August 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Case Sensitivity in AutoText ]]> WebEdit's IntelliSense-like AutoText feature, provided by the Gregor.Editing project, supports case sensitivity in several different ways. In short, we need to distinguish:

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 26 August 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Command Shells ]]> Since .NET Console can be used as an interactive interpreter, how does it compare against other command shells? I'll just grab a couple of random points, and compare that against tcsh, which I frequently use.

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 19 August 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Working With Text In WebEdit.NET ]]> Text is universal. It's a good choice for both data formats as well as interfaces to software (user input, programming). In fact, the most powerful techniques for working with computers are those that rely on the ubiquity of that simple, universal format.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 7 August 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Data Access and Strong Typing ]]> There is a gap between the world of SQL data and objects in statically typed language environments. Efforts are being made to bridge it, and there are different approaches pursued.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 31 July 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Scripting Session ]]> Today, I'm just playing with new .NET Console capabilities. I'm running WebEdit.NET, and my aim is to access an ODBC database, perform a query, and create an HTML table from it.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 23 July 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Language Configuration in WebEdit.NET ]]> Finally, users can configure language-support in WebEdit.NET's settings dialog instead of having to resort to the configuration files. Here are some example of what can be done:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 9 July 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Wants and Needs ]]> It ain't what you want, it's what you need." - Jefferson Starship (Sketches Of China).

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 1 July 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ .NET Sheet : .NET Console ]]> Since I'm talking so much about .NET Console lately, I thought I'd break the boredom by talking about .NET Sheet, a spreadsheet program.

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 22 June 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Implementing Nested Procedures ]]> .NET Console supports nesting of user functions. Part of this feature is capturing variables declared in blocks enclosing the definition of the nested function:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 18 June 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Custom Auto-Completion Code Revisited ]]> Here's a new version the GetInterfaceImplementation function, which I presented here as an example for custom code usable in WebEdit.NET's token expansion feature. That function would be build as part of a Script AddIn.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 12 June 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Why Generics Make Sense In Scripting ]]> Generics are about improving compile-time type checking, right? Why do I support them in .NET Console, then?

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 10 June 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Event Handling with .NET Console ]]> OK, with support for user functions in .NET Console, and plenty of dynamic event management utilities already available, it's no surprise that .NET Console supports hooking up user function to events:

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 6 June 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Loops, Functions, and Generics in .NET Console ]]> Fire up the latest build of WebEdit, and run the following commands in the Console window:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 5 June 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ .NET Console Revamp ]]> Finally! I've managed to write a tokenizer, and a parser, and reworked .NET Console to use a syntax tree.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 22 May 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ The Virtues of Long Names ]]> What's right with the parameter names in the following method:

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 18 May 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Open Instance Property Delegates and Generic Comparers ]]> Sure you know the following situation:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 30 April 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Auto-Completion for .NET Console ]]> WebEdit.NET now provides some rudimentary form of IntelliSense for commands of the "code:" protocol when entered in the Console window. To be more specific, there is an AutoText list:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 16 April 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Late-bound Delegate Creation, Once Again ]]> With Whidbey, late-bound delegate creation, that is, instantiating a delegate for an event and/or a handler determined at runtime, is finally as flexible as I've ever wanted it to be.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 9 April 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Update History of Downloadables ]]> Starting now, you can view the - generated - update history of all .NET-related download items, back to May 2004. The page is located under and linked from the downloads page.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 4 April 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Adding Line Comments in WebEdit.NET ]]> A feature long overdue in WebEdit.NET is adding/removing comments on multiple lines. It's been added now, but it requires the proper language configuration (syntax providers and syntax parsers are queried for the appropriate strings). If some a language lacks these helper objects, or isn't configured at all, you can still prefix lines with a textual command. Here's how to do it for DOS batch files, of all things:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 2 April 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Simple Object Graphs ]]> Walking object graphs with no special information about the object relationships is an interesting concept. It's used in Serialization, but also in property browsers, like the Windows Forms property grid. It isn't that hard to accomplish with, you guessed it, Reflection:

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 30 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Data Types as Measurement Abstractions ]]> You'd think now that high-level languages have won the battle, and developers have easy ways to define abstract data types, we could finally remember a few lessons from physics class.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 22 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ The Last Program You'll Ever Download ]]> The Clown utility of my FileTools collection (which can be found on the downloads page) now supports building and running from sources stored on a web server (which is yet another strike against security):

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 19 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Alias Substitution and Custom Code ]]> WebEdit.NET's token expansion capabilities enable running custom code that generates the text to insert. This is best used with alias expansion, because the text typed is overwritten entirely, and so need not be part of the final text (which means it can be short & catchy).

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 18 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ PowerPoint ]]> I've done a litte ppt presentation. See if you can grok it at the gut level.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 13 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Markup Entities ]]> In the last post, I wondered how I'd efficiently encode HTML entities when editing text. Well, the functionality is already there. Suppose you have a function "EncodeEntities(String) : String" that does it (there's one in Gregor.Core.Parse), all you need is to place the following token in the token list, select it, select the text to encode, and press Ctrl+Shift+T:

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 10 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Tuples ]]> Sheesh, I hate generics! All those angle brackets are a holy PITA when writing articles about generics in HTML. I guess I need some editor feature that helps out with that.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 6 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ WebEdit.NET Languages Configuration ]]> Editor support for programming languages includes various things, such as syntax coloring, auto-completion, editing conversions, and so on. I have consolidated these things a bit, aiming at extensibility, configurability, and general mix-N-match support. The new Gregor.Core.CLanguageInfo class serves as the root for various configurable things, such as syntax parsers, token lists, editing converters, and more.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 5 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ When Not to Show Error Dialogs ]]> Imagine what happens if you pop up error messages in code that runs in a context like the following:

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 1 March 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Do Not Throw Exceptions in Event Handlers ]]> Exception handling works closely with the method stack. The decisions when to throw exceptions, and where to handle them, are a natural part of the method design process. The focal point is what the method does. Typically (of course, *not* typically, but I'm being cynical), a short glance at the method's name clears the point.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 26 February 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Security by Incentives ]]> Of all ideologies, the ideology of security is the most unforgiving one, unlimited in its consequences due to its utopic, absolutist nature. As Bruce Schneier said, When you put the police in charge of security, the trade-offs they make result in measures that resemble a police state.

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 24 February 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Declarative Event Handling ]]> How's that for declarative event handling:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 20 February 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Nested Array Syntax ]]> I gotta say that I find the array declaration syntax in the two .NET languages not very intuitive as far as nested arrays are concerned. The outermost array's rank specifier is declared left-most:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 12 February 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Escape Syntax Madness ]]> Have you ever used VBA to generate C# code that generates XML that includes quotes in attribute values? I did so in a somewhat obscure situation, which involved manipulating an XML file using rules laid down in an Excel sheet.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 5 February 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Implicitness ]]> Although porting my Managed Extensions C++ libraries to C++/CLI (the new version as of 2005) isn't strictly necessary due to the /clr:oldsyntax switch, I'll do so happily since the new language is a lot cleaner, more expressive, and supports more features, such as interface mapping, param arrays, a much better array syntax, and above all, a type system overhaul that makes CLR types look natural (handles, tracking references, etc.). C++/CLI is also the simplest .NET language to define a property.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 29 January 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ The Gregor.Lists Project Has Died ]]> Another project done gone! I have moved the remaining collection classes, including those for history management, from Gregor.Lists to Gregor.Core. Besides having discontinued that silly linked lists class (which I hereby euphemistically acknowledge (in a subordinate clause (not that I care (oh, no, I'm over-parenthesizing (is that spelled correctly?))))), all that's changed for existing code is the namespace: it's Gregor.Core.Collections from now on.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 23 January 2005 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Morning Breeze of Freedom ]]> By today, early in the morning (European Time), when the maniacs rise, I have spent half my life living in freedom.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 28 December 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ ToString Revisited ]]> While the documentation for ToString() says the method is intended to provide debugging output, this isn't the only way the method is used in practice. I've come up with at least three - not mutally exclusive - categories, not including the default behaviour implemented in System.Object:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 26 December 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Spam-filtered History ]]> How do you manage your browser's history, that is, keep it tidy, yet save information long enough so as to be useful still? On today's browsers, you can set an expiration time, like "keep history entries for 21 days" or such like.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 21 December 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Granny Engineering ]]> If your grandma needs to keep a list of her contacts, she'll create a table whose columns are named Last Name, First Name, Date Of Birth, City, Street, and so on.

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 26 November 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Languages in .NET Assembly Browser ]]> WebEdit.NET's assembly browser now supports multiple programming languages in an extensible fashion. Configuration is command-based so far:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 24 October 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Indexing and Slicing ]]> Should a rectangle be defined as a point and a size, or as two points? Should a List.Slice method take an initial index and a length, or two indices called begin and end? Should a period of time be represented by a start timestamp and a timespan, or by the interval between two timestamps?

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 13 October 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Team Oriented Tokenizing ]]> The trouble with the strtok routine is that it uses per-process data to keep track of the tokenizing: if you call some other code after the first call to strtok, you can never be sure that this code won't start a tokenizing session of its own, invaliding you sequence.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 12 October 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Abstracting Client Specifics ]]> Suppose you need to implement a custom solution for some client that deviates from the standard behaviour of your application. The code goes like this:

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 24 September 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Method Covariance ]]> It turns out that the C# folks are aware of the idea of using argument-compatible, but not exact-matching handler methods for delegates of a given type. See here for more.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 14 September 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ The Doom of the DOM ]]> IE has an interesting way of interpreting anchor elements (used for creating document fragment link targets) when it builds up the DOM:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 12 September 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Ch-Ch-Changes ]]> That namespace reorg I pushed on the Gregor.NET framework makes me a very bad person, but I just couldn't help it.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 5 September 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Whidbey ]]> I just downloaded the .NET Framework 2005 (2.0) Beta, and I'm pleased so far. Except for a few minor glitches, things are working. Of couse I'm excited about the new language features, but also about the new framework (Windows Forms, for example).

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 22 August 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Constants, OO-Style ]]> If someone complains to you about the use of raw int literals instead of named constants, ask him if this is the proper OO way:

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 20 August 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Logic ]]> Suppose you've got the following tasks to accomplish:

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 31 July 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Three Things on Trees ]]> It's all about trees this time:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 11 July 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Coding Blues ]]> Sure everybody has been hit by this mistake before:

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 20 June 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Late-bound Delegate Creation Revisited ]]> It turns out that the .NET framework already supports creating delegates based on method information at run time. The System.Delegate.CreateDelegate methods are roughly equivalent to what I offer in the Gregor.Core.Reflect module, although non-public and special (i.g., property accessors) methods must be shared (see their overload list). My reinventing the wheel has another advantage: it's possible to use handler method that don't match the delegate's signature, but are argument-compatible.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 6 June 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Late-bound Delegate Creation ]]> Reflection, delegates, and events is a topic I can't seem to abandon. I've written about how to create and hook event handler delegates by means of reflection (recall that instantiating a delegate involves passing an actual function pointer), but I haven't incorporated that stuff fully into the Gregor.NET framework until now. While the Gregor.Core.Reflect module was able to create property delegates for some time, the more common case of creating method delegates was not supported directly.

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 31 May 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Building Code in WebEdit.NET ]]> You may have noticed that I have been toying arround with custom .NET build tools for some time (ScriptBuilder.NET, the "Build" and "Clown" programs of my FileTools collection, and some others not published). Well, the newest trend is make WebEdit.NET into a modest IDE. I've dropped the Scripting IDE, at least GUI-wise, some time ago: its functionality is either available directly through the editor (for short-term solutions, see the "Execute Code" context menu item, which allows for statement execution, as well as temporary macros and modules), or has been taken over by AddIns (long term solutions and persistent macros).

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 29 May 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ IBM on Positional Parameters ]]> While I'm sure there are plenty of good ways to explain positional method parameters so that even a dullard like me would understand them, nobody can quite teach it the way IBM does (excerpted from DB2 documentation):

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 7 May 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ You Get What You Pay For ]]> Although the market price for a given good or service isn't always considered to be as accurate as it should be in a perfect market, real markets are mostly correct in that they pay very little for something that doesn't take a lot of effort to produce or provide. But there's an underlying principle which applies even if there is no buyer nor seller, but rather some in-house work that's to be balanced against some internal benefit striven for. In the same way that, in the market, the price is a good indicator of the value of something (although some would disagree here), the time and effort it takes to develop something for one's own use is a sure indication of its worth. The problem with non-marketable activities is that predicting the cost/benefit equation is harder, especially if you're acting as a salaried employee at the workplace. Software development is no exception.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 25 April 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Hacking Like Mad ]]> What happens if you don't have a working XML implementation on an esoteric system, like OS/390, that your application is supposed to run on? Case in point, at work I devised an XML-based document templating solution. There are roughly two dozen of such templates in use; the bulk of the data displayed by the application depends on those. And the XML lib won't parse them, because, well, it's never been intended for EBCDIC.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 21 February 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Compatibility, Processes, Solutions ]]> When API's get changed, and you're not within close physical proximity of the people responsible, you can do two things: let the problem escalate, because it's really not your problem if things get thrown arround for no reason, or go adapt your code, because that gets results much faster. The first option is a waste of time for at least half a dozen co-workers, but especially for yourself, since you need to deal with people ("Can you summarize that in an e-mail?") as opposed to compilers ("Unexpected argument: szName"), and at the end of the day (or the week), the decision is made, amidst great fanfare, to, well, get with the program. So you might as well fix the compile errors right away, and call it a day.

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 22 January 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ The Song That the Morning Brings ]]> Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings. (The Grateful Dead).

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 11 January 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ I'm Managed, I'm Bored ]]> With each of the posts on the DevX Forums, there is a link to "report this post to a moderator". I guess I'll add a similiar facility to each article published here - "report this page to the authorities", or "report this code sample to Wrox Publishing's legal department" - see, voluntary cooperation just enhances my value-added personality. Oh, this "managed living" that used to be Life.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 3 January 2004 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ More DHTML Gimmickry ]]> A new preferenceable feature called Page Collapsing is the site's newest gimmick.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 21 December 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ The Groupie and the Geek ]]> If you're female, and not too flat, you may be a groupie. If you're a developer, and have items in a flat list, you may want to group them.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 16 December 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Browser and Text Size ]]> So maybe there is interesting stuff to read on the web, after all. Accessiblity matters, and a major concern right now is text size. If you browse my site with Mozilla (have you tried Firebird lately?), using keyboard shortcuts lets you quickly scale the font to however small you want. Me, I prefer obese fonts these days for reading those other great sites whose authors actually have something to say; but from an aesthetics angle, I prefer tiny Tahoma for the sugar-coated jerkdom that is my own site. For IE, the architecture-arround is a cookie-saved setting on the preferences page. If you browse with WebEdit.NET, the text browser, you can use Mozilla-style shortcuts.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 30 November 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Focus Pocus ]]> So I tried to tidy up the start page, and make it more focussed, but with me, it's tough.

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 5 November 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Throw One Away ]]> It's been embarrasing to find out that certain files where missing from the site. My timestamp-based publication strategy was responsible for this (doesn't work so well when a file with an "old" timestamp is copied into a directory: which has me musing about the concept of file identity). More consequential is the fact that the Publisher application (an FTP client offered at the downloads page) was indeed not in the FileTools zip archive. The reason I learned of these things is nothing less than a crash of my hard drive. So I just rewrote the Publisher application (plan to throw one away, right?).

Read On ...

]]> Fri, 19 September 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Gone ]]> But it's been fourteen years of silence, it's been fourteen years of pain. It's been fourteen years that are gone forever, that I'll never have again (Guns 'N Roses).

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 27 July 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Managed Namespace Extension Project ]]> I've written an article about the GregorView Namespace Extension project, which has already been living at this site binarily for a few months.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 26 July 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ One Dot One, aka, 2003 ]]> Fixed a single, but grave incompatibility issue in the UICore component (regarding the use of the NativeWindow class for subclassing). That done, the Gregor.NET framework now runs under the .NET runtime version 1.1 (I'm still cautious, but so far, things look promising). It's no news that using different runtimes "side-by-side" works perfectly fine, but let me just say: "me too"!

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 28 June 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Custom Document Storage Providers ]]> Fixed an incredibly stupid bug in WinShell. WebEdit.NET now supports linking files or any other command on the toolbar by drag-and-drop; I also tweaked performance a bit. Then, the DataDocs AddIn can now also write to a database, and the connection structure is persisted to an XML file as well; furthermore, free form select statements are now supported. The WebEdit.NET documentation, exclusively offered at this site, now gives some insight into authoring a custom storage provider.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 18 May 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Miscellaneous ]]> The site has got a new start page, which mandates using IE even more. I stand corrected on a certain aspect of VB.NET's treatment of System.Object references pointing to boxed values (see the "Changes" topic). The Gregor.NET projects have seen some changes: in WinShell (custom auto-completion, support for internet shortcuts), UICore (consolidation of the context menus for dockable tool windows), and WebEdit (again, the context menu, this time in the edit pane).

Read On ...

]]> Mon, 21 April 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Who Needs This? ]]> Pushed an extensible context menu management system onto WebEdit, a feature long overdue, and fixed a few things here and there. So there is another update.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 9 March 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Loudness, Wearyness ]]> What can I say? No updates today. I'm slowly cracking up. She won't let me listen to "Father Bruce" (by the Great Society), since she's preparing for her exams, and wants things quiet (she offered me head phones).

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 23 February 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ ShellControls Moved ]]> Some updates on Gregor.NET: The ShellControls projects has been taken over by the AppCore project. The syntax parsers in the Editing project now support CSS, C, and C++. That's it.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 2 February 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ New, New, New ]]> A new year is always a new opportunity to try something new, like a new download strategy or a new upgrade paradigm regarding new versions of my not-so-new Gregor.NET projects (just have a quick browse to the downloads page to see). So, have a happy new year!

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 1 January 2003 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ My Holiday Present ]]> The holiday installment of Gregor.NET includes performance improvements in WinShell, a new tool window serialization model as well as a new toolbar class in UICore, and various reworked bits and pieces in WebEdit. So then.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 22 December 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ A New Record! ]]> I'll remember the 24th of November, since I put five new pages up the site - a new record. But then, I'll only remember because of the Journal. Why is it, that I feel urged to save and archive everything (well)? Is it really just the want to present at this site what the idiot netizenry patronizingly call "content"?

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 24 November 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ .NET Console Integration ]]> Guess what? A new shipment is on the server (integration of the .NET Console into WebEdit.NET being one feature).

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 2 November 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Introducing .NET Console ]]> A new installment of Gregor.NET has arrived with major improvements in UICore and Scripting. Since these are central components, everybody wins.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 30 September 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ WebEdit.NET Sample AddIn ]]> New updates of my .NET projects have arrived. On the downloads page, you'll find the first WebEdit.NET AddIn I've developed in my capacity as a third party.

Read On ...

]]> Tue, 3 September 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Text Finder ]]> The site's latest gadget is the Text Finder, which is supposed to ease finding text in a page. It's got a few minor issues, but hey, it's just another sidebar.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 3 August 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Colored Scrollbars! ]]> I uploaded new versions of my Gregor.NET projects. Mainly, I've fixed bugs, but there's also new functionality, such as scriptable AddIns in WebEdit.NET. Somehow related to the latter, I think it's cool that the .NET framework includes command line compilers.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 13 July 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Some Pitiful Gregor.NET Docu ]]> I wrote a short introduction into each namespace found in my Gregor.NET assemblies. It's not much, but yes, you guessed it, it's a start, and if you knew me, you'd see that this is due to an obsession with "being done" with a task (in this case, commenting on what I've vowed to comment on). VS.NET's just too damn fun and productive a tool, or maybe hobbying in both coding and web authoring is just taking it's toll.

Read On ...

]]> Thu, 30 May 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Beyond the Beta ]]> I'm finally in: I got my copy of VS.NET v1, and after a surprisingly smooth upgrade from Beta 2, I updated the Gregor.NET project downloads. I started a brain-stormy introduction to the CodeBuilder application, but once again, I found the sheer amount of what I'd like to talk about just too overwhelming.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 20 April 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ The Site Console ]]> So I finally took the time to write something on my .NET projects. The main motivation is my growing excitement over WebEdit.NET. The article about it isn't that deep, so forgive me if it sounds like marketing.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 23 March 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ .NET Development ]]> That's what you get when you're too busy writing code with .NET: you forget to update your web site. Anyway, my efforts at porting everything to the .NET platform are paying off. I'm introducing a series of projects under the name Gregor.NET. Although I didn't get arround to write any substantial articles about it, I provide an overview page, as well as downloads.

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 3 February 2002 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Visual Filters ]]> I recompiled my VB6 projects against VS.NET Beta 2 updated dependencies (but preserved backward compatibility). Then, I've added an article about my VBInet project (which will be continued in VB.NET, but it has been available for download for some time).

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 14 October 2001 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Site Quotes ]]> I've updated all my .NET samples and articles. Unfortunately, the topic on file icons is now obsolete, in the sense that the techniques described there aren't supported anymore in Beta 2; but I have found a work-arround already. The Collection topic has some good news on NameObjectCollectionBase. Then, there's UICore, my first C# sample at this site.

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 1 September 2001 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Beta 2 ]]> After migrating to VS.NET Beta 2, I've updated a couple of topics on VB.NET ("Changes", and "Traps"). The bad news is that the samples need some rework still before they're Web-ready.

Read On ...

]]> Wed, 15 August 2001 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Limbo Time ]]> A couple of projects have been updated recently: the XML project (a VB6 DLL, just for downloading) is now usable, although I'm far away from standards complicance. Or even efficient string parsing, for that matter. Then, I've put an effort into VBInet (also an ActiveX DLL without an accompanying article at this site). It's already much more stable than its bastard predecessor equivalents in VB6Core, and new features keep coming up. Speaking of VB6Core, I fixed a few bugs in CHistory and CRtfBox (the latter got an interesting new method as well).

Read On ...

]]> Sun, 30 June 2001 11:11:11 <![CDATA[ Colors and Operators ]]> I changed the colors for the sidebar, picking light silver for some entries. This reduces the number of basic colors on the site to five (white, black, silver, light silver, and the secret shade of navy blue [as the default]).

Read On ...

]]> Sat, 16 June 2001 11:11:11