Общо показвания

декември 23, 2011

TUI status update

The Tornado UI project is now more or less in stable phase, there are some small issues here and there, but the transport layer is stable and the HTML UI is complete. Also the closure-library link for the transport layer is ready.

As of today the develop branch from the last 2 months is merged in the master, which means that it is useful as it is, no need for special setup. You can just host it anywhere and point your Tornado device to the start URL (edit the M55/M70 settings and set 'Start URL' and 'Use start URL' to true).

The one piece still missing is the picture browser, we are working to resolve the memory restriction making web-kit to crash after a while with large files. Once this is ready you will have a complete interface, fully customizable via CSS only and very easy to extend with JavaScript.

The code is available on GitHub.

The documentation is progressing well, for now it covers only the transport layer and its abstraction layers, but the plan is for it to include the UI elements as well for easier use of the source as SDK for your own AV application or even your games.

The binding for closure library will be released soon, we are still clearing some compiler warnings in strict mode with type checking. Stay tuned. Using the closure compiler brings some new features, like compilation for a particular device, cutting out large portions of the code base and making the application faster. We are also working on some nifty features like app cache and local storage for even faster loading as well as some advanced visualization features, that will run on the newer devices and will bring the cutting edge presentation layer one expects from a modern web application.

декември 22, 2011

Списание Дъга

Ако сте над 25 годишни и сте от мъжки пол (пък даже и от женски да сте..) сигурно си спомняте списание "Дъга". На мен ми беше любимото. Нещо като социалистическа версия на "комиксите". Интересното при него беше, че освен разказите съдържаше и игри и статии. Също друго, много интересно нещо бе, че различните истории се рисуваха в различен стил, което развива артистичните усещание у младежта. Нещо такова.

Та така де, всички броеве можете да разгледате или свалите от тук: списание Дъга

What is better than Glee?

Short answer: Mary Lou by Eytan Fox. 


Why? Because it treats real life and real problems and not high school imaginary drama with bunch of adults in their mids pretending to be high-school students. Yup. 

And the music is better. I like Svika Pick! And you like it too, if you like Harel Skaat. 

Attention (Anti Semites): the movie is from Israel and is in Hebrew
Attention (Anti Gays): the movie contains some homosexual imagery and transvestite imagery - nothing profane though. 

декември 16, 2011

Developing JavaScript in Vim

Vim is great for coding, anyone can tell you that. It is customizable and extendable beyond anything I have encountered. However this is not seen as s plus immediately by JavaScript developers.

In this post I will try to summarize my experience with Vim for JavaScript programming and in particular with closure tools and node.

First of course you will need Vim 7.x. You will also need exuberant ctags or gjstags. The former is preferred though (explained later) and a JavaScript hinter/linter (jsl, jshint, jslint or gjslint).

Now for the vim plugins: you will need syntactic, taglist, nerd three and writeJSDOCcommen.

ctags is used to annotate your code and while it does not have the fancy options of Aptana Studio or Eclipse (like annotation for variables in the scope of a method or the properties of an object enumerated in the Object annotation as well as properties on its prototype all arranged in a nice tree view) it has something I often fine more useful - the fact that it is able to append the annotations so when you have opened 10 files and you see only one in your editor you still see all annotations for all open files. This is especially useful when working with code you do not know well (like the vast closure library for example, did I mentioned that I struggled with a tool to help me getting better knowledge of closure).

To use ctags effectively in vim I would suggest taglist. I use the following option setting in my vimrc:

let tlist_javascript_settings = 'javascript;f:functions;c:classes;m:methods;p:properties;v:globals'


This is - I want everything annotated in JavaScript files. I also use this shortcut:

nmap :TlistToggle


In ftplugin/javascript.vim I also have:

nnoremap   :call WriteJSDocComment()

This is not extremely useful, but a time saver. This was for code annotation, not lets begin with code checking.  I used to go with node js and jshint, but the truth is it does not make sense to install node js just to run hinting on it - after all it is marketed as server side JavaScript. Hinting is actually better done with syntactic.

By default it will look for any linter installed, I tried gjslint (the closure instrumentation linter) and jsl. The former tend to be too much closire library centric so probably the later would be better if you are not developing with closure in mind. Also the gjslint executable is much slower on larger files.


The last is NERD_tree which is not JavaScript must have, but it helps a lot see and browse your files as you do in any other IDE.

What I was not able to find is help system that is able to read JSDoc annotation for JavaScript and hint the usage. If anyone knows about such, please let me know.

PS: I often switch OSes, Looks and feels, IDEs and editors, browsers etc. I like diversity. However to this day I have not found the perfect JavaScript editor. Every one out there has a feature that I like but the others lack and each one lacks multiple features I like. Looks like finding the perfect tool is a never ending quest.