Embedding Processing applications in PowerPoint / Other Solutions - applet

I wish to use the application known as Processing to create interactive graphs and figures to use in a presentation for the Arizona JSHS competition. I have used the widely popular LiveWeb application to be able to embed java into the power-point. But when I do the same thing with Java applications made with Processing it gives an error.
"Error: Unexpected identifier or string. http://localhost/applet/index.html"
I have tested it with locally hosted Java applets and Processing applets, both work run normally. But only the Java applet (which is very similar to the processing applet) works in LiveWeb.
Does anyone have suggestions to get around this? Do you think I could import processing library's into Eclipse and work from there?

One potential solution would be processing.js. It is a javascript version of processing that may fit your needs.

Related

Can I use webassembly for plugins like blender uses python?

I was talking to a friend of mine who knows a lot about js and wasm.He told me the technology goes far beyond web, since it is basicly a way to run near native applications on devices without actually giving them access to the computer.
Which means that thrid party or untrusted code on a smartphone for instance cannot accidentally or intentional change other apps or parts of the system.
This seamed to me like the perfect conditions to build a plugin system for an application I am working on.
I asked him about it but he was unable to give me a clear answer.
So the question is, can I use webassembly outside of a webbrowser, with custom bindings to safely allow users to extend the functionality of my application (a special image viewer) without sacrificing too much speed? It seams it should work using libnode or something, but is there a problem I might run into?
I don't know how much you know about web assembly but it depends on what your plugins actually should do. If it basically handle Arrays and numeric data with not that match interacting with host applications then it might fit. But when you have heavy object handling then it will not fit at the moment. So for image processing it might be perfect match like it is used in some web examples. Also be aware that some web assembly targeting system or not suitable for none web targets as they generate also some javascript code to be used in browsers beside the generate wasm. Some wasm modules for example require that you call malloc and free for string handling other have functions like new and gc for the nearly the same.

Executing prolog code on an iPhone

I currently have the need to execute prolog code in an application I am making. I am aware that Apple probably never would allow something like this in the App Store, but that is not the intention either. This is more a private project that will never reach the App Store.
Purpose
In this case prolog is used to describe an object (like for example a telephone) and its properties. The object will be drawn with OpenGL using coordinates specified in the prolog script. The reason for using prolog is that I need the ability to query the program about some of the features this object has, and prolog eases this a lot. Bottom line: I "need" to query a prolog script from my app.
Possible solutions
Embed an already existing implementation written in C. I am unsure if this will even work.
Execute the prolog code on another machine and use the network to query prolog.
It seems that it is possible to run some sort Ruby VM inside the app (shinycocos uses this as far as I understand), could this be used to run one of the Ruby Prolog implementations?
Find some alternative to Prolog. This needs to give me some of the same possibilities I get with prolog.
Sadly, google gives me close to no results at all, so I have a feeling that I might be quite alone on this project. If anyone have any experience or clue at all, I would be very thankful.
Having faced similar difficulties calling prolog code, albeit in a different situation, I'd recommend checking out the castor c++ library. This allows you to write logic paradigm code in native c++ without needing to extend the language at all. As castor is a header only library it is easy to compile wherever c++ is available.
Castor website: http://www.mpprogramming.com/cpp/default.aspx
Half a year later, I would just like to provide some insight on this. I ended up writing a server with an interface to prolog in Java, accepting prolog calls through TCP. It works almost exactly like the live prolog interpreter SWI-prolog (among others) provides, and mostly works quite well. However, it is far from an optimal solution, as you can't call functions from inside prolog. You lose the possibility of having two-way communication.
If I were to start all over again, I would certainly have tried harder to compile one of the pure C implementations for iOS. I gave it a quick go, but my lack of experience stopped me from even removing all of the errors I got. Judging by the fact that you cannot have prolog running as a background process on a unmodified version of iOS as well, some major rewriting would have to be done. Because of this, one might just have to write a new implementation (perhaps inspired by some of the more lightweight ones out there) from scratch to get the perfect solution.
You can download SWI-Prolog's source code and compile it with XCODE for iOS platform. I've never done that, but it's certainly technically possible.
Once you do that, there are a lot of examples on how to run prolog code from C/C++, hence, you will be able to run prolog from Objective-C.
FYI, you can quite easily bi-directionally make calls between Java and SWI-Prolog if you use JPL:
http://www.swi-prolog.org/packages/jpl/
It is also fully re-entrant, so you can instantiate prolog code from java, which in turn instantiates java code etc...
I did this for a number of commercial projects a few years ago when I was required to connect a Prolog based Reasoning Engine to a lot of Java code.
It does use JNI (the Java Native Interface), so you need to be careful about how you compile and link to the native api. Though if you compile it appropriately for each platform you can make it work cross platform. I had it working on OS-X, Windows, Linux & Solaris.
I do not know if this has been tried but there is the possibility to use the combination of NodeJS for Mobile Apps & TauProlog:
https://code.janeasystems.com/nodejs-mobile
https://github.com/JaneaSystems/nodejs-mobile
and
http://tau-prolog.org/

Does anyone has first-hand experience with G-WAN web Server?

The only place where I found informations on G-WAN web server was the project web site and it looked very much like advertisement.
What I would really know is, for someone who is proficient with C, if it is as easy to use and extend that other architectures. For now I would mostly focus on scripting abilities.
Are C scripts on GWAN easy to write ?
Can you easily update and upload new C scripts to the server (say as easily than some PHP or Java pages on other architectures) ? Do you have to restart the server when doing so ?
Can you easily extend it with third party or existing C libraries ?
Any other feedback welcome.
Well, now G-WAN is available under Linux, I am using it for more than 6 months.
The C scripts are fully-ANSI C compatible so there is no difference for any seasonned C programmer.
To update them on the server, you can edit them directly in the /csp folder (remotely via SSH) or locally on a test machine (and copy them later): G-WAN reloads scripts on-the-fly when they have been changed on disk (no server stop required).
G-WAN C scripts can use any existing library (starting with all those under /usr/lib) without any configuration or interface: you just have to write a '#pragma link' followed by the name of the library at the top of your script.
What I found really useful is the ability to edit C scripts and refresh the view in the Internet browser to see how my code works.
If there is a compilation error, then G-WAN outputs the line in the source code (just like any C compiler).
But where it enters the extraordinary area, is when you have a C script crash: here also it gives you THE LINE NUMBER IN THE SOURCE CODE (with the faulty call and the backtrace).
Kind of black-magic when you are used to Apache modules.
My experience with G-WAN and its C scripts are:
The G-WAN community is very small. Questions you have are mostly answered by its single developer.
I consider the API not mature: it's not as "clean" as Java APIs.
The limitation, but at the same time the power, of C: it's a systems programming language. So writing application logic in it must be done carefully.
You generally need to be a good developer to get good results: if you do something wrong, the server crashes fast and hard (Unix-style).
I've written some scripts now, to try out G-WAN. Overall, it's been very "productive": not much bugs and it works if you follow the guidelines and don't want to do too much funky stuff you expect it to have, like mature web servers. However, I have got the feeling I'm reinventing the wheel a lot of times.
G-WAN also support scripts written in other programming languages (C++, Objective-C, Java, etc.) so you will benefit from whatever native libraries each language implements.
For C scripts, well, the /usr/lib directory lists more than 1,500 libraries that G-WAN can re-use with a simple #pragma link "library".
I found it neat to be able to write a Web application with a part in C, another in C++ and a third one in Java!
Benchmark shown how G-wan fare poorly at handling these tests.
http://joshitech.blogspot.sg/2012/04/performance-nginx-netty-cppcms.html
I have been using G-Wan for about two years. I consider it highly stable and production ready for static files. I have a number of static sites running for over a year with no issues.
I have built some small scale dynamic sites in C with it as demos/test projects. A bittorrent tracker and a real time analytics platform both using the KV Store for data backing.
In my view building large scale dynamic sites in G-Wan is possible but only with a significant investment in development and support. G-Wan is better suited to building robust highly scalable "enterprise grade" applications than tossing something together over a weekend.
I use G-Wan for a CMS http://solicms.com but for now, I use Ruby as primary language.
I have used G-wan for some preliminary testing and it does benchmark well. I have found a few points of concern that make it so that I will not likely use it for any of my projects. I have found that it seems to cache responses for about 0.5secs to speedup the responses/second and I can't have only some of the responses hitting the application code. Also the key/value store is great for cache and temporary data storage but I'm not sure how well it will work as a real back-end storage method.

How safe is apache Commons-javaflow while using jasperreports

I am using jasperreport and trying to pass an alternate report runner.
• net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRThreadSubreportRunner: The initial thread-based
implementation
• net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRContinuationSubreportRunner: A Javaflow-based
implementation
I am using the second one (for the reason, it runs on tomcat server, and creating threads wouldn't be good while writing subreports). The second one depends on commons-javaflow which is a sandbox version.
Not sure if I should use it, Could somebody suggest a better way.
Thanks
While javaflow is a sandbox component, it is fairly mature, and many people use it in production. If have worked out all of the class-loader/bytecode transformer steps you need to take, it should be safe to use.
I would write several automated tests (just to be sure), and then use it.
I hope i got the question right
Actually JasperReports depends on many open source libraries, including Apache-Commons and iText among many others. I use JasperReports on multiple computers ranging from PCs to a mainframe. I believe you are safe.

What languages can be used to make dynamic websites?

So, there are several languages which will allow you to create a website, as long as you configure the server(s) well enough.
To my knowledge, there is:
PHP
ASP.NET
Ruby(on rails, what is
that all about?)
And thusly, my knowledge is limited. Ruby and ASP, I've only heard of, never worked with. If there are other languages, I suppose they have some way to make files containing the needed html. It would then suffice to add a line to the Apache config to associate the file-extension.
And if other languages: are there any notable characteristics about the one(s) you mention?
ANY language can be use to make a dynamic website - you could do it in COBOL or FORTRAN if you were twisted enough. Back in the olden days (about 10 years ago) most dynamic websites were done with CGI scripts - all you needed was a program that could read data from standard input and write data (usually HTML) to standard output.
Most modern languages have libraries and frameworks to make it easier. As well as the languages you have already mentioned, Java, C# and Python are probably the most common in use today.
Typically a web framework will have:
a way of mapping URLs to a class or function to handle the request
a mechanism for extracting data from a request and converting it into an easy to use form
a template system to easily create HTML by filling in the blanks
an easy way to access a database, such as an ORM
mechanisms to handle caching, redirections, errors etc
You can find a comparison of popular web frameworks on wikipedia.
How can you forget Java ? :)
Python
It runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, and has been ported to the Java and .NET virtual machines.
Python is a perfect scripting language for web applications, e.g. via mod_python for the Apache web server. With Web Server Gateway Interface a standard API has been developed to facilitate these applications. Web application frameworks or application servers like Django, Pylons, TurboGears, web2py and Zope support developers in the design and maintenance of complex applications. Around libraries like NumPy, Scipy and Matplotlib, Python is a standard in scientific computing.
Among the users of Python are YouTube and the original BitTorrent client. Large organizations that make use of Python include Google, Yahoo!, CERN, NASA,and ITA.
This could be for your interest.
Virtually thru CGI all programming languages that produce output may use for web page generation.
Basically, you can use any language (if you are hosting your own server)
Very closely related and very interesting is this article where LISP has been used to build a very succesfull website.
Python has a 3rd party module CherryPy which can be used with or without a http server.
Amongst others: Erlang (YAWS, Mochiweb), Python
JSP has the advantage that it automatically wraps your code in a servlet, compiles that to bytecodes, then uses the just-in-time Java compiler to recompile critical sections into native object code. Not aware of any alternative which allows optimizes your work automatically in this way.
Also allows you to develop and deploy on any combination of Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.
If you'd like to choose one for the beginning, you should check out PHP first. It gives you the basic clues about how dynamic sites work in general.
After you've become familiar with the basics, I recommend ASP.NET.
Fist off, you should know that ASP.NET is a technology and not a language. (It actually supports any language that can be used on the .NET platform.) Also it is not to be confused with classic ASP. (The old ASP was much more like PHP.)
ASP.NET is very easy to begin with, and after you have some clues about its concepts, you can always dig deeper and customize everything in it. The http://asp.net site is a very good starting point, if you are to learn it. I think it is really worth the effort, because even if you choose not to stick to it, it will give you some interesting ideas and concepts.
I tell you its most important advantages:
The code is compiled (and NOT interpreted like PHP), and it has a very good performance. (In a performace comparsion, it is 10-15 times faster. http://www.misfitgeek.com/pages/Perf_Stat_0809.htm)
It can be run on Windows without effort, and on Linux / Mac / etc using the Mono project.
It implements the Separation of Concerns principle very well.
It has most of the general functionality you'll need built-in. (Such as membership, roles, database management, and so on.)