Kontrawize author Anthony Coates warns that this is an attractive time sink. Thanks for the heads up.
My first round of research found HTML Slidy , but didn't find DocUtils + S5 . S5 is simpler and does less than Slidy. RST markup is far easier to cope with than HTML. This looks …
more ...PPT has one big advantage: it is written by the same people who wrote Windows. So it can seize the Windows display and keyboard, and take control over the entire UI. I happen to think that's A Bad Thing™ but I may be in the minority on that.
Of course …
more ...First, let me get this off my chest: Django http://www.djangoproject.com/ rules. There are a number of reasons, but they aren't the point of this posting.
When someone creates a twenty-minute application, they walk a fine line. The minimalist approach to software development can be viewed from two …
more ...I've been using the Apache FOP http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/ to transform XSL:FO into PDF's. FOP works well enough for some DocBook processing, but it can't handle really complex stuff gracefully.
Can we also use this XSL:FO technology for producing PDF form letters as part of a …
more ...I need to display my product catalog according to a number of dimensions but the data changes slowly and isn't very complex. Is a relational database and a web application really appropriate? Or can I get away with something simpler?
Some small product catalogs evolve slowly. A detailed …
Years and years ago I started using Delphi internet services. They had a complicated dialup arrangement through Sprintnet and Tymenet to a farm of VAX servers in the Boston area, part of Northeast Education and Research (NEAR) net. This was Delphi internet, character-mode, 9600 baud. I used Mac classic and …
more ...The most common argument for introducing YAPL goes like this:
"There are way too many programming languages out there. And they are each flawed in some way (small and odd, or large and incomprehensible). So I, in my wisdom and will create YAPL, which will displace all these other, inferior …
more ...The idea of "universal" processing via XSLT is moderately appealing. There's a big issue with poorly defined semantics, which always breaks a meta-data driven approache. The holy grail is perfect metadata from which all application software can be derived in a trivial way. I'm not sure this is ever achievable …
more ...From an email I got recently, lightly edited. Responses to follow
The data layer of application architecture must be flexible enough to adapt to virtually any new data-driven functional requirement demanded by today's client..right...well to support such adaptability in client deployments, the data model must allow almost …
Mac #1 was a 1986 128K Mac, later upgraded to 1M Mac Plus, with external everything. Eventually a 70Mb SCSI hard drive. Bundled up with another just like it, it sold on eBay for shipping + a few bucks. I kept it running until 2001, when I finally shut it off …
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