Tonic

Touched Tonic's code

2011-05-01T02:25:00.001+02:00

It's been a long time I've touched anything related to Tonic.

Today I've moved code from Sourceforge's subversion to kenai's Git repository. I've chosen Kenai because of their Jira instance. I really like Jira's look and feel and out of so many bugtrackers it suits me best. I've chosen Git because I'd like to give someone an option to clone Tonic's code easily and I'd like to learn Git more. I use it to store my Vim config and plugins (those are kept as submodules +branches for my little additions to snipmate snippets) on Gitorious. Git seems to be complicated, but there's a lot of answered questions about Git on Stackoverflow and thanks to lots of smart and knowledgeable people I can handle it for my simple needs and I sometimes even enjoy it.

I've got some simple ideas for Tonic. I want it to be smaller for download, change some of icons, have nicer ui (better layout, replace table showing moves with list), work on the bughouse support, make it friendlier to Linux directory structure.

[Edit 03.05.2011] I've forgotten to mention two posts that helped me migrate from subversion to Git:
http://www.jonmaddox.com/2008/03/05/cleanly-migrate-your-subversion-repository-to-a-git-repository/
http://help.github.com/changing-author-info/
Big thanks to authors!

Read about JavaFX 1.2, port to 1.3, know about 2.0

2010-09-20T23:13:00.001+02:00

As I mentioned in my last post I was asked to review JavaFX 1.2 Application Development Cookbook. Since JavaFX 1.2 is quite old I decided to use 1.3 and port code found in book along the way. Until chapter 4 which is about components and skinning in JavaFX I hadn't any big obstacles. I was hitting Shift+F6 in NetBeans and everything was running fine. First recipe FormDemo of fourth chapter failed to run due to some compile error in Deck class which wasn't even used in FormDemo (I hadn't got time to dig why this is happening) so I decided to port this custom control to 1.3. Below is code that gave me a chance to learn something new about creating controls in JavaFX.

override function create():Node {
        stack.effect = if(enableReflection)Reflection{fraction:0.35} else null;
        stack
}

I knew this is the way you created CustomNode in JavaFX, but Control would have to be a different beast. Its online documentation doesn't tell anything about extending. Searching gave me some interesting information on JavaFX forum and I was directed to CustomNode doc which says, that overriding create function is the way of dinosaurs. Now one should override children variable.

JavaONE 2010

...

And all the above and all the work done by author of the mentioned book and numerous people working on JavaFX Script libraries, components, books, sessions and docs will become deprecated in a year, because Oracle decided to drop JavaFX Script from JavaFX 2.0 release. Instead you will be able to write against JavaFX libraries in Scala, Groovy, Jython, JRuby and plain old Java and there will be WebPane at last. It's a shame JavaFX Script is going to go out of JavaFX platform, but I guess it didn't see a lot adoption, developers wanted more integration with their favorite languages and Oracle being very pragmatic decided there's no point in pushing new language. I felt something was wrong with Tor Norby when listening to JavaPosse and now I know why. I don't think Oracle will tell a word about JavaFX Authoring Tool. There's no need for such a tool in corporate environment. ~~I haven't heard anything about Mobile either~~, so I guess there's no future for JavaFX Mobile, too. I also wonder what will happen to JavaFX Production Suite, since it produced FXZ files, that were JavaFX Script files zipped. There's also JavaFX Composer affected by depracating FX Script. I'd like to see JavaFX Script being like FXG in Flex 4.

I'm sad that JavaFX Script is going away. I really like the ease of literal objects creation, binding, animation syntax. Maybe it will be fully open sourced (yeah, I know it's Oracle, but I can dream, right?) someone will pick it up and make it as yet another language running on JVM?

Anyway, Oracle is really strengthening Java in RIA space. Especially opening JavaFX libraries to other languages and creating WebPane are great moves.

How is JavaFX's outlook now

2010-09-15T01:34:00.000+02:00

JavaFX's main strength often touted is that it's cross-platform. "See JavaFX play on all the screens of your life" is direct quote from JavaFX's website. Java now is cross-platform on computers, but mobile JavaME is different version in many aspects (libraries, language level stuck at 1.3), then there's also BD-J, Java for Blue Ray players which has it's own set of libraries. And there's Java Card All of them don't even share same level of Java the language, let alone libraries and tools. JavaFX aims at gathering again those target platforms to WORA mantra with common profile which omits for example javafx.ext.swing package and for good reasons - nobody wants to drag that ball and chain into their revolutionary mobile device, right? The three screens would be your iPad, iPhone, AppleTV, err... Sorry I've meant your TV, Windows computer (preferably, because JavaFX is best supported on Windows) and Windows Mobile 6.5 phone.

The problem is JavaFX is available only on desktop: yeah, there was one or two TV shown on stage last year at JavaONE, but I doubt JavaFX TV will survive. Putting Youtube and other Internet sources of content on TV makes sense, but apps? We'll see soon with Google TV, but again it is separate box. TVs are for audio and video output, period.

Where will JavaFX find its home on the smallest of the screens? Windows Mobile? Yeah, right. I used future tense so that doesn't count. Maybe Windows Phone 7? It should be released with some powerful hardware that surely would easily cope with animations, effects and all the richness you can imagine. No. Two words: Microsoft Silverlight.

Symbian or Meego? This would be a pleasant surprise (and big surprise regarding Meego). I know that Nokia is still working on Symbian's Java runtime, but I haven't seen anything about JavaFX Mobile implementation. There's possibility. And there's Nokia's contender in space: Qt Quick.

Blackberry is possible too. Not very exciting platform yet it is doing quite well in US market and in segment that is of interest for Oracle. Still there's no word about JavaFX landing on RIM's handsets.

Anyway Blackberry is going to be crushed by almighty army of Android devices which will rule the world in short order. So let's put JavaFX on Android. It's open, it's free and it's being sued.

Let's summarize. JavaFX is nice on desktop, almost non existent on TV. There's beta JavaFX Mobile implementation for Windows Mobile (one phone, HTC Touch Diamond) as for others: Blackberry: no, no info on future introduction. iPhone: nope. Windows Phone 7: Microsoft Silverlight. Symbian: maybe, there's Flash Lite, there's Silverlight, there will be Qt Quick soon. Big opportunity to compete. MeeGo: would be surprising, Qt Quick will be there soon. Android: now that Oracle sued Google over VM technology I don't see JavaFX on it.

I really like JavaFX and certainly would like to see it on my mobile (Symbian based). We'll see what future holds.

Quite a surprise for me

2010-09-06T00:27:00.000+02:00

I've decided to break the silence, because something really nice happened to me. A few day ago I were contacted by Packt Publishing to write a review of book: JavaFX 1.2 Application Development Cookbook. I agreed to do it. Although now JavaFX is at 1.3.1 and there were some breaking changes (that you can read about in JavaFX 1.2 to 1.3 migration guide) I hope to find that book informative.

Even less time ahead

2009-10-17T02:25:00.000+02:00

Hello, as you can see I've been quiet for long time now. It's mainly due to me not finding motivation to write anything although so much have happened in "IT world" and I was/am excited by several things. I guess I had a feeling that my weblog is useless for me and for everyone else and what I have to say isn't that important, maybe it is this way, but I still can have my say. And I will. So I shall write. About Open Company, about E text editor, about JavaFX, about IntelliJ IDEA, about good and bad ui, about Flash Catalyst, about ... And I will have fun doing it. I hope you, my dear reader, will have some fun too and sometimes will find some useful information while reading my blog.

I'm getting nostalgic and emotional, but please forgive me - my wife born a son two days ago. We are all healthy and happy. I'll try hard to find moments for writing :).

Anti-name-butchers measures

2009-05-28T10:38:00.001+02:00

If you listen to JavaPosse podcast a lot you had heard hosts several times butchering names. It is just so hard to know pronunciation of every language in the world.

I thought it would be nice to create simple app to gather audio for names and tame those name butchers at JavaPosse and all over the world. Of course I haven't got time to make it, but I stumbled upon pronunciation feature on IBM My developerWorks. I think it is an idea worth spreading and stealing. So think about it, ask your community/social portal to protect your name against name butchers.

MediaUnsupportedException no more

2009-03-10T21:38:00.008+01:00

Since the JavaFX's launch I had problems with media. At first JavaFX 1.0 on my home computer crashed JVM when trying to play anything. I filled a bug RT-2530, which was assigned and moved to appropriate category shortly after, but I've never heard from assignee anything. I guess it was because of amount of work in other areas and lack of votes for my bug. I went through intall-reinstall cycle of anything that came to my mind that could be related to media. One thing I wasn't intending to do was reinstalling Windows - I hate it as a solution and I didn't believe it is a cure for all bad. Anyway, I checked my friend's computer that have almost the same hardware as mine. That system didn't play media either. Nothing helped.

With JavaFX 1.0.1 things got slightly better - playing media with JavaFX gave me MediaUnsupportedException. So I went to JavaFX's JIRA and tried to find any bugs related to media and gave some of them, which I thought were similar to mine, a vote. At least I showed Sun's people there is a problem. Unfortunetly I was of a few that voted in JavaFX's JIRA at all. Maybe it is Sun's bug parade bad fame to be pleaded guilty for it?

Then after JavaFX 1.1 I searched again, because it still couldn't play video/audio with JavaFX. Flash worked fine and so did Silverlight. One day someone pointed me to release notes for JavaFX SDK stating that problems with built-in audio cards and missing audio drivers might cuase MediaUnsupportedException. Doh! I reinstalled DirectX (even tried to downgrade it), installed-reinstalled-tweaked codecs, installed On2 Flix encoder to check whether my machine can play fxm files, but I didn't updated my audio drivers! My mobo is nforce2 based with Realtek chip responsible for sound. I've installed new drivers for my built-in audio card. Rebooted and voila. I can now enjoy full power of JavaFX.

I have to say there is still a lot of work for JavaFX to be done, to make it competent rival of Flash and Silverlight, but it is a great start. I've started JavaFX course at javapassion.com and I like JavaFX Script. I also was astonished by video puzzle example from javafx.com. Is it possible to make similar app in Flash or Sliverlight (sorry I don't have time to digg through search engine results)? Anyway, as I said JavaFX has a long way ahead to go to really fly or shine - look at comparison to other RIA technologies at shinedraw.com to see discussion what it might do better in future to please its users. In comments I tried to respond to Terence problems with JavaFX (I almost fully agree with his points), but the conversation has gone the other way due deployment problems. In short Terence decided to wait for next releases to get deeper into JavaFX. I won't wait. I go and see what else JavaFX has for me. And what can I do to make it better.

Update: It seems I misread release notes title - it is for JavaFX preview release, even if itsn't relevant anymore it still inspired me to try to update my audio drivers.

NetBeans Nimbus kumbaya

2009-02-25T21:04:00.003+01:00

I am happy to see Nimbus related NetBeans' bugs are hunted and some of the squashed already.Here is a link to umbrella bug report for Nimbus uglinesses and glitches in NetBeans. For those that won't follow a link - this bug depend on 23 issues of which 7 are opened as I am writing this post. All fixes, except one related to NetBeans not adjusting font size through --fontsize option, are scheduled for 6.7 release. Thank you NetBeans' developers.

The ugly tabs are gone. Me likey! Screenshot is from build 200902231401.

I'd like to see module that would allow to change colors of Nimbus, but is it even possible to do it at runtime? Blue is sad and cold. Good for super hot summer though :).

Some rough edges of nimble couple

2009-01-21T00:20:00.005+01:00

I've been using NetBeans 6.5 for some time with Nimbus laf that came with Java 6u10. I have to say I like Nimbus, I am using it and not going to switch back to Metal or Windows. BTW I've always liked the former more, because of good looking toolbar and editor tabs. Anyway, there are two things, for now at least, that annoy me in NetBeans working under Nimbus (I believe these are NetBeans issues) - the colors of editor tabs and their inconsistence and ugly usage of border around editor pane. Look at the picture below.

Hopefully the selected tab will get less saturated to make it less agressive and more readable for the eye and border at the top of editor pane will long enough to reach its ends :). It will make tabs look more natural, more finished. For now it seems like tabs are alien to the rest of the NetBeans ui. They look more like buttons, because of this line issue.

I know glitches I've mentioned will not make you scream in the middle of the night sweating, but refining those would please my aesthetic needs :). Of course I am not the only one pointing those issues. Just search for "nimbus tabs" in nbusers@netbeans.org mailing list and you would see polished look does matter to developers.

Bad Picasa and bad Google Earth!

2009-01-10T23:48:00.005+01:00

It was a pain for me to discover today that two fine pieces of software from Google - Picasa and Google Earth doesn't allow me to write with diacritical marks. Both programs have assigned actions for keys combinations that normally would have allow me to write letters with diacritical marks. It is unfortunate, but even more unfortunate is I can't change those shortcuts. This plainly sucks!

I wanted to report both of these issues only to find there is no issue tracking neither for Picasa, nor for Google Earth. Grrr! So the only way to tell Google to fix it is to use Forum? I will not leave this bug as it is - I want to use Google Earth and Picasa with pleasure, not with anger :).

I think that good solution is to let user to change those shortcuts. I understand that changing it now, when both software is quite long on the market, isn't an option. I would be more to happy to do it, if Google had fixed this bug.

Am I alone there? JavaFX media playback problem

2008-12-15T19:03:00.000+01:00

The wait is over. Let the wait for next version begin!

As said in This Ain't Yours' Dad's Java podcast good folks at Sun worked very hard to get 1.0 out. Now they have lot's of feedback (good and bad, but hearing in Java Posse #221 people cheering JavaFX and Joe Nuxoll's warm word about it at Devoxx conf shows that Sun's done good job).

For me JavaFX isn't painless experience - and I am not talking from developer perspective - I haven't yet coded any JavaFX - when I tried to run any JavaFX sample involving media all I got was java.exe crash. At first I thought it was problem with my system so tried to reinstall everything what could be fault: DirectX, SP3, codecs. No luck. So I filled bug report at JavaFX issue tracker with id RT-2530.

Surprisingly I haven't yet seen any votes or have found similar stories. Some people were getting UnsupportedMediaExceptions, but no crashes apart from vague "it's crashing firefox". If you have similar problems to mine please vote! You should first register which is free and easy.

Waiting for JavaFX

2008-11-21T22:36:00.002+01:00

Last year's October I was looking at AIR and Java weight - I just checked deployment issues - the size of the download needed to get the platform. The other one is resource consumption and I think both AIR and Java have kind of the same, huge memory consumption (thwirl takes about 45 MB), and to both hardware accelerated graphic is comming so CPU will be relieved.

So I just touched the surface of the platform succes factor. I mentioned also if the platform wants to succeed in the consumer world uber cool apps is a must. They have to be slick and sexy. As is Milpa :) which gives it enough credit to make people wait for Java's cold starts. Seriously there are apps worth downloading JRE - Azureus, Limewire, Spark, BlogBridge, Freemind, but none of them can compete with slickness factor of Kuler, Buzzword, ADC Desktop or Nickleodon's Jigsaw Puzzle Game or BlackBookSafe. You might find some nice looking Java app in Bruce Eckels' post's comments (nice thread btw) and in Swing Sightings (which is death btw?). Java seriously needs some marketing love for RIA or FRCA (filthy rich clients apps).

I like the way Adobe markets AIR (apart from cool name ;)) - for developers it is a little shift (from Flash, Flex or html/css/ajax) and for consumers lots of nice looking, polished, useful and net connected apps developed by known companies (AOL Xdrive Desktop Lite, eBay Desktop). Of course being an AIR app doesn't ensure being a great one, but the ones I've seen are all good looking (probably more designers were involved). I wonder what apps will we see when JavaFX emerges from development. Will there be any great companies involved (think eBay, NYT, AOL)? We will know soon.

One company for sure is developing its product using JavaFX - Malden Labs.

Some shiny spark from the Sun

2008-08-24T01:35:00.002+02:00

As you can see I haven't written anything for some time. Well I've certainly read a few bits of information, opinions and rants... Forming some opinions which I hope to share. Someday.

Today, or tonight rather, reading of some post of Sun's employee (he is blogging on blogs.sun.com) made me sit to write once again. First of I've noticed his post about free midlet games. Free as in steal! I come from a country where when I say I don't play cracked games the eyes of people hearing this are huge as saucers of astonishment, but I am sure many of those people would be as astonished seeing this kind of post on the blog on the corporate server. I don't think that this makes any good for Sun. I am not sure if same goes for shameless FUD spreading about Android. At least I hope nobody is believing uncertain and doubtful in the post about problems surrounding Android adoption - such as any new (or not so new too) technology on Earth!

What really saddens me is that those posts apeared on the java mobile and embedded community site. I've find it quite unfortunate that such a low value posts can find their way to such a prominent place.

7 years old bug nimbly squashed?

2008-05-24T22:56:00.001+02:00

When I've read that 24th build of Java 6 update 10 (aka Consumer JRE) is out I decided to see how will Tonic look in Nimbus Look and Feel. I checked it few time earlier and it didn't look good - at first try I couldn't even run Tonic under Nimbus, second time it was better, but not good enough - internal frames' icons were to big and combo boxes were to small. But one thing remained the same.

Could anyone tell me if this Nimbus' look of text pane (it is all black in other lafs) is a solution to Background attribute in JTextPane is not resolved to the parent style bug?

Anyway, Nimbus looks good and is shaping nicely although I've noticed there is a 1 pixel shift between button and combo box in the UI on the screenshot (if you think I am silly to mention 1 pixel shift, you should read from someone more respected - JGoodies creator's presentation (slides 46-53)). Surely there will be a lot of work done by Java 6 update 10 final release.

Not a BigMistake

2008-05-15T11:55:00.001+02:00

I am not a native English speaker so I for sure make a lot of and a little more mistakes. I just wanted to say that spelling errors can happen to everyone. Even if he is really paying attention. I think that spotting this kind of bugs is hard because our brain is compensating a lot of things. For example there is hypothesis it is smart enough to get the meaning of the word even if letters aren't exactly on theirs places. And you can test it yourself - Raeidng scarblmed wodrs.

While looking for a that link I've found something more scientific - article about conditions influencing reading rates. Long overall, but there is "Conclusion" paragraph.

So there it is directly from developers.sun.com

Harsh truth?

2008-05-09T14:50:00.000+02:00

This a cite from a /.

"The fact that its a crappy feature makes me think it must have originated with a developer.

Developers and User Interfaces don't tend to get along well; you need to go out on the street and grab a couple of people wearing matching outfits and get them to draw your UI on a napkin or something."

Of course it is more funny then true, isn't it?

This was comment to story about Pidgin being forked because of developers didn't wanted to bend to user needs. It was all about flexibility of the Pidgin. The controversial feature wasn't allowed to be turned off.

By the way, do you imagine Apple's designers bending to users' needs?

Enabling software assembling

2008-04-16T20:05:00.001+02:00

Some time ago I wandered through Google results pages seeking for 'better sourceforge' (well, actually I was looking for 'sourceforge sucks'). I knew about Google open source hosting, JavaForge, Launchpad and several others, but I was looking for more mostly of curiosity. It was worthwhile - I've found Assembla. Nice place with very good free offering: they are giving 500MB for you space which might include wiki, svn, mercurial or git repository, assembla's or trac issue tracking software and some other useful tools enabling you to exchange ideas, knowledge and code easily.

I like Assembla's team aim for introducing new and constantly improving tools (when I've stumbled at Assembla for the first time they offered only svn hosting, now there are mercurial and git to choose) and they constantly improve their own Tickets issue tracker.

Assembla isn't a charity driven venture (but it is ad free site, not counting their offerings of course) - they have commercial hosting and service offering as well. If you want you can also write up nice profile; list all your skills and achievements and whatnot - Assembla enables staff or job finding also.

Hopefully you will find Assembla useful. I have to say that I was surprised that there are so many people providing hosting for open source projects. I was even more surprised to see that one company from Poland was offering it. It is good to see that open source is getting support from all over the world :).

Pulp entertainment with a smell of Java

2008-02-23T23:47:00.002+01:00

For some time I've been visiting one website to kill some time. I'd like to share with you my impressions about Milpa.

It is a logic game. Quite addictive, not only for me - after the game you can see your placing on the high score list. I guess scores are kept for one day. When my play is weak I get to around 1000, so there is quite a lot of people playing Milpa everyday. No wonder! Art is nice and simple, so are sounds and animation. Game play is equally good.

If you tried the game you should probably know it is a Java applet. Of course I am not the first who wanted to share his experience about Milpa. Very addictive browser game is a better title for writing about it, that's for sure. One thing that struck me when I read linked web log entry was that its author thought it was Flash game. And not even one mention it loads too long, or puts browser into freeze.

Author of the game, David Brackeen created pulpcore open source framework, which Milpa is founded on. Pulpcore news feed indicates there are some people involved in making it better. Maybe you'll find it worthwhile to check it?

Cheers and don't give the skull a chance to eat your vegetables ;)!

Once upon a time

2008-02-20T23:02:00.003+01:00

Long time ago I started analysing Jin/Tonic gui. My good will to do it lasted only for a week and was enough to provide simple analysis for first time dialog and login panel. Not too much, but here and now is more. This time I will ponder one of the two most used ui elements in any graphical client for chess server - console.

Console is the place to start a chat or a game. You can issue several commands to server from it and get info about server, channels, players and games. You can read news and messages in it, watch shout and tourney annoucments; all in one place. It is what user sees second most to game window.

So as you can see the ui has two states... I used JSplitPane to create a hiddable JPanel with controls that let specify the exact type of new console. The ability of creating and using multiple consoles is one of the strongest features of Tonic, yet I managed to make in a way that it might a source for confusion and frustration.

Straight to the action.

Pros

Ui is simple - 7 controls is not that many.
One font for ui elements (text pane doesn't count, because this control's font type is controlled by user)
There are no unnecessary borders.
Scroll bar is there all the time and safe user from seeing any layout modification when scroll bar would have to be shown.

Cons

There is something I haven't told you - I decided that gui persists between Tonic runs. This is the first source of confusion - if you don't remember in what state did you left console you will be puzzled why new console panel is not showing.
The way I made it ui of top panel is not always showing all of its contents - when you resize some of the controls might be out of sight.
I used combobox where I should have used a list. There are only about 10 choices for the type of console. User can easily grasp that kind of number and there is simple way to show it all in a list. No need for forcing on user one extra click.
Clear console button is in bad place - because of its placement user has to be extra precise and cautious when resizing the console window and there is now safety net for this operation.

And on the ui analysis front I've found a blog entry about AccuRev ui worth reading.

One thing I want to do before next release is changing console's ui so it is less confusing and click hungry. I hope I will do better this time. Cheers!

Are bugs interesting?

2008-01-18T09:33:00.000+01:00

When I checked this weblog traffic day before yesterday I saw a big spike of visit. It is because of a comment I left on recent weblog entry about using Java Help asking whether hideous ui bug in Java Help had been resolved. So it apears that bugs are interesting. One more proof for that is a bug about wording in the dialog taken from IntelliJ IDEA's Jira.

I think I'll hunt for some more useful bugs... To be exact - it is not a bug that is useful of course ;)!

Just couldn't resist, mate.

2008-01-14T23:27:00.000+01:00

From time to time I read a tutorial trying to educate myself on programming, which is just my hobby so I'd like it to be nice and easy. I've read some java tutorials, skimmed through some C++' ones lately, seen some Scala's, Python's and so on. I am not calling myself an expert on that, I am far from that. I am just a average human.

I am trying to push myself through one of tutorials on ActionScript 3. It's name is ActionScript 3.0 for developers and designers – Part 1: Creating a preloader. I've just wonder whether that's me or there is actually something wrong with this article. I hesitated a little, but couldn't resist to write about it so you may judge it yourself.

First thing, Jamie Kosoy is using code convention that makes my hair go gray. Below is the sample.

private function _onProgressBarComplete($evt:Event = null):void
{
_isLoadComplete = true;

progress_mc.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,_onProgressEnterFrame); _animateOut();
};
private function _animateOut():void
{
gotoAndPlay("OUT");
addEventListener(AnimationEvent.ANIMATE_OUT, _onPreloaderOut,false,0,true);
};

I am almost sure this is not the recommended style for ActionScript 3. What the heck is with those $ and _ ?! Are those really that useful to understand code? You know what? When I read this source code I wondered whether those might some special variables, I had to check AS docs to clear it is just a convention. One thing it leads to is to ask useless question: what do those character mean? You have to be pretty sure that there will be questions about tertiary operator as well, and this _animateOut() function call on the of the line!

And the flow of article kills me of. Instead of going from start of program it goes the other way. You see on method there, another here. I know Jamie is senior developer and probably most of developers will understand this cliploader he is presenting. Including myself, but it is hard to read it this way.

Concluding I think this article should be revised to my liking! :))) That is:

make all the special characters from variables go away (this would let me concentrate on the problem tackled in the article and not on wondering what those underscores and dollar sings might mean),
rewrite the article so that it goes from top to bottom (this would present it the way source code is read - from application start. For this very clipLoader I would start from the code that actually loads the content and would drill down to details of passing the event to the timeline objects).

I am sure I will learn a lot from the article, but this could be even better experience for me. And how do you think?

The warm feel of Thermo

2007-12-13T02:45:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I watched the presentation about Thermo. You can read Thermo description or you can jump start to the presentation.

Well, Thermo is a tool not for Java, this is certain, but is built with Java and Eclipse. When you first see you will doubt, but it really is built on Eclipse. Anyway, IBM does a good job of changing Eclipse not-so-attractive appearance in its Lotus Symphony office suite and Lotus Notes app, which, I dare to say, share some good amount of source code.

After watching presentation I think some designer will certainly find Thermo useful ;). I am eagerly waiting for new designer tool from Sun.

Death of e-zealotery

2007-12-11T23:47:00.000+01:00

It is so human to allow yourself a little bit of bias, unjust judgment, close your eyes and open your mouth to only say 'it's my way or highway'. How many more time shall we see post about this and that being death chicken not realizing its head being chopped of its rotten body?

We need some heat, those unfair opinion and numbers taken from the sky, performance measures giving us pure bullshit facts are motivations to clarify, explain and develop. Man, I am lazy and I write seldom, but you see I just can't stand when someone misses the fact train and goes on the bias side. Give me flames so they can burn my laziness :)!

Of course the linked post is in many points right - I especially would like to see delta patches for Java and better modularity, but I'd also like to see those for other software like that developed using Eclipse RCP. I think it is not just a matter of some developer lazy decision - KISS I guess played its role here. About the patches for Solaris. My guess is that Sun's engineers wanted to make sure every patch is installed. The implementation is quite funky, but the goals is met. And I don't think it is big issue for admins in military area or any other high profile deployment. Well, one have to remember that Java and Solaris just only entered desktop market. Both are still looking for solutions to problems meet on the field of end customer shiny desktop :). Project Indiana and Java 6 Update N are still quite young projects.

So anyway, I am more relaxed when I publish this post when I was when I had written it. I guess it is still worth to express my feelings and share my look at some issues.

My vote clarification

2007-11-08T20:24:00.000+01:00

In previous post I decided to vote for Java for OSX the way I saw suggested on the JavaLobby, but I'd like to say that I don't think not having Java 6 on the MacOS X right now is a good reason to be scared by Java future on this platform. I know, and you can check here that waiting for Java 6 might take some time.

On the other hand just waiting patiently is not enough. What worries me the most is Apple's attitude to developers. Their silence is really annoying for many people. Secrecy might be good for projects involving some cool new changing industry hardware, but for implementing JVM? Come on! I don't get it why Apple just can't say "You all act like a bunch of. Of course Java 6 is coming for Leopard!". Instead Apple is acting like a stubborn kid that is afraid of telling anyone what is he doing for some insane reason.

So for me the problem isn't really the lack of Java 6 on Leopard. It is the Apple secrecy policy that make some people pretty worried. If you would like to move to Java 6 and you'd known that your users use Macs what questions would you ask? My take:

Will there be Java 6 on the Mac?
When will there be Java 6 on the Mac?
Will Java 6 on the Mac run on older hardware, on PowerPC or will it be Intel only?

Apple answers: no comments... Is this answer encouraging further investment in switching to Java 6? Is it satisfying? What did you get from the answers? How do you feel as a customer of Apple?

I think Java 6 on Mac OS X will be a decent, well implemented and performing platform. Will it make the bad taste go away? No comments...

I don't use Mac so why should I care?

2007-11-05T11:46:00.000+01:00

As much as I'd love to own a Mac I can't just yet :(, but even though I don't have one I don't think I shouldn't care about those who do. Having a decent and current Java on the Mac would make many faces relaxed and smiled :).

So I decided to vote for Java 6 on Leopard (I think it is just a matter of time, hopefully):

13949712720901ForOSX

AIR in RIA

2007-10-16T12:08:00.000+02:00

When I listened to one of java posse episode, one of the members pointed out that SavaJe is an anagram of JavaSE. So now you know. I am not a superb observant person and Adobe marketing is pretty much smart.

And not only marketing. AIR allows quite smooth transition from web developer space to desktop. How else would you describe ability to write desktop apps in html + javascript mix? And for more advanced solutions you can also use Flex and Flash. I've tried kuler desktop app and it is OK. But it is just one of many. Adobe also renewed its developer oriented site - Adobe Developer Connection. There is very interesting article about eBay desktop development and lots of other content. Adobe engineers prepared AIR extensions for Dreamweaver and Flash, no to mention Flex SDK and Builder 3 that have AIR support built-in.

Apart from those known for some time technologies and programs Adobe is working on AIF and Thermo. Respectively to bring fast image operations to Flash and build a bridge tool between designers and developer just like Microsoft touts its Expression Blend 2 software.

So, all of this shows, that Adobe pumped some fresh air in the RIA space :). And is surely aiming at the second target - designers: check!, now let's move on those developers... ;). Certainly Adobe gives its competitors good hard time.

Air and java weight

2007-10-03T11:28:00.000+02:00

Some time ago I had a conversation on the Java Lobby page. It was about JavaFX Script and its chances to succeed. At least it started this way. Of course, as in every conversation about RIA market and Java, Flash/Flex were brought into play. Which I think is good and bad at the same time. I myself am kind of unhappy of my posts in this conversation - I wasn't paying enough attention to get the meaning of Alex's posts. But nevertheless, even after admitting I've made some mistakes with understanding what he meant I still have to point out that Alex missed some numbers for sizes of JavaFX Script runtime.

So to make it clear: JavaFX Script runtime file javafxrt.jar is 1965kB so it is bigger than Flash, but when you pack200 it it becomes 629kB! You have to add Filters.jar (262kB, pack200ed 81kB) and swing-layout.jar (140kB, pack200ed 27kB). So, one can say that JavaFX Script adds 737kB when packed. And why shouldn't you send it packed to the client when you know that she has JRE installed?

I've seen that (scroll down to the graph at paragraph about Java Kernel) you could need just under 4MB of JRE to run day-to-day useful Swing app. I wonder how big should be the JRE to run JavaFX Script. I guess it would be around 4MB. Do you know any numbers? Comment, please.

I myself think that comparing Java applet runtime (which is full JRE right now) and Flash is like comparing whole school to arts class :). I mean you can do a lot with Flash, but you certainly can do a lot less with it than with Java. Flex ads some flexes to Flash of course, but still it is in different category.

But now, when Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) beta is out we can really compare Adobe and Sun Microsystems solutions. At least in the space of application runtime sizes.

And you certainly know how big is JRE, don't you? Well, just listen to the interview with Roman Guy at Infoq to hear that he missed some megabytes of the JRE :).

I can understand that - I would estimate that last time Roman downloaded JRE at the time when it was of the size he mentions in the interview.

AIR = 9MB, Java 6 = 13.93MB. At least comparing those is more sane then comparing JRE to Flash Player. It seems like you have to weigh a bit to be a platform of today ;).

Coming back to the Roman Guy interview. I agree with him on the size issue, but I'd like to ask average computer user (ACU for short :)) why would he/she download JRE. Is there any Java application that is a must have? I've heard there is certain interest in the Azureus, but I won't count that one, because there is too much dark buzz around bittorrent these days. I've seen Aerith and it was cool, IRIS is cool too. Don't they lack marketing? Is Aerith still developed? I wish it was. It would be nice to show friends pictures from a trip using it. And see their jaws on the floor ;)!

Show to share

2007-09-25T15:16:00.000+02:00

I've just paused a show I've have been watching for a few minutes. It is funny and relevant, with good examples. Watch it. It is worth your time to smile and learn simultaneously.

Link to the video

Cheers!

Design tip from bug tracking

2007-09-03T13:54:00.000+02:00

I read IntelliJ IDEA's EAP news list almost daily. I find it quite interesting. It is really a good proof to see why IDEA is so good and to see its worsts and bests :). One the one side there are wows and, on the second loud whines, on the third lots of good, intelligent and thoughtful suggestions. Some of the whines and worsts get addressed quite quickly as one can see from the Selena builds' (codename for IDEA EAP release) changelogs and numbers of closed bugs from IDEA's Jira. Some don't.

One post I've read today have given me nice tip about ui design. It mentioned this bug.

Illuminating bug!

Good news about JetBrains Omea

2007-08-10T12:01:00.000+02:00

If you know JetBrains Omea Pro, you know that it was anounced to be open sourced a long time ago. After months of silence from JetBrains today I've read a news post on the jetbrains.omea.pro news list that finalizing open sourcing Omea now is a matter of time. Yay!

When I look at Omea I come to the sad conclusion that I have yet to find such a nice and useful tool in the Java realm. Maybe you could point me to some software that at least tries to be what Omea is? In fact some of the Omea's users as annoyed as they could be by the lack of feedback from JetBrains about Omea's future and yet couldn't just turn around to it.

Hopefully open sourcing Omea will bring new quality to this wonderfull tool.

Does it really ad(d)s sense?

2007-06-20T16:21:00.000+02:00

I recently stumbled a few time at ads like this:

For those not speaking Polish language it says: Visual Studio 2005 perfect set of tools for developers!

How is that connected to my search which was 'project darkstar java' (apart from that the ad's title says Java Project, of course ;))?! When I look for Java I'd rather not to see any Microsoft related tools - they don't support Java and they even cannot spell its name (think JScript and J# or J++ or whatever) on their website. Anyway, I'd call it adAbuse :/.

Cheers!

Wow! Yahoo Mail bugs

2007-05-30T14:24:00.001+02:00

Sometime ago I've heard about new and shiny Yahoo Mail and I couldn't resist to try it. It sure looks nice, I haven't yet got deep into it, but I've encountered bugs. Just two frankly or maybe one and a half - I'm not sure whether one of them isn't in SourceForge mailing lists configuration. Numero uno - Yahoo Mail doesn't recognize posts from SourceForge mailing list - it replies to the sender to the list so I have to work around with 'reply to all' and manually delete the wrong e-mail. Numero duo:

Hm... I hope you've spotted the bug, have you? Have you seen it anywhere else then Yahoo Mail? I'd like to check the search feature of this Y!Mail - I know that someone had problem with GMail search feature. I'd had to use it more to confirm or deny, but I have a feeling it also once failed me.

Living in a post JavaONE world

2007-05-20T13:57:00.000+02:00

Now, just after JavaONE we all know that Java is now on the client quest.

Almost everyone is speaking about JavaFX, but there is Consumer JRE . All of these are steps in the right direction- smaller Java package and easier creation of rich Swing/Java2D content are very good first steps.

Many of people around are talking about post JavaONE Java is after Flash. JavaFX Script/F3 demos are all copies of Flash based products, but there are all WebStart applications not applets. So those aren't competitors for web arena, rather for RIA's. So what about Web in-browser? What about all those flashy, colorful animations, buttons, small sized and easy to create? BTW, do you know that there is already a tool for JavaFX visual creation? It's called JFXBuilder. IMHO Reportmill is one of those companies that have problems with marketing. When I first enetered their site I thought "this site doesn't look good, this JFXBuilder might be disappointing" seriously I was worried that this JFXBuilder is a software not worth looking at. I was wrong. Although time management in animation is kind of awkward, because there is no timeline, overall this tool shows the possibilties that JavaFX Script might bring to conent creator, but more importantly it shows that developing authoring tools for JavaFX Script is easy.

And audio/video, what about Java codecs? I'd like to know what Sun's engineers think about Ogg codec family... Are those might be the answer for Java multimedia problem? Ogg codec family is open source, works and performs well right now so why not? And being open they are ready to be even more fine-tuned by Sun and community around OpenJDK. Fluendo has an Java applet that shows the quality of Ogg/Vorbis/Theora video playback compared to wmv and Flash. It plays video, but a little worse then competition. Not to mention applet start up time in comparison to flashy Flash or WMP, but it's being addressed by Sun's engineers.

In one of Java Posse's podcast one javaposser, I believe it was Tor, mentioned that open sourced media solutions in existence might not be enough due to quality (but this can be improved, since it is open source, right?). I was surprised that they didn't know there is Ogg video codec. Not that Java Posse creators are media gurus, but I thought they had some time and interest to investigate that. Not that they are always well prepared for theirs podcasts ;).

I've seen JMC (Java Media Components) proposal by Chet Haase on his blog and I have to admit that it produced mixed feelings. Media is surely an important issue for Sun, but not enough important to pay for codecs. Sun has developed JMF, but don't want to continue it and is comming with JMC (at least this acronym sound kind of cool to me :)). I think two way (interface with native solutions and bring decent cross-platform codec to Java) solution will certainly cover the Java media problem well enough. What native solution Java will bind to? WMP on Windows I guess, QuickTime on MacOS X. And on Linux? Theora? This binding-to-native will certainly bring some problems (remember QuickTime bug that Java bindings caught?). In a Chet Haase IT Conversation's interview and comments to above mentioned blog post there suggestions that it'd be nice Java would use the same video codec that Flash has, but as I stated above Sun doesn't want to do this, because this is too expensive or put even better it doesn't fit into Sun's business model (they still want to concentrate on big clients - enterprises that is). And at the same time they want to aggressively improve client side experience? At least they don't want to over invest this.

Anyway, I am happy that Sun is looking at client side Java stuff. Be it better performance, media intergration, better features or tools. I'll take'em all with pleasure! :)

Lack of time is notorious friend of mine

2007-04-23T20:27:00.000+02:00

My time is consumed mainly by arranging our new flat. It takes awful lot of time :).

So anyway, last time I presented you a screenshot from NetBeans' plugin that I believe has been abondoned due to high quality built-in refactorings provided in Java IDE's. I said it was borderfull. So there were three levels of border, something like a dozen unnecessary IMHO lines. I mean what do they add to this very design? Sure they sometimes help to organize controls through making 'field of funconality', but this dialog is divided in fields by using JScrollPanes. Why add noise with borders? Other than that there is just one thing that annoys me a little bit. In the 'Target class' pane in list 'Probable target classes' string shouldn't touch border (again! :)) of the scroll pane. It creates tension and steals attention of the eye. Eye mind you, not attention of the user although it distracts her for sure. So let it be RefactorIT dialog redone my way!

As much as Ocean look and feel is fontwise crippled for me this dialog looks simple enough. The worst thing here is tension created by 'Resolve' and 'Ok' button. And of course it should state 'OK' (like on Plastic3D look and feel) ;). I didn't wanted to place 'Resolve' button in one row with 'standard' buttons - they differ in functionality a lot.

And on the side note - I won 25$ for filling OSTG survey :)! Hopefully I will have more time for Tonic soon. Otherwise I forgot how to code.

Video-killed-the-radio-star case

2007-03-26T15:35:00.000+02:00

It might be surprising, but I won't boast my new dialog login design for Tonic this time - I haven't got enough 'power' to create it yet, but I decided to take a look at NetBeans site since Eclipse 3.3M6 hit the mirror last Sunday and I thought it would be nice to see if coincidences happen in IDE's wars. They do - but you have to forgive release engineers not being as fast as content writers. M8 will happen soon. BTW, when reading this wiki a had feeling I saw requests about features showed, but I could swear the url had nothing to do with NetBeans :). Maybe I was tired? ;) Anyway, I decided to take a look at NetBeans plugins and as I know NetBeans 6.0 milestones hadn't sophisticated refactoring capabilities due to new editor introduction I decided to look for refactoring solutions and I found RefactorIT.

Even though some people at some companies didn't know it for a long time[1] refactoring is a feature that good IDE cannot miss - it is in the bussiness too long and is soo useful. Even I, forbid humbleness, use it from time to time. And it shows that it is a area were IDEs do compete - there are many refactorings provided out-of-box by then so plugins providing refactorings are losing ground. Just like RefactorIT. Correct me if I'm wrong, but seeing last news item (about release) from 2005 I concluded RefactorIT is no longer developed. But I am a curious person and wanted to see flash demo they are still providing. And watching it I saw it:

Hm. Quite a borderfull dialog isn't? I will post something explaining why I showed you this some time soon (I believe). BTW, I liked the demo.

[1] I mean VS 2005 was released after IntelliJ IDEA 5, Eclipse 3.0.

Coming back to Tonic's ui.

2007-02-20T22:13:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I posted this screenshot.
I saw this dialog (it is modal) often and it really doesn't scare me ;). So let's count: 4 buttons, 3 combo boxes, 2 text fields, 1 password field, 1 check box. 5 areas.

Pros:
1. Do I have any pros for it? Well, some components are align, somewhat. But suriously. I like that 'Server:' and 'Account:' are aligned. And so are 'Login as guest', 'Register' buttons aligned with text field for handle and password. So are the panels 'Guests' and 'Advanced options' .
2. 'Connect' is the default button - the one user wants to click as quick as possible.

Cons:
1. Labels after the components. With left-to-right reading it is hard to read what is control for.
2. Horizontally misaligned components through panels. Look at the buttons in 'Guest' panel and controls in 'Advanced options' for example.
3. The vertical space between components is different through the dialog. Ideally it should be consistent through the whole application.
4. Karsten Lentzsch noted that using titled borders is risky - they take the space, take the attention and produce noise. I know they are wildly use, but it doesn't mean they are the way to go in this dialog.
5. Once again I am presented with information that I cannot access - the menus in the back.
6. The fonts are out-of-any OS default. This is Java cross platform Metal look and feel issue though. I hope next iteration of default Java look and feel would look great. It seems strange to me that I liked (and I still do) old and new Metal lafs. I admit it is totally irrational.
7. 'Connect' and 'Cancel' buttons are on the opposite sides of the dialog. Just note that you could easily treat 'Connect' as 'OK' and now you know why this is contra.

Do user really needs this awful lots of options to choose? I think one could easily hide the 'Advanced options'. And omit the register button as well. To not to just whine I'll do my best to create an alternative for this dialog in which I visualize my propositions :). I would have to do it anyway since after this post I cannot put off a redesign of this dialog too long :).

Anyway, if you have thoughts on this dialog or my post comment please. I will update this small analysis if I come to some new observations.

I love Blogger spellchecking.

New features in Tonic in comparison to Jin

2007-02-17T01:23:00.000+01:00

I'd like to put to this post all features that make Tonic different from Jin. I'll be updating it when new features come. If you would like to read about my thought on some of the mentioned features you can read posts labeled 'feature'.

In short:
Multiple consoles with multiple types.
Channels in tabs.
Shouts, cshouts in tabs.
Text field easing user from retyping commands.
GUI for adding/removing many channels at once.
Timestamp in Channels Manager consoles (optional).
Tray Icon (optional) with closing without confirmation and move/game end notification.

1. In Tonic you can have multiple consoles.
You can specify the type of each created console and it will be created with editable field that will help to send similar commands to server. For example you can create console for chess shout and have a text field that will save you typing 'cshout' every time you want to chess-shout :).

You can also create console that will receive multiple types of messages. Just choose 'custom' and type in what type you want it to be.

And you can also choose 'Talk with' menu item from context menu in consoles. Of course it works only if you have someone's name highlighted.

2. Tonic has Channels Manager.
First of all it show channels content in tabs. Shouts (both 'shout' and 'it' or '-->'), chess shouts and all other text - tells feedback (like '(told 106 players in channel 106'), finger notes, variables etcetera.

You can remove channel from channels list just by closing the channels tabs or you can use a dialog for adding/removing channel and you can do it with many at once. You can call this dialog by clicking right mouse button over the tab.

You can set up Tonic to append timestamp in front of chat messages in channel tabs.

3. Tray icon.
Tray icon is optional so if your system tray is full of icons you spare it the pleasure of hosting Tonic's one.

Tray icon have context menu which provides user possibilty to close Tonic without confiramtion, you can also reconnect and minimize Tonic (when in MDI mode).

Icon in the system tray/notification area changes when game ends, move is made and so on.

Enjoy Tonic!

to be contiued...

To buggy to not to bug

2007-02-13T10:25:00.000+01:00

I just couldn't stand JavaHelp font chooser design not being a bug. I checked Sun bug database looking for a bug concerning it, but I didn't find any so I decided to give it a try and filled a report myself. When I was in the middle of doing it I wondered why there are so many badly designed Java apps. Is this problem really getting the attention it needs to be solve? And is it really that important to have a well ui-wise designed apps? Is it hard to scary user away with bad ui?

Let's look at the context.

1. Programming is hard, but there are hundreds of thousands developers out there and part of the is doing desktop application so at this very moment there are many desktop applications and there will be more.

2. There is a big information sea (and it is not a very clean sea :)) around us and the life keeps us running, we need to get information now and without a hassle so we will avoid situation when this is not possible.

3. Image says more then thousand words.

4. The presentation of data has a role in understanding it.

All of above is really trivial and well known, so why are there so many bad designed ui?

My solution: ask for well designed ui loudly! :)

Something really big ;)

2007-02-09T13:06:00.000+01:00

Surely off-tonic, but not for long :).

Ok, so I am evaluating JavaHelp from https://javahelp.dev.java.net/ for using it in Tonic. I was looking through the user guide made with JavaHelp and I like, but the fonts were a little bit too little :) for me so I decided to change them. AndTHAT was shown. My, oh my. I got so surprised by this dialog horrible design that I wanted to check whether this is the latest version of JavaHelp. It appeared to me that the version from Sun's page has the same BUG ;). I am curious if Romain Guy or Chet Haase ever used JavaHelp. Looks like they didn't.

And to not just whine, but to whine more :) I sat for a couple of minutes and crafted a little alter ego of Mr. Jekuil with the fine IntelliJ IDEA gui designer.
I wanted to use the same components as in the JavaHelp font chooser, but I couldn't live with JComboBox for font size choosing so there's the spinner. If you want to take a look at better design font chooser you should watch IDEA gui designer demo and look for "Designing the form" part of presentation or you can go with Java WebStart demo from L2FProd.com.

This post was sponsored by letter H like 'horrible ui design' and G like 'google is you web search friend' ;).

UI analysis part II and logo proposition.

2007-02-06T22:17:00.000+01:00

First I'd like to introduce new logo. It is just a proposition if you have any thought about it comment, please.
The second part is about second part :) of my Tonic's UI design analysis. This time I'll let you first look at it for a while :), don't hesitate to comment it. When I find time (sigh!) I'll post some thoughts about it.

Tonic is source kibitzed

2007-02-06T11:35:00.000+01:00

If you ever wanted to know how many lines of code I change in Tonic in a certain period of time you can now check it here.

I submitted Tonic to www.sourcekibitzer.org not a long ago. I know there is CIA project. I like statistics so maybe I will add Tonic to CIA too... Being watched doesn't always mean something bad. It really shows how open we can be and it motivates authors to make better software. Or at least better commit comments ;).

Lately I've been doing some UI in NetBeans using new layout manager in Java 6 - GroupLayout. My design were far, far away from being complex and doing them in GroupLayout has proven that, but when I wanted to recreate them in GridBagLayout... Well, maybe I just got spoiled?

First time look at Tonic

2007-01-31T11:58:00.000+01:00

As I have written in my last post I want to take a look at Jin/Tonic's UI.

This is what users usually see when they first start Tonic (apart from splash screen, but this is true for Windows users only).

Pro
1. One font face, same as system font, no bold or italic font (I think it isn't necessary here).
2. No unnecessary borders in the "Choose server" dialog.
3. Only the needed information is displayed, the start is pretty simple - you just choose a server and that is it (this counts for dialog mainly read 1st cons).

Cons
1. It is misleading to show main app window with menus - try to click them, you cannot.
2. Component with scroll bar isn't a good for displaying just a two servers you can connect.
3. The buttons aren't align with a control displaying servers.
4. "Choose server" dialog title and "Choose a server to connect to" label is redundant, but it is disputable whether it's pro or con.
5. It is not attractive :).
6. "Choose sever" window is modal so it makes quiting application harder. You cannot even resize the app window.

Do not hesitate to add something to both lists.

What should I do for Tonic and what should I undone

2007-01-28T11:02:00.000+01:00

After watching this presentation of JavaOne 2006 conference quite a while ago I got quite excited about UI design part of designing software. I had some thoughts about it when I was implementing new preferences UI (for Channels Manager for example). I have to admit that my education should have help me, but my eyes were rather closed at the right solutions. You know, sometimes one needs some little mind push or clarification. Now when I had seen the presentation mentioned above I know I was taught what Karsten was saying - omit clutter, reduce noise, KISS.

So, what should I do now? I will see Karsten's presentation again and again (it isn't enough to see it three times :)) and his Metamorphosis demo. Simultaneously I will do a little measurement of UI design principles correctness against Tonic/Jin (at the moment these are almost identical). I hope I will come to the right observation :).

Coding back to Tonic

2007-01-26T09:45:00.001+01:00

This time I present all of you screenshot with strange chess position. Note this is examined game and you can see what kind of variant it is (be it Bughouse, Suicide or any other). It is something that Tonic's parent couldn't do when I started working with its source code.

Starting a chess game from some nonstandard chess positions (other then well known Fischer random chess and pawns-only) is a feature of Free Internet Chess Server I didn't know until I tried to investigate this bug. And while I was talking on the server with ryoshu about pawns-only variant I was told that there are some boards on fics. Well, one can even check what boards are for each category. You can do it by typing "boards" and then, for example "boards uwild". I did and... this bug occured.
So you have to restart Tonic if you want to get rid of what you see in Channels Manager window, sorry :). I haven't fixed this bug yet, but I have an idea how to do it ;). Anyway, I am happy I found some time to code back to Tonic. And I am glad I kind of remember what I changed in it already :].

Freshmeat efect

2007-01-14T21:17:00.000+01:00

One day when I checked Google Analytics page for this blog I first thought I had clicked wrong link. From abysmal few visits a day to somehow less abysmal :) 63. Well, and most of this comes from freshmeat.net. Anyone who wants to get some attention to its open sourced project should consider submitting to freshmeat.net.

I have been using Google Analytics for www.tonic-chess.blogspot.com just for a couple of days and I wonder why there is no referral statistics from sourceforge.net project site...

And about freshmeat.net it is a good place to promote your project and aside of that seeing this effect in visits:
And it makes you really want to release early, release often. You know, I just don't have time - I have to write this blog and read so many others ;)! Is addictive reading blogs makes me competent to go for blog aggregator? I think there is more to blogging then writing :). Anyway, I recommend reading this post regarding blogoboom (if you are lazy just go for number 4) on Chat Haase blog (sic!). This human being is really a humor beast.

And btw, anybody has some spare time to giva away? ... thought so.

It's unfair ;), but it is ok nevertheless

2007-01-12T09:25:00.000+01:00

I cannot find any time to develop Tonic. I cannot even find time to play a chess game or two :(... Ok, I have some time in the morning to play on Tibia server, but it is just 15 minutes... Maybe this weekend I'll find some time to test my new component for Bughouse. I have to admit that code for laying out component in the chessboard window is rather hard to read for me - Jin/Tonic doesn't use any layout manager there, instead the position and appearance of components are controlled "manually" - you should see the code to understand. One more thing I'd like to change.

On the bright side other developer of free chess software have more time - there is a 5th beta release of pychess, completly refreshed eboard is out and author states he wants to release often. glChess is alive and kicking too. Good for them! I just wish I had more time.

Happy New Year to everyone!

2007-01-05T15:19:00.000+01:00

I wish you all great chess games, interesting blunders ;) and much fun from playing chess. I hope Tonic will grow in feature richness, usability and be more and more popular :). I wish I had more time to develop it. By the way, do you know that new Jin is out? It seems Alexander has found the time to push new release. I hope to do so too in near future. I just need to find a good place in board window to put panel with available pieces for dropping :).

And good news for me is that my beloved wife... ekhem! I mean Santa Claus, brought me Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" 3rd edition. Now I can enjoy reading about Java in my native language. I hope your gifts were nice as well!

Very hospitable snake and chess lovers.

2006-12-18T12:32:00.000+01:00

I have to admit I didn't expected it will happen so fast - I joined a pychess project. It has published a 0.6.0beta2 release as I am writing this post. I have just checked out the source and had a short look at it. The application itselft looks quite good, but the code is not that good documented as Jin's. Yet there is an issue raised for documenting and hopefully I will be able to help. For me developing Tonic was so easy thanks to well documented Jin's code. Sure, when you are the writer of method or if they are self-explanatory it is tempting to not to document, but when beginner approches such a undocumented code he feels discouraged - believe me!

New release is online

2006-12-11T17:05:00.000+01:00

This one contains some new features:

Ability to observe, examine and, almost, play :) Bughouse/Crazyhouse games. Jin just couldn't even start a B or zh game. Moves are displayed in moves' table. If you need you can drop piece on the board using Main Console. Just Q@a5.

Dropped pieces are highlighted on the board.

You don't have to worry about special signs in you language. You can type them - you won't get disconnected because Tonic will convert them to normal signs.

Plain tab is present in Channels Tab.

Not too much as I don't have too much spare time these days.

I have to admit I didn't have enough energy to finish a panel displaying available pieces for dropping when playing Bughouse game, but it is high on my to do lisst. Anyway I hope you find some of the features in Tonic useful. Enjoy!

JRockit didn't Rock

2006-11-22T10:56:00.000+01:00

Well, I tested as I promised. BEA JRockit hadn't problems with handling JDIC library - it is just better at ignoring staff that it doesn't handle. But I've noticed problems with rendering pieces. I examined through a game, or played, not sure :), and all of the sudden I got just the raw silhouettes of the pieces. It looked bad. Is it a surprise that Sun's Java is a winner in this test?

I still struggle to create a JBughousePiecePanel thingy. It will (hopefully soon) render pieces available for both players to drop on the board. I dream to say someday "Happy dropping!".

Does Big and Blue means Bad and Begone?

2006-11-07T22:05:00.000+01:00

Recently I wanted to test whether Tonic works on Java Virtual Machine from IBM. I was surprised to conclude that JDIC project uses some feature of Sun's Java VM that is not available in IBM's thus I crashes Tonic on this VM. So my rant questions are: Do developers of JDIC know it? Did they test against various VMs? I will certainly test Tonic on BEA JRockit 5.0 I have downloaded at the very moment of writing this entry.

I have a great IDEA!

2006-10-19T21:32:00.000+02:00

On 7th October I sent a request to Jetbrains for Open Source License for IntelliJ IDEA. Three days later I got e-mail confirming Tonic had been approved to get this license! I am glad that now I can use this great tool.

And that was the good news. The bad is I am ill... Some might think that being ill gives opportunity to develop more - it wasn't like that. I was so exhausted after having 39°C. Now I am quite fine and I intend to have a look at Tonic :). Maybe I will even write some lines of code...

How to cut ogonek with a snake?

2006-10-08T16:28:00.000+02:00

This weekend I have been coding one nice feature for Tonic for those who sometimes forget how lazy fics happens to be ;). Have you ever forgot to be careful when sending text to fics? If you happen to come from a country which language uses some special (non-ASCII) signs, you sometimes might be surprised how inhospitable fics is (for those who haven't experience it yet - fics disconnects user when she sends some non-ASCII character to server). From now on Tonic is smarter then you... or the server :). It converts letter with ogoneks, acutes, strokes etc. to simple letter, but it also, just to be sure that fics don't disconnects on you, cut other non-ASCII characters to '?'. Anyway, now you can cut'n'paste anything to Tonic to send to server, enjoy!

And as far as concerns goes for next release - it will happen soon. Most notable feature for bridge4 will be ability to observe Bughouse/Crazyhouse games. You will be also able to examine or play such games, but there won't be any gui for it, yet. Less notable feature is that you will be able to play pawns-only wild variant.

I've almost forgotten to explain the title of this post. To make Tonic convert letters with ogoneks I've used simple switch statement. Statement is simple, but the number of latin letter with other characters is quite long... And this is the place where smart ficsers and snake comes into play. Not to mention google... maciejg suggested that I should parse the site with Unicode tabel, which, after, something like 5 hours of struggling with Python, I did. There are 182 case statements in Tonic for converting letters. I am sooo glad I didn't have to do it by hand. Of course, it could take this 5 hours of learning basics of Python, but it wouldn't be fun, would it? And Python is so smooth and silky I really don't regret this time.

New Feature Requests

2006-09-18T22:31:00.000+02:00

I've decided to make some clean up in Features Requests section on Sourceforge project site. I've opened 5 new Feature Requests - they are mainly taken from one bigger and older Feature Request from ryoshu from fics. Through opening new Feature Requests I will try to organize development of Tonic and inform user about my plans and what changes were done to Tonic. Of course I welcome all of them to ask for new features! And would be glad to see some feedback from Tonic user, but I think it is little to early to expect any big interest in Tonic, or am I wrong? Nah!

Back with something new

2006-08-31T22:08:00.000+02:00

From now on tray icon in system tray/notification area is optional. It was not so hard to implement thanks to Jin's/Tonic's API. Creating a plugin with some user interface for preferences is a matter of minutes. I have to thank AlexTheGreat - he put a lot effort to make Jin really open source - well documented, readable and reusable. I hope he will find time to work more on Jin.

Good time, hard time, no time at all

2006-08-30T00:22:00.000+02:00

It may seem I have no time for Tonic - there were no new posts on this blog latly, no commits to CVS , not to mention about new releases. Well, I haven't abonded Tonic, believe me. I like coding it even if it gives headache like yesterday. The feature I was working on was displaying available pieces for Bughouse/Crazyhouse players. I've failed this time, I've made wrong decision to display them on the board. I've decided I will make completly new component for it. Keep your fingers crossed - I won't be able to do it while coding - I am using ten fingers to type ;).

Anyway, I just deleted the wrong code and squizzed a bug in consoles. The bug was: when sending command to server there was space added in front of command. This space was added every time you tried to send command from history too, so you could end up with quite a lot spaces in front of your command... Still full command is stored in history and it is bad feature when you use console with prefix supplier - it will repeat prefix over and over again when you issue command taking it from history. I will work on that soon. [Few minutes after publishing this post I've get rid of this bug too, so it really is a good time ;)] And on making tray icon an option, because some of ficser found it to be bad idea to have next tray icon, I can understand that :).

I was too optimistic

2006-08-04T23:15:00.000+02:00

I agree I was too optimistic saying you may not even notice slowdown in development in Tonic. Getting to know my job takes a lot of my energy. Well, I have it enough to play America's Army from time to time, but not enough to sit down for late night coding. Although I am still sure Tonic will evolve and will get Bughouse/Crazyhouse support, eventually. I've just decided that then I put it in the list of interfaces at Free Internet Chess Server site. I hope it will give it more attention from ficsers. Anyway, it is good to have a job and I learn a lot doing it so I benefit two way.

Bugteaser

2006-07-24T12:55:00.000+02:00

As I said before, one of three most wanted features for Tonic is Bughouse and Crazyhouse variants support. The good news is that now I can examine and play Bughouse/Crazyhouse games in Tonic, bad news - to drop pieces I have to still use console. The side effect of implementing Bug/Crazyhouse is one more feature for Tonic - it now recognizes what is the variant of examined game. I implemented it mainly because I wanted to easily test Bughouse support in Tonic ;), but I think many of user will find it useful to be able to examined diffrent sort of games with Tonic - earlier it was possible to examine through any game, even those that Tonic didn't support - this way I could see what was send from server when playing Bughouse games :). I'll wait with release untill I create ui for dropping pieces. I will commit changes to cvs asap. So, here is the teaser for now.

I got employed finally so I will now have less time for Tonic, but again I code a bit faster so you may even not notice a slowdown in development.

New bridge on a way to real Tonic

2006-07-20T10:13:00.000+02:00

I hope you all welcome this new bridge. I know I've said it already, but this time I'm pretty sure Channels Manager works as expected. And not only that. Now you can:

1.Remove channels by closing corresponding tabs.

If you aren't in a need to practice mouse sharpshooting (for some close icon might be a problem - it is in a small area and thus likely to be incidentally clicked) you can:
2.Set off closeable tabs for Channels Manager and also in the same dialog 3.Set Channels Manager to display timestamp at every tell.

4.You can still close tabs with popup menu (under mouse right button).

5.And the other option is to use this dialog. Just remember to put '-' in front of number of channels you want to remove. Type all numbers of channels you want add/remove and hit enter.

6. Channels Manager is not the only one part of Tonic that got mine attention. You can set initial size for new consoles in Main Console preferences panel. Note that if you've created a new console window it will hold values when it was last shown. This preferences is only for enteirly new consoles - like the ones you create when first chatting with user.

7. And one last little thing. Main Console window will now remember in which state you left new console panel. So you won't have to hide it every time you start Tonic (mine problem ;)).

8. You can open new console for chatting from console popup menu. Just point your mouse over user's name and choose 'Talk with'.

I also managed to logon with Tonic to ICC. It wasn't possible with previous bridge releases. If you want to try it too you will have copy icc directories from Jin resource/pieceset and resource/boardset to corresponding Tonic directories. I didn't do it for release packages since I don't support ICC (for now).

NOTE: This release needs Java 1.5.0 to run.

The source code is there

2006-07-12T22:54:00.000+02:00

From now on Tonic is really open source software (and free as in libre as well) - I managed (I had some problems last time I tried) to import source to cvs sourceforge repository. It is a bridge2 release source with few little modifications. You can read how to get it from cvs here. If you are impatient paste'n'enter in console:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@tonic-chess.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tonic-chess login

When prompted for password just hit enter. And then:

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tonic-chess.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tonic-chess co -P tonic

You should see a list of files downloaded from cvs repository. If you are a non-console user (i.e. Windows or Mac user) I recommend visiting this site. I myself use Linux for development. And Netbeans sometimes as you could figure out from examining the contents of tonic directory. So, enjoy the opensourceness of Tonic!

I uploaded new screenshot to Tonic project site. It is Tonic in Aero GTK engine tuxedo. Quite a peculiar engine imo, but you can use other GTK engines if you run Tonic in Java 6 aka Mustang (you know you can get it from here, don't you?) I test Tonic with Mustang and I've problems with tray icon. After some searching I've realized why Tonic crashed under Java 6 - the problem was tray.jar plugin and its dependencies - tray.so or tray.dll, so if you want to run Tonic on Java 6 move them away from theirs directory. I've written a class for tray icon using new desktop API from Mustang, but it doesn't work as expected in KDE (tray icon is invisible) ; GNOME is better, but I have to work on the popup menu. Well, what could I say? Mustang is in beta stage, but it has some goodies to wait for (early splashscreen, access to tab component, ...).

Being lazy?

2006-07-05T20:57:00.000+02:00

Have you noticed that you can stay in touch with Tonic related stuff using news aggregator? Here is the list for project's news and for this site you have Site feed entry in Links section.

For the next release I plan to fix the bug in Channels Manager I wrote about in last post. I also would like to add a popup menu for tabs. I've noticed that there is some problem with readability in Sought Graph. When Sought Graph's window is small time control types are too small to be read. Well, these are all small changes, but I plan to add something bigger. Maybe not in the next release, but... I think about bughouse/crazyhouse support. I've been looking at the code and tinkering how to do it and I have some ideas. I hope to test them next week. If you have any feature request or bug submission do not hesitate to use sourceforge Tonic's project site sections.

Workaround for Channels Manager's bug

2006-07-02T16:01:00.000+02:00

So you don't see all the channels from your list in Channels Manager's tabs? If you want your tabs now just set width 119 and restart Tonic. If tabs aren't still there you can set width to bigger number. I plan to fix this issue in next release so you won't have to set width to some nonstandard values. If you found any bugs or thought about some feature that might be useful please use sourceforge.net site's sections (Bugs, RFE, Forums).

Bad luck - no release today, tommorrow maybe

2006-06-28T14:37:00.000+02:00

I was going to release new builds. New and better builds although changes wouldn't have been very visible:

Prefix in new console if you want to talk to one person

You can hide panel at the top of main console

The main feature for the next release is _really_ working Channels Manager. And there will be some extra goodies for Windows' users. You'll have to wait for new build - sourceforge was down for maintaince when I was trying to create new release.

Be aware of Dockable Document Interface

2006-06-25T22:43:00.000+02:00

There is one feature which some of you may find tempting to try, but results may be awful.

First of all when using some of look and feels there won't be any action buttons on titlebars,

which are pretty useful in fact - letting you minimize panel to window's borders and closing the windows. This might be inconvienient, but it certainly isn't so severe problem as ui hanging when trying to drag game board out of the window to make it floating window or trying to reopen chess board window - it won't work as well (or bad rather).

Thanks for the interest

2006-06-25T01:00:00.000+02:00

I'd like to thank all ficsers that despite funky release name, quality warnings and not too informative file names they downloaded Tonic and tried it. mccrack tried to run on MacOS X and he reported it worked fine. On the other side of barricade maciejg run Tonic on Windows and he didn't encounter any severe problems. Just to ease running Tonic - main jar is tonic.jar in tonic's directory and you should start with java -jar tonic.jar command or double-click on it (depends on your platform).

By the way, I 've found two bugs: 1. User is not able to access board preferences panel from button on the board. 2. When user adds/removes channel from channel list, chat notification icons does not appear on the right tabs in Channels Manager window. The latter was solved just minutes ago. The former I leave myself for breakfast.

But before going to sleep I have one question: have you noticed two new buttons in board window?

Unfortunatly the one with thick does not work as excpected (see bug 1. above), but you can still customize board through menu Preferences>Chess Board item. Second button does flip the board so now you examine your games from the right perspecitve.

So it have begun

2006-06-24T14:05:00.000+02:00

Today I released first Tonic packages to public. It is just a prelease and I tested it only on Linux. I hope there will be some users that will find some of the features I developed useful. Tonic package for Linux can be grabbed from here and for Windows/Mac users here.

I thought it would be harder

2006-06-23T12:16:00.000+02:00

Some time ago ryoshu from FICS asked me to add tabs for shouts in Channels Manager window. Well, know they are in place. I thought it would be harder.

I don't know if you find ability to have multiple console for chatting useful, but I find it so. Tonic is now capable of creating multiple consoles that can hold all kinds of tells from FICS (I am not implementing any new features for ICC - it is enough for me to learn Java and code goodies for FICS, but I am sure there is a way to change my mind). New consoles can be spiced up to your taste: you can choose from various types in drop down list with one being special - Custom console...

Choosing this item from list enables text field at the right when you can type what kind of tells new console will receive. It can be any of:

announcment,
channel-tell # (where # stands for channel number),
cshout (chess shouts),
ishout ("it" kind of shouts),
kibitz # (kibitzes, where # stands for game number),
ptell (partner tells),
qtell (bots tells),
say (opponent tells),
shout (normal shouts),
tshout (tourney shouts, I think it is ICC kind of tell, isn't?),
whisper # (whisper for the game number #).

I hope you will find this feature useful. If you have found any bugs or have feature request, questions etcetera please use tonic project site on sourceforge.net.

Back to Poznań

2006-06-20T09:17:00.000+02:00

We've came back this Sunday. The long weekend was nice, but not always easy.

After some thinking I decided that colorful tabs for notifying about chatting events is not so good idea - some (read many) look and feels for Java doesn't honour changing background color. It is easier to notify user with icons. Nothing special I think, with one exception - when there is user's name in chat text diffrent icon will apear on the tab.

One of the first things I'd wanted to change in Jin was the background of Seek graph. Well, in Tonic I still haven't changed the background image, but I've thought that it would be better to have information about seek in tooltip - it is not size dependant like in Jin. I know size does matter, but not everyone likes his seek graph taking one quater of screen, right?

Waiting is over, let the weekend begin!

2006-06-14T13:53:00.000+02:00

So there is a tonic-chess on sourceforge.net. No content yet, but it is just a matter of time - I have to learn how to import sources to cvs and how to distribute builds. Today we (I am married, you know) are going north for long weekend. Tommorrow is free day for my wife, while I still haven't found a job.

But before I leave I want to show one more thing that I am devoloping for tonic - it is icon in the notification area.

So there it is. For now I only tested it on Linux, but I will test on Windows as well. This feature was possible to implement thanks to JDIC (Java Desktop Integration Components) library and with Java 6 (aka Mustang) you can do it without any outside libraries, but I haven't tried that since Java 6 is far away from final release.

Waiting

2006-06-12T11:48:00.000+02:00

Last Saturday I applied for a project on sourceforge.net for tonic - internet chess interface of mine. As it is based on Jin source code tonic is quite feature rich and I continue to add a useful IMHO features here and there. Small things as I am not a Java developer. For example I added a window with separate tabs for every channel, that changes colors (randomly for now) when new chat message is sent to specific channel.

Prefix supplier for easier chatting.

I have almost forgotten to mention that tabs are channel list aware - i.e. if you type for example "+ch 67" tab for this channel will apear and when you remove channel corresponding tab will disapear. Of course there is plenty room for improvement (list of channels with descriptions for adding and removing, better way for notifing user about channel tells, more features for prefix supplier and whatever user may find useful and developer within his skill range).