Leftover thoughts

Twice the summer of code

2010-04-27T02:54:00.003Z

The Google Summer of Code^TM accepted students for 2010 were announced today.

This year, two interesting proposals related to State Chart XML were accepted. The first is about a web browser based runtime for SCXML and the second is about an Eclipse plugin for generating SCXML documents from state charts.

Congrats, Jake and Long! The two abstracts, respectively, are:


SCXML Code Generation Framework, JavaScript Edition (SCXML/cgf/js):
An SCXML-to-JavaScript Compiler Optimized for User Interface
Development on the World Wide Web

                   Abstract

This project has two goals. The first is to develop an SCXML-to-
JavaScript compiler optimized for User Interface development on the
World Wide Web. This would allow developers to elegantly describe
and implement Web-based UIs with complex behavioural requirements.
The second goal is to generate graphical depictions of statecharts,
which may then be animated in response to live UI events. This would
allow developers to better comprehend the dynamic behaviour
described by their statecharts.

and


An Eclipse-based Visual State Chart XML editor/debugger that
generates SCXML documents

                   Abstract

State Chart XML (SCXML) provides a generic state-machine based
execution environment based on Harel State Tables. It is very
useful to handler complex state transfer logic, but if a SCXML file
is large and complex, it will become too difficult to maintain and
refactor or to test its logic. This project aims to provide an
Eclipse and GMF based Visual Editor and Debugger for SCXML, which can
also be used to generate SCXML documents and code according to a
state chart.

Here's to a good summer to all involved!

Happy Diwali!

2009-10-19T20:26:00.001Z

दीपावली की सबको शुभकामनाएं ।

दिवाळीच्या सग्ल्यांना खूप खूप शुभेच्छा

ਹੈਪੀ ਦੀਵਾਲੀ

દિવાલી મુબારક

শুভো দীপাবলী

தீபாவலிளி நல்வாழ்த்துகக்ள்

Ubiquity XForms 0.7.0 Released

2009-09-02T15:14:00.003Z

Ubiquity XForms version 0.7.0 has been released.

The Ubiquity XForms processor allows developers to use XForms markup to create interactive web applications. Ubiquity XForms adds new APIs leveraging a number of popular AJAX libraries, making XForms processing available in standard web browsers, without the need for a download.

Since the last release (0.6.2), the team has worked to resolve some 220 issues and worked towards better XForms 1.1 conformance. Here are the implementation reports for Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7.

Here is a slightly abridged version of the 0.7.0 release notes:



       Ubiquity XForms 0.7.0 Release Notes

               Notable Changes

 * Roll-up: Ubiquity XForms roll-ups can now be built, packaging the entire library in one JavaScript file.
 * XForms 1.1 submission: Support for many more xf:submission features, including the xf:header element.
 * Validation: Ubiquity XForms now supports validation against the XForms predefined datatypes.
 * Function extension: JavaScript function extension mechanism to define JavaScript functions that can be called in form XPaths.
 * New map controls: Adding maps to your forms as easy as placing a CSS class value on an xf:output or xf:range.

               New features

 * Conditional action handlers are now available via @if; 
 * Messages can be displayed using xf:message; 
 * More XPath functions have been implemented, such as context(), event() and id(); 
 * The xf:repeat start index (@start) is now taken into account; 
 * The xf:toggle and xf:setindex action handlers have been added; 
 * The xf:method child of xf:submission is now supported; 
 * There is SOAP support on POST submissions; 
 * Support for some of the semantics of XForms in HTML has been added; 
 * @incremental is now working for xf:input, xf:secret, xf:textarea and xf:range; 
 * SHA-256 support has been added to the hmac() and digest() XPath functions; 
 * File writing is available, by using the file: scheme and the PUT method in submission; 
 * File reading is also available, by using the file: scheme and the GET method in submission; 
 * More control over how a user navigates a form is available via@navindex and @accesskey; 
 * xf:input's that bind to boolean data will now render as a check-box.

               Test system improvements

 * Hands-free execution of unit tests; 
 * W3C Test Suite now uses the Selenium Test Harness; 
 * There are more Selenium user extensions for XForms-specific testing; 
 * A Buildbot server has been setup for automated testing and results generation.

               Other changes

 * Improvements to form controls, such as xf:range, xf:select and xf:select1 controls; 
 * Improvements to xf:repeat; 
 * Improvements to action handlers, such as xf:insert, xf:delete and xf:load; 
 * Improvements to resource handling in submission, via xf:resource; 
 * Improvements to messaging, via xf:hint and xf:alert; 
 * Improvements to the processing model and the events generated; 
 * Improvements in MIP handling; 
 * Lazy-authoring improvements; 
 * Fixed dynamic relevance on xf:group; 
 * Various style improvements for form controls; 
 * SVN has been better organized, which means that the directory structure differs from release v0.6.2.

For more details, see the UsingTheLibrary and Release0.7 project wiki pages.

A number of samples are available, including ones that show integration with YUI widgets such as calendars and color pickers, the Google Maps API etc. Here is a screenshot of the map controls:

More detailed posts on individual features in this release coming soon.

Dotting the i in review

2009-09-01T00:24:00.003Z

Any project with a code repository needs to be diligent with its revision history. Design decisions are made (and sometimes reversed), people move on, and the origin and rationale for artifacts in code needs preservation for posterity. Some tools and code review styles lend better than others for subsequent code forensics and traceability. While the RTC development style (Review-Then-Commit) offers reasonable benefits at ensuring immediate quality over CTR (Commit-Then-Review), it may cause loss of valuable information if iterations to a proposed change happen in a medium that doesn't preserve history.

Lets compare a few techniques.

CTR. Apache Commons.

In Apache Commons, committers change code at will. Luckily, we have a bunch of subscribers that look over the SVN diff emails that get sent out and some errors get caught due to community oversight and fixed in ensuing discussion. For bugs and fixes, the ASF JIRA is set up to annotate issues with relevant SVN commit messages containing the issue identifier.

Not all commits are related to JIRA issues, and we haven't gotten into the habit of insisting the same, so often there are what I call standalone commits -- islands of activity that cannot be tied into the issue tracker, discussions or other project tools.

RTC. Apache Tomcat.

In Apache Tomcat, some parts of the repository need enough developer confidence before a change can be committed to trunk. A low overhead version of RTC is used. A text file (see the Tomcat 5.5.x STATUS.txt file) is used for bookkeeping. A code change is proposed with a pointer to the diff and opinions are collected via votes to proposed changes. When a change goes into trunk, the proposal in the STATUS.txt file is removed.

In some cases, patches are in the ASF Bugzilla so there is a better record of them. In other cases, patches are posted in committer's personal web spaces. If there is ensuing discussion and a patch is updated, multiple times even, that bit of the code evolution is not recorded for the most part at worst and harder to retrieve at best.

RTC++. Ubiquity XForms.

In the Ubiquity XForms project, we use what I refer to as RTC++. The two pluses stand for:

+ Effective use of tracker - Each change must be attached to an issue in the tracker. Each issue in the tracker must bear the correct status at all times (Accepted, Started, InReview, Resolved etc.) and pointers to all related commits must appear in the issue comments.

+ Commit stream as a doubly linked list - Every proposed change from a working copy must first be committed to SVN in the changes/ space. During the code review stage, any iteration in the changes/ space based on feedback during the review process must serve as a node in a doubly linked list like so: the commit message should point to the previous iteration which is being improved on (if any) and the code review space should contain a comment about the next iteration (or commit to trunk). All commit messages must contain the issue identifier.

While it may seem like a bit more process, its actually a trivial overhead to RTC when you get it, and having just spent a couple of hours on code forensics I'm personally glad for every occassion where it was used correctly.

For an actual example in action, see Mark's blog post using issue 515 I recently proposed as an example.

Can you read that XML?

2009-08-30T00:13:00.004Z

XML doesn't always provoke a good reaction on the readability front. Human readability, that is, rather than machine readability. Though often times, the examples of XML vocabularies that seem most tenuous are not designed with humans as the primary consumer in mind. Case in point: the UML2 XMI vocabulary subset for state machines as compared to SCXML. The former is undoubtedly convenient for machines, especially when you come at it from the tooling stack with editors in mind as it holds more graphical information that SCXML. With SCXML, on the other hand, human readability has always been an important design point.

I. To id or not to id

In SCXML, there is no need to id anything that is never again referred to. This includes <state>s, <invoke>s, <send>s etc. When a reference is needed, an id of the author's choice is supplied, with the caveat that the author has to ensure uniqueness. With XMI, for example, every state gets an generated id which is guaranteed to be unique and also guaranteed to be unreadable for humans. For example, its hard to say what the semantics of these states are with respect to the particular state machine at hand:

II. Lost and found

Graphically, each component of a state machine, be it a state or a transition or an entry point is a separate entity. XMI models the markup in a flat fashion, as a list of things on the screen all correlated using ids. SCXML nests certain elements in a manner that helps identify certain types of ownerships. For example, outbound transitions belong to the source state. Which means a state with three transitions looks like:

as against this (note that the snippet is really simplified, human readability ofcourse worsens exponentially with growing number of these elements):

III. Getting elemental

SCXML uses different element names for different types of pseudostates and state types (such as initial, history, state, final) which helps human readability whereas XMI uses the same element name.

Compare:

with:

VoiceXML 3.0 Third Working Draft published

2009-08-29T23:02:00.004Z

The data layer, flow layer, profiles and event model building on DOM Level 3 events is shaping up. Kaz's announcement on www-voice:


Hi www-voice,

The third Working Draft of "Voice Extensible Markup Language
(VoiceXML) 3.0" has been published as follows.

This version:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-voicexml30-20090825/

Latest version:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml30/

Previous version:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-voicexml30-20090602/

A diff-marked version is also available for comparison purposes at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-voicexml30-20090825/diff.html

Best regards,

Kazuyuki Ashimura
for the W3C Voice Browser WG

Using UML2 Tools for SCXML

2009-08-29T22:01:00.003Z

UML2 Tools from the Eclipse Model Development Tools (MDT) project provides a set of GMF-based (Graphical Modeling Framework) editors for viewing and editing UML models. After a quick install on Galileo, it was time for some experimentation. The diagramming feature-set is certainly more constrained than some of the other proprietary products in the space, particularly in the context of executable content in state machines. The model format used is XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) and there have been a couple of requests on Apache Commons user mailing list to get a stylesheet going to convert to State Chart XML (SCXML). r808257 adds the beginnings of such a stylesheet to the Commons SCXML extras.

A UML2 state machine diagram can actually contain multiple disconnected state machines. Since each needs to be styled to its own SCXML document, that clearly ruled in favor of using the less pervasive XSLT 2.0, for <xsl:result-document>. Which meant support for if-then-else in the XPaths came along, which turned out quite handy.

The transformation itself isn't too bad, once its bootstrapped. At the onset, to get the SCXML ball rolling, the first order of business is to determine whether the state machine has top level orthogonal states (<region>s in XMI). The second is to determine the initial state for each of the orthogonal states, which in XMI turns out to be a subvertex of type pseudostate with no value in the kind attribute i.e. subvertex[@xmi:type='uml:Pseudostate'][empty(@kind)]

And that gives us:

Once we get down from the region to the subvertex itself, the transformation is a straightforward switch on the type of the state to generate (abridged via ellipsis):

With increased UML2 Tools capabilities for the state machine diagram editor, many of us may soon have easy access to the model to middleware transformation below:

36 more

2009-06-21T01:39:00.005Z

Doesn't look like the weather will hold tomorrow with 2 more rounds to go at the Open. Tuesday was the best day to be out there for me, even though it was a practice round. Less people, more sun, cameras OK :-)

The Bethpage Black album has some pictures from Tuesday.

Business as usual

2009-05-05T23:54:00.000Z

At the Taj, Mumbai.

Red eye

2009-05-05T23:49:00.003Z

Red lighting at the London eye.

I do not wish to debug

2009-01-31T20:29:00.007Z

An occupational hazard, I currently have 11 different web browsers and most have number of debugging facilities turned on. I usually don't promptly turn them off when I'm done coding.

That has caused the "Do you wish to Debug?" alert on IE, for example, to become a close friend. The mind boggles at how many of the popular sites have script errors, which furthers the AJAX as infrastructure point.

Even this blog won't load without the innocuous invitation.

LinkedOut

2009-01-31T20:04:00.007Z

I'm not on any social or professional networking sites, by choice. However, there has been a flurry of invites lately and we will see how long it stays that way.

The latest invite caused me to amble over to LinkedIn to check for namesakes. I wasn't really expecting any, but a 404 may be a bit over the top :-)

Ruby in a chair

2008-12-15T20:35:00.002Z

Congratulations Sam!

Its an exciting time to be there :-)

ApacheCon Keynotes (streaming live)

2008-11-05T15:09:00.003Z

I'm watching the Open Plenary & State of the Feather at ApacheCon US '08 being streamed live right now (g'morning Shane :-). Keynotes will be streamed live as well.

Streaming details:

http://streaming.linux-magazin.de/en/program_apacheconus08.htm?ann

Full schedule:

http://www.us.apachecon.com/c/acus2008/schedule

Blue

2008-10-31T23:51:00.003Z

Getting up to the Mediterranean sun out the window of the Pullman Cannes-Mandelieu during the W3C TPAC last week.

Lost and found

2008-10-31T23:39:00.005Z

All my feeds seem to have disappeared this morning. I had logged out last night in another browser tab, but the error reporting sure made me wonder for a moment whether Google Reader had a Halloween prank up its sleeve.

Boo!

2008-10-31T23:30:00.003Z

We went through a bunch of Halloween attractions this season. The trick to haunted house attractions, ofcourse, is to not increase your awareness by immediately scanning the surroundings in every dark room but to let yourself be surprised.

Happy Diwali

2008-10-29T01:04:00.002Z

दीपावली की सबको शुभकामनाएं ।

दिवाळीच्या सग्ल्यांना शुभेछा

ਹੈਪੀ ਦੀਵਾਲੀ

દિવાલી મુબારક

শুভো দীপাবলী

தீபாவலிளி நல்வாழ்த்துகக்ள்

AJAX as infrastructure

2008-10-28T21:06:00.006Z

I've been meaning to blog about some of the work being done in the Ubiquity XForms project, and it took Carsten to complain about the amount of JavaScript in web application-level code to finally get me going.

The use of AJAX, not as application-level code, but as an infrastructure upon which to implement the semantics for a much better and standard set of abstractions for authoring Rich Internet Applications is beginning to be demonstrated by the Ubiquity XForms library. As JavaScript engines get 8 vertical cylinders, all that computing power can be put to very good use. The Ubiquity XForms library aims to implement the XForms 1.1 standard and make it available to all current web browsers, desktop and mobile. The set of technologies that XForms provides thereby become available to contribute to a standard rich web backplane.

Existing AJAX libraries such as Dojo and YUI play an important role, they provide the platform that Ubiquity XForms builds upon, in terms of widgets and not so visual bits like submissions and change notifications.

Obviously the library (abbreviated as UX) is open source -- its under Apache License 2.0, and has public developer, contributor and commit mailing lists.

Just coming out of the W3C Technical Plenary last week, UX was mentioned in the session on the 'Future of XML Ecosystem in W3C Client-Side Work' discussion as an interim way to look past some of the distributed extensibility limitations in HTML(5) :-) And speaking of the discussion, it was in my opinion the most well-received discussion in the entire plenary day, in so much as folks didn't mind continuing after a break when polled about it!

Back on topic, while UX is under active development, you can try simple examples right now (though they load excruciatingly slowly over SVN):

http://ubiquity-xforms.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/_samples/

The most important thing ofcourse is the source of the samples, so without a 'View Source' you haven't really seen anything.

सुजलाम सुफ़लाम ...

2008-08-15T18:44:00.003Z

... मलयज शीतलाम, सश्य श्यामलाम मातरम ।

वन्दे मातरम !!

dIon

2008-08-08T23:35:00.003Z

I couldn't have said it better than Robert.

Good luck, dIon.

Legends among us

2008-07-07T23:55:00.002Z

Last night's epic gentlemen's final at The Championships was one of the most enjoyable individual sporting events I've seen in quite a while. Be it Federer's surge in the latter half of the game and his graciousness in ultimate defeat, or Nadal's continued resolve to stay in the game to be the first man in 28 years to win at Roland Garros and Wimbledon back-to-back, every moment was riveting. There will be no dearth of speculations as to what this means about the era of Federer's domination on grass, but I do hope we see a lot more of him than we did of Borg after his Wimbledon loss in '81.

And just as Federer runs shy of his 6th consecutive title (knowing that it will be next to impossible to get to winning 5 more in a row again), his friend Tiger has his left knee giving him trouble yet again. I imagine that must be quite frustrating, and it utterly changes the dynamics of the entire game of men's golf for the rest of this season. There is suddenly a lot more room at the top.

Its interesting to try to analyze what makes a few so far better than the rest (in tennis, in golf, in $skill). Some combination of natural abilities, lot of hard work, great resolve, rigorous practice, experience and more. A combination that just works. A combination that eludes the rest of us.

As some hopes are dashed, other dreams begin to take shape. Come 8/8/08, I will definitely be following Michael Phelps in his quest for 8 ultimates as he tries to shatter the 36 year record for most golds in a Games, or Dara Torres as she competes in her amazing 5th Olympics.

While my prospects of playing professionally are diminishing with each passing year (not that I ever had very many illusions about that), watching last night's Wimbledon final made me pick up that racket, restring the spares, and put the clubs in the trunk with renewed vigor. There are a few athletes who have that effect on many of us, and end up improving the quality of our lives. And this is not just limited to sporting arenas, we find such motivating performers in all spheres of life.

Those are the legends among us.

Seven colors

2008-07-07T23:51:00.002Z

While the weather interrupted our game last week, we did get a near perfect rainbow over the baseball field. There is something about rainbows -- I counted atleast seven cars pulled over by the side of the parkway as the occupants took pictures.

Oro

2008-06-23T22:35:00.003Z

Lazy evenings and good food in Saarbrücken. Doesn't hurt to have a close EURO 2008 game going on.

At Oro, I recommend:

Kokos-Zitronengrassuppe
Coconut Jumbo Prawns
Gnocchi in Ricottacreme
Geröstetes Knoblauchbrot
Breadpudding mit Baileys und Vanilleeis

IUIs

2008-06-23T22:11:00.002Z

Spent last week in a meet hosted at the DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), University of Saarland. Caught a glimpse of a lot of interesting research at the center.

In particular, the Intelligent User Interfaces projects had some neat multi-modal technology demos.

f(n) = f(n-1) + f(n-2)

2008-06-21T00:17:00.008Z

Golden ratios and Fibonacci spirals or not, those numbers make art.

As seen at the MoMA.

A unifying programming model

2008-06-20T23:53:00.003Z

The Collage programming model was recently featured as an alphaWorks technology. Important aspects of the associated declarative language are geared towards simplification, evolution, composition, distribution and device adaptation. It is based on a uniform, end-to-end, RDF data model and a cascade-oriented, data-driven execution model.

The introductory download consists of:

the programming model interpreter
the Collage programming model Overview document (PDF), and
a live executable tutorial (complete code samples that can be run in-place while viewing the tutorial)

And it is available here:

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/collage

A memorial hike

2008-06-14T19:20:00.004Z

Memorial Day '08.

Four times a charm plus one

2008-06-14T19:15:00.003Z

The fourth Working Draft of State Chart XML is out.

Quoting the status section of the document:

"The main differences from the previous draft are:

the modularization of the language

the introduction of profiles and

a revision of the algorithm for document interpretation."

Tourist in Holland

2008-06-14T18:59:00.011Z

Canals, windmills and tulips ofcourse.

Three wheels and a wing

2008-01-27T16:19:00.000Z

First time at the front end of the aircraft. A few pointers on the Cessna 172 R instrument panel ...

... before making the wheels float.

Found the sun hiding by the edge of the frozen pond.

Passed by work ...

... and play as well.

The bridge was easier to cross with one less wheel.

We ended up with more propeller blades than when we began :-) (hard to expect more from the iPhone camera).

While its still January

2008-01-27T16:04:00.000Z

There may be time for the customary new year's post. Had a few friends over who insisted on watching the ball drop at Times Square, and given that it was also the centennial for the tradition, they could only be distracted till about 11:45 pm. Got there just in time for the fireworks.

Happy Diwali

2007-11-07T23:00:00.000Z

शुभ दीपावली

दिवाळीच्या शुभेछा

ਹੈਪੀ ਦੀਵਾਲੀ

દિવાલી મુબારક

শুভো দীপাবলী

தீபாவலிளி நல்வாழ்த்துகக்ள்

Recommendation times three

2007-11-07T22:16:00.000Z

XForms 1.0 (Third Edition) is now a W3C Recommendation.

Looking ahead, the roadmap is here.

Gameroom

2007-10-27T21:11:00.000Z

The nets on the tennis courts at work are doing down, golf is on the downturn. Good thing the gameroom is in shape.

Great Donic tables, and a full house of devoted ping-pong fans two nights a week. A new Tornado foosball table, with comfortable, forgiving grips. Doesn't look like any of us will pull an Ortwin soon.

Latest board game additions include a few carroms, and that seems to be catching on (unlike to touch rugby league, that was just World Cup mania ;-). The pool table could be in better health.

Of leopards and foxes

2007-10-27T21:06:00.000Z

... and wily schemes. One week left.

Overheard on the radio

2007-10-27T20:55:00.000Z

Nick heard Raman on the radio. Having worked closely with TV for more than a year, I trust accessible search at Google is in good hands. And to echo Nick, it is about time.

LovePerfectChange

2007-10-27T20:49:00.000Z

Watched the off broadway "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" last weekend, which was better than anticipated.

The details are at (beware, site has a sound track ;-) www.loveperfectchange.com

Detour

2007-10-05T19:00:00.000Z

Being in Minneapolis last weekend, had to take the 35W detour a few times. Having lived blocks from the bridge for a few years, it more than ever drove home the feeling of a personal loss.

Lemon squeeze

2007-09-23T16:04:00.001Z

Spent some time at Mohonk. There is 85-odd miles of hiking, with a variety of trails. I'd say the trail leading up to the lemon squeeze is worth the squeeze.

They have decent golf, tennis, boating, horseback riding. They even have a croquet court :-)

Guess what I changed, for 500

2007-09-22T17:38:00.000Z

I had the opportunity to use Google docs, in a truly collaborative fashion. I'll say its better than many things I've tried.

It auto-saves, which is good. Some of those saves trigger revisions, had to get used to the notion that a revision isn't necessarily anyone's conscious choice of a publishable delta. Top that with wiki-style diffs, whitespace and cross-browser quirks, it can be hard to follow changes.

Some revisions just state "no text added". Fun.

Riding the bike around town

2007-09-22T17:20:00.000Z

We'll be out in numbers again on October 14th. Join us. nycmsbiketour.org has details.

For first-timers, I'd recommend the 30 mile route. Its all along the water, down the west-side highway and up the FDR.

Dos and donts

2007-05-17T17:17:00.000Z

Singapore has signs. Many signs. And enforced fines. It also has a low crime rate. I heard claims there is a correlation. Perhaps.

Pillar

2007-05-17T17:12:00.000Z

I feel asleep under the stars for a couple of hours, the live music coming from the Selona lounge (source of light) was soothing, and so was the Nusa Dua cooler.

Endless ocean

2007-05-17T17:09:00.000Z

Until Australia or Antartica, depending on the heading. I prefer the natural shade.

Dinner on the beach

2007-05-17T16:54:00.000Z

At Tao. Good desserts.

Saving gas

2007-05-17T16:47:00.000Z

At the Taro elephant safari. Pushpa sure can trumpet.

Colors of Bali

2007-05-17T16:41:00.000Z

Been there

2007-05-17T16:38:00.000Z

Cloudy

2007-05-17T16:27:00.000Z

Lens on the glass of the cable car to Sentosa, a bird's eye view of a portion of the second busiest port and the downtown Singapore skyline.

The first round

2007-04-03T21:19:00.000Z

Saturday morning turned out to be nicer than anticipated (59F) for the first round of golf this year. Here's to many more such rounds this season ...

चुकली दिशा तरीही

2007-04-03T20:44:00.000Z

विंदांची ही कविता वाचायला मिळाली, फार खोल आहे खरी ...

चुकली दिशा तरीही हुकलें न श्रेय सारें;
वेड्या मुसाफिराला सामील सर्व तारे.

...

चुकली दिशा तरीही आकाश एक आहे,
हें जाणतो तयाला वाटेल तेथ न्यारे.

आशा तशी निराशा, हें श्रेय सावधांचे;
बेसावधास कैसे डसणार हे निखारे.

इती विंदा करंदीकर.

A working alpha

2007-03-09T00:15:00.000Z

The alphaWorks project related to State Chart XML tools was posted today.

It includes a RSA (Rational Software Architect) plugin for transforming UML state chart and activity diagrams into SCXML.

It also contains a Mozilla extension allowing the execution of event-based controllers within XHTML documents.

Surely the bits are subject to improvement, minor tweaks et al, and theres currently a need for JNI while we wait for a C++ SCXML interpreter in the public domain.

But we can now draw UML charts, transform them to SCXML and execute them. Quite useful.

In addition, given examples of server-side usecases like these, and the Mozilla extension, the network boundary for the application controller just became a whole lot more fluid. And thats quite useful too.

Okemo

2007-03-01T23:01:00.000Z

Hasn't let us down this season, decent place. Suggest rounding up a crew, if at all possible. The good cabin rentals hold around 25.

My top three places in town, apart from the obvious destinations:

3. Tilted Tavern
2. Wicked Good Pizza
1. Waffle Haus on the lower mountain trail

फ़िटे अंधाराचे जाळे

2007-03-01T22:57:00.000Z

बर्‍याच दिवसाने हे गाणे ऐकले, दोन-तीन वेळा।

"मनं मनास उम्गत नाही, आधार कसा शोधावा ...
दुबंळ्या गळक्या झोळीतं हा सुर्य कसा झेलावा ..."

अप्रतिम!

WD++

2007-02-23T22:46:00.000Z

The third Working Draft of State Chart XML has been published.

There is a possibility that I will take some time to bring Commons SCXML upto speed.

I often get asked about the lifecycle of W3C specifications in this context. Here is the state machine (some edge cases skipped for brevity):

The plan, usually, is to end up on the bottom right.

SISR goes PR

2007-02-23T21:20:00.000Z

Acronym soup aside, Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition is now a Proposed Recommendation. Here.

If you've ever developed speech applications (haven't we all), you're probably aware that the grammars are crucial. Whats more, the semantic interpretation pieces often need to be rewritten across platforms. And thats generally OK, until its time to switch or support more (voice) browsers.

So this could be good. GRXML or ABNF camp welcome.

And along with some alignment to web applications as we know them, à la Reusable Dialog Components (RDC) tag library (at Jakarta), speech application authoring might even start coming up everyone's alley.

Hard questions

2007-02-22T16:35:00.000Z

These are trying times; the nephew has mastered speed-dialing. And he wants to know.

After a brief hi, I am required to state my favorite animal. I try to get out of it by saying there isn't one in particular. That earns me three chances. After barely making that one, I'm expected to provide reasons for all three, all of which promptly undergo severe scrutiny. It never gets easier.

As I hang up, I'm left wondering about all the answers I've forgotten over the years.

The world isn't flat

2007-02-21T22:47:00.000Z

The W3C publishes the first Working Draft of SCXML (July 05)
Apache Jakarta releases an implementation, Commons SCXML v0.5 (July 06)
Apache Shale releases a dialog manager implementation using the Commons library (Jan 07)
The subsequent W3C Working Draft adds a Shale example as an informative appendix (Feb 07)

रंजिशे सही ...

2007-02-21T22:31:00.000Z

... दिलही दुखाने के लिये आ,
आ फिरसे मुझे छोडके जाने के लिये आ.

The Ghazals in the concert this Sunday made the drive worthwhile, this one remains my favorite. Serious word play ensues.