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I have an unfinished MathML rendering library written in C++. I ceased development a few months ago due to lack of time. The library [still] uses the TrueType version (unsupported) of the STIX fonts beta [version 1.0 of the STIX fonts (OpenType Postscript format) has since been released].
Development of this kind of library is a HUGE undertaking and, in fact, requires a number of programmers/developers. In my case, I am doing it alone, and here's my question:
Does anyone of you know of any foundations/philanthropists who may be interested to fund my project in return for open sourcing the code?
The funding will serve as an incentive for me to finish the library - perhaps by taking a sabbatical :p - and, of course, as 'payment' for the intellectual property involved.
I've searched the web, contacted some [e.g., foundations, VCs, angels, etc.], but I either did not get a response (from VCs and angels) or was rejected (one reason is geography since these foundations support only US-based projects).
As an aside, when I search the web for MathML, the results are often outdated. I guess there's not much activity concerning MathML. Yet, I believe this library will be very useful not only to developers but also to anyone who uses math, especially students and teachers. It is useful for e-learning, can be used with desktop apps and web servers (Windows), makes it easy to insert images of formulas in PowerPoint documents, etc.
Any suggestions are most welcome. Thank you.
EDITS: I have finished this library finally without funding, although I don't rule out seeking one.
You can find my new site below with lots of sample formulas; click on the download link to download the SDK.
http://reformath.webnode.com/ (preferred for statistical reason)
http://reformath.weebly.com/ (please use the above link instead)
DON'T forget to provide some feedback - or donations. Thanks!!!!!
Since we've already got open source MathML (Firefox has had it for years) that mean you'd have to do something better than the existing OSS solutions. And at that point, why not work on an existing open source project?
So that leaves commercial apps that may want a closed library for MathML rendering. I would go after companies like the makers of MathCad, Matlab, or any other engineering software that may want to display equations neatly. You should have something that already works for some subset of the things you/they will want it to do. You should also turn yourself into a company before going to those places so they take you seriously and you can license it to multiple customers. Otherwise the most you're likely to get is a job offer where they'd like you to hand over what you've got (for free if they can get you to) and then work on it as an employee - which may be all you want if you love it and hate your day job ;-)
You should probably ask on www-math list, also if you ask there, we can list your application in the software implementations page
http://www.w3.org/Math/Software/
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I have a Cricket management game (like Football Manager) written in VB 6.0 long back. It uses MS-Access as it's back-end and win-32 API calls to draw UI screens. It's a reasonably big game with 90,000+ lines of code.
Now, I want to re-write the game using other technologies like Java, Python, C++ etc. Basically I want to get out of Microsoft technologies (and preferably move to technologies that are available for free).
So, please help me out in choosing right technologies for Application-Logic, UI and Database. Below are my broader requirements regarding the three layers.
Application-Logic:
The game needs to make 1000s of calculations on in-memory data and constantly write that data to text files (Save game files). It also needs to do very fast database operations.
UI:
The UI need not be very robust. The only requirement is to be able to develop good looking screens with minimal animation effects. Below are the links to current screen images for your reference.
http://imageshack.us/g/148/89832593.png/
I might also add 2D graphics in the future.
Database:
The database contains around 20 tables with the larger tables containing up to 300000 records. Again, I want to use a free database like MySQL or flat text files. I am very curious to know about the database used by games like "Football Manager" or "Cricket Coach 2011"
Note: Please don't consider the efforts required to learn the proposed technologies. I will take care of them.
Update:
Now that I have decided to go ahead with C++ and SQLite, please direct me regarding the IDE and basic Tools/Libraries I should be using to start with.
I am already experienced in working with "Visual Studio" and "Eclipse". Can I use one of them? or can I go with QT (I read that QT is cross platform, but, is it just for mobile development or can I use it for desktop apps too)?
And,
How critical is the IDE selection initially?
Can I move to a different IDE at a later stage?
If I use Visual Studio, am I getting bound to Microsoft technologies?
If possible, please give me links to any examples to develop screens as in the links I provided above.
[I see now that an "online game" was an assumption on my part. So keep that in mind as you read this.]
I would take into consideration your hosting options. If you want to open-source this or operate it on a shoe-string budget, and run it on the widest array of available hosting services, then you probably want to go with LAMP technologies. This would rule out my favorite language, Java, as the underlying choice of language. PHP is almost always available on inexpensive hosting options. Perl and then Python are also available on many hosts, but PHP is practically guaranteed these days.
If however, you'll be hosting this in a "whatever it takes" environment, I'm a big fan of Java, Tomcat, JBoss, etc. But those technologies, while powerful, take a lot of time to ramp up to use, but more importantly, to use effectively and efficiently.
MySQL is a great choice these days for databases. Postgresql is another free option (in some ways, maybe free-er than MySQL, given MySQL's Oracle connection.) But MySQL is likely to be more readily available on a lot of inexpensive hosts. MySQL also qualifies under "very fast operation."
Regardless of database choice, do what you can to abstract your database code so that should you want to change (or need to change) you can do it with minimal fuss. PHP and Java both have well worn ORMs to help you in this regard.
It'd be interesting to see what kind of data models are used in a game like a * Manager title. I suspect it maps well to a relational database. But I'm personally on the lookout for a good reason to dabble with a NoSQL solution.
HTML and CSS for the client to start.
For a database, I would recommend SQLite: http://sqlite.org/
It's free, fast, and serverless. Serverless being key. There are some drawbacks that you can read about on their website, but for a stand-alone application, it should be much better than using text files.
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Is It possible to perform a system analysis and design for a Website ( particularly a social Network ) ?
What are the Expected contents will be , In the document ?
can u provide an example , please ?
{ I made a social network (www.sy-stu.com) as to be my graduation project and I want to add a full analysis study to the graduation document , I do have experience in UML and Usecases just the Idea of an analysis of a website is not clear and never perform one before }
thanx in advance
This sounds very ambitious, but I'm sure it's possible. Unfortunately, I've forgotten a bit of System Analysis, but do adhere to many of its guiding principles for my own projects. In fact, I would say that most data-driven Web sites are excellent candidates for Systems Analysis and should be used always during Web planning for any project you plan on putting into production.
Straight from the wiki:
The development of a feasibility
study, involving determining whether
a project is economically, socially,
technologically and organizationally
feasible.
Conducting fact-finding
measures, designed to ascertain the
requirements of the system's
end-users. These typically span
interviews, questionnaires, or
visual observations of work on the
existing system.
Gauging how the
end-users would operate the system
(in terms of general experience in
using computer hardware or
software), what the system would be
used for etc.
For the first point, I would analyze different technologies such as ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails and PHP. Each technology has its strengths and weaknesses. One key thing to keep in mind is if you plan on making your social network free, you may consider open source technologies over proprietary - as many servers and application frameworks for proprietary projects are costly. I would also consider Web startup and hosting fees. If you plan on getting a reseller account with Host Gator, then you would need to factor in monthly billing costs. If you plan to host your own servers, you may be amazed at the cost of doing so. For a truly stable system, you would need to put a lot of work and cash into managing your own Web servers.
For the second point, you could probably locate plenty of information on user requirements from similar sites - just check out forums for DIY social networks and see what people are having issues with in the Technical Support section. Obviously, looking into technology based articles and magazines would be a good place to search on end user expectations - or even just joining Facebook and Twitter - see what they are doing since people seem content.
For the third point, again you can consult your competition and see how the user interface works out. Is it easy to use? Is it difficult in some aspects? If you had to use their system for 8 hours a day at least 5 days a week, what would drive you mad and how would you do it better? And keep in mind logical work flow as well. Knowing your user base is important too. In some systems, you may be developing for other programmers. Using strong jargon may be fine, but for a social network you must remember that they aren't familiar with Web site data flow and terminology. So your controls should still make sense to a computer novice and still work securely (don't forget system security too!) and in an organized fashion.
Finally, remember that things happen. I recently created a back-end site for a client of mine. I though the system worked very well - and they were very pleased, but I just got an email today that they want the way order items are stored to work differently. This is why there's a maintenance aspect to the System Development Life Cycle - things change after you finish deploying. It could also be said that if I had communicated with my client's needs more closely, this could have been resolved. Fortunately, the change is relatively minor, and we do live in a real world where things don't always work as we expect. We just do our best :)
As I said earlier, Systems Analysis is a lot of work and should be. The point of it is to determine that what you are trying to accomplish is feasible and practical without committing to a long term project that could span years. And always remember that no plan is perfect. If there were perfect plans, we wouldn't need new systems :).
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We're thinking of moving from our existing installation of MediaWiki to something more feature-rich. I'm trying to find all the pains people have with MediaWiki today (mainly it's poor handling of external documents and less-than-perfect editing capabilities - compared to Word).
We are using a wiki for design, spec, process guidelines. We have several external documents (docs, powerpoints) that we are currently putting on a shared folder and linking to from the wiki (because uploading files is not very convenient in MediaWiki).
We are trying to make the friction minimum, so that nobody will have an excuse or reason for not using it.
Some options we're considering are Confluence, Trac & Sharepoint. Money is not a big concern, only ease of use (and maintenance) and feature-fullness. What would you use?
I would plug the details of my specific feature needs into the excellent WikiMatrix choice wizard and let it make recommendations.
I would advise either
Foswiki ( http://foswiki.org ), (forked by the whole developer community of TWiki to avoid trademark threats), for a feature-rich and fully open programmer's wiki. Drop on #foswiki on irc.freenode.net to chat with the community.
Mindtouch's Deki Wiki ( http://www.mindtouch.com/ ) clearly the most user-friendly advanced and innovative wiki out there, a modern commercial + open source offering. Great integration with Office docs.
I would avoid Confluence. Confluence made a design choice (forbidding mixing html in pages with Wiki syntax) that proves deadly to any attempt at wysiwyg, as it uses a standard HTML editor for WYSIWYG, and this converts it on save in a very limited subset of it, yielding frustrating surprises for the users (foswiki for instance keeps as html the parts the wiki syntax do not handle like bullet lists in table cells). Confluence have many great sides, notably its integration with atlassian great tools as their JIRA bugtracker, (we use it at work for this with good results) but do not plan to customize it.
There are many good choices on hosted wikis too (Google sites, based on the awesome jotspot engine is one).
Never use Sharepoint of course. Its wiki capabilities are a IE-only joke, and Sharepoint whole architecture is braindead (storing all data - even huge docs - in a non-distributed database goes against Microsoft own recommendations). If you want a DMS with good Office integration, have a look at KT (Knowledge Tree) instead. http://www.knowledgetree.com/ . For political reasons we were forced to use Sharepoint at work but we limited it to basic document managing (never use the MOSS higher layer, as it breaks compatibility between versions) and integrated a foswiki frontend to it (dumped document list & metadata in xml and provided navigation in foswiki, and search with a google box)
But my real advice would be to ... wait for Google wave, that promises to revolutionize the wiki concepts.
Disclaimer: I am part of the foswiki community.
Before you move away from Mediawiki I would urge you to consider the many extensions available. IMO there arent many wikis that offer more features that MW, especially when you consider the number of extensions. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Extensions
For example, for editing there are browser based editors similar to Word. And there even macros for Word that allow you to export from MS Word to your Wiki, from within Word.
Also, check out the Semantic Mediawiki extensions. These give enormousness benefits in the area of Knowledge Management.
I would personally recommend against moving from Wiki to SharePoint. The huge problem there is SP's dreadful handling of images.
First of all I would stay away from Sharepoint. Period.
I would not consider switching to Trac either, since Trac has special focus on issue tracking, and poor support for external documents.
I would consider switching to Confluence, since:
Money is not an issue (as you said)
You want to minimise maintanance work (as you said)
You want to use wiki to handle external documents (as you said)
I'm typically a strong advocate of open source technology, but with the requirements you gave, I just don't think they would make you happy. For instance if you had personnel available for maintaining and providing customisations to your system, I would definitely suggest trying out Foswiki, which also would otherwise fit your needs very nicely. However, if you really want to stay away from any extra maintance work, Foswiki is not a good option.
I work on Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware and I'll share a few links. This question comes up quite a bit so we have a dedicated page: http://tiki.org/Tiki+vs+MediaWiki
We're thinking of moving from our existing installation of MediaWiki
Tiki & MediaWiki are both PHP/MySQL so you can use the same server.
Tiki has a built-in importer: http://doc.tiki.org/MediaWiki+importer
to something more feature-rich.
Tiki is the http://tiki.org/FOSS+Web+Application+with+the+most+built-in+features
We are using a wiki for design, spec, process guidelines. We have several external documents (docs, powerpoints) that we are currently putting on a shared folder and linking to from the wiki (because uploading files is not very convenient in MediaWiki). We are trying to make the friction minimum, so that nobody will have an excuse or reason for not using it.
http://doc.tiki.org/WYSIWYG
http://doc.tiki.org/File+Gallery (instead of your shared folder)
http://doc.tiki.org/Docs (web-based ODFs)
http://doc.tiki.org/Spreadsheet (web-based)
http://doc.tiki.org/Slideshow (web-based)
http://doc.tiki.org/Draw (web-based)
Some options we're considering are Confluence, Trac & Sharepoint. Money is not a big concern, only ease of use (and maintenance) and feature-fullness. What would you use?
Tiki is Free/Open Source. But if you have money burning your pockets :-)
http://tiki.org/Donation
You can also hire a consultant to provide training/support and to accelerate the implementation and/or sponsor feature development
http://info.tiki.org/Consultants
Have you considered sharing your Word documents with Google Docs? It has revision control and collaboration features like a wiki, as well as a rich text editor that can import and export plenty of formats.
It sounds like TWiki would be a great option for you as well. I haven't used it myself, but it also has a rich text editor, as well as tons of enterprisey project management features in it.
A lot of people seem to like Confluence. I personally don't know it. If you are not already at it and you want something feature-rich than xwiki could be something for you.
I'd add FCK Editor for WYSIWYG, get a decent document management system to run alongside the wiki and carry on with MediaWiki!
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I would like to make a free open-source C++ application for both Linux and Windows which will create live stock market charts (i.e. they're refreshed frequently).
Please could you give me some pointers on these issues:
What should I use as the data source? Are there free services I can implement? I would like to use the same or similar information as companies like Google.
I'm not sure what GUI toolkit would be best to use, is there one which has charting built in, or would I need to use a specialized library for this?
Some things to note:
This is my first attempt at both cross-platform C++ development, and a GUI application for Linux.
I'm based in the UK, so I'd like to use data sources that provide information for the London stock exchange (LON) as well as NASDAQ, etc.
As of Nov 2014, these links are dead.
Google Finance API: http://code.google.com/apis/finance/
Yahoo! Finance API: http://developer.yahoo.com/finance/
Cross-platform C++ charts w/ Qt: http://www.int.com/products/2d/carnac/chart_component.htm
Assuming the rules in the UK are the same as in the US, you basically have 3-tiered choices.
You can hack together a lame feed from things like Google or Yahoo but you absolutely are not getting every tick, if that is what you are after.
A step up from the obvious internet sources are some of the online brokers. Their data is more reliable and timely but obviously you need an account and they have to offer some kind of API. Check into something like InteractiveBrokers.com. They are mostly java centric but offer a Window's based C++ DLL as well. Several other brokers offer similar APIs but IB is excellent in that it covers a multitude of exchanges including, I believe, London. They also make it relatively easy to transfer currencies if that is a concern.
Lastly you have to go to commercial brokers. You can find them easily enough with a search but be prepared to pay a couple of hundred dollars per month minimum.
I think Mark's suggestion of QT is a good way to go for a GUI. Java tends to be adequate for putting up a grid of running quotes but tends to fail in the charting area, IMO.
You said you wanted "live" market charts. If you mean real-time, you will never get that for free. All the data you see on google etc is delayed, usually at least 15 minutes, and they don't get every tick.
If a delay is not a problem and if you are only interested in daily data, you can easily get historical data for free via simple HTTP request using this historical data API.
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Basically I want tools which generate source code visualization like:
function call graph
dependency graph
...
Doxygen is really excellent for this, although you will need to install GraphViz to get the the graphs to draw.
Once you've got everything installed, it's really rather simple to draw the graphs. Make sure you set EXTRACT_ALL and CALL_GRAPH to true and you should be good to go.
The full documentation on this function for doxygen is here.
I strongly recommend BOUML. It's a free UML modelling application, which:
is extremely fast (fastest UML tool ever created, check out benchmarks),
has rock solid C++ import support,
has great SVG export support, which is important, because viewing large graphs in vector format, which scales fast in e.g. Firefox, is very convenient (you can quickly switch between "birds eye" view and class detail view),
is full featured, impressively intensively developed (look at development history, it's hard to believe that so fast progress is possible).
So: import your code into BOUML and view it there, or export to SVG and view it in Firefox.
For the free version:
source is on Github as DoUML
Installers can be downloaded from http://www.bouml.fr/download.html
You can look at different tools for software design and modelling (Rational Rose, Sparx Enterprise Architect, Umbrello, etc). Majority of them have some functionality to reverse modeling by source code, and getting UML class diagrams, and sometimes even sequence diagrams (and this is very close to functions call graph).
But after you get some pictures on really big project code base you could realise that such graphs are rather hard to read and understand. Unfortunally visualization capabilities of complexity are very limited.
As for me, using a "divide and rule" idiom is more convinient approach. You can extract different functionality blocks or layers from your some code base (just sorting cpp-files by different folders sometimes enough). Another way is to use some scripts (bash, python) to create simple csv tables with interested parameters of files, classes or functions like "number of dependencies" etc).
If you use Visual Studio, the 2010 Ultimate release lets you generate sequence diagrams and dependency graphs. However, the release currently supports only .NET application projects.
The team has gotten lots of interest in supporting C++ in a future release, so you might want stay tuned. In the meantime, you can post in the VS 2010 Architectural Discovery & Modeling Tools forum at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsarch/threads to request an update. I know the product team loves hearing customer feedback about the tools.
In the meantime, you can learn more about creating sequence diagrams and dependency diagrams from .NET code in the following topics:
How to: Find Code Using Architecture Explorer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd409431%28VS.100%29.aspx
How to: Generate Graph Documents from Code: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd409453%28VS.100%29.aspx#SeeSpecificSource
How to: Explore Code with Sequence Diagrams: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee317485%28VS.100%29.aspx
To try the RC release and provide feedback, download it at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=457bab91-5eb2-4b36-b0f4-d6f34683c62a
Try doxygen
Example output from Xerces
In addition to written tools above, you may try understand. But, it is not free.
Might be a duplication, but check out ollydbg, IDA Pro and this website has a whole bunch of resources with some very sexy images.