Ive been reading about seaside and like the sound of it but i cant see an easy way for handling data files, primarily importing Excel. Of course csv files would be more straight forward, but are there any ways to import the various Excel formats (xls,xlsx) without writing your own file parsing routines?
I've heard that the need to open Excel files would be a good reason to choose a windows based system like .NET, what do you guys think?
There are various Smalltalk implementation that support Seaside and that have an excellent integration into the Windows platform: Dolphin Smalltalk, VA Smalltalk, and Cincom Smalltalk. I assume that it is possible to call Excel with any of these.
There are various command line tools available that you could call to convert an XLS file to something you can easily parse (like CSV).
However, I think the most elegant solution (also from an end-user perspective) is the one of Magic/Replace.
Just an answer on the second part of your question: no that is not a good reason. You definitely do not want to run Office as a server proces (I never tried with OpenOffice, but that should work somewhat better).
It is not stable and there are license issues you have to be aware of.
I've worked on a Seaside app that read and wrote excel sheets on Linux. Here's what I did …
First, I had OpenOffice run in the background and converted all office files to OpenDocument format,
and then I imported that into Squeak using some code by Takashi Yamamiya. A word of warning: by the time when I used it, excel import and export didn't work at all, it took me an afternoon and a bit of hacking to get that running, but then it went fine (Niko, why didn't you push the changes back online? Well, you see … ehh, I forgot. And now they're somewhere well hidden on my disk and I don't feel like searching.)
And that's it. It wasn't even slow, just make sure that OOo is running constantly in the background.
Related
I am using a Mac with OS 10.13.
I have 56 formatted RTF files that must be combined into one RTF file without losing formatting. I don't mind renaming the files to part1.rtf, part2.rtf, etc. if that helps automate the task.
I've got Word 2016 for Mac and have the Developer tab activated, and I also have Python installed. I have a conceptual understanding of programming and scripting, so I could follow directions, but I don't have the knowledge necessary to write a script or program to do this.
I guess I'm hoping that this is a common enough problem that one of y'all has got a solution already.
I've been tasked with testing a Windows program that is essentially a collection of links to various exe files. My job is basically to click all the links to make sure they work (yay!). To makes things a bit easier on myself, I want to create a simple script that will do the clicking for me. I have a programming background (familiar with C/C++, Java), but have never scripted anything before.
Despite googling and searching around on stackoverflow, I wasn't able to find anything that explains what would be involved in creating something like this. I downloaded a program called AutoHotKey (http://www.autohotkey.com/) that seems promising, but before I dive into it I want to see what suggestions you all have.
Thanks!
Never tried autohotkey so I can't give you feedback. But I played around a bit with Sikuli which is agnostic of the UI technology used (working with image recognition). It works fine and you should be able to come up with a working prototype in a couple of hours.
HP Unified Functional Testing (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software-solutions/unified-functional-testing-automated-testing/) provides similar functionality as Sikuli. As licensed software, it isn't free, but provides a lot more features and support than Sikuli (which is open source) does.
I'm looking for ways to generate pdfs on-the-fly preferably using a command line tool as this will be done from a web-based system.
My requirements include must work on Windows and Linux, should be able to convert Microsoft Word, Excel and HTML into PDF.
Also the ability to concatenate or merge various documents into one PDF output file would be good.
Any suggestions? I would prefer to avoid applications that work as "printer drivers".
many thanks
After doing some research, the best solution I found in the end that could handle all the file formats we needed converting, plus which ran on Linux and Windows was a beautifully elegant lightweight Python script called PyODConverter. This uses OpenOffice (which itself runs in server mode) to do the actual conversions, and it really works beautifully. I used a separate tool called PDFTK to do the PDF concatenation, as I found that ImageMagick loses a lot of information (and creates huge file sizes).
If you find PyODConverter too limited, there is also a more powerful heavyweight option written by the same guy called JODConverter.
Calibre runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X and has command line tools on all three. It can translate a great many document types to PDF and other formats.
(Disclaimer: I'm a heavy user, help out on Calibre's IRC channel, and have been poking at development, so I'm just a bit biased.)
I think this has a command line utility, but not sure. Check this
PDF Creator
Have a look at biopdf, and a PDF printer that uses it called Bullzip PDF. Check the documentation for Bullzip PDF for examples on how it can be automated. It has an API interface as well as the GUI.
I'm tired of Dreamweaver overwriting wrong files on the server,
so I'm looking for an alternative.
I want color-coding and possibility to open/save and edit files direct from the server, so I don't need to save files on my desktop first.
I'm using Windows.
Every web developer should be hand-writing their mark-up - all forms of automated abstraction inhibit your understanding and awareness of the code and create maintenance problems for the future. I'm quite a zealot about this, you may be able to tell.
On that basis, I can heartily recommend Editplus: has code colouring, FTP and a huge amount of feature-sugar from line duplication to macros.
Notepad++ extended with some plugins is a really handy replacement. Though I can't call it IDE, it does virtually everything a developer need. In my case (a lot of repetitive code) Texter (a small app working in background) makes notepadd++ even more handy. So, my suggestion is: Notepad++ and Texter.
I switched to notepad++ when I had the same kind of problems with DreamWeaver. I tried some other programs too, but they were too complicated for my needs.
If all you need is color-coding and ftp-support, notepad++ is a good choice.
Visual Web Developer Express, which is the lightweight version of Visual Studio.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/
If you're using a Mac you should take a look at Coda
Well personally I use Programmer's Notepad but it doesn't support the facility to upload files to the server. You could get Notepad++ and this FTP plugin. I haven't tried Notepad++ but I'm sure that it isn't WYSIWYG.
Perhaps KompoZer? It has all the features you've asked for, and there's a Windows version (as well as Mac and Linux).
Dreamweaver... Not my cup of tea, because it lacks good support for modern web programming with Javascript or PHP.
For primary design, I use WeBuilder from Blumentals. Its also a good and not expensive PHP and Javascript IDE with debugging support and also has good CSS support with a built-in CSS editor.
I'm not a big fan of text editors like Notepad++ as an IDE replacement, because you often need a lot of additional plug-ins to have similar features like a IDE. But for some files or quick editing nothing can beat such editors (I like Notepad++ the most on Windows).
So for Windows I would prefer WeBuilder for all things (design & programming).
You use only Windows? For Linux there are other alternatives too ;)
When I searched an alternative for the Dreamweaver for PHP, I found some IDEs and one among them is Netbeans. Soon it became my favorite for my object oriented coding.
Here is the download page.
This has support for Zend and Symphony frameworks.
They also support File uploading.
When developping in PHP, I generally use Eclipse PDT.
If you are more oriented towards HTML/CSS/Javascript, you might be interested by Aptana, which is based on Eclipse too... Which means it can use lots of plugins, including some to work directly on a server, I suppose (see TM/RSE, for instance).
Note than Aptana can also be installed into an existing Eclipse installation, as a plugin.
Oh, also, I almost forgot : Eclipse is free, and there are both a free and a commercial version of Aptana.
(One bad thing about Eclipse being it requires a quite powerful computer -- at least 2 cores and 2 GB of RAM, if you want to use any other application at the same time...)
E Text Editor, a Textmate clone for Windows, claims to have FTP Support. But i haven't used this feature before.
I want color-coding and possibility to open/save and edit files direct from the server, so I don't need to save files on my desktop first.
The Zeus editor can highlight and fold HTML files, it integrates with HTML Tidy and can seamless edit files from the server via ftp/sftp.
It also has support for a host of other languages (i.e C/C++, C#, Java, Javascript, PHP, etc etc)
Does anyone know of an alternative IDE for Sybase Powerbuilder? It feels pretty clunky, after working with VS2008 and Eclipse.
If not, has anyone successfully worked with this language outside the IDE? I'm not against using a simple text editor, but I find edit-import-regenerate-test-export-edit is clunkier than simply using the Powerbuilder editor.
To date, the only tools I have had any success with are:
PowerGen, for builds (with NUnit and CruiseControl.NET)
ConTEXT, which has syntax highlighting for Powerbuilder
PBL Peeper, which has some interesting features not present in the IDE
EDIT: I added a bounty to draw some wider attention to the question. It would be a very nice thing to have, if it exists.
EDIT: Well that was disappointing. The bounty apparently did not cause even 1 new person to look at the question.
None that I'm aware of, although you could probably use a source control tool, edit in your source control repository, and Get Latest Version from the PB IDE to shorten your text editor cycle. Be warned that there are hacks required to edit anything over 128 ASCII. (My guess is that this is to allow everything Unicode to be source controlled in the most restrictive source control tools.)
As Paul said, PB12 is coming with based on the Visual Studio shell, and will include things like collapsible code blocks, Intellisense, etc.... However, for PB12, this will only be used for WPF targets and a few .NET-type targets (like assemblies), last I heard. Win32 targets will continue to use the "classic" IDE.
Good luck,
Terry.
P.S. Thanks for the PBL Peeper compliment.
The PowerBuilder IDE is clunky, but I don't think developing completely outside the PowerBuilder IDE is a good idea. I think there are just too many dependencies right now.
However, the IDE for PowerBuilder 12 will be built using Microsoft's Visual Studio Isolated Shell so it ought to be much better when that is released. Also, I believe they'll be doing away with the PBL format which ought to make source control much easier to work with.
Certainly something to watch.
What I do is right-click the object and edit source. Then I copy the text and paste it into Notepad++ to edit. I copy and paste back to PowerBuilder, then I can save and see any errors. I've got a fairly decent User Defined Language for PowerScript if anyone's interested.
Added:
Please be aware that I've seen the PB Source editor corrupt DataWindows. They were all large DataWindows. To be safe always export DataWindows to edit.
One tool that will most probably make your PB experience way better is Visual Expert, which provides a good source browser. Such a tool should have been integrated into the PB IDE a long time ago, IMHO. Only problem is that it's not free, as opposed to the other tools you mention.
Regarding using external source editors, you can probably take advantage of OrcaScript, which is a scripting language that lets you perform actions such as export and import of PB objects from outside of the IDE. It will require some effort, but you can setup a basic dev env using batch files with ORCA scripts and some additional external tools. However, this setup will lack any visual editing capabilities, which means no (feasible) GUI or DW work. If you're mostly into NVOs, it could work. But then if that's the case, why use PB in the first place?...
I too have heard PB12's use of VS will be limited to some .NET stuff, which will probably benefit only a very small portion of the PB programmers community. I'm afraid the rest of us are stuck with the awful IDE for years to come.
Other than exporting the source and editing it I don't know of another IDE for PB. One problem you may have is that the exported source contains a lot of syntax that is not documented in the manuals. The PB IDE generates this code but there is no support for creating it by hand. I think you are stuck with the PB IDE
In my modest five Years of experiences starting with Powerbuilder 5/6, now using PB 10, I tempt to :
build my own browser from the classdefinition object based on Powerbuilder
tried to use autohotkey in order to open datawindows comfortable (we have several thousands in the project and i am two-finger-driven)
truly investigated in the idea using an external editor/IDE suppoted by an autohotkey script which is undermined by sybase allowing only mouse-click-usage of PB
using Visual Expert which is neither a truly integration in the IDE, nor is really worth in analyzing datwindow/powerscript interaction
ending by build hopes on PB12 Visual Studio, which lacks - depending on compatibility issues - ...
... i came to the conclusion that there will be no chance in improving Powerbuilder to an state-of-the-art language
In my philosophy - I obtained during those years - I distinguish between two types of OOP-oriented languages:
the one that award using object-orientation like C#, Python, Ruby (C++) etc. and very much the Java-Eclipse/Netbeans-Universe does
the other one that punish using object-orientation like Powerbuilder and the old Visual Basic, for example (which is causative the OOP-Idea comes afterwards and is "plugged in").
Especially the demand that all object should always be compiled (regenerated) and that you could't work with ancestors and descandants concurrently makes it painful to use real OOP.
...In memory of the good old Unix(Solaris)/C++ days...
I was researching a replacement solution that would be similar to PowerBuilder and I came across two that caught my eye.
The first was 'React Studio' https://reactstudio.com/ which I found via Alternativeto.net .
And the second was from an ad at the top of some Google searches but it was similar enough and looked good enough at first glance for me to want to take a closer look at it, and it's called 'Servoy' https://servoy.com/ .
Still researching but I currently have React Studio at the top of our list.
The TextPad editor has a syntax definition file for PowerBuilder 6.x contributed by anr#aon.at that I downloaded for free and customized several years ago. It works fine for later versions (including 8), doing keyword color highlighting on PowerScript srx files. Editing large source files in PB could get it to crash so it's usually safer, faster and more convenient to export to srx file, edit outside the IDE then re-import.