April 2003 - Posts

• Very Nice C# Patterns Site

  I ran across this very cool C# patterns site by way of Roy's Blog. The site includes definitions, UML Diagrams, and both real-world and structoral C# examples for all of the GOF patterns. Very nice. - James Posted Apr 28 2003, 08:19 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• Another .NET Game book

  There is another .NET book that focuses on game design coming from a publisher I have never heard of, A K Peters. The book is titled C# and Game Programming: A beginner's guide but there is little information on the amazon listing, I did stumble upon this PDF which goes into a little more detail about the book. - James Posted Apr 26 2003, 11:50 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• CodeSmith

  I have started to look at using codesmith for a project I am working on and so far I am very impressed with the tool. (Eric , the code smith himself, is looking for some legal aid if you are so qualified/inclined.) There are a couple of things that I am trying to figure out how to incorporate into the generation process, and as far as I can tell they are not there yet. The first is the ability to do batch processing. I want to be able to point to a database and then create stored procedures for each table. The second is the ability to save the generated script or code to a file after it is generated. I think I can accomplish both of these things in the actual template, but it would be much smoother to keep each template individual and have the tool do the batch processing and saving of the files. I know Eric has alot more to worry about right now then adding new features to the tool, but I figured I would throw these out there nonetheless. The last thing, which might just be my ignorance, is a way to edit the compiled template directly. Eric is also toying with making the project open source, this decision is of course completely up to him, but I would love to see him package it as a small software package and make a little money from it. I would be in line as one of the first to buy it. - James Posted Apr 25 2003, 09:01 PM by jamesavery with 1 comment(s)

• O'Reilly Web Logs

  There are a plethora of blogs over at weblogs.oreilly.com, with some great ones by the likes of Tim O'Reilly and Shawn Wildermuth. Now if only they would publish an OPML file. -James Posted Apr 25 2003, 07:35 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• OPML Directory Browser

  I have been working on a news agrregator and figured that since I have already written the controls and classes to work with OPML that I would whip up a little OPML Directory browser and outliner. Hopefully I will have this little app knocked out in the next week or so, it is mostly just UI and testing at this point. (And after I cope with lack of XPath in the CF, I will release a Pocket PC version too) One thing I have noticed about the OPML documents out there is the inconsistency of the "text" attribute in the outline element. Most of the docs that come from Radio all use the "text" attribute, which is used as the title in the treeview.. but unfortunately the OPML exported from Syndirella and Sharpreader does not use the "text" attribute but instead using a "title" attribute. The OPML spec calls for the "text" attribute to be used to specify what text should be displayed, but I want to be compatible with the docs exported from these readers so I will also have to account for the title tag as well. I guess part of the problem with having a relatively loose spec is that you will run into inconsistencies like this in the documents. Looks like this specification is the source of the "title" attribute. I think it would be much better to switch it back to text since there is no value in changing the name of the attribute, other than breaking old apps. - James Posted Apr 23 2003, 11:11 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• MCSD Tests

  "On Monday I passed my last test for MCSD - 70-315 Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET." [David McDonald Blog] I am going to take this one next week, I took the transcenders and did pretty well so I am not too worried about it. I am not a big fan of certifications but I am supposed to get it for my job and I am sure it won't do me any harm. -James Posted Apr 23 2003, 10:43 PM by jamesavery with 1 comment(s)

• Windows CE.NET 4.2

  "Windows CE.NET 4.2 ("McKendric") has been released to manufacuring.  WinCE.NET 4.2 is what Pocket PC 2003 rides on so.....  PPC2003 is just around the corner for release.  :-D" [Nino Benvenuti's Blog] I believe they completely rewrote Internet Explorer for this one, so maybe I will be able to actually browse from my Pocket PC without it feeling like a 2400 baud modem. Here is a list of all the different features added to this version. - James Posted Apr 23 2003, 10:31 PM by jamesavery with 2 comment(s)

• Nutshell Books in VS.NET

  Oreilly gives you the ability to integrate Nutshell content directly into VS.NET.  I definitely think it is a very cool idea and can't wait to get C# in a Nutshell (2nd ed) and ASP.NET in a Nutshell (2nd ed) to see how helpful it really is on a day to day bases. If you use VB.NET then they have a free download that you can snag to include the VB.NET Core Classes in a Nutshell content. I am glad to see O'reilly constantly looking for new ways to push the medium. - James Posted Apr 21 2003, 06:42 PM by jamesavery with no comments Filed under: .NET

• NUnit and Framework 1.1 Part 2

  Here is another solution to get NUnit up and running with Framework 1.1: The fix is simple and it is incorporated into 2.1. Until then just make the following change to the configuration files, nunit-gui.exe.config and nunit-console.exe.config. <?xml version ="1.0"?> <configuration> <startup> <supportedRuntime version="v1.1.4322" /> </startup> </configuration> [James NewKirk on the SourceForge Forums] This should be alot easier than recompiling the source code like I did. It is also good news that this fix will be built-in to 2.1. - James Posted Apr 21 2003, 01:07 PM by jamesavery with 8 comment(s)

• NUnit and Framework 1.1

  As promised I started using NUnit on my most recent project and pretty quickly ran into some problems. Strangely enough the first couple of tests worked fine, until I started trying to use the XmlTextReader and got a StrongNameIdentityPermission failed security exception on the mscorlib assembly. I did some research and this made absolutely no sense, and I tried everything trying to fix it. It finally hit me that I was trying to run NUnit with tests written in framework 1.1, against a 1.1 assembly. Apparently NUnit has not released a version built on 1.1, and they might not for some time. Luckily the source is included so I decided to try and built it myself. First I opened the solution and let Visual Studio automatically convert the solution and projects to V 1.1. Then I did a build, which luckily did not require any changes to the code. This resulted in an 'Could not find NUnit.Framework error' which I resolved by re-referencing the new 1.1 NUnit.Framework assembly in the GUI project and in my own projects. I ran the new .exe and my tests ran like a charm. Hopefully this information will help someone else out. - James Posted Apr 21 2003, 02:42 AM by jamesavery with 4 comment(s)