headers
Andrew Plotkin | 5 Nov 23:43

Re: Recent stuff.

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Jason McIntosh wrote:

> * Registered a feature request on the bugboard tonight: Javolin needs to 
> be able to open and react to ".volity" files. Yes, I've got the game 
> finder far enough along that it correctly generates and uploads them. 
> I'll have something running on our server soonish.

I started looking at this.

Thing 1: We still need a name for these things. "Volity file" is too 
broad -- it could apply to anything I've written since May.

For that matter, it would be hubris to think that these objects deserve 
to be styled as *the* Volity MIME type. I have no doubt that in a year, 
we'll have more file types and more MIME types.

Therefore, I propose (again) that these things be referred to as "Volity 
command stubs", MIME type "application/x-volity-command-stub",
file suffix ".volcom". (Not that I anticipate dealing with them in the 
filesystem very often.)

Thing 2: I whipped up a XML parser for the file syntax. That was easy. 
Then I tried to figure out how to make Javolin react to the MIME type. At 
this, I have failed.

I created a ContentHandler subclass. (See java.net.ContentHandler.) This 
works, but it's only used for URLs opened inside Javolin. That is to say: 
I can write test code that says

   URL url = new URL("http://www.eblong.com/zarf/tmp/stub.volcom");
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 4 comments |
headers
Andrew Plotkin | 6 Nov 00:37

Re: Re: Recent stuff.

On Sat, 5 Nov 2005, Andrew Plotkin wrote:

> I vaguely suspect this problem is solvable by putting the appropriate 
> resource info in the Volity.app bundle. I have not investigated this yet. If 
> it works, it still leaves the problem of *accepting* the URL inside Javolin. 
> This may be doable with the com.apple.eawt package, but I haven't 
> investigated that yet either. [...]
>
> Which brings us back to the idea of embedding the Web display in Javolin.

This is not to say I'm done investigating. That's just where I've gotten 
to today.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.

-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download
it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own
Sony(tm)PSP.  Click here to play: http://sourceforge.net/geronimo.php
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Jason McIntosh | 6 Nov 02:12
Picon

Re: Re: Recent stuff.

On 11/5/05, Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath <at> eblong.com> wrote:

> Which brings us back to the idea of embedding the Web display in Javolin.
> (As I noted, I have working code to open command-stub URLs *in* Javolin.)
>
> Jason, do you envision your game-finder app using Javascript, or not?

The program I have at present does not; it's straight HTML. (I'll
share the link once Andy and I work out why the server gives a weird
error intermittently.)

I would _like_ to be able to use JS but it isn't absolutely
necessary... the alternative is simply to re-query to server every ten
seconds or so for a page update, I guess.

--
Jason McIntosh
zendonut <at> gmail.com
Jabber: jmac <at> volity.net
AIM: zendonut
http://jmac.org

-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download
it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own
Sony(tm)PSP.  Click here to play: http://sourceforge.net/geronimo.php
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Jason McIntosh | 6 Nov 02:15
Picon

Re: Re: Recent stuff.

On 11/5/05, Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath <at> eblong.com> wrote:
>
> Therefore, I propose (again) that these things be referred to as "Volity
> command stubs", MIME type "application/x-volity-command-stub",
> file suffix ".volcom". (Not that I anticipate dealing with them in the
> filesystem very often.)

This sounds fine to me.

--
Jason McIntosh
zendonut <at> gmail.com
Jabber: jmac <at> volity.net
AIM: zendonut
http://jmac.org

-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download
it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own
Sony(tm)PSP.  Click here to play: http://sourceforge.net/geronimo.php
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Jason McIntosh | 7 Nov 21:53
Picon

Preliminary game finder online

There's a working no-frills game finder Web application online at
<http://www.volity.net/gamefinder/index.html>. I cannot promise that
this won't change, break, or move. Actually, I can promise that it
will change and break frequently because, duh, just look at the thing;
lots of work to do. But it _does_ perform the most fundamental tasks
of navgiating Volity-space (such as it is) and uploading Volity
command-stub files (whose file extension and MIME types are subject to
change as per Zarf's recent posts).

If you start a new table under some parlor, it should magically appear
the next time you load the right page. (If it doesn't, give it a few
seconds and try again. If it still doesn't, let me know.)

Manual reloading is dumb, here. It should at the very least refresh
itself every so often. There's sexier ways it can do that without
resorting to great gobs of JavaScript. This is just a proof of
concept; much more to come.

It works by querying a daemon program running its own little webserver
elsewhere on the machine. The daemon keeps its own map of
Volity-space, maintaining a schedule of parlors and referees to throw
disco queries at every few seconds. I may get around to posting its
API later, though we may end up deciding to limit the daemon's access
to within volity.net. (Volity.net people: what do you think?)

--
Jason McIntosh
zendonut <at> gmail.com
Jabber: jmac <at> volity.net
AIM: zendonut
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 8 comments |
headers
Andrew Plotkin | 7 Nov 21:54

Re: Re: Recent stuff.

On Sat, 5 Nov 2005, Andrew Plotkin wrote:

> Thing 2: I whipped up a XML parser for the file syntax. That was easy. Then I 
> tried to figure out how to make Javolin react to the MIME type. At this, I 
> have failed.
>
> I created a ContentHandler subclass. (See java.net.ContentHandler.) This 
> works, but it's only used for URLs opened inside Javolin. That is to say: I 
> can write test code that says
>
>  URL url = new URL("http://www.eblong.com/zarf/tmp/stub.volcom");
>  CommandStub stub = (CommandStub)url.getContent();
>
> ...where <http://www.eblong.com/zarf/tmp/stub.volcom> is a sample stub file 
> with the appropriate MIME type. This works. However, if I type that URL into 
> Safari, MacOS has no idea what to do with it; it just gets downloaded as a 
> binary file.

This is now checked in.

> I tried twiddling MacOS's Internet preferences, using MisFox (the third-party 
> preference-twiddling tool I use for this task). Did not make progress. MisFox 
> won't let you select a JAR file as the handler for a MIME type -- only a full 
> application. And when I tried setting the old Volity 1.whatever Mac app, it 
> wouldn't stick in the preferences.

I did get this to work, but only after I built a Volity.app bundle with 
the appropriate resource info. For the record, here it is:

   <key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Andrew Plotkin | 7 Nov 22:04

Re: Preliminary game finder online

On Mon, 7 Nov 2005, Jason McIntosh wrote:

> There's a working no-frills game finder Web application online at
> <http://www.volity.net/gamefinder/index.html>. I cannot promise that
> this won't change, break, or move. Actually, I can promise that it
> will change and break frequently because, duh, just look at the thing;
> lots of work to do. But it _does_ perform the most fundamental tasks
> of navgiating Volity-space (such as it is) and uploading Volity
> command-stub files

Seems to work.

> (whose file extension and MIME types are subject to change as per Zarf's 
> recent posts).

I just changed the wiki documentation, as per my recent post, and then 
checked in Javolin code based on the new version. So go ahead and change 
the gamefinder.

> It works by querying a daemon program running its own little webserver
> elsewhere on the machine. The daemon keeps its own map of
> Volity-space, maintaining a schedule of parlors and referees to throw
> disco queries at every few seconds. I may get around to posting its
> API later, though we may end up deciding to limit the daemon's access
> to within volity.net. (Volity.net people: what do you think?)

What sort of API is it? HTTP? XML-RPC?

I guess I can't think of a rational reason to restrict access. I can't 
think of a reason why anybody else would want to use it, either -- but if
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Andrew Plotkin | 10 Nov 05:53

Re: Preliminary game finder online

On Mon, 7 Nov 2005, Jason McIntosh wrote:

> There's a working no-frills game finder Web application online at
> <http://www.volity.net/gamefinder/index.html>. I cannot promise that
> this won't change, break, or move. Actually, I can promise that it
> will change and break frequently because, duh, just look at the thing;
> lots of work to do. But it _does_ perform the most fundamental tasks
> of navgiating Volity-space (such as it is) and uploading Volity
> command-stub files

I have updated Javolin to display this site in a window. Choose "Game 
Finder" from the Windows menu to display it.

Command stub links currently don't work, because Jmac's site is not yet 
using the new MIME type. Once that's changed, all three command types -- 
create, join-table, join-lobby -- should work.

There is no auto-refresh, or indeed any other sort of refresh. This 
Javolin UI, like the game finder, is a work in progress.

To display the XHTML, I've introduced a fourth third-party java library:

Name: Flying Saucer (xhtmlrenderer)
Version: R5 beta
Download: http://joshy.org/flyingsaucer/downloads/flyingsaucer.src.zip
Lib file(s): core-renderer.jar, cssparser-0-9-4-fs.jar
Comments: Given the source distribution, type "ant jar", then copy
     core-renderer.jar from the build directory and cssparser-0-9-4-fs.jar
     from the lib directory.
     You might want to delete the "System.out.println()" call from line 185
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 6 comments |
headers
Jason McIntosh | 10 Nov 21:55
Picon

Re: Preliminary game finder online

On 11/9/05, Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath <at> eblong.com> wrote:
>
> I have updated Javolin to display this site in a window. Choose "Game
> Finder" from the Windows menu to display it.
>
> Command stub links currently don't work, because Jmac's site is not yet
> using the new MIME type. Once that's changed, all three command types --
> create, join-table, join-lobby -- should work.

I just corrected this. Haven't tried doing any of the resource
modification you described earlier to get the app to actually open the
files once downloaded, though.

> It doesn't do ECMAScript, as I've noted before, but it's a live project,
> it's LGPL, and it displays right. Except that links default to red for
> some reason, rather than blue. A stylesheet change should fix that.

Yeah, or a stylesheet written especially for Javolin. Hmm....

--
Jason McIntosh
zendonut <at> gmail.com
Jabber: jmac <at> volity.net
AIM: zendonut
http://jmac.org

-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download
it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
Andrew Plotkin | 10 Nov 22:31

Re: Preliminary game finder online

On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Jason McIntosh wrote:

> On 11/9/05, Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath <at> eblong.com> wrote:
>>
>> I have updated Javolin to display this site in a window. Choose "Game
>> Finder" from the Windows menu to display it.
>>
>> Command stub links currently don't work, because Jmac's site is not yet
>> using the new MIME type. Once that's changed, all three command types --
>> create, join-table, join-lobby -- should work.
>
> I just corrected this. Haven't tried doing any of the resource
> modification you described earlier to get the app to actually open the
> files once downloaded, though.

As long as you're viewing the finder from inside Javolin, you don't need 
resource hacking. It should work on a straight JAR build (as long as you 
include the new XHTML libs.) And on all platforms, not just Mac.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.

-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download
it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own
Sony(tm)PSP.  Click here to play: http://sourceforge.net/geronimo.php
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |

Gmane