Thursday, 19 July 2012

Displaying File Sizes

Readability by Approximation

When it comes to displaying "rough" file sizes (1.2 KB, 34.5 MB, etc), and none of the online solutions offer exactly what you want, then you write your own struct:
public struct ByteCount
{
 public long Value { get; set; }

 public ByteCount(long value) : this() { Value = value; }

 public static ByteCount operator + (ByteCount x) { return x; }
 public static ByteCount operator - (ByteCount x) { return new ByteCount(-x.Value); }

 public static ByteCount operator + (ByteCount x, ByteCount y) { return x + y.Value; }
 public static ByteCount operator + (ByteCount x, long y) { return new ByteCount(x.Value + y); }
 public static ByteCount operator + (long x, ByteCount y) { return y + x; }

 public static ByteCount operator - (ByteCount x, ByteCount y) { return x + -y; }
 public static ByteCount operator - (ByteCount x, long y) { return x + -y; }
 public static ByteCount operator - (long x, ByteCount y) { return x + -y; }

 public override string ToString()
 {
  const string units = "EPTGMK";
  var unitSize = 1L << 10 * units.Length;
  foreach (var unit in units)
  {
   if (Value >= unitSize)
   {
    var value = decimal.Divide(Value, unitSize);
    return string.Format(
     string.Format(
      "{{0:{0}}} {{1}}B",
      value >= 100 ? "#" : value >= 10 ? "#.#" : "#.##"),
     value, unit);
   }
   unitSize >>= 10;
  }
  return string.Format("{0} Bytes", Value);
 }
}
This outputs a consistent three significant figures, with the exception of cases 1000..1023 Bytes, which are output as-is. The supplied set of overloaded operators sufficed for the immediate requirements of my app, which involved only accumulating and subtracting totals, but can obviously be extended easily to include comparisons, multiplication, implicit conversions, etc. Notice the nested calls to string.Format() using escaped {{i.e., doubled-up}} braces, as previously illustrated under C# String Format Run Time Field Width.
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Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Barenboim's WEDO Beethoven Cycle

Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Month to Quit Sky+

The historic week of Proms with Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, led by Daniel's son Michael, is almost here.
His dynamic West–Eastern Divan Orchestra – famously bringing together Arab and Israeli players to form less 'an orchestra for peace' than 'an orchestra against ignorance' – goes far beyond the symbolic in its goal of building bridges through music. (BBC)
They'll be performing the entire cycle of nine Beethoven symphonies, starting this Friday July 20, logically enough with the First and Second, and finishing next Friday with the almighty Ninth - which incidentally hands over to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.

Why is it such a historic cycle? The last time this was done within a single Proms season, was exactly 70 years ago, by Sir Henry Wood himself. Well, not just himself... come on, you know what I mean.

At the risk of receiving a BBC cease-and-desist, I need to put this little table just here: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Prom #
Performance Date/Time
Programme
Broadcast Date/Time
Channel
9
 Beethoven - Symphony No. 1 in C (25 min)
Boulez - Dérive 2 (45 min)
Interval
Beethoven - Symphony No. 2 in D (35 min)
Live!
BBC Four
10
 Beethoven - Symphony No. 4 in Bb (35 min)
Boulez - Dialogue de l'ombre double (20 min)
Interval
Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 in Eb 'Eroica' (50 min)
Sat 21 at 8pm
BBC Four
12
 Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 in F 'Pastoral' (40 min)
Boulez - Mémoriale ('…explosante-fixe…' Originel) (8 min)
Interval
Boulez - Messagesquisse (8 min)
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 in Cm (30 min)
Thu 26 at 7.30pm
BBC Four
13
 Beethoven - Symphony No. 8 in F (25 min)
Boulez - Anthèmes 2 (25 min)
Interval
Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 in A (35 min)
Fri 27 at 7.30pm
BBC Four
18
Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 in Dm 'Choral' (77 min)
Sat 28 at 8pm
BBC Two
BBC HD

Daniel Barenboim photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
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Sunday, 1 July 2012

Tweets - June 2010











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Thursday, 21 June 2012

Oh, That Would Be A Fine Trick

After a quiet month or two, I've started hitting my stride again. I've reached my quota of four technical articles for this month, two of those security related (however vaguely). This means I can relax, and fill up the rest of June with popular culture references. Let's enjoy a couple of my favourite tricks from last year's Penn and Teller: Fool Us series. This first is by the Canadian World Champion of Magic, Shawn Farquhar:



This next shows the maestros themselves doing what they excel at. They let the audience in on both the joke and the magic, while still overfilling with enough additional indirection to ensure our ultimate bewilderment:

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Third Party Creep

Just Out Of Interest...

The somewhat laborious DevExpress build processes described in the previous article did eventually bear fruit, letting me pare down the problem to its bare essentials. Now I need to send this sample code off to DevExpress, together with as many caveats as I can muster - otherwise, they're sure just to write back with some entirely unworkable suggestions, like refactoring our entire business object hierarchy (test impact = humongous).
// Run this project using DevExpress version 9.2.6, and inspect the Field List tab.
// "Contacts" will contain two properties, "Name" and "Telephone".
// Run it again using DevExpress version 12.1, and inspect the Field List tab again.
// "Contacts" will contain only the "Name" property - "Telephone" has disappeared!

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using DevExpress.XtraReports.UI;

namespace XtraReportsTest
{
 public partial class Form1 : Form
 {
  public Form1()
  {
   InitializeComponent();
  }

  private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
   new XtraReport {DataSource = new ContactTypedList()}.ShowDesignerDialog();
   Close();
  }
 }

 public class ContactTypedList : ArrayList, ITypedList
 {
  public PropertyDescriptorCollection GetItemProperties(PropertyDescriptor[] listAccessors)
  {
   return TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(typeof (Contact));
  }

  public string GetListName(PropertyDescriptor[] listAccessors)
  {
   return "Contacts";
  }
 }

 public class Contact
 {
  public string Name { get; set; }
  [Browsable(false)]
  public string Telephone { get; set; }
 }
}
Suitably squashed to highlight the relevant areas, here are the results of the test runs with DX version 9.2.6 (left) and 12.1 (right):



This calls for a course on defensive programming!
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Wednesday, 20 June 2012

Building DevExpress Sources

How to Build DevExpress DLLs for Debugging

This article is your 10-step guide explaining how to build a debug version of the DevExpress component assemblies from their supplied source code. My recent experiences force me to say, wonderful component suite, but their instructions on this particular activity fall a little short of being self-explanatory!

1. Get the Zip

First go here:
http://www.devexpress.com/Support/Center/p/A609.aspx
Pick up the Attachment version relevant to the target DevExpress DLLs version. If it's not listed, request it, go home, and come back next day.

Notice the file PublicKeyToken.txt, which we'll be using later. Actually that's the only, paper-thin justification for this article's Security tag...

2. Check DEFINES.BAT

Follow the first couple of instructions in the Attachment's README.TXT file: copying all the files from its folder or Zip archive into your DevExpress Components Sources folder, and then checking the content of DEFINES.BAT. Note from the location of this file, that should you have to edit it, you will probably have to do so using e.g. Notepad Run as Administrator. Verify in particular the specific version of Studio you are using (vsver), the GAC path(s), and the locations of the correct sn, gacutil and MSBuild executables.

3. Edit the Supplied Batch Files

You're going to want to Run as Administrator the DevExpress source building scripts, CLEAR.BAT and BUILDALL.CMD, following the directions in the associated README.TXT file. But before you do, note that since the files CLEAR.BAT and BUILDALL.CMD will probably have to be Run as Administrator, their default current directory will be something like C:\Windows\system32. We need them to be running instead in the DevExpress source folder, and one way to achieve that is to edit these files so they look a bit like this:
REM @echo off
C:
CD \Program Files (x86)\DevExpress 2009.2\Components\Sources
call defines.bat
and so on. However, note also from the location of these files that you will probably have to edit them using e.g. Notepad Run as Administrator.

4. Build the DevExpress DLLs from Source

Okay, so now Run (as Administrator) your edited CLEAR.BAT and BUILDALL.CMD. Obviously you can safely ignore any generated error messages that relate to software components you haven't installed (CompactFramework, LightSwitch, SharePoint, SilverLight, etc).

5. Create Toolbox

If your target version of DevExpress supports it, now is the time to run the ToolboxCreator utility. How will you know if it's required? Well, if it's in the Start menu for your version of DevExpress, e.g.
Start / All Programs / Developer Express v2009 vol 2 / Components / Tools / ToolboxCreator
then it's required, and you should run it. Whereas if it's not, then it's not, and you shouldn't.

6. Copy New DLLs to Local Folder

Before proceeding to run ProjectConverter, if your third party component binaries are under version control as an External, you'll probably want to copy the newly compiled DevExpress DLLs from whichever output folder they've just been built into, e.g.
C:\Program Files (x86)\DevExpress 2009.2\Components\Sources\DevExpress.DLL
- or -
C:\Program Files (x86)\DXperience 12.1\Bin\Framework
to their local destination, e.g. MyProject\ThirdPartyComponents\Developer Express\DLL, or whatever.

7. Convert Projects

The devExpress README.TXT gives a command line for running the Project Converter utility. I prefer to omit the parameters and use the interactive graphical UI version. However that's not always possible, as earlier versions of the converter don't have the Advanced options UI letting you specify the new Public Key (PK). Be aware that the command line version, if provided with a Project Path, will start conversion immediately, without giving you a chance to adjust any of the other parameters. Either way, be sure to make all of the following settings correctly:
  • Your Project Path(s);
  • HintPath behaviour (I normally use Update rather than Remove);
  • The new PK value (this should be available in the aforementioned file PublicKeyToken.txt).
Inspect any errors in the log output by the conversion process and decide whether or not you care enough about them to start again from Step 1 and be more careful!

8. Check Post Build Events

One subject easily forgotten during this process is the area of post build events in your own project code. These are often used to consolidate the outputs of multi-project or multi-solution systems into a final staging or deployment folder, and in particular, to ensure that all third party assemblies are copied efficiently, i.e., once only. For this reason, the events you are likely to have to care about are those associated with your main exe or web app projects: clients, services, data portals, auxiliary apps and so on.

The aim of this step is to ensure that all DevExpress references end up pointing to the same third party component assemblies folder.

9. Clean Project Output Folders

Again, the aim of this step is to ensure there are no remnant, pre-source-build versions of the DevExpress libraries visible to the compiler. Prior to compiling your code, be sure to delete all bin, obj, Output and/or Run folders generated during your build process, to ensure a clean result.

10. Build Your Solution(s)

And we're done! Get back into Visual Studio and check that you can step through the DevExpress source code, see it in the Call Stack, and enjoy all of its sourcey goodness. Or failing that, consult the troubleshooting section of README.TXT, or the DevExpress Support Centre, Knowledge Base and Forum.

11. Reversion

As described in the Attachment's README.TXT file, you can revert to the installed DevExpress binaries by running the installer in Repair mode. This is essentially the undo of Step 4 above, so to complete the process you will possibly want to follow this with steps 5-10. Alternatively, you might just restore your entire solution image(s) from version control.
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Tuesday, 19 June 2012

Best Rock Gag Ever

The surprise return of Dexys after mumble mumble years, with this charming bit of theatre...



...somehow reminded me of the best ever lyrical gag in a rock song...



After listening to Meat's and Ellen Foley's performance of that Jim Steinman epic (though that's actually Karla DeVito in the video), I think you'll agree the best bit starts at 07:00.
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