August 23, 2006

Verbosio: Editing XML meets a small success

A few minutes ago, I completed a set of XBL-based bindings. This set of bindings implements a repetition model (somewhat dissimilar to Web Forms 2's model, but workable for now), and uses one group of user-interface elements to set attributes for another group of UI elements.

In English, I've made a significant step forward in having XUL edit XUL.

There are still a few issues to work out (extracting the edited XUL from the binding, and feeding XUL in for editing, and making the edits nearly-WYSIWYG... they apply, but for some reason you can't see a radio button's label change). The source code is at http://www.mozdev.org/source/browse/verbosio/experimental/templates/chrome/content/editorTest (see elementTemplate.xul and elementTemplate.xml). Be aware this code is experimental, so it will change in the near future.

XUL for editing XUL has another benefit. Because I would use XUL for editing other XML languages (based on my One for one blog entry), I can use XUL to create the XUL-based editing templates for each language.

Verbosio follows this "One for one" concept. Individual language-specific editors become extensions. Now, it's becoming feasible (not just possible!) to build at least basic extensions with Verbosio itself. That's what I call eating your own dog food. I'm not there yet. But it's in sight.

Posted by WeirdAl at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

August 19, 2006

Geek Goodies: Interstella 5555 (aka Daft Punk's Discovery album)

A few years ago, I was watching Cartoon Network's "Toonami", and they had a special music videos night. I was very impressed by what I saw. Two groups leapt out at me: Gorillaz ("Get The Cool Shoe Shine!"), and Daft Punk ("More than ever, hour after hour, work is never over"). I eventually bought the albums and found Daft Punk's work to be pretty good, Gorillaz's to be okay.

Fast forward to today. I'm browsing through the local used music/movies store, and I come across "Interstella 5555" in the house music videos section. The subtitle is "The animated house musical." As I am a casual fan of anime, I thought, "Okay, this is interesting." Then I looked at the bottom of the cover, and saw some very familiar anime faces, from Daft Punk's music videos.

I was pretty happy. Twenty bucks was a bit much to pay for twenty minutes of video, though, I thought. Then I saw the back cover - 65 minutes. In other words, the whole Discovery album as anime! The best part is I found another copy, used, for only thirteen bucks.

I never expected I'd get to see these anime music videos again. This is, for me, an instant collector's item. You might think this is a cult item, but hey, we are human after all. :-)

Posted by WeirdAl at 11:45 AM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2006

Article: Linux's Legal World After SCO

by Pamela Jones of Groklaw.net. Apparently Linux is ready for the business world. I particularly like the quotes on page six, including this gem:

No FOSS developer would ever pretend that a browser was part of an operating system, for example.

And this:

People Know Now that You Can Make Money with GPL Software

Now if only it was ready for the desktop... ;-) I wonder if Asa would like to update his opinion...

Posted by WeirdAl at 9:36 AM | Comments (3)

August 7, 2006

Attention all Trekkies, Trekkers, Treknobabblers, and Tribbles

The Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner. August 20.

To any non-Star Trek fans out there in the Mozilla audience: we now return you to your regularly scheduled Internet.

Posted by WeirdAl at 11:20 PM

August 4, 2006

XUL Widgets 0.4.2 released

New in version 0.4.2:

  • Checked in a FragmentSynchronizer.js file which domutils.xml requires
  • Added a new <xul:menulistset/> widget, which allows you to have synchronized menulists (you change one menulist's selected index, and the others in that set change as well). Tests now include a demo for this as well.

That is all. Obligatory link: XUL Widgets extension project

Posted by WeirdAl at 1:01 PM | Comments (1)