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Geoffrey Chapman - Macrotone Blogs - Page 14

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Geoffrey Chapman
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An IT professional with a wide experience of IT systems, specialising in Database Management and Security.

Geoffrey Chapman

Joomla and JTableNested

joomla
We recently started addressing a small concern that we had with the handling of Projects in our Issue Tracker component.  Not I hasten to add, a bug, but more a lack of functionality that was desired.  The search functionality was a little limited, and we has implemented some code to sort the projects in the desired order.  Whilst it worked it was not what we would describe as ‘pretty’.  We took the bullet and decided to convert the table from a ‘hierarchical’ format to a ‘nested’ format.

The desire was to

  • improve the search facility
  • to clean up the existing code making better use of supplied Joomla functionality
  • to provide an improved sort ability
  • to introduce ACL group control of the projects (we had already implemented ACL controls upon the issues in an earlier release).
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Geoffrey Chapman

DocBook XML tables


We have been studying  the DocBook DTD and in particular the table specifications.  There are two separate and distinct formats supported, the originals CALS format and the ‘newer’ HTML format since DocBook version 4.3. CALS is an SGML standard developed by the U.S. military, and their set of table tags was one of the first to be developed that included complex features for tables.

Some confusion was encountered since one source claimed that both table formats could not be used in the same document, whilst another source claimed that the two forms cannot be mixed within  the same definition, which makes more sense.

Later, because of widespread familiarity with HTML tables, DocBook added HTML table elements. Now you can use tr and td instead of row and entry in a table.  They cannot be mixed within one table. Also, the content of each table cell has to be valid DocBook, so you cannot usually just cut and paste an HTML table into your DocBook document. But the DTD does permit a document to contain both CALS tables and HTML tables. The tgroup element is the distinguishing characteristic between them. A CALS table requires a tgroup, and an HTML table does not permit one.

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Tags:
XML tables DocBook
Geoffrey Chapman

Using XXE as an XML editor

XMLmind logo
We have been using the evaluation edition of XMLMind XML editor commonly known as XXE for a little while and discovered a a document on the web from the O’Reilly stable.

The link is for an older version of the software (Standard Edition 2.10 I think) but in the main it is still applicable with the latest evaluation edition (5.4.1).  The authors hope that it is found useful or as a starting point for your own work.

Note:  Reloading a later evaluation version resets the usage counter back to 30 days.

Tags:
XML editor DocBook documentation
Geoffrey Chapman

Documentation Formats and Joomla

Historically we used to create our documentation using ‘Word Perfect’ but changed to using Microsoft Word, soon after Adobe ‘took over’ Word Perfect.  This has served us well for many years, but unfortunately Word has not kept up with the changes in the Web and the need for short pages of documentation easily accessible by users.  Yes, Word can generate HTML documents but anyone who has every looked at the created output will be struck by the obvious bloated code and its use of strangely named variables making it almost unreadable in its raw form.  This necessitates a cleanup operation on the code before it can really be used.

So the search was on to see it there is anything ‘better’ out there.

The obvious candidate was something known as DocBook which is written in XML, which means that it can be created and edited by virtually any editor upon any platform.  However to ensure good structure that meets the requirements of the DTD, something more robust is required.  It also raises the question of how one retains the investment in existing documents and how one can convert them to the ‘new’ format.  One advantage of the XML format is that it is reasonably easy to use XSL transforms to convert it to PDF, HTML  or indeed many other formats.

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Tags:
XML Tools joomla documentation DocBook
Geoffrey Chapman

Oracle SQL*Developer updated


oracle
Latest updates for Oracle SQL*Developer 3.2.20.09.87 and SQL*Developer Data Modeller 3.1.4 (710).Both available on Oracle Technet.  Required account.

Geoffrey Chapman

Moving APEX application to the Oracle cloud

Just read an interesting blog post about moving an Oracle APEX application to the Oracle cloud.  Interesting because I have previously used APEX and migrated some of the apps to Joomla.

Tags:
Oracle
Geoffrey Chapman

Humorous quote

The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine.

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN

 

From TV program: QI Stephen Fry - 26th Oct 2012

Geoffrey Chapman

Invoking window.onload multiple time.

Whilst developing our latest component ‘IP Mapper’ I encountered a problem that is possibly known to many but not previously to me.  For that reason decided to make this blog entry.

I was generating javascript code which made a call at the end to the ‘window.load event’.  The code worked perfectly when it was only present once.  However when present more than once only the last call actually worked.

Why did I need it more than once?  Well the code was generated for a specific module, and because the modules could each have very different parameters specified, I had to tailor the javascript for each specific module hence the slightly different code, but each has a different ‘window.onload event’ function call.

I discovered this post by Robert Hahn which describes a solution which I have implemented.

The solution:

function makeDoubleDelegate(function1, function2) {
    return function() {
        if (function1)
            function1();
        if (function2)
            function2();
    }
}
window.onload = makeDoubleDelegate(window.onload, myNewFunction );
Works a treat.
Tags:
joomla Javascript
Geoffrey Chapman

Strong Passwords

Just read an interesting article on Wired that I thought I would share.

It reflects current thinking, and invoked a lot of comments.  Now if Joomla just applied some of the options.

Now that is a suggestion for a good plugin!

Geoffrey Chapman

Apple tracking iOS 6 users

apple
Apple's launch of the iPhone 5 in September came with a bunch of new commercials to promote the device. Not surprisingly Apple didn't shout quite so loud about an enhancement to its new mobile operating system, iOS 6, which also occurred in September: The company has started tracking users so that advertisers can target them again, through a new tracking technology called IFA or IDFA.

See Business Insider

Tags:
security Apple
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