Bruno Vernay

Cross platform development with Qt and Netbeans

2009-07-08T09:51:00.002+02:00

Two very good tools associated to develop cross platform (Linux, Windows, OS X, mobiles ...) applications in this tutorial on Working with Qt Applications:
NetBeans IDE 6.7 seamlessly integrates Qt Designer for productive C++ development !

Store Flac, broadcast MP3 : mp3fs and Ampache

2009-07-07T21:46:00.005+02:00

Lets say that you keep your music with the best quality while still consuming very little disk space : flac (lossless audio compression).
Now that is fine for PC, but most portable players (iPods) doesn't support flac, but MP3, MP4 and other .
You could duplicate your whole collection in two formats, or transcode as needed, but that would be painful. (Even if some application like Amarok are able to transcode on the fly the music or podcast transfered on an iPod.)
A solution for me is to use mp3fs. Mp3fs takes a directory full of flac and present it as another directory full of ... MP3 ! That is very useful for FTP, NFS or Samba shares.
So your Flac music can now be copied on your ipods easily.

One caveat: unless you have a powerful PC, don't expect to listen directly the mp3: the transcoding take some time. It is fine to copy, but not to stream !

Lastly, I didn't find package for Kubuntu nor Fedora. You just have to compile, which is very simple. The only problem being to get the libraries !
There are some hints for Kubuntu. But for Fedora, the library's names are not exactly the same. After a little "yum search ...", I installed: libid3tag-devel, lame-devel, flac-devel, fuse-devel, libogg-devel.

But still, I don't see the point of having different packages, as if Linux needed to be fragmented !

Ampache is another project that can provide transcoding over the web and essentially much more, but see for yourself.

Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B

2009-06-12T13:13:00.002+02:00

Nice post : Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B Posted on May 19, 2009 by John Fuex (johnfx).
I started this questioning about a year ago, but I still see no clear path to escape programming.

Sun's JVM has an HTTP server embedded: com.sun.net.httpserver

2009-05-09T21:40:00.006+02:00

Very useful ! Sun's Java Standard Edition has a simple HTTP Server: com.sun.net.httpserver.

It simplifies dependencies since you don't have to add a new library. It is straightforward to use it with Jersey to publish Restful Services. But it isn't a standard feature !

Eclipse users might see compile errors saying Access restriction: The type ... is not accessible due to restriction on required library ...
The problem is that the HTTP server is part of the Sun JRE6 but not part of standardized Java.
Eclipse therefore blocks access to it.
This can be fixed by going to the Window->Preferences window, selecting Java->Compiler->Errors/Warnings, selecting Deprecated and Restricted API and then changing the setting for Forbidden Reference and Discouraged Reference to Warning instead of Error.

Jersey client, Jax-rs, Jaxb, RESTFUL client in Java

2009-05-09T18:52:00.004+02:00

RESTFUL web-services, in Java, concern mostly server side developments. The client is generally the browser.
Now I am in the process of developing a Java client for web-service. I searched Java solutions in this space and found that Jersey was also a good client. I already known Jersey, for being the reference implementation for Jax-rs (Restful Services ?) and even saw Paul Sandoz himself in Grenoble. But I never imagined that there could be another consumer than the browser.
Well obviously, they needed to test Jersey, hence ad-hoc code, then a framework and a finally a jersey-client for everyone's pleasure.
The funny parts is that I am using jersey-server to test jersey-client: the other way around ... That is not pure Unit Test, in the sense that I prefer functional or integration test than testing every tiny development chunk and mocking everything around.
Point is that implementing Restful Services in java with Jersey and Jasxb is really easy. overall, I stumbled on a problem with Jaxb and the way it doesn't handle immutable objects, but I will make another post about this.

Hadopi, Création et Internet.

2009-04-22T15:37:00.003+02:00

Encore une série d'article sur Hadopi.
Franchement on aurait mieux à faire, surtout en temps de crise ! Il existe des problèmes plus important, non ? Comme par exemple le retard de la France pour ce qui concerne Internet, les Spam, la vente liée ...

Bref, en vrac : Victoire pour les citoyens européens ! L'amendement 138 de nouveau voté

L'amendement 138/46-135 dispose que l'on ne peut restreindre les droits et libertés fondamentaux des utilisateurs qu'après une décision de l'autorité judiciaire (exception faite des menaces à la sécurité publique, auquel cas la décision peut être postérieure). Cet amendement avait été adopté en septembre dernier par une majorité écrasante au Parlement européen et ensuite approuvé par la Commission européenne malgré les demandes répétées de la part de la Présidence française de le rejeter. Le Conseil de l'Union européenne l'avait finalement rejeté sous la pression du gouvernement français et à la suite de la désinformation de juristes employés par le Conseil sur une prétendue contradiction avec les lois nationales existantes.

Malgré une forte pression pour obtenir un compromis sur la directive cadre du Paquet Télécom la commission ITRE du Parlement européen a de nouveau adopté l'amendement 138/46 par une forte majorité de 40 contre 4. Il faudra s'assurer dans la suite des débats que ce vote sera confirmé en session plénière, mais il s'agit d'un signal fort et évident.

Hadopi pour les nuls : un bon résumé.

Adresse IP : la démonstration de l’UFC-Que Choisir L'association de consommateur (UFC-Que choisir, dont le but est de défendre les consommateurs) a démontré avec le professionnalisme juridique requis huissier, tribunal ... que l'IP n'était pas une preuve suffisante pour identifier un coupable.

Manifestation-contre-hadopi.com

2009-04-20T22:04:00.003+02:00

Pour ceux qui ont le temps : des manif partout contre la loi HADOPI.

Voir aussi l'article de la Quadrature du NET :
"Un amendement crucial2 visant à protéger les citoyens de l'Union européenne contre la police privée et la justice parallèle des industries du divertissement (« riposte graduée » instaurée par la loi HADOPI) a été adopté par 88% des eurodéputés lors de la première lecture du paquet télécom, le 24 septembre 2008.

Sous la forte pression de Nicolas Sarkozy dans le cadre de la présidence française de l'UE, le Conseil de l'UE a supprimé cet amendement 138 sans aucune justification"

How to compare a Java Web Framework

2009-03-11T21:51:00.004+01:00

Far from being achieved, but at least a major update of How To compare Java Web Framework and the Java Web Framework matrix.

My first JavaFX tutorial completed under Linux

2009-02-27T22:40:00.002+01:00

I was eager to start using JavaFX, because Linux isn't yet fully supported as a development platform. So I used this tips on how to install Netbeans with JavaFX on Linux. And I have been able to follow this tutorial.
Nothing fancy, but I have a good feeling about JavaFX : the code is clean, powerful and very readable. Not cluttered with legacy stuff.
I hope I will be able to do more with it.

Java on Linux, So Many Free Choices

2009-01-22T13:22:00.002+01:00

Or should we say too many choices ?
This post is essentially to cleanup some bookmarks I tagged "To Read".
There is an article in Fedora Weekly Issue 133 about Java.
I like to have a clean Linux install and having Sun's Java, GCJ, IcedTea and others gives me a bad feeling.
Hopefully the road map toward OpenJDK is clear.

The trouble with triggers

2009-01-19T22:41:00.002+01:00

It is nice when I get a confirmation for a feeling I had for a long time.
Triggers should be use with extreme care. It is a bit like AOP, very powerful but you don't let anyone play with a chainsaw.
So it is worth reading an article The Trouble with Triggers By Tom Kyte in Oracle magazine.
Note that there is a free paper version if you don't have a netbook for the toilets.

Installing KUbuntu alongside Fedora

2008-11-27T20:49:00.006+01:00

What decided me to try Kubuntu is the updated Miro version, the one that allow to download Youtube chanels. Ubuntu has it, but Fedora is lagging a bit behind. (Notice that Mandriva and Suse had it too).
Besides, the Fedora 10 Feature list didn't excite me.

In order to install Kubuntu alongside Fedora on a free LVM volume, I decided to use UNetBootIn. There are no RPM, you have to download it from sourceforge. Since it is only one single exec, there are no problems.

So, you just launch unetbootin, choose which distribution to install, I choosed Ubuntu 8.10 Net install. It download a little file and ask for reboot.

I rebooted and choose "Unetbootin" in the Grub menu. It launches Ubuntu's install.
Partitionning is the scary part: Ubuntu doesn't help you much to choose the right LVM volume ! Basically, don't use your existing /boot, choose to config LVM and only mount the LVM volume that will contain Ubuntu. It still says that it will change the partition table, but luckily, it didn't break too much things.
I did a bare lightweight install (no X server).

Ubuntu's install changed the partition's UUID. Normally, it wouldn't have been a concern. But I used to configure Fedora's fstab to mount it under /mnt/ubuntu. So when I booted back to Fedora it falls short on a "Repair System" shell. Just because it couldn't find the UUID anymore !! Anyway after some Googling, I remounted the filesystem in read/write mode : "mount -w -o remount /" as seen in Linux Forum and just commented the bad line.

After rebooting, I used system-config-lvm (don't know why it doesn't appear in the menu) to mount the kubuntu partition back on /mnt/ubuntu. Then I wanted to copy the /mnt/ubuntu/boot/ to /boot/ and add Ubuntu to the Grub menu. But I only had to updated Grub to add the Ubuntu menu. The file were already in /boot/ : I wonder if UNetbootin copied them there in order to boot the install ?

Anyway, I just rebooted and choose "Ubuntu" in the Grub menu. It reached quickly a standard shell where I did a sudo apt-get kubuntu-desktop, triggering the download of not less than 1,5Go of deb files. But I know that I can switch from one to the other systems.

After rebooting, I still have to configure the NVIDIA drivers, since it gives me a blank screen yet ...

Xebia Web Framework Contest (French)

2008-10-15T14:55:00.003+02:00

Xebia is a well known company with a strong focus on Java and Agile.
I already heard of them through Gero Vermaas's blog.
I saw this context in a post from Matt Raible.
See: RIA Contest : Flex / Silverlight / GWT / Echo3 / JavaFX.

The comment are worth reading too : it shows that it is an interesting experiment, but very limited in time and focus. So it won't be true in 3 month or on another kind of project.

Java browser plugin on 64 bit Fedora and more

2008-10-03T01:18:00.002+02:00

It's been a long time. So just to say that :
- Fedora 10 should be there soon

- There is some hope for a good java plugin on 64-bits browsers. For now just install java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin. Or better, just yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk-*

- being on a project with a lot of JMS, Tibco RendezVous, Complex Event Processing, Event Driven Architecture and the likes, It is the kind of paradigm change that bring some fun to the job ! So no more HTTP request nor function calls : just send events and hopefully someone else will write the code to react to them. We are so used to HTTP and the firewall censorship that we don't even consider JMS ! But there are plenty of cases where it makes perfect sense to use events and messages : a lot of them !

Web Development as Tag Soup

2008-07-22T10:56:00.004+02:00

A post Web Development as Tag Soup by Jeff Atwood in Coding Horror. Very good blog indeed.
There are so many things to say about this problem. Maybe because it touches the Sacred Graal : separation of concern : Presentation and Business Logic.

Overall, there is no silver bullet, but people tends to forget that a Web Application, Web site or intranet can be very different projects and they compare Oranges to Apples. The client and development team changes everything.

Obviously, there are tons of comments, I will try to extract some :

- Mixing HTML / Javascript / server code : is it that bad ? Can there be a "good tag soup" ? "You recently championed Embracing Languages Inside Languages."

- Everyone is promoting his solution : generally a templating engine, but with some discipline to reduce the amount of code in the soup.

- A part of the problem is readability : <a href="<%=foo%>"><%=bar%></a>. Some suggest that "attribut soup" might be more readable. At least it is well formed XHTML : <p tal:content="string:foo"/>. Others consider that it is still a kind of Soup.

- "MVC tends to lead to file proliferation. It takes at least 5 files to create a single page: 3 JSP (using Tiles), 1 servlet, and 1 bean. I have to open 5 files to change a page."

Aims :

- Testability : code in the controller is easier to test than code in the HTML page.

- Wysiwyg : If the HTML is in the server code : only server-side developer can touch it. Designer won't be able to change and refine it. It is best to have well formed HTML templates to work with.

- i18n : what if the text is in the server-side code and in the HTML !

- Same kind of problems with escaping strings and unicode : Javascript, HTML, forms ... all different ways for your text from the Database to your front end !

- Readability, maintenance

- reuse, component

Solution proposed :

- Template Attribute Language : TAL (Python, PHP, Java ...) or XMLC (Java). A bit like the Wicket templates.

- Google XML Pages (GXP) Not very impressive yet. Wuld have to be coupled with some tools or IDE to be compeling.

- Get rid of HTML : GWT (almost), JavaFX, Flex, Curl ...

- Get rid of old paradigm : from Server-side generated HTML switch to SOFEA, Thin Server Architecture.

- more declarative language : XForms ...

- Use an all in one IDE + framework (JSF, JSTL ...) : Eclipse RAP, Netbeans, ...

Argument in favor of Tag Soup :
I quote :

Using more abstraction is just plain wrong, because:
1) you want to control what the output HTML will look like, so forget about a 'builder' tool, like a series of doc.addTag("P",content,attributes) ... it's Ok for passing data through some XML markup, but HTML documents are to complex to keep a clear idea of what the output will be this way. Customizing the layout is going to be a mess.
2) You want to use a 'template' library to avoid using too much logic inside your markup. This ends up being a joke, because you still want some logic, and you end up re-inventing a worse language that has to do loops, conditionnals, formatting, while your base language has certainly a better, more elegant syntax.
3) "simpler" intermediary language, like some XML markup then transformed to HTML through XLST leads you to the same pitfalls. You think you can avoid having logic in your markup, you end up reinventing another language, having to learn that language, to find out you get even more complexity.

The problem with tag soup is just the same of any language in any situation when you lazily prefer writing spaghetti code than creating meaningful functions, explicit variable names, clear indentation, well divided problem solving. Any programming language embedded in HTML is OK, anything else is a waste of time. What you need is to do all the complex stuff outside that embedded HTML file : do the business stuff and read all the records in the controller, and when you need complex formatting or logic rules, do it in helper functions that you'll define in a library accessible from your embedded html. In that embedded HTML, use your primary language, except everything must be very concise and trivial. Anything non-trivial as to be in outside helper functions with meaningful names. How do we program in general ? When we write a method we make sure all the code is about the microproblem you're trying to solve through that method, and anything too complex has to be in other methods, right ? That's just the exact same thing happening here. Being in the middle of HTML markup doesn't mean you can forget those programming rules. It's lame to blame your programming language when you put yourself in a mess, and that applies here too.

UML is going down ? or is it the whole programming thing ?

2008-07-08T15:51:00.004+02:00

At first I was looking at UML because I like it and would like to see more MDA and MDSD done. But I read 13 reasons for UML’s descent into darkness and the future doesn't seem to shine :

But since I am very skeptical about the conclusion that are generally drown from Google Trends, I searched a little more and it seems that whatever the subject "Java, SQL, HTML ..." the trends goes down more or less :

So, I still hope to see something good out of AndroMDA or Taylor.

Linux Podcast

2008-07-01T11:49:00.002+02:00

#! CrunchBang has a nice Linux Podcasts Roundup
And there is a long uncommented list in Monterb.org !
Another commented list in Tux University. (By the way, LearnHub seems to be a nice place !)
Another one from LinuxLink with little comment and logos . Go to Google for the others.

But it will be hard to replace Lug Radio !!

Storage : S3 vs. Hard Drive

2008-06-25T22:52:00.003+02:00

I looked at Amazon S3 service, but it is still expensive, especially if you plan to just "store" files and not often touch them. For example keeping 500GB would cost $90 per month. Compare to a 500GB Hard Drive that cost less than 60€ ! You may count about $10 per month for electric power, depending on your region.

So I planned to use the Open Source Java client : JetS3t, but abandoned it altogether.

Then I have to check for solutions to replicate the files to friends machines. It wouldn't make sense to me to use RAID mirror. Mirror won't protect against thieves or fire !

Good Grasp on what Appcelerator is

2008-06-25T15:23:00.002+02:00

Just read the 5 short chapters about what Appcelerator is
It will take 5 minutes and it explain it all.

(I already looked at their site, but didn't find clear explanation, beyond "... everything you need to build RIAs and SOA-based services the way you want — while being flexible bla bla bla ..."

Note also that they added support for Google AppEngine : so you can easily deploy your backend on Google services.

Johanna Rothman about project management

2008-06-25T14:49:00.003+02:00

Good article, nice schema about differences between serial, iterative, incremental and agile.
What Lifecycle? Selecting the Right Model for Your Project by Johanna Rothman.
Johanna is doing what I would like, with a more technical point of view still.
Look at her site : really good stuff about project management.

Fedora 9 and Java OpenJDK

2008-06-16T10:33:00.000+02:00

I upgraded to Fedora 9 some days ago, it went very well. I used the preupgrade GUI tool.
I just have a little mess in the menu, but easily cleaned up.

I am a bit disappointed by OpenJDK Firefox plugin. Basically, it doesn't work, nor WebStart.
So I will switch to the Standard SUN Java back again. Especially as they fixed and enhanced the applets with Java SE 6 Update 10 b25 !

Resources :

JavaFAQ is a bit outdated (still cover a large part of FC6 !? )

I will have to check this : http://fedorasolved.org/browser-solutions/sun-jdk

Mauriat Miranda guides

http://dnmouse.webs.com/index.html Quick guides (feature autonine : a GUI that install non-free apps)

http://easylife.dulinux.com/ just another GUI that install non-free apps.

People hang out on #fedora-java on freenode. There are also people on #classpath

Fedora Java Mailing list

I would really like some kind of group about "Java on Fedora", like the Java topic on Debian Wiki

New Firefox 3 Extensions

2008-06-12T20:25:00.005+02:00

So extensions are add-ons, but different from plugins like Java or Quick-Time or themes.

Since I switched to Firefox 3, I had to change some extensions :
Google Browser Sync isn't available anymore, so I switched to Weave. It is still under heavy development, as of 0.2 no Mac and no 64bit which are my 2 machines ...
I use InterClue (link preview), but I am not sure if I will keep it, or maybe just only enable it when needed.
Gmarks obviously for Google bookmarks.
Google Gears.
Google Web Comment isn't available anymore. Anyway, I wasn't really using it.
Firebug verion 1.2 works with Firefox 3 !

Firefox Add-ons doesn't allow to filter the Firefox 3 compatibles, which is a bit annoying.

I tried KDE 4 and I like it

2008-06-10T18:27:00.002+02:00

Fedora 9 comes with KDE 4 and it is really great !
Still some details to be fixed but overall I like it much more than Gnome !

About this blog

2008-06-10T17:57:00.002+02:00

Looks like this blog is becoming some kind of personal rant.
There are more political, controversial posts and less technical ones.

There two reason for this :
- creating links on subjects that matters to me is a way to vote for them on the Internet.
- I use Shared Items on Google Reader to mark and comment news. It is much quicker than posting on this blog ! My Shared Items.

But I would like to keep this blog focused on technical articles. Maybe I will split it and create a dedicated blog for the "voting" stuff ?
Will see on next post.

French jobs and salary : articles and web sites.

2008-06-02T11:04:00.003+02:00

Well a few links about Jobs and Salaries in France :

Enquête salaires 2008 : les spécialités qui rapportent le plus (LMI 02/05/2008)

Juri Travail : des conseils et des données sans trop de pubs.