Sitting for the first session as we're going through the XNA session with Pat McGee. The session was an intro to XNA (and filled with a room full of guys who haven't done any XNA work so it was a good audience) but was fun with the people involved.

XNA on Xbox requires you to be connected to XBox Live and the Xbox networking was down so the guys couldn't demo anything on the XBox. However the fallback plan was to demo some networking on the laptops they had (of course when you come for an XNA demo you bring extra laptops and Xboxes, it's all about the hardware). Luckily it was John "The Pimp" Bristowe who saved the day and got the Xbox hooked up to the network so the demos were good to go.

Everyone has a certain set of tasks that they simply do not want to perform.

Even if it seems like the sort of thing that others might (right or wrong) expect them to do as a part of their job.

Like some housekeepers don't do windows.

And some secretaries don't get coffee.

And I don't do dishes.

And GDI on Windows doesn't do supplementary characters.

Over in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup, semi-regular reader Christian Kaiser asked:

Possibly I'm missing something, but I did not find any documentation on how to use GetCharABCWidths() with UTF16 surrogate pairs (additional planes).
Is there any way to use that API (or the like)? The API gets UINT instead of TCHAR, so maybe by shifting the high surrogate and 'or'ing with the low one?

Christian

But Christian isn't missing anything here -- the only way that GDI can ever handle supplementary characters is as glyph ID values; it cannot handle either surrogate pairs or UTF-32 encoded Unicode Scalar Values.

Kind of unfortunate for the whole family of GDI functions like GetCharABCWidths, since only some of them will also take glyph ID values. And although all supplementary character processing does through Uniscribe, there are many pieces of the supplementary ranges that do not require any complex script processing other than this particular requirement, which just means that some functions have no supplementary equivalent.

Because GDI wouldn't know a supplementary character if that character walked up and bit it in the ass (thus inspiring the post's sponsor)....

This post brought to you by 𝌽 (U+1d33d, aka U+d834 U+df3d, aka TETRAGRAM FOR CLOSED MOUTH)

How many Microsoft developers use the MSDN Library? Probably not many because I've just read a blog post where someone recommended not even installing it. I have to admit that I never even opened the Microsoft Document Explorer until I learned how to add my own notes as a custom help collection. Now I use the Microsoft Document Explorer every day. I'm a bit concerned that I am duplicating content that is already baked in so I've spent some time browsing the MSDN Library. You can save interesting help topics as favorites and here are a few of my favorites:

Colors by Lightness - ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.WEBDEV.v10.en/css/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/colors/colors_light.htm

I have some color charts in my notes but these light colors are better for web design.

CSS Enhancements in Internet Explorer 6 - ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.WEBDEV.v10.en/dhtmltechcol/dndhtml/cssenhancements.htm

This includes a diagram of the CSS box model.

C# Programming Guide - ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.VisualStudio.v80.en/dv_csref/html/ac0f23a2-6bf3-4077-be99-538ae5fd3bc5.htm

Lots of information about some of the more advanced features of C# like Generics and Delegates.

Visual Studio 2005 IDE Tips and Tricks - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb245788(VS.80).aspx

Plenty of screen shots here. This is actually a live link because you can save any web address as a favorite in the Microsoft Document Explorer.

So why don't developers use the MSDN Library? There are several improvements that could be made to encourage you to use it. First and most importantly it needs to be customizable so you can take ownership of the information. You ought to be able to annotate the MSDN Library with comments and sticky notes like so many other applications allow. Unfortunately, you cannot even highlight text and retain it. It is possible to add your own help collection as I have done but this requires a lot of effort.

Second the search needs to be improved. I am unable to search my custom help collection and it does not even appear in the index. It would require a massive effort for me to create an index even though all of my help topics have keywords in their original web page format. I also never get anything in Local Help when I conduct a search no matter how I fiddle with the options to get it to search local help.

So what about the Community Content in the Online Help? Anyone can comment or add to the online content. Unfortunately, not many developers are bothering to do so except when the existing content has some really inaccurate information. This makes the Online Help's Community Content look like some sort of pathetic wiki that nobody bothers to contribute to.

In my previous post I referred you to a tutorial how to make a simple line chart with Silverlight 1.1. With this chart we were able to load data from an exported Excel XML Spreadsheet or from a XML serialized list of Point objects. I thought it would be great if the chart can consume data from a web service and thus stay updated without any user intervention. I decided to use Astoria service - it is new, unexplored, easy to understand and to use, the payload is low, etc. I believe that Astoria will be used by a lot AJAX-enabled and rich internet applications. If you are not familiar with Astoria go to its official labs site and learn! The technology is still in an early development phase and there is yet only a CTP version but you can find enough info to get started. Also there is a couple of useful blogs: Project Astoria Team Blog, Mike Flasko's Blog, Pablo Castro's blog.

Yesterday I continued my series of articles regarding how to build a simple line chart with Silverlight 1.1 (read here). I explained how to make an ADO.NET Entity Model, create Astoria service and then consume it from Silverlight. The sample chart loads data from a Northwind database and then represents it in a line chart. It is a pretty straight-forward way to keep the chart alive. The source code is also included (ASP.NET 3.5 app + silverlight control library + silverlight project) so you can try and use it for your needs. Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2008 Beta2, the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Tools, the Astoria toolkit (VS2008 Beta2 Refresh) and the ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 2.

Sadly, it appears the answer is "yes". Specifically, the debugger has a huge limitation - one that's been there since Visual Studio 2005 (maybe even 2003). You can't set a breakpoint on the first line of an anonymous function. Consider, for example, the following:

   1:  <script type="text/javascript">

   2:  function aFunc()

   3:  {

   4:    alert("hi");

   5:  }

   6:   

   7:  var aFunc2 = function()

   8:  {

   9:      alert("hi, yourself");

  10:      alert("what's your problem?");

  11:  }

  12:   

  13:  aFunc();

  14:  aFunc2();

  15:  </script>

Here aFunc is a named function, and aFunc2 is a variable that points to an anonymous function. With the Visual Studio debugger, you can set a breakpoint on line 4, and line 10, but not line 9.

Why is this such a problem? Because most all the major Javascript libraries (at least Prototype, YUI, JQuery, and even, to a lesser extent, Microsoft's own ASP.NET AJAX) use anonymous functions up the ying yang - mostly for object methods. In other words, you can't set a breakpoint on the first line of most functions in most AJAX libraries. And if the function has only one line, yeah, you're screwed - no break-ey break-ey for you.

When I learned that this bug wasn't fixed in Visual Studio 2008 I was, in a word, dumbfounded. Isn't improved Javascript development one of the primary new features of VS2008?

Now, when I characterized the problem as being related to anonymous functions, that isn't quite right. In the above code, even if you give the aFunc2 function a name - "var aFunct2 = function theFunc()..."- the problem remains. There's a brief discussion of this issue on the ASP.NET forums here (note the date - March 2007), but the explanation rather nebulous. Whatever the root cause, it's a horrible limitation that I'm stunned wasn't addressed for RTM.

Guess it's back to Firebug for me. Or maybe it's time for another look at Aptana.

I love working with the new objects in JavaScript available in the AJAX framework. There is a new Sys.StringBuilder, which looks/acts/feels just like the server side StringBuilder does.

There is also an extention to String for a format(mask, [args]); method that let's you do a nice relacement of a string mask.

String.format("{0} is before {1}", "This", "That") give your a nice single string of "This is before That", just as you'd encounter on your Server side.

But Sys.StringBuilder doesn't have an appendFormat(mask, [args]) like String does, it only has a append, and an appendLine() method.

So let's create a new ScottCate.StringBuilder that inherits from Sys.StringBuilder, and prototype an appendFormat() on it.

I'm not very happy with the arg0....arg9 in the appendFormat() signature, but that was easier than reflection style code against the arguments.

Oh! And special thanks to my friend Michael, who helped me figure out the toString() problem I was having.

Type.registerNamespace('ScottCate');
ScottCate.StringBuilder = function(len) {
    ScottCate.StringBuilder.initializeBase(this, [len]);
}

ScottCate.StringBuilder.prototype = {
    appendFormat: function(mask, arg0, arg1, arg2, arg3, 
                                 arg4, arg5, arg6, arg7, arg8, arg9) {
        this.append(String.format(mask, arg0, arg1, arg2, arg3, arg4, 
                                        arg5, arg6, arg7, arg8, arg9));
    },
    toString: function(delimeter) {
        return ScottCate.StringBuilder.callBaseMethod(this, 
                                  "toString", [delimeter]);
    }
}


ScottCate.StringBuilder.inheritsFrom(Sys.StringBuilder);
ScottCate.StringBuilder.registerClass('ScottCate.StringBuilder', 
                                       Sys.StringBuilder);


function TestSB() {
    var sb = new ScottCate.StringBuilder();
    
    var mask = "{0} goes in front of {1}";
    
    sb.appendFormat(mask, "This", "that");
    
    alert(sb.toString());
}