Friday, January 29, 2010

Submitted another bug to Eclipse

It's unavoidable to have ambiguous types in single Java file. The way to solve the problem is very easy, using fully qualified class name. Unfortunately, the Content Assist of Eclipse 3.6M4 is not that smart to generate correct code.

I submitted this bug to Eclipse today and let's see what will happen.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Floating point arithmetic in Python 3 is much more accurate

There is always limited precision in floating point arithmetic due to conversion between decimal and binary. But I found Python 3 becomes much more accurate.

 zhao@nettop:~$ python  
 Python 2.6.4 (r264:75706, Dec 7 2009, 18:45:15)   
 [GCC 4.4.1] on linux2  
 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.  
 >>> 12.6 / 2  
 6.2999999999999998  
 >>> 12.6 + 0.01
 12.609999999999999
 >>> float('3.2')
 3.2000000000000002  

 zhao@nettop:~$ python3  
 Python 3.1.1+ (r311:74480, Nov 2 2009, 14:49:22)   
 [GCC 4.4.1] on linux2  
 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.  
 >>> 12.6 / 2  
 6.3  
 >>> 12.6 + 0.01  
 12.61  
 >>> float('3.2')  
 3.2  
Who has any idea about this?

Update on 27/12/2020, Python 2.7 fixed it as well.
 $ python
 Python 2.7.18rc1 (default, Apr  7 2020, 12:05:55) 
 [GCC 9.3.0] on linux2
 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
 >>> 12.6 / 2
 6.3
 >>> 12.6 + 0.01
 12.61
 >>> float('3.2')
 3.2

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Let scim and ibus support Skype

Update 28/4/2012 - If you're using Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, install ibus-qt4 first.
sudo apt-get install ibus-qt4

By default, I cannot input Chinese in Linux version of Skype. This issue doesn't get solved when Karmic Koala decided to introduce a new input framework, ibus, to replace scim.

To solve this problem, add these 3 lines into your .bashrc file and reboot:
 export GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus  
 export XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus  
 export QT_IM_MODULE=ibus  

If you prefer scim, maybe these lines will help (not tested):
 export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM  
 export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim  
 export QT_IM_MODULE=scim  

Skype is better now under Ubuntu.

Monday, January 04, 2010

Schema of iTunes podcast feed

In 2006, in order to aggregate my favourite podcasts and share them with other iPod owners, I did a podcast aggregation service named myTunes.

I chose JAXB to map XML documents to Java objects and vice versa, so I need a schema or DTD file of iTunes podcast feed. Unfortunately I couldn't find one. I had to generate one myself.

I got an example feed from Apple. I removed a few elements that I think of no use at the moment and generated its schema.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" elementFormDefault="qualified">
    <xs:complexType name="channelType">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element ref="title"/>
            <xs:element ref="link"/>
            <xs:element ref="language"/>
            <xs:element ref="description"/>
            <xs:element ref="pubDate"/>
            <xs:element name="image" type="imageType"/>
            <xs:element ref="copyright"/>
            <xs:element ref="subtitle"/>
            <xs:element ref="summary"/>
            <xs:element name="item" type="itemType" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
    <xs:element name="copyright">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
        <xs:element name="subtitle">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
        <xs:element name="summary">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="description">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:complexType name="enclosureType">
        <xs:attribute name="url" use="required">
            <xs:simpleType>
                <xs:restriction base="xs:anyURI">
                </xs:restriction>
            </xs:simpleType>
        </xs:attribute>
        <xs:attribute name="length" use="required">
            <xs:simpleType>
                <xs:restriction base="xs:int">
                </xs:restriction>
            </xs:simpleType>
        </xs:attribute>
        <xs:attribute name="type" use="required">
            <xs:simpleType>
                <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
                </xs:restriction>
            </xs:simpleType>
        </xs:attribute>
    </xs:complexType>
    <xs:element name="guid">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:anyURI">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:complexType name="imageType">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element ref="url"/>
            <xs:element ref="title"/>
            <xs:element ref="link"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
    <xs:complexType name="itemType">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element ref="title"/>
            <xs:element ref="link"/>
            <xs:element ref="description"/>
            <xs:element ref="subtitle"/>
            <xs:element ref="summary"/>
            <xs:element name="enclosure" type="enclosureType"/>
            <xs:element ref="guid"/>
            <xs:element ref="pubDate"/>
            <xs:element ref="duration"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
    <xs:element name="language">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="link">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:anyURI">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="pubDate">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="duration">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="rss">
        <xs:complexType>
            <xs:sequence>
                <xs:element name="channel" type="channelType"/>
            </xs:sequence>
            <xs:attribute name="version" use="required">
                <xs:simpleType>
                    <xs:restriction base="xs:decimal">
                        <xs:enumeration value="2.0"/>
                    </xs:restriction>
                </xs:simpleType>
            </xs:attribute>
        </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="title">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="url">
        <xs:simpleType>
            <xs:restriction base="xs:anyURI">
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
    </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Then I created Java classes (ObjectFactory.java, Rss.java, ChannelType.java, ImageType.java, ItemType.java and EnclosureType.java) using xjc. Now we're ready to output iTunes compatible podcast feed.

I had closed myTunes before I moved to Melbourne in 2008. In less than 2 years, myTunes collected several hundreds of user agent (it only collects user agent, nothing else). I think it'll be a good idea to publish them one day.