Blog of Ortz

Note to self, write blog post before taking sleeping pill.

Most of my updating is done on Twitter, but I figured since it’s the end of the semester and Christmas is coming up, I’ll post an update on stuff that’s been happening.

Work on OrtzIRC is still really slow, more so lately because of end-of-semester stuff, but it’s still moving. I’m almost ready for a first release. It might not be alpha though.

My cat went missing. It’s been over two weeks so I don’t think we’ll be finding him. He was my favorite of any cat I’ve ever had so I’m pretty sad about this.

I’ve decided that I’ve been ignoring my guitar playing way too much. My playing hasn’t gotten any better in years. When you have to understate how long you’ve been playing by a couple years to avoid embarrassment, something is wrong. So lately I’ve been attempting to learn fingerpicking. I’ve also decided to learn music theory finally.

The Hulu desktop thing decided it doesn’t want to show me Stargate SG-1 episodes anymore. I’ve been using it to watch starting from season 1. I’m on season 6 so far.

Updated 10/31: You don’t need a pass for the repo anymore.

I was on mid-term break the past two days. (Yeah only two. ugh.) I had been looking at Mercurial the past few days so I took the opportunity to switch OrtzIRC over to use Mercurial!

I really like Mercurial. I like how simple it is, even compared to SVN. Whenever I did something with SVN I felt like I was walking through a minefield. And I did manage to get my legs blown off a few times. (I looked at Git but it made me bleed from the ears.)

The switch was ridiculously easy. The only hard part was the fact that the hook for my CIA bot didn’t work, which should’ve been an easy fix, except I don’t know Python that well and Mercurial doesn’t have any docs for writing hooks that I could find. So I spent most of the day yesterday and part of this morning crawling through Mercurial’s changelogs and source.

Anyway, here’s the repo http://hg.ortzirc.com/ortzirc/.

I’m keeping the SVN repo up for now, but I’ll probably delete it pretty soon.

I also switched my issue tracking to FogBugz, which I’m also liking so far. (Free for up to two users) I may post more on that when I’ve used it more.

And as a result of all this, Trac is no longer useful to me. Can’t say I’ll miss it.

Finally got over a little hump recently with OrtzIRC.

I decided to dump ADO.NET and thus SQLite. I like SQLite, just not ADO.NET.

IRC settings are now stored as object and serialized to XML. Here’s an example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<EpicServerList>
  <Network Name="Gamesurge">
    <Server Description="Randoms" Url="irc.gamesurge.net" Ports="6667" />
    <Server Description="Burstfire" Url="Burstfire.UK.EU.GameSurge.net" Ports="6667" />
  </Network>
  <Network Name="Freenode">
    <Server Description="Random" Url="chat.freenode.net" Ports="6667" />
  </Network>
</EpicServerList>

I’ll probably make a tool that will parse the settings from your current IRC client and build an XML file with this schema. What I’m hoping to eventually have is a Creative Commons directory of IRC networks/servers.

Who doesn’t like a good ol’ survey?

I came across this item on ebay just now, and thought the first sentence from the description was interesting:

Internet Explorer 4 is not just another Web broswer-it’s the first step toward a desktop computing environment that mimics the Internet in such a way that the browser becomes the operating system

Internet Explorer 4 was released in 1997, more than a decade ago, and more than a decade before Google Chrome and now the Google Chrome OS.

Though the above description might not have been warranted, I thought it was interesting considering the direction browsers are taking today.

I finished a major feature of OrtzIRC recently, so I thought I would write a bit about how it works.

First of all, a big thanks to Max for being the grease when my gears wouldn’t turn, so to speak. And for talking me into doing commands this way instead of mine, which would not have worked out as well.

One of the goals with OrtzIRC is extensibility. OrtzIRC will have many categories of plugins which you write with your favorite .NET language, compile, and place in the plugins folder, much like Paint.NET. (Unlike Paint.NET, OrtzIRC will stay open source. wink wink) The first plugin category is commands.

Here’s what the “say” command looks like:

namespace OrtzIRC.Commands
{
    using OrtzIRC.Common;
    using OrtzIRC.PluginFramework;
 
    /// <summary>
    /// Parts a channel
    /// </summary>
    [Plugin]
    public class Say : ICommand
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Sends a message to the current channel
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="channel"></param>
        /// <param name="message"></param>
        public void Execute(Channel channel, string message)
        {
            channel.Say(message);
        }
    }
}

Like with most IRC clients, “say” is the only command called automatically (when you type into the command box without specifying a command).

Commands must follow these rules to work properly:

1. The class must implement the ICommand interface. At the moment this interface just lets the plugin loader know that it’s a command.
2. The class must also have the Plugin attribute. Plugin takes an optional string parameter to specify the name of the plugin (in this case the name of the command you type to execute the command, ie “/say”) otherwise the plugin’s name is the name of the class.
3. The command class must have at least one public Execute method. This method is what OrtzIRC calls when you type in a command.
4. The type of the first parameter in each of the Execute methods must be one of the following:
   • Channel
   • Server
   • PrivateMessageSession

   This parameter represents the context in which the command was executed, in other words, the window. (A channel window, PM window…)

5. The type of each of the remaining parameters must be either string or ChannelInfo. The ChannelInfo object is simply to let the command know that the user specified a channel name, ie “#luahelp”.
6. If you want autocomplete support the Execute methods must each have proper XML docs. (This has not yet been implemented, I will discuss it in more detail when it is)

If these rules are not followed, the command will either not be loaded or not called when the user attempts to execute it. When a user types in a command, the plugin system looks through the commands it has loaded and looks for one that meets all these requirements and whose parameters match the parameters given by the user.

This command system is much more dynamic and easier on the programmer than other systems I have seen, which usually require the programmer to manage arguments manually and add a lot of redundant code.

Questions, comments, suggestions welcome.

‘Bout time for a quick update!

OrtzIRC’s first (major) feature is in; Drop-In Commands.  I’ll post more detail in the future but basically you write some commands in C#, compile it, plop it in the plugins directory, and restart OrtzIRC. The command code is dynamically called when you enter an IRC command. I haven’t decided on scripting support but it’s not out of the question.

Just a few more core functionality features to put in like server settings and favorite channels and I’ll be ready to call it “alpha” and get ahold of some testers!

I’ll try to twitter about progress with OrtzIRC more. Also, I’d use hashtags if hashtags.org worked…

Via a wiki answer on StackOverflow:

WiX

• Very powerful and flexible.
• Can produce MSI packages (Microsoft deployment format of choice)
• Almost no documentation
• Very steep learning curve.
• XML-based.
• Recommended for very complex installators.

InnoSetup

• Cannot produce MSI packages.
• Based on INI files (less powerful but very low learning curve)
• Possible to inject Pascal procedures for extra flexibility.
• Probably the best choice for 90% of programs.

NSIS

• Cannot produce MSI packages.
• Fully scripted, very powerful but at cost of high learning curve.
• Recommened if WiX is too much and InnoSetup not enough.

AdvancedInstaller

• Basic version is free.
• Can produce MSI packages.
• Very good user-interface, almost no learning curve to get things done.
• XML-based (but schema is not very user-friendly, doesn’t really matter as you would use GUI editor anyway)
• The best option if you have only basic installer requirements and don’t have time to learn something new.

I took advantage of the deal Dreamhost was offering. 2 years unlimited bandwidth, unlimited space for $20!!

So no more downtime! (yay!)

You’ll probably get tons of 404’s so please have patience while I transfer everything.

Time for another update.

Last time I posted about OrtzIRC, I mentioned I was looking at using System.AddIn as the framework for OrtzIRC’s plugins. (I’ll just call it MAF for Managed AddIn Framework, what it used to be called) Well the biggest problem with MAF is that it’s so freaking complicated. After I finally sat down for a while and read up on it, it just seemed to get more and more complex. And even more so when I started asking “well, how would I do this?”. For instance, everything that crosses the isolation boundary needs a contract. Events, collections (you have to use IListContract), everything. So for OrtzIRC this meant every single event (something like two dozen) needed to be redefined as contracts. (Or wrapped, or whatever) Another problem is that nobody uses it. I’ve only found two projects on CodePlex that use it and virtually no blog posts about it. I’ll admit, I never completely understood it all, but I’m pretty sure it would’ve been a LOT of work. Our own way may also be a lot of work, but at least it’s our own way. Which is what I really wanted to discuss today…

As a quick side note, I did discover the Managed Extensibility Framework, being developed by Microsoft, presumably for future inclusion in the .NET framework. It looks really nice. Much simpler than MAF. And more popular too, at least on Stack Overflow. It’s a really young project though, and although they’re making it rather clear that MEF is here to stay, I think I’ll wait until CTP to give it serious consideration.

So Max and I had a disagreement about how to do the command plugins but that has been resolved (he won lol). So I’ll just point you to his two posts he wrote about it rather than re-explain it.

Onward and upward!