bramstein.com

JSLint CommonJS front-end

I've made a simple command line front-end for JSLint which is compatible with CommonJS implementations such as Narwhal. The front-end supports all JSLint configuration options through switches as well as configuration through a JSON file. Additionally, the front-end can be used in stream processing, for example, to pipe in a file.

XSLTJSON Lite

Today in the category “software I finished over a year ago and forgot about completely” ― XSLTJSON Lite ― a XSLT 1.0 stylesheet to transform arbitrary XML to the JSONML format. It isn't as full featured as its bigger brother XSLTJSON, but might come in handy for developers who do not have access to an XSLT 2.0 processor.

jQuery 1.4.2 support

Just a quick note: all my projects relying or extending jQuery now support jQuery 1.4.2. Almost none of the projects required any changes, except for the jQuery Text Overflow plugin, which is now at version 0.14 and works with both jQuery 1.3.2 and 1.4.2.

TeX line breaking algorithm in HTML5 Canvas

I spent some time over the last few weeks implementing the Knuth and Plass line breaking algorithm (as used in TeX and LaTeX) using JavaScript and the HTML5 canvas element. The code is still quite rough, but early results are quite promising and in my opinion better than what browsers commonly implement. The example page contains an example paragraph, some rough documentation and a rather random collection of ideas and notes.

Grid layout update & jQuery UI integration demo

The jLayout grid layout received a small bug fix and a new feature; you can now specify how you want the grid to be filled in, from left to right and top to bottom, or top to bottom and left to right. There is also a new demo showing how easily jQuery UI components can be integrated with jLayout.

jQuery text overflow plugin: inline markup support

The jQuery Text Overflow plugin now supports truncating text nodes with inline markup. This means you can now call the plugin on any DOM element, and not have to worry about it removing your inline markup or creating invalid markup.

Plotting with JavaScript, Canvas & Interval Arithmetic

I decided to have some fun with the new features in Firefox 3.5 and reimplemented the function plotting from my (still unreleased) chart library using the HTML5 Canvas element and Web Workers. Charts are plotted using interval arithmetic. The basic idea behind this is to recursively subdivide the range in which to plot a function. It keeps subdividing the range until the subdivisions are smaller than one screen pixel. At that point it will plot a pixel on that location. This pixel is then guaranteed to contain the correct solution. This also means that plots are always correct, in that they have no missing singularities or artifacts that are difficult to plot using other methods (well, that's the theory anyway―the interval arithmetic implementation I wrote does not guarantee correctness.) Web workers are used to run some of the recursive subdivisions in separate "threads" for better performance.

Equations are parsed using a Shunting Yard parser and converted internally to interval arithmetic. Most common mathematical operators are supported, such as: sin, cos, sqrt, abs, fmod, exp, log, et cetera. The code is still very much alpha quality, but I thought it might be interesting to put it online. You can find it right here: http://www.bramstein.com/projects/interplot/plot.html.

JavaScript Preprocessor

I spent the weekend working on a new project: a simple JavaScript preprocessor to enable conditional compilation in JavaScript code using the syntax of the C preprocessor (well, a subset of.) This will hopefully make it easy to generate multiple versions of your project to―for example―create a debug build, or a specialized version designed to work in restrictive environments. It can be called from JavaScript, an Ant build script, or the command line.

New jLayout algorithm, examples & plugin update

As promised a new layout algorithm: flow layout. The flow layout algoritm lays out components in rows with components overflowing to new rows if there is not enough horizontal space. The jQuery jLayout plugin has also been updated with a minor bug fix for nested border layouts. There are also three new examples, a nested resizable border layout, a resizable layout with guides, and an example of a smoothly resizing layout.

Book Review: JQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery

I recently started using the jQuery UI library in a work project so I was rather interested when I noticed a book had been published on this library by Dan Wellman. You can read my review of “jQuery UI 1.6: The User Interface Library for jQuery” in the articles book review section.

Text Alignment jQuery plugin

Imagine you have worked hard to make your tables look good, but one thing keeps bugging you; the alignment of the text in the cells. You would, for example, like to align the contents of each cell on the comma character. Unfortunately, no browser supports aligning table cells on characters. This is where the new jQuery Text Alignment Plugin comes in; it adds support for aligning text based on characters to all browsers. You can see it in action on the example page, or read the documentation on the text-alignment plugin project page.

New jQuery plugin: CSS3 text-overflow

This new jQuery plugin implements a simplified version of the CSS3 text-overflow property, which allows stylesheet authors to specify how and where text should be clipped. This is usually done by adding an ellipsis character "…" or three dots at the point the text should be cut off. Unfortunately, not all browser support this CSS property, and this plugin was designed to simulate it when the property is not natively available. The plugin is basically a rewrite of an existing jQuery text-overflow plugin, with the goal of being faster and more reliable (for example, one of the optimizations is that it uses a binary search to find the correct clipping point, instead of a linear search.)

XSLTJSON Bug fix release

Today sees a new release of XSLTJSON, bringing the version number up to 0.87. This new release contains several bug fixes for the recently introduced json:force-array feature. Upgrading from previous versions is recommended if you are using the force-array feature.

New jLayout release

In a further step to compatibility with the jQuery UI guidelines, this new release reduces the number of methods added to the jQuery function namespace to exactly one. Additionally, each layout algorithm is now distributed as a separate file, which hopefully makes it easier to extend the library with other algorithms. The jLayout jQuery plugin page now features more examples (such as a toggle-able border layout, and a layout with scrolling content), and an updated FAQ section. I'm planning on soon releasing a new layout algorithm plus articles on how to extend jLayout with new algorithms, and how to use jLayout with the HTML5 canvas element.

New XSLTJSON version

This new release includes better handling of native JSON data types such as booleans and numbers, and a new source attribute that instructs XSLTJSON to create arrays instead of objects.

Bug fix for jQuery column selector plugin

Version 0.13 of the column selector plugin has been released, and fixes the plugin inadvertently polluting the global namespace.

jQuery column selector plugin

New project time; I mentioned some time ago that I was close to finishing two new projects. Today I finally got around to releasing a new jQuery plugin for selecting table columns. The plugin adds a new selector to the jQuery selector API for retrieving table cells by their column index. It supports tables with column and row spans transparently, no matter how complex a table is. The syntax for selecting column cells is simple and similar to other jQuery selectors, so the learning curve should be very small.

jLayout updated & jQuery UI integration example

The jLayout library has received an update; the new version is mostly a refactoring of the code and as a result the file size is slightly smaller than before (while keeping the same functionality.) It is also a first step towards integration with the jQuery UI framework. Also included in this update is a new example which demonstrates how to use the jQuery UI framework to make a full-screen resizable border layout. As a bonus, this version has been tested with jQuery 1.3.2, which works just fine.

Book Review: Object Oriented JavaScript

A few weeks ago I was asked by Packt Publishing to review one of their titles “Object Oriented JavaScript: Create scalable, reusable high-quality JavaScript applications and libraries” by Stoyan Stefanov. As an avid reader and obsessed with all things JavaScript I couldn't say no, as you can see in my review of Object Oriented JavaScript.

New XSLTJSON version

I've just uploaded a new XSLTJSON version, with exactly one new feature and two minor bug fixes. It is now possible to skip the root element of a XML document and only have the child elements returned using the skip-root parameter. The JSONP support has changed to not produce parentheses when it is turned off (invalidating the JSON), and the stylesheet now supports XML parsers that do not properly match entity encoded new line control characters (that's a mouthful, but what it comes down to is that running XSLTJSON on some XSLT processors generated JSON with unescaped newlines.)

Last update I mentioned two new projects that have kept me busy. I haven't finished either project yet, but I'll give some hints as to the nature of one of them: Canvas, JavaScript, chart, plotting, and almost finished. I hope you can figure it out from that.

jQuery 1.3 support for jLayout

Happy belated new year! It has been a while since I posted; moving twice, starting a new job, and writing your thesis simultaneously tends to do that. Things seem to be calming down now, and I hope to finish and release two new projects soon. In the meantime I've set up a support group for the jLayout library for general discussion and support. I have also tested both jLayout and JSizes with the new jQuery 1.3 release. Neither required any changes, so no new release. I did however remove the “experimental” warning on the jLayout plugin page, and consider it stable and reasonably well tested―it works in all major browsers including Internet Explorer 6.

Functional Pattern Matching in JavaScript

I've turned the articles on pattern matching in JavaScript into a library. The code is completely rewritten, shorter, more efficient, better tested and no longer depends on the Junify unification library. Please see the project page for details on the syntax, documentation and examples.

New jLayout algorithm & IE6 support

I've uploaded a new version of jLayout, with support for a new layout algorithm called ‘flex-grid’. The flex-grid algorithm allows you to lay out components in a grid with flexible column and row sizes. The jLayout jQuery plugin has also been updated and now supports Internet Explorer 6 (in standards mode). Support for IE6 brought up a small bug in the JSizes jQuery plugin, which has now been corrected as well.

Rayfish convention support for XSLTJSON

The XSLTJSON project now supports Micheal Matthew's Rayfish convention for converting XML to JSON. The Rayfish convention creates highly structured JSON from your XML, and is a good choice when dealing with data centric XML files. Additionally I've created unit tests for all supported output formats and made sure that all are passing.

JavaScript Pattern Matching & JUnify, jLayout updates

I've uploaded a new article on advanced functional pattern matching in JavaScript. The article introduces a simplified pattern matching syntax, and shows how to use it with algebraic data types. There are also new versions of the JUnify library and the jLayout library. The new JUnify version contains a small modification to work together with Sjoerd Visscher's algebraic data type library, and the jLayout library now includes support for Safari 3.

jLayout Layout Algorithms & jQuery plugin

The jLayout JavaScript library provides layout algorithms for laying out components and containers. The library currently provides two layout algorithms: border, which lays out components in five different regions and grid, which lays out components in a user defined grid. An experimental jQuery plugin to lay out (X)HTML elements is also available.

JUnify unification library

JUnify is a JavaScript library for performing unification on objects and arrays. Unification is an algorithm to determine the substitutions needed to make two expressions match. If the expressions contain variables, these will be bound to values in order for the match to succeed. If two expressions are not identical or the variables can not be bound, the match fails. Unification can, for example, be used to implement pattern matching, object property extraction, or an expert system.

JSizes jQuery plugin

JSizes is a small plugin for the jQuery JavaScript library which adds support for the CSS min-width, min-height, max-width, max-height, border-*-width, margin, and padding properties. Additionally it has one method for determining whether an element is visible. Because all the size methods return numbers, it is safe to use them in calculating DOM element dimensions.