Dr.Dobb's journal.2006.02
.pdf
O F I N T E R E S T
TransGaming Technologies has launched SwiftShader, a software-based rendering tool that enables the use of 3D graphics in games and applications, without the need for dedicated graphics hardware. SwiftShader supports both Pixel and Vertex Shaders. Direct3D 8- and Direct3D 9- compatible APIs are available, and OpenGL-compatible APIs are also under development. Vertex Shader 1.1 and Pixel Shader 1.4 features are currently supported. The company claims that SwiftShader can perform over 50 times faster than Microsoft’s Direct3D Reference Rasterizer in tests with sample applications. SwiftShader is currently available for x86 CPUs with Intel’s SSE multimedia instruction set extensions. SwiftShader runs on Microsoft Windows 98 and higher, and on Linux through TransGaming’s Cedega portability technology.
TransGaming Technologies Inc. 55 Byward Market, 2nd floor Ottawa, ON, Canada K1N 9C3 http://www.transgaming.com/
Aonix has released Version 8.2 of its ObjectAda for Windows’ development environment. In addition to supporting an Eclipse-based development environment, ObjectAda for Windows integrates current Microsoft platform improvements for compatibility with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. ObjectAda for Windows includes a Java-call interface, enabling Java applications to be called from an Ada program. ObjectAda for Windows 8.2 includes the comprehensive Ada libraries needed for calling Windows Win32 and the Visual C++ .NET 2003 MFC interfaces from application source code written in Ada. In ObjectAda for Windows, these Ada-binding libraries are fully compatible with the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 tools and libraries.
Aonix North America Inc.
5930 Cornerstone Court West, Suite 250 San Diego, CA 92121
858-457-2700 http://www.aonix.com/
Systinet has announced Version 6.0 of its Systinet Server family for creating Java and C++ web services. Systinet Server for Java 6.0 is a platform-independent tool for creating and deploying web services in Java and J2EE applications. Version 6.0 includes support for limiting the number of concurrent JMS threads, WS-RM (ReliableMessaging) in clusters, WS-Interoperabil- ity (WS-I) Basic Profile 1.1 and WS-I Attachments, publishing to any UDDI registry including V.3, and platform support for JBoss 4, Sun JDK 1.5 on Windows, Sun, and Solaris. Systinet Developer for Eclipse 6.0 is a free companion product for Systinet Server for Java. It is designed to make it easy to create, test, debug, deploy, and publish Java web services, all from within the Eclipse IDE. Systinet Server for C++ includes: interoperability support, WS-Interoperability (WS-I) Basic Profile 1.1 compliance, and easy publishing to any UDDI registry including v.3.
Systinet
One Van De Graaff Drive, 5th Floor Burlington, MA 01803
781-362-1300 http://www.systinet.com/
Smart Bear has released CodeCollaborator, a program that lets you perform peer code inspections via a web browser, Windows GUI client, or command-line utility. CodeCollaborator enforces peer code inspections by integrating with version control, issue tracking, reporting, and other external systems. The customizable workflow provides a variety of options based on current inspection processes. The workflow can range from formal rulesbased inspections, to casual “buddy passarounds.” CodeCollaborator’s reporting tool provides you with metrics, such as average defects per KLOC and defects per person-hour. It also provides a side-by- side diff viewer with an IM-style audit trail.
Smart Bear Inc.
12885 Research Boulevard, Suite 210 Austin, TX 78750
877-501-5651 http://www.codecollaborator.com/
QNX Software Systems has announced QNX Momentics MultiCore Edition, an integrated set of development tools and OS features for developing software that targets multicore processors. Among other multicore features, Momentics supports Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP) (for managing individual processors on a chip independently) and Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP), Bound Multiprocessing (BMP) (which combines the resource management of SMP with the application control of AMP, letting you assign applications to specific processors). The package also
includes a system profiler and system builder tools to support the unique architectures of multicore processors.
QNX Software Systems
175 Terence Matthews Crescent Ottawa, ON, Canada K2M 1W8 613-591-0931 http://qnxsoftware.com
SDMetrics has released SDMetrics 2.0, a software-design quality measurement tool for UML. SDMetrics measures structural design properties such as coupling, size, and complexity of UML designs. SDMetrics also checks design rules to automatically detect incomplete or incorrect design, and to point out violations of style guidelines such as circular dependencies or naming conventions. UML-design measurement helps you identify opportunities for design refactoring, and supports effort estimation, project planning, and monitoring. SDMetrics features a suite of object-oriented-design quality metrics and rules covering all UML diagram types. You can add new design rules and metrics that are tailored to your local development process. SDMetrics works with all UML modeling tools and reverse engineering tools that support the UML model interchange format XMI. Version 2.0 includes support for UML 2.0 and XMI 2.0/2.1 standards, with an extended set of design metrics and rules for the new UML2 diagrams and model elements.
SDMetrics
In der Lache 17
67308 Zellertal-Harxheim, Germany
+49 6355 954 761 http://www.sdmetrics.com/
Canoo has released an upgrade of its free Eclipse Integration plug-in. The Canoo plug-in for UltraLightClient’s Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. It integrates UltraLightClient into the Eclipse IDE, thus letting you efficiently deliver pure Java-based RIAs. The plug-in is compatible with Eclipse 3.1.
Canoo Engineering AG
Kirschgartenstrasse 7 4051 Basel, Switzerland +41 (61) 228 94 44 http://www.canoo.com/
DDJ
Dr. Dobb’s Software Tools Newsletter
What’s the fastest way of keeping up with new developer products and version updates? Dr. Dobb’s Software Tools e-mail newsletter, delivered once a month to your mailbox. This unique newsletter keeps you up-to-date on the latest in SDKs, libraries, components, compilers, and the like. To sign up now for this free service, go to http://www.ddj.com/maillists/.
http://www.ddj.com |
Dr. Dobb’s Journal, February 2006 |
79 |
S W A I N E ’ S F L A M E S
Harold Pinter Eats Shoots & Leaves
Interior. Room, no people. A heavily lacquered bar near the back wall. On one end of this, a lightly lacquered bowl of bamboo shoots and mint leaves. Mike, a young man in his late 50s, enters upstage and rubs the bar with a bar rag. He stops. Silence. Harold, a playwright, enters downstage and looks around.
Harold: Slow night.
Mike: I scared away all the writers.
Silence.
Harold: These any good?
Mike: I put rice vinegar on them.
Slight pause.
Harold: I’ll risk it.
He eats shoots and leaves. Pause.
Mike: I shouldn’t have done it.
Harold: No, they’re good with the vinegar. Or anyway, they’d be worse without it. Mike: I said terrible things about some famous writers. Drove off my customers. Harold: Oh, I see.
Small silence.
Harold: Terrible things about — playwrights? Mike: Journalists. Judith Miller and Bob Woodward.
Slight pause.
Mike: But others, too. This place is normally full of journalists, but I chased them all away.
Pause.
Mike: It was its that sent me over the edge. Harold: Its what?
Mike: Its. Just its. Journalists can’t spell “its.” Mainstream writers, bloggers, it’s all the same. They don’t know when it should have an apostrophe.
Harold: You mean when its should have an apostrophe.
Silence, except for sound of chewing.
Harold: I know what you mean. I blame Aristophanes, myself.
Pause.
Harold: Aristophanes more or less invented punctuation, you know. Put raised dots between words to indicate the lengths of pauses. There’s this scene in The Frogs that, in the original Greek—Pause pause slight pause silence chewing bar-rubbing silence and pause.
Harold: No original Greek then. Right-o. Anyway nowadays punctuation conveys a lot more. The pacing, yes, but tone and attitude. All the things that you lose when speech gets written down. That’s what people are groping for in online writing, after all. The cues that tell the reader how to hear what’s written. Mike: Like Smileys. I hate Smileys. And all that pseudotagging, like flame on, cleverness off, snark alert.
Harold: But those are just a natural extension of what you might call verbal punctuation marks. Phrases that are only there to tell you how to hear the rest. Just kidding, all seriousness aside, nudge nudge wink wink.
Mike: You know what’s the worst? Those writers who give direct instructions to the reader, like Pause or Silence.
Silence, followed by long pause and then measured, thoughtful chewing.
Mike: I feel bad about trashing mainstream journalists, though. The Internet has changed their rules on them.
Harold moves downstage center. Lights down, single spot on Harold.
Harold: They had it all worked out, you know. The print journalists, I mean. Broadcast, too. The MSM they call them now. Mainstream media. They had it to themselves. Nobody had their e-mails, you see. The readers didn’t cross the line. They stayed over there, the consumers. The media over here, the producers. You got a nice packaged product that way. Neat. All a mess now. No control. Control is the thing. With control you can be the newspaper of record and still get the scoop. You could. Now the bloggers get all the scoops, and the readers Google you and tell you how to spell its.
Long pause. Lights up slowly.
You know what you need to do? You need to get yourself some peanuts.
He leaves.
Michael Swaine editor-at-large mike@swaine.com
Apologies to Harold Pinter, who was presented with the Nobel Prize for Literature on my birthday (how fair is that), and to Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, but none to Judy and Bob.
80 |
Dr. Dobb’s Journal, February 2006 |
http://www.ddj.com |