Today, I finished reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling. It turns out that the "Half-Blood Prince" was the same person I had read in a forum some time ago (with particularly accurate inferences), but my most favourite character in this series died -- or, rather, became a victim of his generous tolerance and confidence in people that don't deserve that much of optimism and confidence from him. What a pity!
2005-07-15
London Bridges by James Patterson
There is a certain similarity between the unfortunate bombings in London and the fiction in "London Bridges" by James Patterson. This is an opportunity for me to write a few lines about this book.
What bothers me about James Patterson is that his books are just for entertainment, they don't give you more insight about life or anything else whatsoever. And in this book, the writer's view about terrorism and its roots are not very clear and convincing.
Recently, I read "The Forgotten Man" by Robert Crais, and I think I have finally found a writer who is to some extent like Raymond Chandler, whom I adore.
در ضمن، در حالي كه منتظر انتشار ششمين كتاب هري پاتر هستم، وبلاگ جديدي با عنوان «هري پاتر به زبان فارسي» درست كرده‌ام تا در باره‌ي ترجمه‌ي آن مطالبي بنويسم. علاقه‌مندان مي‌توانند به آنجا هم مراجعه كنند.
2005-06-27
Cyclothymia
Sometimes I get the impression that I have some minor form of cyclothymia (just the impression, I don't believe I do!). And now, it is one of those periods that I have a somewhat depressed mood. Usually when I do not have so much energy to entertain myself with the usual tasks of my life, I think about myself, life, loneliness, and so on.
One of the main subjects that I think about is the ends I am seeking in my life. I know some people who have very clear ends: money, fame, and anything else that pertains to them. The problem with me is that I do not feel satisfied with money, celebrity, or being respected.
Sometimes, I ask myself, "If I do not like to be respected by other people, do I like to be humiliated by them?" Surely, this is not what I am seeking. I mean I do not like to be humiliated, but on the other hand, other people's respect (or fear) towards me does not satisfy me. It's not an important end for me. When I think too much, it becomes clear that what I do really want is my love towards other people and their love towards me. But, doesn't this way of thinking have a flaw? Maybe it does. There are people whom I cannot love easily - people who are jealous, people who are intruding, people who do not have the capacity to love other people. This is the main challenge of my life: how to love other people and how to consider all of them worthy of loving.
2005-04-11
My New Book
This post is in Persian. Please stay tuned for future posts in English.
|
رمان «طعمه» نوشته‌ي مايكل كرايتون به فارسي ترجمه و منتشر شد. مشخصات كتاب
اين كتاب از طريق كتابفروشي‌هاي تهران جهت علاقه‌مندان عرضه مي‌شود. براي كسب اطلاعات بيشتر، با نشاني‌هاي زير تماس بگيريد:
توضيح براي بحث در باره‌ي اين كتاب، مي‌توانيد در گروه زير عضو شويد: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/persian-library در ضمن، خواهشمندم هر گونه نظرات خود را با اينجانب از طريق نشاني پست الكترونيك فوق در ميان گذاريد. |
2005-04-08
My Email Address
I have lost my account at Yahoo after about 5 years! Now I use the same ID at Gmail. Of course I liked Gmail from the beginning, but because of some stuff in Yahoo groups, I continued to use Yahoo for some time.
2005-03-07
Iran Books House
This is one of the few really useful Iranian sites. I really enjoy using it. You can search data of all published books in iran in this site.
ICU4J-based Implementation of the Persian Calendar
IBM's International Components for Unicode (Java version) or ICU4J enhances the I18n capabilities of Java in many ways. Since it is based on the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), it is especially useful for Persian-language applications (noting that the support for Persian is rudimentary in Java's native locales). But there is another important reason for using ICU4J for implementing a Persian calendar: The newer releases of ICU4J have reworked the calendar framework, so that, contrary to the Calendar class in the java.util package, much of the functionality has been embedded in the base class. For example, no longer should we worry about DST or weekdays. They are already worked out. The only thing one should implement is the peculiarities of the specific kind of calendar at hand -- here the Persian calendar.
The version 2.0 of my prersiancalendar Java program contains an implementation of the Persian calendar based on ICU4J, version 3.2. It formats and parses dates for many locales besides Persian.
A new update will be released in the near future, containing a bug fix for the SimplePersianCalendar class (which is, in fact, a deprecated class now) and some more locales for the ICU4J-based PersianCalendar class.
One important note is indispensable here: I have used an arithmetic algorithm for calculation of the leap years, which was apparently devised by the late Ahmad Birashk. Although this algorithm is valid for many hundreds of years, the formal definition of the Persian calendar is astronomical. To implement the calendar astronomically, we must be able to calculate the accurate time of the vernal equinox (the time when the solar longitude is 0). The current version of the class com.ibm.icu.impl.CalendarAstronomer is not very accurate, since it only considers the Keplerian gravitational effect of Sun and Earth and ignores the disturbances caused by other celestial bodies (of course there may be other things as well, but I am not particularly knowledgeable in astronomy). I used this class to calculate the time of the spring equinox in the next Persian year (1384) and it
had a discrepancy with the magnitude order of many minutes with what has been announced by the Geophysics Institute of the Tehran University. Currently I am working on this.
I would like to thank Mr. Paul Hastings from Sustainable GIS Co. for his valuable suggestions and contributions. He has added the new Persian calendar to their calendar test bed. He has also promised to provide me with a Thai localization of the Persian month names, which will be a great enhancement to this program.
2005-02-12
Using Gmail's SMTP and POP3 Services
If you have a Gmail account, you can activate POP3 access to your mailbox. Then you can configure Outlook 2003 to access and retrieve your incoming mails. Information for configuring other mail clients is provided here.
2005-02-10
Using SVG in Servlets and JavaServer Pages
The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a language used for creating vector (as opposed to raster) graphics, including shapes, images, and text. Since this format is based on the extensible markup language (XML), it can be extremely useful in web page authoring.
But the problem is that most of the current browsers do not have built-in support for SVG. Currently, this support is added through plug-ins, e.g. the Adobe SVG viewer. I don't know what percentage of internet users have installed an SVG plug-in. So it seems that if we are going to use SVG in our web pages in a practical way, we must rasterize the image before sending the page to the client (though this makes it an ordinary image, not a vector graphic!).
This can be easily done in JSP pages using the library of the Apache Batik project. I have done this and I present the code below. (Please note that the code for this post is released under the GNU General Public License and that there is no warranty as to its correctness or usability.)
Conversion of the SVG source into an image in PNG format may make problems in a case of simultaneous access. So, a noCache attribute has been devised for the <h:svg> tag, so that we can turn on/off the conversion. The best way would be to use noCache="true" while the page is under development, and then turn off conversion with noCache="false" when our images have taken their permanent form.
The full source of my simple application (svgtest) is shown below. But please keep in mind that you need the following libraries to get this application running:
- Batik jar file(s) (may be a single or multiple jar files depending on your build target). I have used batik 1.5.
- JSTL (
jstl.jar,standard.jar) - Xerces XML parser (
xerces_2_3_0.jar). This is included with the batik distribution linked above.
Needless to say, the jar files go to the TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/lib directory.
 |
| Figure 1. The graphics on this page have been created using SVG. Particularly, the three hiragana and kanji characters comprising the Japanese phrase for "Good day!" (今日は) (konnichi wa in rōmaji) have been rendered graphically to ensure their proper appearance even on machines lacking suitable unicode fonts. |
The source code for this simple application follows.
TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/index.jspx
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!-- Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani. License: GPL. -->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:fn="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:page="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/page" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html" />
<c:set scope="page" value="${true}" var="debug" />
<c:set property="characterEncoding" target="${pageContext.request}" value="UTF-8" />
<c:set property="characterEncoding" target="${pageContext.response}" value="UTF-8" />
<page:simple title="SVG Test">
<div style="direction: rtl; background-color: white;">
<c:set scope="page" value="تصوير" var="text1" />
<p>
<h:img noCacheSvg="${debug}" src="/title.png">
<jsp:attribute name="svg">
<svg height="25mm" width="100mm" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<defs>
<filter filterUnits="objectBoundingBox" height="1.4" id="dropShadow" width="1.4">
<feGaussianBlur in="SourceAlpha" stdDeviation="4" />
<feOffset dx="4" dy="4" />
<feComponentTransfer result="shadow">
<feFuncA intercept="0" slope="0.5" type="linear" />
</feComponentTransfer>
</filter>
<filter id="emboss">
<feGaussianBlur in="SourceAlpha" result="blur" stdDeviation="2" />
<feSpecularLighting in="blur" kernelUnitLength="1" result="spec" specularConstant="1" specularExponent="16" style="lighting-color:white" surfaceScale="-3">
<feDistantLight azimuth="45" elevation="45" />
</feSpecularLighting>
<feComposite in="spec" in2="SourceGraphic" operator="in" result="specOut" />
</filter>
</defs>
<g style="font-size: 20mm; font-family: b nasim; font-weight: bold; text-anchor: end;">
<text style="filter:url(#dropShadow)" x="95%" y="66.667%">
${text1}
</text>
<text style="fill:rgb(172,20,20)" x="95%" y="66.667%">
${text1}
</text>
<text style="filter:url(#emboss)" x="95%" y="66.667%">
${text1}
</text>
</g>
</svg>
</jsp:attribute>
</h:img>
</p>
<h:roundrect fill="lightblue" id="mytest1" noCache="true" r="25" stroke="orange" strokeWidth="3">
<div style="direction: rtl; margin: 1mm;">
<p>
<strong>
كلماتي كه ممكن است در مرورگر شما درست نمايش داده نشوند، به صورت تصوير نشان داده مي‌شوند. مانند
<h:img noCacheSvg="${debug}" src="/konnichiwa.png">
<jsp:attribute name="svg">
<svg height="1em" width="3em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<rect fill="lightblue" height="100%" stroke-width="0" width="100%" x="0" y="0" />
<text x="0" y="90%">
&#20170;&#26085;&#12399;
</text>
</svg>
</jsp:attribute>
</h:img>
كه معنايش مي‌شود روز به خير!
</strong>
</p>
</div>
</h:roundrect>
</div>
</page:simple>
</jsp:root>
TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/svg.tagx
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!-- Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani. License: GPL. -->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="image" required="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="noCache" type="java.lang.Boolean" />
<c:set scope="page" var="svg">
<jsp:doBody />
</c:set>
<jsp:declaration>
<![CDATA[
class PngMaker extends org.apache.batik.transcoder.image.PNGTranscoder
{
public boolean convert(String svgUri, String png)
{
java.io.OutputStream os;
org.apache.batik.bridge.DocumentLoader dl = new org.apache.batik.bridge.DocumentLoader(userAgent);
try
{
org.w3c.dom.svg.SVGDocument doc = (org.w3c.dom.svg.SVGDocument)dl.loadDocument(svgUri);
os = new java.io.BufferedOutputStream(new java.io.FileOutputStream(png));
transcode(doc, null, new org.apache.batik.transcoder.TranscoderOutput(os));
os.flush();
os.close();
return true;
}
catch(Exception e)
{
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
return false;
}
}
}
]]>
</jsp:declaration>
<jsp:scriptlet>
<![CDATA[
String png = application.getRealPath(String.valueOf(getJspContext().getAttribute("image")));
boolean noCache = new Boolean(String.valueOf(getJspContext().getAttribute("noCache"))).booleanValue();
if(noCache || ! new java.io.File(png).exists())
{
java.io.File dir = new java.io.File(application.getRealPath("/WEB-INF/temp"));
if(!dir.exists()) dir.mkdir();
java.io.File f = java.io.File.createTempFile("src", ".svg", dir);
f.deleteOnExit();
java.io.BufferedWriter bw = new java.io.BufferedWriter(new java.io.OutputStreamWriter(new java.io.FileOutputStream(f), "UTF-8"));
bw.write("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>");
bw.write(String.valueOf(getJspContext().getAttribute("svg")));
bw.close();
new PngMaker().convert(f.toURI().toString(), png);
}
]]>
</jsp:scriptlet>
</jsp:root>
TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/img.tagx
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!-- Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani. License: GPL. -->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:fn="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" dynamic-attributes="dyn" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="src" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="svg" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="noCacheSvg" type="java.lang.Boolean" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="params" type="java.util.Map" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="alt" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="title" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="style" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="styleId" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="styleClass" />
<c:url scope="page" value="${src}" var="url" />
<c:if test="${not empty svg}">
<h:svg image="${src}" noCache="${noCacheSvg}">
${svg}
</h:svg>
</c:if>
<img alt="${alt}" class="${styleClass}" id="${styleId}" src="${url}" style="${style}" title="${title}">
<jsp:doBody />
</img>
</jsp:root>
TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/roundrect.tagx
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!-- Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani. License: GPL. -->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="id" required="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="fill" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="stroke" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="strokeWidth" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="r" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="width" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="height" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="body" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="noCache" />
<c:if test="${empty fill}">
<c:set scope="page" value="none" var="fill" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty stroke}">
<c:set scope="page" value="black" var="stroke" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty strokeWidth}">
<c:set scope="page" value="1" var="strokeWidth" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty r}">
<c:set scope="page" value="5" var="r" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty width}">
<c:set scope="page" value="auto" var="width" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty height}">
<c:set scope="page" value="auto" var="height" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty body}">
<c:set scope="page" var="body">
<jsp:doBody />
</c:set>
</c:if>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="direction: ltr; width: ${width}; height: ${height};">
<tr>
<h:svg image="/${id}nw.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="100%" cy="100%" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}nw.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}nw.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}n.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="50%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="100%" x="0" y="50%" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="0" x2="100%" y1="50%" y2="50%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}n.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&nbsp;
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}ne.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="0" cy="100%" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}ne.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}ne.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<h:svg image="/${id}w.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="100%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="50%" x="50%" y="0" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="50%" x2="50%" y1="0" y2="100%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}w.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&nbsp;
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}c.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="100%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="100%" x="0" y="0" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}c.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg}); vertical-align: top;">
<jsp:text>
${body}
</jsp:text>
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}e.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="100%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="50%" x="0" y="0" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="50%" x2="50%" y1="0" y2="100%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}e.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&nbsp;
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: ${r};">
<h:svg image="/${id}sw.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="100%" cy="0" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}sw.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}sw.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}s.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="50%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="100%" x="0" y="0" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="0" x2="100%" y1="50%" y2="50%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}s.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&nbsp;
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}se.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="0" cy="0" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}se.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}se.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</jsp:root>
TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/page/simple.tagx
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!-- Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani. License: GPL. -->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.attribute name="title" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="head" />
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=${pageContext.response.characterEncoding}" http-equiv="Content-Type" />
<meta content="no-cache" http-equiv="pragma" />
<c:if test="${not empty title}">
<title>
<c:out value="${title}" />
</title>
</c:if>
<jsp:text>
${head}
</jsp:text>
</head>
<body>
<jsp:doBody />
</body>
</html>
</jsp:root>
TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/web.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee web-app_2_4.xsd">
<description>
SVG Test Web Application By Ghasem Kiani. This application uses the Apache Batik project to convert SVG graphics into PNG images.
</description>
<display-name>
SVG Test
</display-name>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>
index.jspx
</welcome-file>
<welcome-file>
index.html
</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
P.S.
The better way to do this is to write a servlet that outputs the image stream to the client. This will not envolve the writing of the image on disk. Even we can map files with .svg extension to that servlet, so that whenever we reference an SVG file on our application in the src attribute of an <img> tag, the servelt will be activated and the rasterized image will be sent instead. On the other hand, the JSP architecture seems to be inconvenient for outputting binary formats.
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