BCS - Business Computing Solutions

After spending a long 9 hours scraping data off a site I had quite a long time to think about the problems with this process, which I will explain below. Basically this project is a PHP-CLI application that runs a number of threads and will auto-manage them, should you want it.

Status: Working/In development/Rebuilding

RelatedRhythms is a python plugin for the popular linux music program RhythmBox. The project was taken over after the developer of "Last Rhythm" took the decision to abandon his attempt of producing a production stable plugin. Current work has been to import sources, ensure it works with new Rhythmbox version 0.12.5 and removing obsolete code.

Added functionality to this version includes the ability for the plugin to only show related artists which are in the library, as one user suggested in the previous support thread. 

Currently the plugin does function live, however there is a serious need for clean up of sources, make album art load asynchronously to interface thread, and create button actions to filter current playlist. 

Again this is a "back burner" project, which I complete in my spare time. For this reason it is unlikely that it will be finished in the very near future.

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
PAL Nightly Pre-alpha	Early Development - needs lots more work done to make images load asynchronously and buttons do something useful	33 Kb

Status: Unfinished

As connection speeds, internet browsers and web technologies have progressed the internet has become richer than ever before. Web 2.0 applications dominate sites and, unlike a few years back, javascript dominates the web.

With the recent addition to the web in the form of HTML5, the new W3C standard, browsers are supporting more page elements than ever before, but as with all technologies, there are gaps which have to be filled with custom widgets.

PAL is a combination of a XML language compatible with HTML and a server library designed for PHP, which allows those custom widgets to be drawn up in XML, embedded right inside the HTML. Because of this developers can worry less about creating the widgets and more about creating the pages, as javascript files, css files and native HTML are ported in with least effort.

Furthermore PAL allows the developer to forget about the HEAD section of the web page, as this is built by the system at the end of the page build. This means that should the website work off a template, the system can still add custom stylesheets within a particular page with minimal effort as the structure of the web page is managed by PAL.

Below is a sample of PAL markup:

 <?php
ob_start();
?>
<markup xmlns:pal="http://www.iexpand.co.uk/projects/PAL/ns/pal/">
	<pal:include type="javascript" loc="PAL/js/Ajax.js" />
	<pal:include type="javascript" loc="PAL/js/AjaxInterface.js" />
	
	<pal:include type="stylesheet" loc="css/core.css" />
	
	<div id="leftbar">
		<pal:widget type="Panel" id="pal_panel_top" behaviour="tab" size="small" class="pal_panel_sticky">
			<pal:page title="Common" default="default">
				<pal:widget type="QuickTask" title="Photos">
					<pal:task href="/?page=photos">Search for photo</pal:task>
					<pal:task href="#">Download package</pal:task>
					<pal:task href="#">Stitch panaramic</pal:task>
					<pal:task href="#">Name 3</pal:task>
					<pal:task href="#">Name 4</pal:task>
				</pal:widget>
			</pal:page>
			<pal:page colour="yellow" title="Batch">
				Test 2
			</pal:page>
			<pal:page colour="red" title="Pick up">
				Test 3
			</pal:page>
		</pal:widget>
		<div class="cleared"></div>
	</div>
	<div id="main">
		<?php
		if (!isset($_GET['page']) || strpos($_GET['page'],".") !== false || !file_exists($_GET['page'].".php"))
			include "home.php";
		else
			include $_GET['page'].".php";
		?>
	</div>
</markup>
<?php
//echo ob_get_clean();


include "PAL/Launcher.php";
$Doc = new PALMarkup(ob_get_clean());
$HTTPDoc = new HTTPDocument($Doc);
$HTTPDoc->Title = "Home Page";
$HTTPDoc->Manifest = "manifest/index.manifest";
$HTTPDoc->Send();
?>

There is still lots of work to do, however work has been done to enable HTML5 compatibility, such as offline data storage.

As there is no particular purpose for this project, the code is being developed at a slow rate, however if other developers wish to continue developing, let me know

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
PAL Nightly Pre-alpha	PAL development so far - is working, but needs loads more modules, a better stylesheet system and loads more testing!	175 Kb