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Demos for the 2002 APL2000 User Conference

Rendering PVP's

Overview

Kristen Nygaard laid the groundwork for modern programming by conceiving of "object oriented" programming. Others have carried that work further with C++, Java, APL and other "modern" languages. For APL programmers, Eric Lescasse took a giant step with his "Objects" and Adrian Smith has laid solid groundwork for publication with NewLeaf and RainPro. APL2000 and Adrian together have created APLDraw.ocx. Others, especially Bill Parke , have contributed to a body of freeware and shareware. Building on this tradition, this paper proposes and illustrates what Eric has called a "higher level of abstraction" through the discovery of commonalities in major contemporary applications and by the use of certain disciplines which are described in these pages. The software described below was created in this tradition; some was distributed at the APL2000 user conference in Naples in November, 2002 and all is available on request as shareware. The most important use of the software described in this paper is for maintenance of the archives of United States Masters Swimming, Inc. USMS will be referred to as the "client" in this paper.

The client's hopes with new technology are that information is readily accessable and easy to maintain, that experimentation with the relationships in data is easy, that the most critical information is very, very easily available, and that reports are easy to generate in a form acceptable to management, operating departments or committees, researchers, lenders, statutory agencies and his or her clients. A second but still very important client hope is that it is relatively easy to put the new technology in place. These hopes are the underpinnings of this plan.

Information Management

This is an html document linked to approximately 400 pages and available at www.qkw.com/dv/pvmm/. It describes a vision that has evolved over several years. (Some pages are out of date; they are updated on an as needed basis.) These 400 pages are managed with shareware created by Carl House & friends. This software is also used to manage approximately 8000 webpages which are also linked to from this document. software also handles all user i/o, data management, forms, editors, and reports in Windows. The intent is that information will be stored in a format that is independent of any platform and then compiled for use in whatever platforms for which we build compilers.

The concept of "self descriptive data" is key to the approach described in this paper. XML is an example of a self descriptive data. This idea as used in this paper is described in two documents. "Self-Descriptive Data" was presented by Christopher H Lee at the November, 2002 conference in Naples, Florida. "Strategies for Dealing with Multiple Arguments: The Case for Names" was presented by Eric Landau of APL Solutions, Inc. at the November, 2001 conference. The technical form in which we use self-descriptive data is called "property value pairs", or "PVP"'s. PVP and XML data can be changed from one format to the other quite easily. The advantage of PVP's is that they are far more concise and do not need to be parsed.

The most important reason why this software is needed is because the variety and breadth of input possibilities of many systems do not make it sensible to invest greatly in specific forms whose use may be limited. Forms should be structured by a forms compiler as it senses the data it must deal with. This is the reason why people often have a strong preference for Excel, not for software specifically designed for their industry. But if you already have the multitude of macros needed for all those Excel forms built into your "black box", then a self-compiling user interface with flexibility similar to that of Excel might be just what you need.
Our software approach will allow us to avoid being platform dependent because specifications for forms and reports are written in general terms and empowered by compilers which write the platform dependent code. Microsoft Windows is our first platform. The world wide web will be our second.
Since specifications can be briefly written, new forms and reports can be easily created. Many forms will be created by users without the assistance of a programmer.
This approach helps to make maintenance easy and to ease the difficulty of bringing new people into the technology.

Black Boxes

Our software is designed to be useful for a variety of applications. Assuming you have a black box that can do valuable work provided that is has a viable platform, this approach might help. Our software is intended to provide high level object oriented software for publishing and user i/o. It should be understood that what is being presented is not yet commercially viable and trouble-free. Instead, it is presentation of software that is on its way to being a suite of programs for simultaneous software development for Windows and for use on the web. If successful, this effort may present a new plateau for rapid applicaton development. One of the features of this software design is that new forms are created (on the fly) from the characteristics of the data (rather than by programming effort). Your black box can create its own forms.

USMS archives are maintained by batch programs written in APL. These batch programs have little or no user i/o and are run with command line processing. TTDB (used by Barbara Dunbar) and IMGInfo (used by Katie Cooper) are the first attempts to make these batch programs useable by people other than their creator. Both TTDB and IMGInfo are 100% compatible with and are fully expressive of the ideas in this paper.

Publishing

Source material is of wide variety, including narrative text, images, data tables and many variations of each. All source material should be stored with minimal enhancement. Publishing tools should make it possible to render the source material in all of the generally used formats without the need for typists or publishing persons or technical people. Whoever wants the data should be able to get it in the most useful format.

Most of our publishing tools are being created by Causeway Graphical Systems. Like Eric's Objects, Adrian's products are designed to allow one to program exactly what one wants and with remarkable elegance. Our challenge is to define generalized specifications that will meet a wide variety of needs and then to write the drivers needed to use NewLeaf, RainPro and Objects to handle them easily and dependably. Whereever our generalized design and drivers can't do the job, the power and elegance of NewLeaf, RainPro, Objects and APL are available for lower level programming.

Utilities

Utilities include tools for backup, FTP, HTTP, SQL, MDI and many other essential technologies. In addition, several highly developed software products should be considered as essential utilities to our software. These include the products of APL2000, Causeway, Ltd., and Lescasse Consulting which must be licensed directly from those companies. These utilities are used for USMS without cost to USMS because they have been licensed to Carl House on terms that allow for run-time use by others.

Strategy for Proceeding

Our tools will have value to others and it is our intent to share generously as those whose tools we use do. Furthermore, there are uses of our technology which we serve on a pro bono basis and this will continue. We have two tasks at this time. The first is to build a facility to annotate the 3000 photos in our photo library.

The second task is to convert our archives from .sf files to an SQL database and to revise the maintenance procedures to use the SQL files rather than apl .sf files. The Minimal H&A RFP.

Demos for the 2002 APL2000 User Conference

The following are at a stage where they can be demonstrated if time allows in our Naples presentation. Some will be on the Conference CD. All are available as shareware on request.

Rendering PVP's

Data retrieved and distributed as PVP's can be rendered in many different formats which provide different modes of interactivity. Here are the formats we've been using.

Lineprinter (print on paper with monospace fonts, very limited interactivity)
Excel (excellent interactivity but cumbersome for complex applications)
APL2000 grid control (excellent interactivity and all the flexibility of APL)
NewLeaf Postscript, PDF, etc. (interactivity is helped by the "preview" feature; superb printing)
HTML/XHTML/XML/Javascript/Jscript/Jsave (our next platform)

qkForm

Forms are specified in a generalized manner that is independent of the intended platform.

qkForm using Windows Objects
This will include approximately 6 or 12 demos, each of which involves creating a useful form with minimal and very generalized specifications. The general approach is that a gallery of specifications is available to determine how certain fields (or controls) should be treated. This makes it possible, for example, to compile Eric's ConferenceExample5 simply by specifying a formname and the desired fields. The remaining parameters are obtained from the "field gallery". The functions we have written will be available as shareware. Eric's Objects will be required to use them; his software is available from Lescasse Consulting Website and a fully functional trial version can be downloaded.

The TTDB data editor is a good example of building upon objects to reduce development time and to simplify maintenance.
1. The following 13 "Objects" available from Eric Lescasse do most of the work for editing. These are highly developed and proven "Objects" and have a total of 237,101 characters of code. TButton, TCancelButton, TCheck, TCombo, TDates, TEdit, TForm, TGrid, TGridPrint, TIniFile, TLabel, TOKButton & TObject.
2. The following 5 common functions from Eric Lescasse are required by the above "Objects". These functions have a total of 8,245 characters of code. Classes, Hook, OnNew, Reset & ShowEvent.
3. Carl wrote the following 6 utility functions to create an editor for TTDB which uses Eric Lescasse's "Objects". Carl was required to write and must maintain 29,441 characters of code which are leveraged by Eric's 245,346 characters of code (which need no maintenance by Carl). qkGrid, qkGridData, qkGridPrint, qkButtons, qkcolwidth & qkwTitles.
qkForm for use on the web
This will use the same specs used by qkForm for Objects. The specs for one of the Windows forms (Gug) will be used to compile an html form which is fully functional using Fred Waid's apl server for the web.

qkPublish

All source material is stored in a consistent manner that is independent of the intended platform or publishing vehicle.

qkPublish for Windows
Software which uses NewLeaf and RainPro will be available for demonstration and as shareware. NewLeaf and RainPro will be required to use them; this software is available from Causeway Graphical Systems.
qkPublish for use on the web
A report on our web strategy was given in the November, 1999 APL2000 conference in Orlando. A Fast Track to Create a Really Good Website. The demos work better now and use APLDraw.ocx (on the fly) to create navigational graphics.

We're envisioning a qkPlayer that will allow the user to ask for work to be done by our calculating engine with results sent back in our standard data format. qkPlayer will have the ability to print all the reports we've thought are necessary, but it will also have the ability to allow the user to create his/her own reports in any desired format. There is no reason why this can't be a general facility useful in many applications. The user then adds to the load of our server only while obtaining data, not tieing up our server for the time he/she spends with qkPlayer to print standard reports or to tinker with custom reports.

qkHelp

All source material is stored in a consistent manner and can be rendered in many formats. One of those formats is a traditional Windows help system.

qkHelp for Windows
Causeway has developed a facility that compiles a Windows help system. It runs in Dyalog APL. We are presently developing a driver called HelpPrep that will allow this facility to compile a help system from our standard data format.
qkHelp for use on the web
Since our systems were originally designed for the web, they are already sufficient to serve as a web based help system.

Managing images

We were led into the problem of managing images by the generousity of Sports Publications, Inc. of El Segundo, California, in making available all the images published in "Swim Magazine" since 1995.

qkButton

"qkButton" uses APLDraw.ocx to create lovely graphics for the web or for Windows, but this demo is especially designed to generate navigational buttons for websites. qkWebFolder uses qkButton to automatically create navigational buttons when they are needed. This is not important to USMS, but this was the first step in creating IMGBatch which is needed by USMS for resizing and reformatting images from Swim Magazine.

Managing a very large library of images

IMGInfo was created by Carl House and Eric Landau using Eric Lescasse's Objects to provide for image annotation. It is part of a suite of four workspaces used for archiving images for United States Masters Swimming:

IMGInfo - provides a form & database capture so image annotation can be created.
IMGIndex - creates an index of all images in any folder, showing annotation & thumbnails.
IMGBatch - uses apldraw.ocx to resize & change image format.
IMGLib - manages a database of images supported by the above facilities.

IMGInfo

IMGInfo is a very object oriented application. Here is its objects heirarchy.

Eric Landau wrote 3 functions specifically for USMS. IMGInfo was written by Carl. These functions total 10,311 characters of code. IMGInfo, ttIMGInfo, askIMGInfo1, hndIMGInfo1.
Eric gave us 6 functions he had earlier written as utilities for SoftMed, Inc. These functions total 11,298 characters of code. IWrite, ITie, IRead, IDrop, ICreate, IComps.
We used 6 functions from Eric Lescasse's Objects. These functions total 32,841 characters of code. TJpg, TWebBrowser, WebBrowserClass, TMsgBox, YesNo, Ok.
We used 7 utilities available from the APL community. These functions total 10,800 characters of code. qkPath, ‘WBrowseFolder, FolderExist, MKDIR, qkeFI, NewFormName, CatchRTSError.

The Multiple Document Interface (MDI)

In simplest terms, an MDI form is simply the means by which multiple documents or forms are handled. In the Miscrosoft world, they tend to have a very similar physical appearance, and, in fact, there is remarkable similarity in the names of the "first level children". Excel and MSWord both have first level children with the following 8 names: File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Window and Help. Excel adds one (Data) and Word adds one (Table). This similarity and the widespread use of these two systems gives us considerable advantage in designing our MDI form. We've thought of several other first level child names that might also be useful: Process, Publish, Inputs, Run and Outputs, but we've got a big head start from Microsoft. Now all we have to do is arrange our functionality in these categories and make sure all works well within the environment we choose.

QKMDI for Windows
One of Eric's Objects is TMDI. Steve Brooks used it to create his MDI form and loaned us his work. We used the above logic to identify first and second level children for several applications and wrote an MDI compiler to recreate Steve's MDI form as well as our several others. Adding new child forms is as easy as adding a name to a list and rerunning the compiler.
QKMDI for use on the web
We have adapted a javascript menu structure with drop-down menus that work like a Windows MDI form. When it's time, we think this can be adapted to serve as an MDI form on the web. It is illustrated in two large websites. SwimGold.org has approximately 6000 pages. Some pages look more like an MDI form than others; the SwimGold Committee page is a good example of one that looks somewhat like an MDI form. RaceMatters.org has approximately 900 pages. It uses the same javascript, but looks less like an MDI form because the "local.js" menu is less prominent.

Objects Hierarchy for all APL functions used by USMS

The total number of APL functions in use for maintenance of USMS Archives is 1207 with a total of 3.9 million characters of code. 69% of this code is in Carl's utilities, many of which are widely available in the APL community. 11% of the code is in Lescasse Objects, 5% comes from Causeway Graphics Systems, Ltd., 14% is code written specifically for USMS (as a volunteer) by Carl, and .2% is in code written by consultants to USMS. These numbers are based on an estimate by Carl on 12/6/02.

source	code	functions	characters of code	characters %
utilities	0	807	2723558	69.4
Bill Parke	1	2	8555	0.2
LescasseObjects	2	46	427801	10.9
Causeway	3	214	181820	4.6
Eric Landau	4	7	13979	0.4
Carl for TTDB	5	128	562069	14.3
USMS Consultants	6	3	8070	0.2
Total	9	1207	3925852	100.0

Acknowledgements

This is to express appreciation to the following for contributing their ideas and effort over the years. Help comes in conversation, shared code, shared applications, high quality licensed software utilities, in consulting assistance, and in teaching, both formal and informal.

Tom Atkins, Eric Baelen, Warren Baelen, Steve Brooks, Brian Chizever, Davin Church, Scotty Elmslie, Gert Glantz, John Gregg, Brent Hildebrand, Jeff Koloseus, Eric Landau, Christopher Lee, Eric Lescasse, Jairo Lopez, Jeremy Main, Jonathan Manktelow, James Merrill, William Parke, Patrick Parks, Colyn Phillips, Adrian Smith, Michael Steiner, Roy Sykes, Fred Waid, John Walker, Andy Weiss and to others whose name is not coming to mind at the moment. Thanks very much. I hope there is something here of help to you. Carl House, revised 12/5/02 for what I learned at the APL2000 conference.

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Overview

qkForm using Windows Objects

qkForm for use on the web

qkPublish for Windows

qkPublish for use on the web

qkHelp for Windows

qkHelp for use on the web

QKMDI for Windows

QKMDI for use on the web