Wolfram Mathematica

12:00 AM

I guess there are other interesting (anonymous) demographics to gather. Age, occupation, Mma usage, Other Computer languages known, number of current sexual partners, etc.

Rojo

Define current

belisarius

@Rojo Current: as in "we three"

Rojo

12:51 AM

Do pets count?

belisarius

1:58 AM

@Rojo Only if they happen to be four-legged or feathered

belisarius

4:26 AM

@leonid Please see if you can answer this one mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/19534/193. Your answer here stackoverflow.com/q/7553975/353410 was "accepted" by the OP

Michael Hale

6:45 AM

Free CDF hosting on Dropbox seems to work, but the keyboard input seems to spontaneously lose focus. This only happens for me when I run the CDF in the browser. Testing on Windows/Firefox. Same for others?

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78459691/game.html

belisarius

@MichaelHale What should I do? It just runs an animation ...

Michael Hale

I have to click on the game, sometimes twice and then the keyboard starts working. Then it stops again randomly.

Pickett

7:00 AM

@MichaelHale Same for me.

@belisarius First order of business is to look at the black dots in the bars on the top and to the left. At the intersection of these bars there is a yellow dot. If the keyboard is communicating with the game as it should you can control the yellow dot pac-man-style. The keyboard usually seems to work if you click on it a few times.

Michael Hale

When I first made the Manipulate I saw it still had the blinking text cursor beside the Graphics, so I tried setting Deployed to True. Then keyboard input stopped working completely. So I tried setting ShowSelection for the cell to False, and that seemed to work OK. You can still see the "move 4-way arrows" if you put the mouse near the edge. Maybe that is what is causing the problem, but I don't know how else to get rid of the blinking cursor without completely breaking keyboard input.

Maybe NotebookEventActions instead of EventHandler?

Pickett

@MichaelHale Perhaps post that as a question. When you evaluate the game code in the FE initially you have to give it focus as well, that would also be nice to avoid. Perhaps there is a way with FE programming to solve both of these issues.

Michael Hale

7:24 AM

Ok

0

Q: How to handle keyboard events for unselected item in CDF?

How can I force the keyboard input to work for this cell without clicking on it after I evaluate or showing a blinking selection cursor? This is for running CDF games in a browser. pos = {0, 0}; Manipulate[ EventHandler[ Framed@Graphics[{Disk[Dynamic[pos], 0.2]}, PlotRange -> 2], {"LeftA...

keyboard

belisarius

@Pickett Sorry, the pinging system was sleeping. I got no warning of your msg

@MichaelHale Win XP/FF here too. Same buggy behavior

Michael Hale

Going to try NotebookEventActions, then delete input cell, then save whole document as CDF instead of just the cell.

belisarius

@MichaelHale Are there examples of interactive games deployed with CDF in the wild?

Michael Hale

I haven't seen any.

belisarius

@MichaelHale Perhaps there is a reason

or more than one :)

Michael Hale

7:37 AM

Yes. I'd say part of the reason is that Wolfram has an anti-keyboard bias, and the other is that Mathematica programmers don't typically make games, even though that is one of the best ways to get a lot of people to install CDF player.

EventHandler docs don't even give an example of using the key events.

belisarius

@MichaelHale There were someone from WR posting here undocumented FE tokens. But I don't know if that's useful for developing CDFs

Michael Hale

Using NotebookEventActions and setting Deployed to True works great in the notebook. Let's see how CDF export goes.

Not bad. You still have to click in the window after opening the CDF, but you can click anywhere and there are no selection artifacts otherwise.

belisarius

@MichaelHale May I test it?

Michael Hale

Yes. I was just using that simple example. I'll apply it to the game next and send you new link.

belisarius

OK,

Just a reminder @All

3

Q: Mathematica SE (human) language survey

I'm curious about the site users' distribution of native (and other known) languages. I made a poll using SurveyMonkey that can be found here I would like three kinds of feedback Suggestions for other interesting questions Someone with better artistic abilities than me to embellish the add (...

discussion

Michael Hale

8:01 AM

Ok, seems to be working.

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78459691/game.html

2

You still have to click on the game once because it is embedded in HTML, but it is deployed and doesn't lose focus after that.

And we can add a start button and countdown timer.

So here is the current code, but don't evaluate it in the same notebook you are using to edit it.

validQ[p : {x_, y_}] :=
  If[Clip[p, {1, Length@landscape}] == p &&
    MatchQ[landscape[[x, y]], 1 | 5], True, False];
move[p_, o_] := If[validQ[p + o], p + o, p];
randomMove[p_] :=
  If[RandomInteger[3] == 0,
   RandomChoice[move[p, #] & /@ {{1, 0}, {-1, 0}, {0, 1}, {0, -1}}],
   p];
plotLandscape[] :=
 Grid[{{"Energy:" <> ToString@energy <> "  Score:" <> ToString@score,
    SpanFromLeft}, {Null,
    ArrayPlot[{ReplacePart[Table[White, {Length@landscape}],
       y -> Black]}, ImageSize -> {300, 5},

Leonid Shifrin

9:35 AM

@belisarius Perhaps the OP gets a better idea here, since I don't see a simple and direct way to adopt my solution to this situation - in that context, the problem was more restricted. If I get more time, I can look into this later.

rm -rf

2:51 PM

@belisarius You around?

belisarius

3:13 PM

@rm-rf yup,

wassup?

rm -rf

3:36 PM

@belisarius Like this?

belisarius

@rm-rf Nice but ... where is the "Complete the Poll"?

in Chinese?

rm -rf

@belisarius That's what the link does... takes them to a survey

belisarius

@rm-rf But why should I click on a "What do you speak?" link???

rm -rf

@belisarius I'm less likely to click on a "Fill out this survey" link.

In any case, it's your campaign... I just made an ad. Tell me the words you want and I'll put them in.

belisarius

@rm-rf Ok. So tell them lies. "Click here to get a date with Madonna"

rm -rf

3:40 PM

@belisarius "Find HOT 18 yr olds in $GeoLocation that want to fuck."

belisarius

@rm-rf Wait ... I like the ad! It's just that I don't see why someone would click there

rm -rf

@belisarius Well, truth be told, the word spacing is randomly generated and there was only sufficient space for one line =)

belisarius

@rm-rf Now we are understanding each other. Laziness is the mother of all success

rm -rf

@belisarius :D

Any way, let me know what you want for the text (if you want to use the ad), and in that case, you can use this link for the image. It will randomly choose between this and yours every 10 mins.

belisarius

@rm-rf I'd just remove the blue text under the question and replace it with "Answer/Complete/Fill our poll"

perhaps in a smaller font, if there are spacing problems

rm -rf

3:54 PM

belisarius

@rm-rf Wonderskull

please edit my ad and replace!

rm -rf

Ok, I'll push this to the webserver. It should be live soon.

belisarius

@rm-rf Thanks a lot!

rm -rf

@belisarius No need, just use the link I gave above... it'll randomly switch between the two.

If you make some more ads, send them across and I'll cycle them as well.

belisarius

But I like this one :)

rm -rf

3:56 PM

Hehe

belisarius

I'll just replace mine

@rm-rf Done!

Kuba

5:20 PM

Hello @MichaelE2

@JacobAkkerboom strange, isn't it? Why there are those problems with OwnVales/SetDelayed/DynamicModuleVariables? I was trying to find something in doc/tutorials, with no avail, maybe I was not focused enough.

Michael E2

6:02 PM

@Kuba Hi! I'm off to diff eqns class. :)

Kuba

@MichaelE2 :)

@JohnFultz May I ask you to look on my question for a deeper explanation?

Szabolcs

I saw this today ^

UNDO!

Kuba

@Szabolcs Why there is written that in MMA one can't create such text?

Rojo

@Kuba Lame marketing

Kuba

:/

Szabolcs

6:13 PM

@Kuba I don't know, I was looking at the huge UNDO button at the bottom.

Kuba

:p

Szabolcs

@Kuba Reading it in detail now, it says:

> In Mathematica, it is not possible to combine text and mathematics results in this way. You can combine text and static math in the same cell, but you cannot display calculated results. If your results change, you must edit your statement by hand.

Makes sense. Though I'm not looking for that feature. Sounds like report generation.

Kuba

@Szabolcs Isn't inline dynamic cell evaluated in place a contrargument?

Szabolcs

@Kuba Yes. But is that easy to use though?

Rojo

@Kuba But, when you reopen the notebook, if you don't evaluate the code, those cells will become a mess

Humm

Kuba

6:18 PM

@Rojo Dynamic has an option Initialization but to be honest I;ve not used it this way before

Szabolcs

@Kuba Have you seen WRI's comparison of Mma and Maple?

Rojo

@Kuba But that's fixed

Kuba

@Szabolcs No, I don't know Maple, only heard of it

Szabolcs

@Kuba Well, after seeing that I think most people would forgive whatever Maple wrote in their marketing leaflet ...

2

Rojo

Definately

Kuba

6:24 PM

@Szabolcs "comparison" is big word looking at it....

rm -rf

> Do your students a favor...teach the system that's used in industry.

2

HAHAHAHA!

Are they suggesting that we learn MATLAB?

Rojo

@rm-rf They are

Kuba

@rm-rf It is sad but WRI lately shows that they want to focus on selling MMA to schools/univ

rm -rf

@Kuba What makes you say that? The free RPi version?

Szabolcs

I though that universities have always been the primary buyers (site licenses). But that's just a guess.

Getting teachers to use it in their courses is in fact a good strategy. If students learn how to use it, it'll be the tool they go to when they actually need it later.

The same way as turning a blind eye to piracy (especially in developing countries) is actually advantageous to companies.

Kuba

6:35 PM

@rm-rf just my observation of what they are developing in first place. Fact that there is still no good way to protect the code even in EnterpriseEdition is sad.

rm -rf

@Szabolcs In a sense, that's how I got started with Mathematica... except that the teacher (and everyone else) used Maple and I just didn't want to follow the herd.

Szabolcs

If it's easy to get a pirated Mathematica, that's what students will get, that's what they'll learn, and that's what they'll buy (or ask their university to buy) when they can afford it.

Kuba

@rm-rf or the fact that there is not a good tutorial for creating complicated CDFs. Lack of specialized plots that questions about appear here almost each day.

@rm-rf etc.

But that's my opinion and I will not shout it out loud, I've not read all the stuff there is on WRI pages :0

:)

Szabolcs

7:50 PM

Some doc pages are getting a "background" section. Documentation improvement is always welcome. We tend to complain about documentation, but compared to other software it's actually not bad at all. reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Image.html

István Zachar

8:41 PM

Hi @Szabolcs, Kuba, rm -rf

I've just attended the Wolfram Technology Workshop at Budapest, Hungary this morning. Did anyone ever been one of these?

rm -rf

@IstvánZachar No, sorry. I've never been to any of the WRI conferences. I believe halirutan and Rolf (and maybe Oliver) regularly attend one of the German ones and some others attend the main one in Champaign.

István Zachar

Well, it wasn't very useful. The only thing I've learned from it was that ... I'm bloody old. When Martin Hadley asked who used Mathematica before version 5, only an old guy between-80-and-death and me raised our hands.

rm -rf

How was it?

@IstvánZachar Lol...

Kuba

Hello @IstvánZachar

:P

István Zachar

Of course I was immersed in the "new kind of *" enthusiasm.

Kuba

8:51 PM

@IstvánZachar so what's going on such meetings?

rm -rf

@IstvánZachar A new kind of enthusiasm =)

István Zachar

Well, it was mostly introductory stuff. Explanation of Mathema.. - pardon, the Wolfram Language is capable of, in a very general way, like the info-examples on the Wolfram site. Then there was a bit of System Modeler intro, in a very similar manner: nothing specific, just the general description of how many domains it can do good for you.

Kuba

I see

@IstvánZachar you may be interested in mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/43455/… or mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/43432/… btw.

István Zachar

A few Hungarian guys gave 15 min talks about specific projects, but I could hardly enjoy any of these due to the very low quality (code- and language-wise). And then was a 60min session for "how to write fast Mathematica code". But when Martin started to talk about pure functions, I realized that no new revelations will happen.

And free pens and brochures were the only goodies available.

@Kuba Checking...

Kuba

A friend of mine has mouse pad with MMA 5 theme, It'sgreat, I like such gadgets :p

István Zachar

9:05 PM

@Kuba How about putting pos := MousePosition["Graphics"]; in the body of the DynamicModule and removing the Initialization code? Does it do what you want?

Kuba

@IstvánZachar I think it could work but I'm trying to "develop" coding style where the body contains no definitions. Only skeleton-layout of the GUI.

István Zachar

I remember getting the advice once that always use pos[]:=... instead of pos:=... in Initialization code, but this was years ago on MathGroup, I don't think I could find it. I guess Daniel Lichtbalu or John Fultz gave the answer.

Kuba

When I didn't care about proper scoping etc, everything was working :P When I'm trying to do things well, such issues are occuring. Quite important I think.

@IstvánZachar such Q&A would be very useful here. It's fundamental for proper CDF construction. Now I know what, but not exactly why.

István Zachar

@Kuba I could not find that MathGroup post, and I'm dead tired now, but I promise to take a look at the problem tomorrow with a fresh mind!

bye for now!

Kuba

@IstvánZachar Thanks ;) no need to hurry, take a rest.

Cya

Pickett

9:27 PM

Yeeeeeesssssssss! Ahhh.... finally a simple question for me to answer, I've had such a horrible dry spell lately :)

And you @Kuba was there first so I almost got myself a heart attack trying to write down the answer before anyone else did :D

Kuba

9:59 PM

@Pickett :) I was not sure what OP needs :) I know that adrenaline kick, quite nice... if you are firt ofc :)

Have a good night. :)

Pickett

@Kuba Yeah, very nice for me indeed. Have a good night you too. :)

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