WindowBuilder lets you graphically design GWT, Swing, or SWT applications in Eclipse in a very flexible graphical designer, IMO it beats out Visual Studio's Windows Forms designer

(and NetBeans' designer too, obviously, because NetBeans only lets you design Swing UIs, not SWT or GWT)

Wow, thanks a lot @allquixotic!!

...aldi

energy drinks from Austria

tissues from Italy

yoghurt from Australia, but "Imported and distributed in Singapore"

@Bob Now we know why @slhck is a beast as far as volume of moderation work :P

Austria makes the best energy drinks apparently

@allquixotic cheapest*

:P

@Bob aha

but at least their factory workers can happily take a break and hop on their unlimited 4G network on their phone and download video carelessly

....damn them

lol

@JourneymanGeek the Smiggles are similar in that regard :P

I guess you really have to have a huge economy of scale for products coming literally from all over the world to actually be cheaper than just making things in Australia, because it costs a lot of money to transport things thousands of miles

@JourneymanGeek Wait, they aren't supposed to be parallel sticking up? :P

Aldi probably has huge freighter ships the size of oil tankers (they probably just pack stuff into those standard size shipping containers actually) that they run around the world and collect the cheapest stuff, then deliver to Australia

Aldi is weird.

Small shop in the corner of a shopping centre here.

They have food items around the place, and stacks of "other" in the centre. Those stacks change weekly.

I've seen lawnmowers, crowbars, olive trees, cookies, pressure washers, car engine parts...

here, most of Aldi's products are made in the U.S. or Canada, with about 10-15% coming from western Europe, and their store is very small and situated along a highway, next to a place that sells trees, shrubs and garden equipment

someone was buying a motorcycle helmet

they don't sell "other stuff" here though; they are strictly a food products store

oh yea, did I mention the table saw blades, assorted seal kits, and diamond coated cutting discs?

o_O

"here's a bunch of stuff that we bought in bulk at cheap prices! buy it!" :D

lol

about sums it up :P

@allquixotic the language is always easy

unless it's Perl or PHP

Anyone checked out SteamOS?

@allquixotic Very simplistic? How simplistic? :P

Did a static server with bash for one of my courses :\

and then a CGI one

Well, not pure bash.

I believe you witnessed my frustration (and helped me fix it)

damned thing

@allquixotic I am familiar with multi threading, I think I have written some UI that uses Threads and the congruency api ...

what the f-

jsc.sourceforge.net

C# to JS (et al.) compiler? O.O

And I prefer Netbeans because I suck at making ui things ;p

@Bob o_o indeed

@Bob yep lol

@jokerdino Ubuntu based huh ?

@Gowtham you mean concurrency

@allquixotic He quite clearly said congruency. Every thread has an identical state.

It's concurrency api

hides

It's been a year and half since I last coded :/

And I finally trying to finish the SE chat scraper

@Gowtham Why would you scrap SE chat? D:

@Bob Because I am bored :P

And I wanted to try out JSOUP

@Gowtham That was a joke. The word you're looking for is scrape/scraper.

@allquixotic I wonder how difficult it would be to adapt the chatbot code to an API for another language.

!! urban scrapper

@Gowtham scrapper Someone who looks small but is really wired and can kick some major ass even though he doesn't look like it.

Or, I could just go the hackish way and run it inside a WebClient or something in .NET

!!tell 11364725 define scrapper

@Gowtham scrapper A person who disposes of scraps.

Tip: don't rely on urbandictionary for anything.

@Bob that seems to mess up my feng shui

lol

oh yea

@jokerdino it isn't out yet ;p

but I will

@JourneymanGeek you have any Danone branded yoghurt around there?

perhaps at an Aldi?

ya, we do

not at an aldi

we currently don't really have any foreign supermarkets after carrefour left

...you recognised the brand?

(I've... never heard of it before today)

lol

they advertised quite a bit here. I believe they're european , thought they might have bought over malaysian food companies too

@JourneymanGeek Australian, apparently :P

wikipedia says french, but they're everwhere

Hm.

@CallenL Welcome to Root Access chat for Super Users! Please don't ask if you can ask or if anyone's around; just ask your question, and if anyone's free and interested they'll help.

Got a random pack here (from Aldi, of all places) with labels saying manufactured in Aus and another label for import in Singapore.

I am now confused.

Ah, whatever.

lol

may be manufactured in oz

@Bob you mean port SO-ChatBot to some other language/runtime?

and yeah, we get milk from there

@allquixotic That, or run as a web service

as a... web service? what?

you mean the chat commands?

I mean as a general API to scrape chat, and maybe post in chat

should be fairly easy to adapt into an IRC client, actually

@JourneymanGeek wait what

well if you port the chatbot's entire functionality from JS to Java, you could then easily abstract away the chat commands parser to accept input from generic InputStreams, and then have inputstreams coming from chat itself and also from a SOAP or REST API

overseas import of milk -_-

we get milk from australia

@Bob better than Aus getting Singaporean milk hahaha

;p

yeah

@allquixotic: we have one tiny dairy farm

heh. I was just going to expand my bastardised autoreplier

@allquixotic you'd have to port the chat JS too, wouldn't you?

and then redo it every time they update

@Bob well yeah, but they aren't majorly evolving SO-ChatBot anymore, so a clean port/fork would probably be ok

and if they do majorly change it, reading the git commit logs is easy enough

@allquixotic chat, not chatbot

oh you mean SE changing the chat. yes.

but that applies no matter what you do

only way to eliminate that is to have SE officially support a stable public chat API

which they don't have any reason to do

something that hooks into DOM changes and runs the current version of the chat JS is likely more stable than something that runs a specific version (outdated) version of the chat JS

frankly I'm kind of against the whole "run a bot as JavaScript" thing -- even though yes you need some kind of web browser to successfully interface with SE chat at all, I think it's much better to run your control interface in a real language (sorry, JS!) like Java or C#, and use Selenium WebDriver to drive a browser implementation for the sole purpose of rendering the chat and performing updates on it

right now in Zirak's SO-ChatBot, the chat bot logic and the DOM manipulations occur in clientside JS in the browser, which I think is wrong

hm. .NET WebBrowser?

you can run a lot less in the JS and thus depend less on JS and its wonky behavior by doing as much as possible in Java and only pass needed data back and forth through the DOM

@Bob not headless, and based on IE = fail

@allquixotic if it's based on IE10, it's likely more up to date than phantomjs

Selenium, Selenium, Selenium, Selenium, Selenium, Selenium, Selenium,

@Bob not really... and still the problem that it isn't headless and I run SO-ChatBot on a headless Linux server

even if Mono did implement the .NET WebBrowser control, it'd be in, like, Firefox or something, and would need an X server

the WebDriver protocol that's the basis of Selenium is actually an RFC now, and will soon be a web standard implemented natively in all browsers, so Selenium is really going somewhere

general purpose browser automation, cross-browser, cross-platform, based on a simple TCP protocol and JSON

and as far as IE10 is concerned, I'm not going to run SO-ChatBot on a Windows box, because the only Windows box I have is my desktop and Surface Pro, both of which lose their internet connection as soon as I unplug my phone to take it with me to work

hm. where have I heard of Awesomium before?

oh yea, markdownpad uses it :S

@allquixotic apparently it uses V8, too

@Bob what does? IE10? you're shitting me

or Awesomium? yeah I believe it does

@allquixotic no, Awesomium

what does selenium use anyway?

Awesomium is loosely based on Chromium, and it's reasonably viable for our community based SO-ChatBot projects, because we wouldn't have to pay for a license for a non-commerical, open source project, so yeah it'd work

@Bob use, as far as what?

wait a sec. still wrapping my head around what it does

@Bob Selenium is a client library, implemented in various languages, that speaks the WebDriver protocol

ah. never mind.

it automates various web browsers that happen to implement the WebDriver protocol, either directly (like PhantomJS), or via a wrapper executable (like IE and Firefox)

> Selenium automates browsers. That's it.

not sure how that translates to headless browsers

@Bob basically the browser, or a wrapper around the browser, opens up a TCP port that lets a Selenium WebDriver client connect and automate the browser using JS or DOM manipulations, take screenshots, etc... the headless part comes from PhantomJS, which is a WebKit based browser (using WebKit's JSCore) that is headless

Selenium is the most flexible API to write a chat bot in though, because if you happen not to like PhantomJS, or some better headless browser implementing WebDriver comes along, you change about 5 lines of code and your chatbot now works with that other browser

Awesomium is the equivalent of Selenium, PLUS a pre-cooked browser embedded with it

Awesomium's browser implementation and their "driver" (automation) API are tightly coupled

Selenium's wire protocol and the browser implementation are loosely coupled

I see.

but you couldn't, like, use Awesomium's API with Chromium or Firefox or PhantomJS

I'm kinda hopeful that someone else will come along and do PhantomJS but better, and implement WebDriver spec as well

Though the tradeoff for the flexibility is more trouble finding an engine that works well.

either that, or Ariya (the lead dev on PhantomJS) better hurry up with that port of PhantomJS to Chromium

You rely on additional external projects.

@Bob FF and Chrome work extremely well if you don't need headless, which most people don't, but in my particular case of wanting to run a chat bot on a headless Linux server, I am currently limited in choices, yes... it's either PhantomJS, or start up a memory-backed X server like Xvfb and put Firefox in there

That'll do wonders for memory usage and overall performance.

main reason I don't want an X server is because it messes around with init scripts usually, messes around with environment variables, and it could accidentally try to use the actual iGPU in the server's i7-3770, and in any case all of that uses more memory and CPU than having it headless

@allquixotic What's the problem with accidentally using the IGP?

@Bob oh... I mean I don't want it being rendered on the IGP because that would be rendering, and you're talking memory use, potentially buggy graphics drivers bringing down my server, potential security issues, etc

Ah.

yeah I just don't want it even trying to render the browser page, graphically, I mean... it's much better for it to render the object model of it, and do all the networking stuff properly, and the JS stuff properly, but not actually draw anything anywhere, not even in memory

O_O

developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Implementing_Awesomium

My first bounty set on this question. Feel free to colaborate:

@allquixotic Heh, I may as well try a mono/awesomnium environment for the chatbot, sounds like fun

I'll try that when I get my laptop back :\

Who knows, maybe it'll do !!eval properly

@Bob sure, have at it! won't be using it on my server but if you're interested in it, can't hurt to look at it

huh, interesting, looks like Awesomium is actually headless and they have a Linux build available

could work, but I don't like companies that try to be a dick about licensing

@allquixotic wait, you thought it wasn't? :P

@Bob I thought it was Windows-only, didn't think it was headless either

@allquixotic Their licensing... doesn't seem too bad.

either way I'm annoyed that it's not open source... I could use this for my own hackathon projects, but for anything work related, I couldn't use this because we'd have to buy it, and getting customer to buy something is.. just not happening... it's really not

I'm actually using Selenium at work, though, and also for fun, so that's a huge benefit... I can become more competent at work-related things by doing hobby-related things

and if it breaks I can read the source to figure out why

I'd much rather inject pages worth of minified JS shims/hacks into SO-ChatBot for PhantomJS's sake than use something closed source... that's just how I reason/think...

besides, the bot is stable; it's not like he's crashing because of the hacks or the old JSCore

oh right you don't have !!eval... boo hoo... :p

well I'm sure you could use this and easily adapt it to the Awesomium API and load SO-ChatBot the same way as I do, and get it working

won't be me doing it, so, have fun and do what you please :P

all you really need is in this one file

huh

@allquixotic Have you considered using HtmlUnit (instead of PhantomJS)?

@allquixotic boo. that's being closed minded :P

@allquixotic ya, might get a smarter autoresponder up at some point :P

> This is currently the fastest and most lightweight implementation of WebDriver. As the name suggests, this is based on HtmlUnit.

Apparently has good JS/DOM support, up to at least FF17/"current" Chrome (with Chrome16 deprecated, so at least newer than that)

@Gowtham yeah, think so.

@Bob is there any JS in HtmlUnit?

Good evening!

o_O

it actually has good JS support? wow

I'll definitely try HtmlUnit with so-chatbot-driver and see if it works at all, now that you mention its JS support

but if it doesn't support EcmaScript 5, I'll just end up needing the same shims/hacks

@allquixotic code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/HtmlUnitDriver

It uses Mozilla Rhino

it will take about 5 lines of code changing in Driver.java in so-chatbot-driver to try HtmlUnit

Hm. Might actually be a bit dated, actually :(

It says it can emulate FF17, though...

> Rhino 1.6 and greater implement ECMA-357 ECMAScript for XML (E4X). See the specification for more information on the standard, and Rhino version 1.6R1 release notes for details on the implementation in Rhino.

O_O

> It is embedded in J2SE 6 as the default Java scripting engine.

JDK8 has Nashorn as its new JS engine, and it's a JS JIT compiler to native :D :D :D

if the J2SE API to call the JS engine is the same........

I could use an alpha/beta build of JDK8 and take advantage of the latest Nashorn features :D :D :D

         // Rhino defines too much methods for us, particularly since implementation of ECMAScript5

Nashorn probably has ES5. it's gotta. it's a super-moden engine :D

@Bob whee

Line 285 of JavaScriptEngine.java

totally trying JDK8 though just to see how nice it is <3

JDK8 is due out next year and has been incubating for years and years and years, so it's gotta be getting close

whoa. big news day (yesterday, I guess) in tech

games.slashdot.org/story/13/09/23/177246/… and mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/09/23/197258/…

Eclipse Luna too. Its out actually, you can download it..

@vedantchandra nice...

I love Eclipse's engineering / release management stuff... even their milestones tend to be stable, and they pull in a lot of well-tested and optimized features in general

I LOVE their plugin system!

you get the base software

and then you can keep adding on from differents repo's

its like the gift that keeps giving!

@allquixotic HtmlUnit's browser emulation for 'current' chrome is 23.0.1271.95

that's... end of 2012

not bad

@Bob emulation how? does it actually support all the features of Chrome 23, or does it just say that's what its user-agent is?

it's easy to say "my user agent is for Chrome 29!" then not support anything whatsoever :P

> HtmlUnit has an impressively complete implementation of the DOM and has good support for using javascript, but it is no different from any other browser: it has its own quirks and differences from both the W3C standard and the DOM implementations of the major browsers, despite its ability to mimic other browsers.

hm.

> However, note that the constants are not enough to fully customize the browser, you also need to look into the BrowserVersionFeatures and the classes inside "javascript" package.

Part of it is the user agent. But it looks like it also changes some behaviour.

aha!

> Specifying this BrowserVersion will change the user agent header that is sent up to the server and will change the behavior of some of the JavaScript.

@allquixotic So, not all, but it does affect the JS :P

interesting

@allquixotic Possible problem. ECMAScript5 support was added to Rhino in 1.7R3.

@Bob I wonder if Nashorn is a drop-in replacement for Rhino. Nashorn is the new built-in JS engine in JDk8.

1.7R3 was in May 2012

@DarthAndroid heeeelp!

wait no

DarthAndroid is our local JDK8/Nashorn expert ;p

            Update htmlunit-core-js to Rhino head of 07.01.2010 + custom patches.

lol

that was the last rhino related entry in the changelog

USE THE LATEST STUFF, DUMMIES!!!!

release version="2.7" date="Feb 9, 2010"

uggghhhhh

most recent release

version="2.12" date="Mar 6, 2013"

lots of JS updates in more recent releases

@Bob so... so... they've essentially forked Rhino now? -_-

@allquixotic most seem to be DOM-related

so, probably not patching in ECMAScript5 :\

<action type="fix" dev="mguillem" issue="1484" due-to="Hartmut Arlt">
    JavaScript: add support for window.onchange handler (FF10+ and Chrome).
</action>

I bet Rhino 1.7R3 changed enough that pulling it in would be a real pain, kinda like how PhantomJS would have real pain to pull in WebKit2 or Qt 5.0 :P

<action type="fix" dev="mguillem">
    JavaScript: add empty implementations of CanvasRenderingContext2D methods createImageData,
    createPattern, createRadialGradient, fillText, getImageData, getLineData, isPointInPath,
    measureText, putImageData, rect, rotate, setTransform, strokeText, and transform (FF).
</action>

yet again stuck with a big application using a complex framework/API and too much work required to forward-port the code

<action type="add" dev="rbri">
    JavaScript: add DocumentFragment.querySelectorAll()/DocumentFragment.querySelector().
</action>

empty impls lol

hey, I can do that! shims! lol

@allquixotic also, very old

that thing has existed since FF3.5/Chrome1/IE8

patching in older functions :P

:(

I bet I know what it is :D the author of HtmlUnit probably patches in functions on an as-needed basis based on his own, personal use case of the library :D

well, there goes that idea

unless...

hrm.

gotta love small time open source community projects that only support what the developer specifically needs and nothing else

probability that you need something he doesn't need approaches 1 asymptotically

lemme just grab the SVN snapshot

last updated 11 hours ago

wow

at least it's active

What was the change? "Updated timestamp in license"

...if I had a SVN client on here -_-

testing

> [r8511] Add jQuery 1.10.2 sources

two days ago was

well at least it seems to use a current jQuery

> [r8501] Update Chrome version

@allquixotic that's in their tests :P

lol

@allquixotic Isn't jQuery on 2.0?

@OliverSalzburg i have no idea :D

Ah, two branches

I'm pretty sure jQuery 1.0 could run Skyrim in pure HTML on IE 4.0 though, so it's all good... if you can't do it with jQuery then you must not be living in this universe

nope, no rhino-related update on the 2.13 dev

you know, you might be right about that branch :P

lots of JS updates in the changelog

@Bob you mean forking Rhino?

> [r7931] Happy New Year!

o.O

@allquixotic ya

development looks very active

he's just keeping up appearances :P

j/k

sourceforge.net/p/htmlunit/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/htmlunit/src/…

well, not very very :P

a commit every few days - at least it's not dead

@allquixotic if it's only a couple of lines, could you try it sometime? :P

just remember to enable JS, and maybe emulate Chrome

@Bob sure, but not while I'm at work.... too much typing on my phone to do it here

course not xD

you'll want the htmlunitdriver

the plain one is designed for standalone use

huh. that might be one release behind o.O

if htmlunitdriver merely bundles htmlunit i may be able to update it to the latest htmlunit svn

and then update htmlunit to use nashorn instead of rhino in JDK8 :D

not sure how that'd work though

[PATCH] 0/40: Get rid of your stupid JS workarounds and use a REAL JS engine, Nashorn, from JDK8

one can dream

lol

@Bob My phone shuts down even when it is lying untouched for long time so it is not due to me shaking phone.

huh.

microsoft.com/surface/en-us/pre-order :(

Do Want

starts shipping October 21

@allquixotic ...you already have one

@Bob but not the 2!

@allquixotic theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

unless you mean to imply that having double RAM and 4x SSD space isn't freaking awesome, plus a Haswell CPU

@Bob exactly that, except I'm a Microsoft Surface Pro n (n = latest version) fanboy