C

So glad I learned C. Even though I don't really like it. At least I can understand some low-level stuff, like this CUDA course I'm taking at Coursera right now

Custom animated Gtk.Image widget in MonoDevelop

So, I was going through Head First C# and doing the programming exercise using Gtk#/MonoDevelop instead of WinForms/Visual Studio. Of course, then it takes some workarounds(or I should say, different ways) to do certain things in Gtk#.

1. Embedding resources

Pretty straightforward to add resources in Visual Studio. But how to do that in MonoDevelop?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4383298/how-do-i-use-a-resources-file-in-monodevelop

2. Calling resources

Visual Studio auto-generates some Properties.Resources thingy. I was told that I have to do it the .NET way. Never heard of that. (Btw, still confused about what are assemblies.)

Using System.Reflection; //for Assembly
Using System.IO; //for Stream
Assembly a = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
Stream s = a.GetManifestResourceStream("BeeHive.Resources.Bee animation 1.png");

Wow, looks pretty complicated, but it works. (I need to find out how it works)

3. Creating a custom PictureBox control

Well, no PictureBox in GTK. Closest thing is Gtk.Image. So that I'll use.
Apparently, if you extend a control class in Visual Studio it'll just magically appear in your toolbox. Nope, it does not work in MonoDevelop.

Found this video: http://monodevelop.com/Creating_custom_widgets_with_MonoDevelop

Although, seems a bit overkill for my purpose. I just want to extend Gtk.Image. Well, turns out, I just have to add
[System.ComponentModel.ToolboxItem(true)]
to my widget class. And NOW it appears in my toolbox. YES!

4. Animating the control

I'm just following the textbook here. Sounds like a poor way to animate a control when Gtk.Image supports animated image, I think. But never mind. So, I set a timer that changes the Pixbuf property at certain intervals. Conveniently, the Pixbuf constructor allows a Stream as an argument. But wait, even MORE conveniently,

Pixbuf (System.Reflection.Assembly, string)
Pixbuf (System.Reflection.Assembly assembly, string resource, int width, int height)

So I don't have to do all that GetManifestResourceStream crap. Wow, the latter could be quite convenient for future use. Conclusion Not bad, I learned a lot today. Almost wanted to give up and just use Visual Studio instead.

Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++

Just started reading this book by none other than Stroustrup, the father of C++. (how do you pronounce his name?!). Seems like this is a very practical book. I like. I love doing exercises while reading such books, because it helps greatly with my learning.

My first C++ book was a Qt and Design patterns which was awesome too. Now I'm "back to the basics", so to speak. We'll see how it goes!

Overloading of operators

So today I tried to overload the << and >> operators (in a header file)
  QDataStream &operator<<(QDataStream &out, PlayListModel& model) { model.write(out); return out; } 

but I got multiple definition errors:
D:\Qt\PlayGen-build-desktop-Qt_4_8_1_for_Desktop_-_MinGW__Qt_SDK__Debug\..\PlayGen\\..\Mewsic\playlistmodel.h:32: multiple definition of `operator<<(QDataStream&, PlayListModel&)'

I did include guard statements in my header file. Yet it didn't seem to be working here. The header file was being included multiple times. What the heck was going on?! I did a search and finally found the problem:

No, this is a misconception on how include guards work. They will prevent multiple inclusion in the samefile, but not in multiple files.

This is the reason you should only place declarations in headers, but not definitions.

http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/20973 

Bingo! Being new to C++, I've been facing problems similar to these and sometimes to takes a long time to figure it out. But it's well worth it. C++ is so powerful. But I still find it very complicated. All those header files, all those operator overloading and whatnot. I feel that it's very easy to do something wrong and not realise it.

Although I still love Java the most, I'm starting to like C++... Hmm...

A new start!

Well, after so many years of tinkering with software and such, as well as software projects in university, I've created some useful snippets of software that I think might be useful for any fellow students :)

Soon I'll add some of the code I've written. And also the problems I encountered while learning stuff.