As noted on Saturday (http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/blog/archives/614), I picked up a netbook, the MSI Wind (http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productpage.aspx?cid=3&id=40).  Officially, the netbook is for my wife – who has taken up blogging and book reviewing as a hobby.  It gives her a chance to work away from the desktop and in the living room with me in the evening.  However, unofficially, it’s also a toy for me to try new things, as well as play with a netbook (as well as evaluate the feasibility of getting these for work). 

Anyway, one of the first things that I did with the Netbook was drop Windows XP for the test build of Windows 7.  I’ve been looking for a place to try it, and since my wife has been using Vista for a little over a year (I like the parental controls) – I figured that Windows 7 wouldn’t be too much of a difference.  As I noted in the previous post, I was very pleased with how well it has run on this netbook.  In all honest, it boots faster than the original XP system (takes about 10 seconds to go from a cold boot to active) – can run the areo interface on much lighter hardware than Vista (the netbook for example has no problem with it using the integrated video card), and as I spend time working with the system, have been really impressed with the polish in a beta build (especially when you consider what the first public Vista beta looked like). 

So, that was a long explanation for my current project.  I have a lot of computers at home.  The oldest machine that I still use occasionally is a machine that I purchased from Dell in 1998 (I just keep updating the components) up to our current desktop.  Well, yesterday, I was sitting around and wanted to watch an episode of the Simpsons .  I didn’t have the particular episode that I was interested in watching, so I went online and found it (on hulu I think).  Anyway, I hooked up the netbook and feed the video directly to the TV and it worked so well through the DVI cable that I thought I’d setup my own Media PC and see how well I could get it to work.

So….I dusted off a 4 year old media pc that I rarely turn on and decided to wipe the hard-drive and install Windows 7 and see how the new media functionality worked on it (as well as see how Windows 7 worked on a really old system that I wouldn’t touch Vista with).  Again, like with the netbook, the install took approximately 20 minutes to install and apply current updates and create user account.  As well, Windows 7 recognized all the old hardware, and appropriate drivers were added.  From there, I moved the computer next to the TV and let the experiment begin.  I figure, if I like this setup, I’ll likely end up purchasing a light-weight PC that I can use as a media machine – but for now – this will do.  With the current setup, the machine can stream content directly to the TV (unfortunately, not recording yet – though I might pick up a cheap TV input card so I can setup a simplified DVR recorder).  So right now, I’m hanging out at home watching the last episode of the Office (which I missed), an episode of He Man, masters of the Universe (I love old cartoons) and then an episode of Married…With Children (another one of my guilty pleasures).  I’ve been primarily watching episodes via Hulu – and I’m surprised at the video quality.  It’s not DVD quality – but certainly as good an anything off VHS or cable.  I’m not sure if this is because of Hulu’s quality, my high speed internet (thank you Monmouth-Independence) or a combination of things. 

But so far, so good.  It looks like this little setup will work great for testing and seeing why so many people are getting DVR devices.  If anyone has done something similar, give me a shout.  Otherwise, I’ll continue to post updates as I (and my boys) spend time feeding videos through our new test media PC (the boys like watching cartoons online as much as I do, though they seem to be more interested in the current content on Cartoon Network).

–TR 

First thoughts are I like this little machine.  It has a full keyboard so I don’t feel cramped typing, has an expandable drive (so soon I’ll have 2 GBs on the machine), 3 USB drives, an SD card reader – all the stuff that you really need to get things onto and off of the machine.  The device seems fairly rugged and cannot believe how light it is.  I’ve tried the ASUS, Acer and HP netbooks and I really like the design that the folks at MSI have used here.  Oh, and the 6 cell battery – looks like I’ve been getting about 3 1/2 hours of burn time.  Oh, and this is quiet and cool.  The laptops that I have at home simply run hot (I’m rarely cold during the winter so long as I have my laptop).  This little device simply doesn’t put out much heat and is super quiet.  A nice, unexpected change from previous hardware used.

Windows 7…At home, I use a wide number of operating systems.  I have a couple of flavors of linux, XP and Vista (no mac since they won’t let me virtualize it), mostly to test various projects that I work on under different systems.  One of the hallmark of Windows installs tends to be scary installs.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that install tool approximately 18 minutes on this netbook – all hardware was recognized, drivers loaded.  Since, I’ve loaded Google Chrome, Office 2007, Live Writer (which is what I’m using now) and MarcEdit.  Overall, I’ve been pretty impressed with the way the system handles.  At this point, I have Chrome open, streaming a video from youtube (bruises from chairlift), 5 other tabs, IE with 3 tabs (one my exchange mail), 3 word documents, an excel document (~4 mbs in size) and MarcEdit and still have ~200 mbs of RAM free and not a hint of sluggishness.  This is something I’ll track as I continue working on this little box.

–TR

Problem:

Last week, I had someone ping me regarding MarcEdit and a problem that they were running into with the Editor running it on a 64-bit version of Windows 2003 Server.  MarcEdit is compiled for any processor, so in theory, the framework should adjust the variable types to the current CPU type and go on it’s merry way.  And was it not that I have to work with some unmanaged code within my application, I’m sure that this would be the case.  However, when opening the MarcEditor, the user was getting the following error message:

This is odd because I test MarcEdit on every version of Windows from 98 to Vista.  The problem however, is I’ve never ran the program in a 64-bit version of Windows. 

Background:

I did a little bit of research, and found what I thought to be the problem.  The 64-bit version of windows shares many of the same signatures as its 32-bit counter-part, but one place where the signatures differ is in the Messaging Queue.  SendMessage, for example, which uses integers to pass values between processes had been updated to 64 bit integers and would crash if the wrong data type is sent into the function.  No problem, I fixed the signature issue, but the error message remained.  What I didn’t realize is that this wasn’t the actual problem (though it was a problem).  The real problem seemed to be related to simply accessing the RichTextbox Handle and passing it the callback.  Anytime the Handle was touched and passed, this error would be generated.

Solution:

So, Microsoft does make the Enterprise version of Windows 2003 Server available on a trial basis for developers wanting to test their software.  So, I dug up a box with an AMD-64 bit processor and set to installing the software.  Next, I installed SharpDevelop, an Open Source IDE for .NET.  I created a small sample program to isolate the code that was causing me problems.  In my case, the code that was causing the problem is necessary because of MARC being a UTF8 encoded data format.  Microsoft’s Richtext library supports the loading of plaintext (ASCII), Unicode text, text with OLE objects and text in just about any character format, including UTF8.  Unfortunately, the .NET framework only exposes plaintext and Unicode text as supported formats.  This means that in order to load UTF8 data and utilize the components streaming nature to minimize the memory footprint during loading, we need to essentially write our own EditStreamCallback function, create the delegates, the EDITSTREAM struct, etc.  And in that, there is the rub.  When compiling the code in SharpDevelop, I specified that the code should be targeted specifically for a 64-bit processor.  During compile, I got two warning messages that two core .NET components are compiled specifically for 32-bit processors.  Since the signatures on the 64 and 32 bit machines are identical, one can generally ignore these compilation warnings, as the framework does it’s magic.  However, the fact that I’m utilizing functionality from one of these two components within an unmanaged code block causes the problem.  Within the .NET (and 64-bit environment in general), an 64-bit process cannot load a library compiled for a 32-bit process.  A 32-bit process can run within a 64-bit environment, they just cannot share processes between themselves.  My best guess is that this is what was happening.  Since these two .NET components were compiled specifically for the 32-bit processors, my attempts to load them into a 64-bit process and utilize them within an unmanaged code block caused issues.  The solution is a simply one — for the GUI application of MarcEdit (which doesn’t do much anyway), the program simply needs to be complied to target 32-bit processors.  Now it runs just fine within a 64-bit environment, and will remain so until Microsoft cleans up these two core libraries.  With that said, if anyone has a better way of dealing with this problem (code is attached, so if you can make it work, I’d love to here from you), I’d love to hear about it.

RichText Code:

Finally, it’s pretty difficult to find example code dealing with the Richtext components in C#.  I think this is primarily because most folks that use high level languages like C# either don’t have a need for it or don’t have the background in C++ to understand what is actually happening at the Proc level.  Anyway, to that end, I’m posting the source to my small sample program (get it here) that I used to diagnosis this problem.  The trick to doing this type of interaction is to avoid the use of integer class variables.  In .NET, you have to remember that you are dealing with managed code, so when you make the call to a API like SendMessage, you should be Marshalling all your data, and passing it into the function via the IntPtr structure.  The only exception to that with the SendMessage API is the message argument, which microsoft defines and an unsigned 32-bit integer on all platforms, though for practical purposes, the message argument should be classed as a 32-bit integer.

API/Delegate Declarations

   1:  private const int SF_USECODEPAGE = 0x020;

   2:          private const int SF_TEXT = 0x001;

   3:          private const int SF_RTF = 0x002;

   4:          private const int CP_UTF8 = 65001;

   5:   

   6:          private const int WM_SETREDRAW      = 0x000B;

   7:   

   8:          private const int WM_USER = 0x400;

   9:          private const int EM_STREAMIN = WM_USER + 73;

  10:          private const int EM_GETEVENTMASK   = (WM_USER + 59);

  11:          private const int EM_SETEVENTMASK   = (WM_USER + 69);

  12:          private const int EM_STREAMOUT = WM_USER + 74;

  13:          private const int ENM_NONE =    0;

  14:          private const int EM_SETTEXTMODE        = WM_USER + 89;

  15:   

  16:          private const int TM_PLAINTEXT       = 1;

  17:   

  18:          private const int ECO_AUTOWORDSELECTION = 0x00000001;

  19:          private const int ECO_AUTOVSCROLL = 0x00000040;

  20:          private const int ECO_AUTOHSCROLL = 0x00000080;

  21:          private const int ECO_NOHIDESEL = 0x00000100;

  22:          private const int ECO_READONLY = 0x00000800;

  23:          private const int ECO_WANTRETURN = 0x00001000;

  24:          private const int ECO_SAVESEL = 0x00008000;

  25:          private const int ECO_SELECTIONBAR = 0x01000000;

  26:          private const int ECO_VERTICAL = 0x00400000;

  27:          private const int ECOOP_SET = 0x0001;

  28:          private const int ECOOP_OR = 0x0002;

  29:          private const int ECOOP_AND = 0x0003;

  30:          private const int ECOOP_XOR = 0x0004;

  31:  

  32:          private const int EM_SETOPTIONS = (WM_USER + 77);

  33:          private const int EM_GETOPTIONS = (WM_USER + 78);

  34:   

  35:   

  36:          delegate IntPtr EditStreamCallback(IntPtr dwCookie, IntPtr pbBuff, IntPtr

  37:              cb, out IntPtr pcb);

  38:   

  39:  

  40:          struct EDITSTREAM

  41:          {

  42:              public IntPtr dwCookie;

  43:              public IntPtr dwError;

  44:              public EditStreamCallback pfnCallback;

  45:          }

  46:   

  47:  

  48:   

  49:          [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = false)]

  50:          static extern IntPtr SendMessage(HandleRef hWnd, Int32 Msg,

  51:                                          IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam);

  52:  

  53:          [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = false)]

  54:          static extern IntPtr SendMessage(HandleRef hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr

  55:              wParam,    ref EDITSTREAM lParam);

In the declarations, you will see that two forms of SendMessage have been defined.  One where the lParam references the EDITSTREAM structure and on where it references an IntPtr structure.  The former is used when streaming data into the RichText window, the latter is used when sending regular messages between controls.  It should be noted, the later could be removed in .NET 2.0 by making use of the System.Windows.Forms.Message class, which essentially allows you to send messages to controls so long as all arguments can be sent as IntPtrs.

After the declarations, the remainder of the code is setting up the actual streaming, and creating the function that the delegate prototypes.  In this example, I’ve called the streaming function, ReadRichTextStream and the actual streaming function, StreamIn.  These functions would look like the following:

ReadRichTextStream: Accepts a RichTextBox Object and the filename of the file to load.

   1:          private void ReadRichTextStream(System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox objRich,

   2:              string sfilename)

   3:          {

   4:  

   5:              string filename = sfilename.ToLower();

   6:              objRich.Text = "";

   7:              int eType = SF_TEXT;

   8:              if (filename.EndsWith(".mrk")|filename.EndsWith(".mrk8")|filename.EndsWith(".tmp")|filename.EndsWith(".xml"))

   9:              {

  10:                  eType = (((CP_UTF8)<<16)|SF_USECODEPAGE|SF_TEXT);

  11:              }

  12:              else if (filename.EndsWith(".bmrk"))

  13:              {

  14:                  eType = SF_TEXT;

  15:              }

  16:              else if (filename.EndsWith(".rtf"))

  17:              {

  18:                  eType = SF_RTF;

  19:              }

  20:              else if (filename.EndsWith(".txt"))

  21:              {

  22:                  eType = SF_TEXT;

  23:              }

  24:              else

  25:              {

  26:                  eType = (((CP_UTF8)<<16)|SF_USECODEPAGE|SF_TEXT);

  27:              }

  28:   

  29:              //this.Redraw = false;

  30:              long b_length = 0;

  31:              System.IO.FileStream fs = new System.IO.FileStream(sfilename, System.IO.FileMode.Open, System.IO.FileAccess.Read, System.IO.FileShare.Read);

  32:              b_length = fs.Length;

  33:              Application.DoEvents();

  34:              System.Runtime.InteropServices.GCHandle gch = System.Runtime.InteropServices.GCHandle.Alloc(fs, System.Runtime.InteropServices.GCHandleType.Normal);

  35:              EDITSTREAM es = new EDITSTREAM();

  36:              es.dwCookie = (IntPtr)gch;

  37:              EditStreamCallback callback = new EditStreamCallback(StreamIn);

  38:              es.pfnCallback = callback

  39:  

  40:              SendMessage(new HandleRef(objRich, objRich.Handle), (Int32)EM_STREAMIN, (IntPtr)eType, ref es);

  41:  

  42:              //Remember to free allocated memory to avoid leaks.

  43:              gch.Free();

  44:              fs.Close();

  45:  

  46:  

  47:          }

StreamIn: StreamIn is the function that actually reads the data from the file and pushs the data into the RichTextBox callback to print into the control.

   1:          public IntPtr StreamIn(IntPtr dwCookie, IntPtr pbBuff, IntPtr

   2:              cb, out IntPtr pcb)

   3:          {

   4:              byte[] buffer = new byte[cb.ToInt32()];

   5:              uint result = 0;

   6:   

   7:  

   8:  

   9:  

  10:              System.IO.FileStream fs = (System.IO.FileStream)((GCHandle)dwCookie).Target;

  11:              //pcb = cb;

  12:              try

  13:              {

  14:                  pcb = (IntPtr)fs.Read(buffer, 0, cb.ToInt32());

  15:  

  16:                  if (pcb.ToInt32()<=0)

  17:                  {

  18:                      pcb = IntPtr.Zero;

  19:                      result = 1;

  20:                      return (IntPtr)result;

  21:                  }

  22:                  else

  23:                  {

  24:  

  25:                      System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.Copy(buffer, 0, pbBuff, pcb.ToInt32());

  26:                  }

  27:              }

  28:              catch

  29:              {

  30:                  pcb = IntPtr.Zero;

  31:                  result = 1;

  32:                  return (IntPtr)result;

  33:              }

  34:              fs.Close();

  35:              return (IntPtr)result;

  36:          }

Anyway, the gist of all this, is that by setting the compile option to target 32-bit processors in the MarcEdit gui, I’ve been able to solve this issue.  I’m having the user that found the problem verify that I’ve indeed hunted this bug down and squashed it — so as soon as that’s confirmed, I’ll be pushing this fix out with MarcEdit.

–TR

However, it did get me thinking — why do folks view Google in such a positive light?  Or, better yet, how did Google convince libraries (large academic libraries) to essentially give away their content for virtually nothing.  Well, I should qualify that — Google is spending a great deal of money digitizing library content — but the costs of digitization pale in terms of the total value of the collection itself and the value of the collection in terms of the collection development decisions that went into building a library’s materials.  In putting up some capital, Google is able to catch up as a cultural archive on nearly 200+ years of purchasing and collection management decisions and will have surpassed some of our finest academic libraries in terms of content and breath of collection.  Not a bad deal for them. 

But I’ll digress since that’s a different discussion.  I’m really fascinated by Google’s image and how they have been able to maintain their image as a socially conscious company that’s open for integration by others and open as in friendly to open source.  However, if you really think about it — that image doesn’t fit reality.  Google has in effect cultivated this image of “open” by making available bread crumbs into their systems.  Folks have often been able to do very cool things with these bread crumbs (Google Maps, Search API, etc) but these really are only a small part of the Google machine.  While Google offers api it also is, without a doubt, one of the most propriety companies that I’ve ever seen.  Their answers in fiscal filings are difficult to pin down (that’s just about any large corporation though) and they vigorously (actually, that’s an understatement) guard their search algorithems.  Folks should make no mistake — they are a big business and they act like any other business, but they’ve just somehow been able to wrap themselves in a cloak of openness.  In fact, I’ve started to wonder if Google isn’t the ultimate leech.  Now, leeches aren’t bad things.  They’ve used them in medicine for years — but leeches don’t produce anything — and lately, I’ve been starting to wonder what exactly Google has produced.  There is their search engine — which while still wildly popular, is no longer my first choice for all types of searches and then their add placement.  And while innovative in their time — even these services don’t really produce anything.  Outside of that — I can think of a lot of places where Google is taking other people’s content and repackaging it (or using it to sell versions of it) or are swallowing technologies and assimilating them into the collective.  Maybe that should be Google’s new motto, “Resistance is futile”, well, maybe not.  ;)

–TR

–TR

/*=====================================================
* Function/sub: TransformXSLT
* Description: Does the XSLT translation
* ====================================================*/public int TransformXSLT(string sSource,
string sDest,
string sXSLT,
bool bRemote)
{System.Xml.XmlTextReader reader = new System.Xml.XmlTextReader(sSource);
if (bRemote==false) {
reader.XmlResolver = null;
} System.Text.UTF8Encoding Encoding = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(false);
System.IO.StreamWriter writer = new System.IO.StreamWriter(sDest, false, Encoding);