I noticed these knobs on the wall at Via Lago, an expensive sandwich shop in downtown Lexington. When I turned the knob on the right, the background music near the backdoor got louder. I didn't realize that you could buy an integrated Muzak system-- I thought you just got CDs in the mail or a secret radio broadcast or something.
As a documentation enthusiast, I find myself needing to change documents from one silly format to another on regular basis. Usually, I end up writing stupid Perl scripts to convert from one format to another, but I can never remember Perl syntax between efforts. I swear I've written the same text parsing code 4 times, and it hasn't gotten easier.
In an effort to end this depressing cycle, I spent some time this afternoon learning a little wxPython to make what I call UsefulProg. UsefulProg reads in a text file. You enter some regular expressions, and then it filters the file with those expressions. When you screw up (like I always do), you hit the reset button, and it erases your mistakes. When you get the filters working the way you want, you cut and paste the result into wherever you need it.
Here's the code under a GPL license. It's based on an example from the wxPython documentation.
``` (lang=python) from wxPython.wx import * import os import re
class Form1(wxPanel): def init(self, parent, id): wxPanel.init(self, parent, id)
self.logger = wxTextCtrl(self,5, \"\",wxPoint(250,20), wxSize(250,100),wxTE_MULTILINE | wxTE_READONLY)
self.inputlbl = wxStaticText(self,-1, \"Input file\",wxPoint(20,5)) f = open(\"/home/brandon/Python Experiments/dd_tpb.txt\", \"rb\") self.inputfield = wxTextCtrl(self,6,f.read(),wxPoint(20,20), wxSize(200,700),wxTE_MULTILINE | wxTE_READONLY)
self.outputlbl = wxStaticText(self,-1, \"Output file\",wxPoint(550,5)) self.outputfield = wxTextCtrl(self,6,\"\",wxPoint(550,20), wxSize(500,700),wxTE_MULTILINE | wxTE_READONLY) self.outputfield.write(self.inputfield.GetValue())
self.button =wxButton(self, 11, \"Filter\", wxPoint(300, 200)) EVT_BUTTON(self, 11, self.EvtFilterButton)
self.button =wxButton(self, 12, \"Reset\", wxPoint(300, 240)) EVT_BUTTON(self, 12, self.EvtResetButton)
self.regexsample = wxStaticText(self,-1, \"Useful: [D|d]? is non greedy match anything\",wxPoint(250,320)) self.lblname1 = wxStaticText(self, -1, \"Removal string 1 :\",wxPoint(250,380)) self.filter1 = wxTextCtrl(self, 20, \"(Rate[D|d]?mments:n\", wxPoint(400, 380), wxSize(140,-1))
self.lblname2 = wxStaticText(self, -1, \"Removal string 2 :\",wxPoint(250,480)) self.filter2 = wxTextCtrl(self, 20, \" *pixel\", wxPoint(400, 480), wxSize(140,-1))
self.lblname3 = wxStaticText(self, -1, \"Removal string 3 :\",wxPoint(250,580)) self.filter3 = wxTextCtrl(self, 20, \"d+?. nt\", wxPoint(400, 580), wxSize(140,-1))
self.filtlblA = wxStaticText(self, -1, \"Removal string 4 :\",wxPoint(250,680)) self.filterA = wxTextCtrl(self, 20, \"nDare\", wxPoint(400, 680), wxSize(140,-1)) self.replblA = wxStaticText(self, -1, \"Replacement string 4 :\",wxPoint(250,730)) self.newtextA = wxTextCtrl(self, 20, \"nnDare\", wxPoint(400, 730), wxSize(140,-1))
def OnClick(self,event):
self.logger.AppendText(\" Click on object with Id %dn\" %event.GetId()) def EvtText(self, event): self.logger.AppendText(\"\") #('EvtText: %sn' % event.GetString()) def EvtChar(self, event): self.logger.AppendText(\"\") event.Skip() def EvtFilterButton(self, event): text = self.outputfield.GetValue()
filter = self.filter1.GetValue() text, reps = re.subn(filter,\"\",text) self.outputfield.Clear() self.outputfield.write(text) self.logger.AppendText(\"%d removals made with filter 1n\" % reps)
filter = self.filter2.GetValue() text, reps = re.subn(filter,\"\",text) self.outputfield.Clear() self.outputfield.write(text) self.logger.AppendText(\"%d removals made with filter 2n\" % reps)
filter = self.filter3.GetValue() text, reps = re.subn(filter,\"\",text) self.outputfield.Clear() self.outputfield.write(text) self.logger.AppendText(\"%d removals made with filter 3n\" % reps)
filter = self.filterA.GetValue() newtext = self.newtextA.GetValue() text, reps = re.subn(filter,newtext,text) self.outputfield.Clear() self.outputfield.write(text) self.logger.AppendText(\"%d replacements made with filter An\" % reps)
def EvtResetButton(self, event): self.outputfield.Clear() self.outputfield.write(self.inputfield.GetValue())
app = wxPySimpleApp() frame = wxFrame(None, -1,\" UsefulProgPRO\",(100,100),(1100,800)) Form1(frame,-1) frame.Show(1) app.MainLoop()
```
Ethan Zuckerman has an interesting post that suggests an explanation for the lack of news coverage of Africa in the Western press. His theory (recycled from Joi Ito) is that people care about news from nations to which they have some personal connection.
I spent two weeks at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania a few years ago, teaching a workshop on embedded systems for the International Atomic Energy Agency. While I don't think that the workshop was particularly effective, it made me care about Africa, and East Africa in particular.
Last week, Kilinux released the first Swahili word processor ever. To me, this is big news, which is why I wrote most of the article for Wikinews. There are at least 1 million people who speak Swahili as a first language. The language is spoken by 55 million people worldwide. The well-educated people I met at the University of Dar es Salaam spoke Swahili, a local dialect, and English. When in groups, Swahili was the language they used. Access to a free common platform for creating text documents with commands in a language that's easy for them to use is a huge step forward.
The Swahili word processor story has been up on Wikinews for a week or so. Ethan Zuckerman posted it to WorldChanging.org. Other than that, I haven't been able to find coverage in any other media outlet. There are a couple of stories (ZDNet UK and the BBC) that covered a pre-release version before the translation was finished, back in December. Microsoft has said that they are working on a Swahili version of Windows, but the release date reported by the BBC (six months from June 2004) has passed without any news. I guess there aren't so many shareholders in Dar es Salaam.
You heard it here first, folks.
"I'm sorry there was something in the bathroom. Did you try the plunger? Did you?"