Links for 6-Jun

Inlining a schema into an XML document

gotAPI -- API search engine

Getting started with the DLR : ToyScript -- worked example of adding support for a language to the DLR.

WiseDll.dll "Extracting directories..." localization

A Google-bait header for a problem that took me far too long to chase down, and which had no clear data to be found on the web — not even on wise.com's knowledge base.

Scenario — an installer created using Wise for Windows Installer 5.0 — last year's model, I know — with the resulting .msi file being post-processed to extract all the strings from the database, localized, patched and then used to create a transform. All the other strings were being processed; the Template summary and all merge modules were set language neutral (codepage zero); and still, as soon as the installation started, up popped English language strings “Extracting directories…” and “Extracting properties…”.

There was no sign of them in any of the string tables. Flattening the .wsi file to xml failed to show anything. Looking in the actual binary, however, they were there.

Much dissection later, I found that they were present in one of the Binary table entries, which, extracted, turned out to be a .DLL, 21kb, associated with custom calls for startup and cleanup. So not something that could be excised safely. And the strings turn out not to be located as resources, but as hard-coded data.

This really makes all the localization support in the rest of WfWI moot.

So I just patched the .DLL I'd extracted — set the 'E' bytes to NUL in a hex editor — and re-inserted it into the .wsi file using Orca. Problem papered over, if not solved.

Crunch…

At home, I use the Amaya browser/editor to do the bulk composition of web pages (fiction and some pre-composing of blog entries before I dial up). One of its handy features is that it comes with a spell-checker (which has to be taught en-GB, alas). Unfortunately, I seem to be able to hit on words that cause it to crash (well, vanish like a popped soap-bubble).

Some while back I found that the misspelt "superintendant" (should be "-ent") crashed it, and that was fixed. Then in recent days I found that I'd managed to compose a document that had 4 separate space-delimited strings that caused version 8.4 to silently become one with the snows of yesteryear.

• superhurricanes
• supersymmetric
• virtualization
• underambitious

I suspect that there must be something anomalous about the handling of the "super-" prefix that the first time around didn't fully address.

Now version 8.5 is out, only a couple of weeks after 8.4, and is reported to address this issue and other crashes. I wonder how long it will be before I manage to find another word it chokes on. I could try supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but that would be cheating - I'll just wait to find things that come up naturally as I write.

Later - I spellchecked this entry as a regression test. As expected, the regression strings passed OK, but Amaya 8.5 reports that it has no match for "supercalifragilisticexpialido" and separately for "cious". I spot a fixed length buffer (30 characters including a nul?) being used rather than the check being made on a range of references into the document.

Conversely I also spotted that if a word contains markup e.g. the source looks like

compl<em>i</em>ment

that it is taken as separate strings delimited by the markup as well as the surrounding whitespace, which is what I'd expect from a single reference range check rather than through any assembly of the word into a separate buffer.

Silver Surfing

Despite their living in rural Suffolk, and our living in one of the outlying villages within walking distance of Cambridge (and its high-tech industries), my parents have managed to get broadband access before I have. So I spent a while yesterday getting them all set up - ZoneAlarm for the firewall, then the obligatory visits to Windows Update, and Symantec Live Update. Then to get e-mail setup.

That was a palaver - the only information on the letter from Tiscali was the e-mail address/userID for the account and its default password. And the helpful note that further info would be sent to that address. So, it was the good old bootstrap problem - needing to be able to read the e-mail in order to set up e-mail...

Much hunting around the Tiscali site for the support details eventually turned up a web-mail interface, and then being able to read the promised mail then did get a pointer to information about the exact names of the POP3 and SMTP servers, so I could set up Mozilla as the one-stop-shop, and Mailwasher to filter.

I expect to have to do a bit more hand-holding until all the day-to-day sysadmin tasks (keeping everything updated) become routine, and to help with any web site that my Dad eventually publishes. In the latter case, to do something about the particularly naff looking pages that he has prototyped in Serif Page Plus - another DTP program which misuses CSS positioning to make pixel-perfect layouts without regard to the underlying document structure, with screen order and file order of each separately placed paragraph entirely disconnected. And despite the misuse of CSS, the pages otherwise look like they were "My first home-page c.1993" - could, should, have just been HTML 2.0 with a lot of <img> and <p> tags.

I've pointed him at web page editor/browser, that I use - Amaya from the W3C, which is what I use after I've hand-crafted the CSS, in the vain hope that he might use it. We'll have to see.

And now he's on-line, if my Dad reads this, he's free like everyone else to add a comment.

Mid-way

Well, half-way through a week of enforced cycling to work - including in light snow-fall today. Not exactly the weather I would have chosen to cycle in, but at least the weather is generally been not too wet, not too windy, and the endorphin boost after the winter and several stressful weeks at work have has managed to lift the spirits somewhat.

It's been educational, though - it's amazing what one finds when one lifts up a rock and sees what squirms away, and looking at the networking undersides of web browsers is a similar experience.

Meanwhile on the vehicle front, I've just about settled on getting a Smart City-coupé Pure - it'll be a 53 reg rather than the 04 reg I'd been planning on before recent events, but will be the lowest impact commute-mobile for nasty weather.

So safe it doesn't work

The amazing combination of using ZoneAlarm to firewall, and Norton AntiVirus to scan in-coming POP3 mail on WinXP Home will definitely protect you from mail viruses - by not allowing outbound connections to your POP3 server. Whatever helper application or DLL Norton uses doesn't register with ZoneAlarm's list of user-approved applications mechanism. It did use to work with an earlier Norton and ZoneAlarm on Win98, where it was just dog slow.

Privoxy and Live Update

A while back, I noted that I couldn't get Symantec Live Update to work for my Norton Anti-Virus installation when going through the Privoxy filtering proxy. Recently I cracked it. It works if in the default.action file you add .symantecliveupdate.com to the {fragile} site list. This is probably more than is actually needed - the important bit being the domain name isn't just symantec.com.