Every Python developer knows tools like Sphinx. You write some text in a markup language, write make in the shell and let some compilers do their job. In the end you get beautiful HTML or PDF.
I am looking for something like that, just for Finite State Machines, e.g. I put SCXML into a file (with a GUI or manually with VIM as I desire) start a compiler and out comes a picture file format that i can use however I please and that looks good even if I don't know what I am doing. Example:
$ vim my-fsm.scxml
$ scxml2svg my-fsm.scxml
writing file...
finished writing my-fsm.svg
$
The closest I got so far is using various Eclipse plugins (years ago, dislike huge IDEs), draw.io or what I am using now: Umlet. Even Umlet has problems, though. For example it doesn't support the workflow I am used to (write text files, start compiler, see beautiful result). The results are often also suboptimal, because the engine is actually quite simple. But everywhere I look for a more useful alternative (python wiki, other SO questions, tools) I still don't find a simple compiler.
Now I would be really happy if anybody would know such a compiler. If not possible a FOSS GUI editors with PNG/SVG export would also be okay.
GraphViz has a file format which can be written manually and compiled to different picture formats.
I wrote some tools to do this: http://goo.gl/V97ft
Related
Is there a way to avoid working with the command-line installing and using LESS??
There are several offers for GUIs for the compiling-phase, but I did not find a way for the Installation-Phase.
I have been working in the IT-business for so many decades (more in the mainframe and midrange area and as a project-manager and programmer in the application development) and could by now avoid to go as far down to the command-line-world.
I did develop quite fine Websites using HTML5 and CSS3 and doint this I felt a desire for all that, what LESS and/or SASS are offering and the Syntax and logics dont look difficult to handle. But I fail in the first step of just installing it.
The LESS-Website offers command-lines to key in. But I am not sure, if this will be all I have to key in, but only the significant line to be embedded in a sequence of other commands very familiar to all those working at this Level.
How do I e.g. define the place to store the Installation and to refer to in the href in the link-Statement of my html-file .... ??
Thanks
Gerhard (from Vienna/Austria, living in Trier, Germany)
Less is a CSS pre-processor. if you are include less.js in you html page
You can use less directly in to your html page.
Other ways you can use less compiler
Kola this is an open source application it will help you to compile less to css
Your Topics are clear to me. I even downloaded Koala already and I have no Problem in including less.js in my html. And I have read Bass Jobsens book about the Syntax, which does not seem to raise great Problems to me.
But before working with it, I will have to download LESS -what I have done from the Less-Website to the Folder of my choice. My Problem is the next necessary step: To install this downloaded program. There is no install.exe or something like that. The book as well as the info in the less-Website tell me to key some crpytic commands into the command-line.
Anyone know how to set Notepad++ as default text editor for SAS, Stata and R?
I'm having the hardest time finding anything online (particularly for SAS). Looking for ability to run code from Notepad++ as well as setup color coding.
Thanks.
Why not just go the GUI route: right click, e.g., any foo.R file and select "Open with...", then pick Np++ and click the "always open this file type.." button. Rinse, lather, repeat.
BTW, for R, if you don't already have it, get "NppToR" , a little app which lets you execute code directly from the Npp window.
On windows you can either:
manually edit the keys for the file type to set the value of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FILE_TYPE\shell\edit\command where FILE_TYPE is the appropriate one for each of the files extensions you wish to change this is quite hard work or
you can use a program that does it for you such as the free Default Programs Editor
In either case the first thing to do is to back up the registry.
I would seriously suggest looking into using one of the many, some free IDEs as they will automatically include the run from edit environment, syntax highlighting, code completion and, in many cases, debugging as well.
Notepad++ is my favorite editor and I was in the same shoes as you are now.
I am assuming that you are in Windows (Notepad ++ doesn't exist in Mac, saddest thing for me)
Please follow the steps mentioned in the below webpage and do as the author says.
http://hafniumcity.com/notepad_color.php
Now for in-line editing , it may be not be the best choice for SAS. Although I haven't tried it much so not a good person to comment on it.
I'm not sure if this is possible, but this is what I'd like to do:
I'd like to create a literate program, hosted on github, and have the resulting human-friendly literature automatically published on my github's project page. By "automatically published," I mean that I can run a script on my local machine that ends with "git push origin master," and ends up with a published human-friendly, math-containing document on github. I'm open to compromises on the procedure to get there, but the simpler, the better.
Many people don't know what literate programming is, so I'll summarize that. It's a system where you write a single document that can be translated into either source code or a human-friendly document. The purpose is to very clearly explain the algorithm, in English (or other natural language), and it is considered useful when users may be as interested in reading about your algorithm as they are in using it directly. Some folks (like Donald Knuth) consider literate programming as a critical tool in building any complex piece of software.
One idea to do this would be to generate something like a README.md file as the output of the literate program, but I don't know of any math support in github's markdown formatting. It looks like github's wikis might support some math, but I don't know how to make the wiki be generated from the code -- as in, I'd like to be able to do a git push origin master from my machine, and have the github wiki automatically updated.
(Also, to understand why math support is important: I'm coming from a world of always using TeX or LaTeX to write papers, and I'm interested in a general system that other authors used to LaTeX could also use.)
Any ideas how to achieve this?
The wikis are backed by their own git repo, so you can push to it and have it automatically update. That's a different repo than the main one though. As far as I know that stuff is only supported in the wikis, not in the main repo markdown processor.
Do you know any resources that teach to good habits of working in UNIX command line?
EDIT: I don't mean general books about shell or man pages. I mean the things that you can only see watching professionals working with command line. For example when changing frequently between two directories they use "pushd" command, when repeating a command they use "history". I can read about these commands but I want to make it a habit to use them effectively.
I am speaking out of my own experience so it may not apply to you;
The best way to be efficient is actually using it on a daily basis, instead of using graphical tools even if they make look things easy. You will then become aware of most common tasks you care about, and instead of trying to grok it at once, you get a fairly good starting point to start learning. Man pages are the first thing to look at, but there will be non-obvious tricks which you need to search anyway. Knowing what you exactly want, infinitely increases probability of finding it.
For example, you can find how to search all mp3 files easier in man page of "find" than how to deal with files in general (where to start?).
Some common bash command line actions, not in order:
Command line editing: you'll want to be good with emacs or vi and apply that to editing your commands.
Completion: use TAB to expand file names and paths.
note: There is a huge set of file, command, and history completion functions, and it is configurable. Big topic.
"cd -" : go back to the last directory you were in
~ = home directory (or ~user for users home dir)
"ESC ." : expands to the final arg from the previous command
"!string" : execute the last command starting with string
learn find, grep, sed, piping "|" and redirection ">". You'll often combine these to do useful things.
Loops from the shell prompt, e.g. "for" loop - to do repetitive actions
Learn your regular expressions! Often used for matching files.
example: ls x[0-5]*.{zip,tar} = list files starting with x, followed by a number 0 through 5, followed by any string ending in .zip or .tar
If possible ask others for their favorite tricks, read the manual, and practice.
For the more advanced stuff This seems to be fairly comprehensive
this is a great resource: "Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition" (http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz)
stackoverflow.com esp. the bash tag ;-)
(and of course the bash man page)
If you want things that you can "only see watching professionals working with command line," then you've answered your own question: Watch professionals working with the command line. I don't personally find that very useful unless the other person is doing the same thing multiple times; it's hard to pick something up after just one session because it's hard to watch the screen and the keyboard at the same time.
I think the key is to not try to become an expert right away. Just use the command line frequently, and be aware that you might not be using it as well as you could, but don't let that discourage you from using it anyway.
Browse through the man page of your shell, and through lists of tips, not with the goal of memorizing everything in them, but just to pick out a couple of things to try out. Skim through until something catches your eye and makes you think, "Gee, that sounds useful." Then try it out. Not everything is going to be useful immediately; you might have to wait a while before you encounter a situation where you can try something out. Maybe you could write down some things on Post-It notes by your desk to remind you that certain feats are possible, so when you encounter a situation where a more obscure feature could be handy, you'll be more likely to remember to try it.
Frankly, it's impossible to learn this stuff in a vacuum. You need to have problems to solve.
While it certainly helps to have familiarity with the tools available (of which there are a myriad), "learning" it requires applying it. And applying it requires "real" problems to solve.
For example, the skillset of a System Admin may be different from someone who works with databases because their roles are different.
I use them for data processing, using mostly one off files. /tmp/x.sh and /tmp/x.x are worn bare in the directory folder.
My hammers tend to lean towards: ls, find, sort, sed, vi, awk, grep, and comm. Combined with simple shell scripting like: for i in cat /tmp/list; do .. done
But I do a lot of ETL work, and very few script files, which is why my shell scripting skills are so weak.
I do rely on one script, however:
#!/bin/sh
# latest -- show latest files
ls -lt $# | head
As 95% of the time the files I'm working on are in the top 10 latest files. And "latest *.txt" works a peach.
So, bottom line, you need problems to solve. You need to learn the 'man' command, man -k is nice to find things. You also need to leverage the "See Also" at the bottom of most man pages. That's a treasure trove of "I didn't know you could do that".
Then, just start solving problems. Start figuring out "what would be nice to have" and then see if it exists (it very well may). If not, awk, perl, or python can make those "nice to haves" out of thin air.
Join a LUG. That is where I learned most things early on. Ask the organizers to do a "Bash Tips And Tricks Night".
Deft shell users love to show off.
apropos is a really good tool for this sort of thing. Whenever you find yourself unsure of the best way to do something, or wishing you weren't repeating yourself, just use apropos with a keyword or two to find other commands that can help. In distros like debian, you can also install web-based help tools that search all of the manuals available on the system: texinfo, man pages, html, and pdf etc.
Aside from that, yep, read your shell's manual right through at least once --- preferably, go back to repeatedly it as you learn more, reach limits and want to be more efficient.
The join a LUG idea is also good; you'll definitely learn from others' demos.
There are thousands of vi tutorials on the web, most of them generically listing all the commands. There are even videos on youtube which show basic functionality.
But does anyone know of a vi tutorial which focuses on the needs of programmers?
For example when I program in Perl with vi, moving to the "next paragraph" is meaningless.
I want to know which commands seasoned vi users combine to e.g:
copy everything inside of parentheses
copy a function
copy and paste a variable (e.g. 2yw)
etc.
I am sure there are lots of functions using multiple-file capability, and the maps, macros, reading in of files for template code, regular expression search, jumping to functions, perhaps minimal code completion, or other features that emulate what programmers have gotten used to in Visual Studio and Eclipse, etc.
A nice collection of vimtips.
And the best Vim cheatsheet around.
I just ended up reading the vim manual a few times, over the years, picking up useful features on each iteration.
One thing that really made vim work for me as a perl IDE was starting to use tags, as explained here: http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=94. Using the pltags script that ships with vim, you can jump around between modules to find your functions, methods, etc.
If you are a beginner, vimtutor would be a good way to start with. (Type vimtutor on your shell and get going).
And once you get hold of the basics of vim, you can look around web and figure out things for yourself.
This and this may be an interesting read.