I am creating a whiteboard application using flex. I want to add a document sharing functionality to the application i.e, the user can upload the documents which will be loaded into the whiteboard and users can annotate over the document.
I googled a lot but still not sure where to start how to start. I only got the idea that the document can be converted to series of images on the server side and can be loaded in to flex app.
Can the experts help me get started with this. I am planning to use java for the server side.
Thanks all.
I'm not sure about uploading files to whiteboard itself. I think it's better to use loader and put your whiteboard on top of it.
What about software to convert documents. I'm not server side programmer, but I can share programs that we are using to convert documents:
Now we are using Print2Flash for almost all documents, but planning to give a chance for iSpring to convert Powerpoint presentations.
Both are live projects, getting improvements often enough and can convert documents to swf files. Personally I like the way Print2Flash provides ability to customize resulting swf with your own patterns and gives great flexibility to interract with it. As I know, nowadays iSpring added AS3 API to converted files, which is huge enhancement, but it's kinda expensive.
And don't forget about OpenOffice. It has not that good converter, but at least it is free. We've used it before, but gave preference to Print2Flash.
Hope my answer will give you a place to start.
Cheers.
Related
Well in general I am new to BizTalk and maintaining a very old setup, BT 2013 R2
Overall I am well versed in .XSLT and feel more comfortable managing xml directly than I do in the BT IDE ( well the vstudio IDE)
So here are a couple generic architecture questions:
What are the steps to manage the maps manually through notepad? I see a lot of code in the .BTM.CS file, but those don't seem to get picked up. I seem to have to change the .BTM file first, then it generates the .BTM.CS
My Map is Huge, I'm working with X12 and there are thousands of fields, what can I do to make this easier? I have to scroll through 10 layers deep just to make anything visible, then expand the map. BT IDE seems to have a big issue dealing with such big files
Also any books anyone can recommend on the subject would be appreciated
I will say this first, I totally understand where you're coming from, but...
You don't, sorry. The BizTalk Visual Studio Project System is an integral part of BizTalk development and you really, really, really should not even try using a text editor. .odx, .btm, .btp are all meta files managed by their respective designers. The .cs files are generated at Build-time so there is not opportunity to modify them at all.
One way to improve Mapper performance is to areas of function into separate Tabs. The rendering of the design surface is the problem so the less to render at once, the better. Even separating direct links and Functoids helps.
Sandro's book is the current standard: BizTalk Mapping Patterns & Best Practices
Johns-305's answer is good - I'd just add that with XSLT in maps you do have the option of setting "Custom XSLT" for the map in the properties window. That can then be pointed to an external (source controlled) XSLT file which you could then edit using any XML/XSLT editor (Visual Studio or not). Just be aware that this option means you won't be able to us any of the visual mapper functionality, and the .btm file will basically just be a pointer to the compiler to use your custom XSLT rather than the XSLT that would be generated by BizTalk. You should not try to manage BizTalk's generated XSLT in this manner - only for cases where you're certain you want to use custom XSLT rather than the visual designer. To do that, open the map in Visual Studio (1), click the grid area (2), and then set the Custom XSLT Path (3):
(It's possible to do that by directly editing the .btm file, but not recommended - I did write a blog a little while back documenting the .btm format for what it's worth though: https://blog.tallan.com/2015/03/26/biztalk-mapper-file-format-btm-documented/.)
For orchestrations, you're out of luck.
I write an application, with Qt and it has a pretty big help system, which is including images, tables, links, etc... This help system is stored on a disk in a specific location as simple HTML files, together with the images and using a QWebkit control it's loaded in the application on request, and the user can browse it, etc...
Now, I would like to move away from my "in-house, file based" help solution, meaning: I want a help system which still will use my HTML files, but without the need to ship 100 files to the user, only 1 or 2.
I am aware of Qt's help system ( http://doc-snapshot.qt-project.org/4.8/qthelp-framework.html ) but I am wondering if there are any other solutions providing the same or similar functionality.
What I am looking for:
take all the HTML files and create one of them, including images
reader possibly embeddable in application, but separate application is good too.
multiplatform
support for context sensitive help (ie: "Click on what's this", help shows relevant page)
For huge help docs the best way is to use Qt Help Framework. For example QAssistant is done in this way.
It mainly consists of several html like files and index files. Then you "compile" them to get a binary(and compressed) version. You can split help in sections and so on...
I am using QWebView to display HTML help files. You get a widget and can integrate it in your application.
Qt have a good easy example here: http://qt-project.org/wiki/Open_Web_Page_in_QWebView
Since it is a widget, you can greate a stand-alone or integrated look and it it very flexible.
I've been having a heckuva time with this problem, and there seems to be a lot of noise out there in search engines in getting to the bottom of it, so forgive me if I've missed a silver bullet out there.
The base need is that I have to generate a PDF document that has both static and dynamic elements. I started to do this by having a PDF template with all the static content, and then I wanted to inject various dynamic elements into it. The problem is that PDFs are not meant to be manipulated that way, and depending on the size of the dynamic text I put in there, might overflow text on other pages. I was using iTextSharp but can't get past this problem.
A possible fallback is to generate a DOCX, which I've done before, and then convert it into a PDF on the backend. The only libraries I've found to do this are paid apps (like Aspose). There are examples out there that convert to PDF without these libraries, but they seem to require a client-side application. I'm doing this via IIS.
To make a long story longer...are there free libraries that will convert a DOCX file to a PDF server-side without launching client applications to do so?
There are a few choices here:
build a COM interop class that will perform read and 'Save As' functions on your .docx. The MSDN link you gave doesn't require to be run client-side, but rather have the Office assemblies in the GAC or in your ASP.NET's bin directory.
buy a third party component to do the work for you. Here's just one example with no guarantees.
I'm not familiar with any good free ones, but we used Aspose.Words to achieve something similar to what you describe. We keep Word templates with static text and mail-merge fields. The templates can be regular Word documents, they don't have to be .dot templates. Mail-merge fields can be either single fields or repeatable data in tables so you can easily generate pretty complex documents without doing dynamic document editing. (Which is always an option)
Using Aspose for this was so friction free that I would suggest using Aspose unless the cost (which is significant) is a show-stopper. The support is also good which is always an added bonus.
There are always some caveats...
I would have liked more control over the PDF compatability of the generated PDFs. We had some issues with older clients reading the generated PDFs.
Mail-merge is not fun. Complex mail-merge expressions was time consuming to get right.
I just found very simple solution to convert any files from command-line using LibreOffice:
soffice.exe --headless --convert-to pdf file.xls
(google for the rest)
Is there any way where i can create a thumbnail image from a flash movie file(flv /swf) [NOT FROM A VIDEO File ] in ASP.NET ? Any samples of implementation ?
you can use ffmpeg to create thumbnails of the flash video
For .flv you can use ffmpeg to convert parts of the video (e.g. one frame) into an image (sequence)
I've used it as command-line application by calling Process.Start(), but there is at least one wrapper for .NET (I haven't tested it myself):
http://www.codeplex.com/ffmpegdotnet
For .swf I don't know any way to achieve this without some Adobe tool.
for flv it can be done easily, as others mentioned ...
for swf, it depends HIGHLY on the swf ... if the swfs visual appearence is determined by code, there is no other way than to embed a flash player in you app and either let the flash player make the snapshots, encode them as JPEG/PNG, and send them somewhere using TCP or LocalConnection (a flash<->flash communication connection, which can be used with C# as well) or try to somehow grab its output buffer yourself ... the first possibility should be no more than 10-20 lines of actionscript code ... don't know about the latter ...
other than that, you might use an external command line converter ... there are a few floating around the web ...
greetz
back2dos
Take a look at this article, it should point you in the right direction. It uses SharpFFmpeg to extract thumbnail images from movie clips from a variety of formats.
the only way to get an image, is to use a full flash client that starts playing and allows you to capture the first frame.
I would take a close look at flirt (they actually have an example that renders pngs)
Maybe some of the other flash libraries may be of help ( swfdec gnash swift tools gplflash)
Gnash is probably the best choice since its the most mature project out there, but i do not know how easy it is to integrate into command line tools or into your own projects.
We have been working on this in my company, and we got a proof of concept working pretty fast (but the project we made it for is on hold right now). I am not able to share the code, but I can give you some pointers.
It is not pure ASP.NET, but maybe you can still use it. We made a windows service that can be called from ASP.NET.
Basicly you install the flash plugin on the server, the windows services can then simply open the swf through the swf ActiveX component and then you can grap a picture of the whole thing. It works pretty well, notice that you do not have to actually render the ActiveX component on screen to capture the picture.
Check out this post. It does not tell you everything but I guess it provides the ground work required for it. You probably have to figure out how to get the object tag out of the flash-html you are trying to download from a web page. After that you'd have to figure out when to capture the frames. Its a long ride however. You don't need the asp.net part. Just concentrate on the windows project part. Hope this helps. :)
I have a Flex application that seems larger than it should be. There is a lot of code in it, but not a lot of assets and it just seems large, but I'm not sure how to go about figuring out where the space is going.
I know about the –link-report option, but it only gives the sizes of externally linked library classes. I'm very interested in seeing a report of the sizes of all the classes and resources in my application and it would be a huge bonus if I could also view their dependencies. Not knowing how the code is compiled I'm not sure if this is even possible, but it seems like it should since the compiler can give me the sizes of individual classes linked from other libraries.
I did some searching around, but couldn't find anything helpful. Everything points to the optimization techniques of modularizing and externally linking libraries, which I understand and will implement, but I would really love some more detailed reports of what my compiled application looks like.
To be clear, I'm not really interested in tips on how to reduce the file size, just a report on what is used for and which classes are referencing what.
Anybody have any ideas?
CORRECTION - The link report does show all classes. My particular project in Flex Builder had several CSS files set to compile to swfs. My link report for the main app was being overwritten by these css compiles!
The link report actually contains all compiled classes and not just the ones in external libraries (at least with the Flex 4 SDK). There is an xsl available that will generate an html file of the link report so it is easier to read.
Check this post: http://blog.iconara.net/2007/02/25/visualizing-mxmlcs-link-report/
There is a command-line utility called flash.swf.tools.SwfxPrinter in swfkit.jar, which comes with Flex Builder (or the plug-in or the SDK) and which you can use to analyze information about class sizes. Joe Berkovitz wrote some good instructions on how to make use of it in his blog, and he was working on an AIR-based GUI tool that leverages it, but I'm not sure if he ever published the tool. Still, you can use his instructions to leverage the utility directly from the JAR.
I found a handy little AIR app that really helps organize the link report info.
http://www.kahunaburger.com/2008/03/08/air-link-report-visualizer/
It's old but still works very well.