Ghasem Kiani's Weblog

Inheritance in JavaScript

2011-12-28T20:58:00.004+03:30

JavaScript makes heavy use of objects, but its inheritance pattern is not like other object-oriented languages. Rather than class-based inheritance, JavaScript uses prototype-based inheritance. Objects are created by calling constructor functions with the new keyword. Every function has a prototype property that points to a prototype object. Any object instance has an implied reference to its prototype object (which may be null as well). Since the prototype is itself an ordinary object, it has a prototype too. This is what is called the prototype chain. When accessing a property of an object, the JavaScript engine tries to locate that property on the object itself. If it is not found on the object, it is searched in its prototype object and so forth.

The following code shows a simple example of using prototype-based inheritance.

  var Shape = function () {};
  Shape.prototype = Object.create(Object.prototype);
  Shape.prototype.area = function () {
    return new Error("Not implemented");
  };
  
  var Rectangle = function (width, height) {
    this.width = width;
    this.height = height;
  };
  Rectangle.prototype = Object.create(Shape.prototype);
  Rectangle.prototype.area = function () {
    return this.width * this.height;
  };
  
  var Square = function (side) {
    Rectangle.apply(this, [side, side]);
  };
  Square.prototype = Object.create(Rectangle.prototype);
  
  var square = new Square(16);
  console.log(square.area()); // prints 256

The Sales Success Handbook

2010-05-20T13:39:00.001+04:30

A few years ago, I had been asked by Adineh Publishing House to translate a book entitled The Sales Success Handbook by Linda Richardson. Recently, I noticed that the book has been published. If you are interested, you can order it online from adinebook.com.

چند سال قبل، مدير محترم انتشارات آدينه از من درخواست كرد كه كتاب موفقيت در فروش نوشته‌ي ليندا ريچاردسون را ترجمه كنم. اخيراً متوجه شدم كه كتاب چاپ شده است. اگر علاقه‌مند باشيد، مي‌توانيد كتاب را از adinebook.com سفارش دهيد.

A Promise from God

2009-09-09T01:30:00.001+04:30

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

وَمَكَرُواْ مَكْراً وَمَكَرْنَا مَكْراً وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ

فَانظُرْ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ مَكْرِهِمْ أَنَّا دَمَّرْنَاهُمْ وَقَوْمَهُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ

فَتِلْكَ بُيُوتُهُمْ خَاوِيَةً بِمَا ظَلَمُواْ إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لَآيَةً لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْلَمُونَ

وَأَنجَيْنَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ وَكَانُواْ يَتَّقُونَ

النمل، 50-53

Recursion and Local Variables in JavaScript

2009-01-22T21:03:00.004+03:30

Consider the following JavaScript code snippet.

function f(x)
{
 var s = "";
 if(x instanceof Array)
 {
  s += "[";
  for(i = 0; i < x.length; i++) s += f(x[i]);
  s += "]";
 }
 else
 {
  s += "(";
  s += x.toString();
  s += ")";
 }
 return s;
}
alert(f([1, [2, 3, 4], 5]));

If you put this code in an HTML page, you will see that it shows the following result:

[(1)[(2)(3)(4)]]

What's wrong with the code?

The problem is that we have not defined the variable i in the for loop as a local variable. When the function f calls itself recursively, the variable i will have a value from the inner call, and the rest of the loop will not be executed in the outer call.

Now, we add var i; before the loop.

function f(x)
{
 var s = "";
 if(x instanceof Array)
 {
  s += "[";
  var i;
  for(i = 0; i < x.length; i++) s += f(x[i]);
  s += "]";
 }
 else
 {
  s += "(";
  s += x.toString();
  s += ")";
 }
 return s;
}
alert(f([1, [2, 3, 4], 5]));

Here is the result:

[(1)[(2)(3)(4)](5)]

Whenever we use recursion in JavaScript, it is particularly important to take into account the scope of local variables.

تراجع و متغيرهاي محلي در جاوااسكريپت

قطعه‌ي كد جاوااسكريپت زير را در نظر بگيريد.

function f(x)
{
 var s = "";
 if(x instanceof Array)
 {
  s += "[";
  for(i = 0; i < x.length; i++) s += f(x[i]);
  s += "]";
 }
 else
 {
  s += "(";
  s += x.toString();
  s += ")";
 }
 return s;
}
alert(f([1, [2, 3, 4], 5]));

اگر اين كد را در يك صفحه‌ي HTML قرار دهيد، مي‌بينيد كه نتيجه‌ي زير را نشان مي‌دهد:

[(1)[(2)(3)(4)]]

مشكل اين متن برنامه در كجا است؟

مسئله آن است كه ما متغير i را در حلقه‌ي for به عنوان يك متغير محلي تعريف نكرده‌ايم. وقتي كه تابع f خودش را به صورت تراجعي فرا مي‌خواند، متغير i از فراخواني داخلي، داراي مقدار خواهد بود و بقيه‌ي حلقه در فراخواني خارجي اجرا نخواهد شد.

حالا يك سطر var i; قبل از حلقه اضافه مي‌كنيم.

function f(x)
{
 var s = "";
 if(x instanceof Array)
 {
  s += "[";
  var i;
  for(i = 0; i < x.length; i++) s += f(x[i]);
  s += "]";
 }
 else
 {
  s += "(";
  s += x.toString();
  s += ")";
 }
 return s;
}
alert(f([1, [2, 3, 4], 5]));

نتيجه از اين قرار است:

[(1)[(2)(3)(4)](5)]

هر گاه در جاوااسكريپت از تراجع استفاده مي‌كنيم، اين موضوع اهميت خاصي دارد كه به قلمرو متغيرهاي محلي توجه كنيم.

The Brass Verdict

2008-11-18T09:18:00.001+03:30

The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly, is an account of corruption and hypocrisy. Featuring both Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller, it is, to some extent, reminiscent of Personal Injuries, by Scott Turow. The name refers to the brass jacket of rounds shot from a German-made Mauser gun.

I have read all of the fiction books by Michael Connelly, and this seems to be the best so far. Before that, I read the Hot Mahogany, the latest Stone Barrington novel, by Stuart Woods. (Ironically, I have read almost all previous books featuring this character, but in reverse order. Can you believe it?) Stuart Woods is certainly a great author, but, in my opinion, Michael Connelly is a lot better. More and more, he succeeds in polishing and advancing the genre of noir detective fiction.

The overwhelming cliché in Harry Bosch novels is the corrupt police. The idea behind the Lincoln Lawyer was a true villain, a real and heinous evil being. Though I hate to write spoilers, suffice it to say that this new one is about corruption on another level of authority. My point is that this book refers to a very relevant topic considering the actual state of our society. I did relish this novel and I do recommend it to all readers interested in crime fiction.

Musings on Writing

2008-09-15T12:52:00.000+04:30

I am currently reading “The Bourne Sanction” by Eric Van Lustbader and Robert Ludlum. It is a really good book. I haven’t read the three previous Bourne installments, but I have watched their respective movies. I wished I had read those three books that have been written by the late Ludlum himself, so that I can do a better appraisal of the prose of this book. Nevertheless, it has a superb prose and I like it very much.

Thrillers like other kinds of literary work consist of several dimensions. One dimension is the element of suspense and plot. No objection to that. But the prose is important, as well. One of my favorite authors, who is a bestselling author in the thriller genre, does not enjoy a particular power in writing fluent prose. This I regret. He is my real favorite because of his school of thought and so on.

The importance of the element of balance cannot be overemphasized. I hate books laden with lengthy, descriptive passages which are of no avail to the main objective of the book. There are plenty of such compulsory writers, some of them even famous in literary circles. But for someone like me who is interested in good thriller books, the artistic element of the book must be in a delicate balance with its being a hilarious thriller.

The element of humor and the writer’s personality sometimes gets very outstanding and ruins the book to some extent. The mood and morality of the author should not be conspicuous in a fiction book. This is another place where balance plays an important role.

So much for musing in a field I have no expertise in. Today, I became 38. On to a better year I hope.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-08-03T20:51:00.000+03:30

Last week I finished reading the seventh book in the Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", and it was a very pleasurable experience. Since I am not going to spoil your reading of the book, I don't make any remarks as to the plot of the book. Ever since the publication of previous volume of the saga, which I have translated into Persian and you can download it for free, I occasionally worried that the last volume may disappoint me. There were some loose ends in the previous tomes, which couldn't help but make me more anxious to read the last installment. Well, here it is-much better than I could ask for.

While I was reading the seventh book, I got a feeling that it was written in a more fluent language, with lesser use of "dictionary" and "strictly British" words. This makes its translation much simpler. A word of thanks is due to Ms. Rowling for this! Moreover, this volume, enjoying a coherent and compelling plot, is a real page-turner. The ending is almost as I wished it to be. Since I don't like to read fan fiction, I am looking forward to reading more books written by JK Rowling in the future.

The Persian translations that sprang into being all over the net immediately after the release of the book (even before its release in some instances) prevented me form considering this volume for translation. There are a lot of good books out there waiting to be translated (and to be read, I hope—though, sometimes, the lack of book reading in my country is disappointing!)…

«هري پاتر و يادگارهاي مرگ»

هفته‌ي گذشته كتاب هفتم مجموعه‌ي هري پاتر را، كه ترجمه‌ي پيشنهادي من براي عنوان آن «هري پاتر و يادگارهاي مرگ» است، خواندم و بايد بگويم كه كتاب بسيار خوبي بود. البته قصد ندارم به ماجراي داستان اشاره كنم تا لذت كساني را كه هنوز نخوانده‌اند، از بين نبرم. از زمان انتشار جلد قبلي، هميشه ترسم اين بود كه آخرين كتاب داستان خوبي نداشته باشد و توقعات زيادي را كه از هري پاتر در خوانندگان پيدا شده است، بر آورده نكند. علاوه بر اين، معماهاي حل نشده‌اي در جلد قبل مطرح شده بود كه اشتياق مرا براي خواندن جلد آخر بيشتر مي‌كرد. بالاخره كتاب منتشر شد و حتي از حد انتظار من هم بهتر بود.

در حين خواندن كتاب هفتم، احساس كردم كه اين جلد روان‌تر نوشته شده و كمتر از كلمات لغتنامه‌اي و «مطلقاً بريتانيايي» استفاده كرده است. به نظر من، در اين مورد بايد از خانم رولينگ سپاسگزار باشيم! به علاوه، اين جلد از داستاني همخوان و گيرا برخوردار است كه سبب مي‌شود كتاب را نتوان در حين خواندن به سادگي زمين گذاشت. پايان داستان تقريباً همان جوري است كه من آرزويش را داشتم. چون من از خواندن كتاب‌هاي هواداران (fan fiction) خوشم نمي‌آيد، اميدوارم در آينده نيز كتاب‌هاي بيشتري از جي.كي. رولينگ بخوانم.

از اولين لحظات انتشار كتاب هفتم (و در برخي از موارد، حتي از قبل از انتشار رسمي كتاب)، ترجمه‌هاي متعددي به زبان فارسي در اينترنت ظاهر شد، و همين امر سبب شد كه من حتي فكر ترجمه كردن اين جلد را به سرم راه ندهم. كتاب‌هاي خوب زيادي براي ترجمه هست (البته اميدوارم كه خواننده هم داشته باشد—بعضي وقت‌ها كم بودن كتابخواني در ايران خيلي آزارم مي‌دهد!)…

Harry Potter

2007-07-08T10:35:00.001+03:30

متن كامل هري پاتر 6 ترجمه‌ي قاسم كياني مقدم

متن كامل هري پاتر 6 با عنوان «هري پاتر و پرنس نيمه‌اصيل» را مي‌توانيد از اينجا دريافت كنيد.

پس از رفتن به صفحه‌ي مذكور، روي لينك Download file كليك كنيد.

كتاب با فرمت PDF است و حجم آن 5,978 كيلوبايت است.

Thrillers

2007-02-16T20:45:00.000+03:30

A Few Great Books

Michael Crichton's "Next" is about a not-so-distant future when genetic engineering has encroached every aspect of our life. As usual, the author warns us about the uninhibited progress of science. I enjoyed this book much better than the "State of Fear". Like many of the novels by Crichton, the characters seem to be one-dimensional, almost soulless, but the events are very entertaining, and the science interspersed in the book is informative.

"Next" has a unique tinge of humor which I have not seen in other books by Crichton. In a certain part of the book, a company which has claimed ownership of a cell line derived from the cells of a patient's body, employs a bounty hunter to acquire another sample from the body of that patient or his progeny, claiming that the cells in their body also belongs to that company. It seems improbable that any jurisdiction may ever reach to such a ridiculous conclusion, but this is humorous anyway, and I think I can understand the logic behind it. Overall, this seems to be one of the best books by Michael Crichton. I recommend it to every reader interested in technothrillers.

Michael Connelly is my favorite author of crime and legal thrillers. I have read every book in the Harry Bosch series, and I have enjoyed all of them. "The Lincoln Lawyer" is a legal thriller, even better than many of his other books. This book features Mickey Haller, Harry's half-brother, who is a defense attorney. Haller used to think that the worst client for a defense attorney is an innocent client. But he encounters another kind of client who is much worse, a really evil man. The Lincoln Lawyer is the best book I have read for some time.

Tess Gerritsen is another author who has used the theme of evil perps in her books. Her novels enjoy a robust balance of character development and page-turning plots. After reading The Surgeon and The Apprentice, I can't help but to start reading the third book in the Jane Rizzoli series, The Sinner. The problem is, I see a lot of true evilness in her books, but there is little sign of true righteousness. For one thing, Jane Rizzoli does a lot of attempt to prove herself, to get credit for the works she does. I do like real-looking characters, with a natural blend of strong and weak points. But I think there is some place for true virtue and good in her books. Rizzoli should have more valuable drives for her works than just "proving herself." Anyway, Gerritsen is a great author and has a great, useful blog which I usually read on a regular basis. And she has many other bestseller works which I plan to read in the near fututre. Maybe I'll change my mind after reading them.

چند كتاب خوب

كتاب «بعدي» اثر مايكل كرايتون در باره‌ي آينده‌ي نه چندان دوري است كه در آن، مهندسي ژنتيك بر تمام جنبه‌هاي زندگي ما چنگ انداخته است. طبق معمول، مؤلف در اين كتاب در باره‌ي پيشرفت افسارگسيخته‌ي علم هشدار مي‌دهد. اين كتاب به نظر من بهتر از «وضعيت ترس» بود. البته، مانند خيلي از رمان‌هاي ديگر كرايتون، شخصيت‌ها يك‌بعدي و تقريباً بي‌روح به نظر مي‌رسند، ليكن رويدادها بسيار جذاب هستند، و نكات علمي پراكنده در لابلاي كتاب نيز آموزنده است.

كتاب «بعدي» با شوخ‌طبعي خاصي همراه است كه در كتاب‌هاي ديگر كرايتون به ندرت به چشم مي‌خورد. در يك جاي داستان، شركتي كه مالك يك رده‌ي سلولي به دست آمده از سلول‌هاي بدن يك بيمار شناخته شده است، افرادي را اجير مي‌كند كه مجدداً از بدن آن بيمار يا فرزندانش نمونه بگيرند، چون معتقد است سلول‌هاي موجود در بدن آنها نيز به آن شركت تعلق دارند. بعيد است كار دستگاه قضايي در آينده به دادن چنين حكم مضحكي بكشد، ولي به هر حال، اين قسمت داستان مفرح است و به گمانم مي‌توانم منطق نهفته در اين رويداد عجيب را درك كنم. روي هم رفته، به نظر مي‌رسد كه اين كتاب يكي از بهترين كتابهاي مايكل كرايتون است. من آن را به هر خواننده‌ي علاقه‌مند به داستان‌هاي علمي و فناوري توصيه مي‌كنم.

مايكل كانلي نويسنده‌ي مورد علاقه‌ي من در ژانر رمان‌هاي جنايي و حقوقي است. من تقريباً تمام كتاب‌هاي سري «هري بوش» را خوانده‌ام و برايم بسيار جذاب بودند. «وكيل ليموزين‌سوار» يكي از داستان‌هاي حقوقي او است كه حتي از كتاب‌هاي ديگرش هم بهتر است. در اين كتاب، با ميكي هالر، برادر ناتني هري بوش، كه يك وكيل مدافع است، ملاقات مي‌كنيم. هالر هميشه فكر مي‌كرد بدترين موكلي كه ممكن است به تورش بخورد، موكلي است كه واقعاً بي‌گناه باشد. ولي در اين كتاب با نوع بسيار بدتري از موكل رو به رو مي‌شود. فردي كه شرارت در نهاد او جاي گرفته است. «وكيل ليموزين‌سوار» بهترين كتابي است كه در اين اواخر خوانده‌ام.

تس گريتسن يكي ديگر از نويسندگاني است كه در كتاب‌هايش از بزهكاران شرور استفاده مي‌كند. رمان‌هاي او از تعادل خوبي بين شخصيت‌پردازي و وقايع پركشش برخوردار است. من اخيراً كتاب‌هاي «جراح» و «شاگرد» او را خواندم و بي‌صبرانه منتظر فرصتم تا خواندن سومين كتاب در سري «جين ريزولي» را، كه «گناهكار» نام دارد، آغاز كنم. مسئله اين است كه در كتاب‌هاي او شرارت واقعي زياد به چشم مي‌خورد، ولي كمتر اثري از خوبي مطلق يافت مي‌شود. مثلاً جين ريزولي هميشه در پي آن است كه موفقيت‌هاي كارآگاهي‌اش به نام كس ديگري ثبت نشود. البته من از كاراكترهاي واقعي كه تركيب متوازني از نقاط قوت و ضعف داشته باشند، بدم نمي‌آيد. ولي فكر مي‌كنم جاي خير مطلق در داستان‌هاي او تا حدودي خالي است. ريزولي بايد انگيزه‌هايي بالاتر از «اثبات كردن خود» براي كارهايش داشته باشد. در هر حال، گريتسن نويسنده‌ي بزرگي است و وبلاگ ارزشمندي نيز دارد كه من معمولاً به طور مرتب مطالب آن را مطالعه مي‌كنم. او كتاب‌هاي پرفروش متعدد ديگري نيز دارد كه تصميم دارم در آينده‌ي نزديك بخوانم. شايد آن موقع نظرم در باره‌ي آثار او عوض شود.

Reflections about Books and Publishing Industry in Iran

2006-04-09T13:12:00.000+03:30

My first acquaintance with books dates back to ca. 1973, when I was a 3-year-old child. My elder sister used to read or recount some books for us, and one of those books has remained very vividly in my memory: "The Story of Doctor Doolittle" by Hugh Lofting. At those days in the small town of Boshruyeh, my sister used to borrow books from the General Library. Now that I think about what I recall of those days, it is quite clear for me that book reading was more widespread in our community in those days.

I continued to enjoy books, especially fiction books, into school years. But the crucial point was in 1980 when I was introduced--this time personally--to the General Library of Boshruyeh. Since that memorable day when a cousin of mine told me about the library until today, I have not spent a single day without reading books.

I was especially interested in novels, and they were mostly classic works, like Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens and The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson. A large number of these books were published by an institute called the Center for Translation and Publication of Books, which changed its name after the 1979 revolution. What is noteworthy about those books is that they were "authorized" translations, in contrast to most foreign books which are translated and published in these days, since these latter books are generally published without observing the international Copyright law.

Even when I was a little schoolboy, I dreamed of creating books. Some times, I used Handicopy papers to create a few copies of a tale I had invented and illustrated myself (though I never was much of a painter), and thought of handing out those copies as books to my classmates!

Now, I have eventually found the opportunity to translate and publish a few books. And there is the all-important issue of Copyright in Iran.

Unfortunately, the international Copyright law is not enforced in Iran. Maybe one of the most profitable parts of the book industry in Iran is the offset-printing and distribution of foreign books. This doesn't even entail a little creative work and it should surely be forbidden by the government.

As a translator, I would like that my books be published after the authorization of the Author and the original Publisher. But the situation in Iran is so that this does not seem to be practical. For one thing, a novel book may not sell more that 2,000 copies (say, $4 a copy), and this hardly exceeds the expenses the publisher has sustained for publishing it. But it may be better to negotiate for a symbolic agreement at the very least. Anyway, I am not a publisher.

It should be noted that while honorable creators and publishers may not be able to pay for royalties to acquire the authorization for publication of a foreign book in Iran, there are some people who have misused the current situation to earn very large amounts of money without doing the slightest creative work, by just publishing the original book without paying the royalties.

I understand that the prices of foreign books are generally so high that an average student in Iran can not usually pay for them. But the government has always allocated some money for buying foreign books for students, and that seems the proper way, because it does not infringe the international laws.

I hope the copyright law is established in Iran very soon, so that the rights of foreign authors and publishers are not wasted in this country.

The Broker by John Grisham

2006-01-19T09:06:00.000+03:30

The Persian translation of "The Broker" by John Grisham was published.

ترجمه‌ي «سوداگر» آخرين اثر جان گريشام منتشر شد.

1. خلاصه

جوئل بكمن، تا قبل از آنكه به خاطر خيانت (و اتهامات ديگر) به زندان فدرال فرستاده شود، مرد بسيار قدرتمندي بود. او كه به «سوداگر» شهرت يافته بود، ساليانه 10 ميليون دلار درآمد داشت و «مي‌توانست هر دري را در واشنگتن بگشايد». البته تا آنكه تلاش كرد معامله‌اي جور كند و دسترسي به قوي‌ترين سيستم ماهواره‌اي جهان را به بالاترين قيمت واگذار كند. وقتي بكمن را گرفتند، زندان را به عنوان تنها گزينه‌اي كه مي‌توانست او را زنده و سالم نگه دارد، پذيرفت، چون طرف‌هاي درگير (اسرائيلي‌ها، سعودي‌ها، روس‌ها، و چيني‌ها) همگي در صدد بودند به هر قيمتي به راز او دست يابند. غافل از آنكه دولت كشور خودش هم برنامه‌هايي براي دست يافتن به آن اطلاعات-يا لااقل دفن كردن آن اطلاعات با خود او-دارد. اينك، شش سال پس از زنداني شدن بكمن، رئيس سيا رئيس‌جمهور درمانده را متقاعد مي‌كند كه بكمن را عفو كند و سوداگر يك مرد آزاد مي‌شود-و يا در واقع يك هدف آزاد.

سوداگر بهترين قابليت‌هاي جان گريشام را در يك جا جمع كرده است-توانايي غرق شدن در فرهنگ يك شهر كوچك (در اين مورد، بولونياي ايتاليا)، و مهارت انكارناپذير در تعقيب و گريز. نيمه‌ي اول كتاب به شرح مبدل شدن بكمن از سوداگري بدنام به يك قرباني درمانده در بازي خودش اختصاص دارد. بكمن را پس از آزاد شدن، تحت‌الحفظ به ايتاليا مي‌برند و هويتي جديد به او مي‌دهند تا با محيط ممزوج شود. در آنجا، خوانندگان در سفري سينماوار به اطراف ايتاليا با او همراه مي‌شوند، كه با فراگيري زبان ايتاليايي و نكاتي در باره‌ي تاريخ ايتاليا نيز تكميل مي‌شود. نيمه‌ي دوم كتاب، به سبك و سياق كلاسيك گريشام، تعقيب و گريزي از نوع موش و گربه است كه در آن بكمن سعي مي‌كند از دست سازمان‌هاي متعدد جاسوسي كه در پي او هستند، جان سالم به در ببرد و زندگي خود را از سر گيرد. (نقد دافنه دورهام، برگرفته از آمازون)

2. مشخصات كتاب

عنوان: سوداگر
عنوان اصلي: The Broker
مؤلف: جان گريشام
مترجم: دكتر قاسم كياني مقدم
ناشر: اميد مهر
نوبت چاپ: اول، 1384
شمارگان: 3000 جلد
قيمت: 37000 ريال
شابك: 9648605386
نشاني انتشارات اميد مهر: سبزوار، پاساژ ارم، طبقه‌ي همكف
صندوق پستي: 453
تلفن و دورنگار: 2234595
تلفن همراه: 09151710360

3. نحوه‌ي تهيه

گزيده‌اي از كتاب را مي‌توانيد به رايگان از نشاني زير دريافت كنيد:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/persian-library/files/brokerexcerpt.pdf

براي اطلاعات بيشتر مي‌توانيد به وبلاگ مترجم در نشاني زير مراجعه كنيد:

http://ghasemkiani.blogspot.com

براي تهيه‌ي كتاب با انتشارات اميد مهر (تلفن همراه 09151710360) تماس بگيريد و يا به مراكز پخش مراجعه فرماييد.

در ضمن، هر گونه نظر و پيشنهاد خود را مي‌توانيد براي مترجم با پست الكترونيك به نشاني ghasemkiani@gmail.com بفرستيد.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2005-07-19T21:41:00.000+04:30

Today, I finished reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling. It turns out that the "Half-Blood Prince" was the same person I had read in a forum some time ago (with particularly accurate inferences), but my most favourite character in this series died -- or, rather, became a victim of his generous tolerance and confidence in people that don't deserve that much of optimism and confidence from him. What a pity!

London Bridges by James Patterson

2005-07-15T17:18:00.001+04:30

There is a certain similarity between the unfortunate bombings in London and the fiction in "London Bridges" by James Patterson. This is an opportunity for me to write a few lines about this book.

What bothers me about James Patterson is that his books are just for entertainment, they don't give you more insight about life or anything else whatsoever. And in this book, the writer's view about terrorism and its roots are not very clear and convincing.

Recently, I read "The Forgotten Man" by Robert Crais, and I think I have finally found a writer who is to some extent like Raymond Chandler, whom I adore.

در ضمن، در حالي كه منتظر انتشار ششمين كتاب هري پاتر هستم، وبلاگ جديدي با عنوان «هري پاتر به زبان فارسي» درست كرده‌ام تا در باره‌ي ترجمه‌ي آن مطالبي بنويسم. علاقه‌مندان مي‌توانند به آنجا هم مراجعه كنند.

Cyclothymia

2005-06-27T11:33:00.000+04:30

Sometimes I get the impression that I have some minor form of cyclothymia (just the impression, I don't believe I do!). And now, it is one of those periods that I have a somewhat depressed mood. Usually when I do not have so much energy to entertain myself with the usual tasks of my life, I think about myself, life, loneliness, and so on.

One of the main subjects that I think about is the ends I am seeking in my life. I know some people who have very clear ends: money, fame, and anything else that pertains to them. The problem with me is that I do not feel satisfied with money, celebrity, or being respected.

Sometimes, I ask myself, "If I do not like to be respected by other people, do I like to be humiliated by them?" Surely, this is not what I am seeking. I mean I do not like to be humiliated, but on the other hand, other people's respect (or fear) towards me does not satisfy me. It's not an important end for me. When I think too much, it becomes clear that what I do really want is my love towards other people and their love towards me. But, doesn't this way of thinking have a flaw? Maybe it does. There are people whom I cannot love easily - people who are jealous, people who are intruding, people who do not have the capacity to love other people. This is the main challenge of my life: how to love other people and how to consider all of them worthy of loving.

My New Book

2005-04-11T19:16:00.000+04:30

This post is in Persian. Please stay tuned for future posts in English.

طعمه نوشته‌ي مايكل كرايتون

در بيابان نوادا، يك آزمايش تحقيقاتي به گرفتاري بزرگي منجر شده است. ابري از نانوذره‌ها - ريزروبوت‌ها - از آزمايشگاه گريخته است. اين ابر خودمختار است و قدرت توليد مثل دارد. هوشمند است و به تجربه ياد مي‌گيرد. عملاً يك موجود زنده است.
اين موجود به عنوان شكارچي برنامه‌نويسي شده است. به سرعت تكامل مي‌يابد، و با گذشت هر ساعت، مرگبارتر مي‌شود.
هر تلاشي براي نابودي آن با شكست مواجه شده است.
و ما طعمه‌ي اين شكارچي هستيم.

رمان «طعمه» نوشته‌ي مايكل كرايتون به فارسي ترجمه و منتشر شد.

مشخصات كتاب

نام	طعمه
نويسنده	مايكل كرايتون
مترجم	قاسم كياني مقدم
ناشر	انتشارات اميد مهر
تعداد صفحات	432
شابك	964-8605-19-X

اين كتاب از طريق كتابفروشي‌هاي تهران جهت علاقه‌مندان عرضه مي‌شود. براي كسب اطلاعات بيشتر، با نشاني‌هاي زير تماس بگيريد:

پست الكترونيك	`ghasemkiani@gmail.com`
تلفن (7 تا 9 عصر)	05712238144

توضيح

براي بحث در باره‌ي اين كتاب، مي‌توانيد در گروه زير عضو شويد:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/persian-library

در ضمن، خواهشمندم هر گونه نظرات خود را با اينجانب از طريق نشاني پست الكترونيك فوق در ميان گذاريد.

My Email Address

2005-04-08T16:06:00.000+04:30

I have lost my account at Yahoo after about 5 years! Now I use the same ID at Gmail. Of course I liked Gmail from the beginning, but because of some stuff in Yahoo groups, I continued to use Yahoo for some time.

Iran Books House

2005-03-07T16:57:00.000+03:30

This is one of the few really useful Iranian sites. I really enjoy using it. You can search data of all published books in iran in this site.

2005-03-07T01:10:00.000+03:30

ICU4J-based Implementation of the Persian Calendar

IBM's International Components for Unicode (Java version) or ICU4J enhances the I18n capabilities of Java in many ways. Since it is based on the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), it is especially useful for Persian-language applications (noting that the support for Persian is rudimentary in Java's native locales). But there is another important reason for using ICU4J for implementing a Persian calendar: The newer releases of ICU4J have reworked the calendar framework, so that, contrary to the Calendar class in the java.util package, much of the functionality has been embedded in the base class. For example, no longer should we worry about DST or weekdays. They are already worked out. The only thing one should implement is the peculiarities of the specific kind of calendar at hand -- here the Persian calendar.

The version 2.0 of my prersiancalendar Java program contains an implementation of the Persian calendar based on ICU4J, version 3.2. It formats and parses dates for many locales besides Persian.

A new update will be released in the near future, containing a bug fix for the SimplePersianCalendar class (which is, in fact, a deprecated class now) and some more locales for the ICU4J-based PersianCalendar class.

One important note is indispensable here: I have used an arithmetic algorithm for calculation of the leap years, which was apparently devised by the late Ahmad Birashk. Although this algorithm is valid for many hundreds of years, the formal definition of the Persian calendar is astronomical. To implement the calendar astronomically, we must be able to calculate the accurate time of the vernal equinox (the time when the solar longitude is 0). The current version of the class com.ibm.icu.impl.CalendarAstronomer is not very accurate, since it only considers the Keplerian gravitational effect of Sun and Earth and ignores the disturbances caused by other celestial bodies (of course there may be other things as well, but I am not particularly knowledgeable in astronomy). I used this class to calculate the time of the spring equinox in the next Persian year (1384) and it had a discrepancy with the magnitude order of many minutes with what has been announced by the Geophysics Institute of the Tehran University. Currently I am working on this.

I would like to thank Mr. Paul Hastings from Sustainable GIS Co. for his valuable suggestions and contributions. He has added the new Persian calendar to their calendar test bed. He has also promised to provide me with a Thai localization of the Persian month names, which will be a great enhancement to this program.

2005-02-12T19:08:00.000+03:30

Using Gmail's SMTP and POP3 Services

If you have a Gmail account, you can activate POP3 access to your mailbox. Then you can configure Outlook 2003 to access and retrieve your incoming mails. Information for configuring other mail clients is provided here.

2005-02-10T06:42:00.000+03:30

Using SVG in Servlets and JavaServer Pages

The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a language used for creating vector (as opposed to raster) graphics, including shapes, images, and text. Since this format is based on the extensible markup language (XML), it can be extremely useful in web page authoring.

But the problem is that most of the current browsers do not have built-in support for SVG. Currently, this support is added through plug-ins, e.g. the Adobe SVG viewer. I don't know what percentage of internet users have installed an SVG plug-in. So it seems that if we are going to use SVG in our web pages in a practical way, we must rasterize the image before sending the page to the client (though this makes it an ordinary image, not a vector graphic!).

This can be easily done in JSP pages using the library of the Apache Batik project. I have done this and I present the code below. (Please note that the code for this post is released under the GNU General Public License and that there is no warranty as to its correctness or usability.)

Conversion of the SVG source into an image in PNG format may make problems in a case of simultaneous access. So, a noCache attribute has been devised for the <h:svg> tag, so that we can turn on/off the conversion. The best way would be to use noCache="true" while the page is under development, and then turn off conversion with noCache="false" when our images have taken their permanent form.

The full source of my simple application (svgtest) is shown below. But please keep in mind that you need the following libraries to get this application running:

Batik jar file(s) (may be a single or multiple jar files depending on your build target). I have used batik 1.5.
JSTL (jstl.jar, standard.jar)
Xerces XML parser (xerces_2_3_0.jar). This is included with the batik distribution linked above.

Needless to say, the jar files go to the TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/lib directory.

Figure 1. The graphics on this page have been created using SVG. Particularly, the three hiragana and kanji characters comprising the Japanese phrase for "Good day!" (今日は) (konnichi wa in rōmaji) have been rendered graphically to ensure their proper appearance even on machines lacking suitable unicode fonts.

The source code for this simple application follows.

TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/index.jspx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!--
	Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani.
	License: GPL.
-->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:fn="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:page="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/page" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html" />
<c:set scope="page" value="${true}" var="debug" />
<c:set property="characterEncoding" target="${pageContext.request}" value="UTF-8" />
<c:set property="characterEncoding" target="${pageContext.response}" value="UTF-8" />
<page:simple title="SVG Test">
<div style="direction: rtl; background-color: white;">
<c:set scope="page" value="تصوير" var="text1" />
<p>
<h:img noCacheSvg="${debug}" src="/title.png">
<jsp:attribute name="svg">
<svg height="25mm" width="100mm" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<defs>
<filter filterUnits="objectBoundingBox" height="1.4" id="dropShadow" width="1.4">
<feGaussianBlur in="SourceAlpha" stdDeviation="4" />
<feOffset dx="4" dy="4" />
<feComponentTransfer result="shadow">
<feFuncA intercept="0" slope="0.5" type="linear" />
</feComponentTransfer>
</filter>
<filter id="emboss">
<feGaussianBlur in="SourceAlpha" result="blur" stdDeviation="2" />
<feSpecularLighting in="blur" kernelUnitLength="1" result="spec" specularConstant="1" specularExponent="16" style="lighting-color:white" surfaceScale="-3">
<feDistantLight azimuth="45" elevation="45" />
</feSpecularLighting>
<feComposite in="spec" in2="SourceGraphic" operator="in" result="specOut" />
</filter>
</defs>
<g style="font-size: 20mm; font-family: b nasim; font-weight: bold; text-anchor: end;">
<text style="filter:url(#dropShadow)" x="95%" y="66.667%">
${text1}
</text>
<text style="fill:rgb(172,20,20)" x="95%" y="66.667%">
${text1}
</text>
<text style="filter:url(#emboss)" x="95%" y="66.667%">
${text1}
</text>
</g>
</svg>
</jsp:attribute>
</h:img>
</p>
<h:roundrect fill="lightblue" id="mytest1" noCache="true" r="25" stroke="orange" strokeWidth="3">
<div style="direction: rtl; margin: 1mm;">
<p>
<strong>
كلماتي كه ممكن است در مرورگر شما درست نمايش داده نشوند، به صورت تصوير نشان داده مي‌شوند. مانند 
<h:img noCacheSvg="${debug}" src="/konnichiwa.png">
<jsp:attribute name="svg">
<svg height="1em" width="3em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<rect fill="lightblue" height="100%" stroke-width="0" width="100%" x="0" y="0" />
<text x="0" y="90%">
&amp;#20170;&amp;#26085;&amp;#12399;
</text>
</svg>
</jsp:attribute>
</h:img>
كه معنايش مي‌شود روز به خير!
</strong>
</p>
</div>
</h:roundrect>
</div>
</page:simple>
</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/svg.tagx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!--
	Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani.
	License: GPL.
-->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="image" required="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="noCache" type="java.lang.Boolean" />
<c:set scope="page" var="svg">
<jsp:doBody />
</c:set>
<jsp:declaration>
<![CDATA[
	class PngMaker extends org.apache.batik.transcoder.image.PNGTranscoder
	{
		public boolean convert(String svgUri, String png)
		{
			java.io.OutputStream os;
			org.apache.batik.bridge.DocumentLoader dl = new org.apache.batik.bridge.DocumentLoader(userAgent);
			try
			{
				org.w3c.dom.svg.SVGDocument doc = (org.w3c.dom.svg.SVGDocument)dl.loadDocument(svgUri);
				os = new java.io.BufferedOutputStream(new java.io.FileOutputStream(png));
				transcode(doc, null, new org.apache.batik.transcoder.TranscoderOutput(os));
				os.flush();
				os.close();
				return true;
			}
			catch(Exception e)
			{
				System.out.println(e.getMessage());
				return false;
			}
		}
	}
  ]]>
</jsp:declaration>
<jsp:scriptlet>
<![CDATA[
	String png = application.getRealPath(String.valueOf(getJspContext().getAttribute("image")));
	boolean noCache = new Boolean(String.valueOf(getJspContext().getAttribute("noCache"))).booleanValue();
	if(noCache || ! new java.io.File(png).exists())
	{
		java.io.File dir = new java.io.File(application.getRealPath("/WEB-INF/temp"));
		if(!dir.exists()) dir.mkdir();
		java.io.File f = java.io.File.createTempFile("src", ".svg", dir);
		f.deleteOnExit();
		java.io.BufferedWriter bw = new java.io.BufferedWriter(new java.io.OutputStreamWriter(new java.io.FileOutputStream(f), "UTF-8"));
		bw.write("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>");
		bw.write(String.valueOf(getJspContext().getAttribute("svg")));
		bw.close();
		new PngMaker().convert(f.toURI().toString(), png);
	}
  ]]>
</jsp:scriptlet>
</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/img.tagx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!--
	Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani.
	License: GPL.
-->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:fn="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" dynamic-attributes="dyn" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="src" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="svg" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="noCacheSvg" type="java.lang.Boolean" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="params" type="java.util.Map" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="alt" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="title" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="style" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="styleId" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="styleClass" />
<c:url scope="page" value="${src}" var="url" />
<c:if test="${not empty svg}">
<h:svg image="${src}" noCache="${noCacheSvg}">
${svg}
</h:svg>
</c:if>
<img alt="${alt}" class="${styleClass}" id="${styleId}" src="${url}" style="${style}" title="${title}">
<jsp:doBody />
</img>
</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/roundrect.tagx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!--
	Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani.
	License: GPL.
-->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="id" required="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="fill" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="stroke" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="strokeWidth" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="r" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="width" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="height" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="body" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="noCache" />
<c:if test="${empty fill}">
<c:set scope="page" value="none" var="fill" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty stroke}">
<c:set scope="page" value="black" var="stroke" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty strokeWidth}">
<c:set scope="page" value="1" var="strokeWidth" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty r}">
<c:set scope="page" value="5" var="r" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty width}">
<c:set scope="page" value="auto" var="width" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty height}">
<c:set scope="page" value="auto" var="height" />
</c:if>
<c:if test="${empty body}">
<c:set scope="page" var="body">
<jsp:doBody />
</c:set>
</c:if>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="direction: ltr; width: ${width}; height: ${height};">
<tr>
<h:svg image="/${id}nw.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="100%" cy="100%" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}nw.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}nw.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}n.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="50%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="100%" x="0" y="50%" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="0" x2="100%" y1="50%" y2="50%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}n.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&amp;nbsp;
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}ne.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="0" cy="100%" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}ne.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}ne.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<h:svg image="/${id}w.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="100%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="50%" x="50%" y="0" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="50%" x2="50%" y1="0" y2="100%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}w.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&amp;nbsp;
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}c.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="100%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="100%" x="0" y="0" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}c.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg}); vertical-align: top;">
<jsp:text>
${body}
</jsp:text>
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}e.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="100%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="50%" x="0" y="0" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="50%" x2="50%" y1="0" y2="100%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}e.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&amp;nbsp;
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: ${r};">
<h:svg image="/${id}sw.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="100%" cy="0" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}sw.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}sw.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}s.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<rect fill="${fill}" height="50%" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${0}" width="100%" x="0" y="0" />
<line stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" x1="0" x2="100%" y1="50%" y2="50%" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}s.png" var="bg" />
<td style="background: url(${bg});">
&amp;nbsp;
</td>
<h:svg image="/${id}se.png" noCache="${noCache}">
<svg height="${r}" width="${r}" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<circle cx="0" cy="0" fill="${fill}" r="${r/2}" stroke="${stroke}" stroke-width="${strokeWidth}" />
</svg>
</h:svg>
<c:url value="/${id}se.png" var="bg" />
<td style="width: ${r};">
<h:img src="/${id}se.png" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; width: ${r}; height: ${r};" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/tags/page/simple.tagx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>
<!--
	Copyright © 2005, Ghasem Kiani.
	License: GPL.
-->
<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page">
<jsp:directive.attribute name="title" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="head" />
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=${pageContext.response.characterEncoding}" http-equiv="Content-Type" />
<meta content="no-cache" http-equiv="pragma" />
<c:if test="${not empty title}">
<title>
<c:out value="${title}" />
</title>
</c:if>
<jsp:text>
${head}
</jsp:text>
</head>
<body>
<jsp:doBody />
</body>
</html>
</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/svgtest/WEB-INF/web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee web-app_2_4.xsd">
<description>
SVG Test Web Application By Ghasem Kiani. This application uses the Apache Batik project to convert SVG graphics into PNG images.
</description>
<display-name>
SVG Test
</display-name>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>
index.jspx
</welcome-file>
<welcome-file>
index.html
</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>

P.S.

The better way to do this is to write a servlet that outputs the image stream to the client. This will not envolve the writing of the image on disk. Even we can map files with .svg extension to that servlet, so that whenever we reference an SVG file on our application in the src attribute of an <img> tag, the servelt will be activated and the rasterized image will be sent instead. On the other hand, the JSP architecture seems to be inconvenient for outputting binary formats.

2005-01-16T18:58:00.000+03:30

English Idioms

I was looking at the scanned version of a book titled "American Idioms". There was an interesting example of idiomatic expressions in the introduction which is worth writing here:

Sam is a real cool cat. He never blows his stack and hardly ever flies off the handle. What's more, he knows how to get away with things… Well, of course, he is getting on, too. His hair is pepper and salt, but he knows how to make up for lost time by taking it easy. He gets up early, works out, and turns in early. He takes care of the hot dog stand like a breeze until he gets time off. Sam's got it made; this is it for him.

Now, read the same passage with plain words:

Sam is really a calm person. He never loses control of himself and hardly ever becomes too angry. Furthermore, he knows how to manage his business financially by using a few tricks... Needless to say, he, too, is getting older. His hair is beginning to turn gray, but he knows how to compensate for wasted time by relaxing. He rises early, exercises, and goes to bed early. He manages his frankfurter stand without visible effort, until it is someone else's turn to work there. Sam is successful; he has reached his life's goal.

The book is a real treasure! But, my main point in this post is this: There is a great deal of effort in the software business for making free open-source programs. As for books, there are plenty of scanned and OCR'ed books on the internet, but the great majority of them are illegal, according to the Copyright laws - they are "hacked" books. Will there be a movement for presenting newly written, high-quality online books for free? There are sporadic good examples for this. An example is Baen Books, which publishes numerous free online SF books.

2004-12-17T03:14:00.000+03:30

"The State of Fear" by Michael Crichton

Right now, I am reading this marvelous book by Michael Crichton. I am almost through half of it, and I should say it is even much better than Prey. Sort of like Deception Point by Dan Brown. Something icy like that :-), but full of scientific jargon and things I really like. I recommend it to everybody. It rocks.

2004-12-03T01:12:00.000+03:30

To say goodbye is to die a little. -- Raymond Chandler

Recently, I have read numerous novels and science fiction works, including books by Dan Brown, Michael Crichton, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Patricia Cornwell. There are also many books by Agatha Christie, Herbert George Wells, Phyllis Whitney, Walter Gibson, etc., which I have read a few years ago. But one or two months ago, I decided to read works by Raymond Chandler. I had heard his name as a detective storywriter. Now, I have just finished reading "The Long Goodbye" and I can't help but wonder how to express my feelings. It was such a terrific piece of art and story telling. And much more, in fact.

After reading a book, that is when some time passes by, I usually do not remember the story itself or the plots and events in it. But what stays in my mind and makes me think about it now and then, are the characters, the feelings, and the thoughts.

What you find in "The Long Goodbye" is not a series of events designed ingeniously to entertain you; it does entertain you all right, but it has much more to offer. The personality of Philip Marlowe, IMHO, tries to show the multidimensional and multifaceted nature of a human being, bringing into light the inevitable fact that there are dimensions, which are more genuine to being human than others. There are things that are more important, and there are ideas and motives that, even though scarcely expressible, are the characteristics of a lovable and good person.

2004-10-28T21:03:00.000+03:30

The Power of Simple Tags

Simple tags, in contrast to classic tags, are a new feature in JSP 2.0 with a huge positive impact on the usefulness of this technology. In short, simple tags allow you to abstract functionality and refactor template data in JSP, and undoubtedly, refactoring and abstraction is what programming is all about. Since simple tags are nothing but JSP files (or even better, XML documents, if you are wise enough to always use JSP documents based on XML technology), they allow page authors who are not familiar with the Java programming language to use the vast capabilities of Java and JSP.

Here I am going to explain simple tags through an example. I will present a complete JSP application (though very simplistic) to visualize the use of simple tags. In this example, I presume we use Tomcat 5.5 (based on JDK 5.0). The test application is placed in TOMCAT/webapps/test/ (or TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/) directory and its subdirectories, where TOMCAT must be replaced with the directory where you have installed Tomcat. The two simple examples presented here can be viewed at URLs: http://localhost/test and http://localhost/newtest, provided you have configured Tomcat to use port 80. It should be remembered that JSTL JAR files (standard.jar and jstl.jar) must be accessible to this application, e.g. must be placed in TOMCAT/webapps/test/WEB-INF/lib.

Consider the first version of this simplistic application:

TOMCAT/webapps/test/index.jspx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core">

<jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<html>

<head>

</head>

<c:url scope="page" var="mylink" value="/user/index.jspx">

<c:param name="dummy" value="3" />

</c:url>

<p>

این صفحه‌ی اول پایگاه ما است. برای اطلاعات بیشتر به

مراجعه کنید.

</p>

</body>

</html>

</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/test/user/index.jspx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html">

<jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<html>

<head>

<title>اطلاعات</title>

</head>

<h1>اطلاعات</h1>

<c:url scope="page" var="mylink" value="/index.jspx" />

<p>

مقدار پارامتر داده شده

<c:out value="${param.dummy}" />

است، ولی واقعاً اهمیتی ندارد. حالا می‌توانید به

بر گردید.

</p>

</body>

</html>

</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/test/WEB-INF/web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee web-app_2_4.xsd" version="2.4" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<description>Test application to show use of simple tags.</description>

<display-name>TestApp</display-name>

<welcome-file-list>

<welcome-file>index.jspx</welcome-file>

<welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>

</welcome-file-list>

</web-app>

Now, simple tags can do 2 things for us here:

Abstracting functionality. Consider creating a hyperlink. First you create the URL using <c:url /> tag from JSTL core library, and store it in a variable. Then you use the value of that variable in an HTML <a /> tag. This can be made easier using simple tags, as you will see briefly.
Refactoring template data. Both pages contain some common static text data that can be refactored using simple tags.

The new version of our program uses simple tags to solve these two problems conveniently.

TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/index.jspx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html">

<jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<h:page title="سلام">

<p>

این صفحه‌ی اول پایگاه ما است. برای اطلاعات بیشتر به

<h:a href="/user/index.jspx?dummy=3">این صفحه</h:a>

مراجعه کنید.

</p>

</h:page>

</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/user/index.jspx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" xmlns:h="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/html">

<jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<h:page title="اطلاعات">

<h1>اطلاعات</h1>

<p>

مقدار پارامتر داده شده

<c:out value="${param.dummy}" />

است، ولی واقعاً اهمیتی ندارد. حالا می‌توانید به

<h:a href="/index.jspx">صفحه‌ی اول</h:a>

بر گردید.

</p>

</h:page>

</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/page.tagx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core">

<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" />

<jsp:directive.attribute name="title" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />

<html>

<head>

<c:if test="${not empty title}">

<title>${title}</title>

</c:if>

</head>

<jsp:doBody />

</body>

</html>

</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/WEB-INF/tags/html/a.tagx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<jsp:root version="2.0" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core">

<jsp:directive.tag body-content="scriptless" />

<jsp:directive.attribute name="href" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />

<c:url scope="page" var="mylink" value="${href}" />

<jsp:doBody />

</a>

</jsp:root>

TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/WEB-INF/web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee web-app_2_4.xsd" version="2.4" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<description>Test application to show use of simple tags.</description>

<display-name>TestApp</display-name>

<welcome-file-list>

<welcome-file>index.jspx</welcome-file>

<welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>

</welcome-file-list>

</web-app>

This was barely more than a "Hello World!" app, but here are two screenshots of the pages to show that it works properly:

TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/index.jspx

TOMCAT/webapps/newtest/user/index.jspx

The code archive for this example can be found here.

P.S.

Even though I don't have plenty of visitors, but the few people who have been visiting this page are always a source of encouragement for me. I am especially grateful to those few who have written comments or have sent me emails in this regard. But some of these folks have been asking me questions about the Java programming language to whom I have barely had time to respond. It should be noted that I do not claim to teach Java -- in fact, I think I have an innate deficiency in teaching abilities! As a pediatric practitioner, I scarcely have time to do that. This is in fact an apology to all of those who have written to me and have not received any response yet. I do appreciate your interest and correspondence, but I may not be able to reply to your emails in the near future.
Recently, I was informed that SustainableGIS company has created a testing page for my persiancalendar Java program. This is the first use of this program in the real world that I am aware of.

2004-09-16T02:09:00.000+04:30

Book Links

Do you know how many books are there on the Internet? There are numerous movements for scanning and OCRing books around the world (besides older initiatives like the Project Gutenberg and sites like BlackMask). So I estimate that currently, there are in excess of 100,000-500,000 books on the Internet. (Of course, this is a wide range, but I can't be any more exact.) Also, please note that I mean publicly available books (though not all legal), since there may be thousands of books in the publishers' sites that are not available to the public.

Recently, I have spent a lot of time in extracting book links from the Internet. As an example, the links for the book "Flatland" by Edwin A Abbott are given below (not all the links may be active now):

Online versions of **Flatland** by Abbott, Edwin A
http://download.usenet-replayer.com/L/H/9/0/5/3/1055393509.351.zip
http://download.usenet-replayer.com/L/H/9/3/8/0/1067860839.1.zip
http://dwalin.ru/books/Abbott, Edwin/Flatland.txt.gz
http://www.portal5.co.uk/books/Abbott/Flatland.txt
http://www.blackmask.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?ID=d1453
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lg-ay/files/Planilandia.zip

Note: I am not sure if downloading these links is legal. Giving these links is for informational purposes only.

Now, I thought of an interesting thing to do. I have a collection of ca. 40,000 book links. I counted the number of occurrences for each author among them. This is a partial result of this statistics (some books, like Star Trek series, with indeterminate authors have been omitted):

Author stats
Author	Count
King, Stephen	553
Asimov, Isaac	524
Lovecraft, HP	379
Heinlein, Robert A	349
Lem, Stanislaw	334
Grant, Maxwell	292
Simak, Clifford D	284
Clarke, Arthur C	239
Harrison, Harry	231
Bradbury, Ray	224
Sheckley, Robert	221
Balzac, Honoré de	208
McCaffrey, Anne	193
Niven, Larry	185
Andersen, Hans Chiristian	182
Fitzgerald, F Scott	180
Grimm, Hermanos	178
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan	163
Zelazny, Roger	158
Pohl, Frederik	145
Asprin, Robert Lynn	138
Silverberg, Robert	136
Anderson, Poul	133
Borges, Jorge Luis	133
Dick, Philip K	132
Foster, Alan Dean	132
Burroughs, Edgar Rice	127
Norton, André	119
Le Guin, Ursula Kroeber	115
Card, Orson Scott	111
Twain, Mark	108
Dickens, Charles	106
Ellison, Harlan	103
Shakespeare, William	103
Dumas, Alexandre	102
Farmer, Philip José	101
Christie, Agatha	99

I wonder if this list also reflects the global trend of reading authors, or if it is affected by other factors, as well. Of course, in collections like the Project Gutenberg, only books with expired copyright span are published. But sporadic scanners do not obey laws as rigidly, so that the newest books of famous authors are published on the Web after only a few days of their publication (e.g., "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by JK Rowling was published on the Internet just a few days after its official release date).

2004-08-19T16:31:00.000+04:30

Layout Change

I am making some changes in the template just now. Also, I am going to start using the commenting facility of Blogger.com. There may some problems for a while.

2004-08-19T03:24:00.000+04:30

Using Reflection for Actions

There is no doubt that inner classes are an important aspect of the Java programming language. The easiest way to define an action in a GUI application is to subclass the javax.swing.AbstractAction class and override its actionPerformed method, usually in an inner class. Yet, actions are so frequent in these applications that it would be nice to simplify the process further. Here, I suggest a way that I have found very useful.

If we have an action named "Open", we might expect it to call a method like "onOpenExecute" without creating a specific class for it. This can be done, using the Java Reflection API.

The ReflectiveAction class, whose code is presented below, uses the reflection API to find its relevant execute method in the owner object. The method's name is constructed using the "key" property of the ReflectiveAction instance. For example, if a ReflectiveAction has a key value of "open", it will reflect on the owner object's class, to see if it contains a public method called "onOpenExecute". If this method is found, it will be called upon firing of this action. For a key value of "file.print", the execute method must be named onFilePrintExecute. Period character is ignored, so a key value of "Choose..." needs a method called onChooseExecute. Other special characters should not be used in the key field (I have done my best to keep the code as simple as possible).

The source code for the ReflectiveAction class is presented below. It must be taken in mind that in this example, an enhanced for loop has been used, which is a feature recently added to Java since JDK 1.5. When compiling this file with javac, a -source 1.5 parameter must be supplied to show that the source is compliant with JDK 1.5 and not the earlier versions. Interestingly, when I used the -target 1.5 parameter in addition to that, the reflection stuff kept hanging the JVM when running. I don't know if this bug is still there or has been corrected in later SDKs (I have build 1.5.0-beta-b31), but anyway, without this option, everything goes well, and I am not in the mood of keeping track of bugs!

Listing 1. Source code of ReflectiveAction.java

/* 
 * ReflectiveAction.java 
 * (c) Ghasem Kiani 
 * 18/08/2004 06:33:49 PM 
 * ghasemkiani@yahoo.com 
 */ 
 
package com.ghasemkiani.temp; 
 
import java.awt.*; 
import java.awt.event.*; 
import javax.swing.*; 
import java.lang.reflect.Method; 
 
public class ReflectiveAction extends AbstractAction 
{ 
  private Method executeMethod; 
  private String key; 
  public void setKey(String key) 
  { 
    this.key = key; 
  } 
  public String getKey() 
  { 
    if(key == null) key = new String(); 
    return key; 
  } 
  private String getKeyAsTitleCase() 
  { 
    String[] parts = getKey().split("\\."); 
    String result = ""; 
    for(String part: parts) 
    { 
      if(part != null) 
      { 
        if(part.length() > 0) 
          result += part.substring(0, 1).toUpperCase(); 
        if(part.length() > 1) 
          result += part.substring(1); 
      } 
    } 
    return result; 
  } 
  private Object owner; 
  public void setOwner(Object owner) 
  { 
    this.owner = owner; 
    if(owner != null) 
    { 
      Class oc = owner.getClass(); 
      String em = "on" + getKeyAsTitleCase() + "Execute"; 
      try 
      { 
        executeMethod = oc.getMethod(em, new Class[0]); 
      } 
      catch(Exception e) 
      { 
        executeMethod = null; 
      } 
    } 
    else 
    { 
      executeMethod = null; 
    } 
  } 
  public Object getOwner() 
  { 
    return owner; 
  } 
  public ReflectiveAction() 
  { 
    super(); 
  } 
  public ReflectiveAction(Object owner, String key) 
  { 
    super(key); 
    setKey(key); 
    setOwner(owner); 
  } 
  public ReflectiveAction(Object owner, String key, String name) 
  { 
    super(name); 
    setKey(key); 
    setOwner(owner); 
  } 
  public ReflectiveAction(Object owner, String key, Icon icon) 
  { 
    super(key, icon); 
    setKey(key); 
    setOwner(owner); 
  } 
  public ReflectiveAction(Object owner, String key, 
    String name, Icon icon) 
  { 
    super(name, icon); 
    setKey(key); 
    setOwner(owner); 
  } 
  public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) 
  { 
    try 
    { 
      if(executeMethod != null) 
        executeMethod.invoke(owner, new Object[0]); 
    } 
    catch(Exception e) 
    { 
      e.printStackTrace(); 
    } 
  } 
}

Here is a sample application using the ReflectiveAction class. I think that the code is self-descriptive. Also, be warned that I hate comments in my code. As unacceptable as it may be, I use them very rarely.

Listing 2. Source code of TestApplication.java

/* 
 * TestApplication.java 
 * (c) Ghasem Kiani 
 * 18/08/2004 06:58:34 PM 
 * ghasemkiani@yahoo.com 
 */ 
 
package com.ghasemkiani.temp; 
 
import java.awt.*; 
import javax.swing.*; 
import com.ghasemkiani.temp.ReflectiveAction; 
 
public class TestApplication extends JFrame 
{ 
  JPanel jp; 
  public TestApplication() 
  { 
    super("Test Application"); 
    setDefaultCloseOperation(DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE); 
    JToolBar jtb = new JToolBar(); 
    getContentPane().add(jtb, BorderLayout.NORTH); 
    jp = new JPanel(); 
    getContentPane().add(jp); 
    jtb.add(new ReflectiveAction(this, "Green")); 
    jtb.add(new ReflectiveAction(this, "Blue")); 
    jtb.add(new ReflectiveAction(this, "Red")); 
    jtb.add(new ReflectiveAction(this, "Choose...")); 
    jtb.add(new ReflectiveAction(this, "Dummy")); 
    jtb.add(new ReflectiveAction(this, "Exit")); 
    setBounds(new Rectangle(100, 100, 400, 240)); 
    setVisible(true); 
  } 
  public void onGreenExecute() 
  { 
    JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, 
      "I don't actually become green!"); 
  } 
  public void onBlueExecute() 
  { 
    JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, 
      "I don't actually become blue!"); 
  } 
  public void onRedExecute() 
  { 
    jp.setBackground(Color.red); 
  } 
  public void onChooseExecute() 
  { 
    Color c = JColorChooser.showDialog(this, 
      "Choose a color", jp.getBackground()); 
    if(c != null) jp.setBackground(c); 
  } 
  public void onExitExecute() 
  { 
    dispose(); 
  } 
  public static void main(String[] args) 
  { 
    JFrame.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true); 
    JDialog.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true); 
    new TestApplication(); 
  } 
}

Since I am willing to see the result of a code when I read an example code in an article, I present here a few screenshots of the TestApplication class running.

Figure 1

This is a picture of the application window.

This figure shows that the reflection has actually taken place, and the right method hase been called after clicking the Red and Green button.

Figure 2

This is what happens after clicking the Green button.

Another screenshot, just to make it a little saltier! (I don't know if you can take the Persian nuances of words.)

Figure 3

This is what has happened after clicking the Choose... button.

Some may understandably argue that this is againtst the spirit of the Java programming language, having a strong object-oriented orientation. But, it is an equally important argument that such an attitude is the rule in languages like Delphi and lisp (from a totally different point of view relative to Delphi -- here I mean lexical closures and metaprogramming, if I use the right terms).

The source and compiled classes of this example can be downloaded from here.