Every Flavour Beans

[UPDATE 2: Mark Gosh has posted a nice summary of popular blog posts talking about what's new in Wordpress 2.3. Must Read.
TWP website has a new podcast that previews Wordpress 2.3 at the end of it.]

[UPDATE 1: Wordpress 2.3 Beta 2 was released a couple of days ago. Importers are added for Jerome’s Keywords and Simple Tagging Plugins(importer for UTW was already there; read the post). Ryan Boren talks about how the plugin developers can use the new actions added to Wordpress 2.3 related to status changes of the posts(Draft -> Pending, Pending -> Published etc).]

The first beta of a new version of Wordpress blogging engine, 2.3, was released a few hours ago. Wordpress aficionados might already know the new major and minor features that were being planned(and some of them later shelved ;) ) for this release through mailing lists and other sources but for the others, below is a summary of a few changes that can be found in the new Wordpress 2.3 interface. Go through them and if you later decide to dig deeper into these new features, you only have to download Wordpress 2.3 Beta 1 Beta 2(~1MB) and give it a try in XAMPP!

What’s new in Wordpress 2.3 Beta 1?

1. The most important improvement in Wordpress 2.3 version is the built-in support for tagging of blog posts with relevant keywords in technorati style. There is no need to install a separate plugin like Ultimate Tag Warrior now. The text box shown below allows as many tags to be associated with a given post as is needed.

   

   The tables used to manage the categories are now replaced by new tables to manage the tags i.e. wp_categories, wp_post2cat and wp_link2cat are replaced by the tables wp_terms, wp_term_taxonomy, wp_term_relationships. Lot of information on tag support is available on the Internet(especially email archives), so treat Google as your friend. More on database schema changes

2. A new state in which the draft posts can now be saved under is “Pending Review.” It is useful when not all the authors are supposed to be allowed to publish their posts to the weblog before first being reviewed by an editor or an administrator.

   

   Which means that drafts can be of two types now: posts still under editing(Draft) and posts that are ready to be published(Pending Review); there was no good way to differentiate like this earlier. An efficient way to immediately inform the contributor that the Pending Review post has been pushed back to Draft state by the editor, perhaps with a custom message attached explaining the reason for it, is however absent. EMail/IM etc are the alternate options for now; someone can write a plugin in the future that fills this need. (More info)

   Also, Manage -> Posts now contains a drop-down box from which one can filter posts belonging to different states: Draft, Pending Review, Published and Private. So it can be used as a convenient place to access all the draft posts together. Similar filtering can be done based on Categories too. To search posts based on tags or other keywords, the same old search box can be used.

3. A new button on the WYSIWYG editor toolbar can be used to show (and hide) a second (new) toolbar which has got additional editing buttons. These buttons allow operations such as underlining of text, font colour selection, inserting <H> tags, undo-ing, pasting directly from MS Word document etc.

   

   I always use the plain text editor so it doesn’t matter to me how many additional buttons are added to the WYSIWYG editor! Doesn’t matter to those too who use their own favourite WYSIWYG editor in Wordpress.

4. For those blogs that use the popular plugin Ultimate Tag Warrior to manage the tags, Wordpress 2.3 Beta 1 has an importing tool to import those tags to its own native tag format(importing Simple Tagging Plugin tags and Jerome’s Keywords likely in the 2.3 final version it’s there in Beta 2). POC(Plain Old Categories) can also be converted to tags using the provided converter tool. These two options can also be accessed from the Manage -> Import page.

   

5. One of the first things I ever do after installing Wordpress is hide all the links from the default blogroll. The links now point to various resources related to Wordpress project instead of blogs of important Wordpress developers, but I still think I will have to hide them when upgrading to 2.3 version. Or make it visible only to the blog administrator.

   

6. There are many other differences too, like file sizes in Manage -> Uploads section, Categories Widgets, Plugin (and core) Update Notifier etc.

Download it and try it out by yourself. Or check-out the source directly from the subversion repository to keep updated with the latest changes. Wordpress Planet website should keep us posted on the latest information on Wordpress 2.3’s journey towards the final release(more detailed than Wordpress development blog anyway).

Many people complain that configuring Eclipse+CDT/EasyEclipse IDE to work with MinGW C/C++ compiler tools on Windows doesn't always go on expected lines. I hope the following howto would go some distance in addressing this issue. I use EasyEclipse IDE(what is EasyEclipse?) in this howto but the same procedure applies to Eclipse + CDT combination too.

To set up a C++ development environment using Eclipse+CDT/EasyEclipse and MinGW on a Windows operating system, the following steps need to be completed:

1. Download and Install MinGW for Windows.
2. Set MinGW in system PATH.
3. Download and Install EasyEclipse for C++ and configure it to use MinGW tools.

• Download and Install MinGW for Windows

  1. First download the Automated MinGW Installer from the sourceforge.net website.

     

  2. From whatever location you run the downloaded MinGW installer, it creates a few settings file there. So I recommend moving it to its own directory before running it. Move the installer file to a location like C:\mingw\ and run it from there.

     You will see a welcome dialog; click Next to continue. Select "Download and Install" option from the next dialog box and click Next.

     

  3. Read the license and click Next if you agree to it. Select "Current" option from the next dialog box and click Next.

     

  4. Select at least "g++ compiler" and "MinGW make" from the shown components and click Next.

     

  5. Accept the default install location or enter a new location(should not contain any spaces in the path name) in "Destination Folder" text box and click Next.

     

  6. Accept the suggested Start Menu shortcut and click Install to begin the installation procedure. Depending on the number of selected components in Step 4 and the Internet speed, the download may take some time. When the installation is finished, click Close to dismiss the installer. MinGW is now installed on the system.

• Set MinGW in system PATH

  The second step is to add the MinGW bin directory path to the system/user PATH variable.

  1. Right-click on "My Computer," go to "Advanced" tab and click the "Environment Variables..." button.

     

  2. Select the entry of PATH field, click the "Edit" button, hit the END key on the keyboard, add a semicolon and then type/paste the MinGW bin directory path. Click OK to dismiss all the dialog boxes.

     

  3. To verify that the PATH variable is set correctly, select to Start -> Run command and enter cmd in the text box. In the command window, type:
     C:\> g++ -v

     You should see the version information displayed.

     

     If you get an error that g++ command is not found, then you have not set the PATH properly. Repeat the above instructions carefully or search through the Internet to learn how to change PATH variable in Windows.

• Configure EasyEclipse for C++ to use MinGW tools

  The third step is to download EasyEclipse for C++ package for the Windows OS and unpack it to a directory(say, C:\easyeclipse).

  Go to the unpacked directory and click on the startup.jar file to run the EasyEclipse for C++ IDE. (You can right-click on this file and send a shortcut to the desktop or pin it to the start menu or add it to quick launch panel for easier access in the future.)

  1. To create a new C++ project, select File -> New -> Managed Make C++ project(File->New -> New Project to see all the options), enter a name and click Finish.

     

  2. Once the project is created, change the default 'Build Command' from 'make -k' to 'mingw32-make -k'(to use MinGW's make tool). This setting can be changed from Project -> Properties -> C/C++ Build -> Build Settings tab:

     
     You can also access project settings by right-clicking on the project name and selecting 'Properties'.

  3. To add a new file to the project, select File -> New -> Source File, enter a name(say, hello.cpp) in the 'Source File:' text box and click Finish.

     Type the following program in the editor:

     Show Plain Text
     C++:

     1. #include<iostream>
     2. #include<string>
     3.  
     4. int main()
     5. {
     6.     std::string name = "world";
     7.     std::cout <<"Hello, " <<name <<".";
     8.     std::cout <<std::endl;
     9. }

     As soon as the file is saved, it is built automatically. The errors, if any, are highlighted by underlining them with red lines.

     

     If you want to build the project manually, then uncheck the "Build Automatically" option from the Project menu.

     

  4. You are all set to add additional source (and header) files to the project now and expand the C++ application. Remember that Step 2 has to be repeated for every new C++ application created.

     

Good luck!

Boost Consultancy has created a wizard based installer for downloading and installing the correct version of Boost components on a Windows machine for Visual Studio .NET IDEs. The Installer simplifies the process of installation by getting rid of the time-consuming, and on rare occasions error-prone, process of compilation from the sources. But if you use any IDE other than Visual Studio .NET(even the old Visual Studio 6.0 IDE) then you need to use the typical Boost installation method(). Below is the procedure to install Boost for Visual Studio .NET IDEs using the Boost Installer for Windows.

1. Download Boost Installer for Windows(~180K in size) from Boost Consultancy website. Run the installer. You will see the following license agreement displayed(Installer license).

   

   Read it and press "I Agree" if you agree to the terms. Another license agreement will be displayed next(Boost Libraries license).

   

   Read it too and press "I Agree" again if you agree to the terms.

2. Based on your geographical location, you can select one of the nearest location from the provided list of mirror locations. Select one or leave the default selection to select a location randomly. Press "Next".

   

3. The following dialog box allows one or more variants of Boost libraries to be selected for downloading and installing on your system. First select the complier to download Boost libraries for. If you have both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and 2005 versions installed, and so prefer to use Boost with both of them, then you can select both the compilers in the left pane("Compilers").

   Then select which variant(s) of Boost library binaries you want to install. If you have absolutely no idea what to select here, then go with "Multithread Debug, static runtime" among any others you want to select. Press "Next" after making your selection(s).

   

4. The next dialog box prompts the user to select the components of Boost to be installed. You may consider including "Source and Documentation" if the download size is not a big concern for you. The same (but updated) documentation is always available at Boost Documentation page anyway.

   

5. I prefer to select a destination folder path that doesn't contain any spaces or special characters in it. Accept the default path as shown below to use Boost with Microsoft products or get into the habit of always installing programming or Unix like tools in paths that don't contain any spaces in them, like: C:\boost\boost_1_34_1 or C:\programs\boost\boost_1_34_1. (MinGW, Eclipse etc will be very happy with paths like these.)

   

6. Time to take a coffee break. Depending upon the download size and the speed of the Internet connection, the download and install process may take some time to finish. (To give you an idea, it downloaded ~90MB in around 30 minutes of time on my machine.)

   

7. Installation is finished.

   

   Time to start testing the installation.

Testing Boost Installation in Visual Studio .NET 2003/2005/Orcas

Boost has two type of libraries : header-only(which are compiler independent) and compiled binary libraries.

• Testing Boost Header-only libraries:
  1. Start the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET IDE and create a new C++ project in it(File -> New Project). select Visual C++ -> Win32 in the left pane and Win32 Console Application/Win32 Console Project in the right pane. Enter a name(BoostDemo) for the project and click OK.

     

  2. Right-click on the project name and select Properties(or select Project->BoostDemo Properties). Select Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> General in the left pane and type/select Boost installation root directory(C:\boost\boost_1_34_1) in "Additional Include Directories" field in the right pane.

     

  3. Add the following code just above the _tmain() function(in the generated file - BoostDemo.cpp).
     Show Plain Text
     C++:

     1. #include<iostream>
     2. #include<boost/any.hpp>

     Add the following code with in the _tmain() function:

     Show Plain Text
     C++:

     1. boost::any a(5);
     2. a = 7.67;
     3. std::cout<<boost::any_cast<double>(a)<<std::endl;

     

  4. Select Build -> Build Solution to build the project and, assuming the build completes successfully without any errors, select Debug->Start Debugging to run the program.
• Testing Boost Compiled Binary Libraries
  1. First complete the Header-only test as described above. In the same project, right-click on the project name and select "Properties". Select Configuration Properties -> Linker in the left pane and type/select the Boost lib directory path(C:\boost\boost_1_34_1\lib) in "Additional Library Directories" field in the right pane.

     

  2. Add the following code just above the _tmain() function
     Show Plain Text
     C++:

     1. #include<boost/filesystem/operations.hpp>
     2. namespace bfs=boost::filesystem;

     Add the following code with in the _tmain() function:

     Show Plain Text
     C++:

     1. bfs::path p("BoostDemo.cpp");
     2. if(bfs::exists(p))
     3.     std::cout<<p.leaf()<<std::endl;

  3. Build and run the program as before.

I have tested the above procedure with the latest release of Visual Studio Orcas Beta too.

A NOTE:

Also see:
Getting Started on Windows with Boost
Building Boost Libraries for Visual Studio
Building Boost for Other Compilers and Other Platforms
More EFB Posts on C++ Boost

A couple of days ago, Akismet killed 100,001th comment of this blog.

If not for Akismet, I would've had to either lock-down the comment section or pass every comment through the tiresome moderation process. Lately I have come across many other tools that further help in countering the spam menace (each of them in a different way) but Akismet alone is fine for me for now. The latest statistics of this blog are like this:

A job well done, Akismet.

Distrowatch Weekly Newsletter notes in its 13th August 2007 issue that Asia is fast catching up with the readership of Distrowatch.com website, which roughly translates to a keen interest in keeping in touch with, and downloading, various GNU/Linux and BSD distributions. The following table should shed some light on this development:

Number of visits from Japan were very high even in 2006 but the increase in visits from India over just seven months since then is remarkable. The above four countries(other than Japan) have registered around 50% increase in the same period, India leading the table by a big margin. This is what Distrowatch has to say about it:

While Japan has been maintaining the top position since the beginning of this web site, it's interesting to note the dramatic growth of readership in the two most populous countries in the world - China and India. With a handful of exceptions, the number of readers visiting DistroWatch has been on the increase and a total number of Asian-based readers have grown by more than 20% since a year ago.

Source: Distrowatch