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Visual representations for manipulating structured data help eliminate both complexity and errors in working with structured objects. Formulate, the distributed visual programming language Allen presents here, was designed with these problems in mind.
Sanscript is a visual scripting tool that lets you assemble scripts from graphic functions connected together in a dataflow-like diagram. Dave has found Sanscript ideal for developing assistive technology applications.
Simulations provide powerful means for communicating complex ideas. Andri and Alex show how AgentSheets can enable end users to build their own interactive simulations and export those simulations as Java applets or JavaBeans to the Web.
Dave presents a Visual C++ MFC program that combines Mindstorms RCX code with C++ code to control a robot's behavior.
Automatically generating comprehensible graphs for large amounts of data is a difficult problem in computer science. Our authors describe an algorithm based on a physical system of springs for drawing a useful and aesthetically pleasing graph from a large data set.
Bill presents the DUMPROM utility that lets you examine the configuration ROM of any 1394 device. In the process, he examines the 1394 addressing scheme and other issues.
Task dispatchers are small executive programs that control switches and other inputs. Ron presents a dispatcher implemented in C that's small enough to be reliably implemented in the assembly language of the destination processor.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 browser provides COM interfaces that let you easily load and parse HTML without actually having to display it. Andrew describes these interfaces and implements a C++ class that lets you take advantage of them.
The emerging generation of feature-rich applications required multimedia, geospatial data, and types that are more complex than traditional SQL rows and columns. Consequently, developers require sophisticated database managers for complex data, user-defined functions (UDFs), and user-defined types (UDTs).
Between Alan Cooper's new book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum and Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor," Michael is having a hard time keeping up with Jerry's kids.
Dummies for dummies? Yes, that, C++, and more -- including a wild argument on wild arguments.
Can Java handle exception handling? You bet, and David shows you how in this month's column.
Wavelets offer an attractive alternative when it comes to image compression. Steven gives us a practical guide to image compression via wavelets, and compares the results to more familiar techniques, such as JPEG.
Dr. Ecco and sidekick Liane try to solve tomorrow's problems at NASA today.
Greg takes a quick look at Jim Blinn's Corner: A Trip Down the Graphics Pipeline and Jim Blinn's Corner: Dirty Pixels, both by (you guessed it) Jim Blinn, Essential COM, by Don Box, Effective COM, by Don Box, Keith Brown, Tim Ewald, and Chris Sells, Web Navigation, by Jennifer Fleming, The Computational Beauty of Nature, by Gary William Flake, Optimizing C++, by Steve Heller, Practical Software Requirements, by Benjamin L. Kovitz, and DNA Computing, by Gheorghe Paun, Grzegorz Rozenberg, and Arto Salomaa.