I'm using a WPF InkCanvas control to capture signatures in a Tablet PC application.
One of my requirements is to validate whether or not the application has really been "signed". Right now I'm doing this by checking the Strokes collection of the InkCanvas - if there are 0 strokes, then I know the user has not "signed".
However, if the user enters a single slash, or even a single dot, this counts as a stroke and my validation test will pass, even though the signature isn't really valid.
Any ideas about how to build a better test for this? Granted, the use case for what is and is not a valid signature is pretty fuzzy, but I want to try to eliminate obviously bad signatures.
Or is this simply unsolvable in any straightforward way?
I know there are algorithms to test if a signature is a valid match for an existing signature, like the one outlined here. However, finding out if something is a signature in the first place seems to be much more complex.
From Wikipedia:
On legal documents, an illiterate signatory can make a "mark" (often an "X" but occasionally a personalized symbol)
...
Several cultures whose languages use writing systems other than alphabets do not share the Western notion of signatures per se: the "signing" of one's name results in a written product no different from the result of "writing" one's name in the standard way. For these languages, to write or to sign involves the same written characters. Three such examples are Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
While this could be approached using Intelligent Character Recognition, I also know that my signature rarely looks like it has any characters in it. It's even worse if I am using one of those UPS or FedEx package singing pads. Next time a package arrives though I will try signing with just a dash and a dot and see if it allows it (Which I think it will allow since it's already close enough to that).
Because a signature may not match any recognizable words or characters, trying to 'validate' it any further then you currently are could actually be discarding some valid signatures. If for some reason you do still need to know if there is something more then a dot, take a look at validating instead that the signature fills a certain sized rectangle. That still may invalidate results that shouldn't be, so if you do attempt to add any validation to it make sure to document fully the expectations of a valid signature.
Related
Can any one tell me the slot type of the intent which can have long sentences in the English(India) Language? In English(US) I use AMAZON.StreetAddress for this purpose. Thanks.
Consider using a custom slot type. According to Amazon, use of the Amazon.LITERAL type is discouraged, and a custom slot type is recommended instead. Usually for custom slot types, you specify a set of sample values. However, based on your use case, it sounds like you want a match that is as close as possible to just catching all possible inputs, which is Scenario #3 from this Amazon Alexa blog article. As the article's content for the "Catch All" scenario mentions:
If you use the same training data that you would have used for
LITERAL, you’ll get the same results.
IMO, of special importance is the last paragraph regarding Scenario #3.
If you’re still not getting the results, trying setting the CatchAll
values to around twenty 2 to 8 word random phrases (from a random word
generator – be really random). When the user says something that
matches your other utterances, those intents will still be sent. When
it doesn’t match any of those, it will fall to the CatchAll slot. If
you go this route, you’re going to lose accuracy because you’re not
taking full advantage of Alexa’s NLP so you’ll need to test heavily.
Hope that helps.
Is there a way to check for dead keys in the current layout? I am currently capturing the users input for a project I am doing. I created a map of all keys on the keyboard, but there seems to be no flag or whatsoever defining a key as dead or not. I use libxkb in my current code.
The layout is retrieved using
KeySym * keysyms = XGetKeyboardMapping(display_, keycode_low, keycode_high - keycode_low + 1, &num_keysym);
I understand you need to know which key will not directly produce a character, maybe because you are writing a game and do not want to have it use keys as input that would require another key to be pressed to produce some output (if so, please mention in the question)
Not through standard Xlib calls, to my knowledge, and definitely not without actually pressing the respective key. Composing is entirely done within Xlib, and transparent to the front end. (For its original purpose, it should be as transparent as possible to work properly, after all)
You could, however, do the same thing that Xlib does and parse through the various Compose configuration files starting with $HOME/.Xcompose. But that could be a tedious process.
On second thought, I am definitely not proposing the following:
You could, for each key you are looking for information, create a synthetic keypress event and feed it into XLookupString. Hand in an emptied XComposeStatus structure as well. If the structure returns modified, this could be a strong hint you have found a compose key. But it could also mean the server modifies it without any need..... If I were very desparate, I'd probably try.
Working on testing a React component, I was reading the docs and found scryRenderedDOMComponentsWithClass. I'm having trouble understanding the function of this component because it's unpronounceable, so I don't understand how it's naming maps to a mental model of what it's doing. (There are a number of related names, such as scryRenderedDOMComponentsWithTag.)
What does the scry part of this method name refer to? Scary? Scurry? What concept is this name trying to illustrate?
Short answer
"Scry" in this context just means "find all". See this comment on ReactTestUtils.scryRenderedComponentsWithClass. It's a single word, not an abbreviation, and it's pronounced like "cry" but with an "s" at the beginning.
Longer (and nerdier) answer
Elsewhere in that same file, you'll see a reference to DOM.scry:
/**
* Todo: Support the entire DOM.scry query syntax. For now, these simple
* utilities will suffice for testing purposes.
* #lends ReactTestUtils
*/
zpao explains in a comment on a GitHub issue:
That's a reference to an internal Facebook module. It's basically querySelectorAll with fallback behavior for handling old browsers and special cases. It is pretty unremarkable and doesn't actually translate super well here (except maybe a scryRenderedDOMComponentsWithQSA or something, but meh). We're working on improving the testing in other ways so I don't think there's anything we really want to do with this right now.
jimfb takes it a bit further in another GitHub issue, explaining that the name is a reference to Dungeons & Dragons:
Back in the day, we had a bunch of D&D fans on the team.
For reference:
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Scrying
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD3e:Scry_Skill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrying
Historically, we've used scry to indicate a helper that finds a set of results. As the framework matures, we should start choosing function names based on what the functions actually do instead of fantasy words that have very little meaning to the typical developer.
Though I would agree that the word has very little meaning to most, it's worth noting that "scry" is a real English word:
scry
[skrahy]
verb (used without object), scried, scrying.
to use divination to discover hidden knowledge or future events, especially by means of a crystal ball.
Interestingly, according to the data from Google's Ngram Viewer, it seems that the word fell out of normal usage in the early 19th century and then wallowed in obscurity until the 1980s, presumably after D&D gained popularity:
So I can't say I object to jimfb calling it a "fantasy word", especially considering the kind of imagery my imagination conjures up when I hear it.
This is in C Language
I want to know how i can write a program to lookup all the input fields of a website. Any website. and then can fill them in. I can write the simple webbrowser in vbs but how can i analyse the input fields. even better would be is i could click the lookup field and it puts the name of it in a box..... that would be ideal.
Anyone can help? thanks :)
Are you sure you want to do this in C?
I ask because it is not easy. First of all, you need to be able to run the HTTP GET request against the webpage you wish to view. For this, you probably need libcurl; you definitely don't want to be writing from scratch at any rate.
Next, you need to process the html you get, finding all input fields. You do NOT want to do this using regular expressions, if anything for the sake of bobince's blood pressure. HTML is not a regular language is the bit you need to take away - you need an xml parser. Enter libxml. I'm sure there are other xml libraries out there, and even libraries for parsing html.
Finally, having done that (got the fields etc) you need to be able to populate them and submit the correct request as per the ACTION and METHOD parameters of the FORM.
This is of course assuming you know what the fields should be formatted with. And it also assumes nothing else is going on. If you have a javascript validated web form (I sincerely hope they're validating on the request too, but they might provide feedback via JS) you won't benefit from that (unless you're going to integrate JS, in which case you might as well write a browser).
This is not a trivial task and it is the reason there are accessibility standards for HTML, because otherwise it becomes tricky to interpret the form without human interaction.
Of course, this all assumes said html is well formed, which isn't always the case...
I might suggest another approach. BeautifulSoup is a well known Python web scraping library that works very well. Python as a language allows easier string manipulation too, which will dramatically cut down your development time. I'd suggest giving the need to use C some serious thought given the size and complexity of the task you want to undertake vs your need to get a result quickly. If you have a lot of time, by all means go for C.
So we are sure that we will be taking our product internationally and will eventually need to internationalize it. How much internationalizing would you recommend we do as we go along?
I guess in other words, is there any internationalization that is easy now but can be much worse if we let the code base mature and that won't slow us down very much if we choose to start doing it now?
Tech used: C#, WPF, WinForms
Prepare it now, before you write all the strings in the codebase itself.
Everything after now will be too late. It's now or never!
It's true that it is a bit of extra effort to prepare well now, but not doing it will end up being a lot more expensive.
If you won't follow all the guidelines in the links below, at least heed points 1,2 and 7 of the summary which are very cheap to do now and which cause the most pain afterwards in my experience.
Check these guidelines and see for yourself why it's better to start now and get everything prepared.
Developing world ready applications
Best practices for developing world ready applications
Little extract:
Move all localizable resources to separate resource-only DLLs. Localizable resources include user interface elements such as strings, error messages, dialog boxes, menus, and embedded object resources. (Moving the resources to a DLL afterwards will be a pain)
Do not hardcode strings or user interface resources. (If you don't prepare, you know you will hardcode strings)
Do not put nonlocalizable resources into the resource-only DLLs. This causes confusion for translators.
Do not use composite strings that are built at run time from concatenated phrases. Composite strings are difficult to localize because they often assume an English grammatical order that does not apply to all languages. (After the interface design, changing phrases gets harder)
Avoid ambiguous constructs such as "Empty Folder" where the strings can be translated differently depending on the grammatical roles of the strings' components. For example, "empty" can be either a verb or an adjective, and this can lead to different translations in languages such as Italian or French. (Same issue)
Avoid using images and icons that contain text in your application. They are expensive to localize. (Use text rendered over the image)
Allow plenty of room for the length of strings to expand in the user interface. In some languages, phrases can require 50-75 percent more space. (Same issue, if you don't plan for it now, redesign is more expensive)
Use the System.Resources.ResourceManager class to retrieve resources based on culture.
Use Microsoft Visual Studio .NET to create Windows Forms dialog boxes, so they can be localized using the Windows Forms Resource Editor (Winres.exe). Do not code Windows Forms dialog boxes by hand.
IMHO, to claim something is going to happens "in a few years" literally translates to "we hope one day" which really means "never". Although I would still skim over various tutorials to make sure you don't make any horrendous mistakes. Doing correct internationalization support now will mean less work in the future, and once you get use to it, it won't have any real affect on today's productivity. But if you can measure the goal in years, maybe it's not worth doing at all right now.
I have worked on two projects that did internationalization: a C# ASP.NET (existed before I joined the project) app and a PHP app (homebrewed my own method using a free Internationalization control and my own management app).
You should store all the text (labels, button text, etc etc) as data inside a database. Reference these with keys (I prefer to use the first 4 words, made uppercase, spaces converted to underscores and non alpha-numerics stripped out) and when you have a duplicate, append a number to the end. The benefit of this key method is the programmer has a pretty strong understanding of the content of the text just by looking at the key.
Write a utility to extract the data and build .NET resource files that you add into your project for compile. Create a separate resource file for each language. In your code, use the key to point to the proper entry.
I would skim over the MS documents on the subject:
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/getwr/dotneti18n.mspx
Some basic things to avoid:
never ever ever use translation software, hire a pro or an intern taking that language at a local college
never try to create text by appending two existing entries, because grammar differs greately in each language, this will never work. So if you have a string that says "Click" and want one that says "Click Now", do not try to create a setup that merges two entries, or during translation, copy the word for click and translate the word now. Treat every string as a totally new translation from scratch
I will add to store and manipulate string data as Unicode (NVARCHAR in MS SQL).
Some questions to think about…
How match can you afford to delay the shipment of the English version of your application to save a bit of cost internationalize later?
Will you still be trading if you don’t get the cash flow from shipping the English version quickly?
How will you get the UI right, if you don’t get feedback quickly from some customers about it?
How often will you rewrite the UI before you have to internationalize it?
Do you English customers wish to be able to customize strings in the UI, e.g. not everyone calls a “shipping note” the same think.
As a large part of the pain of internationalize is making sure you don’t break the English version, is automated system testing of the UI a better investment?
The only thing I think I will always do is: “Do not use composite strings that are built at run time from concatenated phrases” and if you do so, don’t spread the code that builds up the a single string over lots of methods.
Having your UI automatically resize (and layout) to cope with length of labels etc will save you lots of time over the years if you can do it cheaply. There a lots of 3rd party control sets for Windows Forms that lets you label text boxes etc without having to put the labels on as separate controls.
I just starting to internationalize a WinForms application, we hope to mostly be able to use the “name” of each control as the lookup key, without having to move lots into resource files etc. It is not always as hard as you think at first….
You could use NGettext.Wpf (it can be installed from NuGet, and yes I am the author, but I made it out of the frustrations listed in the other answers).
It is hosted this github repository, and here is the getting started section at the time of writing:
NGettext.Wpf is intended to work with dependency injection. You need to call the following at the entry point of your application:
NGettext.Wpf.CompositionRoot.Compose("ExampleDomainName");
The "ExampleDomainName" string is the domain name. This means that when the current culture is set to "da-DK" translations will be loaded from "Locale\da-DK\LC_MESSAGES\ExampleDomainName.mo" relative to where your WPF app is running (You must include the .mo files in your application and make sure they are copied to the output directory).
Now you can do something like this in XAML:
<Button CommandParameter="en-US"
Command="{StaticResource ChangeCultureCommand}"
Content="{wpf:Gettext English}" />
Which demonstrates two features of this library. The most important is the Gettext markup extension which will make sure the Content is set to the translation of "English" with respect to the current culture, and update it when the current culture is changed. The other feature it demonstrates is the ChangeCultureCommand which changes the current culture to the given culture, in this case "en-US".
I also highly recommend reading Preparing Strings from the gettext utilities manual.
Internationalization will let your product be usable in other countries, it's easy and should be done from the start (this way English speaking people all over the world can use your software), those 3 rules will get you most of the way there:
Support international characters - use only Unicode data types in files and databases.
Support international date, time and number formats - use CultureInfo.InvariantCulture when storing data to file or computer readable storage, use CultureInfo.CurrentCulture when displaying data or parsing user input, never do your own parsing, never use any other culture objects.
textual data entered by the user should be considered a black box, don't try to break it up into words or letters, especially when displaying it to the user - different languages have diffract rules and the OS knows how to display left-to-right text, you don't.
Localization is translating the software into different languages, this is difficult and expensive, a good start is to never hard code strings and never build sentences out of smaller strings.
If you use test data, use non-English (e.g.: Russian, Polish, Norwegian etc) strings.
Encoding peeks it's little ugly head at every corner. If not in your own libraries, then in external ones.
I personally favor Russian because although I don't speak a word Russian (despite my name's origin) it has foreign chars in it and it takes way more space then English and therefor tests your spacing too.
Don't know if that is something language specific, or just because our Russian translator likes verbose strings.