Any ideas for .gif webcounter for book?

Hi folks,

I wrote a preliminary web-counter resource manager that generates
a .gif file, and am thinking of putting that into the book as the
first project. The idea being that the concept is very simple,
and can be expanded.

So, I’m planning on developing it in phases – phase 1 will be
totally rudimentary – you give it the foreground and background
colours and the x,y size on the command line, and it manifests
/dev/webcounter.gif (or whatever name you like). Whenever you
read /dev/webcounter.gif it increments the count. The initial
count can be given on the command line as well, otherwise
it defaults to 0.

Phase 2 will have more bells and whistles. Note that I’m mainly
interested in “educational” bells & whistles :slight_smile:, so things that
demonstrate something “clever” in a resource manager. I’m
thinking of putting in a /dev/webcounter.txt that you can read
the count from in ASCII and write the count to as well. Then
there might be some devctl()'s for setting the foreground/background
colour. Suggestions?

In Phase 3 I wanted to convert it from being a file-based resmgr
to a directory-based resmgr, and maybe should something like setting
the x,y size as part of the filename: /dev/webcounter/200x50.gif
or something. Suggestions?

(I’m embarrassed to say, “no you can’t see this in action because
my webserver is QNX 4 – if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”) :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-RK


Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Books, Video-based and Instructor-led
Training, Consulting and Software Products at www.parse.com.

Ian Zagorskih <ianzag@megasignal.com> wrote:

so afaiu “text string → .gif/.png/etc image”. What kind of rendering engine
you’r willing to use ? Oh, don’t say “Photon” please > :slight_smile:

Currently it’s just a hand-coded 7-segment LED-style of thing, and
the gif encoder is something I foraged years ago from FRACTINT.
However, the graphics part of it isn’t the main focus of the effort :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-RK

// wbr

“Robert Krten” <> rk@parse.com> > wrote in message
news:b7m6ie$mge$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
Hi folks,

I wrote a preliminary web-counter resource manager that generates
a .gif file, and am thinking of putting that into the book as the
first project. The idea being that the concept is very simple,
and can be expanded.

So, I’m planning on developing it in phases – phase 1 will be
totally rudimentary – you give it the foreground and background
colours and the x,y size on the command line, and it manifests
/dev/webcounter.gif (or whatever name you like). Whenever you
read /dev/webcounter.gif it increments the count. The initial
count can be given on the command line as well, otherwise
it defaults to 0.

Phase 2 will have more bells and whistles. Note that I’m mainly
interested in “educational” bells & whistles > :slight_smile:> , so things that
demonstrate something “clever” in a resource manager. I’m
thinking of putting in a /dev/webcounter.txt that you can read
the count from in ASCII and write the count to as well. Then
there might be some devctl()'s for setting the foreground/background
colour. Suggestions?

In Phase 3 I wanted to convert it from being a file-based resmgr
to a directory-based resmgr, and maybe should something like setting
the x,y size as part of the filename: /dev/webcounter/200x50.gif
or something. Suggestions?

(I’m embarrassed to say, “no you can’t see this in action because
my webserver is QNX 4 – if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”) > :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-RK


Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Books, Video-based and Instructor-led
Training, Consulting and Software Products at > www.parse.com> .


Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Books, Video-based and Instructor-led
Training, Consulting and Software Products at www.parse.com.

so afaiu “text string → .gif/.png/etc image”. What kind of rendering engine
you’r willing to use ? Oh, don’t say “Photon” please :slight_smile:

// wbr

“Robert Krten” <rk@parse.com> wrote in message
news:b7m6ie$mge$1@inn.qnx.com

Hi folks,

I wrote a preliminary web-counter resource manager that generates
a .gif file, and am thinking of putting that into the book as the
first project. The idea being that the concept is very simple,
and can be expanded.

So, I’m planning on developing it in phases – phase 1 will be
totally rudimentary – you give it the foreground and background
colours and the x,y size on the command line, and it manifests
/dev/webcounter.gif (or whatever name you like). Whenever you
read /dev/webcounter.gif it increments the count. The initial
count can be given on the command line as well, otherwise
it defaults to 0.

Phase 2 will have more bells and whistles. Note that I’m mainly
interested in “educational” bells & whistles > :slight_smile:> , so things that
demonstrate something “clever” in a resource manager. I’m
thinking of putting in a /dev/webcounter.txt that you can read
the count from in ASCII and write the count to as well. Then
there might be some devctl()'s for setting the foreground/background
colour. Suggestions?

In Phase 3 I wanted to convert it from being a file-based resmgr
to a directory-based resmgr, and maybe should something like setting
the x,y size as part of the filename: /dev/webcounter/200x50.gif
or something. Suggestions?

(I’m embarrassed to say, “no you can’t see this in action because
my webserver is QNX 4 – if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”) > :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-RK


Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Books, Video-based and Instructor-led
Training, Consulting and Software Products at > www.parse.com> .

Ian Zagorskih <ianzag@megasignal.com> wrote:

“Robert Krten” <> rk@parse.com> > wrote in message
news:b7m812$mge$> 2@inn.qnx.com> …
Ian Zagorskih <> ianzag@megasignal.com> > wrote:

so afaiu “text string → .gif/.png/etc image”. What kind of rendering
engine
you’r willing to use ? Oh, don’t say “Photon” please > :slight_smile:

Currently it’s just a hand-coded 7-segment LED-style of thing, and
the gif encoder is something I foraged years ago from FRACTINT.
However, the graphics part of it isn’t the main focus of the effort > :slight_smile:


In gereral, i like this idea. On the one hand that should be quite simply to
implement under both QNX 4 or 6 and on ther other it’s puporse is clean and
you can see the result just running “#pv /dev/mycounter.gif”. Well, maybe

Then I’d have to implement a newsreader that searchs in alt.binaries… :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-RK


\

Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Books, Video-based and Instructor-led
Training, Consulting and Software Products at www.parse.com.

“Robert Krten” <rk@parse.com> wrote in message
news:b7m812$mge$2@inn.qnx.com

Ian Zagorskih <> ianzag@megasignal.com> > wrote:

so afaiu “text string → .gif/.png/etc image”. What kind of rendering
engine
you’r willing to use ? Oh, don’t say “Photon” please > :slight_smile:

Currently it’s just a hand-coded 7-segment LED-style of thing, and
the gif encoder is something I foraged years ago from FRACTINT.
However, the graphics part of it isn’t the main focus of the effort > :slight_smile:

In gereral, i like this idea. On the one hand that should be quite simply to
implement under both QNX 4 or 6 and on ther other it’s puporse is clean and
you can see the result just running “#pv /dev/mycounter.gif”. Well, maybe
the 4th step will be /dev/pr0n.jpg ? :slight_smile: I bet you’ll take a very wide
audience…

// wbr

“Robert Krten” <rk@parse.com> wrote in message
news:b7m9nj$mge$3@inn.qnx.com

Ian Zagorskih <> ianzag@megasignal.com> > wrote:

In gereral, i like this idea. On the one hand that should be quite
simply to
implement under both QNX 4 or 6 and on ther other it’s puporse is clean
and
you can see the result just running “#pv /dev/mycounter.gif”. Well,
maybe

Then I’d have to implement a newsreader that searchs in alt.binaries…
:slight_smile:

That’s not so fun, better generate it on fly :slight_smile:

// wbr