other on MXI

A case of adapting a CLI test command from *NIX to Windows

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 21:45:11 +0300

There is a package I wanted to publish to npmjs.com. That package provides a CLI tool among other features, and contains tests for that tool. Unfortunately, tests were made with only *NIX in mind, so it wasn’t possible to pass all tests and publish the package from Windows.

The main culprit is inside the following function:

function runWithInputAndExpect (input, args, expectedOutput, done) {
var command = 'echo "' + input.replace(/"/g, '\\"') + '" | node bin/cli.js ' + args;
exec(command, function callback (error, stdout, stderr) {
expect(error).to.be.a('null');
expect(stderr).to.equal('');
expect(stdout).to.equal(expectedOutput + '\n');
done(error);
});
}

What makes the difference between *NIX and Windows (as far as we concerned here) is how echo command works. First of all, it keeps the quotes! But after we try to remove them - we will soon discover that the rabbit hole might be quite deep.

And down the rabbit hole we go:

SDRSharp plugin for touch devices, some thoughts on license

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 17:00:00 +0300

This project was sitting on my hard drive for several years until now. Last time I made an attempt to clean it up and prepare for publishing to GitHub in 2017.

Making sure it compiles against all required targets and contains all the required notes - is easy for such a small project. But there was something I just didn’t know how to deal with… More on this below.

Back in time, I was playing with RTL-SDR dongles, and the device I was connecting them to was a Microsoft Surface 2 Pro - “laptop-but-more-like-a-tablet”. I love Microsoft Surface devices, especially that old one, for it’s compact size. It is really cool to be able to move around freely, listening what’s coming from a dongle, no awkward balancing acts with a classic laptop…

Portable use has some UX specifics. Namely, having to use keyboard and mouse is really limiting, and touch screen operation on a tablet device is much more preferred.

While SDR# had quite clean UI, it was clearly made without such considerations. The core functionality - frequency navigation - was nearly impossible to perform on the go. It is really hard to hit top or bottom of the right digit on the frequency display.

At the same time, I had some examples of test and measurement equipment in access. These are historically made with very good tactile operation in mind. So I figured I can bring some of that experience to an SDR# plugin.

Next folder, previous folder navigation in Explorer with QTTabBar

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 12:15:11 +0300

QTTabBar surprised us with the update recently, after almost three years of silence. (The changelog also points to an importance of having a full copy of your code somewhere outside of your PC. Version control systems to the rescue.)

To celebrate this fact, I decided to publish a little custom feature I’m using with QTTabBar — a script and UI buttons to navigate between folders within one common parent folder.

There are cases when you need to visit a set of folders, and going up and down in the folder structure is getting tedious. That’s where magic “Next folder”, “Previous folder” buttons come in handy.

Navigation pane, a.k.a. tree view can, in principle, be used for that, but it isn’t always convenient to use. I can only use it for top level navigation, unless Microsoft will come up with some way to reduce clutter in the tree - not showing subfolders that aren’t ascendants or descendants of current folder for example.

My QTTabBar panel looks like this:

Two triangles looking in opposite directions are the buttons this post is dedicated to.

Below is the code and description for the buttons.

PowerShell, square brackets and apostrophes

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 02:15:11 +0300

This is a follow-up post to the one about square brackets and Unicode in PowerShell.

I discovered recently that there is another PITA character that interferes with my workaround — it’s a single quote, or apostrophe.

It’s fine to start PowerShell inside a folder with an apostrophe in its name, but we have to escape it when using inside Powershell commands or passing into PowerShell from anywhere else.

Below are my experiments to find the best way to open PowerShell in any folder… if ever possible.

PowerShell, Explorer, square brackets and Unicode paths

Sun, 19 Mar 2017 00:55:11 +0300

Let’s make a folder C:\[test] and try to open PowerShell there from Explorer (using Ribbon or context menu).

Oops!

Let’s see what we can do with this.

Circling the square

Thu, 02 Jun 2016 20:48:23 +0300

I have some more Paint.NET shapes added to collection. Superellipses to be precise. Check the project page.

Superellipse or Lamé curve is the shape produced by generalized equation of ellipse, where we change the power factor. It approaches to rectangular shape on large values.

Also check the video below for a little bit of history of this shape in design.

Released some shapes for Paint.NET and converter

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 14:34:14 +0300

Some glitch-art, for starters. Guess what it was supposed to be: Recently I was doing some simple photo-editing and found that it will be much easier if there were some crop masks. 3x3 grid and things like that. After looking into Paint.NET forum I discovered that Paint.NET has support for custom shapes. This feature meet my needs almost perfectly. I think I’ve overdid it a bit, and after some research and coding I end up with a bunch of stuff which you can see on a project page.

Paint.NET stuff

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 14:15:46 +0300

Collection of custom shapes for raster graphics editor Paint.NET and some tools to assist in custom shape creation process.