AnimalTracker is progressing. The bugs are getting less and less. The GTK and the Windows Version have still one bug each. They are different bugs unfortunately. Unfortunate because it shouldn’t happen that those versions behave different that just is more unnecessary work for me. I am restructuring the graphic classes maybe that will help. I “fixed” a few bugs by disabling functions in one of the versions. None of those missing functions are important, but I hope I can really fix them sometime.
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The online HTML version and a PDF Version of the AnimalTracker manual are now available.

I’ll fix the GTK version next. Not all of the functions of the MS Windows version are working in the GTK version.

I created and uploaded a demo version of the MS Windows version of AnimalTracker. It is also accesible via the software page. As I already wrote previously I am writing an english documentation. A part of it is already online. The rest will follow within the next days. A PDF version of the manual will also be available if the documentation is finished.

I spend about an hour to write about my attempt to install Docbook to use it to write the documentation for my animal tracking software. Unfortunately something went wrong while I was previewing the entry and I lost everything I wrote. Basically I wrote that I found it difficult to install all the needed file on a Debian system.

I always forget to check the CDs before I buy them. Now it happend I bought my first CD which allegedly has a copy protection. I was on the way home when I noticed it. It didn’t care that much if I could rip the CD, what mattered more to me was that I supporting copy protected CD by buying them, although it was just a maxi CD, so my support was not that big The CD was “Why Worry” from Sylver. I liked the title, the lyrics, the melody and the singer looks good too
I tried Grip for Linux and CDex for Windows both the CD-RW and the DVD-ROM could read the CD, so where’s the copy protection? I am really disappointed. And I didn’t find the Mediaplayer they said in their F.A.Q. should be on the CD to access the music. They should either remove the warning on the CDs or put some real copy protection on the CD. I hope next time I’ll pay more attention if I buy CDs.

The music publisher btw. has a funny question in their f.a.q. : Will the CDs be more expensive because of the copy protection? What a weird question. I’d rather ask: Will the CDs be cheaper now that the CDs are not copied anymore? But that question might be just as naive as the original one
The “problem” that I have currently is that there is too much music. I listen a lot to Digitally Imported and they have a channel for every mood, from chillout music to hardcore techno. And if I am tired of electronic music there are still all the other internet stations and my CDs. It would be great if I could listen to several songs at once . Today I discovered beatmaka.com a site which offers free downloads and reviews of electronic music made by less known artists. I am curious if the bands and musicians will sell their music by themselves through the internet in the future.

wxWindows is frustrating, the GTK version is behaving different than the MS Windows version. The windows get drawn differently. The GTK version wants to draw the windows even if they are not visible, which
results in negative window sizes and the gnu debugger is crashing now and then with a segmentation fault.
The Motif Version is crashing right at the beginning. If all versions at least would crash at the same spot then I would have probably found a solution a long time ago, because I developed it in Windows, it runs flawless there,

I am going to play Neverwinter Nights now

Today I registered AnimalTracker on Freshmeat. I fixed a few bugs which only appeared in the GTK version. It’s still not perfect. The Arealayer is flickering in the GTK version, but that is bearable and there is another small bug. But I am too curious if there is an interest in that software. I don’t think many people who visit freshmeat have use for it. But having two projects on freshmeat looks good in itself. If you (the reader) know any sites for zoological/biological software, it would be kind to leave a comment with a URL.
The software comes with an unusual license: The use on unixlike OSes is free, but you have to pay for the MS Windows version. Most of the users who could use it will probably use Windows. It would make me either happy if they would use Linux to use the software or if they pay me something .

The creation of the RSS file works again. I changed the link in the top frame from RDF to RSS. RSS seems to be a substandard of RDF. Links to RSS viewers can be found here. I tried the first one on the list AmphetaDesk and didn’t like it, because it starts a webserver. I don’t have that much memory to start a webserver for every application, I rather want a standalone desktop application.

The comment function was broken, too. It should be working now. I discovered the error when I looked into the sitelog and saw someone trying to post a comment.

I finally found two bugs which caused my animaltracking software to crash under certain circumstances. All the important things seem to work now. You can draw a map, and place animals on it. The application can calculate the distance between each animal and the distribution of the animals on the map (The screenshot on the left shows the distribution view. The screenshot was taken from the GTK Version running on Mandrake Linux 9.1).

The application is created with wxWidgets. I developed the application in MS Windows because of the faster compile times. There also seem to be differences between the wxWidgets version. The mousewheel is not working correctly in the GTK/Linux Version (the mousewheel scrolled the window instead of handling my custom event). The past GTK versions of my software often crashed, the Windows version didn’t. It was of course my fault. The current GTK version doesn’t crash, after I removed some bugs in the windows version. There is still one thing in the GTK Version makes it a bit hard to use: the bitmaps are not sized correctly, but this should be easy to fix.

It would probably be easier to develop the software had I used Java to code it, but that would have been to slow for the users. One user runs this software on a Pentium with 75MHz and I am impressed that the application is usable on that machine.

Eclipse ist wunderbar. Eclipse ist eine Java IDE und eine der besten IDEs die ich kenne. Aufrund von Eclipse w�rde ich schon eine Anwendung eher in Java, als in irgend einer anderen Sprache schreiben. Eclipse nimmt einem einiges an Arbeit ab und man spart definitiv einiges an Zeit. Vervollst�ndigung von Funktionsnamen und Attributen findet man h�ufiger bei IDEs. Fasziniert bin ich von den Fehlerkorrekturvorschl�gen und den Refaktoringfunktionen. Es wird automatisch vorgeschlagen eine Funktion zu importieren, oder Try-Catch Bl�cke. Wenn man eine Klasse umbennenen will klickt man einfach auf Rename oder auf Move, um sie zu verschieben und automatisch werden alle Referenzen darauf angepasst. Schade nur das es die Funktionen noch nicht f�r das Eclipse C Plugin gibt.