In addition to the lack of time for the application, I’m also impressed with the Gospel Library published by the LDS church. Granted they don’t have a lot of releases, however they have a great deal more features then what is provided by the Scriptures application.

The last thing I have considered is open sourcing the application. If there are people interested in working on the application or even just learning from some of what went into the application I could consider publishing it on a code site like github, however I’m not keen on somebody taking it over and then using it to earn money from it, so I haven’t released it anywhere yet. So, if you are interested in it at all, drop me a line.

In my app I also use prototype, which uses the $ function…just like jQuery. Fortunately there is a work around. All that is needed is a simple javascript in the header. Something like this should work well:

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  var $j = jQuery.noConflict();

That then allows you to use both jquery as well as prototype in the same application. Anywhere you need to use jquery instead of doing a $() you use use $j instead.

His email follows:

I would like each of you to participate in a linguistics experiment.
I propose creating a new word, one which hits on a Google search of less than 20, mainly due to random letter arrangements.

The purpose of this experiment will be to create a global awareness of a new word in as little time as possible.

We will create a new word, create a definition of this new word, and then release it into the wilds of the infospace, rather like a semantic virus.

Then we will each use this word, at least once in a blog post or email or comment on an article or blog on the web. The spread of the use of the the term is the intent so a high frequency of usage is suggested. The simple reposting of this email will suffice.

We will then watch how quickly, or not, the word becomes prevalent in the linguistic maze that is the web.

Each week I will send a Google search count update to this list.

~~~

* The first word I propose is “leximize” which is to maximize the lexical exposure of a word.

As of this moment (5/10/2010 8:30 AM PST) there are 5 hits on the quoted word “leximize”, none of which have legitimate meaning.

~~~

I would also like to attach a future event to this word. The concept of this event will infiltrate the consciousness of the netmind bleeding out into the memespeak of the mainstream media. The purpose of attaching a fabricated event is to determine if we have any influence, to any degree possible, on the event and date in question; if in nothing more than the escalation of anticipation of the proposed date and event, simply through awareness.

* The spring equinox 2013 (March 21, 2013) will mark this event’s horizon.
* This event will entail the the joining of hands of multiple, long time national rivals and the collapse of physical, political and cultural barriers.
* At this point in time not only will these nations build a neoleague but newly constructed terms to describe the event will have been leximized.

~~~

Your participation is welcome in this experiment.

I urge you to reformulate the content in this email, to create a names to commemorate this event, to create your own neoleague terms and to send this email on to whomever you believe will find this experiment entertaining.

This experiment has officially begun!

Download it here.

To start, lets show the feature. I’ll go through each line one at a time.

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    Scenario: Create a new style from scratch
        Given I have logged in as "testuser"
        And I am on the style creation page
        And I fill in the fields
            | unit_style_code        | S100  |
            | unit_style_description | A simple floorplan |
            | unit_style_square_feet | 100.0 |
            | unit_style_price       | 1000.0 |
        When I press "Save"
        Then with the latest unit_style
        Then I should be on the edit style page for that unit_style
        Then the "unit_style[code]" field should contain "S100"
        Then the "unit_style[description]" field should contain "A simple floorplan"
        Then the "unit_style[square_feet]" field should contain "100.00"
        Then the "unit_style[price]" field should contain "1000.00"

Line 2: This one was tricky. I’m using restful authentication for rails and I’m using users already created with dummy/test account information for testing purposes. The “I have logged in as” step does all the logging in steps. Getting through all that is another posts (one shorter than this one tho).

Line 3: Just create the mapping for “the style creation page” in /features/support/path.rb

Line 4-8: In /features/step_definitions/webrat_steps.rb, I put in the following code:

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When /^I fill in the fields$/ do |table|
  table.raw.each do |row|
    fill_in(row[0], :with => row[1])
  end
end

Line 9: “Save” is the name of the submit button. The “I press” step is already in the generated webrat_steps.rb

Line 10: I created a unit_style_steps.rb, which contains:

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Then /^with the latest unit_style$/ do
  @unit_style = UnitStyle.find(:last)
end

Line 11: Again, back to path.rb, this time I added the following:

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    when /the edit style page for that unit_style/
      "/housing/engineering/edit_style/" + @unit_style.id.to_s

Line 12-15: This is where I was having problems. The generated webrat_steps had the following for it:

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Then /^the "([^\"]*)" field should contain "([^\"]*)"$/ do |field, value|
  field_labeled(field).value.should =~ /#{value}/
end

But it wasn’t finding the fields correctly. So after using the save_and_open webrat function (now another method in my webrat_steps) I was able to determine that the fields were there and that they had the correct information in them. Webrat just was not finding them. After a bit more digging I found the file_named function, and now, the step looks like this:

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Then /^the "([^\"]*)" field should contain "([^\"]*)"$/ do |field, value|
  field_named(field).value.should =~ /#{value}/
end

So, with only a few lines of code, I have a simple, easy to read scenario that just about any user would be able to read and understand, but also something I can take and run on a regular basis to make sure the application is also running the way it should.

Add a dose of a primary hard drive crash and you have for a busy couple weeks. Finally I’ve managed to reinstall most of my necessary software, but I lost my .gitconfig file. So, for future reference, here are a couple of essentials needed to get git, svn and kdiff3 working (at least for now). All of it can be done with the git config command, but it is so much easier to just cut and paste.

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[user]
	name = David Mitchell
	email = mitchelld@acm.org
[color]
	interactive = always
	status = always
	pager = true
	branch = always
	patch = always
	ui = always
	diff = always
	grep = always
[format]
	pretty = medium
[merge]
	tool = kdiff3
[mergetool "kdiff3"]
	path = C:/Tools/KDiff3/kdiff3.exe 
[diff]
	tool = kdiff3
[difftool "kdiff3"]
	path = C:/Tools/KDiff3/kdiff3.exe
[difftool]
	prompt = false
[mergetool]
	prompt = false