.Open Sample Project Blog -- Improving MATHS Tools
. 2009-10-20 Tue Oct 20 12:22 Fixed a bug in mth2html
Yesterday I noticed that some items in a section were not being numbered.

By looking at what was numbered and what was unnumbered I noticed this
.Table Syntax	Numbered	Unnumbered
.Row Had a inline formula	no	yes
.Row Had no inline formula	yes	no
.Close.Table

So I looked for why a "<li>" tab was not put in when a "<span class="Inline...>"
was present.

And found that I used the code like this
.As_is 		/<span/!s/...../<span class="Formula"/
to stop multiple insertions.

The fix was obvious
.As_is 		/<span class="Formula"/!s/...../<span class="Formula"/
and worked.

I cloned this into the renderer (m2h) for submissions...

Oddly a similar overgeneral regular expression was causing a different bug in the
script I use to publish newer items (pubn).  There I looked for
".pubn" rather than "\.pubn" and so picked up a mystype ",pubn".

Doh!

. 2009-09-29 Tue Sep 29 10:58 Tabs in Tables
Previously `mth2html` would treat a series of ASCII.HT (horizontal tabs) as
a separator between table elements (<th> or <td>).

I've changed it (after it bit me) so that each single tab character in a table heading
(.Table) or row (.Row) indicates a table entry.   THis leads to empty entries.
I have a vague memory of these not being treated well in some early browsers.
[Contact] me if you have a bad experience.

After a private test period, if nothing bad happens, I'll change the script used
with web pages (`m2h`) to0 have the same behavior.

. 2009-08-25 Tue Aug 25 11:39 doi DOA
It turns out that "doi:" is not a reliable protocol.... to put it mildly.
I will be removing it. In place of the reccomended
.As_is doi:10.1016/j.scico.2007.07.001
on the Science Direct web site..... it has to be
.As_is http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2007.07.001
as the "href" in the HTML anchor.

I'll test this, but I'm not sure that it is a reliable feature....

It does seem to work.... and even handles ACM's DOIs.   

DOI::acronym="Digital Object Identifier", following
.Box
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI(R)) System is for identifying content 
objects in the digital environment. DOI(R) names are assigned to any entity
for use on digital networks. They are used to provide current information,
including where they (or information about them) can be found on the 
Internet. Information about a digital object may change over time, 
including where to find it, but its DOI name will not change.

 From
.See http://www.doi.org/
.Close.Box

. 2009-08-25 Tue Aug 25 11:28 added doi to mth2html
Yesterday I added "doi" to the protocols that my MATHS to HTML translator handles.
It was a simple change.  But the ASCII browser I use to test pages doesn't
handle the protocol.  Safari does.  I'd like to know if MSIE, Firefox, etc.  do
the right thing with "DOI"s.  Select
.See ../test.html
to get the HTML rendering for this test case
.As_is .Open Test
.As_is .Source RJB
.As_is .See ftp:ftp.csci.csusb.edu/dick/test.html
.As_is .See doi:10.1016/j.scico.2007.07.001
.As_is .Close
. 2009-06-02 Tue Jun  2 13:35 Obvious solution
There was an `obvious` solution to the problems of upgrading to a new server
which didn't have the functions I needed for the PHP scripts.  As Suggested
be Ken our systems administrator -- I can use the old server to run the scripts.

All I had to do was change
.As_is comment.html:<form method=POST action="http://www.csci.csusb.edu/dick/samples/mailme.php">
.As_is hole.html:<form method=POST action="http://www.csci.csusb.edu/dick/samples/mailme.php">
to
.As_is comment.html:<form method=POST action="http://ftp.csci.csusb.edu/dick/samples/mailme.php">
.As_is hole.html:<form method=POST action="http://ftp.csci.csusb.edu/dick/samples/mailme.php">
and the Contact and Contribute/hole pages should work.
. 2009-05-30 Sat May 30 07:35 Upgrades...
We have upgraded to a new web server for faculty.  ANd this has killed
the PHP scripts that use EMail on this site... [Contact]....

It has also killed the rendering PHP scripts....
This is effectively a repeat of the next entry.  Which seems to be anexample of this theorem
	upgrade = crash.
. 2009-05-06 Wed May  6 13:46 Another crash
On Monday morning the server went down and needed to be rebuilt.  The new
server was up by the afternoon -- with improved security.   It also returned to 
December 2nd 2008.

But -- I keep a separate working copy of all files that I publish on the web.
So I was able to replace all the changed files by Tuesday Morning.

And discovered that some scripts that used PHP Mail were dead.  My systems Admin
got that fixed this morning and we worked on the problem of the shell scripts that
came out of this project.

Turns out that the PATH to the "bin" directory had changed with the
new server.  And I fixed that about 15 minutes ago.  This was a "Tech"
issue
.See ./maths/T.html#PHP+unix
from July 31st raising its ugly head again.

. 2009-02-07 Sat Feb  7 08:02 Just when we got it to work...
A young officer wrote to his parents from his place of deployment that
just when they got everything to work properly somebody from home
came out and reorganized everything....

Which is how I feel about my sabbatical work.  In December of this year
someone got into our web server and set up what was probably a gambling site....
so the whole server had to be rebuilt and this broke all my scripts for sending
contributions.

The sysadmin was very helpful in providing work arounds and I've just installed them.

I alsohad to find out were my "web/bin" directory had got to.   

And discover that "~dick" on the web server works differently to which I thought...

ANd.... the our PHP doesn't like "else if".

BUT I've fixed most of the critical scripts: home, samples, papers, maths, cs375, and
cs201.

So, in theory I'm open for contributions again.... I think I'm going back to bed as well,
to recover...

By the way, the young officer was in the Imperial Roman Army, nearly two thousand
years ago.  The only constant..... is change.

. 2008-11-18 Tue Nov 18 14:11 Allow 3 leading spaces to work like a tab
Here is a feature I lost.... and which is helpful when inputing MATHS
into a form in some browsers. To make a formula out of a like
put a tab or 3 spaces in front of it. Like
	this
   or this
 for example.
. 2008-10-18 Sat Oct 18 11:10 Error in fixing slashes
I didn't know that PHP also prefixed a backslash in front of backslashes.... or
more precisely I've just rediscovered this while testing "hole.php".

So the `ed` shell script reads:
.As_is 	ed - "$1" <<ENDIT
.As_is 	g/\\\\'/s//'/g
.As_is 	g/\\\\"/s//"/g
.As_is 	g/\\\\\\\\/s//\\\\/g
.As_is 	w
.As_is 	q
.As_is 	ENDIT

The octuple slashes to match what is actually a pair and the quadruple
backslash to generate a single one..... was discovered thru several
painful iterations:-)   But now TeXie things like \alpha don't come out
as \\alpha.

. 2008-10-05 Sun Oct  5 17:10 Updated Systems and Technologies
I've just changed the description of systems
.See ./maths/S.html
to date the systems as achieved.

Also added a technique/tool
.See ./maths/T.html#unix2dos
for converting .mth (Unix) files into .txt (DOS) files
for those servers that don't have the Gnu unix2dox command.

. 2008-09-19 Fri Sep 19 13:09 Ready for Brave Beta Testers
Go to
.See ../hole.html
and send me your thoughts.
. 2008-09-19 Fri Sep 19 12:09 m2h works
For a whiel the m2h script output nothing.... but while walking to get some
tea I figured out that the web server couldn't find one of the most useful
programs that I have ever developed.  It is called `br` and it has the function of
`br`-eaking lines along word boundaries, if possible.  It was designed
using a variation of Jackson Structured Programmig before ANSI C existed.
The documentation is here
.See ./br.d.html
and you can get a copy of the C source code
from
.See ../tools/br.c
, enjoy!

Now all I have to do is make PHP create a temporary foo.mth file
and pass it to `fix.slashes` and `m2h` to present to the user
the HRML rendering of their submission.

. 2008-09-18 Thu Sep 18 14:09 Scream of trivial triumph
It turns out that I was working in the wrong 'bin' directory
and had mistyped the permissions so that the server couldn't
execute the "fix.slashes" command.   

The correct directory is obscured because PHP sees a different
directory structure to a logged-in user running a shell...

I have been here and done this before.
. 2008-09-18 Thu Sep 18 13:09 Struggling with PHP--Shell
Currently I've got PHP to run my "cookie" shell script OK,
but the "fix.slashes" script is not executing.  Need inspiration
to see what stupid assumption I am making.

Next step -- create a cut down version of `mth2html` called 'm2h`
that works on a test file `tester.mth`.

Then use PHP to create a tmp file ready for `m2h`.

. 2008-09-12 Fri Sep 12 15:09 How to remove magic slashes
PHP inserts `magic` slashe in front of quotation marks in incoming
data in an attempt to thwart SQL injection and other
evil attacks.  These can also bite shell scripts -- an adde
quote allows the user have any shell commands they like executes.

However the venerable `ed` editor can not be tricked into
executing the file it is editting, by data in that file.  And so the
safest(Q) technique (T) is to use a script that calls an `ed` command.

Here is `fix-slashes`
.Box
.As_is : fix extra slashes injected by PHP 
.As_is if [ $# -ne 1 -o "x$1" = x ]
.As_is then
.As_is 	echo $0: Wrong number of arguments
.As_is 	exit 2
.As_is fi
.As_is if [ -w $1 ]
.As_is then
.As_is ed - $1 <<ENDIT
.As_is g/\\\\'/s//'/g
.As_is g/\\\\"/s//"/g
.As_is w
.As_is q
.As_is ENDIT
.As_is else
.As_is 	echo $0: file $1 not writable
.As_is 	exit 1
.As_is fi
.Close.Box
. 2008-07-31 Thu Jul 31 16:07 Problem with PHP and UNIX resolved
.See ./maths/T.html#PHP+unix
. 2008-06-25 Wed Jun 25 10:06 Problem with PHP and Unix
.See ./maths/T.html#PHP+unix
. 2008-06-04 Wed Jun  4 06:06 Added Qs and Ts
See
.See ./maths/T.html
, 
.See ./maths/Q.html
, and
.See ./maths/log.txt
for details.

Spent a week studying
.See [Weber05]
on "The Success of Open Source".  Which fits well with Shirky and "Coding Horror"
below.

Consequence: confirmed that a email+reflect back system is the best
next step.
. 2008-05-30 Fri May 30 14:05 Many small changes
In particular include the fact that the current bibliography of
software engineering has links to more than 100 different hosts.
.See ./maths/index.html
. 2008-05-30 Fri May 30 12:05 Evil that men do
Added examples: 
.See http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001123.html
(Coding Horror blog "Designing For Evil", May 2008).
to
.See ./maths/R.html
(Realitites of project).
. 2008-05-28 Wed May 28 18:05 Insight into how social web sites work
Just spent the afternoon studying a wise paper on the design of technology
to support conversations and how groups actually work.

.Open Shirky03
 Clay Shirky 
 A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy 
 ETech (Apr 2003 ) + Published July 1, 2003 on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list.
.See http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
 =TALK =HISTORY WWW/NET SOCIAL GROUP PEOPLE CULTURE WEB2.0  TEAM  
 Refers to W.R. Bion: "Experiences in Groups": 
Groups of people become both collections of individuals and a self-coordinating  entitiy.
Therapeutic groups tend to: talk sex, identify external enemies, and religiously venerate something.
Need for structure for groups to work.
In particular rules for creating rules...
 Examples of BBSs, Usenet, .... where open free group is invaded.
 Therefore need structure in social systems.
 Technology (TCP/IP, WiFi, IM, Mobile phones, ...) now lets all people be online together.
 Example. Ito's Conference call moderated on chat with wiki for references.
 For a given technology -- most groups fail!
 Accept:
.List
 Social and technical issues are intertwingled: they can not be separated niether does the technical drive the social. 
The system will have antics -- emergent properties.
There will be a formal rules and informal rules.
 Members are not just users. 
There will be an onion structure. 
Example: reader -> anonimous coward  -> named person  -> moderator.
The Core subgroup love and weed the garden that others wander through (and vandalize?).  = Volunteer fire department.
 `One user = one vote` does not work when anybody can be a user.
.Close.List
 Things to design for
.List
 Give members a handle -- stable local name.  So they get a reputation.
 Make a simple way for behavior to be visible --  who is in good standing?
 Make it difficult to enter the core subgroups.
The `group` is the real user!
 Make the communications scale.  
Encourage a `small world` structure. Many linked small groups.
.Close.List
.Close

. 2008-05-21 Wed May 21 09:05 Tweaked the infrastructure
.See ./maths/
. 2008-05-20 Tue May 20 19:05 Technology exploration
This morning I discovered a difference between the 'sed'
available in our labs and office machines, and the login server
vs the 'sed' on our web server.  My plan is to initially reuse
the source code and much of that uses the UNIX Stream EDitor --(sed)

The code that works outside the web server looks like this
.As_is sed '/^\.As_is/!{s/\\TeX/\&Tau;<sub>\&Epsilon;<\/sub>\&Chi;/g
.As_is s/\\alpha/\&alpha;/g
.As_is ...
.As_is }'
and I had to "Destructure" it and introduce a `goto`:
.As_is sed '/^\.As_is/bignore
.As_is s/\\TeX/\&Tau;<sub>\&Epsilon;<\/sub>\&Chi;/g
.As_is s/\\alpha/\&alpha;/g
.As_is ...
.As_is :ignore'

Please don't tell me to use Perl.

I'm thinking about using a variation of PArnas's Display concept where
requirements, designs, the properties of machines are all shown at
once, but kept separately....

. 2008-05-16 Fri May 16 10:05 Infrastructure -- New directory -- samples/maths
.See ./maths/
. 2008-05-15 Thu May 15 17:05 Blog Started -- Copying items from main blog
I've decided that I need to track my thinking about MATHS and developing
its tools separately to to my regular blog of reading.  The following
entries are ripped out of the normal blog.

. 2008-05-13 Tue May 13 14:05 Requirments vs Technologies

Meanwhile -- working on requirements and the available technologies for
my sabbatical project, and sorting out leaks in (1) my accounting
and (2) a bath room tap.  Also reviewing the syntax and semantics
of documentation in my MATHS language --
.See ./maths/notn_13_Docn_Syntax.html
.See ./maths/notn_14_Docn_Semantics.html
.See ./maths/notn_15_Naming_Documentn.html
etc. .
. 2008-05-12 Mon May 12 14:05 YAML -- XML considered harmful
My favorite blog just sent me an excellent article
.See http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001114.html
which says something that I have been thinking ever since
XML was invented -- that it may not be the best solution for
all your data encoding needs.   As evidence the author
gives examples of YAML 
.See ./samples/languages.html#YAML
which are both easier to read and still 99% unambiguous.

Like my own $MATHS language it use white space to indicate structure.  But
it goes further by having no open+close bracketing syntax.  It is
all done by indentation.  Much the same way CODIL did (does?).

I'm tempted to formalize YAML into my $MATHS language as a long
format for complex objects:
	CIRCLE( center=> POINT( x=>1, y=>2 ), radius => 10 )
.As_is .Open.YAML
.As_is     center:
.As_is        x : 1
.As_is        y : 2
.As_is     radius : 10
.As_is .Close.YAML

But this will need some thought about current features of MATHS
and how simple implementation might be.  Can it be done with the UNIX 
standard tool kit -- sed/auk/...?

. 2008-05-09 Fri May  9 17:05 Sabbatical Project -- MATHS
My sabbatical project is not making much progress.  The next post
is typical of the reading that I have been doing that indicates
that there may not be a `market` for a simple, formal notation for
mathematics -- even if designed to have a lot in common with
programming languages.  The language exists
.See ./maths
and has stabilized over several years personal use.  My project is
to add a new feature heading in the direction of a wiki.

In the project I was hoping to move in the direction of a wiki-style
site that used the language with a lot of people contributing information,
notes, samples, and so on.   Yesterday I looked into a "PHP Phrasebook".
It is full of warnings about the bad things can do if they supply data
and some of the things you can do to avoid them.  I knew about the
risk of passing HTML code with "<script>" tags and have (for years)
translated HTML-special symbols in MATHS into entities on HTML pages.

What I had not thought about is that URLs can not be trusted.  I'm quite
paranoid about clicking on links and attachments for example in EMail.
But I'm starting to wonder if I can trust links in the WikiWikiWeb and the
Wikipedia any more.

This is fairly typical of requirements... a desirable feature comes with a
poison pill.  It is also typical that you discover the poison pill after
the project is well under way.    It is also an example of a negative
requirement -- something that must not be possible.

.Open MATHS Project Features
 (REQ1): Users should be able to edit MATHS web pages.
 (REQ2): Users must not be able to include links to illegal and/or malicious URLs.
 (NAT1): Some people attempt to include illegal and malicous links in my pages.
 ()|-Anonymous users may need to have their changes vetted before inserting.
 ()|-Untrusted users may be limited to local links.
 ()|-There may be away to join a group of trusted users who will get full access to the system
.Close
Note:  In the above I distinguish `requirements` (labeled REQ`n`) from
known facts (NAT`n`).   This comes from the SCR project and Michael A
Jacksons recent publications.

Contact me if you have an thoughts.

. 2008-05-05 Mon May  5 13:05 Software Reliabillity Probabillity etc
I've made some small improvements to some pages introducing my
MATHS language:
.See ../maths/intro_records.html
showing how to describe structures with 
.Key optional and multiple parts.
For example to state that a cat has 4 legs...
	CAT::=Net{ cat: $ LEG ^ 4 ,...}.

. 2008-03-24 Mon Mar 24 17:03 Sabbatical Next Quarter
I've just posted my grades for the Winter quarter so I'm ready
to take a break (taxes + a trip?).

Next quarter I will be `on sabbatical`.  This is a long tradtion in
Universities.  I guess it is assumed that after 7 years of teaching
you will need a break to get your perspective and energy back.  In
CSUSB you have to apply and the aplication includes a form defining the
project you plan to carry out on the sabbatical.  Here is the
short description
.Box
To develop software and a web site that enable other computer scientists to
experiment with and use my MATHS language.  The software will enable the 
creation of linked, mathematical, and searchable documentation in HTML, 
XML, and ASCII.
.Close.Box
Here
.See ./sabbatical.html
are the details.

I hope to start a new blog to track progress... and I have to decide where
it fits this website.  More later.
. Glossary
MATHS::=http://csci.csusb.edu/dick/maths/,
a language for semiformal documentation including
ontologies, logics,
conceptual models, specifications, and algorithms
that I also use for weblogs, essays, lecture notes, etc. etc.

.Close Sample Project Blog -- Improving MATHS Tools