tool page 5 - Dave's Blog

Word Wrapping IE's Plain Text

2008 Oct 28, 11:23

If you view a plain text document in Internet Explorer 8, for instance the plain text version of Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother and press F12 to bring up the developer toolbar, you can see that IE simply takes the plain text, sticks it inside a

 tag, and renders it.  This means that word wrapping isn't supplied and the only line breaks that appear are those in the document.  However, since the text document is converted to HTML it means I can implement word wrap myself using a bookmarklet:
javascript:function ww() { var preTag = document.getElementsByTagName('pre')[0]; preTag.style.fontFamily="arial"; preTag.style.wordWrap='break-word'; }; ww();
After adding a favorite and setting the favorite's URL to the previous, I can view plain text documents, and select my Word Wrap favorite to apply word wrap and non-fixed width font.

browser technical ie wordwrap

Investigation of a Few Application Protocols (Updated)

2008 Oct 25, 6:51

Windows allows for application protocols in which, through the registry, you specify a URL scheme and a command line to have that URL passed to your application. Its an easy way to hook a webbrowser up to your application. Anyone can read the doc above and then walk through the registry and pick out the application protocols but just from that info you can't tell what the application expects these URLs to look like. I did a bit of research on some of the application protocols I've seen which is listed below. Good places to look for information on URI schemes: Wikipedia URI scheme, and ESW Wiki UriSchemes.

Some Application Protocols and associated documentation.

Scheme	Name	Notes
search-ms	Windows Search Protocol	The search-ms application protocol is a convention for querying the Windows Search index. The protocol enables applications, like Microsoft Windows Explorer, to query the index with parameter-value arguments, including property arguments, previously saved searches, Advanced Query Syntax, Natural Query Syntax, and language code identifiers (LCIDs) for both the Indexer and the query itself. See the MSDN docs for search-ms for more info. Example: search-ms:query=food
Explorer.AssocProtocol.search-ms
OneNote	OneNote Protocol	From the OneNote help: /hyperlink "pagetarget" - Starts OneNote and opens the page specified by the pagetarget parameter. To obtain the hyperlink for any page in a OneNote notebook, right-click its page tab and then click Copy Hyperlink to this Page. Example: onenote:///\\GUMMO\Users\davris\Documents\OneNote%20Notebooks\OneNote%202007%20Guide\Getting%20Started%20with%20OneNote.one#section-id={692F45F5-A42A-415B-8C0D-39A10E88A30F}&end
callto	Callto Protocol	ESW Wiki Info on callto Skype callto info NetMeeting callto info Example: callto://+12125551234
itpc	iTunes Podcast	Tells iTunes to subscribe to an indicated podcast. iTunes documentation. C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe /url "%1" Example: itpc:http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=35
iTunes.AssocProtocol.itpc
pcast
iTunes.AssocProtocol.pcast
Magnet	Magnet URI	Magnet URL scheme described by Wikipedia. Magnet URLs identify a resource by a hash of that resource so that when used in P2P scenarios no central authority is necessary to create URIs for a resource.
mailto	Mail Protocol	RFC 2368 - Mailto URL Scheme. Mailto Syntax Opens mail programs with new message with some parameters filled in, such as the to, from, subject, and body. Example: mailto:?to=david.risney@gmail.com&subject=test&body=Test of mailto syntax
WindowsMail.Url.Mailto
MMS	mms Protocol	MSDN describes associated protocols. Wikipedia describes MMS. "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" "%L" Also appears to be related to MMS cellphone messages: MMS IETF Draft.
WMP11.AssocProtocol.MMS
secondlife	[SecondLife]	Opens SecondLife to the specified location, user, etc. SecondLife Wiki description of the URL scheme. "C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -set SystemLanguage en-us -url "%1" Example: secondlife://ahern/128/128/128
skype	Skype Protocol	Open Skype to call a user or phone number. Skype's documentation Wikipedia summary of skype URL scheme "C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe" "/uri:%l" Example: skype:+14035551111?call
skype-plugin	Skype Plugin Protocol Handler	Something to do with adding plugins to skype? Maybe. "C:\Program Files\Skype\Plugin Manager\skypePM.exe" "/uri:%1"
svn	SVN Protocol	Opens TortoiseSVN to browse the repository URL specified in the URL. C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe /command:repobrowser /path:"%1"
svn+ssh
tsvn
webcal	Webcal Protocol	Wikipedia describes webcal URL scheme. Webcal URL scheme description. A URL that starts with webcal:// points to an Internet location that contains a calendar in iCalendar format. "C:\Program Files\Windows Calendar\wincal.exe" /webcal "%1" Example: webcal://www.lightstalkers.org/LS.ics
WindowsCalendar.UrlWebcal.1
zune	Zune Protocol	Provides access to some Zune operations such as podcast subscription (via Zune Insider). "c:\Program Files\Zune\Zune.exe" -link:"%1" Example: zune://subscribe/?name=http://feeds.feedburner.com/wallstrip.
feed	Outlook Add RSS Feed	Identify a resource that is a feed such as Atom or RSS. Implemented by Outlook to add the indicated feed to Outlook. Feed URI scheme pre-draft document "C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /share "%1"
im	IM Protocol	RFC 3860 IM URI scheme description Like mailto but for instant messaging clients. Registered by Office Communicator but I was unable to get it to work as described in RFC 3860. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\Communicator.exe" "%1"
tel	Tel Protocol	RFC 5341 - tel URI scheme IANA assignment RFC 3966 - tel URI scheme description Call phone numbers via the tel URI scheme. Implemented by Office Communicator. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\Communicator.exe" "%1"

(Updated 2008-10-27: Added feed, im, and tel from Office Communicator)technical application protocol shell url windows

Tag Metadata in Feeds

2008 Aug 25, 10:13

As noted previously, my page consists of the aggregation of my various feeds and in working on that code recently it was again brought to my attention that everyone has different ways of representing tag metadata in feeds. I made up a list of how my various feed sources represent tags and list that data here so that it might help others in the future.

Tag markup from various sources

Source	Feed Type	Tag Markup Scheme	One Tag Per Element	Tag Scheme URI	Human / Machine Names	Example Markup
LiveJournal	Atom	atom:category	yes	no	no	, (source)
LiveJournal	RSS 2.0	rss2:category	yes	no	no	technical (soure)
WordPress	RSS 2.0	rss2:category	yes	no	no	, (source)
Delicious	RSS 1.0	dc:subject	no	no	no	photosynth photos 3d tool (source)
Delicious	RSS 2.0	rss2:category	yes	yes	no	domain="http://delicious.com/SequelGuy/"> hulu (source)
Flickr	Atom	atom:category	yes	yes	no	term="seattle" scheme="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/" /> (source)
Flickr	RSS 2.0	media:category	no	yes	no	scheme="urn:flickr:tags"> seattle washington baseball mariners (source)
YouTube	RSS 2.0	media:category	no	no	no	label="Tags"> bunny rabbit yawn cadbury (source)
LibraryThing	RSS 2.0	No explicit tag metadata.	no	no	no	n/a, (source)

Tag markup scheme

Tag Markup Scheme	Notes	Example
Atom Category atom:category xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"	category/@term Required category name. category/@scheme Optional IRI id'ing the categorization scheme. category/@label Optional human readable category name.	term="catName" scheme="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme" label="category name in human readable format"/>
RSS 2.0 category rss2:category empty namespace	category/@domain Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme. category/text() Required category name. The value of the element is a forward-slash-separated string that identifies a hierarchic location in the indicated taxonomy. Processors may establish conventions for the interpretation of categories.	domain="tag:deletethis.net,2008:tagscheme"> MSFT
Yahoo Media RSS Module category media:category xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"	category/text() Required category name. category/@domain Optional string id'ing the categorization scheme.	scheme="http://dmoz.org" label="Ace Ventura - Pet Detective"> Arts/Movies/Titles/A/Ace_Ventura_Series/Ace_Ventura_-_Pet_Detective
Dublin Core subject dc:subject xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"	subject/text() Required category name. Typically, the subject will be represented using keywords, key phrases, or classification codes. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.	humor

Update 2009-9-14: Added WordPress to the Tag Markup table and namespaces to the Tag Markup Scheme table.

feed media delicious technical atom youtube yahoo rss tag

Olden Days Tools Exhibit

2008 Jun 24, 9:58

sequelguy posted a photo:

canada victoria tools royalbritishcolumbiamuseum blueprints

Leaking Information Through Delicious

2008 May 18, 6:45

While re-reading Cryptonomicon I thought about what kind of information I'm leaking by posting links on Delicious. At work I don't post any Intranet websites for fear of revealing anything but I wondered if not posting would reveal anything. For instance, if I'm particularly busy at work might I post less indicating something about the state of the things I work on? I got an archive of my Delicious posts via the Delicious API and then ran it through a tool I made to create a couple of tables which I've graphed on Many Eyes

I've graphed my posts per week and with red lines I've marked IE7 and IE8 releases as stated by Wikipedia. As you can see, there doesn't seem to be much of a pattern so I suppose my concerns we're unfounded. I use it for both work and non-work purposes and my use of Delicious isn't that consistent so I don't think it would be easy to find a pattern like I was thinking about. Perhaps if many people from my project used Delicious and that data could be compared together it might be easier. For fun I looked at my posts per day of week which starts off strong on Mondays and decreases as the week goes on, and my posts per hour of day. It looks like I mostly post around lunch and on the extremes I've only posted very late at night twice at 4am: converting media for the Zune, and Penn's archive of articles. In the morning at 7am I've posted only once: document introducing SGML.manyeyes graph cryptonomicon delicious

URI Fragment Info Roundup

2008 Apr 21, 11:53

Information about URI Fragments, the portion of URIs that follow the '#' at the end and that are used to navigate within a document, is scattered throughout various documents which I usually have to hunt down. Instead I'll link to them all here.

Definitions. Fragments are defined in the URI RFC which states that they're used to identify a secondary resource that is related to the primary resource identified by the URI as a subset of the primary, a view of the primary, or some other resource described by the primary. The interpretation of a fragment is based on the mime type of the primary resource. Tim Berners-Lee notes that determining fragment meaning from mime type is a problem because a single URI may contain a single fragment, however over HTTP a single URI can result in the same logical resource represented in different mime types. So there's one fragment but multiple mime types and so multiple interpretations of the one fragment. The URI RFC says that if an author has a single resource available in multiple mime types then the author must ensure that the various representations of a single resource must all resolve fragments to the same logical secondary resource. Depending on which mime types you're dealing with this is either not easy or not possible.

HTTP. In HTTP when URIs are used, the fragment is not included. The General Syntax section of the HTTP standard says it uses the definitions of 'URI-reference' (which includes the fragment), 'absoluteURI', and 'relativeURI' (which don't include the fragment) from the URI RFC. However, the 'URI-reference' term doesn't actually appear in the BNF for the protocol. Accordingly the headers like 'Request-URI', 'Content-Location', 'Location', and 'Referer' which include URIs are defined with 'absoluteURI' or 'relativeURI' and don't include the fragment. This is in keeping with the original fragment definition which says that the fragment is used as a view of the original resource and consequently only needed for resolution on the client. Additionally, the URI RFC explicitly notes that not including the fragment is a privacy feature such that page authors won't be able to stop clients from viewing whatever fragments the client chooses. This seems like an odd claim given that if the author wanted to selectively restrict access to portions of documents there are other options for them like breaking out the parts of a single resource to which the author wishes to restrict access into separate resources.

HTML. In HTML, the HTML mime type RFC defines HTML's fragment use which consists of fragments referring to elements with a corresponding 'id' attribute or one of a particular set of elements with a corresponding 'name' attribute. The HTML spec discusses fragment use additionally noting that the names and ids must be unique in the document and that they must consist of only US-ASCII characters. The ID and NAME attributes are further restricted in section 6 to only consist of alphanumerics, the hyphen, period, colon, and underscore. This is a subset of the characters allowed in the URI fragment so no encoding is discussed since technically its not needed. However, practically speaking, browsers like FireFox and Internet Explorer allow for names and ids containing characters outside of the defined set including characters that must be percent-encoded to appear in a URI fragment. The interpretation of percent-encoded characters in fragments for HTML documents is not consistent across browsers (or in some cases within the same browser) especially for the percent-encoded percent.

Text. Text/plain recently got a fragment definition that allows fragments to refer to particular lines or characters within a text document. The scheme no longer includes regular expressions, which disappointed me at first, but in retrospect is probably good idea for increasing the adoption of this fragment scheme and for avoiding the potential for ubiquitous DoS via regex. One of the authors also notes this on his blog. I look forward to the day when this scheme is widely implemented.

XML. XML has the XPointer framework to define its fragment structure as noted by the XML mime type definition. XPointer consists of a general scheme that contains subschemes that identify a subset of an XML document. Its too bad such a thing wasn't adopted for URI fragments in general to solve the problem of a single resource with multiple mime type representations. I wrote more about XPointer when I worked on hacking XPointer into IE.

SVG and MPEG. Through the Media Fragments Working Group I found a couple more fragment scheme definitions. SVG's fragment scheme is defined in the SVG documentation and looks similar to XML's. MPEG has one defined but I could only find it as an ISO document "Text of ISO/IEC FCD 21000-17 MPEG-12 FID" and not as an RFC which is a little disturbing.

AJAX. AJAX websites have used fragments as an escape hatch for two issues that I've seen. The first is getting a unique URL for versions of a page that are produced on the client by script. The fragment may be changed by script without forcing the page to reload. This goes outside the rules of the standards by using HTML fragments in a fashion not called out by the HTML spec. but it does seem to be inline with the spirit of the fragment in that it is a subview of the original resource and interpretted client side. The other hack-ier use of the fragment in AJAX is for cross domain communication. The basic idea is that different frames or windows may not communicate in normal fashions if they have different domains but they can view each other's URLs and accordingly can change their own fragments in order to send a message out to those who know where to look. IMO this is not inline with the spirit of the fragment but is rather a cool hack.

xml text ajax technical url boring uri fragment rfc