cryzed's laboratory

Now that was quick – didn’t even last longer than my usual projects. The reason I’m pausing Vynk for now is because the java.awt.Robot class apparently isn’t able to send anything besides a subset of the ASCII charset characters to non-Swing windows.

Well… it is possible, but no one in their right mind would even think about using these workarounds. For Windows operating systems that would for example be holding down the CTRL-key and entering some fancy combinations on the numpad just to get an umlaut of some kind let alone accented characters.

Maybe I’m expecting too much – but I also couldn’t find any way to convert a character to a keycode so I could easily send it with java.awt.Robot. That’s why I ended up creating another ugly workaround to get the basic alphanumeric characters into a nice dictionary and additionally had to create a seperate dictionary for special characters so I could later access them easily.

KEY_EVENTS = dict((key[3:], value._doget(None)) for key, value in
                  KeyEvent.__dict__.items() if key.startswith('VK_'))

SPECIAL_CHARACTER_KEY_EVENTS = {
    ' ': KeyEvent.VK_SPACE,
    '!': KeyEvent.VK_EXCLAMATION_MARK,
    '"': KeyEvent.VK_QUOTEDBL,
    '#': KeyEvent.VK_NUMBER_SIGN,
    '$': KeyEvent.VK_DOLLAR,
    '&': KeyEvent.VK_AMPERSAND,
    ...
}

KEY_EVENTS.update(SPECIAL_CHARACTER_KEY_EVENTS)

But even with all that I’m still not able to send simple umlauts, such as ‘ü’, ‘ä’ or ‘ö’ to non-Swing windows or even a simple ‘?’ for that matter. Maybe I’m doing something completely wrong and it’s all my fault or just maybe java.awt.Robot isn’t as well-kept as the other Java libraries… or I simply don’t get Java. It’s probably a bit of everything.¹

If I ever start working on it again I’ll probably use python-xlib. Of course it wouldn’t be cross-platform then anymore, but really, it’s not like Windows is in any need of desktop automation software with stuff like AutoIt and AutoHotKey around.

¹⁾ If anyone knows how to do these things contact me please or simply leave a comment.

The Humble Indie Bundle

With Wolfire Games’ very recent introduction of The Humble Indie Bundle which lets you pay what you want for the following 6 indie games:

• World of Goo
• Aquaria
• Gish
• Lugaru HD
• Penumbra Overture
• Samorost 2

It’s looking really great for the GNU/Linux gaming domain. Even better yet is that Wolfire Games decided shortly after they introduced The Humble Indie Bundle to open-source their game Lugaru HD. Additionally the other game developers participating decided to release the source code of Aquaria, Gish and Penumbra Overture aswell.

Everyone who is familiar with the general GNU/Linux folks and their spirit knows what is to follow: Many contributions and improvements to the released source code. Lugaru HD has already had many contributions within its first day of being open source and I’m sure once the other games have their source code released they will get just as much contributions. Even if not yet shown on The Humble Indie Bundle page you can find the source code for Penumbra Overture here.

I’m already getting my hopes up for a multiplayer version of Lugaru HD – even if it doesn’t look like much it’s unbelievably fun. What I could also imagine is that some people decide to use Penumbra Overture’s physics engine to create some kick-ass shooter or something in that spirit.

Valve’s Steam for Linux

Also currently creating uproar is Telegraph’s article on Steam for Mac where at the end is mentioned that “Valve has also confirmed that it will make Steam available to Linux users in the coming months”. Shortly after that Phoronix says it’s official and with that also mentions more possible proofs regarding the GNU/Linux Steam client.

I’m still a bit skeptic regarding all that though – there wasn’t a “real” official announcement directly from Valve after all, so I’ll keep my joy restrained for now.