BREXIT DAY!

Even for those who voted for Brexit, there might be room
for a bit of restraint as the countdown approaches completion.
Europe was a beautiful dream and - for a generation - a cosmopolitan
reality for many. This deserves respect.

More concerning, Le Monde brings to one's attention,, quite pointedly, tha after refusing
massive natiionalizations and money injections to the North of England as the EU
had been suggesting for years, the Conservatives gor their Brexit votes promosing
precisely that. A storyline that many in Europe are sure to follow...

Finally, I would also draw caution to wanting Britain to reassert cultural  clout
on its ex-colonies. As Bagehot as argued, the English Monarchy may be very positive
for Island Great VBritain, but in the larger world, feudalism is dead.

Okay, the cold, the dark, and a long day on coding problems has left me in a snit.
So HAPPY BREXIT, and let's all make the best of it.

Shopping

Trying to develop a simple data binding model.
Actually, a shopping helper, when one is invariably
stuck in a math knot trying to figure out added tax and
effect on the card of possible purchases.

https://youtu.be/s8GomyEOA8w

                                        

Long Day

Spent mos of the day trying to install a plug-in on Eclipse
to do data binding. We'll see tomorrow...

On the more modest registration example, looking at how/when to
integrate CSS styling; because .fxml and CSs handle different things.
Turns out there is a window showing what CSS remains possible tp add
after the FXML constraint are in place:

PoweringThrough!

Working through Part3 this morning: the app is up and running.

*     *     *

This example is getting complicated for me. Decided to work on something

less elaborate. Which works 'out of the box'.

Particularly helpfull is this diagram:

It also synchs with SceneBuilder without fuss... Entering the code first

gifts one with this on opening SceneBuilder.

(In principle, anything with @FXML or declared public should do so!)

https://www.callicoder.com/javafx-fxml-form-gui-tutorial/

Java Geek

Yesterday's coding exercise made me finally understand
the import of some of the things I had been reading: like that
BorderPane divides the space into regions, and that each region
accepts one child node at most. Thus, if one wants more, one needs
to add another layout element as that child!!

If one leaves an area undefined, the space will be allocated to
neighbors that are...

https://examples.javacodegeeks.com/desktop-java/javafx/javafx-borderpane-example/

The AnchorPane is a good choice for the root layout because
of it's behaviour with respect to re-sizing. specifying a left and top anchor
will keept the design in the right place. giving fixed positions to opposite
anchors will make the element expand and retract on re-sizing.

https://www.vojtechruzicka.com/javafx-layouts-advanced/

All .fxml files now open in Scene Builder!!

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Have completed Part2!

Pay with Lydia

Lydia has become the number one online paymentfor young
people in Europe. And are partnering with the chinese Tencent...


https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2020/01/25/lydia-l-appli-de-paiement-qui-a-conquis-la-jeunesse-francaise_6027179_3234.html

https://lydia-app.com/en/about/lydia.html

Multi-scene

My app risks getting long and involved and have been
trying to find how to keep the code for different scenes on
different Eclipse pages.

Below, one person's very helpful model, from GitHub.
I think the notion of controller is useful, and the person is building
on the model-controller-view paradigm.

I'm not there yet, but this is helpfull.

https://github.com/ksnortum/javafx-multi-scene

                                           *     *     *

Sunday morning, and I am biting the proverbial bullet
and undertakening a tutorial showing Best Coding Practices.
It dates from 2015 but it follows the MVC, Model-Controller-
Viewer model. From the start, I have discarded the ever-present
application package to devise three sepatate packages...

The tutorial is available in English as well as in French transalation;
I am getting this!

https://code.makery.ch/library/javafx-tutorial/part1/

https://code.makery.ch/fr/library/javafx-tutorial/part1/

I have finished Part1 of the tutorial:

The image is showing up when I run the app in Eclipse. 

spent a long moment worried because, although SceneByilder works fine, it will

not open from Eclipse. Why worry! Just drag and drop the two .FXML files to

the project, as it they were im ages. Everything works fine. That's the lesson, isn't

it; oned modularizes javafx apps by creating the visual aspects separately. And 

SceneBuilder is a gem of an app that turns one's choices into .fxml code.

                                                           *     *     *

Some.fxml files open with Scenebuilder but not all:

California Burning

There are always private interests involved... It is up
to governments to define priorities!

http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2020/01/23/californie-horribilis/

source: Liberation, January 23, 2020

author: Gilles Fumey

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

A BAD TURN FOR CALIFORNIA

While President Trump is chirping away from Davos, Californians count their hundreds of victims and thousands of hectares lost to fire. This American state which proclaims itself the 6th economic power in the world by boasting of its its GDP gets unhinged on the waterfront (in the spring) and in flames (in the fall). Follows a humble assessment of the failed harvest in Sonoma County in 2019.

A good hour's drive from the very rich San Francisco, in Santa Rosa, it's time for taking stock. Several hundred dead, nearly 200,000 people evacuated from a vineyard which was planted in 1836 by a Russian-American company, fifteen thousand hectares ravaged by fire. Never in the Old Mediterranean world has there been such a trauma. Worse, in California, some vines had been planted to serve as firewalls around cities. In 2017, the prestigious Napa Valley was hit. PTrump may know how to twitter but he does not yet know how to stop fires.

First target: drought . Is it exaggerated by climate change? Bathed by the cold Pacific current, the coast is usually rather dry. Have the winds been more violent this year? In the event of a fire, they are always assessed to be more powerful than they usually are.

Second suspect in the case: the electricity company Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and its facilities dating from Mathusalem, and known to be responsible for half of the fires. Fires start largely due to the collapse of pylons on  trees where  short circuits take place. The New York Times previously reported similar facts in 2017 in Napa. In 2020, it was the aptly named Paradise, more than 200 kilometers from San Francisco, which was threatened by the fall of a cable from an old centenary pylon and paid a tribute of 86 victims. Explanation: PG&E is almost bankrupt and powerless. Who should take over, Mr. Trump, from these private bankruptcies if not the State of California ?

Third to be accused: local agronomy which recommends no-till to limit erosion in the heavy spring rains. Result: the grass that dries in summer becomes a flammable doormat.

To limit the spread of fires, PG&E stops distributing electricity. In the richest country in the world, thirty-six counties were plunged into darkness for almost two weeks. Only the richest properties have generators. Couldn't Silicon Valley, champion of the entertainment industries, do better by focusing on a sustainable ecology?

We would come to compare California to Egypt which had to undergo ten abominable plagues to leave the Hebrews in peace. Because Ange Salerno who investigated in California (1) points to a fourth accused: cannabis has become a plant competitive to the vine . Otherwise more profitable, attractingting part of the Mexican workforce from the better-paying vineyards (up to $ 22 an hour). Paranoia takes hold of the locals: what if the Mexican cartels manipulated the workforce? While waiting for Hollywood to seize the subject…

(1) The thousand torments of the Californian vineyard , La RVF, n ° 638 (Feb. 2020)

---------------------

PS. The excellent site  Atlantico questions the agronomist Bruno Parmentier about the industrial methods of producing almonds, of which California provides 4/5 th of the world's needs by pumping 10% of its water resources for this production alone. Such anomalies highlight the deadly logic of capitalistic agriculture degrading the environment: thus, almost half of the 3 million hives pollinating the 400,000 hectares of almond trees saw their bees die under the effect of pesticides and parasites like Varroa destructor .

----------------------

The prestigious Soda Rock Winery (Healdsburg) in flames


                                                              *     *     *

But is it Art. Not sure, but it is fine carrot cake. Shopping with Lyse
this afternoon...

BPitt...World Loneliness Day

Working on...

Each of the vignettes on the activities page is actually a button control.
On click, the user should be taken to a new scene with the requested
activity. (User should also be able to return to the vignettes page if he/she
changes her mind). Thus, a back arrow will be needed.

Been thinking it would be nice if the proposed activity under Games showed
a love emoji whose opacity could be controlled by a slider control. Below, our
emoji at 50%, and 100% opaque. The actual page mightlook like below:
FancyGirl is asked to rate new cookies, BPit and a Chanel Bag to initiate her
into the girls' group. That is her badge.

That part can be done easily enough...there is also a more challenging aspect I
need to master; that is, writing only one action event function for all the actvities
buttons. An action event has a type, a source and a target which the coder can get and set.
Do-able if a bit of a mind-bender...

                                                        *     *     *

Got the slider wired for opacity. One needs to get a package from beans, and use
a pared-down version of the Action Listener code:

Very Important:

Adding Label

Adding a simple label to the activities page turned out
to be a herculean task. One needs to create a layout
within a layout with the vignettes and recalculate things.

Now I know how: Hoorah!

https://www.vojtechruzicka.com/javafx-layouts-advanced/

                                                        *     *     *

sources: Images are from Sketchpad.
              Text was done on Microsoft Expression Design.

                                                    *     *     *

Below, with wider spacing and resizeable at false. This window cannot
be resized!?

Design Day

Made a decision: after the splash page, user will go to
a vignettes' page, and choose the activity he/she wants.

Each vignette is a button,  with an image!!

This is today's design problem...

*     *     *

*     *     *

ManyScenes

At this level of operation, the main mechanism by which
a more complex app can be built is the following. There is only
one main thread, but one moves between scenes.

Like with the intro, this creates a window of 650 by 400. This window can be
resized by the user, but it is a good size for a tablet. We are making, after all,
a desktop app.

I think I might be ready to plan the app 'on paper': this is today's problem.

                                                 *     *     *

Got a web browser, initially loading Doxa. Eventually, this scene should
give the user a choice of YouTube music vids.

*     *     *

ProjectFont

In putting together a java app, it is probably a good practice to include
the fontface one wants for certain effects. One just includes the .ttf file
with the project resources on click and drag. One then refers to it through
CSS commands. Below, using Helvetica on the Valentine's Kit project.

Rocking the Helvetica Font:

With the animations:

Because this is java, the drop shadow is an effect which needs to be called.

My text color is red, my shadow color blue, with a Y offset of 3 pixels (the f is for float).

The default blur covers 21 pixels.

Overall rather sweet; but am thinking of adding sizzle...