Thank you for Visiting

Posted on November 6, 2017 by wcthorne

WildTower continues to provide full-stack web and Windows core development for Inventu Corporation, which markets the Screensurfer and Inventu Viewer+ Legacy-to-Web products.

Have been working on some interesting technologies, including migration of desktop terminal emulator macros to Inventu Server-side macros.  This entails conversion of Visual Basic for Applications to VB.NET, as well as converting or accommodating screen integration libraries from various original vendors, such as WRQ, Rumba and Attachmate.

I used the ANTLR4 parsing engine along with some open-source VBA/VB grammars, which I’ve been fiddling along the way to enable parsing some of the odd dialects implemented by the emulation vendors.  This was then coupled with an XML-based Transform language I came up with as a way to bridge from the ANTLR parse-tree to new, generated source (with necessary transforms included).  Finally, a comprehensive GUI with tools for exploring a modules parse-tree along with the ability to generate Transform search arguments…then, compile and view the results as part of a workbench solution.

The Inventu Server-Side macros are also interesting, in that the server-side code can display modal forms and other prompts to the user, which are synchronized across the web using Javascript, AJAX or Web Sockets (if web sockets are available).  This allows migration of the original Windows Basic forms to a web server environment…

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Portfolio On the Way

Posted on October 21, 2010 by wcthorne

Will be posting achievements in a Portfolio category, and adding a menu for each of the posts. Traditional resume/cv text is not a great medium for presenting your work, especially when you create products with a strong visual component.

Expected projects covered include:

  • SharePoint 2010 Web Part with Custom Editor, Macro scripting (to define data interchanges) and macro runtime (to execute data interchange based on user input and/or Web part connection events).  Provided with new Flynet 2010 commercial product.
  • Automated Data Entry solution for Blood centers: manages batches of data entry from sourced laptops to back-end UNIX systems.  Includes Flynet UNIX-interfacing web services, a Windows .NET Service communicating with a WinForm client using WCF duplex channels to provide realtime dashboards.   Client displays up-to-the-second status of each record (donation) transferred using custom data visualization (GDI+ user controls).  Client also provides integrated logic to access batch records in custom terminal emulator for corrections to records pended due to business rules or backend warnings/errors. 
  • Web-based Help page with JSON-fed indexing of videos, HTML and PDF help resources.  Provides a graphical presentation of “how-to” topics based on order of execution and level of complexity.  Access to individual topics is provided using icons as well as jQuery-managed dialogs.  (http://flynetsoftware.com/help)
  • Catalog of How-to videos produced using Camtasia providing in-depth assistance to developers implementing solutions with Flynet Viewer tools. (see previous item).  Scripted, recorded, narrated and edited each video.
  • Graphical logic viewer for Flynet Viewer product.  Provides an interactive logic viewer for finite-state logic representing managed web services that utilize one or more host screens and navigation to enter data and/or provide inquiry functionality.  Written using c# and the GDI+ graphics in .NET Winform user interfaces.  All scrolling and user-interaction is managed in code to provide a unique and customized interface.
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No More Static Site

Posted on September 18, 2010 by wcthorne

My old website was getting very tired, and after starting a few blogs for friends and business use, I’ve implemented a WordPress site instead. I think I will have moved all of the relevant content in about an hour’s work.

The content still is old and tired, but at least it looks better now!

Not sure if I will post very often, but might start as I explore some new ideas in software, including Micro-entry, which is like private micro-blogging only with requests for data from co-workers or friends. I’ll be exploring some custom SharePoint applications that provide this to SharePoint users and see how it goes.

I was pretty surprised and pleased to find that MicroEntry.com was available, so I now own it…soon to be a new Industry Buzzword, I’m sure.

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