08/24/2004 - 08/30/2004

Rich text editors for your web browser

I've had a couple of clients recently who've been interested in building solutions around a rich text editing piece in the web browser, linked to a PDF generation piece on the server that will produce a press-ready PDF from it.

We've had the PDF piece for a while - offering full support for rich text (including tables, lists, Unicode, etc.) along with placement of images, other PDFs, SVG and even PS/EPS. - but now we had to help them find stuff for the client

I've found two that seem to solve the problem nicely - and both are based on JavaScript/DHTML and NOT Java!

1. Editlet - a very powerful commercial solution
2. Rich Text Editor - an basic (but nicely done) open source solution

What were they thinking!?!!

The Associated Press (AP) reports on a wholesaler in Miami who is recalling 14,000 bags of candy containing a toy, that shows a plane flying into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

The obvious question is WHO would make such a TOY?!?!?!

What's in a name

I frequently wear one my polo shirts with my company name (PDF Sages) embroidered on it...

Usually, most people who notice it and bother to comment on it, ask what it means. I tell them it's my company and we do computer software - easiest way to explain it to the averge person

Today was a bit different howerver...I was out shopping and the cashier (20-something girl) at the store is looking at my shirt. She says...

Must have been absent that day in class...

Excellent primer on product pricing

An old college buddy of mine, Eric Sink, wrote an excellent primer about how to price your software product, based on his experience at SourceGear.

I HIGHLY recommend this to anyone in the software industry!

Fixing bugs by not letting users find them...

A new project on SourceForge called Stabelizer takes an interesting approach to finding and fixing bugs...

Instead of actually fixing the bug, the solution is to catalog the bugs in the software and then install "gates" that keep the user from getting to that problem again.

wIX - Build Windows installers from XML

In a strange twist, Microsoft has released into the open source community their Windows Installer XML project.

WIX is a toolkit for building Windows installers using an XML source description. It is the exact same toolkit that MS itself uses for building the installers for Office, SQL Server, etc.

Looks like good stuff!