ZPE CAST or ZPE Client And Server Technology is the way in which Remote ZPE (rZPE) works. It is currently based on a point to point communication protocol through a single port. A server initiates and a client sends a request for a connection. It is currently based on a multithreaded server that opens a ZPE command line to the client. This allows remote testing and more importantly remote access to a system. It currently does not encrypt the connection, but I am working on bringing this in the near future.
The ZPE commands that do this will soon be removed, in favour of the -n ZAC that was added in version 1.5.1. I will be redesigning the message consoles too so that when a server is connected to a client, the client opens a server and sends a request to the server it has connected to open a client and connect back, reducing the number of jobs needed by the users of each client and server.
All of this is planned for the next version of ZPE, version 1.5.2.
Also, the CLI version number put at the top of the zpe command in every version to date has been incorrect and only outputted the version number of the ZPE application. It has now been updated so that it displays the correct information, showing what version ZLC (Zenith Language Compiler) is in. As of 1.5.2 this is version 1.6. Also, the ZenEXecutable specification has changed, thus all compiled programs need to be recompiled.
ZPE 1.5.0 brought a ton of new features that make it better than it ever was. But version 1.5.1 has brought about even more. Now version 1.5.1 which recently was released to beta users has been improved further. It's main focus has been on improving the back-end compiler, and it seriously has. The compiler now follows a different path to the interpreter, something planned for a long time. This update changed ZenEx and how it works compared with before and will mean that you will need to recompile any applications written in ZenLang.
On top of this it has received some Java-based TLC. Users who develop Java applications will have a much easier time accessing what they need, when they need it. Everything is now packaged up in to a bunch of very neat little packages and classes, rather than all residing within the ZPE package. For instance, you can now find GUI based stuff in:
jamiebalfour.zpe.GUI
And the core is now found in:
jamiebalfour.zpe.Core
Easier by a long shot.
Also, the public methods class called PublicMethods is now found at:
jamiebalfour.zpe.Core.PublicMethods
This was added in version 1.5.1 and it adds many new methods that are there for developers to take advantage of. One such example now opens all internal functions to Java developers, no longer limiting them in to using ZenLang to access these (prior to this the plan was to use the public Execute function to get a result).
BalfBlog is making a big change today that will change a lot of installations. Luckily there is a new plugin included by default with all installations that fixes this.
The fix I speak of is moving from using MD5 in any hashing algorithms at all. I was interested in finding out whether or not MD5 was a preferred choice to SHA1 for a short URL and came across a page in which the write manages to produce two images which are distinctly different yet the manage to produce the same MD5 value causing a collision. Not good.
As a result I have decided to change from MD5 being used to generate hashed URLs to SHA which has a much lower chance of a collision than MD5 does. For more information on creating collisions (and it's a very interesting article) look to here:
http://natmchugh.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/create-your-own-md5-collisions.html
After hours of work and countless cans of juice, I have finished my website update for early 2017. Nothing has changed on the front-end except for my menu, which now implements BalfBar 1.2 and also now has padding on the dropdowns as well as new uppercase text.
This update did focus primarily on updating the back-end, primarily introducing DragonScript 2, the replacement for my January 2015 DragonScript package. This new version is much faster and works on the idea of hashing data rather than storing it in an array. It's a huge performance improvement that makes this website speedier than ever. On top of that I have been stripping parts of my website that are no longer needed with a focus on not only making the website faster but streamlining it so that it is easier for me to update and add to.
Disruptions have been minimal as I continued to support DragonScript version 1 on my website simultaneously with DragonScript 2, but as of five minutes ago, the two year old version has been retired.
Will DragonScript 2 get a release? I doubt it. I don't plan to make it available now because it would be too much work since it is now intertwined heavily with my website. It is possible I will develop a more open, WN Project based on DragonScript, but not yet.
Finally, on top of the menu getting a little update. I decided to push my dark theme further on my website, and for the first time have built dark code samples. The choice to do this was inspired by the fact I now use Adobe Dreamweaver again, and I really like it's dark theme. This now makes them easier to see on top of looking much nicer.
var x = "Test"
This update removes even more skeuomorphic designs and focuses even further on the flat design. It does however retract a bit on the statement I made about getting rid of curves, with more and more objects across the site being curved. Alas, I could not resist a couple of circular objects and feel they fit better than the square ones did.
Yesterday I tried out ZPE Remote with a friend across the Internet. It works well and he was able to execute commands on my MacBook Pro over the Internet.
Most crucially, ZPE Remote also restricted access to certain built in methods using permission levels that would not be possible to bypass in the interpreter. I will continue to test this with people, allowing them try out certain features of ZPE Remote and let me know where it could be improved.
ZPE 1.5.2 is now available to download from my website. It is a huge update that brings so much (and removes so much). ZPE 1.5.2 is known by its code name Pelegosto.
Let's start with what's being removed:
- string_concatenate - added in version 1.3.0, deprecated in version 1.5.0 and now removed in version 1.5.2.
- open_remote_client - added in version 1.5.0, deprecated in version 1.5.1 and now removed in version 1.5.2.
- open_remote_server - added in version 1.5.0, deprecated in version 1.5.1 and now removed in version 1.5.2.
Now for what's new:
- Serialisation and deserialisation of objects and structures: objects and structures can now be saved to disk and retrieved later. This feature is a particular favourite of mine.
- Custom keywords: finally you can customise the compiler with your own keywords and how they are interpreted. This feature is in its early days, but it works as expected.
- Constructors for structures: now you can instantiate a structure with a set of parameters. This feature was requested by one of the original testers of ZPE, wondering why it was you couldn't do this. Well, now I've done it.
- General improvements that fix a few bugs
- Performance improvements, particularly with mathematics
- The jget ZAC, based on cURL. This ZAC is designed to download a file from the central repository of ZPE tools and features. For instance running
zpe -jget stdLib.zexwill download the compiled standard library (now over 400 lines long).
ZPE 1.5.3 is already underway and it's main focuses are on better structures and ZPEObjects as well as a much better compiler. So far in ZPE 1.5.3 the new -l argument for the compiler. This allows you to compile an application into a library, meaning the main function will not be included for efficiency.
The Nintendo Switch, the console Nintendo could not afford to go wrong with, especially after learning that the hard way with the Wii U's failure.
However, I believe Nintendo may go wrong again, and I'm disappointed to see my childhood gaming company make the error again.
If you haven't already heard about the Switch, head on across to Trusted Reviews to see all the information about it.
A lot was good:
- The portability is awesome. I love the fact that I take home my games console and plug it into my TV then take it with me for the bus.
- It's Nintendo, which means some of the most awesome games will come to it
- It's going to support Unreal Engine 4 - that's pretty demanding.
- It's so flexible! I also love the fact that you can disconnect controllers and change things around so much.
- Nintendo will final comply with standards and I will be able to use the USB Type C connector for my laptop to charge it
I will summarise what's wrong with it, and this is my opinion:
- Underpowered. We have seen devices like the new Razer Blade Stealth (amongst many others) adding PCI-Express graphics cards to laptops when they are docked via Thunderbolt. Nintendo could surely have looked into this and made the Switch a 4K gaming experience when it's in the dock and then used a smaller less capable and yet more power efficient graphics chip when it's out and about, couldn't they?
- Overpowered. Seems like a contradiction but I wanted to put that there because the Switch seems to suffer from the same problem that the Wii U Gamepad did. Battery life. How on earth can the Wii U Gamepad only last on battery for three hours when an iPad or even an iPhone can last for up to ten?! The thing only receives a wireless signal with a picture to display and the audio to play with it (as well as act as a controller). And what's worse is the low resolution (especially compared to tablets of today) of the Gamepad. Well, the same is said about the Switch which can last 6 and 1/2 hours playing games, except that it ranges from just two hours with games like Zelda only achieving about that. THAT'S IT?!
- Storage, or the lack of. 32GB of storage is still the best option for 2017?! And knowing Nintendo, it will use eMMC memory which will make it a slow 32GB of storage.
- The price, at £300 I would expect a bit more, especially saying as you can get something like an iPad or Xbox One for just a little more, even if they haven't got Mario and Zelda on them.
Feel free to criticise my opinion and write your thoughts below.
It has taken me most of last weekend and some of today (I have other work to be doing for my PhD as well, so I can't give this full dedication) to get here, but I'm happy to say that DragonScript 2 is finally here on my website.
All pages have yet to have this but any page which is within sections from A-M are now enabled for DragonScript 2 apart from my developer tools. You can probably see the speed difference between the two.
Oh and it was exactly 4 years ago tomorrow that I rebuilt my website for the first time, and for the very first time used HTML5 and CSS. Version 2.0 was finally released tomorrow 4 years after a long struggle to rebuild the content. Now in version 3.7 I'm quite happy with the way things are, particularly now with DragonScript 2 and BalfBlog.
DragonScript is the PHP system I made and use to power my website. It's a pretty genius way of making my website highly consistent and flexible. It allows me to make a single page in a matter of seconds. Previous to DragonScript I had a silly less capable way of managing my content. Now with this improved version I need not worry because it is all handled efficiently and quickly by DragonScript.
But now in 2017, two years after DragonScript was first used on my website, it is coming to an end. Well at least version 1 is. The new version DragonScript 2 is miles better. It is more efficient with memory and handles things better.
DragonScript originally worked by including a PHP file that was a template and providing several variables. No longer does it do this. Part 1 is still true but now in part 2 it includes the one $dragonscript variable which provides an array of values that are used to tell the server what to do. Things were messy in the original version of DragonScript and things like $beforeParseInclude variables were just plainly unused.
DragonScript 2 also provides a new system which finds the name of the webpage and finds associated files. For instance if the page was called index.php it would look for index.head.php and index.foot.php for any additional code needed. As you'd imagine, this system is far easier to maintain too.
I consistently release a new version of ZPE each year. This year version 1.5 has been released.
In 2015 version 1.3 was released which brought the most changes to ZPE since it began in 2014. Version 1.3 added so much including the very basic compiler that version 1.2 started. Over 50 functions were added in this version. This version added if statements, for loops, while loops, functions, structures (although they didn't work properly until 1.4), RMM (Real Math Mode), plugins, libraries, lists, associative arrays, constants, variables, incrementing and decrementing, built-in converters (and for a while one example did even exist that converted ZPE code to Java), image functions and of course, my favourite feature of ZPE, anonymous/lambda functions.
In 2016 version 1.4 was released and it brought a huge shake-up of changes, but its main focus was consistency between internal functions and imported ones. It also brought structures that are similar to those used in other languages such as function(){ } instead of function() end function. As well as this it brought the LAMP interpreter, lazy evaluation, function chaining, the object type, a better hashing of variables and functions, the internal manual for information on built-in functions. Version 1.4 also brought support for many other new things, including octal and hexadecimal without the need for a function.
In 2017 version 1.5 was first released. This version currently adds one major new feature, Remote ZPE. Remote ZPE allows a system running ZPE to act as either a client to another ZPE installation or to act as a server that other ZPE Clients can utilise. The purpose of this is for smaller, much less capable machines such as the Raspberry Pi to be able to quickly take advantage of the processing power of a more capable machine. This was developed because I use ZPE remotely on my Raspberry Pi through SSH to do things, but what I'd really like is ZPE to work on my MacBook and send the result to my Pi (so it goes like this Mac connect to Pi through SSH which then uses ZPE Remote to do processing on Mac which returns the result to Pi which shows on my Mac, this way I can process scripts stored on my Pi and utilise them on my Pi).
The future of ZPE 1.5 however is very clear. 2017 will bring the following major features to ZPE:
- JSON parsing (already done and available in all versions of ZPE) (1.5.0)
- Remote ZPE: Client and Server (already done and available in all versions of ZPE) (1.5.1)
- Multi-threading: Currently this project is underway and it's easy to test with ZPE version 1.5.1 (currently beta users only) using the following:
$v = threaded function() { for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) print($i) end for }. It's easy to do and I'm sure it makes sense. - Interfaces for objects: allowing programmers to define interfaces
- GUI builder: a way to develop graphical interfaces in applications (not sure if I will include this by default in all installations and might just include it as a library)
- Conversion methods: New built-in methods to make conversion plugins easier to write
- Plugins will gain access to internal functions: A method of accessing built-in functions from plugin functions
- Typo: The new Typo typing system will finally come to version 1.5.x (finished in 1.6.7)
- Includes: Inclusion techniques to include non compiled code in the non compiled version of the code. Much like the C and PHP include methods. (1.5.1)
- Include imported functions: The import function will be changed to be a part of the compiler and will change the way it is run.
- Ordered associative arrays: associative arrays currently store just one key and do not follow an order, this will allow associative arrays to be ordered (1.6.8)
- ZPE JSON: Improve JSON parsing and drop the use of GSON (the JSON functions will all work identically to how they work with GSON, it's just the wrapper functions on the top that will change).
- Improved compiler: the compiler currently flows within the compiler-interpreter cycle whereby the compiler generates the input for the interpreter. This is fine for simply using the -i tool, but when running applications it means that one more step still needs to be run - transform the AST to something meaningful. With the latest update, I aim to change this and put the compiler in a different place. The basics of the compiler will remain the same, but one more step will be added when compiling to a compiled program. This will improve the speed of the ZPE Runtime when applied to a compiled application (it will have no effect on the interpreter). (1.7.1)
- Power to the objects: objects, and, as a side-effect structures will be getting more powerful. It will soon be possible to declare a function within an object using lambda functions. As well as this objects will be getting more support in the LAMP parser. (1.6.3)
- Passing parameters by reference: just as it says. I aim to have this feature in version 1.5.3. This would mean functions like list_dequeue would no longer need to be reassigned to the variable. (1.7.1)
I am highlighting in green the features as they get added and highlighting in orange features that are partially added, so keep an eye on this post for updates.
There are several more but they will be put here once I have decided whether or not they are feasible or not.
This is a very tall order, and Typo and the conversion functions are currently at the bottom of the stack and although they have been suggested for this version and were originally planned for version 1.4, I still may need to delay them to version 1.6.
Also, with the release of version 1.5, support for any version 1.4 iterations of the software has now ended, I encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of ZPE.
