The terminal component I wrote for my helper is super sick. It totally blows away the JTA SwingTerminal that some other Java-based helpers have used. It's wicked fast and it has a clean object-oriented design, so it would be a snap to plug in a drawing canvas in place of the scrollback buffer. After I finish my helper, maybe I'll clone TheDraw.

Just had to tell somebody, 'cause my girlfriend doesn't understand.

I hear you. When do we see a beta? LOL

H

So in the past 9 months or so, I have written a lexical analyzer generator, scrapped it, wrote another, started using PostreSQL for the database, scrapped it, switched to ObjectDB, hacked JTA's SwingTerminal so that sector numbers could be clickable, scrapped it, wrote this terminal... your guess is as good as mine.

Post a video or something. Lets generate some buzz.

All I have right now is a window that scrolls a bunch of text really fast. I'm beating on the terminal component, making sure it's right and it's not going to slow anything down. The demo is 2.7 MiB, if you know of a good place where I could temporarily host it.

After the terminal, I'll be working on data collection. (I already wrote a powerful tool for that.) And then data visualization. That's going to be the really fun part. Here's a video showcasing the library I'm planning to use.

Interesting video. Are you just planning on using the TWX database for the information or will this have it's own mapping system to store sector warps? As for the hosting I don't know anyplace off hand, but maybe talk to JP. Maybe he will let you post it here. Am definitely excited about something new.

You tube?

Well, here's what I'm thinkin'... When the terminal emulation is done and it's just a simple Telnet/ANSI/VTxxx client that you can use through TWX, I'll post a demo so people can beat on it and let me know if it screws up on any ANSI codes or anything.

It'll have its own database. I've already started on that a bit, but I wanted to get the terminal done first.

If you need hosting space, let me know I have some available.

So I wrote a test program that hooks up my display and my lexer/parser and runs one of the TW intro screens through it. And... BAM!

Is the graphStream thing yours? Is this intended for mapping, like to make a graphical map of the universe? I'm not a programmer so the talk is above my head, but in the video it looked to me like that thing with it's different patterns could be used to make a heck of a visual map of the universe.

I didn't write GraphStream, I'm just planning to use it. It's a free library created by some university in France. And yes, it looks like it could produce some phenomenal visual maps. I can't wait to get to that part of the project.

Now it's actually a working terminal program.

Kinda like birthin' a baby huh?

In that case, I'm going to have to induce labor... I just got hired for a job that starts April 9th. Plus my lady is buying a house and we're going to be doing a ton of gardening and greenscaping. It's going to be a very busy summer!