wxPython providing a fake-file translation - internationalization

I want to have a base64 encode a .mo file and use it as the translation file for wxPython. Since it will be located in a .py file.
I have a wxPython project that is getting compiled a couple different ways. Icons are no trouble because they are packed in a .py file and base64. Translations in .mo files are a pain in the butt. Is it possible to do this same cheat for the translations? Include them not in a correct .mo file, but just dump the translation in base64, or gzipped base64?
wx.FileTranslationLoader() seems to be the only wx.TranslationLoader() that exists. It says I can replace that translation loader and use my own. https://wxpython.org/Phoenix/docs/html/wx.Translations.html#wx.Translations.SetLoader However to do that I need to return an msgCatalog which isn't apparently an object type that I can find anywhere.
This seems like a solid method of faking this so builders that pack all my .py will be set for their translation files but it doesn't seem easily doable but maybe there's an easy hack I'm missing. Maybe ducktype the MsgCatalog but I dunno what methods it needs to have. And I don't actually want to read the .mo myself, just give it a bytestream like object. In theory I could write the mo a locale directory but usually the internal fileystems of various installs are fake so I'd end up writing some weird files to disk. I suppose I could do that in the temp directory but that seems extra hacky.

Related

Rules for file extensions?

Are there any rules for file extensions? For example, I wrote some code which reads and writes a byte pattern that is only understood by that specific programm. I'm assuming my anti virus programm won't be too happy if I give it the name "pleasetrustme.exe"... Is it gerally allowed to use those extensions? And what about the lesser known ones, like ".arw"?
You can use any file extension you want (or none at all). Using standard extensions that reflect the actual type of the file just makes things more convenient. On Windows, file extensions control stuff like how the files are displayed in Windows Explorer and what happens when you double click on it.
I wrote some code which reads and writes a byte pattern that is only
understood by that specific programm.
A file extension is only an indication of what type of data will be inside, never a guarantee that certain data formatted in a specific way will be inside the file.
For your own specific data structure it is of course always best to choose an extension that is not already in use for other file formats (or use a general extension like .dat or .bin maybe). This also has the advantage of being able to use an own icon without it being overwritten by other software using the same extension - or the other way around.
But maybe even more important when creating a custom (binary?) file format, is to provide a magic number as the first bytes of that file, maybe followed by a file header structure containing a version number etc. That way your own software can first check the header data to make sure it's the right type and version (for example: anyone could rename any file type to your extension, so your program needs to have a way to do some checks inside the file before reading the remaining data).

ELF/DWARF Parser to Out Structure elements

Is there a way to extract the size and address of elements within a structure using an elf file? I am hoping there is a tool available that can do this and export it to a more readable format.
My end goal is to convert the ELF file to a ASAM A2L file. A open source/free tool that could do this would even be better but most companies that do this charge alot for their tools.
I don't know offhand of anything pre-canned, but it isn't very hard to modify an existing tool to do it.
The "pahole" program from the "dwarves" project does something similar. It prints a structure definition in a certain way.
There's also a "pahole.py" script for gdb that does pretty much the same thing. This would be trivial to modify to print things however you like.
If you want to get a little deeper you could write it yourself using one of the existing DWARF libraries. I like the one in elfutils, but YMMV.

How can I convert a extremly big .dat file to Image files?(Like jpg or something)

I have a folder of image file which have been compressed into .dat file. Since the .dat files are extremly huge(They are the microscopic image of the organ.), I don't really know what kind of tools that I can use to convert it into jpeg file. So the best case would that the whole image is split up into pieces, and I can get all the pieces of the image.
The ".dat" file suffix is used broadly, so you'll need to specify more details on what format/source software created the original data. As a guess, from a quick search of ".dat" format microscopy, these tools looks like they might be applicable to your domain:
http://gwyddion.net/
or
http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/products/bio-formats
If you can't find a library for the format/languages you are using, then you'll need to find documentation of the file format, and write a converter (at least, the reading portion of the converter - you can use something like libjpeg to handle the writing portion.)

Ruby: Create files with metadata

We're creating an app that is going to generate some text files on *nix systems with hashed filenames to avoid too-long filenames.
However, it would be nice to tag the files with some metadata that gives a better clue as to what their content is.
Hence my question. Does anyone have any experience with creating files with custom metadata in Ruby?
I've done some searching and there seem to be some (very old) gems that read metadata:
https://github.com/kig/metadata
http://oai.rubyforge.org/
I also found: system file, read write o create custom metadata or attributes extended which seems to suggest that what I need may be at the system level, but dropping down there feels dirty and scary.
Anyone know of libraries that could achieve this? How would one create custom metadata for files generated by Ruby?
A very old but interesting question with no answers!
In order for a file to contain metadata, it has to have a format that has some way (implicitly or explicitly) to describe where and how the metadata is stored.
This can be done by the format, such as having a header that says where the "main" data is stored and where the "metadata" is stored, or perhaps implicitly, such as having a length to the "main" data, and storing metadata as anything beyond the "main" data.
This can also be done by the OS/filesystem by storing information along with the files, such as permission info, modtime, user, and more comprehensive file information like "icon" as you would find with iOS/Windows.
(Note that I am using "quotes" around "main" and "metadata" because the reality is that it's all data, and needs to be stored in some way that tools can retrieve it)
A true text file does not contain any headers or any such file format, and is essentially just a continuous block of characters (disregarding how the OS may store it). This also means that it can be generally opened by any text editor, which will merely read and display all the characters it finds.
So the answer in some sense is that you can't, at least not on a true text file that is truly portable to multiple OS.
A few thoughts on how to get around this:
Use binary at the end of the text file with hope/requirements that their text editor will ignore non-ascii.
Store it in the OS metadata for the file and make it OS specific (such as storing it in the "comments" section that an OS may have for a file.
Store it in a separate file that goes "along with" the file (i.e., file.txt and file.meta) and hope that they keep the files together.
Store it in a separate file and zip the text and the meta file together and have your tool be zip aware.
Come up with a new file format that is not just text but has a text section (though then it can no longer be edited with a text editor).
Store the metadata at the end of the text file in a text format with perhaps comments or some indicator to leave the metadata alone. This is similar to the technique that the vi/vim text editor uses to embed vim commands into a file, it just puts them as comments at the beginning or end of the file.
I'm not sure there are many other ways to accomplish what you want, but perhaps one of those will work.

I need to write a .DDS file cross-platform, can someone point me to example?

I need to create a .DDS file with code that runs on both OSX and Windows. Although the format doesn't look difficult, I'd still like an example of writing the file. Note I don't need to read it, just write it.
C or C++ and RGBA bitmap.
I finally resorted to written a RAW file, and using GraphicConvertor (mac) to read it and write the DDS file. I think Photoshop can do it too. RAW files are simply RGB or RGBA or similar formats written straight to a binary file. Then in the reading application you tell it the dimensions so it can read it in. Then you export to whatever. Not a perfect solution but it worked for what I needed.

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