Homepage of Thomas Aglassinger

Welcome to my page. Here you can find a list of various projects and publications I did during the past years. Most of it are open source or freeware programs for Mac OS X and AmigaOS Classic, but many of them work on other platforms too.

Enjoy, Thomas.

Projects

One of my hobbies is software development, usually resulting in applications that scratch an itch of mine. Here's a short summary of the most recent ones. You can also visit my Ohloh profile for more information.

• Cutplace, a tool to validate that data conform to an quite easy to read and write formal interface description. (License: open source; platform: independent; programming language: Python)
• Scunch updates a Subversion working copy from an external folder and copies, adds and removes files and folders as necessary. (License: open source; platform: independent; programming language: Python)
• Loxun, a Python module to write large output in XML using Unicode and namespaces. Of course you can also use it for small XML output with plain 8 bit strings and no namespaces. At EuroPython 2012 I did a lightning talk about the events that lead to this module, accompanied by slides and example code (License: open source; platform: independent; programming language: Python)

Publications

At my slideshare.net profile you can find presentations to various topics at talked about at local user group meetings and conferences.

• Kanban zur Abwicklung von Reporting-Anforderungen (German only): A talk given at the "9. Anwenderkonferenz für Softwarequalität und Test 2011" in Graz, Austria.
  It describes how Kanban can help to handle orders for standard and ad hoc reports in Banking. Major challenges in this environment are a large number of possible clients, a wide spread in complexity and cost, and a broad set of technologies. Kanban encourages to track current orders in a white board, limit the orders processed at the same time and let the client prioritize the sequence of delivery. This ensures a constant stream of delivery with the client getting his most important items first while the people handling the requests remain in a state of flow.
  An article version (PDF) is available from Peischl, B. (ed.) "Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Anwenderkonferenz für Software Qualität und Test 2011 ASQT 2011" (page 23 - 31), published by Österreichische Computer-Gesellschaft (OCG) in May 2012.
  
• Error Handling in Structured and Object-Oriented Programming Languages (PDF): My master's thesis, which examines how well error handling mechanisms in various programming languages support the development of robust software. It also analyzes conditions that lead to error, including mental models and situations that result in human error. Additionally it derives a simple schema for phrasing helpful error messages and outlines how well designed software can support this.
  
• Various articles for AmigaScene, an Austrian online Amigazine written by the Amiga user group of Graz. While the server is offline by now, you can still download its issues (in German) from aminet:docs/mags/ascene*.lha.

Old projects and major contributions

• Tratihubis converts Trac tickets to Github issues. (License: open source; platform: independent; programming language: Python)
• LichtTools, a bulb simulator originally designed by Michael Gehmair. It has been ported to various platforms by various people (License: open source; platform: iOS, Android, Windows, AmigaOS, Commodore 64 and others; programming language: various)
• Jomic, a viewer for comic book archives. (License: open source; platform: independent; programming language: Java)
• rcs4cvs2svn prepares RCS projects for processing with cvs2svn. You can also use it as replacement for various rcs2cvs scripts floating around.
• Grotag, a viewer for for documents in the AmigaGuide format. It can also convert them to DocBook XML for further editing on contemporary platforms. (License: open source; platform: independent; programming language: Java)
• Vahunz increases or decreases the legibility or of source code names. It scans a whole source code tree and collects variable and function names in a dictionary. The user can then decide what to do about each name: leave it untouched, assign a more meaningful one, or let vahunz generate a random one. (License: open source; platform independent; programming language: portable C)
• WgetRexx integrates the recursive download tool wget into various Amiga web browsers. It makes it easy to create menu items that allow to download the currently visible page or the whole directory branch related to it. (License: freeware with source code included; platform: Amiga OS 2.x or later; programming language: ARexx)
• Sofa - a port of the SmartEiffel Eiffel compiler for AmigaOS Classic. See aminet:dev/lang/sofa.lha.
• Contributions for dynAmite, a multi player bomberman clone for AmigaOS. In particular I authored a couple of maps and a style named "obvious". The latter makes it easy to map colors from the chat window to actual players. W00t.
• envSOF - Eiffel/Sofa environment for GoldEd (now called CubicIDE). It simplifies developing Eiffel programs by adding syntax coloring, a procedure browser and documentation browser. See aminet:text/edit/envSOF*.lha.
• Orbit Amiga 68k, a port of the Orbit space combat simulator for Amiga/68k. This was a funny exercise in futility because it runs fine albeit too slow to do anything really useful with it. (License: open source; platform independent; programming language: C)
• ASCII-Scramble, a shoot'em up for MS DOS text mode using only ASCII characters. (License: open source; platform: MS DOS; programming language: Pascal)
• Hsc, an early HTML preprocessor. Written in C, maintained by me until 1998. The project was later picked up by Matthias Bethke, see his Freshmeat entry for more information on the current version. (License: open source; platform independent; programming language: portable C)