I have been getting frustrated with DocBook’s generation of HTML files, because it seems to gratuitously insert random id’s for things in a pattern that doesn’t repeat, so you run xsltproc on the same file twice, and the output changes. subversion, git, etc… pick up on the differences and want to save the new version, which is quite annoying.

I figured out a way to get around this. I have no idea if it’s ugly or not, but it works and that’s enough for me. Comments/ideas/improvements welcome.

<xsl:template name="object.id">
  <xsl:param name="object" select="."/>
  <xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$object/@id">
  <xsl:value-of select="$object/@id"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$object/@xml:id">
  <xsl:value-of select="$object/@xml:id"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
  id-<xsl:number level="multiple" count="*"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

The key is the line:

  id-<xsl:number level="multiple" count="*"/>

which replaces

  <xsl:value-of select="generate-id($object)"/>

The problem is that generate-id, at least in xsltproc, uses a fairly random bit of data (memory location) to create the id.

My fix uses the location of the element within the document as the id.

Unfortunately, in order to do some BlackBerry hacking, it looks like I need a copy of MS Windows, to run under some sort of virtualization software. It’s possible to get most of the bits and pieces sort of working under Linux, but I don’t want to spend too much time fiddling; I’d rather spend it hacking.

To be brief and to the point: anyone out there know if there are deals for developers, open source or otherwise, to buy a legitimate copy of Windows? It’d sure be easy to just download it, but I believe in respecting other developers’ licenses just as I want them to respect mine.

However, if I could save a few bucks and spend them on my daughter Helen, instead of Mr. Gates and company, I sure wouldn’t mind. Any ideas?

I seem to have gotten it to work, more or less consistently (although I’ll keep my fingers crossed).

The first step is: do everything this guy says, and thank him profusely, as he seems to have blazed a path for everyone else to follow.

http://www.slashdev.ca/2008/03/27/blackberry-simulator-in-linux-sort-of/

Keep in mind that newer versions of the JDE (mine is 4.7) have different devices, so create, for instance, a 9500.sh instead of the 8800.sh.

These points bear repeating, as gleaned from the comments on the above post.

1. Make sure you have the very latest Wine that you can find and is somewhat stable. I used this: deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt intrepid main
2. Get gdiplus.dll (search for it with Google) and install it in your .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/ directory. (From Cay in the comments).
3. Get msxml.msi (Google, again) and run it like so: wine start msxml.msi, which should install it in wine for you. (From Patrick).
4. Edit your shell script to make wine stick with one processor: task -c 0 wine fledge.exe .... (From Andrey in the comments)

To load up your hello world application, select the file menu, “load java program”, and then in the emulator, go to the ‘downloads’ section (double clicking on the main screen should get you to the applications). Your app should be there.

So far so good, although the whole thing is a gigantic pain in the neck compared to development with platforms like Java ME or Android, where Linux versions exist.

Update

Sadly, it still randomly exhibits problems. How frustrating.

Here’s the idea: there are tons of games and things out there for j2me (err, make that “Java ME”), and it’s a fairly simple API, it’d be nice to have something that’s a bit less than an actual phone, that can be loaded up with stuff to play.

I’m specifically thinking of my daughter when I talk about this – she loves to grab mom and dad’s phones and run around with them, but it’d be better if she had something of her own, and, hey, why not make it something real where I could write some neat little games or interactive things?

There are some mobile phones that are getting very cheap, that would probably do nicely, but the really cheap ones don’t have J2ME. I think the price for this should be under 50 dollars.

I suppose the best thing would be to find a cheap phone on eBay, but I think there’s a market for something similar to what I’m describing.