Software

One year ago, I told a friend—who happens to be an expert in computer science—I have a dream project. I would like to create my own software. After defining my needs and strategy, he advised me to look for Qt. Qt is a language (C++-based) and environment for software and user interface development.

Recently, after a couple of frustrating experiences with the current solutions, I took the time and started to learn with language, thanks to video tutorials from ProgrammingKnowledge. So far I’ve learnt how to display text on the user interface, how to add push buttons, check and radio boxes, how to interact with user using dialogs, how to create menu options, and how to arrange all that in specific layouts and multiple views. The basic for building a user interface. Now, I need to learn the data handling that a software has to do at some point.

I’ll let you know about the progress 🙂 The big question is, what is this secret software I want to build…

Great news, PolyCounter (this amazing software from Takeshi Nakagawa) works fine on Windows 10! More precisely, it works fine on the current Technical Preview of Windows 10 (final version available at the end of July). It actually works better than on Windows 8.1, since all sound files now play nicely.

The software Tilia, well known from palaeoecologists, needs the user to specify a group code for each taxa. The obvious question after that, is to sort all these data so that taxa with the same group code are gathered together. One could use the custom sort fonction from Excel, or use this AppleScript:

Browsing large dataset in Excel can be tricky sometimes, as one almost always wants to refer to row and column names. Excel provides a feature for this, called “freeze panes”, but the interface is not practical at all (Microsoft…). Here is a handy AppleScript to activate/deactivate on-the-go this feature. Just select the cell from which you want to freeze the panes, and run the script [I would suggest, from Alfred 🙂 ].

Many palaeoecologists and other scientists working with stratigraphical data use Tilia as a software for production and visualization of quality time-series graph. This software from Eric C. Grimm needs you to present your data in a particular way, so as to work properly. There is nothing difficult here, just something to pay attention about.