01.03.11: Shell script to build GCC Snapshot
I use GCC (gcc, g++, gfortran) and GDB on a daily basis. It's very important that the compiler itself be "bug-free". Most of the new features will be in GCC's SVN trunk; these will take many months or even years to be in the "stable" release. For most practical purposes, the trunk is "stable" enough to be usable -- you can try out the new features in the compiler and also get the latest bug fixes. I'm not a GCC developer myself but I do occasionally submit bug reports (like #44912, #44929 and others) and testcases. I do like to browse GCC source code, so I use the GCC weekly builds.
Here is small bash script. It downloads the GCC and GDB weekly snapshots from their FTP servers, unpacks the archive, configures and compiles (make && make install) automatically. I've put in some options for make that I normally use on my system. If you already have old source code and would like to update it to the latest weekly snapshot, pass the "--update" switch. I've put up the code on GitHub in case I update it later.
Category: Software Posted by: bdsatish26.12.10: Language : : Google Transliteration IME for Sanskrit
Google Transliteration IME (Input Method Editor) is a free (gratis) software for many Indian languages. It lets you type Sanskrit, Kannada, etc. from your English keyboard. An excellent feature is automatic word-completion using its built-in dictionary (which works offline too). For example, just type 'kR' and it suggests कृष्ण, कृत्वा , etc.
It's annoying to note that there is no key mapping for Devanagari daṇḍa ( । ) or double daṇḍa ( ॥ ), even if you use the on-screen keyboard. Another problem with the Sanskrit IME is that it is not fully phonetic. For example, typing 'priyan' does not show प्रियन् at all! It suggests something else like पर्यन, प्रियान, etc.
I've solved both of these problems using the "Canonical Schemes". Basically, Google lets you define your own key-mappings if you are not happy with the default ones. It uses something called "classes" (not OOP!) in a scheme (.scm) file. I have created a scheme file which uses the Harvard Kyoto mappings for Devanagari transliteration. Download HarvardKyoto.scm here. Save it in C:\Program Files\Google\Google Sanskrit Input\Schemes and that's it. The next time you open Google IME, you'll see a 'C' icon. Just click it and start using.
The daṇḍa (। , U+0964)is mapped to vertical line ( |, U+007C). The file is simple enough to read, and you can modify it to ITRANS, ISO 15919, etc.
The file HarvardKyoto.scm is copyrighted by me (Satish BD) and released under the GNU General Public License v3.
Category: Languages Posted by: bdsatish15.08.10: Software : : Communications and Signal Processing
Happy Independence Day ! Celebrating 63 years of Indian Independence!
Of late, I've been doing a lot of programming in Fortran. No, it's not a dead language. Modern Fortran is a fully object-oriented language with array-like operations built into the language itself, making it more like "compiled Matlab". Fortran Wiki is an excellent starting point.
That said, I have written up a few thousand lines of code for Communications and Signal Processing routines. The project is licensed under GNU General Public License. So, it's free and open-source software. The project is hosted at BitBucket. I've tested it on GNU/Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows/Cygwin. It's nice to know that my software is equivalent to 40,000 US dollars of development effort. Wow ! Thanks to Ohloh for the metrics, I've added a badge on the left sidebar.
Category: Software Posted by: bdsatish03.06.10: Language : : Writing Chinese in Devanagari
It has been six weeks in Hangzhou, China. This has given me enough time to decipher the Mandarin language. Mainland China uses Simplified Chinese. Chinese cannot be transliterated but only transcribed. What makes Chinese so different are the following facts:
- There is no concept of vowels (a,e,i,o,u) or consontants. It's all about initials, finals and tones.
- The same character can correspond to two (or more) different sounds. For example, 言 can be transcribed as yán or yín or yàn
- The same sound can correspond to two (or more) different characters. For example, tā can be written as 他 or 她 or 踏
Here, I have come up with a scheme to pronounce Chinese as closely as possible by the Indian tongue. It's easy because Indian languages (say Hindi or Kannada) are "phonetic" -- we pronounce the way we write. One letter, one sound.
The rest of the article assumes that you have some knowledge of Pinyin, Devanagari, International Phonetic Alphabet, Vedic Accent, Sanskrit phonology and Mandarin phonology. Read on full article here !
Category: Languages Posted by: bdsatish
05.04.10: Software : : Fixed-point Math for Embedded Systems, Part 2
As mentioned in my previous post , Fixed-point Arithmetic is proving more and more interesting. Ahem, I created an Open Source project at Bitbucket ! Here's the link : Fixed-Point Math Library. You can download the latest version of software for free and try it out. I've created versions 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3, but it's always suggested to use the 'TIP'
I managed to code a thousand lines in just three days (Happy Easter !) over the long weekend. So the following, features are complete:
- Conversions among fixed-point, floating-point and ASCII strings (with or without rounding)
- Extracting integer-part and fractional-part of Q-number, absolute value & saturation
- Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide (different versions for dealing with rounding and saturation in different Q-formats available)
- Fixed-point Square-root and Inverse Sqrt
One more feature I added are unit-tests -- as and when I implement new code, CuTesT will automatically generate template for my test suite. Currently there are about 18 test suites, take a look at the test/
folder in the downloaded zip. Of course, all of them are passing !
Category: Software Posted by: bdsatish
