Posted on 14 Comments on Using OpenGL with Qt: A Tutorial with Code Examples and Screenshots

Using OpenGL with Qt: A Tutorial with Code Examples and Screenshots

My last tutorial on this subject was written almost thee years ago, and it’s still the most popular article on this blog, yet I’m not sure even I could follow it. Thus, I’m going through the steps again with the latest versions of NetBeans (7.1.2) and Qt (4.8.1), this time taking screenshots along the way.

Read more Using OpenGL with Qt: A Tutorial with Code Examples and Screenshots

Posted on 6 Comments on Thread-Safe Observable Priority Queue for WPF

Thread-Safe Observable Priority Queue for WPF

Building on my last post, I realized that you couldn’t push elements onto the queue from a worker thread, making it pretty much useless. However, if we dispatch the pushes back to the UI thread, it should work, right?

Here’s (what I believe to be) a thread-safe observable priority queue with notifications for use in WPF.

class PriorityQueue<TValue, TPriority> : IEnumerable<TValue>, INotifyCollectionChanged
    where TValue : INotifyPropertyChanged
    where TPriority : IComparable
{
    private SortedDictionary<TPriority, Queue<TValue>> dict;
    private int count;
    private Dispatcher dispatcher;

    public int Count { get { return count; } }
    public bool Empty { get { return Count == 0; } }

    public PriorityQueue(Dispatcher dispatcher = null)
    {
        this.dispatcher = dispatcher ?? Dispatcher.CurrentDispatcher;
        this.count = 0;
        this.dict = new SortedDictionary<TPriority, Queue<TValue>>(new ReverseComparer());
    }

    private class ReverseComparer : IComparer<TPriority>
    {
        public int Compare(TPriority x, TPriority y) { return y.CompareTo(x); }
    }

    public virtual void Push(TValue val, TPriority pri = default(TPriority))
    {
        if (dispatcher.CheckAccess())
        {
            ++count;
            if (!dict.ContainsKey(pri)) dict[pri] = new Queue<TValue>();
            dict[pri].Enqueue(val);
            OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Add, val));
        }
        else
        {
            dispatcher.Invoke(new Action<TValue, TPriority>(Push), DispatcherPriority.Send, val, pri);
        }
    }

    public virtual TValue Peek()
    {
        return dict.First().Value.Peek();
    }

    public virtual TValue Pop()
    {
        if (dispatcher.CheckAccess())
        {
            --count;
            var pair = dict.First();
            var queue = pair.Value;
            var val = queue.Dequeue();
            if (queue.Count == 0) dict.Remove(pair.Key);
            OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Remove, val));
            return val;
        }
        else
        {
            return (TValue)dispatcher.Invoke(new Func<TValue>(Pop), DispatcherPriority.Send);
        }
    }

    public event NotifyCollectionChangedEventHandler CollectionChanged;

    public virtual void OnCollectionChanged(NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        if (CollectionChanged != null)
        {
            CollectionChanged(this, e);
        }
    }

    public IEnumerator<TValue> GetEnumerator()
    {
        foreach (var queue in dict.Values)
        {
            foreach (var value in queue)
            {
                yield return value;
            }
        }
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return GetEnumerator();
    }
}

Read this blog post to find out how this works.

Posted on No Comments on Observable Priority Queue

Observable Priority Queue

Just started playing around with WPF in VS 2010. They have this ObservableCollection class which you can bind to your DataGrid or ListControl and then when you add or remove items from it, the control is refreshed automatically. However, I wanted to use my PriorityQueue class that I posted about earlier, so I modified it a bit:

class PriorityQueue<TValue> : PriorityQueue<TValue, int> where TValue : INotifyPropertyChanged { }
class PriorityQueue<TValue, TPriority> : IEnumerable<TValue>, INotifyCollectionChanged
    where TValue : INotifyPropertyChanged
    where TPriority : IComparable
{
    private SortedDictionary<TPriority, Queue<TValue>> dict = new SortedDictionary<TPriority, Queue<TValue>>(new ReverseComparer());
    private int count = 0;

    public int Count { get { return count; } }
    public bool Empty { get { return Count == 0; } }

    private class ReverseComparer : IComparer<TPriority>
    {
        public int Compare(TPriority x, TPriority y) { return y.CompareTo(x); }
    }

    public void Enqueue(TValue val, TPriority pri = default(TPriority))
    {
        ++count;
        if (!dict.ContainsKey(pri)) dict[pri] = new Queue<TValue>();
        dict[pri].Enqueue(val);
        OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Add, val));
    }

    public TValue Dequeue()
    {
        --count;
        var pair = dict.First();
        var queue = pair.Value;
        var val = queue.Dequeue();
        if (queue.Count == 0) dict.Remove(pair.Key);
        OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Remove, val));
        return val;
    }

    public event NotifyCollectionChangedEventHandler CollectionChanged;

    public virtual void OnCollectionChanged(NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        if (CollectionChanged != null)
        {
            CollectionChanged(this, e);
        }
    }

    public IEnumerator<TValue> GetEnumerator()
    {
        foreach (var queue in dict.Values)
        {
            foreach (var value in queue)
            {
                yield return value;
            }
        }
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return GetEnumerator();
    }
}

Priorities are sorted in descending order (higher value = higher priority).

Also discovered that I could just use “yield return” instead of having to write a custom Enumerator class too! Very nice. Especially since I wouldn’t have known how to write it 🙂

Posted on No Comments on Human-readable file size in C#

Human-readable file size in C#

static string ReadableFileSize(double size, int unit = 0)
{
    string[] units = { "B", "KiB", "MiB", "GiB", "TiB", "PiB", "EiB", "ZiB", "YiB" };

    while (size >= 1024)
    {
        size /= 1024;
        ++unit;
    }

    return String.Format("{0:G4} {1}", size, units[unit]);
}

I made “bytes” a double so you could pass in fractions, which you might get when calculating download speeds.

Posted on 1 Comment on A Simple Priority Queue in C#

A Simple Priority Queue in C#

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace QueueSpace
{
    public class PriorityQueue<TValue> : PriorityQueue<TValue, int> { }

    public class PriorityQueue<TValue, TPriority> where TPriority : IComparable
    {
        private SortedDictionary<TPriority, Queue<TValue>> dict = new SortedDictionary<TPriority, Queue<TValue>>();

        public int Count { get; private set; }
        public bool Empty { get { return Count == 0; } }

        public void Enqueue(TValue val)
        {
            Enqueue(val, default(TPriority));
        }

        public void Enqueue(TValue val, TPriority pri)
        {
            ++Count;
            if (!dict.ContainsKey(pri)) dict[pri] = new Queue<TValue>();
            dict[pri].Enqueue(val);
        }

        public TValue Dequeue()
        {
            --Count;
            var item = dict.Last();
            if (item.Value.Count == 1) dict.Remove(item.Key);
            return item.Value.Dequeue();
        }
    }

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var pq = new PriorityQueue<int>();

            for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i)
            {
                pq.Enqueue(i,i/2);
            }
            while (!pq.Empty)
            {
                Console.Write(pq.Dequeue() + " ");
            }

            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

Output

8 9 6 7 4 5 2 3 0 1

Items with the same priority are dequeued in the same order that they were inserted.

Posted on 1 Comment on .NET Dock Panel

.NET Dock Panel

Apparently .NET does not come with any dock widget, like the ones used for the Toolbox and Properties window in Visual Studio. However, there is a freely available one on sourceforge called DockPanel Suite. Unfortunately, it seems to lack any sort of documentation!

This little code snippet below should be enough to get you started though. Just make sure you your form’s IsMdiContainer property to True first.

public Form1() {
    InitializeComponent();

    glControl.Load += new System.EventHandler(glControl_Load);
    glControl.Paint += new System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventHandler(glControl_Paint);
    glControl.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;

    var dockPanel = new DockPanel();
    dockPanel.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
    Controls.Add(dockPanel);
    dockPanel.BringToFront();

    var mainDock = new DockContent();
    mainDock.ShowHint = DockState.Document;
    mainDock.TabText = "untitled1";
    mainDock.Controls.Add(glControl);
    mainDock.Show(dockPanel);

    var propGrid = new PropertyGrid();
    propGrid.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;

    var propertyDock = new DockContent();
    propertyDock.Controls.Add(propGrid);
    propertyDock.ShowHint = DockState.DockRight;
    propertyDock.TabText = "Properties";
    propertyDock.Show(dockPanel);
}