File	Date	Author	Commit
html5	2011-08-17	Philip Ashmore	[d9349b] Version 0.10-04
qt	2011-08-17	Philip Ashmore	[d9349b] Version 0.10-04
sudoku	2012-02-13	Philip Ashmore	[09538d] Version 0.10-05
ChangeLog	2012-02-13	Philip Ashmore	[09538d] Version 0.10-05
LICENSE.txt	2011-08-17	Philip Ashmore	[d9349b] Version 0.10-04
Makefile	2012-02-13	Philip Ashmore	[09538d] Version 0.10-05
README	2011-08-12	Philip Ashmore	[87a098] Release 0.08-06
TODO	2011-08-17	Philip Ashmore	[c0172e] Release 0.10-02
gpl.txt	2011-08-17	Philip Ashmore	[d9349b] Version 0.10-04

Read Me

Storyboard
==========
It's registered in SourceForge as v3c-storyboard due to a name clash.

Directory layout
================
storyboard (you are here)
 |- html5
 |   |- sudoku
 |   \- timeline
 |- qt
 |   |- c++
 |   |   \- html5-capture
 |   \- images
 \- sudoku (the "c" solver)

So, in the context of this project what is a storyboard?

A storyboard is a sequence of commands, or timeline.
The commands might specify the actual story time at which the event it describes
takes place (as it does in the Sudoku project below) or the timeline might
simply indicate a relative ordering of commands.

What do these commands look like?

Well, for a general dependency graph, for example, we have declarations

1. entity declaration
	an entity is something of interest
2. entity relation declaration
	a relation describes a relationship between entities
3. modifier declaration
	these change or delete an entity or relation

In all cases these commands are context methods, changing the state of the
context. The context here is something that implements a "dependency graph"
interface.

In the case of a context recorder, this state change is the addition of an
object that describes the context method call.

Replaying this context means supplying another context for it to play into -
also a context method, but a method of the context recorder interface, a derived
interface, or an alternate interface in case of a method name clash.

Usually the timeline isn't played to the end, but to a particular point
according to some constraint.

In Sudoku there was an implicit context with a current or timeline time.

Duration psuedo-entities were used to change this timeline time and subsequent
entities picked up this time attribute, defining a time relationship between the
two sets of entities, before and after.

On the Sudoku board context, these entities created sprites that played on the
board and also modified the numbers on the board.

Event objects were retrieved from the timeline and played into the board context
until the timeline caught up to the current play time.

In timeline/pixel, there was an explicit context - the drawing context.

The timeline in this case had an "end" attribute which placed an upper limit on
the number of drawing events to replay.

In v3c-schema, the schema "script" described a series of structure/member
definitions with relations. So the context there was

1. the schema context for structure and attribute declarations
	This could change to a structure context when it met a structure
	declaration.
2. a particular structure context for attribute and member declarations
	Here an "end-structure" command pops the context to the schema context.

projects
========
Storyboard currently contains the following sub-projects

html5/sudoku
------------
I wanted to publish a c/c++ class library with demos but then I got sidetracked
with html5 which turned out to be a short-cut to grappling with storyboards
core concepts - timelines and nested stories.

The result is a mostly working demo that shows a "master" story (the timeline)
controlling a nested story (the Sudoku board) which has it's own stories - the
span and number sprites.

I did all my development and testing in Google Chrome on Debian GNU/Linux
amd64. You'll need to add

   --allow-file-access-from-files

to the google-chrome command line if you want to run them locally from the
expanded project tar-ball available at

   http://sourceforge.net/projects/v3c-storyboard/

and using the "git" version control program with

   git://v3c-storyboard.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/v3c-storyboard/v3c-storyboard
   (read-only).

I case you don't have a browser capable of seeing this demo in all it's glory,
I posted some YouTube videos at

   http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=v3c+storyboard&aq=f

html5/timeline
--------------
The "timeline" in the sudoku example is so cryptic it's downright encrypted!

I was looking for a way to get html5 to show a view into a large graph, with
zooming/panning.

Now it looks like I'll have to re-implement the scroll functionality I can see
in the text editor (KDE3 Trinity/kate on Debian AMD64) I'm using to write this
- scroll bars.
It's mostly done, but what does this say about software re-use?

qt/c++/html5-capture
--------------------
This is a QT program that by default opens the local html5/sudoku web page.
It synthesizes timer events and captures the web page as a QImage.
It then renders this image into an ffmpeg buffer.
It does this as fast as it can to "render" the web page animation into a video
file.

You will need a recent ffpmeg GIT snapshot (0.7.1 or later) installed for this
to work.

sudoku
------
This contains sudoku-solver.cpp, the source for a command-line program that
uses SpiderMonkey, Mozillas JavaScript engine.

This program uses SpiderMonkey to traverse the puzzle specifications looking for
"board" declarations.

It uses these as input to its solver algorithm to solve the puzzles.

On my system (Intel dual core 1.867MHz) it takes about 0.15 seconds to solve all
the puzzles - except the empty one, that is.

This is to demonstrate just how much slower JavaScript is to C/C++.
JavaScript takes a few minutes to find all 1 solutions to just one puzzle.

JavaScript is still sweeter for rapid prototyping, though ;)

Feedback
========
All feedback should be through this projects support web page
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/v3c-storyboard/support .

I've added a help, open discussion and a mantis bug tracker there.

Finally, do send me an email to let me know what your thoughts are on
v3c-storyboard!