Author: Nick Hodge

SOAP, AppleScript, PHP4

Wow. Have been spending time with SOAP Spec as a mechanism for transport of client-server messages over the net. And it works as advertised

After using AppleScript on MacOS X to communicate to a server, I added a PHP4 SOAP implementation of both a client and server to this web server. Just to make life interesting, after installing the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit 2.0, I can now get data from the server. The next step is adding a database to the back end; and get some stuff persisting and being useful!

The ease of programming in PHP also surprised me. Even got the object orientation and correctly factored my code. The ultimate strategy is to place as much of the content on this site into a database and dynamically generate anything – this site, navigation or a for-print document. Well, that s the wish anyway. Presently, I use Radio Userland as a weblog tool after transitioning from Blogger. But I d prefer to roll my own. The next step in the process is understanding MySQL

The service provider we use for this site is JumpLine — these guys are extremely helpful — and nothing has been too much trouble.

Trip to US

Back from the US, so much to talk about.

As you have read or seen, Adobe announced new versions of Adobe Illustrator (now version 10) and InDesign (now version 2). To me, InDesign is the most exciting. I have been doing tests to various RIPs of output, experimenting with Spot colours and transparency. It rocks, and will change publishing more than any other application since QuarkXpress 3.32

Something non-Adobe related. I have recently taken possession of a Titanium PowerBook G4 with MacOS X 10.1 installed. At Seybold I saw AppleScript Studio: a good mind meld between NeXT s excellent developer tools (now incarnate in Cocoa) and AppleScript. The more customers Apple get using these tools, the better future for the company. This is a developer s dream operating system. I’ve installed PHP and also purchased ScriptDebugger to do more in the scripting realm.

Saturday, 22nd September, 2001

The last 2 weeks have been difficult for many people. My heart goes out to those who are directly touched by these events. Sadly, this has not reached an end.
Today I am off to San Francisco Seybold. Somehow, I do not think that it is going to be ultra busy.
Expect some juicy announcements from all at the show … more during the week