Exceptions in C++

In Google C++ Style Guide they state that they are not using exceptions in C++ code at Google. They have reasons for it (“historical” mostly, as usual), but I do not necessarily agree with their view on it. Anyway, exceptions are quite a controversial topic in C++ community, and a must-read C++ Exceptions: Pros and Cons article at CodeProject goes deeper into the subject.

Personally I think that exceptions are really great, although I see how people can get things messy/wrong when using exceptions in inappropriate contexts and/or in inappropriate ways. Recipe to avoid problems? My own short list:

• Use exceptions when they are really needed, i.e. when something exceptional happened
• Understand Exception guarantees AKA Abrahams guarantees (see more at Exception-Safety in Generic Components – Lessons Learned from Specifying Exception-Safety for the C++ Standard Library by David Abrahams)
• Follow Resource Acquisition Is Initialization AKA Resource Initialization Is Acquisition (or RAII/RIIA in short) principle

Today’s Sites/Blogs

• Ask the Performance Team (Thoughts from the EPS Windows Server Performance Team) – in their own words “… the Performance team covers a broad range of seemingly unrelated areas such as Core OS Performance, Printing, WMI and Terminal Services. Simply put – we’re a bit of a “catch-all” team. [...] Because we cover such a wide spectrum of technology, we see many different types of issues – some more frequently than others. So we thought we should share with the broader technical community. We’ll be sharing troubleshooting tips and technical information on areas of our specialty that we cover.”
• 45+ Excellent Code Snippet Resources and Repositories – it is what it says it is.

.NET Events: Multithreading Issues

Threadsafe Events article at CodeProject explains problems one might encounter with .NET events in a multithreaded environment (not necessarily stating the absolute truth but still). Unfortunately, no-one has figured out the perfect solution, and we will have to choose “the best from all bad solutions” for some time still.

Asynchronous Callback Contexts article by the same author shows possible solution for event cancellation, particularly during object disposal: end-users do not expect components to raise events after they have been disposed or after they have unsubscribed from these events. The author refers to his Nito Asynchronous Library as a way to solve this issue.

Windows Media Player: WMP Mini FAQ

While searching for a solution to DRM-related troubles with film2home.fi video on demand service (gosh! no wonder that VoD purchasing rate is abysmal over here!) I have bumped into a Windows Media Player: WMP mini FAQ – an absolutely great collection of remedies to all kinds of Windows Media Player problems. Did not manage to solve my (in fact, film2home’s) problem though… :)

Is IE8 Really Fat and Slow?

Is IE8 really fat and slow? While not using IE8 yet (our software depends on IE7, so have no choice), found that post good to know, as it seems this is quite a common problem with IE8.

|=uCl<1/\/9 Acrobat Reader!!! (Part II)

Shit! I have already once posted about problems with Acrobat Reader. And, here it comes again! I am really tired of getting stupid “The Adobe Acrobat/Reader that is running cannot be used to view PDF files in a web browser. Adobe Acrobat/Reader version 8 or 9 is required. Please exit and try again.” message almost (almost, but not always) every time I try to open PDF document from some web site. Both solutions I found suck big time:

1. Uninstall Acrobat Reader 9 and install version 8
2. Go to Edit > Preferences > Internet and clear Display PDF in browser checkbox (this is the one I am using now)

This problem is known to Adobe, but ignored by them for more than half a year. Boooooo…

VS2008 SP1 WPF Designer Hotfix

Microsoft released a hotfix for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 WPF Designer. Following issues have been fixed:

• When a resource in an external resource dictionary is updated, Visual Studio 2008 crashes.
• WPF Designer cannot load read-only attached properties, such as the VisualStateManager. VisualStateGroups property.
• If users or codes set a data binding locally, and then the users or codes clear the data binding, WPF designer reports the following error message: ‘System.Windows.Data.Binding’ is not a valid value for property.
• If a Win32 project is set as the startup project, WPF Designer cannot load solutions in Visual Studio 2008 or in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.
• When you set and then delete the Source property of a WPF WebBrowser control, Visual Studio crashes.
• When you move a control that uses the MultiTrigger class or the DataTrigger class in the Style class, WPF Designer may generate an InvalidCastException exception.

The package can be dowloaded directly from the MSDN Code Gallery. This hotfix is not needed and you must not install it if you have Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (or plan to install it).

A Book on .NET Performance

Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability freely available on MSDN seems to be really full of interesting info, despite being from 2004 (deja-vu? :).

Tracking Down Managed Memory Leaks

One more “oldie” (now from 2004 :)… Rico Mariani’s Tracking down managed memory leaks (how to find a GC leak) article shows how to find managed memory leaks using WinDbg. You can check his blog for wealth of info about all aspects of .NET.

Problem Showing Document Properties in Word 2007

Instead of showing the document properties, my Word 2007 was showing nice “The Document Information Panel was unable to load” message when I was invoking Prepare > Properties. Finally I got tired of this and decided to do something about it. Found two solutions on the Internet.

One was to disable System Event Notification service, and, of course, it was not working (I would wonder if it would, as I do not see any link between SENS and document properties).

The other one was a bit more elaborate. It argued, that the missing “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\ipedintl.dll” is causing the issue, and copying this file into the abovementioned location would restore Word’s functionality. The file was missing in my case; I found it in “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Web Designer Tools\Office12\1033\”, copied it over to “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\”, and voilaz, Word now shows the document properties panel fine.

UPDATE I had to reinstall my PC. So, fresh Windows XP SP3 and fresh Office 2007 with SP1 – same problem appeared straight after the installation :) . Really sucks (but at least now I knew how to fix it!)

UPDATE 2 I had to reinstall my work PC now, and again the same shit, except now I used Office 2007 Ultimate SP1. But now there was a twist – ipedintl.dll was nowhere on the hard disk… I found it on Office installation disk in the “\Office.en-us\OfficeLR.cab” file (.cab is an archive file, like .zip or .7z or similar). It is called IPEDINTL.DLL_1033, and you should extract it to the above mentioned “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\” directory (using e.g. 7-zip) and rename it to ipedintl.dll. Problem fixed.

|=uCl<1/\/9 Acrobat Reader!!!

Arghhhhh! The newest Acrobat Reader sucks big time!!! Its Content Preparation Progress/Please wait while the document is being prepared for reading dialog is something beyond my understanding. It is “processing” the document with the speed of 1-2/pages per second, and stays on top of e.g. browser; plus, you cannot do anything with the document while the dialog is there, e.g. no searching.

How could older Acrobat Readers show me my documents without displaying this beautiful piece of “contemporary PC art”, and the newest reader cannot!?

UPDATE There is a way to turn it off! There is the Reading > Screen Reader Options > Page vs Document option in Preferences, and it should be set to Only read the currently visible pages. No idea, why it had different value, as I have never touched it. Anyway, I am not alone in this – many others had the same issue, when this setting got somehow changed.