Thank you for the reply. :) In the end, we decided to go with a hybrid approach. Have the core backend done in Java, while administration and stuff would be in PHP. -chronodekar

My company is planning to make a new kind of messaging application and I'm trying to decide what technology to use on the back-end. We're thinking of the client-server model. Where client can be a web-app, native mobile or even a desktop application. As a developer, to me this means that the back-end server better be darn good and stable. The current proposal is to use PHP. Is this really a good idea? Sure, wordpress proves that you can build really complicated things with PHP, but I'm not working with veterans. The programmers would have at best 1 or 2 years of experience. My concern is on extending the backend when requirements change as well as debugging errors. For a new team, what technology would be easier to use? Can Java be used for this purpose? Will it be easy to debug? What about .NET ? -chronodekar

I'm curious. Can you provide a snippet of the XML file you are trying to read? -chronodekar

I've seen that too, but if you download the newer eclipse releases, you'll see that it doesn't even have the "Profiling and Logging" perspective mentioned in that tutorial. Furthermore, the tutorial link itself indicates that its a part of "TPTP", the "Eclipse Test & Performance Tools Platform Project", which hasn't been updated since Feb-2011 ! -chronodekar

I just ran an internet search for "eclipse java profiler". The results are confusing. I was expecting to find a list of tools or at least a simple tutorial on how to use a free one, but haven't seen anything of the such. I find it hard to believe that an OSS profiler doesn't exist. Can someone point me to a tutorial on how to use one? Preferably with eclipse integration. Or should I switch over to netbeans? -chronodekar

There might be a more efficient way of doing it, but here's my thinking. 1. Arrange all the numbers in descending order. Make note of the largest one ( = A). Also store the numbers in an array ( = ARRAY) 2. Count the number of inputs ( = B). 3. Visualize the output in the form of a rectangle - you need to draw (with ASCII) a rectangle whose height is A and width B. Alternatively, you need to print A no. of lines with B characters. Now we come to implementation. In pseudo-code;

for (i = A ; i>0; i--)
{
for (j = 0; j i)
print("*");
else
print("O");
}
print("\n");
}

I think that should do it. Any edge case I missed? -chronodekar

Try changing your approach to the problem. Let's try this. Input : 2, 4, 3 Desired output:

*
**
***
***

For graphical purposes let me remake the output as follows

*OO
**O
***
***

Replace the "O" with spaces. Does it help? -chronodekar

There is a free game development tool called "Wolf RPG Editor". Details on the following site, http://www.silversecond.com/WolfRPGEditor/[^] The problem is that its been written in Japanese. Using Resource Hacker[^] I managed to translate one of the configuration tools that came with it. For reference here are screenshots of my efforts, BEFORE, http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/4545/configjapanese.jpg[^] AFTER, http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/3365/configenglish.jpg[^] My next plan is to try and work with a few friends to translate the rest of the tool. Basically, it revolves around changing the text in the dialog boxes. The problem I'm facing is how to manage such a team effort. Does anyone know a way (or utility) to extract the resources from a windows executable, split it into different files and then merge it all back together? As useful as Resource Hacker is, its essentially a one-man tool. I'm looking for something that would let me work with a version control system for this. On the legal side of things, I've been led to understand that the original developer has granted permission for translation efforts (admittedly, hearsay from others). The way I see things, since its a free tool and because I'm only translating it, there shouldn't be any trouble. -chronodekar

For a project I'm about to complete, we need to create some help files. I've already made some tutorials using Wink (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/[^]). What I need now, is to create a set of inter-connected HTML pages to serve as the help document. What I'm looking for is something similar to the output which Natural Docs (http://www.naturaldocs.org/[^]) produces. But ND does not make it easy to link up to other HTML files. Another viewpoint might be that I just need some HTML creation software, or something like that? I've already looked into HelpMaker (http://www.vizacc.com/[^]), but I don't think .chm files will let me embed any objects in them. I'm open to suggestions. All I need is SOME kind of software (freeware) that will let me update (as painlessly as possible) any user-oriented help documentation I create.