Font Collection sites (many free)

There are various font collection sites where you can find nice typefaces you can preview and download:

http://www.fonts2u.com/

http://www.ffonts.net/

http://www.fontxs.com/

http://www.abstractfonts.com/

http://www.fontspace.com/

http://www.dafont.com/

Make sure you check the license for each font you download before using it in some project (some are only free for personal use, others are free for commercial use too).

 

Also take a trip http://www.deviantart.com/ for lots of artistic stuff that sometimes includes fonts too.

 

And finally checkout some nice hand-picked thematic font collections that point to FontSpace and other font download sites:

http://naldzgraphics.net/freebies/futuristic-fonts/

http://naldzgraphics.net/freebies/kid-fonts/

http://naldzgraphics.net/freebies/christmas-fonts/

http://naldzgraphics.net/freebies/movie-fonts-download/

Fix: embed Office & Acrobat Active Documents in IE WebBrowser control

Since the LvS desktop application (from Learning Via Subtitling project) uses Internet Explorer to embed Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat PDF documents (among others), I added some useful info to the LvS download page on how to work around issues one may face in such a scenario:

If you don’t have Microsoft Office (or have very old Office versions like Office 95 or Office 97) and want to embed Word documents you should better also install:

• free Microsoft Word Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=4
• free Microsoft Excel Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=10
• free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13 (this older version also supports Windows 2000: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6 but might not support all PowerPoint 2010 features)

To show .docx (Word 2007+) files if you use Office XP or Office 2003 or the free Word viewer you need to also install "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats" from: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3

Office 2007 doesn’t show documents embedded in Internet Explorer by default (which LvS uses internally to host Active Documents), use FixIt button at following page to fix this: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=927009 

In LvS if you have Office 2007 without this fix you will see message "Type the correct address" when your unpacked activity folder contains Office files

To embed Adobe Acrobat files you need Adobe Acrobat or the free Adobe Acrobat Reader from: http://adobe.com/reader

If Adobe PDF files don’t show embedded and open up in separate window: Use Start/All Programs menu from the Windows Taskbar and run Adobe Reader application. Then go to its menu "Edit/Preferences…" and at the dialog that opens up, go to "Internet" and check "Display PDF in browser", then press OK (can then close Adobe Reader).

When such files open embedded you may be asked to open or save the file for each one – select open and DO check to not be asked again (since it gets very annoying).

Since this "not ask again" will be remembered for IE too, if you want to clear it later on see the following article: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reset-opensave-choice-for-internet-explorer-downloads-in-vista/

Combinatorics library (Silverlight for Windows Phone)

I recently found a very nice article at CodeProject on Combinatorics algorithms implementation (specifically Permutations, Combinations and Variations with Repetition option) using C# Generics:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/Combinatorics.aspx

It uses a lexicographic algorithm, so it allows one to ask for “next” permutation/combination/variation from the collection of all possible ones, in the spirit of C++ Standard Library’s (STL) “next_permutation” algorithm.

My Anagram app for Windows Phone 7 is using this code (packed it in a Silverlight library)

I packed the files in a Silverlight for Windows Phone class library (named Combinatorics) and modification I had to do was to:

1. make the IMetaCollection interface public so that I could abstract the use of any combinatorics operation based on user selection
2. add CombinatoricsOp class to help with using any combinatorics operation via one entry point
3. As a bonus there is also a Combinatorics.cd there (class diagram)

You can download the library to use with your WP7 Silverlight apps (or repack source into other library project for other targets) from my Zoomicon public SkyDrive folder:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=2335bbef59b92c54&resid=2335BBEF59B92C54!1705&parid=2335BBEF59B92C54!386
Please give due credit to original author of Combinatorics code (and myself if you use my additions too).

The code for CombinatoricsOp class I added is below. Just call GetCombinatoricsOp to get a Permutations, Combinations or Variations class instance (all implement IMetaCollection interface) and then use the enumerator (with extra method to get count of items without counting them one-by-one) as described in the CodeProject article mentioned above.

//Version: 20111119
//Author: George Birbilis (birbilis@kagi.com)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;   namespace Facet.Combinatorics
{   public static class CombinatoricsOp {   public enum CombinatoricsOpType
    {
      Permutations = 0,
      PermutationsWithRepetition = 1,
      //---
      Combinations = 2,
      CombinationsWithRepetition = 3,
      //---
      Variations = 4,
      VariationsWithRepetition = 5
    }   public static IMetaCollection<string> GetCombinatoricsOp(
                  IList<string> values, CombinatoricsOpType opType, int take){
     switch (opType)
     {
       case CombinatoricsOpType.Permutations:
         return new Permutations<string>(values);



       case CombinatoricsOpType.PermutationsWithRepetition:
         return new Permutations<string>(values,GenerateOption.WithRepetition);
       case CombinatoricsOpType.Combinations:
         return new Combinations<string>(values, take);
       case CombinatoricsOpType.CombinationsWithRepetition:
         return new Combinations<string>(
                         values, take, GenerateOption.WithRepetition);
       case CombinatoricsOpType.Variations:
         return new Variations<string>(values, take);
       case CombinatoricsOpType.VariationsWithRepetition:
         return new Variations<string>(
                         values, take, GenerateOption.WithRepetition);
       default:
         throw new NotImplementedException();
     }
   }   }   }