A color picker (also color chooser or color tool) is a graphical user interface widget, usually found within graphics software or online, used to select colors and, in some cases, to create color schemes (the color picker might be more sophisticated than the palette included with the program). Operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or macOS have a system color picker, which can be used by third-party programs (e.g., Adobe Photoshop). == History == The concept of color pickers dates back to the early days of computer graphics and digital design. Early versions were rudimentary, often featuring basic color palettes and limited functionality. One of the first drawing programs to include a color picker was SketchPad (also referred to as LisaSketch), designed by Bill Atkinson in 1983 to showcase LisaGraf's capabilities. It used a black and white pattern system, using dithering to create the illusion of color depth. With the increased popularity of personal computers with color graphics, there soon came software similar to SketchPad that supported more than two colors, like Broderbund's Dazzle Draw for the Apple II or Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint. However, the color pickers present in those programs relied on indexed colors. Color pickers, resembling ones used in modern software with support for direct, 24-bit color, appeared soon after the release of the Macintosh II, with the release of programs like Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. As the increase of color depth allowed the choice of significantly more colors, the shape and form of color pickers started to diverge. For example, Adobe Photoshop used a hue-saturation color wheel with a slider for brightness in version 0.63, later on switching to a rectangular design accompanied by a hue slider. Corel Painter pioneered the triangular saturation and brightness picker with a hue ring around it, aiming to better represent the continuity of the hue spectrum and the relationship between saturation and brightness. == Purpose == A color picker is used to select and adjust color values. In graphic design and image editing, users typically choose colors via an interface with a visual representation of a color—organized with quasi-perceptually-relevant hue, saturation and lightness dimensions (HSL) – instead of keying in alphanumeric text values. Because color appearance depends on comparison of neighboring colors (see color vision), many interfaces attempt to clarify the relationships between colors. == Interface == Color tools can vary in their interface. Some may use sliders, buttons, text boxes for color values, or direct manipulation. Often a two-dimensional square is used to create a range of color values (such as lightness and saturation) that can be clicked on or selected in some other manner. Drag and drop, color droppers, and various other forms of interfaces are commonly used as well. Usually, color values are also displayed numerically, so they can be precisely remembered and keyed-in later, such as three values of 0-255 representing red, green, and blue, respectively. === Eyedropper === The eyedropper is a tool present in most color pickers and graphics software that allows a user to read a color at a specific point in an image, or position on a display. This enables the color to be transferred to other applications particularly quickly. Modern implementations of eyedropper tools are also available as browser extensions, allowing users to pick colors directly from web pages, such as in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. == Working == A color picker has two main parts, first a color slider and second a color canvas. The color slider has a linear or radial gradient of the seven rainbow colors i.e. Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. It allows one to choose any of the seven primary colors. The color value chosen from the color slider instantly reflects in the color canvas. The color canvas is a mixture of two linear color gradients. First a linear gradient of the current chosen color and second a linear gradient of the black color. This mixture of color gradients lets one choose a lighter and darker version of the current chosen color from the color slider.
Airfair
AirFair was a mobile travel application that checks flights, and shows whether a traveler is owed compensation. == History == AirFair was developed in 2016 by Allay Logic Ltd; a Newcastle-based tech-company. == Services == AirFair offered a free flight check to see if compensation is owed. The app could indicate how much the person is owed within minutes whether the flight was delayed, cancelled or the traveler is refused boarding.
EPUAP
ePUAP (Electronic Platform of Public Administration Services) is a Polish nationwide platform for communication of citizens with public administrations in a uniform and standardized way. Built as part of the ePUAP-WKP project (State Informatization Plan). Service providers are public administration units and public institutions (especially entities that perform tasks commissioned by the state). The platform provides service providers with technological infrastructure to provide services to citizens (recipients). Among the participants of ePUAP there are both central administration units and local governments, including municipal offices. Among the services offered by ePUAP is also Profil Zaufany (Trusted Profile), which enables electronic filing with legal effect without the need to use a qualified signature and SAML-based single sign-on mechanism, which enables the same ePUAP account to log on to websites of various service providers. The website www.epuap.gov.pl enables defining citizen and businesses service processes, creates channels of access to different systems of public administration and extends the package of public services provided electronically. Services available through the ePUAP platform may be accessed at the official website. Currently all administration services are available in Polish only. == Overview == It is described by the Polish government as "a coherent and systematic action program designed and developed to allow public institutions make their electronic services available to the public". The platform provides citizens, businesses and institutions with a number of services intended to ensure smooth and safe communication between: customer to administrations (C2A), business to administration (B2A), administration to administration (A2A). === Main goals === The main project objectives are to create a single, secure and electronic access channel to public services for citizens, businesses and public administration and also to reduce time and lower the costs of sharing information resources and functionalities of administration domain systems. Within the project, the following functionalities and services were delivered: Public services catalogue – a method of presenting and describing administration services, ePUAP platform – a web platform designed to provide public services on the Internet, Interoperability portal – a portal for experts working on recommendations for electronic documents and forms used within Polish administration systems to assure the uniformity of IT standards, Central Repository of Electronic Document Models – a database for valid document models and electronic forms. == History and background == The ePUAP project was carried out in the years 2005–2008. Currently, a continuation project ePUAP2 is being carried out with the following objectives: to increase the number of online services available to the public including the registry services, to widen the scale of usage of public electronic services, to integrate subsequent systems of public administration and business on ePUAP portal, to define new processes of customer and business services. === ePUAP2 === ePUAP2 is a public and administrative project that extends the set of functional services developed during the first edition of the project and is another step in the process of transforming Poland into a modern and citizen-friendly country. The implementation period for the project covers the years 2009–2013. Project financing The cost of the project “Construction of electronic Platform of Public Administration Services” – 32 million PLN was covered in 75% by the funds from the European Regional Development Fund (under the Sector Operational Programme "Supporting Competitiveness of Enterprises for the years 2004–2006"), while the remaining 25% of the cost was covered by a Polish national co-financing. Funds for the ePUAP2 project were gained from the 7th priority axis of the Innovative Economy Operational Programme and amounts to 140 million PLN (85% of eligible expenses were covered by the European Regional Development Fund, 15% were covered by a national co-financing). The trustee of ePUAP is the Polish Ministry of the Interior and Administration. == Legal regulations == According to the Polish law from 1 May 2008, public authorities are required to accept documents in electronic form (bringing applications and proposals and other activities in electronic form). ePUAP enables public institutions to meet this requirement by providing a service infrastructure to set up am electronic inbox. The ePUAP inbox meets legal requirements, in particular: issuing an official confirmation of receipt in accordance with the regulation of the Prime Minister of 29 September 2005 on the organizational and technical conditions for the delivery of electronic documents to public entities; cooperation with hardware security modules (HSM), meeting the technical requirements set out in the law; handling documents electronically in accordance with the minimum requirements set out in the Regulation of the Polish Council of Ministers of 11 October 2005 on minimum requirements for ICT systems. == Incidents == === Crashes === The ePUAP system very often happens smaller or larger failures. Because it is used to sign the application profiles trusted also in other electronic systems such as public administration. Electronic Services Platform created by ZUS, the system fault ePUAP it very difficult to settle official matters most electronically. === "Infoafera" === According to TVN and the release of TVP News from 10 April 2014, the creation of ePUAP is also associated with the so-called "Infoafera." On 10 April 2014, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland confirmed the information that the American technology company HP confessed to its participation in the Polish info-tour and corruption of Polish officials. By March 2014, the construction of ePUAP and its maintenance cost PLN 98.4 million. PLN 67.8 million has been used for this project. Challenged expenses only on the portal itself is approx. PLN 20 million.
Random (software)
Random was an iOS mobile app that used algorithms and human-curation to create an adaptive interface to the Internet. The app served a remix of relevance and serendipity that allowed people to find diverse topics and interesting content that they might not have encountered otherwise. Random did not require a login or sign-up - the use of the app was anonymous. The app was powered by an artificial intelligence that learned from direct and indirect user interactions inside the app. While learning and adapting to a person, Random created a unique anonymous choice profile that was then used for recommending topics and content. The app didn't recommend the same content twice. == User interface == Random's user interface was made of ever-changing topic blocks that contained keywords and images. By choosing any of the blocks, the user would see related web content. By closing the web content, the user could access new related topics. The user interface allowed people to get more information about a specific topic area or then just leap freely from topic to topic. The content recommended by Random could be any type of web content, varying from news articles to long-form stories and from photographs to videos. Every user of the Random was curating content for other users by using the app. == History == Random was launched in March 2014. The startup was backed by Skype co-founder Janus Friis. The Random app received a strong reception from the likes of The New York Times, TechCrunch, New Scientist, Vice, and other leading publications. The app went on to gain traction with an active and loyal user community of several hundreds of thousands. This was not enough to support the free app model the team strongly believed in, and the service was terminated in December 2015. == Reception == Various reviews in media have emphasized that Random enables people to break their filter bubble and find diverse content they might not find elsewhere. Alan Henry of Lifehacker wrote: "Random... breaks you out by intentionally guiding you to new topics and interesting articles at sites you may not otherwise read." Vice Motherboard's Claire Evans says that: "Random never turns into a filter bubble, because it perpetually injects the irrational into my experience… in a cocktail of relevancy and serendipity." The app has been said to have a unique, minimalistic user experience. Kit Eaton of The New York Times commented that Random "let's you browse the news in a different way to all the other news sites you've probably ever used." Mashable reviewed Random by concluding that the "app may be one of the most simple content-discovery apps on the market."
FoundationDB
FoundationDB is a free and open-source multi-model distributed NoSQL database owned by Apple Inc. with a shared-nothing architecture. The product was designed around a "core" database, with additional features supplied in "layers." The core database exposes an ordered key–value store with transactions. The transactions are able to read or write multiple keys stored on any machine in the cluster while fully supporting ACID properties. Transactions are used to implement a variety of data models via layers. The FoundationDB Alpha program began in January 2012 and concluded on March 4, 2013, with their public Beta release. Their 1.0 version was released for general availability on August 20, 2013. On March 24, 2015, it was reported that Apple has acquired the company. A notice on the FoundationDB web site indicated that the company has "evolved" its mission and would no longer offer downloads of the software. On April 19, 2018, Apple open sourced the software, releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license. == Main features == The main features of FoundationDB include the following: Ordered key–value store In addition to supporting standard key-based reads and writes, the ordering property enables range reads that can efficiently scan large swaths of data. Transactions Transaction processing employs multiversion concurrency control for reads and optimistic concurrency for writes. Transactions can span multiple keys stored on multiple machines. ACID properties FoundationDB guarantees serializable isolation and strong durability via redundant storage on disk before transactions are considered committed. Layers Layers map new data models, APIs, and query languages to the FoundationDB core. They employ FoundationDB's ability to update multiple data elements in a single transaction, ensuring consistency. An example is their SQL layer. Commodity clusters FoundationDB is designed for deployment on distributed clusters of commodity hardware running Linux. Replication FoundationDB stores each piece of data on multiple machines according to a configurable replication factor. Triple replication is the recommended mode for clusters of 5 or more machines. Scalability FoundationDB is designed to support horizontal scaling through the addition of machines to a cluster while automatically handling data replication and partitioning. Systems supported FoundationDB supports packages for Linux, Windows, and macOS. The Linux version supports production clusters, while the Windows and macOS versions support local operation for development purposes. Configurations on Amazon EC2 are also supported. Programming language bindings FoundationDB supports language bindings for Python, Go, Ruby, Node.js, Java, PHP, and C, all of which are made available with the product. == Design limitations == The design of FoundationDB results in several limitations: Long transactions FoundationDB does not support transactions running over five seconds. Large transactions Transaction size cannot exceed 10 MB of total written keys and values. Large keys and values Keys cannot exceed 10 kB in size. Values cannot exceed 100 kB in size. == History == FoundationDB, headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, was started in 2009 by Nick Lavezzo, Dave Rosenthal, and Dave Scherer, drawing on their experience in executive and technology roles at their previous company, Visual Sciences. In March 2015 the FoundationDB Community site was updated to state that the company had changed directions and would no longer be offering downloads of its product. The company was acquired by Apple Inc., which was confirmed March 25, 2015. On April 19, 2018, Apple open sourced the software, releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license.
Lexical Markup Framework
Language resource management – Lexical markup framework (LMF; ISO 24613), produced by ISO/TC 37, is the ISO standard for natural language processing (NLP) and machine-readable dictionary (MRD) lexicons. The scope is standardization of principles and methods relating to language resources in the contexts of multilingual communication. == Objectives == The goals of LMF are to provide a common model for the creation and use of lexical resources, to manage the exchange of data between and among these resources, and to enable the merging of large number of individual electronic resources to form extensive global electronic resources. Types of individual instantiations of LMF can include monolingual, bilingual or multilingual lexical resources. The same specifications are to be used for both small and large lexicons, for both simple and complex lexicons, for both written and spoken lexical representations. The descriptions range from morphology, syntax, computational semantics to computer-assisted translation. The covered languages are not restricted to European languages but cover all natural languages. The range of targeted NLP applications is not restricted. LMF is able to represent most lexicons, including WordNet, EDR and PAROLE lexicons. == History == In the past, lexicon standardization has been studied and developed by a series of projects like GENELEX, EDR, EAGLES, MULTEXT, PAROLE, SIMPLE and ISLE. Then, the ISO/TC 37 National delegations decided to address standards dedicated to NLP and lexicon representation. The work on LMF started in Summer 2003 by a new work item proposal issued by the US delegation. In Fall 2003, the French delegation issued a technical proposition for a data model dedicated to NLP lexicons. In early 2004, the ISO/TC 37 committee decided to form a common ISO project with Nicoletta Calzolari (CNR-ILC Italy) as convenor and Gil Francopoulo (Tagmatica France) and Monte George (ANSI, United States) as editors. The first step in developing LMF was to design an overall framework based on the general features of existing lexicons and to develop a consistent terminology to describe the components of those lexicons. The next step was the actual design of a comprehensive model that best represented all of the lexicons in detail. A large panel of 60 experts contributed a wide range of requirements for LMF that covered many types of NLP lexicons. The editors of LMF worked closely with the panel of experts to identify the best solutions and reach a consensus on the design of LMF. Special attention was paid to the morphology in order to provide powerful mechanisms for handling problems in several languages that were known as difficult to handle. 13 versions have been written, dispatched (to the National nominated experts), commented and discussed during various ISO technical meetings. After five years of work, including numerous face-to-face meetings and e-mail exchanges, the editors arrived at a coherent UML model. In conclusion, LMF should be considered a synthesis of the state of the art in NLP lexicon field. == Current stage == The ISO number is 24613. The LMF specification has been published officially as an International Standard on 17 November 2008. == As one of the members of the ISO/TC 37 family of standards == The ISO/TC 37 standards are currently elaborated as high level specifications and deal with word segmentation (ISO 24614), annotations (ISO 24611 a.k.a. MAF, ISO 24612 a.k.a. LAF, ISO 24615 a.k.a. SynAF, and ISO 24617-1 a.k.a. SemAF/Time), feature structures (ISO 24610), multimedia containers (ISO 24616 a.k.a. MLIF), and lexicons (ISO 24613). These standards are based on low level specifications dedicated to constants, namely data categories (revision of ISO 12620), language codes (ISO 639), scripts codes (ISO 15924), country codes (ISO 3166) and Unicode (ISO 10646). The two level organization forms a coherent family of standards with the following common and simple rules: the high level specification provides structural elements that are adorned by the standardized constants; the low level specifications provide standardized constants as metadata. == Key standards == The linguistics constants like /feminine/ or /transitive/ are not defined within LMF but are recorded in the Data Category Registry (DCR) that is maintained as a global resource by ISO/TC 37 in compliance with ISO/IEC 11179-3:2003. And these constants are used to adorn the high level structural elements. The LMF specification complies with the modeling principles of Unified Modeling Language (UML) as defined by Object Management Group (OMG). The structure is specified by means of UML class diagrams. The examples are presented by means of UML instance (or object) diagrams. An XML DTD is given in an annex of the LMF document. == Model structure == LMF is composed of the following components: The core package that is the structural skeleton which describes the basic hierarchy of information in a lexical entry. Extensions of the core package which are expressed in a framework that describes the reuse of the core components in conjunction with the additional components required for a specific lexical resource. The extensions are specifically dedicated to morphology, MRD, NLP syntax, NLP semantics, NLP multilingual notations, NLP morphological patterns, multiword expression patterns, and constraint expression patterns. == Example == In the following example, the lexical entry is associated with a lemma clergyman and two inflected forms clergyman and clergymen. The language coding is set for the whole lexical resource. The language value is set for the whole lexicon as shown in the following UML instance diagram. The elements Lexical Resource, Global Information, Lexicon, Lexical Entry, Lemma, and Word Form define the structure of the lexicon. They are specified within the LMF document. On the contrary, languageCoding, language, partOfSpeech, commonNoun, writtenForm, grammaticalNumber, singular, plural are data categories that are taken from the Data Category Registry. These marks adorn the structure. The values ISO 639-3, clergyman, clergymen are plain character strings. The value eng is taken from the list of languages as defined by ISO 639-3. With some additional information like dtdVersion and feat, the same data can be expressed by the following XML fragment: This example is rather simple, while LMF can represent much more complex linguistic descriptions the XML tagging is correspondingly complex. == Selected publications about LMF == The first publication about the LMF specification as it has been ratified by ISO (this paper became (in 2015) the 9th most cited paper within the Language Resources and Evaluation conferences from LREC papers): Language Resources and Evaluation LREC-2006/Genoa: Gil Francopoulo, Monte George, Nicoletta Calzolari, Monica Monachini, Nuria Bel, Mandy Pet, Claudia Soria: Lexical Markup Framework (LMF) About semantic representation: Gesellschaft für linguistische Datenverarbeitung GLDV-2007/Tübingen: Gil Francopoulo, Nuria Bel, Monte George Nicoletta Calzolari, Monica Monachini, Mandy Pet, Claudia Soria: Lexical Markup Framework ISO standard for semantic information in NLP lexicons About African languages: Traitement Automatique des langues naturelles, Marseille, 2014: Mouhamadou Khoule, Mouhamad Ndiankho Thiam, El Hadj Mamadou Nguer: Toward the establishment of a LMF-based Wolof language lexicon (Vers la mise en place d'un lexique basé sur LMF pour la langue wolof) [in French] About Asian languages: Lexicography, Journal of ASIALEX, Springer 2014: Lexical Markup Framework: Gil Francopoulo, Chu-Ren Huang: An ISO Standard for Electronic Lexicons and its Implications for Asian Languages DOI 10.1007/s40607-014-0006-z About European languages: COLING 2010: Verena Henrich, Erhard Hinrichs: Standardizing Wordnets in the ISO Standard LMF: Wordnet-LMF for GermaNet EACL 2012: Judith Eckle-Kohler, Iryna Gurevych: Subcat-LMF: Fleshing out a standardized format for subcategorization frame interoperability EACL 2012: Iryna Gurevych, Judith Eckle-Kohler, Silvana Hartmann, Michael Matuschek, Christian M Meyer, Christian Wirth: UBY - A Large-Scale Unified Lexical-Semantic Resource Based on LMF. About Semitic languages: Journal of Natural Language Engineering, Cambridge University Press (to appear in Spring 2015): Aida Khemakhem, Bilel Gargouri, Abdelmajid Ben Hamadou, Gil Francopoulo: ISO Standard Modeling of a large Arabic Dictionary. Proceedings of the seventh Global Wordnet Conference 2014: Nadia B M Karmani, Hsan Soussou, Adel M Alimi: Building a standardized Wordnet in the ISO LMF for aeb language. Proceedings of the workshop: HLT & NLP within Arabic world, LREC 2008: Noureddine Loukil, Kais Haddar, Abdelmajid Ben Hamadou: Towards a syntactic lexicon of Arabic Verbs. Traitement Automatique des Langues Naturelles, Toulouse (in French) 2007: Khemakhem A, Gargouri B, Abdelwahed A, Francopoulo G: Modélisation des paradigmes de fl
Reflection lines
Engineers use reflection lines to judge a surface's quality. Reflection lines reveal surface flaws, particularly discontinuities in normals indicating that the surface is not C 2 {\displaystyle C^{2}} . Reflection lines may be created and examined on physical surfaces or virtual surfaces with the help of computer graphics. For example, the shiny surface of an automobile body is illuminated with reflection lines by surrounding the car with parallel light sources. Virtually, a surface can be rendered with reflection lines by modulating the surfaces point-wise color according to a simple calculation involving the surface normal, viewing direction and a square wave environment map. == Mathematical definition == Consider a point p {\displaystyle p} on a surface M {\displaystyle M} with (normalized) normal n {\displaystyle n} . If an observer views this point from infinity at view direction v {\displaystyle v} then the reflected view direction r {\displaystyle r} is: r = v − 2 ( n ⋅ v ) n . {\displaystyle r=v-2(n\cdot v)n.} (The vector v {\displaystyle v} is decomposed into its normal part v n = ( n ⋅ v ) v {\displaystyle v_{n}=(n\cdot v)v} and tangential part v t = v − v n {\displaystyle v_{t}=v-v_{n}} . Upon reflection, the tangential part is kept and the normal part is negated.) For reflection lines we consider the surface M {\displaystyle M} surrounded by parallel lines with direction a {\displaystyle a} , representing infinite, non-dispersive light sources. For each point p {\displaystyle p} on M {\displaystyle M} we determine which line is seen from direction v {\displaystyle v} . The position on each line is of no interest. Define the vector r p {\displaystyle r_{p}} to be the reflection direction r {\displaystyle r} projected onto a plane P {\displaystyle P} that is orthogonal to a {\displaystyle a} : r p = r − ( r ⋅ a ) a {\displaystyle r_{p}=r-(r\cdot a)a} and similarly let v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} be the viewing direction projected onto P {\displaystyle P} : v p = v − ( v ⋅ a ) a {\displaystyle v_{p}=v-(v\cdot a)a} Finally, define v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} to be the direction lying in P {\displaystyle P} perpendicular to a {\displaystyle a} and v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} : v o = a × v p {\displaystyle v_{o}=a\times v_{p}} Using these vectors, the reflection line function θ ( p ) : M → ( − π , π ] {\displaystyle \theta (p):M\rightarrow (-\pi ,\pi ]} is a scalar function mapping points p {\displaystyle p} on the surface to angles between v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} and r p {\displaystyle r_{p}} : θ = arctan ( r p ⋅ v o , r p ⋅ v p ) {\displaystyle \theta =\arctan {(r_{p}\cdot v_{o},r_{p}\cdot v_{p})}} where a r c t a n ( y , x ) {\displaystyle arctan(y,x)} is the atan2 function producing a number in the range ( − π , π ] {\displaystyle (-\pi ,\pi ]} . ( v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} and v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} can be viewed as a local coordinate system in P {\displaystyle P} with x {\displaystyle x} -axis in direction v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} and y {\displaystyle y} -axis in direction v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} .) Finally, to render the reflection lines positive values θ > 0 {\displaystyle \theta >0} are mapped to a light color and non-positive values to a dark color. == Highlight lines == Highlight lines are a view-independent alternative to reflection lines. Here the projected normal is directly compared against some arbitrary vector x {\displaystyle x} perpendicular to the light source: θ = arctan ( n a ⋅ a ⊥ , n a ⋅ x ) {\displaystyle \theta =\arctan {(n_{a}\cdot a^{\perp },n_{a}\cdot x)}} where n a {\displaystyle n_{a}} is the surface normal projected on the light source plane P {\displaystyle P} : n a ^ / | n a ^ | , n a ^ = n − ( n ⋅ a ) a {\displaystyle {\hat {n_{a}}}/|{\hat {n_{a}}}|,{\hat {n_{a}}}=n-(n\cdot a)a} The relationship between reflection lines and highlight lines is likened to that between specular and diffuse shading.