I am linking to these Eric Elliott articles on JavaScript programming because I don't want to forget about them.

Eric Elliott: 12 Books Every JavaScript Developer Should Read

Eric Elliott: The Software Developer’s Library: A Treasure Trove of Books for People Who Love Code

Eric Elliott: Learn to Code: 13 Tips that Could Save You Years of Effort

Eric Elliott: Native Apps are Doomed

Eric Elliott: Why Native Apps Really are Doomed: Native Apps are Doomed pt 2

I've never been a big fan of Chicago, the band. I've heard this song before and had no idea it was by them. But I really like "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"

Ode runs Perl via CGI on the server. That doesn't mean it is slow.

Turns out it is very, very fast.

I can render an index page with previews of every post (all 900+) in about 20 seconds.

My last text processing project started in Bash, which which I'm more familiar, and then took a turn toward Ruby before returning to Bash when deadlines got tight.

Now I'm thinking about the next election-results script, which won't be using XML from the state of California but instead the space-delimited ASCII from Los Angeles County. Another developer handled that task in November, but I want to take a crack at it for March 2017.

My goal is a "universal" script that can work on any results file that the county provides without requiring a lot of hacking for individual races in any given election.

In other words, I want to write once, run many times.

I could do it in Bash. Or Ruby. But I might want to try JavaScript and run it with Node on the server (or, if the election is "small" enough, client-side in the browser).

LA County data is not standard. It's not XML or JSON (though the county DOES use JSON in its own results, it does not share that data with the media).

Instead, the county uses what appears to be a home-grown data format that is arcane yet well-documented.

Each line begins with an alphanumeric code, and data fields are placed on those lines at predetermined character lengths and predetermined positions.

So a script would have to create substrings of the data from each line. I'm thinking that I'll use the script to either create XML that I would then convert, or to skip that step and create JSON directly from the county's data.

Doing it in JavaScript would be an opportunity to learn more about the language (just like it would be for Ruby if I used that language; and the jury is most definitely out).

What muddies the water considerably is the fact that my company is also following elections in San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties. I know that San Bernardino doesn't really provide data at all. I generally scrape their web page on Election Night. I don't know what Riverside and Orange do.

So I'm going to focus on LA County for now. Another developer wrote the front-end code for the election-results display, and all I have to do is provide the JSON. I wouldn't be opposed to writing the whole app, but for now a "smaller" bite is a more realistic one.

I'm exploring my options for coverting XML to JSON, even though I don't have any new XML coming my way.

I previously used a Ruby library and considered a different JavaScript library to do the conversion.

I just tested a different JavaScript library, enkidootech's xml2json, and that worked very well right out of the box.

Well, almost.

I tried to install it globally via npm, but my resulting JavaScript file didn't seem to be able to find it.

Then I used npm to install the package locally, and that worked. I have a node_modules directory in the same directory as my script, and it outputs JSON as expected.

I just took what enidootech offers as an example and put that in my file (which I named xml_to_json.js). I ran it with node and it worked:

// From https://github.com/enkidootech/xml2json

var parser = require('xml2json-light');
var xml = '<person><name>John Doe</name></person>';
var json = parser.xml2json(xml); 

console.log(json);

You get this:

$ node xml_to_json.js 
{ person: { name: 'John Doe' } }

Nice!

If my next script won't involve XML, what will it do? That's a question for the next entry.

CodePen: JavaScript Basics 2: Arrays and Loops http://codepen.io/jakealbaugh/post/js-basics-2-arrays-and-loops

CodePen: JavaScript Basics 1: Functions and Variables http://codepen.io/jakealbaugh/post/js-basics-1-functions-and-variables

The morale of this story is that the KDE Plasma settings can screw up your Xfce and GNOME settings. So if you're using multiple desktop environments on a single system -- like my Fedora 25 laptop, or any other Linux system -- you could be in for some pain.

What I was trying to do is configure a dark theme for KDE Plasma (easy) and also use dark themes when running GTK3 and GTK2 apps on the Plasma desktop.

It looked pretty good in KDE Plasma, but things went pear-shaped in GNOME 3 and Xfce. My fonts were screwed up, Menus were gray type on a gray background, and icons were messed up -- with KDE icons bleeding into Xfce.

And then I had trouble logging in with Plasma at all. Blame the Fedora 25 upgrade (and KDE Plasma in general) for that one.

I first tried using the many Xfce configuration utilities to make it right. That didn't do much. I finally was able to log into Plasma (only after a reboot) and attempt to undo the damage. I was partially successful.

In GNOME 3, I had a lot of success with the GNOME Tweak Tool (which should be preinstalled on every GNOME system). I was able to use the Xfce Adiwata Dark theme to make even my GTK2/GTK+ apps look better in GNOME. The whole dark-themed GNOME experience is pretty much better than ever. So that's a win.

And I finally got Xfce looking right. I'm still having display font issues, but everything is more than good enough, and figuring out how to make dark-themed GNOME look better than ever is a bonus.

From Solid Foundation Web Development: Basic operations for arrays in Ruby

I upgraded from Fedora 24 to 25 today. So far, so good.

Update: I've had periodic Google Chrome freezes. I've had to kill it and start again a few times. I just had one while writing this post with Ode's EditEdit plugin. Not sure if this is a Google Chrome thing or a Fedora thing. I do have Fedora's version of Chromium to test.

Another update, a day later: No Google Chrome freezes today. I just had my first Google Chrome freeze of the day. Before that I replaced RPM Fusion's Audacity 2.1.2 with Fedora's own Audacity 2.1.3, and my GTK3 rendering issues are now gone. And for some reason I can still output an MP3 even though this isn't the "freeworld" version.

Trying Chromium: I am trying the Fedora-packaged version of Chromium to see if I experience the same freezes that I have been getting in Google's version of the application.

Chromium update: You know what's not crashing? The Fedora-packaged Chromium browser.

So far today, I have replaced the Chrome browser hosted on Google's server and Audacity from RPM Fusion with versions of both from Fedora's own repository. I always like using as many packages as possible from a distribution's own repo (generally a point in Debian and Ubuntu's favor), and it's nice to get closer to that ideal in Fedora.

I have been meaning to write about the coming of Chromium to Fedora for a long time but never got around to it. It installed on my computer automatically as the dependency of another app, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

I also should write about MP3 support (decoding, not encoding) coming to native Fedora (i.e. without RPM Fusion). While I do have RPM Fusion repos active on my Fedora desktop installation (I'm sure there are people who don't ...), I'm not sure if that's the reason my now-Fedora-supplied (and non-"freeworld") Audacity is able to output an MP3 file. All I know is that I'm happy to have my Audacity rendering issues (which have been problematic for a couple of months) and Chrome freezing issues (only a problem since the Fedora 25 upgrade) both solved in very short order.

More info on Fedora's Chromium package: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium

Possible clue on why Google Chrome is freezing in Fedora 25: From a Fedora mailing list exchange

GNOME 3.22: As dozens of entries on this site will tell you, I periodically try GNOME 3 and usually abandon it because I get more work done in Xfce. In Fedora 25 -- for the first time -- Wayland is the default display technology for GNOME. When I try to run that on this 3-year-old AMD-running laptop (HP Pavilion g6-2210us), it freezes. The Xorg version, still available in the GDM choices, does work.

Chrome in GNOME: It seemed to be working fine. Once again, time for a GNOME test.

A ton of updates means Wayland is now working: All the video drivers updated just now in Fedora 25, and I can now run GNOME in Wayland. That was a quick fix.