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+++ title = "7bit Projects: Dew Point Forecast, MacBinary, RSS Please, Titlecase" date = 2024-05-04T16:20:49+10:00
#[extra] #updated = 2024-02-21T10:05:19+10:00 +++
Today I compiled my titlecase Rust crate to Web Assembly and wrapped a
web-page around it so that it can be used online. It's published on my
"projects domain", 7bit.org. After I published it I realised I hadn't
written about the other projects that are on 7bit.org. They are
Dew Point Forecast, MacBinary, RSS Please, and Titlecase.
A few years ago I decided that it was a bad idea to speculatively register domains for projects because:
- I don't finish all (*cough* most) projects
- They get expensive
In an attempt to curb spending on domain names I searched for a short,
nondescript domain to use as a dumping ground for projects that were complete,
but not significant enough to warrant their own domain. Thus 7bit.org was
born.
So far I've published four projects to it, all of which are open-source.
Titlecase
Titlecase is one of the earliest Rust crates I wrote. The first commit was in 2017. It converts text into title case. Specifically it uses a style described by John Gruber for post titles on his website Daring Fireball.
Instead of simply capitalizing each word titlecase does the following
(amongst other things):
- Lower case small words like an, of, or in.
- Don't capitalize words like iPhone.
- Don't interfere with file paths, URLs, domains, and email addresses.
- Always capitalize the first and last words, even if they are small words or surrounded by quotes.
- Don't interfere with terms like "Q&A", or "AT&T".
- Capitalize small words after a colon.
I have compiled it to WebAssembly so that it can be used online.
{{ figure(image="posts/2024/7bit-projects/Convert%20Text%20to%20Titlecase%20-%207bit.org.png", link="https://7bit.org/titlecase/", border=1, width="739", alt='Screenshot of the Titlecase web page showing the result of converting the text ‘an iPhone review: "our take in 10 minutes"’ to title case with the tool. The resulting text is ‘An iPhone Review: "Our Take in 10 Minutes"’.', caption="Screenshot of the Titlecase web page") }}
RSS Please
RSS Please is a tool to generate RSS feeds from web pages. It uses CSS selectors to extract parts of the page to generate the feed from. It's implemented as a command line tool in Rust.
{{ figure(image="posts/2024/7bit-projects/RSS%20Please.png", link="https://rsspls.7bit.org/", alt="Screenshot of the RSS Please website. It has a teal backgound and features a screenshot of the tool running in a terminal. There is an orange RSS logo in the top left and download button in the bottom left.", caption="Screenshot of the RSS Please website") }}
Dew Point Forecast
Dew Point Forecast provides weather forecasts that include the dew point. The dew point relates to how humid it feels. It's a better measure than relative humidity as the value does not vary with the air temperature the way the relative humidity percentage does.
I built this one after moving to Queensland in 2021 and it was the first
project published to 7bit.org. It's implemented in Rust using the Rocket
web framework.
{{ figure(image="posts/2024/7bit-projects/Dew%20Point%20-%20Forecast%20for%20Brisbane%20City.png", link="https://dewpoint.7bit.org/", border=1, width="739", alt="Screenshot of the dew point forecast for Brisbane, Australia. There are boxes for current conditions, Sat 4 May, Sun 5 May, and Mon 6 May. Each box contains values for temperature, dew point, sunrise, sunset, UV index, and relative humidity.", caption="Dewpoint forecast for Brisbane") }}
MacBinary
MacBinary allows inspection and downloading of individual components in MacBinary encoded files that were used by the classic Mac OS. It's available as a Rust crate for use in third-party projects. I have compiled it to WebAssembly for use on the web page. I wrote more about this project in this post.
{{ figure(image="posts/2024/7bit-projects/Decode%20MacBinary%20Online%20-%207bit.org.png", link="https://7bit.org/macbinary/", border=1, width="739", alt="Screenshot of the MacBinary webpage. It is showing the parsed information from a file called 'bbedit_lite_612.smi_.bin'. Several resources are lists such as 'BNDL', and 'CODE'.", caption="Screenshot of the MacBinary web page") }}