Posts Tagged ‘new developments’

two new developments at csa website.

Aug 14, 2008
Number one: You will be able to get CSA news/events/seminars in the form of a feed (Thanks to Raghavendra for the suggestion). Try your feed reader with the feed link: http://www.csa.iisc.ernet.in/feed/feed.xml and let me know if you find any issues.

Feeds can be implemented easily. One simply needs to generate a valid XML file with minimal tags like item, title, link and description. Let me know if you want the source code.

Number two: Automatic spam feedback to the web-team is now challenged with a CAPTCHA. Check out the feedback form and let us know your views about the website.

The original plan was to implement it using a graphics library like GD. But that was too much for such a small requirement, although, I have some experience with it while I worked on Anagram Images. So we implemented the shortcut.

  1. generate random characters and write those to a text file.
  2. use enscript to convert the text file to a postscript file.
  3. use ps2epsi to convert ps file to eps file.
  4. finally, use pstoimg to convert the eps file into a gif.

Steps 1 and 2 can be combined. But if you know of implementing captcha in a faster/easier manner, do let me know. And, if you want the source, feel free to contact.

Let me put the usual disclaimer: Both these features are in Beta.