"What is the best way to parse and recognize tokens/macros? How to parse and evaluate equations? How to develop an extendable framework of tokens that also allows to render the results to many formats (html, json, plain text, etc)? I love things like that."
This time we are talking to Olga of Chartopia.
Q&A with Olga of Chartopia
How did you get involved in Chartopia?
Glenn and I were thinking about doing a software project together.
Glenn had already been working on the Chartopia web app for a couple of years, so we decided that it would be nice to add an Android app for it (which we are currently re-writing in Flutter instead).
Eventually I also started working on the Chartopia web app too, to help out Glenn with new features.
What bits of Chartopia are you most proud of creating and why?
I am very proud of changing how Chartopia macros (and other language features) were implemented, which made it much easier to add new ones.
This allowed us to enrich the Chartopia domain language with many new features.
What is the most fun thing about working with Chartopia?
The most fun thing for me is solving challenging engineering riddles and Chartopia provides many opportunities to apply my skills.
What is the best way to parse and recognize tokens/macros? How to parse and evaluate equations? How to develop an extendable framework of tokens that also allows to render the results to many formats (html, json, plain text, etc)?
I love things like that.
What are your favourite Geek or Gaming related things?
I play board games and love Star Wars :).
What are the most painful lessons you've learnt from Chartopia?
Checking "if object:" or "if object is None:" is not the same thing in Python :)
Also, Android development is just full of pain... That's why we switched to Flutter.
What is the most fun random generators you've seen?
Some of my personal favourites include:
- Love Stories - funny love stories
- Start Wars Quests - - one of nice Start Wars related tables
- MCC / Gamma World Character Creator - Work in Progress - super complicated generator with many of the Chartopia domain language features used, and the content is great.
What are your next big projects (Chartopia or otherwise) that you can talk about?
Our next big project is Flutter app for Chartopia. We are currently working on the API as well as basic features for the mobile app.
One of the biggest additions to the mobile app will be ability to save charts to your phone and roll them off line.
I am really looking forward to implementing this particular feature since it will require a lot of thinking on how to do it best without the need to update the mobile app each time we add new tokens to the Chartopia domain language.
Where can people find you on social media?
On Twitter as @perederieieva.
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
I would like to thank our Patrons for all their support and helpful discussions on new feature development.
I would also like to thank all users who discovered and reported some of the issues, or suggested some very interesting features to add.
It is always a pleasure to get feedback from the users and move the project forward.
Further Reading
You can find more articles about Chartopia and more Creator Interviews on Rand Roll.
And you can always use gold coins on Coffee.
