All posts that used to refer to a website and person I don’t want to have anything to do with anymore have been edited and made public again. All posts that could not be recovered by editing, as well as those that aren’t interesting anymore for other reasons have been deleted.

And now for something completely different: an actual new post to this blog! Coming soon, or maybe less soon.

When I started inkscape today, I saw the update fairy had added some new features to it.

Most dialogs can now be docked to the right side of the screen, which is a huge convenience.

Even better, there now is a “sculp and paint” tool. Actually, these are two very different tools hidden under the same button. The sculpt tool is very intuitive, and makes drawing a lot easier. I’m pretty sure it makes the actual drawing part of my drawing work at least ten times faster.

I’m dying to find out if there are any other improvements, so this post isn’t going to be any longer than this.

A big thank you to the inkscape team!

Lots of people are finding this post through search engines. What are you looking for, people? Something that can show text and play mp3s, something that can change text into mp3s, or something else? Please do tell me in a comment! I’m not just curious, I actually know how to change text into speech automatically. I just haven’t tried it yet. OTOH, if you’re just looking for an ebook reader that can play mp3s… I don’t know, why don’t you get yourself an EeePC or something?

Every once in a while, a geek’s gotta do what a geek’s gotta do, so… Report, meet mp3 player. Mp3 player, meet report.

We’re going to try to display a report I wrote in LaTeX as a slideshow on my large screen (ho hum) mp3 player.

First, we’ll adapt the LaTeX source file so it will generate pages the size of the screen of our “ebook reader”.

We don’t want a4 paper (duh), and we want a small font so more text will fit on the screen, so we replace

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

by

\documentclass[10pt]{article} .

We look up the screen resolution of the “ebook reader” on the net, it’s 128 x 160 pixels. We add the following:

\usepackage[vcentering,dvips]{geometry}
\geometry{papersize={128pt,160pt},total={108pt,140pt}}

Note that the second two numbers create a tiny margin. I know points (pt) and pixels are not the same thing, but for our purpose they will be.

We disable the useless automatically generated parts of the document by prefixing their commands with a % :

%\maketitle
%\tableofcontents
%\listoftables
%\listoffigures

Now we’re ready to compile the document with the usual command:

latex report.tex

Oops! We get lots of warnings about overfull hboxes. LaTeX has very nice two-side justification enabled by default, but on this scale it just won’t work because not enough words will fit on a line to make it look good. So, we’ll use the less pretty left justification instead. Insert this somewhere after \begin{document} : \raggedright . There, problem solved. Now re-run latex report.tex until it stops complaining about cross-references.

Now we have a dvi file, but what we want is a set of jpg files (the mp3 player doesn’t support any other image format). Fine. First we’ll make a postscript document:

dvips -o report.ps report.dvi

And then we’ll convert it to jpg files:

convert -antialias -negate report.ps rep%03d.jpg

Convert is part of the imagemagick package. This will generate a bunch of jpg files, named rep000.jpg, rep001.jpg, etc. -antialias should make the result a bit prettier, and -negate will change it to white text on black background, which should be easier on the eyes and maybe also on the batteries.

We use our favorite image viewer to verify everything looks alright (it does), and copy the files to our mp3 player, er, ebook reader. We’re done, only the mp3 player shows black screens instead of the text. I guess it doesn’t even support jpg very well, maybe a firmware update will fix that but I can’t be bothered to take the risks of that for something as silly as this. It’s a samsung yp-z5f if anyone’s curious.

We failed at the last step, thanks to proprietary software on the mp3 player. Still, I’d like to see you try this with an MS Word file, and get as nice results with this litte work:

Because LaTeX takes care of most of the formatting for you, it is much more flexible than WYSIWYG word processors.

Just to prove a point:

file rep000.jpg
rep000.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01

See? It’s a real jpg. Nothing wrong with it. Oh well.

LaTeX tip of the day: include images this way:

\includegraphics[width=<SCALE>\textwidth]{<FILENAME>}

where <SCALE> would be, for example, .5 to make the image half as wide as the text. This way your images will never be too wide for the page, no matter what paper size you choose.

EDIT: For those who are finding this because they want to know how to change the look of the shell prompt, it’s quite simple:

Edit your .bashrc file ( /home/yourname/.bashrc , or /root/.bashrc for the root user), and change the PS1 variable. For example mine is PS1=’[\u@\h \W]\$ ‘ .

The format for PS1 can be found in the bash manual page, in the PROMPTING section (open a terminal, and type man bash[enter]/PROMPTING[enter] ).

Now, back to the funny story about me being really stupid …

I’m writing a report in LaTeX, with this little makefile here:

—
# (insert tabs where you would expect them, code tags don’t work as advertised)

all: report.pdf

view: report.pdf
xpdf report.pdf

report.dvi: components.eps channels.eps

.SUFFIXES: .dia .dvi .eps .pdf .tex

.dvi.pdf:
dvipdf $<
.tex.dvi:
ispell -p dictionary -t $< && latex $< && latex $<
.dia.eps:
dia $< -e $@ -t eps-pango
clean:
rm *.{aux,log,out,dvi} || true
cleaner: clean
rm *.{pdf,eps,bak,dia~} || true

—

At first I used evince instead of xpdf, but it has some problem with the fonts. So I adjusted the makefile, became root, and installed xpdf. So far so good. But then I forgot to log out root before running ‘make view’… this is where the fun begins.

ispell found some spelling mistake, changed report.tex to fix it, which because of that became owned by root:root. Apart from that and a few other files changing owner, everything went as expected, so I didn’t notice. I edited report.tex a bit, then tried to save it… permission denied! My first response was to insert my USB stick and try to save the file there, and investigate the cause of the problem after that. Not losing work is always most important . Guess from which terminal I mounted the USB stick? Yup, mounted as root, so: “cannot create file”. Only then I figured out what I had done.

The funny thing is, I knew Linux couldn’t possibly be malfunctioning this way, and I was pretty sure I had not done anything that could change file permissions, so most likely my system had - somehow - been cracked, and the cracker was now messing with me .

If I would more often use the root account by accident, that just might happen.

Now I wonder why I would think a crack is more likely than a random error (by either system or user). After all a crack requires an error too, and most errors can’t be exploited… and I have pretty decent security.

GNU/Linux: less buggy than a human brain.

Take a little Motif, CDE, MS Windows and MacOS, (relative amounts may vary), stir, and what do you get? Probably one of the following:

• GNOME
• KDE
• Xfce

Even the alternative window managers (only complete desktop environments were mentioned above) tend to look a lot like either MS Windows or MacOS window decorations. Apart from the really minimalistic things like EvilWM, Ratpoison, or Ion, it’s always the same minus-box-ex or “horizontal traffic light”.

But mind you, this goes much further than just the window decorations. Think of GTK and QT: what do those look like? Well, just like Motif, MS Windows, or sometimes a Mac if that theme was chosen… or perhaps like those with a really odd skin applied. “What else should they look like?” I can hear you think. Can for example a scrollbar look different than “[<] [ ] [>]“? Well, how about “| ———==[<][ ][>]= |”? (OPEN LOOK fans should recognize that one.) And not just scrollbars. Many more basic GUI elements could look and behave different while still making perfect sense. Ask any old OpenLook user (such as me), or someone who has used some other different from usual GUI that I don’t know about. Some widgets in those actually are better than what you’re used to! For example in OpenLook (I’m sure you’re getting tired of that name by now) any scrollbar can be split, so you can view multiple far apart parts of the scrolled area at the same time, and menus and dialogs try to predict what you want to do and minimize mouse mileage for that.

And still even the most imitated “different” GUIs like that of MacOS or of BeOS are incredibly similar to the norm. It’s because user interface designers want to make sure those who previously used MS Windows won’t have a too hard time adjusting, and perhaps also because those designers are a little lazy .

But WHY?

Why are we trying to make an alternative OS attractive to people who don’t want to try something different? Why do we take an incredibly configurable and clever OS, and then bolt on a demented GUI design meant for the kind of user who supposedly whines about too much choice? Are we designing for the wrong audience or what?

Counterargument 1: we want as many people as possible to switch to Free *nix OSes, so we should make the switch as easy as possible.

Reply: Wrong strategy. Those who have difficulty learning something new tend to depend on their local geeks for help with their computing. Give the geeks a good reason to switch, and their dependents will follow. A more inspiring GUI that is also better suited for getting work done might just be that reason. Guess which app has gotten the most wows from my shoulder surfers? Not compiz, they know that from MacOS. Not The pretty looks of E17. It’s the simplistic image viewer called entice (which by the way usually doesn’t work on my system for some reason, but that’s something else). A simple GUI that doesn’t care about conventions, but cares about ergonomics and ease of use instead.

Counterargument 2 & 3: I just happen to like this “standard” GUI; why shouldn’t we make life easy for those who have better things to do than getting used to an “interesting” GUI?

Reply: Nothing wrong with that. I’m just saying Free *nix deserves to have a different kind of GUI as well.

So here’s what I propose: let’s completely rethink even the most basic small things in graphical user interfaces. How can we do things in more elegant and more clever ways? Or, to take a bit of a shortcut if enough others agree: let’s make an OpenLook compliant GUI, but modernize it with antialiased fonts and soft shadows and whatnot, and add in ideas from other GUIs where those are better.

Unnecessary word of warning: OpenLook was the first GUI I really liked, so I probably care a little more than I should about splittable scrollbars, smart menus, warping cursors, a resizable virtual desktop manager and rounded corners .

What do you think? What user interface do you miss (please do get nostalgic!)? Anyone else still suffering from OpenLook withdrawal?

What happens when you put the Netherlands in an icy fog for a few days, then bring back the sun? This does. Ooooooh.

I dare to bet a record for number of photos taken in one day in the Netherlands must have been set, there were people taking pictures everywhere.

Note that two of the photos have default copyright (all rights reserved) instead of a cc-by license, because I forgot to ask he people in those for permission, and I don’t want any headaches because of portrait rights. Note 2: I always “forget” to ask permission, but when the photo was taken at a free software or open content event I assume nobody minds their photo being on flickr.

This year, I have two favorites among my Christmas card designs. One is a bit wild, the other extremely simple. I’ll let you choose which one you save (and possibly print) .

Please note that if you want to use these images for your own cards, you must obey the CC-BY license (see link button somewhere on the bottom right of this page), meaning you must put my name (Taco Buitenhuis) somewhere in your print or email message or whatever you put the image into, so it will be known who made these nice images. If you want a higher quality image (more pixels), just leave a comment asking for one (do tell what size you want) and I’ll email it.

Happy winter solstice!

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. — Douglas Adams

(Is that really a Douglas Adams quote? I recently attributed it to someone else. Oops.)

I meant to write this post much sooner, but you know how it goes when you’re tired and you have work to catch up on. Yes, tired. In a good way. Talking with other open translation people 9 to 5, and then partying with the same people 5 to … late … is tiring. But great fun!

The last thing I learned at OTT07 is that I’m from Brazil. Or possibly Portugal. At the closing party I had these little conversations:

[we all know who you are ]: Hey, where are you from? You’re from Brazil, right?
me: Nope.
wakwya: No? Are you from Portugal then?
me: No. I’m from the Netherlands.
wakwya: Really? Cause you have something really Brazilian about you!

Two minutes later: same person, same thing (word for word).

Ten minutes later:
wakwya: Where are you from?
me: I’m from Brazil!
wakwya: Really? That’s cool!
Someone else: No! He’s from the Netherlands!

Maybe someone enjoyed the beverages that everyone brought from around the world a little too much. By the way, I didn’t bring any beverage from the Netherlands. I didn’t know about the cultural beverages thing soon enough, and what nice drinks do we have here anyways?

Anyway, I suppose it’s an understandable mistake. The previous time I was in Croatia (iCommons summit Dubrovnik) I got accused of being Spanish. And a girl. But am I not a tiny little too tall to be a latina?

The semi-last thing I learned was actually related to the iSummit: conferences where everyone in principle can talk to everyone are much more useful than the old fashioned “important guy talks, everyone else listens” type. When you think about it, it’s a little weird most of the iSummit talks worked the latter way. Isn’t the commons supposed to be all about participation?

Get to the real things you learned already!

Speedgeeking taught me how to give a short and good explanation of what Passiflora is. It’s a multi-user document writing and translation program with a strong focus on document structure (outlines), separation of tasks/data, meant especially for free-licensed (eg creative commons) works. Expect a somewhat longer explanation like that to appear on the Passiflora homepage somewhat soon.

I also learned that Passiflora might be useful to provide learning data for statistical automated translation tools. It will contain (nearly) aligned translations, although possibly the amount of data could be too small to be significant.

But most important of all, I learned about something that can only be vaguely described as “processes involved in translation”, although I do think I sometimes learned what other programmers think those processes are, and not what they really are.

I was quite happy to see the “write your ideas on sticky notes and let the group order them” idea works very well. I already intended to make the document planning phase in the far future version of Passiflora work in a similar way. Nice to see it’s not a silly idea!

OTT07 was really great. It was a nice and inspiring mixture of very different people. Just geeks is also nice, between only translators I would probably feel lost, but this kind of mix is simply the most fun. Provided you can understand them, very different minds are the most interesting. When they talk about a topic all know about, then they do speak the same language (pun intended).

I think this first OTT conference may even have been a bit of some tiny little sort of historic event. Translation is all about facilitating communication, and software freedom is, in some sense, about exactly the same. Today computers are most of all communication devices. Proprietary software and secret file formats impose unfair restrictions on the recipients of communication-by computer. So software freedom makes communication easier! And then there is the shared aspect of sharing between open content and freedomware.

Open content translation people and open toolmakers have common goals but different methods and different ways of thinking. Put them together, and magic happens.

I’m writing this during a break in the first day of the Open Translation Tools conference in Zagreb.

Last night could be called day 0, I attended the opening drinks. I then already managed to have some interesting chats with other participants.

The real conference is quite informal and makes use of special communication techniques, such as drawing a line on the floor to use as an “opinion spectrum”, or the group writing lots of single statements/questions on post-its which then later are sorted in groups on a blackboard. This is all less chaotic than you would expect, quite effective actually.

I hope to get a better understanding of the needs of translators, so I can make Passiflora a useful piece of software. Making it meet my own needs is good, making it useful for many others is better.

I will participate in a speedgeeking session, which is something like speeddating for projects. Unfortunately Passiflora is kinda broken at the moment, so I can’t give a smooth demo… I’ll probably show just one screen to illustrate the general idea. I’ve got only 4 minutes anyway, that probably wouldn’t be enough to show two screens .

Having loads of fun!

Today I found an excellent small website about the gender imbalance in Free software. There’s been a lot about the topic on the linux/free software news sites too.

Large parts of the free software community are rather hostile towards women, as unfortunately is usual in communities with a huge male majority. Which then prevents the community from becoming balanced because it will be unattractive to women.

I think it is odd the proprietary software industry is closer to gender balance. Aren’t people who care a lot about freedom supposed to be more friendly to others who are different from them in any way?

Perhaps the difference is caused by the strong connection between hobby computing and Free software. Not everyone who has an IT job also likes to tinker with computers in their spare time, although probably the majority does have that hobby. For some reason it is a typical male hobby… I don’t really understand why. So with more spare time programmers involved, it makes sense there are less women involved in Free software.

Another possible cause for the difference is the image of the Free software community being a resistance movement (against microsoft), which is of course nonsense, but half the community thinks it’s true and so does almost everyone outside it. Resistance movements are more attractive to young men than they are to young women. Why? I’ve noticed most women just won’t get as angry about microsoft as men will, but I wouldn’t know if this has to do with testosterone or with those women being less informed because of not being part of the Free software community. Anyway I still think being angry at microsoft is a very poor reason for joining the community.

So what are we going to do about this gender imbalance? Labeling projects as friendly to women (or any other group) isn’t going to help, because it will imply all the unlabeled projects are NOT friendly. Live in the ghetto or fear being discriminated… not a great choice, is it?

I think we need to make more clear to everyone what Free software really is about. It’s not a bunch of geeks who have trying to kill some company by giving away an imitation product for free. It’s a community of nice people who want to get things done, who will write their own software if needed, and who don’t want to be prevented from helping each other. Maybe that will help, and if it doesn’t, it will still be an improvement in other ways.