An old screenshot of my Linux box at the University.
In the background I embed sunny resorts that I once
visited and they revolve periodically, owing to KDE

am exceedingly impressed by the innovative work of the KDE team. These folks truly invent some productivity methodologies which exist nowhere else. KDE is primarily targetted at operating systems such as Linux and BSD and it puts them both at the forefront of innovation. How they do it, I don’t know, but I suspect that requests and suggestions from the public (KDE userbase) make it a reality, via wishlist items, reported as ‘bugs’ with low severity level. Allow me to exemplify my statement using a timely realisation.

Only yesterday, I needed to restart KDE (no reboots involved). This happened after over one month of this non-stop KDE session. The motive? Possibly a few memory leaks, which had accumulated throughout 5 weeks of 24/7 computing (I run experiments using untested code overnight and whenever I am absent). Either way, once restarted, KDE restores the user’s session perfectly.

All windows re-appear in the correct virtual desktop, in the same position with the same dimensions as prior to logout. A complete system reboot would have had the same impact. Shells are reinstantiated and created, possibly positioned at the same directory/path as before. While it sounds simple and trivial, it is not. File managers likewise. FTP connections are restored with the servers in question, even at the right depth and directory level. The only exception are SSH connections that were opened without calling the command directly, e.g. SSH within a shell. Otherwise, even remote connections as such are restored! Again, this should not be taken for granted.

In this older version of KDE (3.1, as haven’t tested it yet with the newer setup at home), Mozilla applications are the sole exception. They are not being restored. Nonetheless and all in all, well done, KDE team! You thought of everything the user will ever need.

There is a Mozilla Firefox extension called SessionSaver. It achieves something similar to the above by fully restoring tabs, even with textarea input re-instered. This mechanism is robust and even resilient to browser crashes, all at the expense of browsing performance, as well as some system resources.

Related recent item: Why I Love KDE

A KDE pager containing eight virtual desktops

KDE is a powerful and versatile desktop environment, which I have raved about for as long ago as I had known it (read GNOME vs. KDE, for example). Apart from its augmented support for virtual desktops, it boasts an almost infinite number of features that make it highly extensible. Here are some examples of things that any user is able to achieve with KDE.

• Open a particular program, let us say the Web browser, consistently in desktop 8, always in shaded mode with opacity level 80% (20% translucent). These per-program features were added around version 3.4 of KDE.
• Without any extensions, KDE enables the user to download fresh wallpapers off the Internet (primarily through kde-look.org), all with a single click. Then, the user is given the choice to select multiple wallpapers from the collection, revolve them (as in a slideshow) every number of minutes, with separate wallpapers assigned to different virtual desktops, at different changing intervals, and with effects like hue shifts applied to them ‘on the fly’.
• Move and resize windows without reaching for their edges and corners, simply using the mouse pointer and the keyboard. Moreover, window focus policies, as well as new window placement, is highly customisable.
• KDE supports XGL (or conversely so, as well GNOME, of course). XGL is hardware-accelerated nice ‘eye candy’, which does not necessarily enhance the pace and productivity of work.

So where is the competition? KDE appears to be best bar none, in terms of function. Many consider it user friendly since its look-and-feel is assimilated to that of Microsoft Windows.

Related items:

• KDE Pushed to the Limit
• Wallpapers Obsession
• Desktop Environment Freedom
• KDE and Ease-of-Use

PELLCHECKERS have been a very fundamental tool for quite some time. However, they tend to be bundled to particular applications and the whimsical Windows XP does not even include one, unless/until Office gets installed. Below are a few observations and personal tricks, which enable the task known as spellchecking to ‘escape’ the relams of individual packages.

Firstly, let us consider Web browsers. The latest of Konqueror comes with in-line spellchecker ‘out of the box’; Firefox has plugins (notably SpellBound); I am not too sure about Opera because it contains nothing as such ‘out of the box’. Then again, I may have missed it because I use Opera no more than once a week. Internet Explorer may rely on applications like Word or Outlook (Express) for peripheral spellchecking, yet this is far from convenient.

How can the user check inserted text in merely any application? What happens when the spelling facility is out of sight? I can only present my own method, which is the use of a lightweight external program: the text editor. Copying to external editors is easy and generalisable, just as a last resort. In my case, this involves a sequence of keystrokes: [Ctrl]+A (highlight all), [Ctrl]+C (copy), [Ctrl]+E (for editor invocation), [Ctrl]+V (paste in editor), [Ctrl]+T+S (spellchecking), then [Ctrl]+A (highlight all again), [Ctrl]+C, [Ctrl]+V (paste back). It takes only a few seconds and works effectively in any application.

All in all, familiarity with keyboard accelerators is the key (pun intended), as well as setup of new accelerators, hand positioning (arms as adjacent as possible to all peripherals) and so forth. A few others could possibly attest to a similar experience.

The ‘big boys’ have some typos as well, one of which I captured

FTER some long experience with a large variety of E-mail clients, I settled on Mozilla Thunderbird. I did so without any hesitation once the application was sufficiently mature. Thunderbird is immaculate: stable, predictable, highly-extensible and even interoperable (including importers and exporters).

A calendaring component for Mozilla Thunderbird (version 1.5 or later) has been officially released. It bridges a certain gap where Sunbird, as well as another third-party applications, integrated calendaring into Thunderbird insufficiently well. The last time I checked, one such Thunderbird extension was developed to become Windows-compatible only (shame on the developer/s).

The site introduces the new extension as follows:

The Lightning Project is a redesign of the Calendar component. Its goal is to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Mozilla Thunderbird.

I am still reluctant to move my calendar from a portable Palm PDA onto a desktop. It can have an adverse effect on partability. I will have to look into the interaction between the two, as well as multiple desktops. I currently have close to 10 Thunderbird extensions, which make it beyond bloated (albeit very stable and robust, unlike an overloaded Firefox).

Related items:

• Tabs in Thunderbird
• Thunderbird versus Outlook
• Thunderbird Aqua
• Mail Readers Survey

Calendaring in the Open Source Horde project

HOWN above is a screenshot of the Web calender which is closely integrated to my mail. As it turns out, as well as speculated years ago, Google are working on their own implementation. Their Web-based software will actually be called CL2 on the face it. Some screenshots are revolving around the Web nowadays. They depict what could potentially kill many other Web-based calendars.

Related item: Managing To-Do Lists On-Line

Yet another day in La-La Land®

ILLED with frustration over some recent rotten conducts, I once assembled a few streams of consciousness to compose a bitter essay. It was saturated with citations on the way Microsoft continues to exploit its desktop monopoly-like state-of-affairs. I titled the essay On Operating Systems Monoculture and it spanned 4 pages. Today I would like to elaborate on that matter, whilst venting some anger (rant alert) and pointing out facts that Microsoft prefer to hide from their users, owing to Vista’s prematurity.

In a world where a desktop monopoly prevails, there is also mental manipulation of minds. Innocent people are (mis-)led to believe they are IT-proficient when they manage to change font size in Word. Skills are not sufficiently generalised and MSCE qualifications are a glaringly-obvious example of this. Advice must be taken from people who live in a broader reality and are neither delusional nor biased.

To take an overview, as well as a look into the future, Microsoft continue to use dirty tactics to push away any type of rivalry. They also propagate some hackney myths. Microsoft cried “Wolf” whenever someone criticised Windows Vista. Yet, based on some recent screenshots, Vista Starter Edition will allow only 3 processes to run at any one time. It is one among the numerous ‘penalties’ that will force a paid-for upgrade.

Then comes the issue of desktop environment visualisation. Graphics in Vista are unimpressive, assuming Aero cannot be run. Aero is the glass-like component in Vista’s window rendering, which enables translucency (as in Linux and Mac OSX). Aero is estimated to be properly-supported by 50% of today’s hardware. So, is Microsoft taking a step backwards, both in terms of hardware support and functionality? Even when Aero is enabled, it offers nothing out of the ordinary. LiteStep can already enrich the looks of Windows, so Vista offers nothing innovative. Aero only suffocates the CPU. The 3-D effects make the system choke. Vista is the same product which is known as XP Service Pack II (or Windows Server 2003), but it was put in a new dress. It is no surprise given the recent major fallback in terms of the codebase.

Microsoft employ a famous composer to work on sounds in Vista. Judging by what the O/S has to offer and rave about, Microsoft could take the easier route and just go with Mozart’s Requiem. It may soon be “Hasta la Vista“.

N programming, efficiency always entails a cost. Contrariwise, simplified and inefficient code is often easier to understand. Where can balance be found? Can it ever be found? Efficiency is often preferred by so-called ‘power users’, whereas others opt for simplicity. Consequently, when negotiating projects, either at code-level or when deciding on UI design, flame wars may arise among developers or avid users.

Let us consider code optimisation. If the programmer wants to go all the way, (s)he could optimise by shortening variables, removing excessive spaces, and stripping out newlines. In such circumstances, interpreted code will be quicker, albeit less meaningful when an error arises and goes verbose. This is nothing like bytecodes and JIT, but similar rules should apply.

Good code should be well-structured, easily-readable, elegant, and well-documented. If the code is compiled, all comments should definitely stay in tact rather than ever be stripped. Automatic documentation can fit nicely in the source rather than be generated and made peripherally available, e.g. via Web pages. The only exception is debugging ‘bits’, which could definitely slow down program execution. As long as the developer keeps the original and saturated version of the code public, however, nobody need get entangled in closed-source traps.

On to an exciting prediction, with lowered file sizes and optimised code, programs could scale better on Wi-Fi-driven Web servers which run on a PDA in one’s pocket. Such server must be properly taken good care of, as well as the Internet connection, which is as vital as that of a synapse. With the growth of smaller devices, the need for efficiency is better realised.