HIS morning I found (and began playing with) a GPL‘d newsgroups statistics tool (homepage of the project). I compiled it from source code without the QT GUI and off I went experimenting. In case you choose to run that tool as well, there is an ample manual for its command-line mode.

I have reported a serious documentation bug to the author — a bug that cost me a fair bit of time. To quote the report, in case this helps somebody else:

In Turquoise 2.2, the help bit says:

Usage: turqstat [options] outputfile areadef(s)

Shouldn’t the ourputfile precede the [options]? It took me a very long
time to realise that.

Having run it successfully ‘off-line’, script invocation has been made a weekly cron job (i.e. a job which is scheduled to run repeatedly by a daemon). I decided that I can only post its output to forums where:

• My participation is noticeable and is decent
• My presence goes back a long time into the past
• The amount of involvement and activity is high, or else there is not much to gauge. Statistics become uninteresting otherwise.
• Nobody else generates statistics already

For the time being, I will generate and publish statistics for the search engines and Palm newsgroups only.

Consider reading this intersting article on the role and impact of Firefox extensions. Below is the foreword.

If you have any doubts about the source of innovation in information technology, you should look at the Mozilla web site. I just counted 1,028 extensions contributed by the community. Then take a look at the themes section. Even the colossus of Redmond with its billions of dollars hasn’t mustered that kind of development effort for IE from its community over the years. Now, let’s get familiar with underlying reasons.

Related items on Firefox extensions:

• Firefox Essentials
• Firefox FTP Client
• Firefox for Web Design
• Favourite Firefox Extensions

WYSI(not)WYG, so better use plain-text (click to enlarge)

HERE is most definitely no perfect editor, regardless of which platform one uses. Nonetheless, while Linux has some very powerful text editors, different ones should be used under different circumstances. In this item, I concentrate on editors (primarily my favourite one) for development work.

If one ever made a transition to Linux, my suggestion for an editor would be Kate/KWrite, among more. KWrite, which is the editing component of Kate (typically KDE-only), is a good editor for developers — either Web developers or programmers. KWrite incorporates knowledge of markup and syntax for many programming languages, which would be valuable to the P/L-polyglots.

I recently made a permanent transition to KWrite and I continue to explore Kate, which integrates seamlessly with FTP, much like the rest of the desktop environment. It becomes an important trait if you develop on a remote computer, which for me is essential due to parallel computing.

The MATLAB editor, for example, I recently conceded in favour of KWrite. It was slow and it hadawkward and unconventional keyboard accelerators, probably owing to interoperability. The accelerators were an oddity and a real pain to adapt to. Above all, the editor was an unbelievable bloat over SSH. It was not too responsive, yet it had built-in debugging capabilities, which I never bothered to use as it had been aimed at unexperienced users.

BBedit is said to be a good editor for developers on the Mac, but it is costly. For Windows, there are many free editors that replace the weak Notepad — that which is included by default in Windows.

SearchStatus – one among many Firefox search toolbars

LUG-INS have become very popular among Open Source projects. They enable an application to be extended endlessly by its community without getting bloated at the very core. At present, you can come across a large variety of plug-ins for the Mozilla family and many of these plug-ins tend to be more playful than practical. They serve no pragmatic purpose or even a purpose other than amusement. Most of them offer nothing beyond an enjoyable 1-minute time-burning. Examples from Mozilla Firefox:

• Extension to display your IP address
• Extension to diplay the Google icon in the status bar whenever you visit Google
• National security threat level in your panel

All of these plug-ins simply do what they claims to be doing. No more, no less. These are ‘proof of concept’ examples; very basic examples, almost as fundamental as the infamous “hello world”, but ones which exploit the Firefox API‘s for independent developers. These often get unjustifiable low ranks, which criticise their presence rather than quality. This bugs me at times.

Plug-ins are indeed sometimes pointless, but they should do what they say on the tin. Why do people install such plug-ins and then whine about them? If you don’t need a plug-in, don’t get it installed in the first place, I say. I continue to see review of what is admittedly incomplete or lacking. Better not review or not download literature and code if the description does not sound pleasing. Review is unfortunately used as means of punishment for time-consuming activities or dissapointments, which were all along called for (and voluntary). Rank, popularity and value must be separated altogether.

Giving the more professional look to your text

HIS blog item revolves around a wonderful Perl script which can revolutionise the layout of your plain-text messages, giving them looks reminiscent of that found in professional literature. The tool is called the Paragraph Adjuster with Hyphenation and it is of course free.

To give an example of its use, a file I created in ~/Main/Programs/Scripts/indent.sh contains the following:

perl ~/Main/Programs/paradj/paradj.pl --width=74 -h -n -b
     ~/in > ~/out
kedit ~/out

The first command invokes the script from its path and passes it some arguments, which are personalised. The input come from the file in and output is sent to a reserved file (out) which acts as a common container and somewhat of a placeholder. The last command makes the output available to me (on screen) to copy and then paste, often to be used in newsgroups, mailing lists, and rarely in E-mail too.

The script is based on a Perl module that was inherited from T_EX. The L^AT_EX family is rather presentation-aware and smart in terms of its fragmentation decisions. It ‘knows’ when it is reasonable to hyphenate and where added spaces for justification are least distracting. Maybe the same applies to indentation. There are many options in the script, which control the tendencies, the priorities and thus the behaviour of the output.

The command example above hopefully illustrates how simple it is to use the script, as well as invoking it rapidly, without too much manual intervention and input/output ‘piping’. I have also set up a shortcut (CTRL+ALT+7) to convert in to out and then copy and paste onto the required place, so indent.sh need never be called from the command-line.

Example from my most recent use of the script:


The  short  answer:  Windows has  got  itself
trapped. Over the years it has adopted overly
permissive  and  lenient mechanisms that  ne-
glected security. Security seemed like a cost
hat  hindered functionality. Unauthorised in-
stallations and lacking verifications are one
example. ActiveX controllers are another.


Notice that all text lies within a rectangular block. This needs fixed-sized fonts, which cannot be guaranteed by all recipients or readers. If sent to a recipient and read by a mail client, feed reader, newsgroups reader, browser, etc., it may be displayed in whatever form the user prefers, even proportionally-differing font sets.

AKING of efficient algorithms and use of more compact data representations have a cost in terms of complexity. They lead to greater coding and programming time, yet there is plenty to be gained.

Broad-scale example: writing of a good search algorithm makes it hard to understand, let alone algorithms that discriminate data. There is a reason why the Web was made available and practical throughout its decade-long extension.

One would say that the Web has been open. Its pertinent objects were also broken down rationally. It was also because not all pages and graphics are bitmaps, but instead the Web exploits wavelets that are based on mathematics or defined a palette and then use some conventions to refer to it.

Moreover, rather than poster-like Web sites, where everything is hard-coded, there emerged a language called (X)HTML which is concise, descriptive, and unambiguous. There are protocols which define how it should be rendered so a description — a code that is — makes it laborious to implement. Construction of pages becomes arguably easier and the end product much more concise, in terms of its size. Versatility (or flexibility) is yet another matter.

The take-home message: complexity in implementation or even specification takes its toll, but entails true benefits. ‘Lazy’ programming leads to inefficiency, whereas tactful complexity pays off in the long run.

Earlier today (and/or yesterday), both the GNOME Web site and the KDE Web site published promotional essays, or pointed to them rather.

KDE – Why KDE Rules

I wrote this document to tell everybody why KDE is great, why it’s worth using (great functionality), supporting (great development platform) and hacking (great design) and why you can expect many other awesome features from KDE 4.

GNOME – Vive La Desktop Difference!

If you, dear reader, wrote in asking whether I think you should drive a Mini Cooper or a Hummer, how should I respond? My best bet is to offer no opinion. I know nothing of your preferences or your needs. Either vehicle will get you where you want to go. The difference will be in the experience of getting there. It’s the same deal with KDE and Gnome.

I do not believe this to be a coincidence given some news we have recently heard. KDE’s strengths have been pointed out by no-one other than Linus Torvalds.

Related items:

• KDE and Ease-of-Use
• The User Interfaces of Tomorrow
• KDE Pushed to the Limit
• KDE to Reach Africa
• KDE Versus GNOME