OpenOffice.org development

Here's what I wrote about OpenOffice.org development.

'Nuff said.

Vibrant ja Tatung CRT kuvarite monitorifailid

Aasta leid ja kullaauk kõigile, kel kasutuses Vibrant'i (ja Tatungi) kineskoopekraan (CRT):

download.tatung.co.uk/drivers/Monitor/Vibrant

MicroLinki arvutikomplektides kaasa antud Vibrant-nimeliste CRT monitoride draiverid ei ole kuigi levinud, ehkki nad on Internetis mitteametlikes failihoidlates leitavad. Minu eesmärk draiverite ametlike tõmbamiskohtade leidmisel on see, et nende puhul on viiruserisk kõige madalam ning draiverid võivad olla ka uuendatud.

Modernsed Vibrant CRT kuvarid on varustatud Plug-and-Play funktsionaalsusega, mis võimaldab tänapäevasel opsüsteemil lubatud sagedusvahemiku ise ära tunda. Sellistel juhtudel ei ole monitorifaili tingimata vaja, ehkki selle olemasolu ja seadistus opsüsteemis oleks praktikas ideaalne variant, sest süsteemi sisse seatud monitorifail näitab ära kuvari seadistustes tootja enda poolt sätestatud värskendussageduste vahemiku.

Kuna Vibrant CRT monitoride puhul on tegemist juba mitu aastat tootmisest maas oleva riistvaraga, on tootjapoolne toetus nendele puudulik. Nimelt on draiverite saadavus nendele monitoridele teiste tootjatega võrreldes raskendatud, hoolimata sellest, et nimetet kuvarite PnP võimalused draiveri olemasolu ülemäära vajalikuks ei kaalu.

Et Vibrant ja Tatung oma tootelehtedel vanade kuvarimudelite draivereid otseselt ei paku juba aastaid, oli draiverite leidmine viitega ametlikule allikale aeganõudev tegevus. Veel mitu nädalat tagasi rõõmustav tulemus Internetarhiivis ringi tuhnimisest tundub tänast suurt leidu arvestades kesisevõitu.

T., 13.09.2011. täiendus:
Tatungi UK kodulehte pole, Veebiarhiiv ei aita, ning ainsa ametliku vaid Tatung monitorifailide allika leidsin siit:

ftp://207.215.188.219/MONITORS
(lingitud Tatung USA ametlikult kodulehelt).

Kordan, et konkreetselt on tegemist vaid Tatung monitoridega.

E., 10.10.2011. uuendus:
Kui varem soovitasin mudelinumbrite kokkulangevusel Tatungi draivereid Vibrant monitoridega proovida, sest Tatung on Vibrant kaubamärgile monitore valmistanud, siis nüüd tungivalt ei soovita, sest see võib rikkuda Vibrant monitorid ära. On muidugi tõenäosus, et Tatung monitorifailides on info ka Vibrant kuvarite kohta, kuid see on kinnitamata.

Kuna mul oli siiski õnneks ühtedes oma online järjehoidjates alles hoitud Veebiarhiivi aadress Vibrant kuvarite monitorifailidele, siis siiski õnnestus sellele lõpuks ka juurde pääseda vot siit:

(nüüd alles selgus, et sama viide oli ka siinsamas minu nina ees, aga natuke ülevalpool ^)

wayback.archive.org/web/*/download.tatung.co.uk/drivers/monitor/vibrant*

Põhimõtteliselt on tegemist ametliku allikaga, nii et veel töökorras olevate Vibrant monitorite omanikud saavad soetada oma ekraanidele sobiva monitorifaili :-).

Värskendussagedusest
Silmale mugav värskendussagedus saab näiteks olla vähemalt 85Hz — vanemate monitoridega võib olla nii, et kui kõige ülemine on 76, 72, 70, 60 Hz, siis peavad olema need ja eriti midagi muud pole teha, kui just mitte vähendada ekraani enda resolutsiooni, et saada parem värskendussagedus; kui mingite teiste elektriagregaatide läheduse tõttu kuvaripilt ikka vilgub, tuleks sagedus seada kõrgemaks.

Kuigi kõrgem vertikaalsagedus vähendab monitori vilkumist, võib kuvari jaoks liiga kõrge sageduse seadmine (tavaliselt üle draiveri poolt võimaldatud piiride) põhjustada pikema aja jooksul sellele riistvaralist kahju — pikaajaline kogemus on näidanud, et valesti seatud vertikaalsagedus CRT monitoridel viib nende pildi tumenemiseni; samas võib niisugune efekt esile tulla ka monitori mitmeaastase intensiivse kasutuse tulemusel.

Netiquette: Large images and the Internet

In July 2008, a family member far away wrote me that she had been having trouble sending images to people. So here's an article that I initially wrote for her, but decided to re-edit and publish it in here for all to read. She sent me four very large photos.

Netiquette

The photos in their original photographed size are very large, which is why most Internet service providers intentionally impose technical limitations in their e-mail servers on the size of e-mail that can be transferred. The original large size of the photos is useful for when there's a need make high-quality prints (even above the 3x4" or 10x15 cm range).

When view digital photos in a new computer, then it is powerful enough to be able to temporarily resize them to the proper viewing size every time they are opened for viewing. This functionality may create an illusion that the images are not as large as they really are.

An important part of the netiquette in e-mail is to send messages that have reasonable sizes, so as not to constrain all the server computers and network traffic routers through which e-mail passes through. All servers have restrictions as to how large an outgoing message can be. A user's outgoing server may have lax restrictions, the addressee server may not.

Photos that people send to others are usually very likely to appear in a message in-line, when that message is being viewed in an e-mail folder. Some e-mail programs allow automatic resizing of images, so they equally create an appearance of a size that fits.

One solution is to send large photos on a piecemeal basis, especially if there is an actual requirement to send large images.

One way to know how much a sender can send at a time is to see the error message of a returned letter. Somewhere down there must be an error message stating the permitted space limit. Note that addressees' servers' limits on the size of incoming messages always differ. Pass-through mail servers may also have their internal space limits.

Another solution to sending images is to compress them into one .zip file, for example. In Windows XP and Vista, there is a built-in compression program with functionality to select a bunch of photos, then click on the selection with the right mouse button and select "Send To" > "Compressed (zipped) Folder".

Oftentimes (and even then) the collections of photos even in a compressed file may end up too large. Compression of files also takes time, so if there are lots of large files, compressing and uncompressing them takes some time.

Resizing/scaling images

Yet another solution is to resize all images to something the expected size of people's screen resolutions. For example, the four photos I received this February were each more than two megabytes in size and that is really huge. Even individual images are large. One way to reduce their size is to scale them down with a good image processing program.

For example, a particular group pose photo I received is 3264x2448 pixels in size (width x height). This would probably fit a large wide-screen monitor or be proper for an equally capable projector. Most people's computer screens are nowadays set to 1024x768 pixels.

When opting to send a fair number of not-so-small photos through online means, then, yes, it is a really good practice to resize them.

My favourite tool for this is The GIMP &nmdash; The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GNU is a recursive acronym for GNU's not UNIX). The latest release is 2.6.2 and it contains many improvements over the 2.4.x [development] branch, the major version that I had been thinking of mentioning when writing this instruction set long before the 2.6 version suddenly came out.

The GIMP is available from gimp.org

If there are many images...
For batch processing, there is a plugin for GIMP called DBP — or David's Batch Processor. DBP is available from here. (Download link on the left side of the page.)

Extract the executable (an application) into this directory (it's better if GIMP is not running at that time):
C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins
Run GIMP after that and the extension is under the Filters menu as a "Batch process..." command. Note that the extension also launches a command-line window. It can be minimized.

The user interface of the Batch process plugin is more or less straight-forward.

• When adding images, choose those that are similar in their features — for example that the width of every image should be longer and height shorter: the batch processor will otherwise make a portrait-positioned image out of landscape-shaped images ugly. The resultant image can later be turned to the suitable portrait/landscape position.


• Under Resize tab, enable the Resize function.
  If the image size is 3264x2448, then it is important to first test through an individual scale process to see what the results are. Choose Scale from the Image menu.
  For example, scale the image to resize it to a 1024 pixel width (the height is calculated automatically). The result should be 1024x768, if the aspect ratio is 4:3 (or 3:4), if memory serves me right.
  The reason for this is that while the DBP plugin's resize function allows relative resizing whilst keeping the aspect ratio, it's impossible to tell what the resultant width in pixels would be.
  That is why I choose absolute resizing, knowing that the aspect ratio will be maintained, if I set the absolute width and height to 1024x768 pixels — if a 3264x2448-pixel image scales to 768-pixel height if the width is previously set to 1024 pixels.


• The Rename tab's functions allow choosing a different destination directory and in the Output tab a relevant image format must be specified — JPG for photos and PNG for non-photographic material (pictures, screenshots, drawings, etc.). After setting JPG as the output format, the image quality must be set to 100 (the output will still be considerably smaller, even with a 100% image quality). Other things can be left as default.

Optical Disc authoring

One way of physically sending a large batch of photos is to buy a quality optical disc (typically one with gold as the default/main metal of use; Some products are geared/optimized toward a certain task, such as audio burning, data, photos, etc.), such as a CD-R (Recordable) or CD-RW (Rewritable) from a known brand with a history of producing writeable media (EMTEC, Verbatim, TDK, Philips, Sony, Maxell) — and burn the photos there.

For more size, a recordable DVD presents a good option. There are several recordable DVD formats, but it's best to choose the format that the optical disc writer at hand supports. Both CD's and DVD's come in various sizes, so if there's only up to 200 megabytes of photos to burn, an equally fitting pocket-sized CD is the ideal option — only that it may cost less than a vanilla 650–700 Mb CD-R. Standard-issue CD-R-s can store from 650 to 700 megabytes, depending on specification.

Rewritable optical discs (marked with XXX-RW or XXX+RW) are useful for testing. When I last burned data, I discovered a rewritable CD was very useful, because of a program setting I forgot to set in K3b, an optical disc authoring program in Linux, and so several burning sessions were lost and this allowed me to make mistakes. Rewritable optical discs have lesser storage latency, though, compared to one to which data is written to permanently.

On the other hand, rewritable discs are great for short-term projects, such as when using a backup application for the first time or trying out another program for disc authoring.

In addition to selecting a quality disc, the packaging also shows the suggested recording speed or a range of speeds. I've seen TDK's CD-s' packaging with the specification of "Up to 52x" writing speed. The great thing about it is that such language is not ambiguous.

Some writeable CD's have specified 4–16x writing speed. While 52x writing speed may be fast and may save time, it may not be useful for long-time storage of data, as error correction information is not saved because of such a speed of writing, so choosing the slowest possible speed is best for long-term storage, provided that the disc is equally suited for it.

Optical discs are also sensitive to elements, so that combining all the best practices reduces the chances of data loss. Some good disc manufacturers already produce optical media that have protection against elements, such as ultra-violet light and scratching. They are more expensive and usually geared toward heavy-duty use, but are all the more durable.

Once a burn is complete, it's important to use a marker specially labelled to be used on optical discs (CDs and the like).

More in a Wikipedia article about CD-R's, with plenty of essential advice on authoring an optical disc. The right-hand sidebar also shows links to other formats, just that CD-R is one of the cheapest ways to store data longer-term off a hard drive /my own long-term experience has shown that hard drives may eventually fail.

Unable to change HTML and HTM file icons

I found the solution at MozillaZine Forums.

I didn't do all of the things that were described in the second instruction set, as I only had to go as far as delete the IconHandler key from the registry, re-access the Tools > Folder Options > File types dialog and click OK for both file types, after which the filetypes' correct icon finally appeared.

Mozilla Firefox 3 and cookies

One of the problems with Mozilla Firefox 3 cookie dialog behaviour is that the dialogs tend to quickly crop up on top of one another instead of waiting till I have set a certain cookie behaviour for a server. The workaround is to move the cookie dialog upwards or downwards, because the dialogs only crop up in the center of the screen.

Another cool feature not existing in Firefox 2.x–3.x is an about:config Boolean entry of

network.cookie.denyRemovedCookies

— which can be set to true.

Tip from here.

Optimize page rendering of Gecko-based browsers

Originally posted on 24.09.2008.

Tips from here.

• nglayout.initialpaint.delay — Set the integer value to 0 if the connection is too slow.
  
  E., 06.12.2010 Edit/Update: The downside is greater CPU usage, so if the computer is slow and/or if there's a slow operating system (Windows 95/98), then don't use this feature.
  
  For example, I have at my wherewithal a 900 MHz computer with 128 Mb RAM and Windows 98SE (the operating system that was supplied by the manufacturer), in which OS the latest Gecko-based browsers can be Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.20, K-Meleon 1.5.4 and SeaMonkey 1.1.19.
  
  In late 2010 I realized how much more complex have websites become and their rendering really slowed the computer down. Messages about unresponsive scripts have also become more frequent.
  
  The only thoughtful solution to this would be changing the operating system to something lightweight, which supports SeaMonkey 2.0 (such as Linux). More about this in a future post.

ScanDisk tulemused (eestikeelses) Windows XP-s

Märkus: ScanDisk programm on Windows xp-s CHKDSK nimega.

Event Viewer > Application > Source: Winlogon, ava tulemuste vaatamiseks (peaks olema kõige varasem sissekanne peale restarti).

Event Viewer'i (sündmustelogi) avamise eri moodused:
 

• Start > Juhtpaneel > Haldusriistad > Event Viewer
  
• Töölaual või Start-menüüs paremklikk Minu arvuti ikoonil > Manage > laienda puumenüüst Event Viewer
  
• Start > Käivita..., kirjuta eventvwr.msc ning vajuta OK/Enter.
  

Abimaterjali sain siit.

Most important settings in optimizing Mozilla Firefox, K-Meleon and other Gecko-based browsers

Usually these two about:config instructions rarely appear together in any entry about optimizing a Gecko-enabled browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, K-Meleon, SeaMonkey and others.

In about:config —
• network.prefetch-next — toggle to false (can be done with a doubleclick)
• browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers — change to 0 on computers with low resources or 2 on friskier machines.
In very modern and very fast machines, the default settings can be kept intact.

Update: 28 Coolest Firefox about:config Tricks — Contains instructions both for Windows and Linux users and those who prefer some of the older Firefox UI features.

E., 18.07.2011. Update: Something I very recently found by chance in a version of Firefox on Knoppix 4.0.2, yet which may well exist in other systems and versions:

browser.related.enabled can be set to false, because the preference does very little specifically in anything that is not SeaMonkey (unless someone is using any What's Related-like extension that uses the preference).

Most of the preferences well apply to older versions of Gecko-based browsers, especially those that use Gecko 1.7, 1.8 and 1.8.1 (upwards to Firefox 2, SeaMonkey 1.1 and K-Meleon 1.5.4).

Firefox 4.0/5.0+ (where 5.0 is actually an incremental development because of rapid development practices now at mozilla.org) are less and less likely to require these modifications, because they're typically installed on modern and very modern computers.

L., 22.10.2011. Update:

browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs — Set to 0

If you're using multiple tabs, then upon session restore all the tabs are restored, but pages are loaded only on the tabs that you open. If you're using more than one window, the last tabs open before closing will still load.

Applies to Mozilla Firefox/Iceweasel/IceCat 4–8 only
08.01.2012. update: The feature was deprecated in version 9.0 of Firefox and corresponding forks. Users who still have version 8.0.1 at most and are happy with how it performs, should turn off the auto-update feature in Preferences.

Other options can be found from about:config entries at MozillaZine Knowledge Base Wiki.

P., 04.03.2012. Update:
This one should be useful for users of LiveCD-s:

plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin

This should work in Mozilla Firefox/Debian Iceweasel/GNU IceCat 3.0 and SeaMonkey 2.0 or newer (given that the function was first checked in on 02.10.2007).

P., 05.08.2012. Update: browser.sessionstore.interval — Set integer to more than 10000 (milliseconds; default value means 10 seconds) — I sometimes set it to 34000 or even 60000.

This can be useful if you don't want Firefox to interfere with plugin work. (I won't guarantee that it would work as expected, but in theory it sould improve performance. Apply if you think it may help.)

Uus värdsõna

Uus sõnavärd: "Windowsi õelvara eemaldamise tööriist - September 2008" (KB890830)"

Termini kasutus Microsofti abi ühel eestikeelsel leheküljel.

Täiendus: Sami blogis on veel sõnu.

Non-keyboard characters in Pidgin IM and Windows 9x

This page neatly describes what to do to write non-keyboard characters in Pidgin.

Keep in mind that because the latest major version of Gtk+ for Windows 9x is 2.6, the new input method introduced in Gtk+ 2.10.0 won't work. (Users of Windows 2000 and newer are spared of this).

In Windows 9x, you have to hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys and type a hexadecimal Unicode number for the character.

While the Character Map in Windows 2000 and newer supports showing Unicode character numbers, Windows 9x versions don't.

One workaround is to use the Windows Calculator to get the hex value of a typable character. Open it, select set the calculator view to scientific, type the given Alt+xXXX value and then click on the Hex radio button. This will convert the decimal value to hexadecimal. 0176 or just 176 yields a degree ° sign, the hexadecimal value for this is B0.

Keyboard shortcuts for Dec/Hex conversion in Calculator:
F5 for Hexadecimal (Hex) and F6 for Decimal (Dec).

Multiple instances of Skype in Windows Vista

Multiple instances of Skype 3.x in Windows Vista won't work because of different Runas behaviour. Skype 4 fixes that issue in version 4, which is in beta, using the /secondary command.

For Skype 3.x, some of the runas functionality does work, when the user specified is not part of an Administrators group, but rather that of Power Users.

More in-depth information here.

L., 04.04.2008. Update:
Skype 4.0 has now been released and it does indeed support the /secondary command when using the Runas command:

runas /user:Mart "\"C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe\" /secondary"

Note that nested quotes (quotes inside quotes) must be escaped with a backslash, as seen above.

Windows Update error 0X80072F89 in Windows 98

If anyone gets their hands on a really old computer with 32Mb of RAM and, of course, a legitimate installation of Windows 95/98 in it, updating that operating system through Windows Update may prove to be a slight hurdle.

Internet Explorer 5.0 on its own is now quite an old web browser, but there are at least two reasons why it's important to download updates through Windows Update:

• After browsing around the web to research the error, the most common suggested remedy was to install Internet Explorer 6 on the computer, but given that as a major next version, a typical installation of IE6 would take more system resources to run on a computer with 32Mb of RAM, than, say, IE5 that's already been installed.
  
• Connecting to Windows Update early is especially useful in cases when the computer keeps acting up because of a software issue that must be fixed first.
  

1. The first useful suggestion I got is to update root certificates for Internet Explorer, as suggested here.
   
2. And this nice Microsoft newsgroup post offers a direct download link for it. Just in case, I'm providing the download link for ROOTSUPD.EXE here, too.

After that, Windows Update should work fine.

So if Internet Explorer 5 has already been installed, Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 2 might also solve the issue, but I can then only vouch for it once I get to update another computer with Windows 98 that's already been installed on a PC. To download IE5.01SP2 and other assorted browser goodies, the browser archive at evolt.org is the best place to start.

Deleting files with Shift+Del in Windows 95/98

Over all those years using Windows 95/98/98SE, I had issues with permanently deleting files with the Shift+Del key combination: Either I'd get the vanilla deletion dialog (after which I had to retry) or sometimes I'd hit lucky with a real permanent file deletion dialog.

This Summer I discovered that the trick was to hold the Shift key until the permanent deletion dialog appeared, which then seemed to solve my problem with all this.

Showing exe files' extensions in Windows

Regedit HKCR\exefile, add new string AlwaysShowExt.

The same applies to other filetype descriptions, like exefile, some of which might be more elaborate than that.

Restart.

gimp-win-remote and Windows Vista

In Windows Vista, opening a file in the same instance of GIMP (2.4.6 is currently the latest) appears to be much trickier than in Windows XP (well, I have yet to try that out there..).

R., 28.09.2012. update:

Turns out that it can be just as tricky on Windows XP, so the same solution applies.

First off, I used to try opening a file through the Open With... command, but that didn't work, because it yielded an error message. Nevertheless, the program was added to the registry and the Open With list, so it was easier to tweak it after that.

To access the Windows Registry, click the Windows button and then the Run... command, type regedit, press Enter, give permission to continue. You can also launch Regedit from the Command Prompt; the principle is the same.

The key that you need to navigate to is

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\gimp-win-remote.exe\shell\open\command

The (Default) string in the right-side view of the key's contents already has the non-working command in it (the format of which usually works with most other apps to open files). Double-click (Default) to modify, and then between the app path and "%1" add with quotes and separate with one space on either size:

"gimp-2.4.exe"

The resulting command should look like this:

"C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\bin\gimp-win-remote.exe" "gimp-2.4.exe" "%1"

Click OK, quit the Registry Editor, and now try opening an image file with gimp-win-remote, if an instance of GIMP is open already.

I got the tip from here.

R., 28.09.2012. update

In addition, here's a registry solution to change the gimp-win-remote.exe program name in the Open With list (both in the shortcut menu and the dialog) to something less cryptic, once you're already using the registry to resolve the above situation.

(I tried this out in Windows XP, and I don't know if it will work the same in Windows Vista.)

Move up to

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\gimp-win-remote.exe\shell\open\

— and create a FriendlyAppName string in it:

right-click in empty space of the right pane for the shortcut menu,
choose New > String Value, then write FriendlyAppName for the new value.

Now, that's only a parameter. To change it, double-click on it or press the Enter/Return key for it and write the friendly app name.

Because the Open With dialog sorts programs alphabetically, then GIMP and GNU Image Manipulation Program will appear near the top of the list. The GIMP, which sounds cooler, will then be near the bottom of the list, and reaching it when choosing a program to open a file may require scrolling (at least for the first time). In any way, GIMP 2.6 should already allow adding the Edit with GIMP command to an image file's context menu upon installation or when editing preferences.

In a computer that is used by an average user who understands English, I chose GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) as the friendly app name.

The simple reason was the the long name is self-explanatory and (GIMP) in parentheses is there for future name recognition.