- Arch-projects - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-projects] Arch Forums review
by Rasatmakananda 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

Thu Apr 07, 2005 - dp in Arch Linux Forums wrote: > update: > it seems that the atmosphäre calmed down a little ... and i see new things > appear in the forums. > change is always a good sign while under pressure growing. Hi, I think the Forum calmed a quite a lot with the help of what took place when devs leaving, hues & cries, and posting of "what's happening" topics. It was for the good. Moreover, bound to happened. The growth was too smooth and no "struggle" for learning as a community. The problem in such situation, when active users move away, it creates a vacuum. If this vacuum is not filled in short time, creates more confusion and disorder, and will be difficult to restore. I am glad some of the active users came forward to help... (1) made an awareness of the situation and gave solution: Topic: "Old-timers retiring? An objective analysis" Topic: "Old Timers retiring please help!" (2) new forum guidelines ("FAQ" and "Forum Etiquette") by cactus. (3) more moderators, forum advisers, and new "ArchLinux Forum Moderation Team". (4) return of dp... reflecting the new environment and devs will come back. These were nothing special. But when major problems happen, users want to see something is done. Not only verbally but also physically. Now when seeing the Forum site, at first sight, there is a change. Maybe too early to say when browsing the posts, they are as what should be. And no access usage in Off-topic. For information, it was necessary to remove posts from Off-Topic. Some users blamed it was source of the problems... encouraging power-posting (increase of post count), trolling, spamming, rough language and insult. To conclude this short review, I ask developers and package managers who decided to keep away from the Forum, to come back home (smile). There is noting as perfect, but lets hope the new Forum Etiquette will keep everyone happy. Its locked and only authorized persons can edit. http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/Forum%20Etiquette The FAQ is also more or less ready. http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchFAQ If anyone needs a "celebrity" protection, contact the ArchLinux Forum Moderation Team. :wink: Markku (rasat)

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[arch-projects] VR Gear in Linux
by Dusty Phillips 01 Apr '05

01 Apr '05

I'm starting to take an interest in virtual reality gear -- head mounted displays, head trackers, data gloves, etc. More specifically, I'm thinking about possible ways you might program for it, especially in the context of Ensmer. I've done some cursory research on google, just an hour or so's web browsing. I've got a vague idea of what is available, based slightly on third rate Sci-fi novels, and slightly on this research. The first thing I found out is I am WAY TOO BROKE to afford any of this stuff right now. ;-) I've found the following site to be quite interesting: http://virtualreality.physiol.ox.ac.uk/ (makes me wish I'd applied at Oxford). It provides some hints and tips on setting up a PC for use as a VR machine, but for the most part, it sounds like a PC can barely handle it. They mention that they use Linux for their PC work. I find this difficult to understand, since I would assume most VR equipment requires a weird-ass device driver, and I don't know how many Linux hackers are reverse engineering this stuff; its not exactly standard equipment yet. Even the gaem systems don't use it yet. Well actually, you can connect these head-mounted displays to an X-box if you want... Anyway, I was wondering if anybody out there has any experience with or knowledge about VR equipment, especially as used under Linux. And how it can be coded with OpenGL... Dusty

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[arch-projects] projects
by Dusty Phillips 31 Mar '05

31 Mar '05

Hey, What's everybody working on these days? ;-) I officially deleted the AL forums from my bookmarks today, its starting to annoy me. I don't really have better things to do with my time, but I'd rather do nothing than get involved with some of that. My personal project is, of course Ensmer. I've made a few changes, not ready for another devel release. Development has slowed down since I don't have a school timeline anymore. I'm also working more on things that seem important than things that seem like they're worth marks. ;-) I'm thinking of voice recognition... don't know how to actually implement it. I'm looking at sphinx-4: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/sphinx4/ Any ideas on that? I thought it might be neat to add voice commands as alternative form of input. Hard to implement in a modular fashion though. And then there's internationalization... Dusty

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[arch-projects] WM standards
by Aaron Griffin 31 Mar '05

31 Mar '05

Can anyone here explain all the different WM standards briefly? ICCCM NETWM EWMH (? ehwm? *shrug*) any others? I'm not sure what each one is for, and the docs for all of them are long - so I was trying to get a nice summary of each before I delved into them...

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[arch-projects] Forum to mailing list
by Rasatmakananda 22 Mar '05

22 Mar '05

Hi, This is related to Dusty's suggestion on user-contributions.org forum to explore a forum to mailing list system where both forum discussions, which does an excellent job keeping discussions well organised, and mailing list allowing an ease of usage and speed. http://user-contributions.org/forums/userproject/viewtopic.php?t=97 I have installed M2F (Mail2Forum) in usercb forum and works fine. http://user-contributions.org/forums/userproject/viewtopic.php?t=98 If arch-projects mailing list wants to install this system, I am ready to help. If you want use usercb forum is also fine with me. I don't know what you all would think having user-contributions.org joined to this list. http://user-contributions.org/index.html Markku (rasat)

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[arch-projects] XML holocaust
by Dusty Phillips 22 Mar '05

22 Mar '05

Was wondering if anybody here actually *likes* XML. You'll probably be shocked to find out I can't stand the language, since Java programmers seem to be inextricably married to the language. In fact, the link to XML, and not Java itself is what often makes me feel embarrassed to be a Java programmer! Enter Groovy. Between GPath/XmlSlurp (http://groovy.codehaus.org/GPath) and GroovyMarkup(http://groovy.codehaus.org/GroovyMarkup), I'm finding that its practically painless to interface to XML coming and going. While working on the weather applet yesterday, I found that I could read the weather.com XML file using dot syntax _without having to parse it_. I've also experimented with GroovyMarkup and the XML builder. Again, you can use dot syntax and basic Groovy/Java code to create an XML file, and can also use typical programming language constructs (loops, conditionals) to simplify the task. Ok, you can probably do similar stuff with Python, Ruby, or any other scripting langugae. If you can't somebody should write a module that does it. ;-) Being able to ignore/abstract XML is great, but I started thinking it should be possible in some cases to completely discard it. My first example is ant. Those who don't code Java probably still use make (with the antiquated Makefile syntax), or that neat Python distribution tool, or something similar. or dissimilar. In my case, I've been taught to use ant. I hate the XML build files. Groovy allows me to script ant, but I figure I should be able to ignore the ant dependency and write a build toolkit in Java and Groovy. Haven't thought about it much, but I'm thinking each target could be a Groovy closure. The build file is a groovy script that extends a Java (or Groovy) class and manages a bunch of closures/targets in some way. That will probably be my next project. :-D Another item is TestNG. This was a framework that I chose to never use because of the XML scripts, its supposed to be the 'next generation' to JUnit tests. (http://www.beust.com/testng/) I have issues with JUnit though. I'm thinking I can do the same thing and overcome TestNG's "limitation" (XML) by writing test framework in groovy. Happily, this has already been done (http://groovy.codehaus.org/Unit+Testing) But I like TestNG's annotation-based configuration, so maybe someday I'll expand the Groovy Unit Testing to include that. It could happen. I'm also thinking of ways to code XHTML in GroovyMarkup so I never have to look at another angle bracket ever again! Thoughts? Anybody want to defend XML? Dusty

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[arch-projects] Two small projects
by Dusty Phillips 22 Mar '05

22 Mar '05

Ok, I had my break from coding last night. After having spent some eight months on the same project, I'm looking at some really small ones to scratch little itches i've developed. To be honest, I doubt anybody else would be interested, but I wanted to present the ideas. If people are interested, it means I'll put more work into it, and may affect my choice of languages. ;-) First, I've been looking for a CLI weather station. This started when I used XFCE4 for a while and it had the neat little weather applet. Now I'm using WMI. I wrote a simple script that uses PyMETAR (http://www.schwarzvogel.de/software-pymetar.shtml) to download weather, and I run this with WMI remote in my status bar. The problem with this solution is that METAR data doesn't seem to be quite as reliable as weather.com data, at least, not in my area. To that end, I found "CurseTheWeather" (http://opensource.hld.ca/trac.cgi/wiki/CurseTheWeather) an ncurses based weather app that includes a weather.com module I can use for the same script. There's another problem with this solution though, and that is that it doesn't allow me to easily get the forecast. What I want is an app that allows me to get the current weather conditions on the command line, using a formatting string very much like the format of the date command (man date). However, I ALSO want it to provide me with CLI AND GUI options to view a five day forecast. I haven't found any programs that do this. The GUI version is more important to me; I want to have current conditions on my WMI status bar, and have the forecast available in a window at the press of a key. So I'm planning on writing a script that does all this. If anybody was interested, I'd go the full mile and implement everything I just described. If nobody is interested, I'll probably skip the 'formatted like date' command and do the formatting inside the script and stuff like that. Depending on whether or not anybody is interested, I will either do this in Python, using the weather.com module from CurseTheWeather, or will do it in Groovy, writing my own Weather.com data parsing unit from scratch. I lose either way, really. I hate doing GUI work in Python. But I also hate working with XML, and weather.com data is in XML; CurseTheWeather has already taken care of messing with the XML. But I'll probably use Groovy for that unless other people are interested -- if they are, I'm sure most people would be more likely to use a Python app than Groovy one. My second mini-project is probably about a half hour's work, so lets call it a subcompact mini-project. I've noticed all good text editors allow you to access the console, either directly, or via a plugin that simulates a console within the editor. I think this is kind of dumb, I'd rather use a terminal on the side and not have it run by the editor. Keeps things neater and smaller. The only thing is, I love being able to change to the current buffer's directory. For example, in JEdit, if you use the console plugin, you can type cd ${d} to change to the open buffer's directory. If I use an xterm on the side, I can't do this. That's what I aim to fix. Here's how I propose to do it: I'll write a JEdit plugin that writes the location of the current file out to $HOME/.currentbuffer or something like that. Then all I have to do is add something like B=$(cat $HOME/.currentbuffer) to my ~/.bashrc, and I can type cd $B any time I want to go to the directory of the current buffer. So the only hard part is writing a plugin for JEdit. By hard, I mean half hour's work. ;-) Again, NOBODY is interested in this because they don't use JEdit, but I thought it might be interesting to present the idea, since some people might theoretically want to use the same idea with their chosen editor, and it would make sense to settle on a filename (ie: $HOME/.currentbuffer). More importantly, somebody may know that such a mechanism already exists, and can tell me a better way to code it for JEdit. :-) Dusty

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[arch-projects] Why do we choose the programming languages that we do?
by Dusty Phillips 21 Mar '05

21 Mar '05

This is a weird-ass philosophical post. I'm sick and bored right now and my eyes hurt too much to look at the monitor, but I need something to do (*watches fingers typing...*). I was just wondering why programmers choose the languages they choose... and why there is so much zealotry in this area. I mean, naturally, some languages are better suited to certain applications than others. But over all, I think we tend to choose a language more for aesthetic value than how useful it is! And aesthetics all depend on the user. Take scripting languages. For some reason, I haven't been able to get the hang of Python. I think its a great language and I can code in it (who can't!?), but I don't find it really fun or enjoyable. On the other hand, I find coding in Groovy to be a great joy. Perl gives me the greatest of headaches, I can't stand scripting in it, I avoid it at all costs. I haven't tried Ruby, so I can't compare. There are numerous other scripting languages. They are all designed for more or less the same tasks (arguable, yes). You can code the same scripts in Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Lua, Groovy, etc with approximately equal results. Yet if asked to code a particular generic problem, each of us would choose a different language! I guess when it comes down to it, it all depends what you *like* to code in. Its a lot like music. When I was a kid, I played piano for a few years. I wasn't very good at it, and I didn't enjoy it all that much. Then one day I picked up a guitar and a teach yourself book... I enjoyed it. I guess some people are piano people and some people are guitar people and some people are clarinet people... This is the only explanation I can come up with, thoughts? Also, I'd really like to have an explanation for the language nazism that goes on all the time. I can't understand that one at all. ;-) Dusty

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[arch-projects] GroovyWeather
by Dusty Phillips 20 Mar '05

20 Mar '05

I don't think I've ever enjoyed a scripting language so much. I know nobody'll use this but I thought I'd post it anyway... its kind of an interesting example of Groovy code, it uses XMLSlurp, SwingBuilder, and what little Groovy-specific syntax I know... http://www.buchuki.com/groovyweather.html Dusty

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[arch-projects] hyperbolic scarf anyone?
by Aaron Griffin 18 Mar '05

18 Mar '05

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4531695

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