Convert PDF to JPEG on OS X

I had a student of mine complain that the .PDF material I’d provided was illegible. I attributed the problem to her ignorance, and to her lack of knowledge of the magnification tool, but the customer is always right, … right? I decided to hard copy the material myself and personally hand it in to her at our next class a week away. In the meantime I wanted to convert the .PDF material to something that she may have been more adept at using, even if in a rastorized format. So, I decided to convert the .PDF to –wait for it– .JPGs! Googling brought me to an article that details a script that converts .PDF to .JPG but –in true mac fashion– it only works with the latest and greatest pay-ware version of OS X, 10.5, while I use 10.4 –leaving murmurers such as myself lost in the wilderness as the faithful continue to the promised land with their glorious and fearless leader, Jobs. Now, my problem is not with converting .PDF to .JPEG. I think this should easily be possible considering both formats are so pervasive. My problem is that it would seem –according to the Machead in the article previously mentioned– to necessitate underlying technology which only works with 10.5 OS X, and if there are other options for 10.4 users, why not mention them? Well, I found out there are other options, two –of which I’m now aware– in fact.

Collanos Standalone Phone dead, & “Expropriated” into Workplace

Feb 14, 09 UPDATE: Peter Helfenstein has confirmed that a stand alone is in production. Read the comments section for details.

What irks me about big business is how they sometimes take GPL software, sometimes created by non-profit communities (let’s call it community software), and incorporate it into their product without regard for where the software originated and that community’s sensibilities and social contract.

This is what I feel has happened with the Collanos Phone, a product that I once believed to be a viable GPL replacement for Skype (I even recommended it to others) and the successor to WengoPhone. In fact, I think Collanos Phone was based on much of the same code as was WengoPhone, although the Collanos forum¹¹¹¹¹¹ is vague about the exact providence stating, “Collanos Phone is based on many pre-existing open-source components and governed under the General Public License (GPL)”. True, Wengo might not qualify as a “software community” but I understand the code upon which WengoPhone was based was and continues to be community driven (ie., the libgaim library from Pidgin, previously known as Gaim).

If you haven’t clued in yet, Collanos has effectively cancelled the stand alone Collanos Phone. The download page now only mentions, “Collanos Workplace … now includes Collanos Phone”. The first of this that should have sounded bells off is a Dec. 16, 08 email I received from Peter Helfenstein and Franco Dal Molin mentioning the extension of Workplace’s capability to that of video and audio based telephony. It didn’t mention the killing off of the softphone project, but that’s public relations for you. You can “read into” this change-over on Helfenstein’s blog entry from January 28, 09 entitled “Team – It’s Time to Talk²²²²²²“.

US has it out for brit hacker

I can’t get over at how stupid the case is of the American government against Gary McKinnon. This British citizen is accused of hacking into secure US Air and Army forces computers, and causing millions of dollars in damage after crashing networks, all the while hacking from his girlfriend’s home.

I think icebergradio.com sucks!

IcebergRadio’s OS X support is terrible!

They are resistant to having their service heard on the widest possible range of platforms. This is
ridiculous. It’s like a tv station wanting to be solely watched on Sony television sets, and assuring it stay that way. You’d be out of luck if you had a Toshiba or any other brand tv!! The music was great, but their disregard for maximum interoperability is atrocious, meaning they’ve consistently shown they do not care about having their music heard by Mac users. I don’t have memories of getting it to work on Gnu-Linux, either.

My Composer Article Gets Picked Up

Well, I got published by a third party. My article on Composer (that I originally wrote for this blog) got picked up by FSM (Free Software Magazine), and –after editing– is part of issue #22. Read it at FSM.

Maurice Cepeda

This is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License. All brands mentioned are properties of their respective owners. By reading this article, the reader forgoes any accountability of the writer. The reading of this article implies acceptance of the above stipulations. The author requires attribution –by full name and URL– and notification of republications.

Native Alpha OS X Port of OpenOffice.org is Out!

Good news for OpenOffice.org (OO) fans that presently use Apple OS X.  You can now get a native OS X port.  No, I’m not referring to NeoOffice.

Djvu on OS X

Dec 24, 2007 Update: 
Since last month, there has been an official OS X port of the DjVuLibre project located at Sourceforge.  It has “find all occurrences of a search string”, thumbnail, and outline viewing capabilities. Upon testing, the print to .ps does not seem to create a readable .ps file –or OS X fails to convert it to .pdf (OS X’s default viewing format)– but exporting straight to .pdf (command+E on OS X) overcomes this issue. Exporting to various other common formats –such as .tiff and .jpg– is also possible.

Heads up!

In certain circles I was used to move in, .pdf was considered “the” universal document format, that and .eps or just .ps, but .pdf was considered a cleaned up .ps –anyway.

There’s now a “new” format on the turf. How’s it different from .pdf? Well, .pdf doesn’t optimally do graphics –just text–, while

The Difference Between Gnu-Linux, Windows, and OS X

When figuring out the difference between Gnu-Linux, Windows, and OS X user experiences …

“The timing couldn’t be better since Vista is a Wagner Opera that is usually late to start, takes too long to finish, and is spoilt by floorboards creaking under the weight of the cast,” he continues. “Mac OS X Leopard is the late show in an exclusive nightclub where the drinks are always too expensive. Linux Desktop is the free show in the park across the street — it imposes some discomforts on the audience but provides plenty of entertainment.“

MacBook Pros Run AMD!!!

I remember writing a review of an iBook some years ago. Honestly, the thing was a lemon and because of this I opted out of even pondering on buying another Apple computer. I liked PPC processors (RISC based) but since these were and still are on a downward spiral for desktop use (the opposite is true for game stations), I reasoned that my next investment would be an AMD –only somewhat RISC-like. Even so, AMD too was on a downward spiral considering that they were behind Intel in laptop suited processor design a few years ago … what with Intel’s _Centrino_ and all.

When I found my iBook doing a system-wide breakdown halfway through an university gig, I went against my previous conviction and again considered purchasing another Mac –a MacBook Pro running a late 2006, 2.6 GHz Intel Core Duo model. This, not for my previous experience (obviously) but for the default reliable UNIX OS, hoping that Apple had learned from previous mass production related quality problems (as with my old iBook). Well, its performs like a champ. To my chagrin, it feels incredibly fast compared to its PPC predecessors. It seems that Apple has also learned from its barrage of Airport Extreme emails concerning Libre hardware support, and their fiasco in choosing Broadcom on their iBooks (maybe not, as the new Santa Rosa uses a NVidia video card). On my MacBook Pro, both Airport Extreme (an Atheros card) and iSight have Libre software support. I had an over-heating problem early on and got the entire motherboard replaced. It doesn’t come close to getting hot anymore and I didn’t have to lather it with “heat gel”, as some Mac enthusiasts claimed when this issue came to air. I’ve tried a friend’s Mac Book (without “Pro”) and find it not nearly as responsive (it intermittently lags noticeably).

Windows, a Victimized Hip Culture

In the years of his PC computer use, my younger brother got caught up with the “build your own custom computer, install pirated Windows and save money” movement. While I, at the time, recommended he buy a mac, he was told they were over-rated and expensive, thanks to his Windows karate friend named Jeremy who always thought he knew better. (If I recall, you could get an 400MHz G3 IBM processor in a second generation iMac, while Intel made lowly 200MHz processors on which Windows ran.)

Well, the “build your own computer mindset” lead to stability problems, presumably due to a lack of hardware support in the way of frequent system crashes that didn’t let up until Windows XP, which –by that point in time– ran slow on my brother’s ageing machine. Adding to his continuous stream of problems, lately, he has all sorts of trouble with his Windows installed laptop. He associates his Hotmail problems (he has problems receiving emails) to the fact that he runs a pirated copy of Windows. Because of this, he can’t update his system, either. So, his OS is a security powder keg waiting to happen. Not too impressive considering that he does intelligence gathering on the middle east for a think-tank on this setup.

Show Stoppers, OS X vs. BSD & Gnu-Linux

I hate how Free OS critics attempt to undermine projects by mentioning that little things here and there don’t work or configure easily on BSDs or Gnu-Linux distros as they do on Windows or OS X (yes, I know what it’s based on). They list them as “show stoppers” as in they stop users from taking up these other OSes. In response, I’ve compiled a small list of OS X failures. Keep in mind, this is not comprehensive at all, but just to make a point.

Access Meebo via Bitlbee or a Jabber Client

I have a web-page where I integrated the Meebo plug-in. It’s handy because it allows quick instant messaging with your page’s visitors, rather than asking them to contact you via MSN or some other IM protocol and waiting for requests to be accepted. Despite Meebo’s convenience, I’ve been frustrated that in order to take advantage of this service I have to log into the Meebo page and that I don’t have access via one of my multi-protocol apps –or so I thought.

When I learned that Meebo uses the XMPP (Jabber) protocol, I experimented connecting to Meebo by using the Jabber client called Coccinella, Psi and Bitlbee. I was successful.

Coccinella Instructions
Create a profile, do not use “New Account” as this doesn’t allow you to specify the Meebo username. To so this, at startup select Profile, give it a name such as Meebo, specify the jabber server to meebo.org, input your Meebo username and password, and throw in “Home”as the resource. Select “Less” and “SASL authentification method” under “Use Secure Connection”(under the “Connection” tab). Other than that, the only other selection that should be activated is “Scramble password” under the “Login” tab. Save your preferences when done and log-in.

The only caveats are that you need to delete the Meebo visitor after he surfs off your page, at which point he becomes listed as off-line. The other seems to be a OS X specific issue in which Spotlight is activated evoking a window manifestation when your contact IMs. This happens initially and only once.

Coccinella allows you to log into various protocols, but adding various servers or profiles seems less intuitive if at all supported (I see no “log-in during startup” selection under the profile’s preferences to enable simultaneous multiple server/profile log-ins). To be useful, I need to login to various servers, including Google Talk, and Meebo, which –as far as I see– are not regularly supported with transports (transports or gateways are the “things” on servers that allow connections to various IM protocols). In short, if I connect to a Jabber server called –say– MyJabberServer.org and it does not have a MSN transport, well, this would bar me from connecting to the MSN network for the session (until I logged in again with another server that supports MSN). There are clients that allow multiple server connections. By the way, Psi does, so that you can use the Google Talk talk.google.com server (your Google Talk account, a XMPP protocol based service), the Meebo meebo.org server (another XMPP protocol based service), and just any ordinary Jabber server along with your MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo accounts.

Notes on Getting Meebo Working with Psi
I will not narrate how to get Psi working with Meebo as the above Coccinella example serves as a general guide. In short, you need to specifiy the following.

Host: meebo.org
Port: 5222
Select “Encrypt When Available”
Allow plaintext authentication: “Over encrypted connection or Always”
Do not select “SSL encryption”.
Note: (Doesn’t show subscribed rooms until someone contacts you. As default, a window doesn’t pop-up when contacted either.)

Bitlbee Instructions
Following up on my previous HOWTO on Bitlbee interoperability, I got Meebo working with Bitlbee too but deleting the continuous stream of contacts –as they log-off– might be frustrating. Of course, this depends on the amount of traffic your site receives, but if you’re getting that much congestion you need another service such as email. I added Meebo to Bitlbee the following way, in a one line command,

• account add jabber username@meebo.org/Home yourPassword meebo.org:5222

It was also accepted without the “/Home” bit. Experiment at your own risk, seems my logging in with the Meebo plug-in on my page on SeaMonkey caused a crash. Suffixing “:ssl” disables Bitlbee’s ability to log on; Bitlbee reports “Login error: Unable to connect” and signs off –so don’t request “ssl”. Bitlbee needs a script to automize off-line Meebo contact deletion in real time. The other option would be selectively allow off-line Meebo contacts show presence on the roster. Thus, one could manually delete them as they take off-line status (assuming that Meebo contact names are not recycled in which case rendering deletion unnecessary). This might be manageable if “only Meebo contacts” show as off-line, as enabling off-line visibility for all IM accounts would become unmanageable; This, due to the sheer number of off-line contacts at any given time and the needle in the haystack scenario contact deletion involves (I reported this as a bug). To lighten this quandary, unix commands could help as in, “blist all | grep @hotmail.com” or “blist all | grep hotmail.com”, or “blist all xaccount” to list all (off and on-line) xaccount contacts (I reported this as an enhancement request).

I guess this guide comes close to answering this Meebo user’s wish. Except in the Bitlbee example we replace his desired Jabber server with Bitlbee (specifically, IRC client to Bitlbee server to Meebo server). While there are fewer links with the Jabber client route … we bypass any Jabber server entirely and connect directly to Meebo’s server (Jabber client to Meebo server).

Maurice Cepeda

P.S.
I tried this with Adium’s Google Talk and Jabber plug-ins but these don’t work because they don’t allow Meebo username and password input, and add-in “@gmail.com” or “jabber.org” to your Meebo username –thus, rendering the function useless. Rather than write another plug-in, why not just allow better setting customization as with Psi, with a Meebo check mark option automizing contact deletion? (Adium is more or less Pidgin ported to OS X.)

For developers,
Protocol: XMPP
Domain: meebo.org
Resource: Home
Connect port: 5222
Connect server: meebo.org

As for references, they were useful in clueing me into the XMMP protocol and and port 5222. There is a Pidgin plug-in written that automates contact deletion. Perhaps this can be incorporated into Bitlbee and other “clones”.

http://jrpomeroy.com/pidgin/
http://oshelpdesk.org/?p=256

Misc
Google Talk Notes
Google’s Google Talk guide for third party apps doesn’t help anymore, thus my point form guide:

Google Talk on Psi
Host: talk.google.com
Port: 5223
Allow plaintext authentification: “Over encrypted connection or Always”
“Use SSL encryption” (to server) or the like.

Spark
Meebo works on Spark but Google Talk does not, at least not for me.

This is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License. All brands mentioned are properties of their respective owners. By reading this article, the reader forgoes any accountability of the writer. The reading of this article implies acceptance of the above stipulations. The author requires attribution –by full name and URL– and notification of republications.

Turn ChatZilla into an Universal Instant Messaging Client

Considering shortcomings of various universal IM clients, be they feature or technical (see below), I opted to use a basic client of my choice with the hopes of increasing its interoperability. I was successful.

As people may know, I really like the SeaMonkey suite. I use its Address Book, web-page creator called Composer, Mail and, of course, Navigator –its browser. I’d be using Calendar (rather than Sunbird) if it hadn’t been removed (re-implementation expected at a later release date with suiterunner¹). Of interest to this article, SeaMonkey incorporates an IRC client called ChatZilla (which is also available as a Firefox extension for Firefox users).

I personally like ChatZilla but it only handles IRC. Its a prototype for an IM client (presumably for more than just IRC), but never made it past the IRC protocol. Bitlbee changes this, taking it from its IRC limitations –extending it to MSN, Google Talk, Jabber, ICQ, AOL, and Yahoo IM protocol interoperability. Doing so was quite easy, as you’ll see in this HOWTO. Writing this article was much more tedious. (Ignore “” surrounding commands. “” identify commands and GUI buttons).

Composer, a Potential .html Based Word Processor

ATTN: An edited version of this article was published by FSM (Free Software Magazine), in issue #22, at FSM.

Rosalyn Hunter writes about Composer and the fact that she uses Composer as a stand-in word processor. I too, have used Composer as a replacement word processor. As I as of late work on OS X and because Abiword is available for OS X, I’ve tried it –but it’s OS X port leaves a lot to be desired. For instance, it has serious viewing issues –in the way of displaying illegible fonts.

I like Composer for various reasons. I’m quite familiar with it, as in the past I’ve used it for website authoring. It creates HTML (.html) –a markup language– files. I’ve come to the conclusion, “.html is not a bad “language” to use for a word processor”, considering that it already allows for basic editing, and then some, features.

Composer Features
Here are the reasons for why Composer (as a word processor) makes a decent stand-in. Keep in mind that these features are not revolutionary, but the point is that one need not resort to an overblown word processor to get these features, that Composer really can be used as temporary replacement word processor and even that it makes a good basis for a word editor –due to these features.

Basic Features

• supports basic formatting (indenting, paragraphs, bulleting, etc)
• supports various fonts
• supports tables
• supports images
• has a spell checker (dictionary)
• embedding hyper-links is easy

Universality of HTML

• supports multiple character encodings, the near universal UTF-8 and my past favorite ISO-8859-3 for southern European languages. It even allows for a quick and simple conversion from one to another.
• .html is a markup language that’s humanly understandable, if you want to read it. For the tech inclined, it even allows for low level hacking under the source tab. Don’t try to read any word processor’s file format after opening it up in a text editor.
• supports ftp transferring, allowing the saving of documents to ftp servers
• created documents can be easily integrated into .html based emails, just copy and paste
• Lastly and perhaps most importantly, .html files can be viewed by any browser on any operating system (provided an Internet browser is accessible). Imagine putting a stop to friends and colleagues saying, “I can’t open that file. Can you buy (the latest) Word?”

To elaborate on the economical size of .html files … as with Scribus, Composer does not save images “within” the .html files it produces. This allows for a small sized documents. File size gains can be further leveraged by placing images –meant to be viewed in documents– on-line on ftp servers and have the document link to them via Internet for viewing. Pathways from .html documents to images need to remain constant, though. Otherwise, images will not be found to be where expected and consequently not shown.

Reasons Why Composer is Not Ordinarily Used as a Word Processor
So why hasn’t Composer been extended into a word processor? I’m not sure … maybe it’s because Microsoft Word won the most mind share. Also, OpenOffice and even Abiword are rather well established. There is also NeOffice for OS X, a Java based porting of OpenOffice to OS X. In the end, I usually find these slow, huge file downloads, and buggy. Word start quickly (on Windows anyway), but I recall that the trick to this is that Microsoft keeps Word in ram at all times. This is not to say that Composer doesn’t have it’s own issues, but given the slow start-up times, and overall sluggishness and memory use of the established apps, why use not use Composer. On the other hand, a Composer shortcoming is that it misses layout capability. It’s difficult to see what is going to hard-print beforehand. Another short-coming is that it prints a pathway header, which is undesirable and unsightly. A work around is to print it from Shiira 2.0 b2 which doesn’t insert the header. The selecting of paper size and wysiwyg implementation would be all that is needed to make Composer a respectable basic word processor.

There is another reason that no one has taken up in this .html processor idea. There already is a markup based writer’s program and its been around for decades, although accompanied with a steep learning curve. It’s called LaTeX. It provides professional quality usage and results. Unfortunately, it’s limited to academia and has never won avid support among laymen. It’s also a nuisance to install, with numerous and sizable files coming from various sources with various licenses. For instance, to get a working install, you must have a front-end, but front-ends do not provide the plethora of back-ends needed for a simple run of the mill install. Another problem again is interoperability; Common programs, such as Internet browsers, do not display LaTeX files. On the other hand, I don’t think .html renders mathematical equations, as does LaTeX. But then again, most of us don’t need to display them. There are some “work arounds” for installing LaTeX on OS X. For instance there are two installers, MacTex and i-Installer, freeing you from manually installing multiple files, whose functionality is not always clear.

The fact that this article juxtaposes two opposing approaches does not escape me. Word processors format words, while LaTeX is a document processor (or are said to be document orientated). Early on, word processors differentiated themselves from text editors in that they added styling to ordinary alpha-numericals. LaTeX differs in that it deals with wysiwyg, equations, and frees the writer from formatting. Both previsouly said, concepts are not lost on me, rather an application such as Composer allows for both approaches. That is, Composer easily allows text processing, the stylisation of individual or groups of words, while CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) could allow for a document orientated take. That is, CSS could work as templates, thus freeing the writer from formatting and to simply write, perhaps implementing the template afterwards or synchronously (”as you go”) by simply plugging words into the template. As for the typical critique of .html presentation inconsistency, CSS increases uniformity. Add the cross platform universality of .html and the fact that produced files are viewable in any browser (even curses based ones), and you have a powerful writing tool. As should be obvious by now, Composer needs development to make it a word/document processor envisioned herein.

Scribus, an XML Markup Page Layout Attempt
There is a Libre program that offers the layout elements missing from Composer. It’s a page layout program called Scribus, and an OS X port is available (Scribus/Aqua). It’s fairly easy to install, just a few dependencies in addition to the Scribus program. The learning curve is not steep, just different from word processors. Last I checked, the OS X port was a little rough around the edges (slow, and key-bindings don’t always hook, so use the menus) but it’s workable (with occasional crashes). The port is sure to stabilise in the future as work progresses and a native Intel port is eventually released. Even so, the problems are OS X specific (it flies on Gnu-Linux, though). It produces its own XML based .sla file format, without self-contained images contained (keep image pathways constant). As you might already have deduced, .sla documents are not viewable with most other programs, but Scribus can convert to universal .pdf and .eps files (among others) with great resolution (what are undoubtedly larger than .html files). Setting aside file size issues, I still prefer the .html approach because it’s easier to edit .html files than it is to edit .pdf or .eps files. Afaik, you can’t render images remotely with .sla as you can with .html, either.

Other .html Word Processor Attempts
There are/have been a few attempts at a .html word processor, although not with Composer. FLWriter fits the bill, EZ editor does as well (it also does equations), and GWP (GNOME Word Processor) may have had similar aspirations (hard to tell as their site is really slow, check GNOME for source). Afaik, only FLWriter is currently under development, and in alpha stage. Thus, Composer –being that it is mature– would seem to be the natural candidate onto which add page layout capability –to create a useful word/document processor– for a dual purpose word and document orientated processor. Most of it is already written.

Maurice Cepeda

This is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License. All brands mentioned are properties of their respective owners. By reading this article, the reader forgoes any accountability of the writer. The reading of this article implies acceptance of the above stipulations. The author requires attribution –by full name and URL– and notification of republications.

EZ Editor
http://www.hps.com/~tpg/toolbox/auis.php
http://www.hps.com/~tpg/toolbox/auis/
http://www.hps.com/~tpg/toolbox/auis/ez-wp/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/atk-ftp/web/andrew-home.html

GWP (previously XWord)
http://www.hungry.com/old-hungry/products/gwp/

Scribus/Aqua
http://www.scribus.net/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=3

SeaMonkey (contains Composer)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

FLWriter
http://www.whoow.org/people/Jean-Marc.Lienher/xd640.html

On LaTeX:
LaTex OS X Installers
http://ii2.sourceforge.net/
http://tug.org/mactex/

LaTeX Orientation
http://www.physics.brown.edu/physics/userpages/students/Michael_Abbott/stuff05/mctex.htm
http://www.tug.org/mactex/fonts/fonttutorial-current.html
http://latex.yauh.de/index_en.html

LaTeX Front-ends
http://www.uoregon.edu/%7Ekoch/texshop/texshop.html
http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/download.html

Other LaTeX Info or Implementations
http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/Mac#toc1

Lesser Known SeaMonkey Key-bindings

There’s a few key-bindings (short cuts) in SeaMonkey of which I wasn’t aware and wanted to list. I accidentally “discovered” some, this lead to some experimentation and finding others.

Suiterunner has Landed

The next generation SeaMonkey has landed! “On 29th May 2007, Robert landed the patch that saw “suiterunner” [this version of SeaMonkey] become active on the trunk. This means that developers can now fully focus their attention on the toolkit based SeaMonkey rather than having to additionally maintain the old xpfe based SeaMonkey.

We can now work towards a 2.0 release with a much more supportable code base.

Nightly builds are available for testing, note however that at this stage they are recommended for testing only.”

Why is this a big deal?

On SeaMonkey Dictionaries

Just a few tips on SeaMonkey 1.1.2 regarding dictionaries, mainly their extraction, installation, and the editing of user added words. This HOWTO is geared towards OS X.

Decompress .rar Files on OS X “for Free”

Update (Nov. 2, 2007):
There is now a UI GPL utility for OS X that not only opens .rar files but also those pesky Stuffit files for which you thought you had to go through an intense sign-up (to download Stuffit). It’s called Unarchiver and it’s apparently “completely” Libre, unlike some of the questionably licensed apps mentioned below. Unarchiver will also save you from installing MacPorts or Fink, a little tedious if you’re just installing it for the one app..

I was asked to translate some movie subtitles from English to Spanish. The files came in .rar format contained within emails. I scoured the net for Libre (GPL or the like) .rar decompresser applications, and I didn’t see much.

I messed around with a few applications, but nothing worked. Some back-end command line programs exist, but I can’t –from their web-pages– make out their licenses, as with WinRAR OS X’s version. Other apps with front and back-ends do exist but for the life of me, I can’t make out their licenses either (UnRarX, and MacPAR deLuxe come to mind). I tried both the back-end named p7zip [dead link], made to work with the front-end called ez 7z [dead link] –to no avail on my Intel Tiger (OS X) install.

[You can now get both p7zip and ez 7 at <http://os.cqu.edu.au/macosx/misc/> or at <http://p7zip.sourceforge.net/> and <http://osx.iusethis.com/app/ez7z> consecutively.]

Looking around I found out that MacPorts has unrar. So I installed unrar with,

Backup Gnu-Linux-PPC to OS X

I wanted to make a clean install of Ubuntu-PPC. Rather than burning everything to CDs, and since I have a dual-boot (OS X just for backup purposes), I reasoned that I could copy my Ubuntu account contents straight into OS X, reinstall Ubuntu onto the Ubuntu partitions, then copy my Gnu-Linux account contents back in.

Change Scribus/Aqua Language Setting

Upon installing a new version of my favourite page layout program (some time ago), I kept getting some persistent Nordic language setting (seems it was either Afrikaans or Dutch). Reinstalling an earlier version didn’t help because the setting stuck. Nor could I change this setting via the GUI because I can’t make out Germanic languages (other than English), thus, this low level fix. (I assume that you want English as your default language setting.)

How to Rip CSS from a .html Template

How to Rip CSS from a .html Template

In case you wanted to rip the CSS from a blog template, I’ve written the following.
This assumes that you know how to make a separate CSS work with your newly stripped .html file.

Audio/Video Conferencing with OS X & Free Software

Considering that my family is scattered across the world, my brother has been pestering me to use proprietary Skype. Considering that I like to support Free Software or at least Open Software, I looked into some Free/Open Software alternatives available to the OS X user.

There seems to be another reason to keep away form Skype, it “steals” bandwidth you paid for and, presumably, gives it to others (who haven’t paid for it). It surely does this to improve quality of service for those lacking broadband connections considering that Skype even works with dial-up connections. What a (sneaky? and) neat little trick. Because of this behaviour, it’s even illegal to use at CERN (and see here too). If you haven’t figured it out yet, because Skype is proprietary, Skype users can’t talk to industry standard SIP users or vice versa. Skype locks you in, big time.

Furthermore, Skype has been documented to access bios information and identify your individual computer (and here and here too). Hmm, there’s a name for this type of software … evens so, their website claims “No Spyware … Malware”. I’m trashing Skype for good despite that they reportedly removed such capability (attributed to EasyBits) and never benefited from the collection of said information. I haven’t found information to assess how EasyBits might have benefited, and Skype has not apologized.

UPDATE:
August 26, 2007
I’m not given to conspiracy theories but Jabari Zakiya theorizes that the Skype network has been compromised by American government surveillance. What allows this possibility is that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has passed into law. Worth a read, anyway. If you’re the paranoid sort that doesn’t appreciate being stalked by the American government, get yourself up and running with one of the apps below and install the ZFone plug-in.

Network a USB Printer with OS X

Considering D-Link’s failure to provide OS X support on networking printers with their DI-534UP router (their manual lacks the info.), I struggled to network a HP PSC 1610 All-In-One with a D-Link DI-524UP router. I’m glad to write that I was successful.

Googling didn’t help, seems there aren’t a lot of articles on how to network a printer with OS X (Tiger [what I'm running] or any other version). Perhaps most OS X users are only too happy to use the Airport Extreme Base Station (an expensive router for dummies), or whatever the almighty Jobs tells them they should buy.

Anyway, I got my set-up working just fine with a little elbow grease. The keys to making it work is knowing the router’s private IP, the printer’s queue name, and using LPD (not IPP, nor HP Jet Direct-Socket). You can do the same in eight easy steps. Do so at your own discretion.

Multizilla & OS X SeaMonkey Port Problems

I’ve been having some problems with Multizilla. So I sent an email to their mailing list and got two responses. Michael Vicent does not run OS X, so he can’t test it but is open to me reporting the problems so he can tackle them.

The following are OS X related. Most (all?) of them do not show up on other platforms.

Reopen Closed Tabs in SeaMonkey

This concerns “my” fix for Mulitzilla v.1.8.3.0a’s bug that breaks resurrection of deleted tabs. This bug was mentioned in my previous article “Make SeaMonkey 1.1.1 Usable“.

According to <http://bugzilla.mozdev.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16942>, contrl-z does not bring up closed/deleted tabs. There is a solution therein, but I wasn’t able to apply it. The fix requires the creation of a preference in about:config. I created the preference but inserting the code didn’t fair well (because you have to manually edit the file).

Inconsistent Character Encoding Problems

I’ve been wrecking my head trying to get some web-pages I authored to display tildes (“´”) and “ñ”s. It seems that every mention I googled suggests changing the following line,

  <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#web>
<http://www.interaktonline.com/Products/Dreamweaver-Extensions/MXRSSReader-Writer/Product-Forum/Details/121651/RSS+Reader+spanish+char+encoding+problem.html>

where UTF-8 supports Spanish characters. The problem is that it didn’t for me on OS X (Tiger) and Firefox 2 or SeaMonkey 1.1.1, although the same document renders with IE on Windows (XP?). On the other hand, ISO-Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) and ISO-8859-3 (southern European) works for my OS X setup but does not render well with IE on Windows.

Make SeaMonkey 1.1.1 Usable

I wanted to write an updated article of my endeavours to make SeaMonkey 1.1.1 compliant to my daily computer needs. SeaMonkey –not only should cover new ground, if only in a new fashion but– needs to replace or offer alternative functionality idiosyncratic to that of Firefox, if only in the way of commonly used extensions.

As mentioned in on a previous article of mine, some Firefox extensions listed at the SeaMonkey add-ons site fail to install or function properly. Moreover, the site’s search utility fails to find particular extensions while a manual search does not. For instance, searching for “Sage” (or “sage” for that matter) fails, yet it is listed under Recommended Add-ons. This sort of inefficiency needs to be pruned, if SeaMonkey is to gain user confidence –let alone be given a fair chance to become a viable and competitive browser.

Back to the point of how to make SeaMonkey viable. One approach would be to build upon (accentuate) SeaMonkey’s attributes. The other approach is to replace missing elements.

Broadcom Email 2-Airport Extreme

Concerning Releasing Airport Extreme Source Code

This is the second set of my email dialogs with Broadcom concerning Free Software support (or lack thereof) for hardware they produced. I’ll let you decide if they are unco-operative. In the interest of keeping the correspondence in as pristine condition as possible, I’ve left them in WinTel email form, or lack of form. I’ve added a few editorial comments in red.

Maurice,

Broadcom is in the process of reviewing our linux support policy. As it stands now there are solutions on the market for linux users to use Broadcom equipment [Really? What viable alternatives are there? Read below for one that might have been viable if the manufacturers had complied with GPL obligations.]. And we do comply with all open-source regs [Well then release the source.]. However, to get open-source code you will have to go to the manufacture of the product [Don't you make the Airport Extreme chipset?]. I’m sorry I am not familiar with the Apple product specifically, but I know that Linksys has post source for their Broadcom base wireless router [Are you suggesting that they passed the buck to yourselves or are you passing it to them? Regardless, here is an admittance that the Airport Extreme is based on Free Source code. It presumably refers to the Linksys WRT54G, which used Free Source code as per <http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0309.3/0904.html>; The article mentioned details how Linksys has NOT complied with G.P.L. obligations and withholds static kernel module source code. This lack of co-operation has hindered the Free Source development of the code, and corresponding hardware support. To add to this fiasco, the creator of Snort alleges that the Broadcom 4300 series wireless nic violates his program because,

Broadcom Email 1-Airport Extreme

Concerning Releasing Airport Extreme Source Code …

This is the first set of my email dialogs with Broadcom concerning Free Software support (or lack thereof) for hardware they produced. I’ll let you decide if they are unco-operative. In the interest of keeping the correspondence in as pristine condition as possible, I’ve left them in WinTel email form, or lack of form. I’ve added a few editorial comments in red.

Early 2004 iBook Review

I seem to recall Apple advertising that the plastic that composes my iBook’s case was shatter resistant space age technology. Well for something so advanced, it scratches like hell. Even my case scratches it. I gather this serves as motivation to purchase over priced “official” cases and sleeves. Upon plugging in my earphones, I noticed the female receptor cover popped out; This required the the motherboard to be replaced. At about the same time I noticed the screen bezel had a bubble. I was told that the screen “might” have to be replaced. I waited sometime and finally the L.C.D. screen arrived, but broken.

Scribus/Aqua Templates

June 17, 2006
I promised a friend to help her with a pamphlet for her grandfather’s restaurant. I noticed that the default Scribus/Aqua came with few templates, but I found two template files searching through the Scribus site. One is called scribus-temp-all-1.2.1.tar.bz2 and the other, scribus-temp-all-1.2.tar.bz2. [Tiger's de-compressor (BOMArchiveHelper) doesn't open the file. Use OpenUp.]

Manually Open Compressed Files

Update (Nov. 4, 2007):
From another post of mine, “There is now a UI GPL utility for OS X that not only opens .rar files but also those pesky Stuffit files for which you thought you had to go through an intense sign-up (to download Stuffit). It’s called Unarchiver¹ and it’s apparently “completely” Libre”.
<http://mauroandres.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/decompress-rar-files-on-os-x-for-free/²>

The following instructions work for various extensions such as ¨.tgz¨ and I believe ¨.tar.gz¨.

Mount OS X on the Fly

While OS X is mounted, you’ll be able to drag files from Ubuntu to Panther (OS X) and vice versa to the ‘Shared’ OS X folder (/home/USER/macOSX/Users/Shared). Other recommendations have you mount OS X under /mnt/ (in gnu-linux), but I find permissions problems with this that do not even allow access to the Shared folder.

Buss Cards with GPL Apps

May 25, 2006.
This set of instructions are from an early set attempting to use OO and even Mozilla’s Composer to create ready to print business card images in the .pdf format. Eventually I settled for Scribus to compensate Inkscape’s limitations (which I like very much anyway).

Burn Bootable CD

This guide applies to the OS X port of X-CD-Roast (as well any ported to Gnu-Linux. Burning CDs with GNOME’s built in burning facility is easy (nautilus-cd-burner). (But it’s missing a few features with the release of Hoary, burning music being the most obvious.)

What prompted me to write this is that the Panther 10.3.9 Disk Utility still has problems making bootable CDs; It chokes with Ubuntu-PPC .isos. I sent off a bug report to Apple (as I’m sure I have on other occasions too) but I gather they’re too busy fighting off Tiger bugs at the moment, and are probably not interested in enabling their software to burn Gnu-Linux installer CDs. (UPDATE: Tiger was released seemingly months ago and Disk Utility still crashes.)

For those of you who don’t want to pay for Tiger only to get a fix that Apple should have fixed long ago in Panther, considering you expect to get fully operational utilities with OS X, you’ll benefit from X-CD-Roast. This is an intro into powerful software that is just as great as payware app, and it’ll decrease your dependency on proprietary apps and their pushers.

Although, I find it terse, and the manual confusing for burning bootables, it seems a fully fledged counter-point to Toast payware (last time I checked) or the Roxio’s “windoze” equivalent. Just ripping music and making back-ups seems more straight forward, so I’ll not touch that subject. This document concerns itself with burning bootable isos. Technically X-CD-Roast is alpha, but I have never had problems of any sort, nor have I read of any. It seems the developers have very high standards.

Extending SeaMonkey

I recently built my own compiled version of SeaMonkey 1.1.1. I find it less buggy than Firefox 2 and faster too, especially after tweaking (see my article on Mozilla tweaks; As I write this I’m noticing that SeaMonkey accesses wordpress.com seamlessly, smoothly, and efficiently).

I love the Address Book and Mail integration. These too work speedier (for me) than their standalone counterparts on MacTel Tiger. I also happen to like the fact that the Mail, Address Book, and Chatzilla are all available from the bottom of the window via small icons that do not take much room (if you don’t recall key bindings). I like how one can go into off-line mode (something Safari integrated as of late, I believe) by simply clicking on plug-in icon at the bottom right, the Top and Up features on Site Navigation Bar. This avoids wandering through menus in a half-blind fashion.

I like that sidebar searches allows Sherlock-like search results which can be opened in a new tab by command clicking on title on the bottom half of the screen (although enabling the same from the top search results–without resorting to the bottom– would be better). These searches also allow pagination (although only using one search engine and with Google at that, AFAIK). Sherlock-like searches could also be improved by allowing independent searches from window to window, and perhaps from window to tab.

There are some difficulties integrating these search modes with the new A9, and AskJeeves is slow as of late but SeaMonkey is really starting to shine as an unpolished gem.

Even so, I started to miss some of the add-on functionality of Firefox, so I installed a few SeaMonkey compatible extensions.

Zorra Veloz, a Firefox 2 Based Browser

On account of being dissatisfied with OS X browsers, I decided to hack out my own compilation of Firefox 2.0.0.3 for my Intel based MacBook Pro (what I call my MacTel). After spending the better of a day reading seemingly about 20 Mozilla pages, seriously, I got some working builds.

I was surprised to see that a few nagging problems that the official Mozilla builds have disappeared.

Building KompoZer for MacTel

Well after succesfully building BonEcho (Firefox 2) on my MacBook, I decided to give building KompoZer a try. Why? I always thought that KompoZer felt very porty rather than native. This seems to have worsened somewhat with Rosetta and the fact that both Nvu and KompoZer effectively are dead

Hot Rodding Firefox & Other Mozilla Based Browsers

UPDATE: Some settings were again updated (on Aug. 21, 09). They turned out to be too conservative and changing them has proved to be fruitful.

ie.,
network.http.max-connections-per-server
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
network.http.max-connections

I also threw in network.http.request.max-start-delay and a “Further Fine Tuning Front-end Behaviour” section.

This is really my (updated, as in now organized!) personal check list and guide to fine tuning the Firefox, Flock, & Iceweasel browsers for speed and a pleasurable surfing experience. [It could still use some editing to make it
readable by the public, but that wasn't its purpose. It was meant as a personal check-list, and if others can make sense of it ... well that would be all good but secondary. By secondary I mean computer geeks. Non-computer geeks are on
their own.] If you’re looking for a hold-your-hand guide, read Serdar Yegulalp’s well written article titled Hacking Firefox: The secrets of about:config [1] [1] [1]¹¹¹.

Yes, now there’s an extension (somewhere) that does this sort of thing but I doubt it does it all. Plus, you lose control and, some might say, responsibility over your own “hacking” (ie., What if the installed extension doesn’t work? [and --worse-- you don't notice]). You would also miss out on the fun of hacking things on your own.

This list might be extensive –but you do not need to implement it all –depending on your needs and/or likes. I hope others find this helpful, as I have.

I’ve taken care to quote and give credit to sources.

Personal comments are done within “[]” brackets and are somewhat anecdotal.

So without further adieu, here is my compiled list of Firefox/IceWeasel/Flock tweaks.

Adding extensions to Flock

Seeing that there is not a lot of movement in Flock’s extension page, I was thought about how one might add one’s favourite extensions. Firefox’s Add-on page, as extensions seem to be called now, lists the odd Flock compatible extension.

Testing Flock 0.7.99 Trunk

While constantly getting frustrated at how Firefox 2 crashes on Tiger, I was hoping for a new update to the Flock 0.7.10.1release. Well I got bored of waiting around, so I looked around to find a nightly build and finally I found one at

Firefox vs. SeaMonkey vs. Flock

Hey,
I’m just here trying to decide whether to stay with Firefox. (The following was tested on a MacIntel running Tiger OS X.)