Fedora user group

[Input Style] What's Over-the-spot, on-the-spot ... etc?
Last Friday I saw an ibus issue about input style support in ibus-anthy. The maintainer, Fujiwara insist that editing in the candidate window is not "over-the-spot".

Ok, time to do literature review:
According to sun and Mozilla, preedit area is INSERTED into the inputing spot in on-the-spot, the text after the input spot WILL be pushed to the right when preedit area expend; while preedit area is PUT OVER the inputing spot in over-the-spot mode, the text after the input spot WILL NOT be pushed to the right.

Reference from IBM tells different story. Over-the-spot, as the page states, is the mode that candidate window closely followed the input spot, but the preedit string is formed in candidate window.

Java also has its own definition. Below-the-spot is the term for IBM's over-the-spot.

Summary:

After the intensive web search and discussion, we conclude that we should use some thing like "Embedded preedit in client application" to avoid confusion.

Desktop Switchoff: suggestions?

As you may have read earlier, Ryan Rix and I are doing a desktop switchoff next week: he’s going to go GNOME for a week, and I’m going KDE. In order to prep up for the week (…or more, if we decide we need a longer timesample to get a good evaluation period going) of fun, it seemed prudent to ask the metabrain for thoughts on…

Help with KDE: I have never used KDE before, though I’ve had a general idea that it was around and Did Some Things Differently, though I didn’t – and still don’t – know exactly what that means. I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m in for. KDE testimonials (or complaints), guides, cool-stuff-to-try – all are extremely welcome. (Why do you use/contribute-to KDE?) I’m starting with KDE’s “An Introduction To KDE” and Bruce Byfield’s “KDE 4.2: 10 tips for getting started” article (yes, I realize 4.2 is no longer the latest version, but I’m trying to grok whatever subtle paradigm shift is needed here) and have also found some general KDE reviews to peruse.

Help with GNOME: Same questions as for KDE above. I’m actually asking this for myself (although I’m sure Ryan will find it useful too ;-). I’ve been a GNOME user for several years now, having gone from enlightenment to xfce in high school to fluxbox and then GNOME in college, largely due to… well, to be honest, laziness and the path of least resistance. But I actually have very little insight into how the GNOME community works, what GNOME is all about, why it’s awesome, things to try with it, etc. Various places on the GNOME website seem like a good resource to start with for understanding this.

A list of use cases: This is something I should be adding to as the week goes by, but I’m trying to think of a list of tasks I’d want to be able to accomplish with any desktop, so I have something to compare with. I’m not sure how one goes about building a good list like this for comparing desktops, but that list is at least a stub where I’m attempting to start. Edits welcome. I’ll take notes on what it takes to complete each task in each desktop during the week of the test (and the first week I switch back).

Ultimately, I pretty much agree with Stormy: it’s not a GNOME vs KDE thing for me, it’s about trying to understand the uniqueness – and the richness – of both projects for what they are and what they’re trying to be, and getting a better feel for what is in the land of open source desktops, and why. I sometimes (er, often) feel far less informed about the various components of the stack I run than I should be, and this is one of many attempts to rectify a portion of that – and to learn stuff while having fun. It’s an experiment! We’ll see how it pans out.

As an upside, I’m also learning how people with very little context into a piece of software and its community start hunting for clues as to what that project is all about – and yes, I’ll blog about this for Fedora Marketing as notes pop up. We do have much to learn.

PackageKit

When I first used Fedora, PackageKit didn’t exist. I had no Internet connection either. So I used a local repository that I had to configure with a lot of reading and googling. I was a newbie with no Internet connection, using one of the most difficult distros by that time. So, I managed to compile most applications which did not install by default or not contained in the media install. It was a lot of work and learning. When I finally accomplished my local repository I said “C’mon, what do I need Windows for?”

It was something I had to do every time there was a new Fedora release, until I get Internet connection using Fedora 9, and then PackageKit came. It was so dissapointing. I switched to Yumex with some relief. But then I realized that the most fastest and practical way to install your packages was yum. Simply.

Everybody was complaining about PackageKit.

And thus is how I said goodbye to PackageKit and had a big welcome for the simplest and fastest way to install in Fedora: yum.

Recently someone told me Packagekit is no more the turtle it used to be; but, sorry, I am happy installing via yum

Besides, even installing with yum I get PackageKit causing this never ending error:

$ sudo yum install compiz-fusion
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto, refresh-packagekit
Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid 9189.
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
The other application is: PackageKit
Memory : 84 M RSS (108 MB VSZ)
Started: Sun Feb 7 16:56:08 2010 - 01:00 ago
State : Uninteruptable, pid: 9189
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
The other application is: PackageKit
Memory : 84 M RSS (108 MB VSZ)
Started: Sun Feb 7 16:56:08 2010 - 01:02 ago
State : Uninteruptable, pid: 9189


This error comes when PackageKit is locked to fetch update database. It does that in the background.

Maybe some day I give it a try, though it may be just to make things easier for someone is used to install in graphical mode.

Fosdem 2010 Day 2 (End)

Back on FOSDEM 2010

La fin du FOSDEM 2010

English version

There we are, on the way back home.
These 2 days have been really nice, this event is attracting every year more and more people and covers more and more topics.

Today I have been able to attend 2 very interesting conferences. One from Richard Hughes on PackageKit one year after. It is a very good tool and the future of it, looks really nice. After that I stayed for the talk on 'Semantic Desktop' this being a technology that I have professionally interest in. The conferences covered a quick introduction to the basis of the semantic technology and format with a quick presentation of the RDF format, the second part was more applied to the implication of the semantic technology in the development of the 'Desktop Environment'. Unfortunately time was running I could not stay to this part.
I have to say that I would love to see more conference about this, but FOSDEM is probably not the best place for that. I should look for more semantic oriented conference.

Thanks to Max I am also carrying with me about 600 laptop stickers that the French NPO will be able to redistribute, thanks a lot Max !

Finally I would like to thanks all the people that made this FOSDEM such a good one, starting of course by the FOSDEM people and Frederic who organised the Fedora and JBoss participation this year again. Thanks to all the folks from Grece, Turkey, USA, The Netherlands (yes there were some, although not all were real Dutch), the German community present as ever, the French and Belgium guys who showed up but also our ambassadors from Switzerland, Hungary, Roumania, Italy (I am probably missing some, sorry about that).

I was nice to see all and I am already looking forward to see you next year.

PS: Nicu if you read this, since I could not pay you a beer today, let me know how to be sure you get one. I want the Fedora Comic back !! ;-)

Inkscape Class Day 7

Friday morning, I taught the seventh session of an 8-session (40 minutes per session) course on Inkscape at a Boston-area middle school. (For more general details about the class check out my blog post on day 1.)

Friday’s Class

Well, this Inkscape course is quickly wrapping up. One more class after this past one on Friday. The students’ work was due at the end of this class and they all did great work in prepping their designs for the printer. I handed out a sheet with the export instructions (available for download below.)

We weren’t exactly sure the best approach to gather up the files at first; Ken had set up a shared drive on the network for the students to save their work to, but on some of the Macs, Inkscape’s export bitmap dialog could not see the shared drive (and some could!) What we ended up doing:

• Have the students export their work out to the desktop – 300 dpi, PNG format.
• I asked them to use either their band name or their own name in the file so I could tell them apart.
• Then, ask them open up the appropriate network drive folder and drag both the exported file and original SVG into it from the desktop.
• I then connected to the shared drive, inspected all the files to make sure they had exported correctly (they had! If they hadn’t, I would have gone back to the students whose files had issues and tried to help them re-export them.)
• I then copied the files from the network drive onto a USB key.
• Immediately after I got back to the office, I went through the files carefully, adding the requested T-shirt size from the students’ filled-out T-shirt size sign-up sheet from day 5 of class. My naming scheme was the following format:
  

  01-studentfirstname-bandname-sizeS.png

• I then uploaded the files to a URL, both as individual files and bundled in a zip file for Walter’s convenience – then I emailed Walter the URLs.
• John called Walter from EmbroidMe Chelmsford up to make sure he had gotten the email (he hadn’t yet, so great thinking on John’s part) and Walter set out setting up the T-shirts that morning.

A few things we learned from this process I think you could take away in teaching a similar class to make it run more smoothly:

• Make sure you pass that T-shirt size signup sheet around early on, and keep bringing it back to class until every student has filled it out. Students are absent sometimes, especially in the winter cold season, and you want to make sure you’ve got each student’s size.
• We had one student absent this past Friday. We’ll get his file on the last day of class and get his T-shirt to him after the class is over. That being said, you may want to have the students save out to a shared drive throughout the class (we weren’t doing that, we were having them use their individual accounts) and in the days of class past the halfway mark of the entire course, ask the students if they are going to be there for every day, and if not would they like us to go ahead and print their files if they’re not there or to wait.
• Make it easier for your printer and put the students’ T-shirt sizes in the file name.
• Make sure you get the students’ SVGs as well as PNGs! Rendering PNGs from SVGs with a lot of blurs can take a long time! I was really surprised by this. The Whisp logo took the longest – a good 15-20 minutes to render! If you have the students’ SVG files as well and run out of time during class, it enables you to do the rendering on your own post-class to make sure the printer will get the files on time. It’s also good to have the SVGs in case you or the printer notice any issues with the PNG that might have been missed during class.
• Bundling the files into one compressed file makes it easier for them to download than individual files.
• If you’re on a tight deadline, don’t rely on email only – give your printer a call!

Many students were finished with time to spare, so they had the rest of the period to explore Inkscape on their own. They came up with some very cool sketches using the techniques they learned throughout the class:

You can see the full set of photos John took of the students’ work in the Flickr album for session 7. On Tuesday, if all goes well (fingers crossed!) we’ll hand out the T-shirts and do some fun exercises with Inkscape, so look forward to those photos.

Follow Along on Your Own

Here’s the lesson sheet we used for class on Friday:

Introduction to Inkscape Lesson 7

As always, the OpenOffice.org source files and the outlines for the entire course are at the course page on my website – but please note that’s a rough outline; as we progress through the class I’m coming up with the more-solid lesson plans based on how far the students get each session. By the end of the course I hope to have the course page organized much better.

By the way, if you’d like to follow all the blog posts about this class at one URL without getting the rest of my feed, I’ve set up a category in WordPress specifically for these posts:

http://mairin.wordpress.com/category/inkscape-class/

Enjoy! And please do let me know in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions

This course is sponsored by

Filed under: Uncategorized

Just Like Three Weeks Ago

Yesterday (2010-02-06) Benjamin and myself were again in Lech/Zürs snowboarding; just like three weeks ago. Last time (2010-01-17) Pattrick and Torsten also were able to join. This time it was only Benjamin and myself.

The weather was similar to our last visit. Mostly cloudy with a few peeks of sunshine. This time, however, we had lots of new deep powder and it was freeriding time. Extremely exhausting but great fun.

[Campus Numerique] So much events to go….

Dear *,

A new invitation to participate to a Belgian event at Charleroi , the 22th of April 2010 from 9AM to 5PM.

Ref: http://www.campusnumerique.be/
Registration : http://www.campusnumerique.be/edition-2010-du-forum-des-technologies-de-linformation-et-de-la-communication.html

BR
Frederic

[LOAD'10] Things Happens in Belgium

Dear *,

If your are system administrator, system engineer or IT Manager then it could be interesting for you to come….

Ref: http://loadays.org

BR
Frederic

[FOSDEM'11] That’s the next step.

Dear *,

Indeed, I really appreciated the talk from Gdk about Education and Open Source during the last edition of FOSDEM (‘09), so I was a little bit disappointed to not have the same kind of talk this year.

So now, the challenge will be to make it happen for FOSDEM’11.

BR
Frederic

[FOSDEM'10] JBoss Devroom exceeded our expectations.

Dear *,

An unbelievable surprise!
As it was the first time JBos.org was present at FOSDEM, we did not expect to a such success.
The result was beyond our most optimistic expectations.
See by your self on the following pictures :

First and Second talk – Falko Menge and Heiko w. Rupp -

Third and fourth talk – Mark Proctor, Sabri - From the point the room was always FULL – ( THE BET WAS WON ! Congratulation jbug ! – Belgian Jboss User Group – )

Unfortunately I had not the possibility to attend for the other talks (JBoss ESB, Yoeri Roels).

Thanks to jbug.be for helping me to make this happens – Joris, Jarom, etc..).
Thanks also to all speakers – Falko Menge, Heiko w. Rupp, Mark Proctor, Sabri Skhiri, Yoeri Roels

Rem: 30/40 attendees per session. Not so bad

BR
Frederic