Actually no. Given the initial intent and final vote of the OOXML, the EC is now planning to look into the voting process itself.
A little too late now; a bit like the cops in the movies.
Even with all the clamouring, it'll take years for any allegations to be proved or falsified. By that time, OOXML would have become mainstream thus making it all moot.
Rather, the standard should be on indefinite hold till a consensus is reached by all concerned that Microsoft got the votes fair and square.
Who's going to complain about this?
Microsoft? Actually, they'd benefit as they have nothing to hide, wouldn't they?
The Open Source crowd? It's not a standard yet, till the allegations are proved either way, so they might have to wait a couple of years before they have a technical locus standi in this discussion.
That about settles it then?
*wink
All this will be apparent to those who've the "Yes Minister" series where the Minister and the Civil Services folks clash over policy.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Reading Digest mails with Gnus
One of the reasons why I use Gnus, is the ability to read mailing lists in digest form very easily.
Lots of mailing lists have the option of sending digests of all the mails sent that day, in a couple of mails (say usually under 64K) per day. This is better than having your mailbox inundated with hundreds of emails from the list. And delays the latest Virus/Bot attack too. :)
A digest mail is no different from another email, so most email clients treat it as another article or mail message. But if you open it, it's quite unappealing to read it. One huge text file, with mails separated by a newline. You'd have to scroll up to the TOC (generated from the Subject lines) to get the context and follows up in order to read. Especially on interesting mail threads, it's very irritating.
And to repeat it's all text. Imagine trying to read 64K chunks of plain text. I get around 8 in day on the sas-l list.
This is where Gnus shines. If you open the mail, Gnus opens it normally. Then hit C-d, Tada!
it's now splits the digest as individual mails showing each email by date and author. Just like you'd see any normal mail. And to boot, if you hit C-M-t, it threads the same digest to the extent possible(I mean, some mail threads can span digests, can't it?)
Hitting C-d is the only extra work involved.
This feature alone is the biggest time saver in terms of reading mailing lists for me. A quick glance at the threaded subjects of the digest and I'm ready to either read a few or simply exit the temporary buffer created.
Gnus is awesome in this regard.
Lots of mailing lists have the option of sending digests of all the mails sent that day, in a couple of mails (say usually under 64K) per day. This is better than having your mailbox inundated with hundreds of emails from the list. And delays the latest Virus/Bot attack too. :)
A digest mail is no different from another email, so most email clients treat it as another article or mail message. But if you open it, it's quite unappealing to read it. One huge text file, with mails separated by a newline. You'd have to scroll up to the TOC (generated from the Subject lines) to get the context and follows up in order to read. Especially on interesting mail threads, it's very irritating.
And to repeat it's all text. Imagine trying to read 64K chunks of plain text. I get around 8 in day on the sas-l list.
This is where Gnus shines. If you open the mail, Gnus opens it normally. Then hit C-d, Tada!
it's now splits the digest as individual mails showing each email by date and author. Just like you'd see any normal mail. And to boot, if you hit C-M-t, it threads the same digest to the extent possible(I mean, some mail threads can span digests, can't it?)
Hitting C-d is the only extra work involved.
This feature alone is the biggest time saver in terms of reading mailing lists for me. A quick glance at the threaded subjects of the digest and I'm ready to either read a few or simply exit the temporary buffer created.
Gnus is awesome in this regard.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The Impression I create with Gnus!
Sometimes I forget that Emacs is not a mainstream editor in India. And lots of folks haven't even heard of it.
Since I use Emacs for almost everything and the most common application I'm in, is Gnus, I get a lot of curious enquiries. Some are easy to divine while others are slightly weird where it's like there is a pregnant silence and you both wish the conversation had not started.
Those who examine it a little more closely ask more questions. Earlier I used to say "Gnus", now I say my "mail client" and quickly add that I prefer plain text. The question which is asked
At this point, UNIX guys nod their heads, Windows guys/Managers smile and others simply think I'm kooky.
Oh, I prefer the keyboard to the mouse, I say. It's easier to do this, that and that (vigorous hand waving by me) and getting a little animated.
See, you can do PCVS, mail, Usenet.... (swivels around to Laptop and runs through a couple of keychords)
At this point, the newbies listen on, others look at their watch, while even more others mutter some excuse, and some say "nice" and wander on.
The hapless noob is well and truly in my clutches. :-)
You know vi, I ask?
Just started learning it, he replies.
Well, don't learn it, learn Emacs, I earnestly prod him.
Of course, I'll give my copy of it, I say.
Which is the last I hear from him.
I think I'm doing a terrible disservice to the FSF GNU Emacs hackers. World domination will have to wait.
Since I use Emacs for almost everything and the most common application I'm in, is Gnus, I get a lot of curious enquiries. Some are easy to divine while others are slightly weird where it's like there is a pregnant silence and you both wish the conversation had not started.
Is that a DOS application?is the most common question. That is sort of OK, as I have white on black emacs screen and it probably is easy to mistake Emacs for a DOS application when glancing quickly(hah!)
Those who examine it a little more closely ask more questions. Earlier I used to say "Gnus", now I say my "mail client" and quickly add that I prefer plain text. The question which is asked
What is that?
At this point, UNIX guys nod their heads, Windows guys/Managers smile and others simply think I'm kooky.
Why?
Oh, I prefer the keyboard to the mouse, I say. It's easier to do this, that and that (vigorous hand waving by me) and getting a little animated.
You don't use insert mail app here?No, you see it's a part of Emacs and Emacs is..... (even more excited and fast speech)
Why?
See, you can do PCVS, mail, Usenet.... (swivels around to Laptop and runs through a couple of keychords)
At this point, the newbies listen on, others look at their watch, while even more others mutter some excuse, and some say "nice" and wander on.
The hapless noob is well and truly in my clutches. :-)
You know vi, I ask?
Just started learning it, he replies.
Well, don't learn it, learn Emacs, I earnestly prod him.
It takes about 6 months and after that it's easy I say. Faces fall; see, you'll have to unlearn CUA and relearn the Emacs way, terminology usage and all.
Is it easy?
Is it Free?
Of course, I'll give my copy of it, I say.
Which is the last I hear from him.
I think I'm doing a terrible disservice to the FSF GNU Emacs hackers. World domination will have to wait.
Making CD images and ISOs on Windows
Fortress 1.0 released
Saw this on gmane ; rekindled my memories on what this was all about. I remember the name Guy Steele and was thinking that this could turn out to be interesting language on High Performance Computing.
Check out the source page and as an emacs user, you'd be glad to know that there is also an emacs mode for it.
Will be downloading it and trying it out.
Check out the source page and as an emacs user, you'd be glad to know that there is also an emacs mode for it.
Will be downloading it and trying it out.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
OOXML and Microsoft: Getting the votes
Looks like a lot of "negotiations" have changed the outcome of the OOXML standards vote. OOXML is probably going to be voted as an ISO standard. Appears that I spoke too soon.
The next logical thing is get funding for another truly open document standard.
As Andrew Tannenbaum says, the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
If the open source waters are being muddied, muddy it a little more and move to the new standard. However long it takes. A document is one of the fundamental blocks of business transactions in an electronic world. Making it unreadable at some future date due to legal and technical reasons is clearly not in anyone's interest.
Royalty free, non discriminatory and under a standards body NOT controlled by any entity is what the target should be.
The next logical thing is get funding for another truly open document standard.
As Andrew Tannenbaum says, the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
If the open source waters are being muddied, muddy it a little more and move to the new standard. However long it takes. A document is one of the fundamental blocks of business transactions in an electronic world. Making it unreadable at some future date due to legal and technical reasons is clearly not in anyone's interest.
Royalty free, non discriminatory and under a standards body NOT controlled by any entity is what the target should be.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Wireshark 1.0 released.
For those in the security business and those learning packet sniffing, here's an official announcement of the 1.0 release. 10 years to come to that though it was waaay usable and stable before that.
Finding out which file belongs to which package in cygwin
Today, while trying to add some directories to the PATH variable in my startxwin.bat, I managed to corrupt the file.
I don't know what was wrong but the script refused to start the X server.
Well, I'll just recover the script by re-installing the package I thought.
The only problem is, I don't know which package the file belonged to! And I didn't want to re-install ALL the X packages of the X-server. That would have been the last resort, anyway.
A google search revealed that someone else had faced the same problem and cygwin had a package search which does the same thing; it can search within the packages.
I found the package and reinstalled it from the local copy on my HDD and all was well. X server started up as usual along with my customisations which I applied again.
I don't know what was wrong but the script refused to start the X server.
Well, I'll just recover the script by re-installing the package I thought.
The only problem is, I don't know which package the file belonged to! And I didn't want to re-install ALL the X packages of the X-server. That would have been the last resort, anyway.
A google search revealed that someone else had faced the same problem and cygwin had a package search which does the same thing; it can search within the packages.
I found the package and reinstalled it from the local copy on my HDD and all was well. X server started up as usual along with my customisations which I applied again.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Installing MikTeX with Emacs-22.1 and Cygwin
Since I decided to go with MikTeX, I downloaded and installed the base MikTeX package. The MikTeX install offers a net based install of additional packages that is easy to use. Install the additional packages that you'd generally use. Don't forget to refresh the FNDB to make sure that the package is registered with TeX (I think it's the equivalent of texhash.)
Open a cygwin prompt.
That will not help as the TeTeX binaries will be found before MikTeX. Change that by
assuming that you have auctex tarball untarred already. You'd need to change the paths to point to your emacs, the MiKTeX tree and where you want the installation files to go. Obviously.
The configure script generates the Makefile and the echoed messages on the screen will tell where it is picking different binaries from. Check the Makefile carefully especially the installation paths of various auctex .el files.
I have these entries in my .emacs
Note that, I'm forcing emacs too, to look in the MikTeX distribution first for the respective binaries before looking under cygwin.
Testing these on a random tex file, it generated the output pdf.
Because I had both TeTeX and MikTeX installed, I wasn't sure which binaries would be picked up. The first time I tried, the PATH variable made TeTeX binaries as the values to various configure checks. I had to set the MikTeX path first to force it to choose MikTeX. And you get messages like this
And as far as possible, install the MikTeX in folders without spaces in the names. It would make things simpler.
That is pretty much it.
Open a cygwin prompt.
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/cygdrive/c/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin:
That will not help as the TeTeX binaries will be found before MikTeX. Change that by
$ PATH=/cygdrive/c/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin:$PATH
$export PATH
$ cd c:/gnu/elisp/auctex-11.85
$ ./configure --with-emacs=c:/gnu/emacs-22.1/bin/emacs --disable-preview \
--with-texmf-dir=c:/MiKTeX-2.7/miktex/tex/ --prefix=c:/gnu/ \
--with-lispdir=c:/gnu/emacs-22.1/site-lisp/
$ make
$make install
assuming that you have auctex tarball untarred already. You'd need to change the paths to point to your emacs, the MiKTeX tree and where you want the installation files to go. Obviously.
The configure script generates the Makefile and the echoed messages on the screen will tell where it is picking different binaries from. Check the Makefile carefully especially the installation paths of various auctex .el files.
I have these entries in my .emacs
(setq exec-path (cons "C:/gnu/bin/" exec-path))
(setq exec-path (cons "c:/cygwin/usr/bin" (cons "C:/cygwin/bin" exec-path)))
(setq exec-path (cons "C:/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin" exec-path))
(setenv "PATH" (concat "C:\\MiKTeX2.7\\miktex\\bin;C:\\cygwin\\bin;C:\\cygwin\\usr\\bin;
C:\\gnu\\bin\\;" (getenv "PATH")))
;; AUC TeX
(load "auctex.el" nil t t)
(require 'tex-mik)
;; ;;; some basic customizations
(setq TeX-auto-save t)
(setq TeX-parse-self t)
(setq-default TeX-master nil)
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'turn-on-reftex) ; with AUCTeX LaTeX mode
(add-hook 'latex-mode-hook 'turn-on-reftex) ; with Emacs latex mode
(setq reftex-plug-into-AUCTeX t)
(setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
(setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
(setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
Note that, I'm forcing emacs too, to look in the MikTeX distribution first for the respective binaries before looking under cygwin.
Testing these on a random tex file, it generated the output pdf.
Because I had both TeTeX and MikTeX installed, I wasn't sure which binaries would be picked up. The first time I tried, the PATH variable made TeTeX binaries as the values to various configure checks. I had to set the MikTeX path first to force it to choose MikTeX. And you get messages like this
As you can see, there are binaries chosen from MikTeX as well as cygwin. If you have not chosen the TeTeX binaries during the cygwin install, there is a lot less to worry about. You'll have to force the configure script to find every binary it is looking for, from the MikTeX distribution.
checking for tex... /cygdrive/c/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin/tex
checking for pdftex... /cygdrive/c/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin/pdftex
checking for dvips... /cygdrive/c/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin/dvips
checking for perl... /usr/bin/perl
checking for makeinfo... /cygdrive/c/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin/makeinfo
checking for texi2html... /usr/bin/texi2html
checking for texi2dvi... /cygdrive/c/MiKTeX2.7/miktex/bin/texi2dvi
checking for texi2pdf... /usr/bin/texi2pdf
checking for install-info... /usr/bin/install-info
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
...
And as far as possible, install the MikTeX in folders without spaces in the names. It would make things simpler.
That is pretty much it.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Microsoft and OOXML revisted
When the lede to the story has the lines
and the title is one about Microsoft, you know it's not going to be good.
For both Microsoft and the public at large.
So, UK might revisit it's yes vote on the OOXML file format.
Microsoft's stand is now wobbly considering they and other vendors have been bashing Sun for not making a Java a true open standard. All approvals had to be routed through Sun and everyone cried foul. Now Microsoft is in the same situation. It seems to need the Open Source tag without losing control over the file format specifications.
That is going to be tough. Very.
It's better to be proprietary and arbitrary in your file formats than to take a stand which is viewed as fake and with suspicion. At least, while not getting good karma, you don't get bad press either.
by reiterating that it won’t sue over future versions of its file format.
and the title is one about Microsoft, you know it's not going to be good.
For both Microsoft and the public at large.
So, UK might revisit it's yes vote on the OOXML file format.
Microsoft's stand is now wobbly considering they and other vendors have been bashing Sun for not making a Java a true open standard. All approvals had to be routed through Sun and everyone cried foul. Now Microsoft is in the same situation. It seems to need the Open Source tag without losing control over the file format specifications.
That is going to be tough. Very.
It's better to be proprietary and arbitrary in your file formats than to take a stand which is viewed as fake and with suspicion. At least, while not getting good karma, you don't get bad press either.
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