The GUI Dilemma

The funny part about GUI is - less is more. Well elaborating more, humans love less choices. They love customization sure, but they love choices which customize as they want it. heh. What does it really mean for any software. Simply speaking most people would like their software to be "intelligent" enough to understand their preferences and present them with a "logical" ( at least to that user ) set of choices which allows a change in the look & feel of the software. How does one achieve that ? I'm working on solving it myself. Any ideas would be welcome !

Page Saving Plugin for Firefox - Scrapbook

One thing I seriously miss in Firefox is to save a html page in its entirety as single file.

I tried spiders and downloaders. However nothing came close to the convenience of CHTML ( Compiled HTML ) made available by IE.

However my faith in humanity was restored when I encountered this great addon for Firefox - Scrapbook. Scrapbook Firefox addon page

A quick look at its features -
Major features are:

• Save Web page
• Save snippet of Web page
• Save Web site [ robot / spider ! ]
• Organize the collection in the same way as Bookmarks
• Full text search and quick filtering search of the collection
• Editing of the collected Web page
• Text/HTML edit feature resembling Opera's Notes

A little more technically scrapbook adds the "spider" feature to firefox allowing to save the pages in categories / folders with tags et al! Now if this isn't awesome I don't know what is. And since its a part of firefox it utilizes its cache to the hilt. No special / additional downloading ( except when you ask it to "follow" links on the page to a certain level. )

Now this goes waaaay beyond the capabilities of chtml. Infact its just perfect if you are a google scout like me and likes to keep notes of things all around. I love it. Give it a try and you'll never save a page like you did again !!

P.S : I have started building my scrapbook ... Now only looking to share it >)

Code posting in Blogger

If you've tried posting code in blogger, you have faced the same frustration as I have. Basically blogger munges the </br> tag so very nicely that you are left wondering what is happening. If that wasn't enough it does not offer a simple css style class to format a particular code. The situation doesn't improve if you try to use text area. The size of the text area need calculation. Not good. You have two options at this point :

1. Use SyntaxHighlighter. The downside to this - some random language would need a separate style sheet.
2. Define a body pre.code { style in the blogger template and use the <pre class="code"> in the actual source

I have defined the option 2 and the result looks as below :

 some random piece of code I want to paste. And any language !

To get the above effect you need to define two things :

1. Variable

   <Variable name="codefont" description="Blog Code posting Font"
   
               
   type="font"
   
               
   default="normal normal 110% , Monospace"
   
    value="normal normal 110% , Monospace">
   

2. The actual style definition

   body pre.code {
     margin:1em 0.8em 1em 0.8em ;
     padding:1em 1em 1em 1em;
     line-height:1.6em;
     font:$codefont;
     border:2px dotted  green;
   }
   

The downside ? You still have to use the proper html equivalents for < > . :(

This can be alleviated by doing a replace in any text editor for the < and > symbols and paste the converted html to the "Edit Html" box of blogger. You could even use txt2html if you use Linux ( Am using Ubuntu ).

Hope this helps.

Better fonts in Ubuntu with freetype auto-hinter

Alrighty ! If you felt fonts in Ubuntu looked fuzzy and not-cool, you are probably right. Because it can be changed and in all probabilities you'll like the change. I am talking of auto-hinting which is compiled into freetype ( font rendering libraries ) but not enabled by default in Ubuntu 8.04 So without any delay , here's how to enable auto-hinting in Ubuntu 8.04 - add the following lines to your .fonts.conf file in your home directory i.e /home/chet/.fonts.conf

<match target="pattern">

  <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">

   
<bool>true</bool>

  </edit>

</match>

Please note that this text should go before the </fontconfig> tag. So your sample .fonts.conf might look like below :

<fontconfig>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="rgba"></edit>

   <const>none</const>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="hinting"></edit>

   <bool>true</bool>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="hintstyle"></edit>

 
<const>hintmedium</const>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="antialias"></edit>

   <bool>true</bool>



 <match target="pattern"></match>

    <edit name="autohint"
mode="assign"></edit>

      
<bool>true</bool>



</fontconfig>

Thats it ! Log-out and log-in to experience the goodness of auto-hinter !

Installing fonts in Ubuntu, made simple, really

So tried installing fonts in linux and found nothing or obscure documents involving sudo access ? Well if you are using Ubuntu 8.04 then the situation is easily solved. you need to copy the fonts you find on web ( .ttf files ) in the /home/.fonts/ directory. Thats it. As simple ! Now when you re-login you should find the font in the the font list of your favorite application.

Waree - True type font for linux

If you haven't checked out the Waree Book font in Ubuntu 8.04 yet , then you should. Check out the image below - This shot was taken at 86 dpi on a Thinkpad T61 lcd display. Agreed they look very very similar to deja vu but believe me there's a world of difference between the two. Especially in the numbers. Waree has lean numbers. Check the shot below comparing the Waree with Deja Vu Sans :

With Waree font at 86 dpi

With Deja Vu Sans at 86 dpi

Check out how Deja vu looks fatter as compared to Waree. Some how I like the fonts esp. the numbers to be lean. :)