Digested

Paper paper everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:47:00 +0000

I have an itch. I need to get hundreds of pieces of paper to my bookkeeper who happens to be on the other side of the country. And as usual, when poking an itch things happen in interesting ways, opening up possibilities. So start with Python, PyQt and the KDE python bindings. The plan was to write some kind of bulk scanning application, with the ability to annotate notes to the scans, bundle them up in a pdf, and send them off by email. Some issues that I ran across. The python-imaging-scan module is quite flakey. Repeated scans would lead to crashes. I encapsulated it within a subprocess, which seems to prevent bringing the whole application down, and somehow allows it to do it's thing each time reasonably reliably. Still has issues however. The python-keyring-kde works nicely. Very simple to use, and it works. I use it to keep the password needed to login to send emails. The python-imaging is very nice. I clip the images to remove whitespace around it, and it is very easy. To create a QImage is trivial using the QtImage module. The reportlab pdf creation module is very nice. Once you get your mind around the structure, which is much easier than the documentation seems to portray, it is very easy to create a simple pdf. The code is at code.google.com. There are doubtless many bugs, and I have only done testing with the scanner that I have.

I now have a few hundred pdfs containing all kinds of interesting information. They are mostly structured documents, ie. invoices. Now to figure out some way of parsing and categorizing the data so that I can use it in some way.

Truth in Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:39:00 +0000

Jasper's blog (and the seeming tenor of planetkde today) seems negative. It isn't. It is the truth. The Linux desktop is, for all it's advances and neat stuff, pretty limited.

There are a few reasons for this. Starting from the premise that it, for the most part, is written by individuals or groups to scratch a specific itch:

Major parts of the infrastructure are either missing, old and outdated, or unstable.

The process of filling the gaps and getting things working has required throwing away quite a bit of stuff, requiring updates elsewhere in the stack. Which consumes resources and creates instability and raises the cost of entry.

The amount of basic infrastructural work required to write even a modestly ambitious application limits the field to the devoted and few.

Throw in the tendency for distributions to attempt to differentiate themselves by infrastructure projects that try to solve a problem, but end up being either chronically unfinished, poorly thought out because of lack of communication, and many times eclipsed by smaller projects that work well, are well maintained but refused entry by the NIH syndrome.

And because the whole thing is necessarily in flux, the cost of entry and cost of maintainership rises.

Have no fear. It will get worse before it gets better. By the time the Xorg guys are done, and the kernel guys get a file system and scheduler that works for the desktop, and all the *Kit stuff gets finished, we will have something great. In the meantime, a mess.

What all this means is that we will have new media players every week. We don't have users that require the broad range of applications and functionality, some of which will write that stuff if the basics were there because the functionality isn't quite there yet. Linux and desktop will always be a developers platform, and as the basics get sorted out, people needing specific function for vertical or specialized requirements will flock to it. For the simple reason that it is cheap and easy.

It isn't easy now. But it is getting closer. Stuff like akonadi is amazing, opening up possibilities that the pim guys haven't imagined, and making basic function easy for developers. PyQt is simply awesome as a RAD environment. The stuff I'm doing with it makes me wonder why I would ever use C++ again. Fast and stable. The nepomuk stuff is cool, and we are going to see very neat things come out of it. Not some Nepomuk Application, but making it easy for developers to sort and index and connect their data opens possibilities that otherwise would take too many resources to write.

As for attracting and expecting commercial ports of applications to Linux, we might as well wait for the moon. It won't happen. The only way we would get a stable Skype on linux is if someone wrote one. The commercial houses have no interest in doing anything but token support of linux to check some boxes for someone. And they will never fit in with our very nice packaging and updating systems. As it always has been, if we want something good, we have to write it.

I still believe in a rich and thick desktop computer. Web based applications take me back to edlin except with colors and pictures. Serious handheld applications remind me of a time at my local credit union, oh 25 years ago, watching a woman enter information into a dbase table. She typed in a bit of stuff, hit enter, and waited a while for the data to be transfered to floppy I think. When I say serious I means something I can do business with, not texting or even email. The desktop allows a rich experience, and with quad cores, 2 terabyte drives for cheap and low cost seemingly unlimited memory, the possibilities are endless. And we will write them.

Oh, and finally. The stable, well finished and usable desktops from Apple and Microsoft are as good as they are because a bunch of guys in their basements, in their spare time made fools of them. OS9, Windows95, even NT as a server were pretty bad. They were forced to improve their wares, their processes by free software nipping at their heels. That is something we can all be very proud of.

Release

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:19:00 +0000

I've packaged up a tarball to make a first release of idfeditor, an application to create and edit the configuration files for Energy Plus building simulation. It can be found at code.google.com/p/energyplus-frontend. The first release is very basic allowing editing of most elements of the configuration file.

Next is to simplify viewing and editing the building geometry. Energy Plus has a few different ways to represent the information. One way is vertices, with a building element made up of a series of 3d points. The points can be relative to a building basepoint, or zone, the points can be clockwise, counter clockwise, starting at any of the four corners, etc. Or there is another way which has azimuth or facing angle, tilt, origin, length, width. Again from origin. It is quite flexible, meaning quite complicated and error prone.

Right now I'm working on translating the various input types into xyz space, something suitable to transforming, rotating and such. The first goal is to get the code to the point where it reads and writes the data reliably with all the defined input types. The math is fun. I vaguely remember learning all this stuff in school, and have the horrifying memory of doing the calculations on a slide rule. I can't honestly say that it is coming back, that would assume there was some memory remaining. It is all pretty basic vector geometry.

Almost ready to release

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:30:00 +0000

Almost ready for the first release of Energy Plus frontend, idfeditor. code.google.com/p/energyplus-frontend. The link lists the features that are done. I'm in the process of testing by building and editing a simulation, and am finding the odd thing that needs fixing. There are many things I want to do to make creating a simulation easier, but they will have to come in future versions. Anyone who wants to test can checkout the svn tree and run "python idfeditor.py".

One issue that I'm not sure about is regular crashes when calling QFileDialog. It doesn't crash each time it is called, but seemingly random. The traceback shows a call to free() in Qt. The PyQt folks may have some ideas, but has anyone else run into this? I'm not sure if it my Arch Linux setup which is somewhat bleeding edge.

Phantom Pain and Python

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:15:00 +0000

Been rereading The Brain that Changes Itself (link). A friend had a severe injury a number of years ago, lost two limbs. He experiences phantom pain, where the missing limb hurts or itches. Quite common for amputees. A neurologist figured out a mirror box, where for example if you have one hand amputated, you put the good hand in this box, and you see the mirror image in another compartment. The patient is told to imagine putting his phantom hand in the other compartment.

The movement of the good hand is reflected, and the brain sees the mirror image and gets the impression that the missing hand is moving. People would find the pain and odd feelings from the missing hand go away. About half of the patients treated in this way improved.

The gentleman who figured this out, V. S. Ramachandran says to his students "when you go to meetings, see what direction everyone is headed, so you can go in the opposite direction. Don't polish the brass on the bandwagon". He describes pain as "an opinion on the organism's state of health rather than a mere reflexive response to injury". Out of these insights come therapies that help in dramatic ways.

The energy plus frontend is progressing. I wrote a script that reads the class definition and generates python classes representing all the elements that make up a building simulation. Right now I'm working on models that encapsulate the data for the variety of views that are needed. Andreas Gerber, who teaches building technologies, has contributed code for writing out the definition data from the classes.

Rapid Application Development

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:49:00 +0000

An itch showed up, I needed (wanted) a simple, or so I thought, application to edit or create a definition file for the Energy Plus building simulation suite. Energy Plus is a US department of energy sponsored project. You need to define the building quite specifically. There are applications available for windows, or for purchase. So I decided that the best way to learn the rather complex structure was to write some code to fool with it.

I started with Ruby, but when I needed some gui stuff, found the bindings not up to date. PyQt is up to date and well supported, so I started writing. First was to parse the definition dictionary provided in the suite to build python classes representing each needed description. The classes would know how to read, write, edit and draw the particular element. Or would once I wrote it. Then read some example definition files, and work on the edit code. So far, so good. There is still a ways to go, but I'm seriously impressed how quickly one can bang out a working application for a specific purpose. This isn't trivial; the definition files are complex, long and involved. I have some widgets to write, some careful parsing through the results to check for accuracy, and some code to draw a few elements onto a graphics scene to represent the building outline. I suspect another 40 or so hours on top of the 40 or so I have into it already to get something useful.

Very impressed so far. PyQt is well documented and works, python works well and is reasonably quick. Qt is of course very nice to work with. It is so quick to build something useful.

The project is at http://code.google.com/p/energyplus-frontend. You need python, and pyqt. And the energy plus suite mentioned above, which is free. Get both the linux and windows one, it runs in wine. The windows package has the dictionary files required to build the classes. I'm working with the v3.1 stuff, and eventually may test with earlier versions.

The prerequisite screenshot. Note the empty space in the middle. A graphics scene ready for one's imagination.

Qt and Community

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:02:00 +0000

The opening of the Qt repository is potentially the most important move Nokia has made.

Jeff Jarvis documents the decline of print media and explores strategies that could be adopted to keep in business. He describes an attempt to build a news product with community involvement, attempting to use the community. He probably inadvertently describes some of the attempts to leverage free software developers. It only works if people are building something for themselves.

Nokia is building something for themselves, and opening the repository (and adjusting the license) so that developers can build something for themselves.

One might add that having developers by definition as users of the library makes it more likely that valuable contribution will happen. End user applications face a bigger hurdle in eliciting contribution.

I have an article in lwn.net this week regarding the Qt announcements.

Nortel Bankrupt, My Fault

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:08:00 +0000

Nortel, a venerable manufacturer of telecommunications equipment has filed for bankruptcy protection. Their last gasp was the tech boom of the 90's, but since then they have been shrinking. The market they sold into has changed, and they didn't.

Why is that my fault? Simple. My daughter is in Scotland, so I explored the various alternatives to be able to call. Cheap was the goal, with the expenses paid on my end preferably. So I set up a voip account with a UK provider, purchased a local number in the city where she resides. It costs me around $8 a month. I dusted off an old laptop that was sitting idle, installed Asterisk and got it working. I purchased a product from Nortel's arch nemesis Cisco, who sells a Linksys phone/voip adapter. She calls the local number with her cell phone on the weekends when it is free. The phone rings here and we talk as long as her free minutes allow.

All for $8 a month. For 4-6 hours of chat.

That is why I feel personally responsible for the bankruptcy of Nortel. I don't feel bad or guilty. Just responsible.

Qt LGPL

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Big news. I actually liked the GPL since it forced 'payment' of some kind. But there is no denying that the license conditions of Qt have limited it's adoption. Those barriers are gone.

The one thing that was problematic with the old arrangement was the insistence on ownership (with rare exceptions) of the code within Qt. If there was a bug, the solution was to maintain a parallel tree and/or wait for Trolltech to fix it. To quote from Ars Technica:

An inclusive and transparent development model

In addition to adopting the LGPL license for Qt, Nokia will also be completely changing Qt's development model to make it more inclusive and transparent. The source code will be moved to a publicly-accessible Git repository so that the latest changes will always be visible. The use of Git, a distributed version control system, will make it easier for third-party developers to participate directly in the process of improving Qt. To further reduce the barrier to participation, Nokia plans to accept code from contributors without requiring copyright assignment.

That is a very positive change. And probably bigger news than the license change.

Looking At the Gift Horse's Teeth

Multi-national corporations don't give things away. So what is the deal here? Nokia seems to be trying to gain developer mindshare. They are in a multi way fiercely competitive market in phones; Apple, now Google, the Microsoft platform, Palm is back in the game, RIM, etc. The base phone market is pure commodity. But if you had a very nice smart phone with a very large developer community that is cross platform, cross capability, cross everything, there is potential.

This is up against Microsoft, with an solid toolchain and product offering. But it is closed and expensive. Google, with an open and free platform developed in the dark. Google is great with free software, but does it the typical way, periodic free code dumps. Control rears it's ugly head. RIM has a totally closed stack and offering and has the benefit of first to market, actually having defined a market segment. Apple with very tight control of not only the platform but what runs on it. Nice, expensive, boutique, but ultimately limiting.

So Nokia comes tearing into the corner like Esa Tikkanen, attempting to change the game. An excellent toolkit with a large and vocal and enthusiastic user base. A license change that will only increase the size of that base, potentially changing KDE and Qt from an outlier in the free software stack to a central part. Throw in the freeware and shareware potential for other platforms. And much of what is written potentially available for a smart phone. With some work of course. The platform potential gets defined in large ways by the numerous users and developers. And by the way, I've got some hardware that you'll like for sale. Think of the implications. I enjoy free software for the ability to customize my work environment. Not wallpapers and sounds, but the whole application and workspace. I want a portable device that would allow me to do that. Not 'allow', but by design encourage.

If you look at the offerings now, they each have a small well defined market to cater to. Rim with the connected. IPhone with the fashionable. I have no use for either, and haven't bought them. My needs will not be met by someone looking for market share. They will be met by ideas implemented by people with similar needs. All we need is a platform to build it on. It seems that Nokia is looking to build that platform.

As I said, very interesting. Palm had such a platform for it's time, but when the possibilities changed, their software wasn't ready for it. As long as Nokia keeps it open, lets go as much as possible, and follows while leading (as tough a challenge as it sounds). Don't do anything approaching the Apple khtml/webkit BS. Remember that people will work to no end for themselves, but will not ever work for you for free. Think hard about the difference and get it right. Produce nice compelling hardware for us to buy and build on.

We are in for an interesting ride. I'm actually excited by the portable platform again.

Look Back at 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:53:00 +0000

The big news this year is the beginning of the KDE 4 series. On January 11, 2008 KDE 4.0 was released. KDE 4.1 was released on July 29, 2008.

The first commit regarding KDE 4 happened on May 8 2005. There was a BOF session at Akademy 2004. After 3 years and 7 months the work seems only to have started. This is what I love about free software. No one in their right mind would even try something like this, but it was done. And I humbly submit, quite successfully.

I wrote last year at this time that "probably this time next year we will have a version that we can recommend to our grandmothers". My perfect skills at prognosticating have again been validated. The coming 4.2 release will be ready for grandmothers everywhere.

So we have Plasma working well, Phonon simple and working. Akonadi will wait for 4.2 along with many other neat things. Much of the infrastructure is in place, some things not quite there yet, but coming. The user experience is getting better. Not too bad for a broken development system.

Any change as large as that will engender feelings. Some wish that things had gone quicker, some don't like some decisions and directions. Flame wars are a hallowed tradition of free software, and we haven't disappointed. The community came up with Code of Conduct to keep a lid on the more damaging manifestations that we saw earlier on. But as always, code triumphs, those who did the work decided and produced, the rest spectated.

How can the large behemoths of the software industry harness the energy and ideas of free software? And the real question is how to harness it without creating or feeding a viable free desktop that could potentially put it out of business? Now we know. WebKit has made the news a number of times this year. Google released it's own browser, Chrome. It is based on WebKit. Microsoft made noises about using WebKit as browser engine. Nokia continues to use it, Qt includes it as part of their library.

A couple of thoughts. It is more evidence of the industry's fixation, unhealthy fixation with monoculture. Also, it is a marked event where the software behemoths of the industry, Apple, Microsoft, Google, become consumers of, in Doc Searls terms, building materials, instead of producers. Is Microsoft is such dire shape? And along the way every effort has been made to deny the benefits of the collaboration to the free desktop.

What interests me in the browser world is the single minded perseverance of the khtml folks, who don't want to become unpaid labor for these behemoths. And hv3, another browser with another html engine. Who in their right mind would write another html engine? The same type of folks that would write an OS, a desktop, and all the interesting and difficult pieces that make up the free software stack. You see, without this single minded determination all we would be are very low cost venture capital firms coming up with neat ideas and implementation, but no one to pay.

Nokia bought Trolltech. How this all works out remains to be seen. Trolltech and KDE had a symbiotic relationship, but how does Nokia and KDE?

Probably the slapdown of not only the year, but of the decade came about at Linux Plumbers Conference. Greg Kroah-Hartman gave the keynote address, and lambasted Canonical for it's lack of contribution upstream to the plumbing of what makes up the linux desktop. Here is the talk, here are more of Greg's comments, and for a sample of the response from the community, a post at lwn.net. Read through the comments, among the hurt feelings of Ubuntu users, there are comments from individuals who confirm what was said. So a question for us users; if a distribution can be the most successful without giving back, do we have a responsibility? If hardware vendors ignore the basic structure of free software, do we support them?

And lastly, the abundant and inexorable flow of code changes seems to have worn out our faithful chronicler, Danny Allen. What does the future hold? Will he regain his power and determination and madness?

Not A Team Player (tm)

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:55:00 +0000

Impatient and cynical. Moody. With no understanding of the realities of the software business. Obviously don't write c++ code.

All this because I dare mention that Nokia has released a beta of a tool for Qt without source code.

(checking) This is a free software community, isn't it? We actually do believe in those things still, don't we?

And yes, I do write code, have been for many years. And have worked with a number of variations of designers. Always end up yearning for a text editor. I'm funny that way, goes with moody and cynical.

And no, seriously no, I will not use, look at or try a binary development tool. Been there, done that. Life is too short. In fact, offerings of that sort are taken by my flawed personality as an insult. Especially when I'm expected to be grateful, demeaned and condescended to.

Miscellaneous

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:14:00 +0000

I'm attempting not to be grouchy. We had our first snow fall of the year; wet, sloppy and cold. Although I probably wouldn't have noticed it as much if I wasn't walking the dogs, rolling in the wet grass trying to hide from them, and sliding down hills. They had fun.

Updated the Kubuntu box at work. There is a definite disadvantage to running an svn build of KDE; you see the shortcomings of the release scheme. Konqueror doesn't work on Kubuntu, no addressbar. That issue was fixed around a month ago. Maybe I should write things down so I can complain coherently. I like Konqueror, but somehow Kubuntu has consistently conspired against it's usage. I must say that KDE4 is nice looking. The menu was fixed to require clicking on the tabs to select. Not sure that is an improvement. I dislike clicking for some reason.

Olivia, our portuguese water dog, has a simple purpose in life. Every fall when I start wearing gloves, she isn't content until she has chewed one finger off. Her single minded focus is admirable. On a similar subject, has Nokia released the source to the Qt designer marketing trinket they threw at the wall last week?

Talked to a guy who is setting up a generator for his house so he can be self sufficient. He is quite sure this whole economic mess is going to get ugly. No guns though, this is Canada. A question; How is this turmoil affecting KDE developers who are spread all over the world?

I had the distinct privilege of running windows the other day. One of our vendors has an engineering application that won't run in wine, so I had an emulated copy of windows running. My hand got sore double clicking. I think it illustrates how bad ideas get entrenched in desktop software. I'm not a poster boy for throwing out everything, but some ideas need to go by the wayside. Including some of the things we do on the free desktop. The challenge is to come up with something better, which almost always requires quantum leaps in technological advancement and capability. I'm looking forward to Nepomuk actually changing how we see the stuff on our hard drives. Very challenging, not there yet, and there will be many iterations that will suck. Fun nonetheless. Like walking dogs in the first snowfall of the year.

Solzhenitsyn, December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:19:00 +0000

One summer quite a few years ago, I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was a hot day, and I shivered due to the cold. That was how powerful this book was. A man condemned to the Soviet work camps, but the humanity and dignity that showed through. It described the prisoners working in the cold of Siberia. I then read The Oak and The Calf which describes his battle with the authorities.

You can see from the review in the New York Times that Solzhenitsyn was not loved, even by the western liberal elite. Oh, he was their hero for a time, while he represented the persecuted writers in the USSR, but he refused to believe like them. Even on his death, you can read the resentment of him and his ideas oozing from the commentary. Yet, that belligerence, refusal to submit to the common ideas and thinking of the day if he found it wrong, is what draws me to him. I'm quite sure that if I had met with him, we would have disagreed on many and substantial issues, but a man to have lived and survived, even thrived under the conditions that he did is enough. Every person who writes down all his thoughts will offend someone, and hopefully many.

It's been a while since I read the Oak and the Calf, but two things come to mind. The story is about the travails of publishing underground in the USSR, and the events that led up to him being expelled from his country. He was not afraid of the all powerful state, which made them powerless. Yes, power is based on fear, and if you are not afraid, no one can have power. Yes, they can imprison, exile, harass, make life difficult, but they cannot make you someone or something that you aren't, because you are not afraid. Interestingly, and this is borne out by other similar stories, if the state's agents act in a way to purposely intimidate you, and you don't react as they expect, they don't know what to do. Because they have no power. A lesson for life.

The second point is his disdain for the apparachik that distributed illegal copies of his works. The Samizdat became a way for the enablers of the state to get frissons of danger without much risk. The end result was that his works were unattributed, and no benefit accrued to him, but those same individuals who enabled the persecution by supporting the state apparatus got free reading. Again, no holds barred.

I haven't read any of the Gulag series, they have been on my long time reading list. I have some impetus to read them now.

It's quite simple. A man who is hated by both western liberal intellectuals and Soviet communists is worth reading. An interesting comment, again words to live by, is when asked why he didn't respond to all his critics in the west, he said that he had a book to write, and wouldn't have time to do both. He lived to 89, an age befitting his spirit and dignity.

Here are some quotes from his speech that he gave at Harvard in 1978. He purposely is taking a poke at many of the sacred cows of the west.

Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy.

Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development.

The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them.

Doesn't Quite Work (tm)

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:26:00 +0000

It started when I tried an update of Kubuntu. Using the gui, Adept I think. It borked, and crashed with some error or other. I really, really want to forget the syntax of dpkg, but this gui that Doesn't Quite Work forces me to go to the command line to first diagnose and then fix it.

Then, having the desire to set up Asterisk, I purchased a SPA3102 phone adapter, which works fine. I installed AsteriskNow in a virtual machine, VirtualBox doesn't like AsteriskNow, or visa-versa. VMWare doesn't like the updated libraries on my distro. So back to what works, QEmu. Set up bridging, and attempted to set up Asterisk to talk to the SPA3102 through the web based interface. Quickly ran into limits, forcing me into a hackery of configuration file editor. Ssh'd into the vm, fired up vim, and edited the files as required. Got it working, but the nice web based interface Doesn't Quite Work.

Must be a bad week. A couple of months ago lightning smoked my trusty WRT54G router. Replaced it with a cheap Belkin, Linux based. Works ok for wireless and the like. Asterisk and sip want multiple ports accessible to the wide world, and the router has an option to enable upnp. Everything worked fine, asterisk talked to the provider as expected. For a few hours, then registration errors would occur. I thought maybe the bridge setup, the vm, rebooted, etc. Nope. Reset the router, and everything works. For a few hours, then the same problem. Is it the router? Next is to set up IAX incoming with the provider, which seems to bypass NAT and firewall issues. Doesn't Quite Work.

And finally, since it's friday, and we got caught up on most of the emergencies, I took advantage of my neighbor who builds canoes and rents kayaks. I took a kayak out on the lake, attempting to have my dog sitting on my lap. Doesn't Quite Work. Next time, I'll use a canoe.

Too Many Projects, Currency, Google Sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:58:00 +0000

Google doesn't really suck, but when you use something as often as Google, well, it sucks sometimes. For example. If you live on the bleeding edge of things, and are having a problem with getting things to work. So you do a google search on "ati xorg 6.9.0" you get a whole listing of announcements. Great. I know it's out there, I'm using it. I want to find out if this or that works, and how to fix it. Eventually there will be search results for what I want, but by then I'll be using 7.1.0 or something. A more precise search term would help, but you need to know the words before you can search for them.

In my day job, if someone is willing to spill lots of real money, they get our attention. Free software works a bit differently. Not entirely, having $500 million or so to drop judiciously may even buy you a distribution, but I digress. For mere mortals, the currency is contribution. If someone contributes, they get attention. I can vouch for that. People read and comment on my semi-coherent rants possibly because I bought some currency by contributing.

The contribution doesn't need to be source code. How about someone collecting or linking all the current problems, fixes, development efforts on a particular piece of hardware or software that they use? I've enjoyed it when others have done that. The information is available, but spread all over the various forums and lists.

I've wondered why no one has written a regular summary of all the changes in xorg. It affects everyone, so there would be an audience.

What about a podcast or series of articles on using the KDE technologies to solve common business problems? This one has been perking in the back of my mind for a long time. Akonadi gives access to data that businesses always need. How could someone use the api's to accomplish what they need? That is one example. How about scripting workflows with KOffice? This stuff is the bread and butter of commercial desktop usage. When these types of questions are asked, solutions come forward, improving the software for everyone.

There is so much to do. Instead of wallowing in disappointment, jump in. Either work with the project, or do something on your own. KDE is today what individual contributions have made it. Oh, don't be anonymous. Building community is another word for building relationships.

YMMV

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:03:00 +0000

It seems the radeonhd driver doesn't work for everyone. Here are some links that are surprisingly difficult to find using Google.

Xorg radeonhd wiki page with many helpful links. There is a section about monitor detection issues that may help with misresolution issues. Also, for getting OpenGL working, How to setup DRI with radeonhd. Requires quite a bit of bleeding edge stuff. The urge to fiddle with xorg.conf and xorg drivers comes and passes quickly, especially if I have a reasonably working setup.

For those who are vehement that this all should be working NOW, I have a suggestion that will really help. Get yourself comfortable, close your eyes, and start humming. Hmmmmmmm. Do it as long as it takes for the video stack to stabilize. If you get the urge to flame someone, control yourself. Close your eyes. Hmmmmmmmmm. How can you expect things to improve if you don't do your part?

a thousand years
inside
a thousand years
beyond

empty
these eyes
are full.

ATI and KDE 4

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:03:00 +0000

I've got a cheap on board ATI 1200 series video. I've been using the Catalyst proprietary driver from ATI, with some success. I have become reaquainted with the hard reset button, but the free drivers have been not much better. Seeing notice of a new version that supported EXA rendering, it was time to try them again. Here is the announcement

What a nice surprise. Everything worked fine once I renamed the xorg.conf file. It detected the monitor and resolution just fine. The peripherals worked as expected. Plug and Play. Scrolling in Konqueror is quick, Dolphin is downright snappy. 2D is quite satisfactory.

When I turned on Desktop Effects using OpenGL, it didn't work at all, and I had to revert. Using XRender however, the effects are quick and tidy. I can watch a video with Dragon, which I couldn't do with the Catalyst drivers with Effects enabled. A slight problem with Dragon, it doesn't want to go full screen. I'm sure there will be other issues show up, but so far so good. I can't get the 3D Earth Model plasmoid to work, but it didn't work with Catalyst either. I may be missing something there. Xine ui doesn't work properly either, but mplayer does.

Ahh, the sweet smell of freedom. There has been enormous effort to get the video stack working, there is quite a ways to go. But how nice to experience the first fruitage of the efforts. Kudos to the ati radeon developers. And kudos to AMD for releasing specs that allow free drivers.

Oh, this was version 6.9.0 of xf86-video-ati, KDE svn version 827820.

Plasma

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:35:00 +0000

When we learn new things, our brains reorganize. This process produces feelings of confusion and frustration. I like that state, and always pursue the limits of my understanding.

Keeping the above in mind, I explored the current Plasma desktop ideas. Very interesting, in fact, not frustrating at all. I've often wanted to explore the idea of zooming in and out of various work areas, or areas of interest. Right now I have 10 windows in my panel, and often have more, depending on what I'm doing at the moment. I would love to be able to zoom in and out of tasks, leaving everything open and where I left it. OS/2 had attempted this with the Workplace Shell. You could create a folder (don't remember the terminology of the time) with links to applications or files, open the folder which opened the applications, closed the folder which closed the applications. Handy, but flawed. The api was closed of course, and to do anything mildly useful required using undocumented interfaces. And the Workplace Shell didn't show the filesystem, but had something akin to .desktop files that linked to the various real files. So if you moved the physical files, the whole thing got confused. And in practice, it was flakey. Plasma didn't make the same mistake. Nice.

So far not much new learning for me. Only questions, which will be answered in time as things get done.

If you click on the cashew thingy, one item is Zoom Out. Try it. Your desktop, not including panel, will shrink. If you left click on the checked background, you can slide it side to side, hiding your desktop. There is lots of real estate open for exploitation. Click on the cashew thingy, and another item shows up. Add Activity will create another desktop. You can add widgets to that, zoom in or out to each one. Cool.

So here comes the questions. Will applications be able to work within the plasma zooming scheme? That would be a killer. Or will applications based on the plasma api be the only ones? Then the tricky parts. This could get complex in a hurry, which I have no problem with. But how to allow a user to keep track of what is there, easily switching etc. I see that the panel we know doesn't really fit into the paradigm. What would replace it, and how? As it stands it is just starting to be useful. There is a pile of work to be done yet, and I eagerly await what is to come.

One thing for sure. My monitor is suddenly too small. And I don't feel the slightest frustration. Maybe time to delve into the plasma api. I'm sure I'll get there quickly enough.

Users vs. Developers Ad Nauseum

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:30:00 +0000

I read this comment on the Dot earlier this week. It stuck in my mind, and I wanted to share it: (link) It was written by someone called outolumo.

"Couple years back I moved to France for 11 months, didn't know the language, anyone in there, and for the first two months my only access to Internet - to keep me at least somewhat sane - was in an Internet café, where I visited about once a week or so. And besides reading my mail (which there never was too much), how did I use that time? By reading carefully about the developments of KDE4 (and 3) from the KDE Commit-Digest..."

I don't know if he was reading what I did, or what Danny does. Doesn't matter. I know that comments like this give a burst of energy.

All this discussion about users vs. developers obscures what really matters. What would move someone to write, debug, translate, draw artwork, study usability, test, file bugs, document something like KDE? LWN interviewed a kernel hacker named Peter Zijlstra and we learn what motivates him. Here is the link. I understand what he says, and feel the same excitement and pleasure in solving difficult problems.

Process or Product

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:33:00 +0000

One of my proudest moments was when I learned that someone quit their job as a result of my speaking up.

I won't bore you with the story, but what I said cut through all the messaging and managing of expectations and easing of the customer experience, helped a fine gentleman realize he was working for a bunch of snakes, and he quit.

The killer feature of free software is it's lack of artifice. Software is a product of the human mind, and since the human mind ranges from intolerably stupid and destructive to sublime beauty, software reflects those extremes. Of course, most minds and software are somewhere in between. Free software processes expose the reality, closed software tries to hide it. I mistrust software, although I have an implanted device run by software that keeps me alive and well. I know bugs exist in all software, and gleefully climb into an airplane run by software. I know I could lose all my data, but I run KDE 4 from trunk.

I would hope that one gift free software gives to humanity is a realization of the frailty of software development. For that reason, exposing the process of free software development is extremely important. But equally, the exposure of this reality imposes a discipline. Most ideas look wonderful until they are exposed to the light of day. And like all human endeavors, great ideas are usually the result of many bad ones.

The killer app of free software is the process. The products range from awful to awesome, but the process, in all it's beauty and ugliness, has challenged well financed development houses. Any attempt to protect users from the process will inevitably hurt the product. We have a saying at work that the paying customer is always right. Those who can pay, who can contribute to the process, will and do appreciate the exposed nature of the process, including the rough and tumble and the uncertainty of the development process. That rough and tumble and uncertainty and much more will come out when developers speak their minds. And tell us the neat things they are doing. And show us pictures of their kids. Why would anyone give their time to work on free software if they couldn't show off their kids?

Speaking of intolerably stupid and destructive, Mussolini said "Ruling the Italians is not difficult; it's pointless." It is not difficult to control the message. Disaggregate some bloggers, like me for example. Write a community communication manual. But why? It's pointless. In fact, it's counterproductive.

In case you're wondering, in the situation I described above, there was no need for abuse or yelling. Just a simple clear description of the truth sufficed. I talk to the gentleman nearly every week at his new employer, and the enjoyment is mutual.

Bliss

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:07:00 +0000

The KWallet icon showed up in my panel. I'm at Revision 821975. See, I'm not that hard to please.

Buyers remorse

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:59:00 +0000

That Bruce Tognazin quote I referred to reminded me of an experience I had this winter with a customer. (the names and details have been changed to protect the foolish)

Ground source heat pumps use the warmer temperature of the earth as a source of energy. They are efficient if sized and installed properly. They are also sold as "going to save us all" solutions, which leads into emotional purchase territory. Large purchases. The Canadian government gives a grant of $8000 for an installation. It isn't unusual to have people spend $25-35K on a heating system, and there was a $175K system put in not far from here.

The only problem is that many of the systems don't work. Work in the sense of saving energy, or even sometimes heating the home. They are sized to get the sale, not to solve a problem. One customer has a system that doesn't work, but the esteem given to someone enlightened enough to have such a system is worth the monstrous heating bills. I'm not joking. The system doesn't work. Many don't. But no one complains or says anything because they know they were suckered by a sales pitch, and they convince themselves that they made the enlightened choice. Even if it doesn't work.

The $175K system I referred to didn't work. At least it didn't work during the winter when it was cold. The fellow had a multimillion dollar house at 55F 12C in February. I was told by a customer that I didn't understand such systems and therefore my opinion that it didn't work was invalid.

You see, I deal with this BS all the time. Overpromise and underdeliver works only if people pay way too much money and are ashamed of telling everyone how foolish they are.

Negatives

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:20:00 +0000

Some have commented that my descriptions are negative.

I ran Dolphin on my Eeepc this morning. The experience was quite different, even satisfying. I only had 6 files and folders in my home folder. At home on my desktop with hundreds of files and folders the tool failed for me. This is not a question of user skill. I ran across this quote:

"The purpose of the icons, the purpose of the entire OS X look and feel, is to keep the customer happy during that critical period between the time of sale and the time the check clears." (Bruce Tognazin) list of interesting quotes Ask Tog, source of quote

Dolphin

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:52:00 +0000

I hate graphical file managers. Not only graphical. I hated the text mode filemanagers of yore. I feel deep comfort seeing the lonely and stark command prompt.

Using Dolphin the other day to browse through my drives, I realized why. I would dislike affixing a large magnifying glass in front of my face. Hence the command prompt. I tell it what I want to see, and it shows me.

Dolphin starts up with an incredibly cluttered interface. No, not the menus, toolbars and the like. Every addition is painstakingly decided and parsed. But the 251 Items, (88 Folders, 163 Files) show up unbidden and undesired. In the Tools menu there is a helpful Show Filter Bar selection, which brings up a text line where you can enter some kinds of filter. Forget everything you know about wildcards and the like, it doesn't work. If you type the first letter of a folder, it will list all folders and files whose name contains that letter. If you select the folder, the filter stays, and to see what is in the folder you have to clear the filter editor. Maybe I will implement T days, or if I'm particularly grouchy, Y days, only seeing the filtered files and folders with that letter included.

If only the darn thing showed up next time I ran Dolphin. Maybe if I ran the thing more than once every three weeks I could remember where to find the menu selection. Maybe if it showed up when it started I might run it more than that. But no, clutter is evil. Except in the file listing. This is where I start looking for the little X button. Did I mention that I hate graphical file managers?

But I persist. Konqueror did automatic file previews. This was one feature that overcame my apprehension of graphical file managers. Dolphin does similar. The file type is identified by an icon, and as you hover, the preview shows up in the information panel. It is a bit small, showing just not quite enough information to identify a text file for example, but adequate. Definitely a plus. Clicking on a file loads a viewer or editor as expected. I miss the embedding from Konqueror. Hovering and previewing or even getting a left menu takes a long time. The application becomes unresponsive. Hopefully it improves by release time.

Tabs are supported, but as of 819969 drag and drop between tabs doesn't work. Strange, but I think it did work at one time. Not sure.

A neat feature that I just noticed is the ability to zoom in and out. It changes the density of the view pane, increasing or decreasing the size of the icons. The small icon size messes up the + and - clickable points though.

There is no indication once you click or hover whether something is happening. That may be a kde4 issue.

As I said, I don't like graphical file managers. Dolphin has some sweet spots and if it was lightning fast, much could be endured. I'm sure that will improve in time.

Something I found in browsing my cluttered drive:

Gwenview

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Kite) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:06:00 +0000

If you are looking for a reason to move to KDE4, Gwenview is it.

I took some pictures of our dog for my wife to upload to Facebook, and to email to our daughter who is seeing the world with an Eeepc in her luggage. Our camera uses Xd memory cards, and I've got a handy Lexar JumpDrive usb dongle gizmo that reads all the card varieties that I use. I use KDE4, she is still in kde3.5. In kde4, it was a matter of mounting the drive in Dolphin, left click on the folder, run Start a Slideshow which loads Gwenview. It was easy and quick to select the pictures we wanted.

In Kde3.5.x, it was more difficult. Oh yes, there is digikam and other picture viewers. I ended up using kuickshow for speed and simplicity.

It's almost time to migrate. Everything else is coming along nicely. Gwenview is the killer app. Kudos to Aurélien Gâteau.