Colin Charles Agenda » Software

Fonts

Colin Charles — Thu, 20 May 2010 09:11:08 +0000

I’m amazed that Helvetica, a rather beautiful font, costs USD$741. I know fonts take a lot of time to make, and generally cost a lot of money (a conversation I had with Keith Packard sometime in 2004 cemented this into my head). Recently, I read in Monocle about Japanese font-maker Morisawa and figured that fonts are truly, really expensive.

Apple ships Helvetica. But as a “dfont” package. Good thing there’s a utility called DfontSplitter (Windows and MacOSX only). It allows you to extract the font as a TTF. But legally, you might not be able to use it for Web Embedding either.

Today, I discovered Cufón (source). Its a simple web utility – upload the font, and it generates the font in a format, and then there’s a little rendering engine that pops out in JavaScript for your usage. Very handy. Now websites can have embedded fonts, and things start looking the way you designed them to look.

As an aside, I used to generate favicon’s using an image editor. Nowadays, it seems like you might as well just move to the web – one less use for desktop software – use the favicon.ico Generator.

Wikipedia available in print via PediaPress

Colin Charles — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:56:50 +0000

Over a year ago, I found out about Wikitravel Press from Jani Patokallio, at BarCampKL 2009. I was pretty excited since it was based on the open content Wikitravel, it was printed on demand, and it was updated on a regular basis. Imagine getting accurate travel guides when you were going somewhere (as opposed to a dated Lonely Planet guidebook)?

When I was young, I used to pore through a set of encyclopaedias from Grolier, that my late grandfather had purchased sometime in the ’60’s. These were wrongly disposed off, during a move, and the last time I encountered a traditional encyclopaedia, was a few months ago, albeit a digital version. For me, Wikipedia won.

Naturally, I’m excited to see that you can now get Wikipedia entries, printed in book-form now. PediaPress now offers custom books to all users. Check out the book creator on Wikipedia.

It got me thinking. Would we eventually see textbooks being printed out from Wikipedia? I took a look at some of the pre-prepared books, and found one for College Mathematics: Algebra. Its over 400 pages of dense mathematical content; about the typical size of a math textbook. Coursework preparation will be more open, and quality will be crowd-sourced.

More interesting for me, and other developers using MediaWiki? The tools for creating your own press are available at the PediaPress Open Source Repository. Therein lies a Python library for parsing the MediaWiki articles (mwlib), another library for writing the PDF documents from MediaWiki articles (mwlib.rl), and a bunch of extensions to collect MediaWiki articles and output them to PDF, XML, or even OpenDocument format (ODF).

What does that mean? If you’re using MediaWiki to create documentation, you can quite likely create a printed manual pretty darn easily. No mucking around with writing documentation in DocBook XML… you can use the friendly MediaWiki markup and syntax.

MeeGo: Quick thoughts on the Moblin and Maemo marriage

Colin Charles — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:06:01 +0000

I’ve been excited with the Maemo platform for a few years now. I after all, had the Nokia N770, their first tablet that had Maemo on it. But as soon as they released the N800, things weren’t backward compatible, and due to frustration I gave up on the platform (the devices themselves were very difficult to find). All this changed sometime in January when I walked into the Maemo Lounge of the Nokia Store in London – the Nokia N900 was impressive. But it wasn’t for sale internationally.

Last week, I found out that Nokia will sell the device in Malaysia, Singapore and probably many other regions. I also had the opportunity to use the device for a couple of hours, and while I had a bunch of suggestions, I did like it. Maemo 5 is a clear win, and there’s going to be a lot more work to make Maemo 6 rock even harder. Simply put: the N770 was relegated to sitting by my bedside table after a while, but the N900 is something I would definitely carry in my pocket.

But that’s not the big news of the day. MoSync currently supports writing mobile software, that runs on Java ME, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and Moblin platforms. If you notice, the coming soon is clearly: Android (I’m told it will appear real soon now), iPhone (a lot more difficult than you think), and Maemo. After playing with a Maemo 5 capable device last week, I was almost certain that this is a good future platform to bet on – I know, today it seems all the cool apps only run on the iPhone and the Android, with maybe the BlackBerry thrown is an afterthought, but I think Maemo will help Nokia rebuild/rebrand itself.

What better news, than to see Jim Zemlin announce to the world, that Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo projects are being embraced by the Linux Foundation, to create a new “uber-platform”, called MeeGo?

Now, to crystallise some quick thoughts on this:

When the N770 came out (and subsequently the N800, and the N810 – both devices I did not purchase), I would ask – where was the GSM chip? You create a fancy tablet, but you leave out the GSM chip. If I wanted to do voice, I’d have to use Gizmo Project (now Gizmo5, which has since been acquired by Google). Skype came later, only to the more modern devices. So, while the N900 is welcome, its been about 4 years since the first tablet was launched – what took Nokia so long to pop a GSM chip in?
The promise of Linux on the phone has been met – Google unleashed Android to the world. From the G1, to the Nexus One, and the market of folk building against their devices, like HTC, Motorola, etc. And people have been happy with it – look at the endorsement Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, gives to the Nexus One. A part of me asks – is this too little too late from Nokia?
Moblin didn’t quite excite me, and I never took a look at the platform till I became involved in MoSync. But I can see where Nokia is headed – they are providing stuff in the “one connected device” mantra, and the N900 is their first take with truly mobile computing.
From a developer’s perspective, you better be brushing up on your C++. Its quite clear that this will largely be driven by Qt. I forsee heavy investment in rich-applications provided by the Web Runtime widgets (WRT). You will also be able to build applications cross-platform (no need for a Microsoft Windows-based host, to create Symbian applications for example), and you’ll probably be creating some sort of cross-compiling development environment (Maemo has largely been ARM, Moblin is largely X86) to get apps going.
MeeGo while it has been announced, is not completely concrete yet. You can see that there are no prepared downloads, but you can whet your appetite on their architecture documentation (note: GTK/Clutter left behind just for application compatibility – I’ve been away from the Maemo community for a while, but from what I gather, Qt has become the hype du jour these days), some information on Qt Creator (which runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux), and a quick introduction to creating your first MeeGo application.
If you want to follow further resources, check out Quim Gil’s blog, as well as Ari Jaaksi’s blog. It probably wouldn’t hurt following Planet Maemo either.
If Intel, Nokia, and the Linux Foundation get their act together, and gather buy-in to create all the cross-devices, it can be really useful for application developers – its going to get more reach. I don’t see why we won’t see an iPad competitor anytime soon, for example. Imagine running the Bloomberg application on your television, on demand. The possibilities are endless as we get more connected.
Currently, while no devices support MeeGo, I expect the Maemo 6 platform to be MeeGo compatible. Will Nokia update the Maemo 5 software on the N900 for free? I hope this is true – otherwise the N900 owners aren’t going to be too happy, that they’ve got an outdated phone on their hands. Keep in perspective the leap from N770 to N800, and the OS differences (being bitten once, I’ll be just this more cautious the next time around).
From a MoSync perspective, it looks that we may already support the new MeeGo platform to some extent. Once more developer SDKs come out, we’ll be able to update the community on this. And as a developer, supporting Moblin/Maemo (MeeGo), and other platforms, can be a real win for your application.

All I can say is: exciting times ahead. I’m glad to see Nokia isn’t just supporting Symbian based devices any longer, and are moving with the times. There’s an uphill battle to build interest amongst the developer community to be developing against their platforms – only a lot of evangelism and love is going to make this happen. Today’s web services completely ignore S60, but maybe they’ll jump on Maemo or MeeGo. And maybe we at MoSync can help them too (I bet once we get Android + iPhone support, it will look a lot more compelling).

Rekindling my love for the Sony Reader PRS-505

Colin Charles — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:08:43 +0000

I wrote this before the Apple iPad announcement, so no thoughts on that yet, in this post. At the top of my head though, I’m still keeping my PRS-505, and not getting the iPad.

In May 2008, I picked up a Sony Reader PRS-505. Its an e-book reader, and in the day, was definitely the flagship device from Sony, for electronic books and PDF reading. Today, Sony still sells this, and they also have models with a touchscreen, as well as a mini-version of this (a pocket reader?). I used the device on-and-off, mostly to read PDFs, but of late, I decided to read full-length books on it, and the quick verdict is a simple win!

A bit about the device. It can be charged over USB (I did not opt to buy the AC charger), and uses a standard USB cable. It has a built-in rechargeable battery, and you’re meant to go for about 7,500 page turns. It does audio playback (which I never use), and it can read SD/MMC, as well as Memory Stick cards (again, I don’t use these options). It has over 128MB of storage available for you to store e-books, which seems plenty (failing which, the external storage options can be utilised). It looks like a book – comes encased in a soft leather cover. To turn pages, there are two sets of buttons, so I can read with one hand, or two.

It also is based on opensource software. It runs MontaVista Linux, and Sony distribute all the GNU based software on the web (mixes of GPL/LGPL software being used). More importantly, I can sync e-books via my Linux or Mac OS X boxes – I’ve never actually used Windows for this task. I can successfully import and export books to the Reader, using calibre.

So, why a Sony Reader rather than an Amazon Kindle? Simply, it boils down to availability. I don’t live in the United States, and Amazon tells me I can’t get myself a Kindle. I’d love one – the ability to buy a few books at 3am, to peruse on a topic I’m interested in? That sort of thing is priceless. I don’t even care about the DRM that they impose, the fact that they can come in and delete my purchases. Its the convenience that matters (beats going down to Borders the next day, finding I might have to wait for a title, etc.).

That aside, I also do not buy books that have been inflicted with DRM, from Sony. I’ve been burned once before – when the Palm Pilot’s were the craze around ~1998, I did buy a few titles. Last I checked, I can’t access them anymore, and for the life of me, I don’t own a Palm device capable of reading that stuff.

What do I read? PDF’s, mostly. Of books, of course. Today, O’Reilly’s Safari Bookshelf is really useful. For about 10 tokens, I usually can download a whole book. I’ve been doing this from time to time over the years, and now, instead of reading them on my workstation, I read them on the Sony Reader. Apress isn’t far behind, as most of their books have PDF versions to boot. So my technical reading material is covered.

calibre also allows me to read bundles of Newsweek, The Economist, and the like. I used to use this, but I tend to visit a library once a week once, at least, and end up reading the dead tree copies that are there. Reading fiction and non-fiction is admittedly harder – author/publisher buy-in is very sparse, and I’m sure I’ll have better luck with the Kindle here.

What don’t I like about the device? There’s no backlight. I’d like to read in the dark sometimes, and having lighting is inconvenient, so it would be great if it were backlit. While I can bookmark pages, I cannot highlight text, or even write notes about what I’m reading, inside the Sony Reader. In contrast, if I use the iPhone/iPod Touch to read a book, I get a nice backlight, and I can copy text out, as well as make notes in the notepad. Of course, I don’t get 7,500 page turns on such a device, but if I can squeeze about 20 hours of reading off any device, I’d be pretty happy (think: long flight).

Text from PDFs can be a bit too small. They don’t seem to use up all of the available space, which is truly annoying. Zoom options are available, but there are only two supported sizes: S or M. M makes for easier reading, but I wish it took up more of the device. I’d rather have more page turns, than bad eyes over the years!

Currently on the device (I purged everything from before, just because – disclosure: most links below go to amazon.com and are part of their affiliate programme):

Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore by Paul Carr. Most interesting, I’ve completely read this already, and should post up a review soon.
Coders at Work by Peter Seibel. I just finished a couple of chapters, and am going strong here.
Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice) by Jono Bacon

Two of the above are author released PDFs, while one is from O’Reilly’s Safari Bookshelf and the other an outright purchase from Apress.

Would I recommend one? Sure. If you like reading, have a tonne of PDF’s in ~/Downloads, its about time you got yourself a Sony Reader. Would I recommend one if you already have an iPhone/iPod Touch? Sure (I have an iPod Touch, too!). I think they’re two different devices, and its not time to converge them just yet (maybe, if the iPod Touch had a bigger screen).

Do you have an e-book reader? Where are you getting your fix of content?

Interactive git add

Colin Charles — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:53:04 +0000

I’ve been using git a lot more (its become my personal favourite; though on a daily basis I have to context switch between Bazaar and SVN as well – glad that I’ve stopped using CVS and BitKeeper) and am really liking it. Recently, I found out that git add has an interactive mode!

You can add a whole bunch of files real easily. Ditto with reverting changes. You can also add certain lines of a file (this is seriously useful).

Go give git add -i a twirl. Any other good git tips?

Evernote on Symbian Series 60?

Colin Charles — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:21:30 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of Evernote for a while now, but have found it lacking in some areas: no Symbian Series 60 support for my mobile phone (yes, there is a mobile interface, but I’d like a native application), and no native Linux support (yes, there are workarounds through WINE, but its nothing like a native application).

It seems like the API is open. It seems like a real popular request to get this going on Series 60, and it seems like there may be wind of such a client, especially since they’re also doing stuff for the Android platform, but nothing concrete.

Does anyone know if this is happening? Failing which, maybe a Nokia Nseries Widget (WRT widgets) might be what I’m after (seeing this working on the N97 yesterday, I was truly impressed).

At this juncture, I need Series 60 support, more than I’d need Linux support. I don’t have plans on carrying an iPhone anytime soon, just to make good use of Evernote (which I must say, is impressive – full integration with the hardware, is very cool).

Video: Interview with Marc Delisle, of the phpMyAdmin project

Colin Charles — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:19:38 +0000

I caught up with Marc Delisle (we have a relatively old interview with him on the MySQL DevZone) recently, and got him to give us an introduction to phpMyAdmin, the several books he’s written, and how the project gets new features from the Google Summer of Code. What’s really impressive? They continue winning awards (Marc won one from MySQL in 2009 as well!), and have a user base of nearly 18.5 million (this is downloads — not just users, considering how common it is in shared hosting environments). Watch the video for more.

Getting VLC to display full screen video on the secondary/external monitor

Colin Charles — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:04:33 +0000

Today, I acquired a Dell S2409W 24″ full HD LCD monitor. Its been a while since I’ve connected external displays to my laptop (on Linux, they are fun to work with), so today, I thought as one of the tests, I should see how VLC performed, on the 24″ monitor.

Video -> Video Device

But then, how does one get VLC to display on the secondary monitor at full screen? My repeated attempts were getting me to only see it on my main 13″ display. A little prodding brought me to the Video -> Video Device menu option. There, you can choose either Screen 1 (your LCD panel on the laptop) or Screen 2 (the external monitor). Immediate win!

Just wish this was automatic (ala, the Mac way), or a little more obvious.

DRBD Management Console

Colin Charles — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:53:04 +0000

Wow, check out what just came out from Linbit: The DRBD Management Console. Written in Java (so it runs anywhere), completely open source (GPLv3), and allows you to manage DRBD and Heartbeat based clusters. You can install, configure, see your systems graphically, and a lot more. I’m interested to try the beta out, as soon as I get back to my lab (sitting in the airport now). If you know how to use DRBD/Heartbeat, and use it in production for your MySQL setup, it might be a good application to test out, and improve if need be.

From the screenshots, I’m surprised this isn’t a value added extra that Linbit would like to charge for. Kudos, Linbit, for keeping it GPLv3!

Adobe needs cheaper local pricing

Colin Charles — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:50:44 +0000

I should make it clear, that I am against software piracy, and do not support it in any way, shape or form. However, I want to provide some context to my tweet earlier:

RM8,599 for Adobe Creative Suite 4 bundle, at machines. I’m sorry Adobe. I’ll limp with open source alternatives, and others will pirate you

I have an inkling to play with, and use, Photoshop CS4, as well as Illustrator. So I started calling around and finding out a little more about it. Only to be shocked that the entire “bundle” of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium would cost me a meagre RM8,599 (then again, it might be the Master Collection – I was just told it was a bundle). I called elsewhere, to find that the Standard Edition is RM5,500, but I can get a discount for a mere RM5,300!

I prodded around the Adobe website further, to find that they had some offers, like bona fide students can for a mere RM399, get Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium (normally US$2,313). So that’s a good deal, if I were in an educational institution.

However, Adobe doesn’t seem to understand Asian economics (something, even Microsoft is getting with lower priced software, including for their flagship Office products). I can go to my friendly neighbourhood software retailer, and for a mere RM10, pick up RM5,300 worth of value. Heck, I won’t be surprised if I can pull in RM8,599 worth of value, even.

On Twitter, I was advised that its cheaper to buy an older version, then upgrade from there. I cannot imagine many a Malaysian wanting to pay this much for software.

Adobe is a member of the Business Software Alliance. Doesn’t the organisation dole out advice to members, to keep software prices in check?

How many legit users of Adobe Creative Suite are there in Malaysia? Please stand up. Remember, you could get a MacBook, a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, or even an iMac for less than the entire bundle.

Me? I’ll just happily limp on with using The GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, and the like. For others that don’t grok open source software? They’ll shell out RM10 (or fire up their BitTorrent client).

Long live proprietary software license fees, and ridiculous prices that go with it.
(and I hope that the open source alternatives eventually force Adobe to rethink their business model)