Re: googleaccount.el
Hi Riccardo, FYI, the emacspeak project has a module called g-client, which implements a number of interfaces to google for various google services (calendar, gphoto, greader, etc) and includes an authentication and login process. You may find it of interest. Although it is part of the emacspeak project, it has been written so that it can operate stand-alone as well. See http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au ___ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
Re: doc-view.el --- View PDF/PostStript/DVI files in Emacs
Tassilo Horn [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tim X [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hi Tim, 5. Dired key: It would be nice to have a defcustom value that would specify a dired map key that would call doc-view on a file (with a new doc-view function that doesn't prompt for the file name). This would make it easier to browse pdf files in dired. Good idea. I'll add that. Do you have a good suggestion what key could be used and is free? How about b (for browse) or V (for View)? I think 'b' is available. However, you may find it useful to do what I did in my txutils.el package. I used defadvice around view-file (which is bound to v in dired). Since I was asked to include doc-view.el in Emacs I'm not sure if defadvice would be too good. AFAIK RMS doesn't like it too much. Actually, this is a misunderstanding of RMS' position. It is true he doesn't want defadvice used in packages that are part of emacs, but thats not because he doesn't like the mechanism. His view is that it could make debugging of problems harder because it can obscure what is going on. As a facility to change exisitnig functionality, he has no issue with it. So, yes, your right you shouldn't use it if the package is going to be part of emacs, but incorrect on the reason. However, since it will be part of emacs, there is no reason you couldn't ask for a change - either to how view-file works or to how/what is bound to the 'v' key in dired. For exmaple, you could create a new funciton that is bound to v which does things specific based on the file extension. So, now if I hit v on a pdf, ps, doc, ppt html etc file, it converts the file to either text or html and then displays it in a buffer (in the case of html output and .html files, it just uses browse-url to display the rendered version). At least for PS files that may not be the right thing. Users might want to view it with `ps-mode' instead. One of the nice things about advising view-file is that you still get standard behavior if you just hit enter i.e. if you hit enter on a ps file, it will just open the file in ps-mode. However, ps-mode is I think for hacking at the postscript level rather than for viewing. The nice thing about the txutils package is that all of this is controlled by a customizable variable. If you remove the translation entry for PostScript, then no conversion will occur. Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au ___ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
Re: doc-view.el --- View PDF/PostStript/DVI files in Emacs
Bill Clementson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 5. Dired key: It would be nice to have a defcustom value that would specify a dired map key that would call doc-view on a file (with a new doc-view function that doesn't prompt for the file name). This would make it easier to browse pdf files in dired. Good idea. I'll add that. Do you have a good suggestion what key could be used and is free? How about b (for browse) or V (for View)? I think 'b' is available. However, you may find it useful to do what I did in my txutils.el package. I used defadvice around view-file (which is bound to v in dired). So, now if I hit v on a pdf, ps, doc, ppt html etc file, it converts the file to either text or html and then displays it in a buffer (in the case of html output and .html files, it just uses browse-url to display the rendered version). What I like about this approach is that I now always use 'v' to view a file and don't have to remember to hit a different key for different filetypes. HTH Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au ___ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
Re: [OT] Re: realplay.el interface with Real Player v. 1879
Lucas Bonnet [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You're wrong, EMMS is indeed a GNU project. It seems that EMMS is a GNU package--a separate one. I will look at the situation with EMMS and mplayer. What do you mean by situation? EMMS supports several command-line players; by default they are, in this order : - mpg321 - ogg123 - mplayer Which means that EMMS tries mpg321 (for mp3s), ogg123 (for ogg vorbis) and then mplayer (for pretty much everything else). EMMS does not recommend the use of mplayer. Does the simple fact of allowing users to use mplayer means encouraging? No, I don't beleive that is what Richard or anyone else is arguing. I think there are two issues that Richard is concerned about. 1. Free software that actively encourages the use of non-free software/codecs etc. (I don't believe mplayer does this). 2. Free software which, through the way it is configured/setup implicitly encourages the use of non-free software. This one is possibly the more common and perhaps incidious of the two because people may not realise what they are doing. An example would be if mplayer had a button that allowed you to easily download and install non-free codecs by simply clicking on that button. I've not seen this, but I've not looked at mplayer very closely or even read its documentation. The fact a piece of free software allows you to use non-free software/codecs in itself is not an issue. Rather its the extent to which it facilitates doing so that is of concern. the FSF isn't so ideological as to try and ban the use of free software - if they were, you wouldn't have distributions like Red Hat or companies like Oracle doing a GNu Linux distribution and the ability to run non-free packages. Rather, they don't want to implicitly or explicitly encourage the use of non-free software and they want people to be aware they are using non-free softtware when they do. this original debate started when Richard asked that an elisp package not encourage the use of realplayer by promoting as one of its benefits that it provided an easy interface to that bit of non-free software. He didn't say it couldn't do that or in any way indicate that it was or should be barred from doing so. I suspect he would prefer that the package promoted itself as providing a convenient interface to other free software and left the fact that it could be used to interface to realplayer as an available option for those wanting it bad enough (assuming there isn't a free alternative of course). regards, Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au ___ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
Re: [OT] Re: realplay.el interface with Real Player v. 1879
Joost Kremers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tim X wrote: David Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] While I can appreciate what your saying, I think you may be missing some of the subtlety of Richard's point. and perhaps you're missing some of the subtlety of david's point: if mplayer did not support non-free codecs, some (many) people wouldn't even consider giving GNU/Linux a try. now, even if you should agree with the FSF that all software should be free in their sense, i.e. licensed under GPLv3, (a point i personally don't subscribe to, btw), you may still argue that the chances of reaching that ideal are better when some non-free content and/or software is supported: it enhances the spread of GNU/Linux, which it turn makes free software more visible, which in turn may convince more people to release their software (and entertainment content, etc.) under free licenses. if there had been no support for proprietary formats in GNU/Linux, it might well have been that so few people would have started to use it that it would never have gained the momentum it has now. No, I'm afraid you totally missed my point. I appreciate what David was saying and said as much and in fact summarised what I thought was the argument pretty much exactly as you put it when I wrote about some GNU Linux distros and software making it easier to use non-free codecs to encourage increased take-up of GNU Linux. I'm not subscribing to any specific school of thought/arguement and in fact had the exact same perspective as you outlined at one time. However, after reading a lot of what Richard has written and listening to a number of his interviews, I began to appreciate what he was trying to get across. My response to David was an attempt to explain this perspective a bit further because I don't think Richard's point is self evident - there are subtleties here that are easily overlooked. My personal view is still evolving as I consider the issues and to some extent, they are quite heavily influenced by what I observe occuring in the industry, society and on the political and legal fronts. I will admit though that over the last few years, I'm beginning to lean further and further towards Richard's perspective. The point I think you miss is that bringing people over to a free OS is pointless if in doing so we sacrifice those freedoms in order to do it. The objective isn't to make GNU Linux the most popular OS or even increase the size of its user base - the objective is to protect our freedoms. If we sacrifice those freedoms for the sake of popularity, then we have possibly won a battle, but lost the war. If the objective is to foster a social belief in free software, how is that advanced by facilitating the use of non-free codecs (even if that does expose more people to free software?).. The alternative argument that believes attracting more people to free software, you increase its exposure and increase the likelihood of creating more demand for a free software model and content that is based on such a model. However, this comes at a high cost if you believe that the freedoms the GPL attempts to protect are what is important. I also suspect that there may be a flaw in this argument in that it assumes that if enough people support free software through their use of GNU Linux et. al, content providers will begin to provide content based on free codecs. I'm not convinced this does actualy follow and wonder what the incentive would be for content providers to switch anything if they know that users of free software are still able to access their content. A part of the reason for my skepticism is that I don't believe the majority of GNU Linux and other free software users are doing so because they are concerned about the potential loss of freedm associated with proprietary closed systems. I think the vast majority use it because it is free in the sense of free beer. I regularly see people posting from GPL based software stating they don't support the GPL or agree with its philosophy, yet they are quite willing to take advantage of it. I regularly see people moaning that free software is destroying their livelihood, yet they themselves use it. I often see people using GNU Linux, gcc and other free software to develop their own applications which they will not release under a free software license because they want to sell it and prevent others from possibly using it without paying or using it as a basis for something they intent to sell etc. These are not people who understand or appreciate the freedoms the GPL attempts to protect. These are people who want to pay little, but dream of selling for a lot. Essentially, these are people who care more about their own individual short term situation than about the long term outcomes or impact to society over time. As I'm not Richard and I'm not an FSF representative, I want to be clear that this is my interpretation of what Richard's arguement is. While he may feel
Re: [OT] Re: realplay.el interface with Real Player v. 1879
David Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:18:18 +1000 Tim X. wrote: David Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Free software somehow has to interact with the real world, which - sadly - is dominated by proprietary software and file formats. A lot of people switched to free software after free office software became reliable in reading M$ office files. I think the case with mplayer is similar. No one forces you to use the binary only codecs, mplayer already does a pretty good job w/o them (except for listening to BBC radio but hopefully the BBC comes to its sense...). And when it comes to patents or restriction circumventions: the legal status is different from country to country. I don't think this makes mplayer non free, it's the laws in some countries which restrict the freedom here. While I can appreciate what your saying, I think you may be missing some of the subtlety of Richard's point. Its not sufficient to protect our freedoms to just switch to using free software unless that software is really free and actively protects our freedom. While mplay itself may be free, the fact it supports non-free codecs encourages the continued support of those codecs or at the very least reduces any potential pressure that might exist to convince content produces to use free rather than proprietary codecs. Maybe we should clarify what a free codec is. Is xvid free? Or libavcodec? If not, is there any video codec that can be called free? If they do count as free, I think there is no problem with mplayer. Just don't install or distribute any binary codecs. I think a reasonable definition of a free codec would be one that is licensed under a license that aims to protect the four freedoms i.e. GPL The possible problem with mplayer is that it may make it too easy for end-users to use non-free codecs, in which case it is implicitly undermining the protection of our freedoms. When it comes to freedom restricting laws (e.g. patents or media access restriction), which country should be the reference? The US? Or the least or most restricting laws in the EU? China? Is freedom relative to any particular country? I guess things depend on how you look at freedom. For me, you either have it or you don't. Its a very difficult issue (which is partly why I wanted to put another perspective to Richard's point). to some extent, there is some conflict between individual freedom and social freedom. However, for me, one of the biggest threats to freedom is the growth of corporate capitalism and the misdirection of terms like economic freedom, which is increasingly used to justify and protect profits at the cost of individual freedom by locking us out of access to technology while making us more dependent on it. If you think obeying such laws is important, a lot of GNU software is non free in a lot of countries. Just one (extremely silly example): In Germany distributing non rated video games is illegal. This makes Emacs (tetris, snake) non free in Germany. Font rendering or cryptographic software is a more serious issue. A lot of GNU software links against freetype (you can compile it with -DFUCK_PATENTS) and cryptography is heavily restricted in a lot of countries. I don't quite understand why requiring a rating for emacs games makes them non-free. I also don't see anything in the GPL which would prevent games authors from adding a rating or if doing so would be in conflict with the GPL I also don't believe the legal system and freedom are necessarily the same thing. Often the legal system is used to restrict freedom to protect corporate/economic profit. Current software patent law for example is the antithesis of freedom - it is the mechanism used to 'justify' the attempts of mainly large coorporations to restrict our freedoms in order to maximise their profits. Frankly, as long as the risk of getting seriously punished is very low i don't give a fuck about these laws. That's like waiting as a pedestrian for a traffic light if there's no car in sight, or not smoking weed because some authority thinks it should decide what's good for you. To some extent I agree. There are laws I don't agree with and there are some I do. For example, I agree with laws that protect our rights to free speech, freedom of association, freedom of religious belief etc. Other laws, such as those that attempt to impose somebody elses idea of morality, or laws that prevent me from doing something that doesn't impact on others (Big Brother laws) or laws that have been created to keep the established 'status quo' and power hierarchies or protect big business interests are less likely to get my support. Of course, its not a black and white world, so its difficult to draw clear devisions. On one hand I agree with laws that protect against having your physical or intellectual efforts exploited, but at the same time, I find many of these laws fail to achieve what
Re: [OT] Re: realplay.el interface with Real Player v. 1879
Joost Kremers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [as one poster remarked, this does indeed not seem the right place for this discussion. i have no idea where to take it, however, so i'll just post here. if there are suggestions for more appropriate groups, i'd be happy to follow up there.] Agreed, so I will refraim from further posts and will restrict my response to responding to the points you raise (and not bring in any new ones). Tim X wrote: No, I'm afraid you totally missed my point. I appreciate what David was saying and said as much and in fact summarised what I thought was the argument pretty much exactly as you put it when I wrote about some GNU Linux distros and software making it easier to use non-free codecs to encourage increased take-up of GNU Linux. ok, perhaps i've read your post too quickly, if so, i apologise for jumping to conclusions. i got the impression, however, that you mainly saw a people want it, so let's be practical and include it kind of argument. I'm not subscribing to any specific school of thought/arguement and in fact had the exact same perspective as you outlined at one time. the phrase at one time implies that you see it differently now, which (to me) implies that you *do* subscribe to a specific school of thought/argument. (which is perfectly ok, of course.) As I think I said in another post, I'm beginning to lean more towards Richard's perspective, but to be honest, the jury isn't in yet. Thats why I said I'm not subscribing to a specific point of view (yet). The point I think you miss is that bringing people over to a free OS is pointless if in doing so we sacrifice those freedoms in order to do it. The objective isn't to make GNU Linux the most popular OS or even increase the size of its user base - the objective is to protect our freedoms. yes, i realise that. the question in the end is what is the best strategy. making some compromises along the way to enhance the spread of one's ideas, or sticking strictly to one's ideals, even if that means that your message won't be heard by as many people. I agree that compromise is an important part of making change. However, I'm not convinced that compromising the core/fundamental principals is the right way to go because I suspect that once you do, you won't be able to go back later, despite any justification or statement to the contrary that is made initially. If we sacrifice those freedoms for the sake of popularity, then we have possibly won a battle, but lost the war. not necessarily. the war is won by winning the key battles, and the bigger and stronger you are, the better your chances of winning those. If the objective is to foster a social belief in free software, how is that advanced by facilitating the use of non-free codecs (even if that does expose more people to free software?).. that social belief is advanced exactly by the fact that more people are exposed to it. if you identify along the way very clearly the parts that you believe are really free, and the parts that you only accept for the time being for practical reasons, to encourage the adoption of free software, no-one can claim you're being a hypocryte, and people may in general be more inclined to listen to what you have to say. (people generally don't like strict points of view not open to compromise.) I sort of agree in part, but something still disturbs me with this in that I suspect this is a double edged sword. Once you openly accept the more pragmatic position of accepting non-free software, I suspect yo will have an even harder battle to reverse that perspective in the future. Note however that I do think there may be some justification in implicitly or unofficially accepting it, but officially denouncing it (recognising of course the possible claims of being a hypocrite). The alternative argument that believes attracting more people to free software, you increase its exposure and increase the likelihood of creating more demand for a free software model and content that is based on such a model. However, this comes at a high cost if you believe that the freedoms the GPL attempts to protect are what is important. again, not necessarily. it really depends on how you deal with it. if you make it clear from the onset that you only accept certain non-free software for practical reasons and have the aim to replace them as soon as possible with free alternatives, i do not believe the cost is too high. sure, there is a cost, but the gains may outweigh the costs. I guess that is possibly the basis for the difference in ideological perspective. I also suspect that there may be a flaw in this argument in that it assumes that if enough people support free software through their use of GNU Linux et. al, content providers will begin to provide content based on free codecs. I'm not convinced this does actualy follow and wonder what the incentive would be for content
[OT] Re: realplay.el interface with Real Player v. 1879
David Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Free software somehow has to interact with the real world, which - sadly - is dominated by proprietary software and file formats. A lot of people switched to free software after free office software became reliable in reading M$ office files. I think the case with mplayer is similar. No one forces you to use the binary only codecs, mplayer already does a pretty good job w/o them (except for listening to BBC radio but hopefully the BBC comes to its sense...). And when it comes to patents or restriction circumventions: the legal status is different from country to country. I don't think this makes mplayer non free, it's the laws in some countries which restrict the freedom here. While I can appreciate what your saying, I think you may be missing some of the subtlety of Richard's point. Its not sufficient to protect our freedoms to just switch to using free software unless that software is really free and actively protects our freedom. While mplay itself may be free, the fact it supports non-free codecs encourages the continued support of those codecs or at the very least reduces any potential pressure that might exist to convince content produces to use free rather than proprietary codecs. The difference between Richard's and your perspective is that your approach is possibly focusing more on the usability issues and allowing users to benefit from a free platform while still being able to access proprietary content as easily as users of closed proprietary systems. I think Richard's perspective would be that this has the danger of giving up some of our freedoms without really realising what we may be sacrificing in the long term for a short term gain (i.e. access to the proprietary content). Richar's perspective is likely that if you believe your freedom is important enough, you will sacrifice short term access to the content in favor of protecting your long-term freedom. Furthermore, he is likely to argue that most people aren't really aware of the value/importance of such freedoms until they have been lost and once lost, are very difficult to get back. I think Richard's point is very important and completely missed by some groups. for example, some GNU Linux distributions and some free software have made it very easy to obtain, install and use proprietary codecs. this is often justified by arguing that it makes GNU Linux more accessible and popular. However, this totally overlooks the potential danger this has in weakening our freedoms. If it is as easy to use proprietary codecs as truely free ones, then there is little encouragement for producers to change to free alternatives. I guess the basic difference in perspectives depends largely on your values and to what extent you are prepared to sacrifice material satisfaction for moral/ethical values. regards, Tim P.S. I also don't think you can claim FSF supports the use of non-free codecs because EMMS is under the GPL. As far as I'm aware EMMS is not an official GNU project and therefore is not officially supported by the FSF. Software released under the GPL doesn't also mean it is supported by or in any way approved by the FSF. -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au ___ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
[OT] free software vs open source was: Re: codesearch.el 1.0 --- Search for code via Google Code Search
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ;;; codesearch.el --- allowing users to search for open-source code on Would you please call it free software code? Using the term open source downplays the ethical issues which are the most important issues. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html for more explanation. My apologies to all for being off topic in this sources group, but I think this is an important issue. While I agree with the sentiments, I'm not sure 'free software' would be correct in this case. Maybe you can clarify. From what I've read I'd expect that free software is a subset of open source software (i.e. not all open source software is free in the sense that it protects our freedoms). Therefore, referring to codesearch.el as a utility to search for free software would only be correct if all the software titles it returned were ones with licenses such as the GPL, which protect our freedoms and exclude packages with other licenses which don't have those protections. There maybe a valid argument in saying that we should always use the term free software to reinforce the important issues rather than 'open source'. However, I wonder if doing this generally may have a negative effect in that if it is applied to software which doesn't protect our freedoms people will associate the free with free beer rather than freedom or worse yet, think that all open source software protects our rights. Personally, I think we should only use the term 'free software' to refer to a package when the license does actually protect our freedom and use the term 'open source' if the license doesn't have that level of protection. . Although I've not had a chance to look at the package (which I think will be quite useful), a nice addition would be if the search results were gruped into 'free' and 'non-free' (with free being presented first). How easily this could be done I don't know. Congrats BTW on GPLv3. Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au ___ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
Re: gds.el --- Emacs interface to Google Desktop Search
Richard M. Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In my case I have GD installed on my machine because I think it helps me, and I wanted to interface to it, to make my Emacs experience better. If there were a free replacement I would use that instead and interface to that one. We can't treat a non-free program as ethically legitimate merely because there is no free program that replaces it! True, but its not just about ethics, but more necessity. I use some commercial software on my GNU/Linux system simply because there is no free version available which meets my requirements and these are fundamental to being able to work on Linux. I have released som software as GPL which interfaces with the commercial software. If there was free/open source version that had the features I require, I'd use it, but there isn't. Tim -- Tim Cross The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out! ___ Gnu-emacs-sources mailing list Gnu-emacs-sources@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
