Re: Bad mail habits... (was: 480x320 on Clie UX50)

2003-09-19 Thread MJ Ray
On 2003-09-19 17:26:52 +0100 Michael Nordstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
And to make things worse the mail also includes *everything* from
previous messages in the thread. How about removing most of the "old"
Top-posters and over-quoters on lists are routinely deleted by many 
(hey, it's our time), so http://remember.to/edit_messages if you want 
to be read by more people.
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Re: MemoURL extension for viewer

2003-07-13 Thread MJ Ray
Chris Hawks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It all ready does this. URLs and Hardcopy both write to the memopad
> with a catagory of 'Plucker' (if there is is one, Unfiled if not).

I missed that in the documentation.  For archive searchers, it's in
3.1.2 The Main Screen.

> BTW: Mike released a program (many years ago), that grabs these memos and
> plucks tham into a Plucker document. (pluckerlinks.c)

I can't see this in the distribution or CVS.  Where is it?

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Re: MemoURL extension for viewer

2003-07-13 Thread MJ Ray
Dave Maddock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It would be cool to be able save urls in the pdbs metadata database
> which a conduit could grab at hotsync time and add to an inclusion list
> for that channel.

If Plucker were to save URLs to memopad with a particular category,
that may be sufficient for this.  I have no idea how realistic that is,
though, as I don't program the PalmOS viewer.

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Re: MemoURL extension for viewer

2003-07-09 Thread MJ Ray
masakazu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There are conduits for windows and macintosh.
> MemoURL application and conduit for windows is available from:
>http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley/6737/

This is not free software, which is annoying.  Can you persuade them
to relicence?

More worrying, did your memourl.c and .h files come from it?  If so,
it would be difficult for it to be included in plucker legally.

For people who wish to read plucker's URLs that are copied to memo pad
from plucker, there is a short shell script called "homesync" on my
web site (URL below then Software, Palm, I think).

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Re: www.plkr.org: Plucker vs. AvantGo

2003-07-08 Thread MJ Ray
Alan Hoyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> take http://nelson.oit.unc.edu/~alanh/tmp/plucker-feature-matrix.html to
> use on their site, I've added a Creative Commons license to it.  Or would

You are discriminating against commercial use, so I think this licence
is not very nice.  Plucker can be used legally for commercial use, so
why not its documentation?  Also, it cannot be relicensed to allow it
to merge with other material.

> the GNU FDL be more appropriate?  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

I think that something like the Design Science Licence, or GPL with
clear specification of source form, would be more appropriate.

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Re: strike-thru in libraryform

2003-06-03 Thread MJ Ray
Michael Nordstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, the other "option" is that I decide how everything should look
> and work. Personally, I think it is better to leave some of those
> decisions to the user ;-)

Some, but not all.  Plucker already has a bit of danger in some places
of turning into "preference soup".  I think it's better to try and find
a way of solving each problem that offends few people. That isn't always
possible, but those are the cases you have options for.

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Re: strike-thru in libraryform

2003-06-02 Thread MJ Ray
Michael Nordstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 02, 2003, Alexander R. Pruss wrote:
>> I assume you can turn this off?  ARP
> Yes, and it is off by default.

Argh! Another option! Why not use bold in the library to indicate unread
documents instead?

MJR


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Re: getting changes in (and UTF-8)

2003-05-31 Thread MJ Ray
Alexander R. Pruss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1. I myself don't need full UTF-8.  I just need to make some quick-and-dirty
> substitutions for quote marks, apostrophes and long dashes.  So if someone

Look for unknown_charref in TextParser.py -- I wonder if this can be done
in a more general way with a lookup table in helper?

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Re: Desktop: Follow only links that are sub-folders of the root source paths checkbox

2003-03-29 Thread MJ Ray
Ken Stuart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is there any objections to such a feature, or any technical obstacles in
> implementing it in Plucker Desktop?

I think there's already a --stay-below=path option to plucker-build,
so if Plucker Desktop uses that, it should even not be too hard to
implement.  It may be worth having a --stay-below-home flag added
to plucker-build.  What do others think?

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Re: Commerical Applications

2003-03-03 Thread MJ Ray
David A. Desrosiers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   The important thing is that if you change the _source_ to the
> project, that those changes be available to the community, so they can
> benefit from them. [...]

Note that while the above is the expressed wish of the maintainer (and
therefore A Good Idea), the GPL only requires you to share with your users. 
This may be the same thing, though.

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Re: robots.txt

2003-02-25 Thread MJ Ray
Blake Winton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> wondered if Plucker wanted to start being a good web-citizen
> and honouring robots.txt.

Plucker is not necessarily a robot, although it can operate as one.  It
should support robots.txt only when it is recursing into a site, not when
downloading a single page, IMO.  It should always support the robots meta. 
If that is acceptable and no-one beats me to it, I will try to code this
into the main plucker-build parser later this week and send a patch.

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Re: http://sourceforge.net/projects/plucker/

2003-02-24 Thread MJ Ray
David Starks-Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...] Is it an intentional placeholder or forgotten or ... ?

I don't think Sourceforge allows you to delete projects.  You can check out
any time you want, but you can never leave.

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Re: robustness of html error handling and plucker

2003-01-30 Thread MJ Ray
Blake Winton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You say that as if it's an either/or choice.  If Eugene wants
> to work on making plucker more robust, who are we to stop him? [...]

Oh yes, plucker's Free Software, so if any new developer wants to
concentrate on that, then go ahead.  I just didn't want anyone having
illusions about the difficulty.  Tidy is not a new project and still is
nowhere near fixing 100% of the crap out there.  It's already possible to
use tidy before plucker, so I also wonder how "itchy" the task is.

I agree that calling tidy as a filter is probably the right way to do it
with the least effort.  I'd be disappointed if existing (very busy, as far
as I can tell) developers stopped working on the wonderful things we're
seeing and started with that, though.  Just my opinion as a counterweight to
the original request, that's all.

On the point from lower down the thread: emailing webmasters of dud pages is
probably worth an option.  I don't really believe in options, but that would
be a useful trick, but you wouldn't always want to do it.
 
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Re: robustness of html error handling and plucker

2003-01-29 Thread MJ Ray
Eugene Y. Vasserman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...] how feasable it is to have plucker handle obvious html errors
> "intelligently". [...]

It's rather difficult to detect how to handle these "obvious" errors. 
Normally, it means that the site authors' are depending on some display
logic error of particular (groups of) browser(s).  It is possible to locally
mirror pages with a tool like wget and then use tidy to correct some errors,
but even that is not infallible and they've put a lot of time into how to do
it, so Plucker probably won't exceed that.  It will still fail on some
sites.

It's a compromise: I'd rather Plucker developers spent time on improving
functionality for real web sites (ie ones that are valid and follow
guidelines) than tried to square the circle and understand the
unintelligible.  Wouldn't you?

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Python 2.2 solution?

2003-01-23 Thread MJ Ray
Like many people, I resent having to use a different version of Python for
Plucker than everything else on my system.  Today, I stumbled across the
change suggested by jtamboli that seems to allow Plucker to work under
Python 2.2 at
http://gnu-designs.com/bugs/view_bug_advanced_page.php?f_id=450

Basically, plucker:/home.html becomes plucker:///home.html -- is that right?
Why does it fix it?  I don't know (is there a perldoc-like for python?), but
it certainly seems to help here, but isn't in CVS as far as I can see.

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Re: Tables!!!

2002-11-28 Thread MJ Ray
Chris Hawks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> my IIIx. I may be the only person on the web without a homepage, so, I
> have nowhere to post them.

Free hosting services abound.  Please use.

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Re: Non-HTML (was Re: Back/foward/home function code)

2002-11-20 Thread MJ Ray
Chris Combs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> s/<\![^>]*>//g;

Won't that catch valid things like CDATA?
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Re: Non-HTML (was Re: Back/foward/home function code)

2002-11-19 Thread MJ Ray
Robert O'Connor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> -Others: maybe the "marquee" tag from MSIE 3.x days, and all the other non-
> standard crap that has come and gone over the years.

Yes!  We want  in Plucker now!

Seriously, has anyone who asks for support for standards-breaking actually
thought the effect of it through to a conclusion?  I think Plucker should be
praised for taking a reasonably pure-standards approach on this.  It's the
only way that you can hope to keep things sane *and* moving forwards.

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Re: Bulletin Board instead of Mailing List?

2002-11-19 Thread MJ Ray
Fringe Ryder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I find a mailing list nearly ideal.  The only detriments to it are that the=
> odd message is flagged as spam by my filters and I haven't determined why,=

You need to add the lists to your whitelist or scorefile.

> and that threads I care nothing about still show in my in box.

You need to improve your mail filters.

HTH, HAND.  ;-)
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Re: Bulletin Board instead of Mailing List?

2002-11-19 Thread MJ Ray
Blake Winton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Not all of the "advantages".  If I subscribed to the lists today
> as a new subscriber, I couldn't reply to any message before today.

Yes, you can.  The archive site allows you to download a mailbox with all
messages to date in it, which you can then read and reply to like any other
emails you get.  It's one link to save.  Not much trouble if you want it.

[...]
> I like the mailing lists, myself.  My only request would be to expose
> a news interface as well, so that Google Groups could index the list.

I have software which does this.  A couple of scripts added on to the sn
small newsserver.  This message comes to you via it.
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Re: Back/foward/home function code

2002-11-19 Thread MJ Ray
Laurens M. Fridael <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> it seems that SVG may not be in a happy place for free software
>> either, because of patents held on some of its core methods.
> Akin to the LZW patent used by GIF? I'll take a look.

Actually, I think they're far more pervasive than that.  With the GIF
patent, there was only one and a better format that avoided the patent was
possible anyway.

>> Please, get your hands dirty and start work if you're convinced
>> people will want this.  It may well be the case that you have to
>> maintain a "PluckNGo" branch so as not to load the main code with a
>> lot of unnecessary baggage, but it should be doable.
> Right now, JPluck takes up all my programming time and there's still a lot
> to cover there. Maybe later.

Indeed, I understand that, but I don't think any of the current core have
the right time+willing available to do this for you now, so pleading will
have little effect.  Maybe it will encourage someone new to start
contributing to plucker?  Failing that, it will just have to wait.

MJR

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Re: Back/foward/home function code

2002-11-19 Thread MJ Ray
Laurens M. Fridael <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...] The Adobe SVG plug-in, for instance, is still way too heavy compared
> to Flash and there aren't enough good SVG authoring tools for designers,
> nothing that can compare with Flash MX, that is. [...]

There's a conversation just started on [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it seems
that SVG may not be in a happy place for free software either, because of
patents held on some of its core methods.

[...]
> It may not be your goal, but people see Plucker as an AvantGo replacement.
> And if you go the extra mile in supporting some of AvantGo's features that
> are relatively easy to implement in the Viewer - like the back function -
> you will ease over the transition. [...]

Please, get your hands dirty and start work if you're convinced people will
want this.  It may well be the case that you have to maintain a "PluckNGo"
branch so as not to load the main code with a lot of unnecessary baggage,
but it should be doable.

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Re: Table rendering problem

2002-10-24 Thread MJ Ray
David McNab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is there any way I can build a table in LaTeX which will be rendered
> correctly once it goes through the LaTeX->latex2html->plucker-build
> cycle?

Correctly in which way?  I'd suggest a quick fix of making the table six
rows of numbers countin up, which will mean the plucked doc is in the
correct order at least.  The same will also apply for some screen-readers,
but I'm not sure that can be relied upon.

MJR

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Re: Re[2]: new manual in TexInfo format?

2002-10-24 Thread MJ Ray
Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I don't find any SGML format to be a particularly tractable source
> format.  Reasonable for generated output, though.  Or are there some
> good WYSIWYG SGML editors that I've just missed out on?

qemacs can *edit* DocBook WYSIWYGish, although adding tags when writing new
parts requires one to fall back to editing the code.  I suspect extending it
to do some tags without dropping back to text wouldn't be *too* difficult.

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Re: Mailing list etiquette - Gone TOO far

2002-10-15 Thread MJ Ray

Edward Rayl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...] He told me he was too afraid to post the question for fear of
> reprisals for asking a 'trivial' question on plucker-list.

That is a shame, but is entirely unrelated to the thread which you mention. 
I hope you pointed out to that user that all plucker questions are welcome,
but some people have tired of the easy-to-avoid rudeness that started that
thread?

OK, the occasional burst of fire (which has now died out) may be temporarily
off-putting but if it gets the job done, I think most people would live with
it...  If it becomes endemic, then I'll support your grumble.  OK?  ;-)

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Re: Intellectual property (was: owner_id_build vs. copyprevention_bit)

2002-10-06 Thread MJ Ray

Terence Tan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This is why I disagree with the GPL as well as any DRM schemes, because 
> it forces authors down a certain path.  [...]

You misunderstand the GPL's effect on author's rights.  The GPL is only
concerned with guaranteeing all future users the same rights as the original
users.  Please go read the GPL FAQ on the gnu.org site, but feel free to
email me off-list if you can't see why you're wrong.

MJR

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Re: Intellectual property (was: owner_id_build vs. copyprevention_bit)

2002-10-06 Thread MJ Ray

Dennis McCunney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It's not entirely a myth, unfortunately.

Show me the numbers.  Real numbers, not the abstract estimates of publishers
associations.  Find a particular piece of restricted work and detect a
disturbance in the sales series at the point where an illegally derestricted
electronic version hit the net.

[...]
> But in the case of Baen (and other success stories for the freely shared
> model) one important bit of my argument is common: the creators _gave
> permission_ for it to happen.  It was done with thier knowledge and consent.

Indeed.  My point is that content creators will do well to authorise their
fans to promote them to their friends in this way.  If they don't, they are
ultimately harming their own revenue and playing into the hands of the large
corporations.

Breaking a law is breaking a law, even if it is unjust.  It should not be
taken lightly, but this is an illegality that should not even exist. 
Creators, help yourselves by inviting others to help themselves!

MJR

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Re: Intellectual property (was: owner_id_build vs. copyprevention_bit)

2002-10-05 Thread MJ Ray

Dennis McCunney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But most of the folks I know at the moment are writers, artists, and
> musicians trying to make a living out of what is essentially intellectual
> property, who are _directly_ hurt by unrestricted sharing of thier
> copyrighted work.  I'm not concerned about loss of revenue by large
> corporations.  I _am_ concerend about the welfare of my friends.

This is an old myth peddled by the people who make money from restricting
sharing of creative works.  In the DRM world, the people who make the most
money are the "gatekeepers," the large corporations.

Why does an artist want to cooperate with large corporations and make
criminals out of people who appreciate their work?  It doesn't grow their
audience and just leaves people feeling bad.  Experiences of authors who
*welcome* their works being shared are documented in articles such as
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm (OK, so that's a widget frosting or
related services model, but it still shows what a good way it is to become
known.  There are probably others, but that was the first I grabbed from my
bookmarks).

Personally, I'd go further and start looking for a way to provide work as
copyleft, but then you knew that anyway.  I'm concerned about the welfare of
*all* my friends, but both producers and consumers.

MJR

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Re: owner_id_build vs. copyprevention_bit

2002-10-04 Thread MJ Ray

Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm sorry, Richard, but I can't pass up pointing out inconsistent
> philosophy.  the GNU GPL is exactly Digital Restrictions Management.

I repeat: the GPL is enforced by the courts, not by software.  Surely it is
not even digital?

MJR

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Re: owner_id_build vs. copyprevention_bit

2002-10-03 Thread MJ Ray

Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> DRM should not exist in any software, or any hardware.  DRM is theft!
> Would you disapprove of software which enforced, in some way, the GNU GPL?

Yes.  Legal agreements should be enforced by the courts, not by software. 
If your local court system is really so broken that it's impossible, please
fix it.

MJR

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Re: OT: Intellectual property (was: owner_id_build vs. copyprevention_bit)

2002-10-01 Thread MJ Ray

Guylhem Aznar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Governments should not bother preserving outdated business models.

Consumers should not encourage outdated business models.  Go buy some
copyleft work today.
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Re: Help request: for someone with perl knowledge and has latex2html on their system

2002-09-29 Thread MJ Ray

Robert O'Connor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I made a mention on the latex2html about adding support in latex2html for a  switch 
>to allow 

Please, why use latex2html?  tex4ht is normally superior, because it uses
the latex interpreter instead of trying to reimplement it in perl.  If you
have a particular requirement that tex4ht doesn't meet, maybe I can help if
you tell me what it is.

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Re: Web-based tasklist (was: Assign me a task)

2002-09-24 Thread MJ Ray

[Danger: wildly OT.  May injure passers-by.]

David A. Desrosiers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...] and before that, it was called "message bases" back in the BBS
> world, and 'mail' on the vax. [...]

Ooooh, the vax.  I remember them taking phone away from ours one September.

On the subject of top-posting, try this simple quote to see how annoying
I find it:

>>Who's there?
>>>Knock, knock!
Not you any more. *PLONK*

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Re: Plucker Desktop - Suggestions

2002-09-17 Thread MJ Ray

Ken Findlay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1. Include the RTF2HTML program with the distribution (it's freeware) and

It's an executable for Windows only and its licence is not free enough to
allow it to be ported.  Maybe a better idea would be to either provide hooks
for it, and maybe other similar tools like antiword or plucker-oebps.

> 2. Provide an option for the user to specify the automatic generation of
> bookmarks form HTML or RTF headings. [...]

Or a jump list based on id or name attributes in the xhtml.  Not sure which
is better.

MJR

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Re: wipeout img (was Re: Thanks all)

2001-12-06 Thread MJ Ray

Kjetil:
> _I_ know that, but some of the people who create content I'm
> interested in, don't.  I guess I could run everything through tidy or
> similar before giving it to Plucker, but it seems a bit overkill and
> inconvenient.

Better than that, if some recalcitrant web authors are still using such
tricks *and* not setting alt tags, why not send them an email?

alt tags -- required for new pages since 1997...
-- 
MJR



Re: wipeout img (was Re: Thanks all)

2001-12-06 Thread MJ Ray

Brian:
> It would be a bad standard if it required everyone to change all
> their old pages every time the standard changed.

Where did I say it was required?  I just said that pages that are that old
probably have other problems... however, I suspect that the problem here is
badly written HTML, rather than merely old.

> is what to do in that case?  You've got a completely free hand for
> rendering illegal HTML, so you might as well pick something useful.

There should be something to mark that an image existed, in my opinion. 
Maybe a command line option which defaults to "[img]" is the way to go, but
dropping [img] markers is nasty.
-- 
MJR



Re: wipeout img (was Re: Thanks all)

2001-12-05 Thread MJ Ray

Brian:
> An alt attribute is required in HTML 4.01, but not in HTML 3.2.

Any page still written in a language obsoleted four years ago probably has
other problems than not looking as good as it could in Plucker.  I get
slightly irritated by HTML 4.01's continued use, but there's little excuse
for still using 3.2, is there?

Such problems should be noticeable, so you can notify the authors...
-- 
MJR



Re: wipeout img (was Re: Thanks all)

2001-12-05 Thread MJ Ray

Dirk:
> "Me too".  I just commented out the following lines in
> /usr/lib/python2.0/site-packages/PyPlucker/PluckerDocs.py:

Argh!  You're fixing the wrong problem!  The real problem is not plucker
generating "img", but the document you are converting not specifying the
contents of the alt attribute, which I believe is mandatory, even if it is
set to null "".  Fix the HTML to actually be HTML (rather than this bastard
not-quite-HTML) and Plucker will happily do what you want.
-- 
MJR



Re: Virus issues (solution?)

2001-12-01 Thread MJ Ray

David:
>   Not a really good idea, since we send attachments to the list in
> various formats. We just need to probably de-fang Windows DOC/pif formats
> for the interim. Mark?

We do?  I see some patches and so on drift past here, but not much else. 
Why not just have these troublesome windows types to a blacklist?

Other lists I know actually reject anything that isn't text/plain, but maybe
that's too harsh for here.
-- 
MJR



Re: Question regarding your Plucker product

2001-11-26 Thread MJ Ray

> [...] Instead, there could be
> an additional program that the user runs manually which would read
> the Memo database that has been hotsynced to the PC, would pull
> out all the Memo records that were saved from the Plucker viewer,
> create a temporary HTML file from them. The new program would then
> call the parser to fetch all links in that HTML file.

I currently do something like this with the following command:

jpilot-dump -M | sed -e
'/^Plucker/,/^$/{;s/^Plucker.*$/&<\/h4>/;s/^.*:\/\/.*$/&<\/a>/;};/^[^<]/d' >home.html

(remove the line breaks), but it would be very good to have the Plucker
viewer write a bit more home.html-format-like links to the memo database
instead of just the URLs, then I could just replace this with:

jpilot-dump -M | sed -e
'/^Plucker/,/^$/{;s/^Plucker.*$/&<\/h4>/;};/^[^<]/d' >home.html

and get more functionality to boot.  I quite understand that providing the
full range of plucker options on the copy url screen isn't viable. Is there
another way to read the memo db?
-- 
MJR



Re: Suggestion: Copy to Clipboard

2001-11-17 Thread MJ Ray

> >I'm wondering if you plan to include an option to copy selected text
> > to the clipboard in a future version of Plucker? iSilo 2.58 does this,
> > and it's the *only* reason I haven't deleted it from my Palm yet. =)
>   I should have an auto-responder answer these =)

What happened to the patch that could copy the screen to memo?
-- 
MJR



Re: So about that 6000 dollars

2001-11-12 Thread MJ Ray

David:
>   The language doesn't make bad code, programmers make bad code. Some
> languages make it easier to write bad code, however, but I think that's also
> dependant on the programmer's level of understanding of the actual code and
> the objective. TMTOWTDI.

Language influences the way the programmer thinks, though.  A programmer who
has no concept of macros, closures or continuations probably won't miss
them.  One who is used to getting work done faster with them will be at
least unhappy.  If the language is chaotic, like php, then many of the
programmers will write chaotically.  Ones who know (and think in) other
languages may be safe, as will ones who have learnt good programming, but
most php coders seem to be self-taught.

[...]
> > > I make it a point never to turn down a contribution or contributor.
> > That is not a healthy statement.  Again, I know that's politically
> > incorrect, but that's the way it is.
> I meant 'turn down' from a morale and future contribution perspective, not
> from a "Hey, we'll just toss this code in there and see what happens"
> perspective. If you turn them down now, they won't be inclined to learn
> more, help you further in the future, or contribute. If you teach them to
> fish...

Ah, I see "turn down" as more or less a synonym for "reject", as in the
contribution.  Two countries divided by a common language, again.
-- 
MJR



Re: So about that 6000 dollars

2001-11-12 Thread MJ Ray

David:
> > OK, I'll bite: php? Dear God, nooo! Is plucker going for a
> > record number of languages used, or something?  ;-)

> You forget whose house is right up the road, and whose house the Plucker
> server is currently colocated within... Rasmus Lerdorf, author of php.

If I hammer the server hard enough, can I make it catch fire?  (OK, poor
joke, I'm sorry... I've just seen enough bad php to last me many lifetimes.)

>   Seriously though, php is ideal for this over perl as much as I hate
> to admit it. It does lend itself well to session handling and form
> processing and very fast database access. All of which will be required
> attributes for this system to work. [...]

PHP programmers should all make sure they read and *understand* "Study in
scarlet" before being allowed to start work.

I don't see that your comments make a decisive case.  Libraries exist for
many other languages, including perl, to do what you want and most of those
languages are more powerful and elegant than PHP.

> Besides, I have a volunteer that knows php, and that's less work I have to
> do actually coding it. I can get onto other things taking up my time and
> burn through them.

Yes, that's good, but are they going to help maintain it?

> I make it a point never to turn down a contribution or contributor.

That is not a healthy statement.  Again, I know that's politically
incorrect, but that's the way it is.
-- 
MJR



Re: So about that 6000 dollars

2001-11-12 Thread MJ Ray

David wrote:
>   I've got a guy volunteering already to help with the php-based front
> end for "Wucker" (ok, I couldn't think of a name, Web Plucker), which is
[snip]

OK, I'll bite: php? Dear God, nooo!

Is plucker going for a record number of languages used, or something?  ;-)
-- 
MJR



Re: So about that 6000 dollars

2001-11-12 Thread MJ Ray

Robert:
> This is a nice example of what David was discussing in regards to the heavy
> tolls being tossed onto the small independent content providers.

So where are the people promoting Plucker in that thread?  I only read my
local palmtops group, as I don't have that much time or a particularly big
stake in palms at the moment, but I often promote it there.
-- 
MJR



Re: Change the Palm OS requirement

2001-11-11 Thread MJ Ray

David A. Desrosiers:
>   The only units which do not support a multibyte ROM right now and
> are OS3.1 or later are the IIIx, IIIe (not flashable, but running 3.3),

I've just checked the IIIe here and it's running 3.1.1 by a soft-upgrade and
is non-flashable.

Is flashing a Windows-only operation then?  If so, Bad Palm (again).

-- 
MJR



Re: Change the Palm OS requirement

2001-11-11 Thread MJ Ray

> I guess the number of devices running 2.0 are less than 1% and it
> would make more sense to strip out all the 3.x stuff from the viewer
> to create a "Lite" version for those devices (they are already low on
> memory). Anyone using 3.0 can upgrade to 3.3.

Are you sure on that?  I'm fairly sure certain Palm 3s are non-flashable and
stuck on 3.1, while I know of some people using older Palm Pros which have
had memory upgrades added.

Is it possible to support multiple OS versions with #ifdefs, or is that
going to cause a lot of pain?
-- 
MJR



Re: wxPerl! YEAH!

2001-11-08 Thread MJ Ray

David wrote:
>   I'll see if I can get Robert's gui or parts of it working in this,
> just something to tinker with. You all know how I feel about Python.

...and you all know how most of us feel about *spit* Perl ;-)
-- 
MJR



Re: Plucker Desktop initial tour

2001-11-08 Thread MJ Ray

> The Plucker Desktop can now be taken for an initial tour. Can download the
> zip and run it.
> This is a Windows32 binary compile. [...]

So I can't run it.  Sorry if I'm being dense, but where abouts is the
source?  I'm quite happy to try to compile it myself.
-- 
MJR



Re: Problem in Rendering of HTML Tables in Plucker

2001-11-08 Thread MJ Ray

> In normal HTML we use  tag or  tags to create a table.
> But in Plucker it seems these tags are not getting used.

If someone can come up with a good solution of how to display tables wider
than the screen, they may be supported, but they are not at present.

Surely this is a FAQ?
-- 
MJR



Re: I cannot delete one article

2001-11-06 Thread MJ Ray

Gary:
> I use sitescooper to create about a dozen plucker files each day. I usually
> want to delete a file after reading it.
> I understand your logic though.

I don't.  I sync quite a few pages most times (when my Palm isn't ill like
it seems to be at the moment -- that's the last time I use hacks on it!),
but I usually go L and then delete the doc I just had open.  Why
shouldn't there be something to do that sequence for me and leave me in the
library screen?
-- 
MJR



Re: behavior of missing tag?

2001-11-03 Thread MJ Ray

>   http://foo.bar.com/bletch.html#tag
> but there's no "tag" in bletch.html) is handled is to point the link
> to the beginning of the page which presumably would have contained the
> link (in the above example, to paragraph 0 of bletch.html).
[...]
> change the parser to treat such URLs as excluded, just as with any
> other URL which doesn't exist.

I have to support the other message which said that we should support
current (bad) practice, rather than taking a hardline on semantic bugs.  I'm
all for excluding browser-specific features, but using the page instead of
avoiding it for a missing id is probably arguably in the spirit of the spec,
if not the letter.
-- 
MJR



Re: debug.c

2001-10-31 Thread MJ Ray

David:
>   "Oh, you mean you block browsers which don't adhere to the Microsoft
>standards... not the w3c standards... I see..."

...and as I've just been saying elsewhere, manufacturer-controlled standards
are no standards at all.

>   Incidentally, I'm thinking of converting the basic README/FAQ/etc.
> text files in the CVS into an easily parsable format (XML, likely), so that
> I can pull them directly from the cvs to the website for viewing

Can I quietly suggest using structured text (STX)?  I believe there are
modules for a few languages to render it as HTML, but definitely python... I
think there's a guide on http://www.zope.org/ somewhere.

MJR
-- 



Re: Rookie questions

2001-10-29 Thread MJ Ray

Brian:
> (1) Is there a way to look at archived traffic from this list? The

Related question: how do I move to a digest subscription?

> (2) Does Plucker support horizontal layout of tables?

The problem is finding a good algorithm for handling tables that don't fit
on the palm screen, I believe.
-- 



Re: move to Python 2.x?

2001-10-27 Thread MJ Ray

> MJ, can you please provide a URL for that file, so we could check on
> the reason?  But my point was that Python 2.x for Debian is available.

http://ftp-master.debian.org/testing/update_excuses.html

It's within a few clicks of the front page (->Release Info->testing more
detailed explanations->update-excuses or similar).  python2.2 seems to have
some problem on mips, so is also not included.

It would appear that python2.0 has made it into testing at last, though,
which is a good sign.

MJR



Re: move to Python 2.x?

2001-10-27 Thread MJ Ray

> > There is an "excuses" or "reasons" file or similar which you can check to
> > find out.
> MJ, can you please provide a URL for that file, so we could check on
> the reason? 

I'll look it up and get back to you.  In theory, it should be readily
available on the Debian site... in practice, as the "testing" branch is a
relatively new development, it might not be.

> But my point was that Python 2.x for Debian is available.

Depends how you define "available".  There exists a debian package in the
bleeding-edge development branch, but you can't just install it on a system
running the current debian release.  I don't think that's available to most
users.

As to the "I compile things from source" people: well, that's fine and I
used to do that myself, as an ex-slackware user, but I now value my system's
integrity, so even if I compile it myself, it gets made into a package
before it gets allowed into /usr.

MJR



Re: move to Python 2.x?

2001-10-26 Thread MJ Ray

> 2.0 is available in debian-unstable, but for some reason isn't in
> debian-testing. [...]

There is an "excuses" or "reasons" file or similar which you can check to
find out.  The most common causes are not building on one of the debian
core platforms, or something which it depends on has an unsolved critical
bug.  Python fans who use debian should probably take a look and see if they
can lend a hand to fixing it.  Having Python 2.0 in Debian 3.0 would be a
very good thing, but if no-one who knows the python build process helps out,
it sounds like it might not happen.

MJR



Re: move to Python 2.x?

2001-10-25 Thread MJ Ray

Bill:
> I'm wondering if the world is ready for the next release of Plucker to
> require Python 2.x? [...]

Until the next stable Debian ships (and does anyone know if it's with Python
2?), I'm going to have to say "No", in my opinion.  I know that Debian
stable is regarded as somewhat behind the leading edge, but it's a good
benchmark for what you can expect to be out there... not just on Linux, but
Unix in general.  I'd be surprised if our Solaris systems had Python 2 yet.

Start the preparations, but expect Python 1.x to be common for at least
another six months.

MJR



Re: newsrc files

2001-10-24 Thread MJ Ray

> I'd use NNTP to access the news source.  Python includes a pretty
> complete NNTP library (nttplib.py) as part of the standard library.

Yes, I definitely will.  The spool just happened to be handy as I was
writing the first version.

What I'm really interested in is what on non-Unix systems uses newsrc-like
files to define what has been read.  If nothing, then I shan't worry too
much about them.
 
MJR



Re: newsrc files

2001-10-24 Thread MJ Ray

David:
> > I'm writing a tool to pluck news.  Do any non-Unix newsreaders hold
> > articles in a spool-like structure and use newsrc files?
>   There was a perl script out there awhile back that someone
> specifically wrote to put news directly into Sitescooper and Plucker. I know
> I posted it here in the list, but I can't recall when or what the tool's
> name was. DOH! 10lbs of potatoes in a 5lb bucket (my brain). It was on a .nl
> site IIRC. I'll search around and see if I can find something.

OK, thanks, but I have this working from spool now (apart from a slight
problem with the mailto) and it should be fairly easy to make it run
straight off NNTP if desired.  I've written it mostly in python because
all systems using plucker should have python installed, right?

MJR



newsrc files

2001-10-24 Thread MJ Ray

Hi,

I'm writing a tool to pluck news.  Do any non-Unix newsreaders 
hold articles in a spool-like structure and use newsrc files?  
If they do, I'll try to write the one shell script currently 
controlling the build of the HTML tree in python instead.

If not, I'll just document and publish, I guess.

Thanks,

MJR



Re: character sets in HTML files?

2001-10-18 Thread MJ Ray

Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> As soon as we add an XML component to the parser...  It's on my list.

Should plucker just parse XML and feed non-xml stuff to tidy to
reformat?  Just an idea to simplify things.  I think it simplifies
things, at least.

> Actually, if you read the XHTML specs, you'll see that they refer you
> back to the HTML specs for many, even most, things.

Indeed, but I thought XML was in unicode?  Or did I dream that?
Probably did, as I'm sure I've seen encoding="iso-8859-1" in some
files, actually.

-- 
MJR



Re: character sets in HTML files?

2001-10-17 Thread MJ Ray

Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I've been reading the HTTP and HTML specs about character sets.

Shouldn't you be using the xhtml specs now?
-- 
MJR



Re: Plucker Desktop GUI Manager

2001-10-16 Thread MJ Ray

Andy Rabagliati <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> > Well, from what I remember of sitescooper, wouldn't it require yet
> > another interpreter?
> It needs perl. It leverages off plucker code to generate the DB -
> though historically plucker had a perl transcoder too.

Well, we all make mistakes!  ;-)  Seriously, it would mean non-unix
users having to download both of them, wouldn't it?  I'm assuming
they're not common yet.  In that case, I think it would be a bad
thing.

> -fetch is wget, sitescooper, any number of others.

Now, using wget is an interesting idea, although it might require
quite a bit of scratch disk space to get a site.

> -convert we do need. The intermediate form should be a file (files ?)
> with links relativised.

This is interesting.  If it was just encoding all files it found, it
would open the possibility of including multiple sites in one plucker
db.  I'm not sure if such a thing is possible or desirable, though.

-- 
MJR

Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services?  Why
not talk to my employers?  See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.



Re: Plucker Desktop GUI Manager

2001-10-16 Thread MJ Ray

Andy Rabagliati <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I see more perl interpreters around than python. To install plucker
> on a shared BSD box, I had to install a private copy of python 2.0.
> perl has usually 'just worked' when I needed it.

"perl is more common" would be a better way of phrasing it.  I'm
always amazed that perl continues to keep its foothold given some of
the abominations and lack of standardisation which it permits.  

I'm equally amazed that people dismiss my preferred language (scheme)
as a minority, when I think it's on about as many systems as python.
Then again, this is going miles off-topic now.  Let's take this bit
off-list if you want to continue it.

> The plucker project combines 3 totally separate things :-
>1. Fetch content
>2. Convert / pack data for viewer.
>3. View.
> Item 3 is outstanding. Yip Yip - Hooray. Sitescooper, IMHO, does a good job
> of 1, and needs some plucker help for item 2 (for the plucker backend only).

Well, from what I remember of sitescooper, wouldn't it require yet
another interpreter?  Has it been ported to Windows yet?

Maybe it is better to split the plucker-build into -fetch and -convert
instead, though?

> However, since I am
>   not in the position to contribute code at the moment,
[...]
> I should just shut up..

Yes, I probably should too.
-- 
MJR



Re: mailto links update

2001-10-15 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   By non-standard you must mean "not used often". They're used quite a
> bit in academia, and are also in rfc2368.
>   http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/rfc2368.txt

I'll read that RFC.  It seems my knowledge has been obsoleted again.
I remember a bulletin from either WaSP or IACT being particularly
vicious about them in the past.

> > On an semi-related point, is anyone else seeing plucker occasionally
> > goof when presented with a long URL to copy to memo?
>   How long?

Around the 200-character length.  It seems to "lose" the front of the
URL.  I'm not sure which version of the viewer the afflicted palm is
using, though.

-- 
MJR

Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services?  Why
not talk to my employers?  See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.



Re: Plucker Desktop GUI Manager

2001-10-15 Thread MJ Ray

Andy Rabagliati <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Well, I am fond of sitescooper, because perl is less esoteric than
> python, and sitescooper can slice and dice better than the plucker
> frontend - picking out certain porions of a page, for example, or
> converting the URL to the "print format" on the fly.

I feel that I simply have to comment about perl being described as
"less esoteric than python".  How do you decide that?  I've seen some
really disgusting perl, but only mildly distasteful python.  Both have
their flaws, though.

> Scoop ... transcode ... view.
> My vote would be for "channel" or "scoop".

Would we risk confusing the issues if we call them "scoops" instead of
"plucks"?

-- 
MJR

Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services?  Why
not talk to my employers?  See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.



Re: mailto links update

2001-10-15 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   This may be in Chris' court, and if he doesn't have time to look at
> it, I'll poke around in emailform.c, but.. subject and mailto modifiers are
> ignored when they're parsed into Plucker. Example:

I'm mixed about this.  Those modifiers are distinctly non-standard and
I'm unsure that they're used in any consistent manner by the world at
large.

On an semi-related point, is anyone else seeing plucker occasionally
goof when presented with a long URL to copy to memo?

-- 
MJR



Re: Plucker Desktop GUI Manager

2001-10-14 Thread MJ Ray

"Robert O'Connor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Since that was an item included in the draft (under channel manager and the
> main>advanced options), I should ask why you recommend not packaging
> software with any sample Plucker-compatible content, for new users who don't
> know any URLs, or don't feel like always keeping up to date with them as
> they change?

I don't know: it just smacks of centralisation and giving an official
stamp of approval to things.  I'm with plucker because I can do
whatever I want with it, not just what a certain large corporation
says that I can.  

I do recognise the power in having a listings service on the
distribution site, though.  At the very least, it should not be
distributed with the software because it will change more often than
the software (I hope), and it should be possible to pull listings
files from multiple sources (not just plkr.org).

-- 
MJR

Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services?  Why
not talk to my employers?  See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.



Re: Plucker Desktop GUI Manager

2001-10-13 Thread MJ Ray

"Robert O'Connor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> [...] Can certainly add in a way to specify
> some custom behaviour to execute at the end of the Sync.

Pluck not sync, right?  I want to run a command after a successful
pluck -- or is this only to be fired off by a sync process, at which
point there will be problems writing conduits for everything?  :-/

Slightly OT, is the jpilot list quiet atm?

-- 
MJR



Re: Plucker Desktop GUI Manager

2001-10-13 Thread MJ Ray

"Robert O'Connor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I am certainly open to what to call the things other than channels; it is
> easier to specify the term now than more time spent rewriting things. [...]

I vote for "a pluckable (site)", rather than a channel.  To me,
channel implies that you're going to be distributing lists of
recommended sites with the application, which would be a definite
misfeature IMO.

Failing that, "Plucked Document" is probably the next best :-/

-- 
MJR



Re: Plucker Desktop GUI Manager

2001-10-13 Thread MJ Ray

"Robert O'Connor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> wxWindows is a cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit. Makes small footprint, fast
> apps for Linux, Windows, and Mac using widgets for the appropriate OS.

I believe it uses GTK+ widgets on Unix, doesn't it?

> Examples of existing programs are Audacity (wav editor), and Mahogany
> (high-powered email client).

Never heard of them.  I'll go look them up now.  The PLT Scheme system
uses wxWindows, I think, although I suspect it is its own
customisation of it :-/

> I finished the initial draft this week. The 10 screenshots are here:
> http://www.rob.md/projects/plucker/2001_10_13/  (windows widgets shown).

I'll go take a look.  One thing that would be very useful is the
ability to execute some command after a successful pluck, so that the
plucked file will appear in the list of files to be transferred at the
next sync.

> required. It is designed to be compact enough (~350 KB)to be left running in
> the background and update the channels on its own when the due time is up.

Does it have to be running to do timed plucks correctly, or will it
notice when it's next started that it's time to do some plucking?

-- 
MJR

Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services?  Why
not talk to my employers?  See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.



Re: jpilot conduit for plucker (idea)

2001-10-12 Thread MJ Ray

Alexandros Vellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Is anyone anywhere considering making a jpilot "plugin" (conduit) for plucker? 
> In essence, it will be a GUI front-end for Plucker. [...]

I've been considering a simpler version of what you describe for
months.  I've still not done anything about it, mainly because my C is
fairly bad and I hate GUI programming in C.  If you do it, you'll have
at least two very appreciative users here.  I think the jpilot list
are always supportive of plugin authors, too.

Thanks,
-- 
MJR



Re: Microsoft Word to Plucker convertor, 1.0

2001-10-11 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   Any ideas on how I should go about this? Or should I just dump the
> idea and move onto other things? The output from Word to Plucker is fairly
> impressive. Much more impressive than Abiword's output or even the Microsoft
> native "Save As HTML" output.
>   Ideas? Comments?

Why not release the script for download?

-- 
MJR



Re: Palm Boulevard Submission Information

2001-09-27 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   Once again they screw it up and copy the wrong content over with the
> wrong screenshot when they hijack the Palmgear.com submission data. Lovely.

Do you have a "cease and desist" written specially for these kind of
jerks now?

-- 
MJR   Thesis watch: 30%
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/



Re: CVS question

2001-09-26 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   cvs -z9 up -dP
>   Which will add maxumum compression (probably overkill, but I'm in
> close proximity to the box anyway =) [...]

What, so you can hear it catch fire when everyone follows this advice?
 ;-)

-- 
MJR   Thesis watch: 30%
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/



Re: CVS question

2001-09-25 Thread MJ Ray

Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> [...] Is there some magic switch that has to be thrown
> to get a full update?

-d I think.

-- 
MJR   Thesis watch: 30%
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/



Re: Thanx

2001-09-24 Thread MJ Ray

"Zach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Thank you for this wonderful product.  And thank you for making it freeware.

I'm sure the developers will appreciate your praise, but please notice
that it isn't public domain software and has a licence which must be
respected.  That licence is there to safeguard the freedom of the work
done on it.

Thanks for taking the time to write a note!  :-)

-- 
MJR   Thesis watch: 27%
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/



Re: Colour images and Unix

2001-09-15 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   Compile and install that version and then do the following,

*Please* suggest that people build or install packages for their
distribution in preference, where possible.  I'd hate plucker to be
suggesting that people break their systems unnecessarily.

-- 
MJR   Thesis watch: 27%
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/



Re: Colour images and Unix

2001-09-15 Thread MJ Ray

Kjetil Torgrim Homme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Versions: ppmtoTbmp 1.1 from http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/pilot/
> plucker 1.1.12 (tar.bz2)

You'll doubtless be told: use netpbm not ppmtoTbmp.  There is
pnmtopalm in netpbm now.

-- 
MJR   Thesis watch: 27%
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/




Re: upgrade to 1.1.12 broke image conversion

2001-09-08 Thread MJ Ray

Dave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Am I just missing something stupid, or is this a real problem?  Thanks
> for your time and help.

Can you run it with -V 2 and see what the real error is, please?
I've just had to edit my parser to fix a big with self.scale not being
set if it doesn't need scaling, causing an exception.  I don't know if
I caused the bug, though.

-- 
MJR   Thesis watch: 27%
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/



Re: Daily Dose

2001-09-04 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   The question becomes.. should we make this type of information
> available on the website? Or should we leave it off, because of the
> potential "transcoding" concerns? I think I know Mike's opinion on this one,
> but I'd like to hear from others.

Maybe just having configuration file sections which we can download in
some simple way is good enough?  That way, we'd always get the latest
info, whenever we sync.

>   If anyone hasn't noticed, I'm trying to brush up on my perl a bit
> more because there's a whole bunch of new things coming soon... but I'd like
> to do something a bit more interactive on the site to keep people coming
> back.

Not interested in a more modern language like Ruby, then?  ;-)

-- 
MJR
  This is my personal web site =-> http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
 http://www.alug.org.uk/ <-- This is the LUG I go to
I work for this clever internet developer ==> http://www.luminas.co.uk/



Re: This Program....

2001-08-23 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   This is the development list, please take this to plucker-list, not
> the development list. Keep the noise and spam/flames out of this list,
> please.

Is document development not important?



Re: This Program....

2001-08-23 Thread MJ Ray

I'm sorry, but is this meant to be a request for help or a general
rant?  It's very hard to read.  If you have specific problems
understanding the documentation for the Windows plucker, I'm sure that
someone who knows will help.

Plucker is still under heavy development and not ready for world
domination yet, I'm afraid.  If you send useful help (eg specific
questions) or money or hardware to the developers, it will improve
faster.  That's the way these things work.  It's an end to
spoon-feeding and the start of a partnership.



Re: Autoscroll MarkII

2001-08-08 Thread MJ Ray

Dirk Heiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> The first time i open the DB and see the new autoscroll control at
> the toolbar i was a little bit confused. I expected that if i see the
> run symbol (the right arrow) the autoscroll are on and if i see the
> stop symbol (the filled black square) the autoscroll is off and taping
> this button change the state.

It depends whether you think of it as an indicator (showing the
current state) or a control (showing the intended state).  Showing the
intended action is consistent with the other controls, I think.

> The other thing. In settings you could set the Autoscroll delay in
> "Ticks", i guess many users with no programing experience are confused
> by the "Ticks". Maybe give this setting in seconds a better?

Do Ticks vary between machines?



Re: Modest patch proposal: Pixel tweaks to icons, autoscroll, narrow fixed font

2001-07-19 Thread MJ Ray

Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> autoscrolling, a la CSpotRun.  The default speed for scrolling is too
> fast for me, and I can't seem to slow it down enough (or speed up my
> reading :-) to make it usable.

Seconded.  Using large text, it's nearly usable, but it's just too
fast otherwise.



Re: Modest patch proposal: Pixel tweaks to icons, autoscroll, narrow fixed font

2001-07-19 Thread MJ Ray

"Robert O'Connor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> as pressing down on scrollbar), but a double pixel scroll, (plus an
> overclocker like Afterburner) works quite nicely. Or can think about adding

Ow!  Eat my batteries with an overclocker just to scroll Plucker
documents?



Re: Plucker und automatische Proxconfiguration unter Windows NT

2001-07-12 Thread MJ Ray

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

> Mein Problem: Ich bin oft auf Dienstreisen und würde meinen Palm auch gerne
> von meinem Arbeitsplatz unter NT aufladen. Gibt es eine Möglichkeit dies über
> automatische Proxykonfiguration zu erledigen (siehe entsprechende Option in
> Netscape)?

Nein.  Plucker mußt mit Javascript automatische Proxykonfiguration
lesen und Plucker hat keine Javascript...  Kann man die proxy_config
lesen und die richtig Proxy für jeden PluckerDB konfiguren?

(Apologies to all for my rusty German.)



Re: Just an idea...

2001-07-07 Thread MJ Ray

Michael Nordström <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Not hard at all --- if someone sends me a patch... ;-)

Not hard, or not hard for you?  If the former, then I'll add it to the
over-long TODO (but fairly high up as this is an irritating omission).
If the latter... ;-)

-- 
MJR



Re: Just an idea...

2001-07-06 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   Prepend http://plucker.gnu-designs.com/download/plucker-1.1/ to the
> front of each of them. Obviously it's not a browsable directory.

Yeah, I tried that before and was threatened with being paddled.
Rather unfriendly to say the least ;-)
-- 
MJR



Just an idea...

2001-07-06 Thread MJ Ray

Well, actually two.  First up, how hard would it be to implement an
autoscroll setting, where the screen moves down half a screenful every
n seconds?  ISTR that you can move it down half a screen on tap.

Secondly, where do I download Plucker 1.1.5 for Linux?  I was about to
rebuild again but I see that a new version is out.  There doesn't seem
to be a source link for it, though, only a binary-only one.

-- 
MJR



Re: question re bookmarks for Palm doc format documents

2001-07-06 Thread MJ Ray

"anna" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Basically, I'm trying to create a doc for Palm, and need to create my own
> bookmarks in the text. Do you know of an editor or something that will allow
> me to put in my own bookmarks. [...]

Plucker isn't a standard Palm doc maker, but converts HTML documents
into its own format.  As such, you can use hyperlinks between pages
and so on, the same as on the web.  You also get more textual effects
and images than you can with plain Palm doc.  I think the recommended
way to distribute ebooks is now to offer them as simple HTML
documents, so the users can convert them easily to their preferred
format.

I don't know the Palm Doc format well enough to know how bookmarks are
done, or what open source software does them.  Perhaps someone else on
this list does.

-- 
MJR



Re: Legacy code

2001-07-01 Thread MJ Ray

Michael Nordström <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Neither of them are common. You have to build ppmtoTbmp by yourself
> and if you can handle that then you should be able to upgrade to the
> latest version of netpbm, too.

OK, I overlooked the tool in Debian's unstable because it changed from
starting with ppm to pnm.  Debian users should be able to upgrade with
"apt-get source netpbm && cd netpbm-* && debuild binary" and then
installing the resulting package.

> By adding a check to the configure script we can prevent users from 
> installing Plucker unless they have the correct netpbm version, so it 
> would not break converters "without warning."

Why does plucker not complain more about such things?  In the "Plucker
1.1 was configured..." finish screen, saying whether it can make
images would help.

Now I'm really confused.  It seems to do just that: it spits out a
*big* warning if it can't find anything to convert with.  For some
reason it thinks it's OK here but still doesn't convert images.  I
think I'm going to wander off, do some upgrades and some tests and see
whether that fixes it.  My plucker seems a little confused.

> > (My copious free time is over-allocated elsewhere just now, sorry.)
> Of course, we on the other hand seem to be expected to have an 
> unlimited amount of free time ;-)

Hmm, irony detection failure?

-- 
MJR



Re: Legacy code

2001-06-30 Thread MJ Ray

Michael Nordström <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> ppmtoTbmp has not been maintained for several years, so it's not 
> a question of only using bleeding edge or not. 

But the palm-supporting version of netpbm still isn't common, while
ppmtoTbmp still is.

> > Maybe because plucker ought to have more users, not fewer?
> Sure, but someone has to support the tools or you will just do 
> the users a disservice.
> Do you volunteer your time? ;-)

It's a couple of lines to trap and retry using a command that worked
before.  How much effort is it really?  Maybe it should grumble while
it does it, then remove support in a later version?  It's better than
suddenly breaking converters without warning everywhere.

(My copious free time is over-allocated elsewhere just now, sorry.)

-- 
MJR



Re: Legacy code (was: Anyone else seeing problems with plucker 1.1.7 ?)

2001-06-29 Thread MJ Ray

Michael Nordström <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Why support a tool (ppmtoTbmp) that is not maintained any longer?

Why support anything other than the bleeding edge versions of
anything?  Maybe because plucker ought to have more users, not fewer?

-- 
MJR



Re: Anyone else seeing problems with plucker 1.1.7 ?

2001-06-29 Thread MJ Ray

Michael Nordström <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> That is, you are using an old version of ppmtoTbmp that doesn't
> support the -4bit argument.

Until the new netpbm is common place, it should at least be possible
to use plucker nicely without having to build your own upgrade.
Perhaps a fall-back try with the old parameters?  It can't be that
hard, surely?
-- 
MJR



Re: Bad manuals

2001-06-10 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   Alexander, can you comment?

Alexander has emailed me off-list to say that it was because tex4ht
doesn't exist for OS/2 at the time it was written.  He also gave me
lots of other useful comments.  Can someone tell me what tex4ht
availability is like on other platforms now?

Also, is the "hyperref" package available on other platforms and tex
distributions?  Most importantly, miktex on windows, emTeX on OS/2,
OzTeX (or whatever is the standard now) on Mac and 4allTex on DOS.

Thanks,
-- 
MJR



Bad manuals

2001-06-10 Thread MJ Ray

After prompting on the newsgroups, I've noticed that I can't build the
plucker manuals.  This is because they are in latex but use some
packages that aren't in tetex, most notably html, but also because
they want to use latex2html instead of tex4ht (ht latex).

Briefly, tetex is the largest standard tex distribution, so I'm
slightly surprised that it's using things not found there.  Also,
tex4ht uses the latex formatting engine to generate html while
latex2html reimplements a subset of it in another language.

I suggest that the manuals are moved to use tex4ht and hopefully
remain compatible with building with latex2html.  If no-one is able, I
will make a start, but it may be some time.  But first I wanted to
ask, is there a strong reason why latex2html is used?
-- 
MJR



Re: From comp.sys.palmtops.pilot

2001-06-05 Thread MJ Ray

Nick Vargish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> It's deprecated, not removed. Plenty of documents exist that use  and
> were fully conformant with the standard of the day. Are we going to throw
> out backward compatability and thus loose the ability to accurately
> portray these documents?

No, but the correct translation should be selected by the DOCTYPE of
the source document.

I've not looked to see what plucker's basic format is like, but
wouldn't it be good to build up modular stylesheets and load in the
right ones depending on the source document?  Sort of XSLT-like, but
that won't work as HTML isn't XML.  Conformant and compatible, though.

> I think that would be a big mistake, and one made based on a
> misunderstanding of the intent of deprecating features. The concept is
> there to steer page authors, not browser developers.

Awww, what's the use of having standards if you can't grumble about
them not being followed?

> I haven't seen any actual "argument", though maybe that's happening at a
> level that's not visible to me...

http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=argument WordNet entry, 
sense 3.
-- 
MJR



Re: From comp.sys.palmtops.pilot

2001-06-05 Thread MJ Ray

"David A. Desrosiers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   Mike fixed strikeout and put a package on the ftp site:

So I saw.  It's started some argument over whether this is a good
thing, as strike-through is deprecated.
-- 
MJR



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