Re: Looking for a good "default" font (small 'L' vs. capital 'i' problem)
Hi Marco, thanks for taking the time to reply. Am Tue, 22 Aug 2023 20:24:39 +0200 schrieb Marco Möller : > Having had the same problem to solve for myself I ended up to use: > Noto sans for all my GUI > Liberation Mono for coding The "Noto Sans" has an almost identical glyph for the capital 'i' and the small 'L'. It's just a straight line and as such doesn't solve my problem. Christoph
Re: Looking for a good "default" font (small 'L' vs. capital 'i' problem)
Am Sun, 20 Aug 2023 21:41:04 + schrieb "Russell L. Harris" : > On the 3, 5, 6, and 9, open the end of the loops, and shorten the > horizontal stroke on top of the 5 so the 5 is not mistaken for an S. > Always put horizontal strokes on I. Make the 1 with a flag on the > upper end and put a horizontal stroke on the 7, German-style. My > handwriting is a odd mixture of cursive script and printing. Thanks for sharing! Really interesting ... I'm already implementing all of these "rules". I learnt to write the 7 in German style because I live in Germany ;-) We also learned to put a "flag" on the 1 in school. I was surprised to see other people don't. To me it's quite confusing to see 1 just as a straight line. I don't remember when I startet to put bars on the 'I', probably during my studies of electrical engineering when we used lots of formulas. I also have a "mixed handwriting" with some ligatures (for example on the double 'l'). For the small 's' I use two different glyphs (not on purpose) that usually depend on my mood. For a long time I wasn't even aware I was doing this :-) Best regards, Christoph
Re: Looking for a good "default" font (small 'L' vs. capital 'i' problem)
Am Sat, 19 Aug 2023 20:16:25 + schrieb "Russell L. Harris" : > I am concerned primarily with the distinction between numeral 1 and > lower case L. Of course, 'l' and 'I' was just the most prominent example. Usually I look at 1lI| (numeral one, small 'L' capital 'L', Pipe) > And I loathe fonts in which the numerals 3, 5, 6, and 9 > are not radically different. Interesting point. Didn't pay much attention to these numerals, yet. > Back in the 1970's, I ran across a detailed study of character shape > with respect to the problem of readability after photographic > reduction (microfilm and microfische) in hand-lettered engineering > drawings (24in x 36in). Reading that study brought about a change in > my own handwriting. The study was by a oil company; perhaps it was > Shell Oil. That would be really interesting to read. Do you have any (more) hints on how to find that study? Do you remember what change you did in your handwriting? > For Debian, I searched by opening EDIT > PREFERENCES > APPEARANCE in a > terminal. I currently am using `go mono regular'. But `liberation > mono regular' looks promising. I do admit that I wasn't specific enough in my first question. When I wrote "sans serif", I meant "a not serif font". Actually I wasn't looking for a monospace font either (but didn't state that explicitly). For now "IBM Plex" seems to do a good job. Thanks, Christoph
Re: REeLooking for a good "default" font (small 'L' vs. capital 'i' problem)
> Have a look at: https://github.com/IBM/plex > it is very readable. > Rolf > Thank you, that's something I've been looking for. There's even a debian package ... apt-get install fonts-ibm-plex ... did do the job. Best regards, Christoph
Looking for a good "default" font (small 'L' vs. capital 'i' problem)
Hi all,
I'm unsatisfied with the default sans font in debian for use in the
graphical user interface (in my case XFCE).
My main concern with the default sans font (I guess it's Bitsream Vera,
but that doesn't really matter) is the the small 'L' and the capital 'i'
look the same (mostly).
Everyone who has tried to read unknown characters (e.g. a password
generated automatically oder base64 encoded data) knows what pain it is to
distinguish these characters.
Could you please recommend a "suitable" sans-serif font that
a) has "proper" 'l' and 'I' characters
b) looks harmonious on screen, even for small (8pt, 10pt) font sizes
e.g. not too narrow, not too wide, no weird characters, etc.,
maybe even beautiful, without being "artistic" / fancy
(I noticed how different the interaction with my computer feels
after changing fonts – and I really don't want to accept any font too
stiff, too thin, etc.)
c) has german Umlaute and other regular "foreign language
characters" (no need for a "large" range of Unicode support)
d) has no technical flaws
(a lot of free fonts I tried do have weird quirks, like improper
rendering in specific font sizes, missing characters when printing,
etc. ("Signika" is an example of this))
I'm close to hiring a font designer to design a font according to my
needs, which – in some way – seems ridiculous to me :-)
(On the other hand I like the idea)
The fonts I tried so far and somewhat suit my needs are "Shanti" and
"Share". Both are a bit too narrow for my taste and Share definitly is
too "stiff".
I hope you have a good recommendation for me.
Thanks,
Christoph
Re: How to change lightdm background in bullseye? (additional: weird stat behaviour)
Am Thu, 16 Jun 2022 23:26:38 + schrieb Lee : > > [greeter] > > background=/usr/share/xfce4/backdrops/foo.png > > user-background=/usr/share/xfce4/backdrops/foo.png > > Do those files exist? There's no /usr/share/xfce4/backdrops/ on my machine.. No, these files don't exist ;-) I changed the name to foo.png in the email because the original name contained information I didn't want to share. But yes, the directory exists (initial install was Debian 8) and the files referenced also exist. > This works for me > $ cat lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf > [greeter] > background = /usr/share/desktop-base/spacefun-theme/login/background.svg My original file /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf actually contained a lot of lines with comments about the options. I copied only the relevant stuff (what I _believed_ was relevant) into the email. > Try installing lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings > I get a lot of error messages but it did change the background for me. It works. The settings editor removed everything else from the file and now there's only those two lines left. I'm really curious to find out what in the original file caused problems. I'll restore it from my backup and check that. Thanks! Christoph
How to change lightdm background in bullseye? (additional: weird stat behaviour)
Hello, Part 1: lightdm background I've just upgraded to bullseye and would like to change the background of the lightdm greeter. According to ... https://wiki.debian.org/LightDM#Change_the_greeter.27s_background ... I'm supposed to edit ... /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf ... which I've done ... [greeter] background=/usr/share/xfce4/backdrops/foo.png user-background=/usr/share/xfce4/backdrops/foo.png ... with no success. Background sticks to dark blue image with debian artwork. Before, I had already tried to get a language selector in lightdm by changing the indicators: indicators=~host;~spacer;~session;~language;ally;~clock;~power But lightdm doesn't show a language selector. I'm suspecting my changes in lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf have no effect. Question 1: How do I properly change the lightdm background image? Question 2: Is lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf the right place to configure the lightdm greeter in bullseye? Part 2: weird stat behaviour (ext4 filesystem) I'm not too familiar with stat and access times, although I do believe to have some understanding of it. But the following confuses me: The question related to lightdm was: Is the file /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf actually read by lightdm? To find out I edited the file and restartet lightdm. "stat" didn't show any access to the file so I did a system reboot because I suspected the missing access change was due to caching. But after the reboot the file still had the old access time! (I removed addional output of the stat command): /etc/lightdm$ date Do 16. Jun 11:11:05 CEST 2022 /etc/lightdm$ stat lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf Datei: lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf Zugriff: 2022-06-16 10:43:18.769291459 +0200 FYI: "Zugriff" is access time in german Reboot was at 10:45, access time is 10:43. Is it correct to conclude that the file has not been read during bootup? Or am I overlooking something? To further elaborate I did another test on a test.txt file. Procedure: 1. touch test.txt 2. stat test.txt -> correct access time from touch 3. cat test.txt 4. stat test.txt -> access time changed due to cat - fine 5. cat test.txt 6. stat test.txt -> still the same access time as in step 4 - caching? 7. reboot 8. cat test.txt 9. stat test.txt -> STILL the same access time as in step 4 - WTF? Expectations: 1) After a reboot there is no cache to read from. 2) The cat command accesses the file. 3) Stat shows the time of "cat" in the access time stamp. But 3) does not happen. More precisely: It only happens sometimes. Question 3: Could someone please explain to me what's going on here with stat? Thanks, Christoph
Parallel processing unit cluster for single ffmpeg calls?
Hi folks, I was wondering if I can build a cluster to convert / transcode videos with ffmpeg. There are some workstations standing around here ... and I though maybe it's possible to combine their computing power? To be clear: The task is to work on a single video as fast as possible. I found this, but it's from 2010: http://www.samir.ca/2010/11/23/high-speed-ffmpeg-cluster-encoding-with-python-and-avidemux.html I have no experience in clustering and would be grateful for any useful hint. Thanks, Christoph
Re: Installationsproblem
Am Tue, 16 Mar 2021 17:48:43 + (UTC) schrieb Julia Volovik : > Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, > ich habe ein Problem mit meinem Notebook nach der Installation. > Ich habe mit Rufus ein Boot USB erstellt (Debian Version ohne Internet > Anschluss).Auf dem Notebook gab es vorher Windows 7. Es handelt sich um ein > Dell XPS 8 GB RAM Intel i7.Ich habe die Installation durchgeführt. Während > der Installation gab es keine Probleme.Am Ende stand "Jetzt das neue System > hochfahren" und dann kam der schwarze Bildschirm. Das Notebook geht sehr > schnell an und der Bildschirm bleibt schwarz.Ich habe versucht das Notebook > von dem USB noch Mal zu booten. Ich bin in die Setups gegangen und habe mehr > Mals versucht von "USB Booten" zu starten. Es passiert aber nichts. > Könnten Sie mir weiter helfen ?Mit freundlichen Grüßen,Julia Hallo Julia, die Sprache dieser debian-user Mailingliste ist Englisch. Versuch es am besten auf der deutschen Liste: https://lists.debian.org/debian-user-german/ Gruß, Christoph
Re: Please be respectful
Hello Leslie, hello Harry. On Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:46:42 -0500 Leslie Rhorer wrote : > Until someone does earn respect, there is no reason anyone > should afford it them. It is utterly ridiculous to think > everyone deserves respect. On Fri, 16 Oct 2020 22:39:01 -0700 Weaver wrote : > Some, in their retarded viewpoint, believe respect is something > engendered by social position. > Wrong! > Social position is engendered by earned level of respect. We're on a Debian mailing list here. Being respectful is part of the Debian Code of Conduct which reflects the values of this community: 1. Be respectful In a project the size of Debian, inevitably there will be people with whom you may disagree, or find it difficult to cooperate. Accept that, but even so, remain respectful. Disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour or personal attacks, and a community in which people feel threatened is not a healthy community. [...] Source: https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct If both of you openly state that you oppose the idea of being respectful with other people unless they have earned your respect (according to your perception), you more or less directly state that you oppose the Debian Code of Conduct. Apart from that, both of you have broken a couple of rules from the Mailing lists code of conduct: https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/ * Non-constructive [...] messages [...] are not welcome * Do not use foul language; [...] * Try not to flame; it is not polite. * Use common sense all the time. I hope some people will draw some meaningful consequences. Best regards, Christoph
Re: Please be respectful
Hello Harry, thanks for your answer. On Wed, 14 Oct 2020 02:12:45 -0700 Weaver wrote : > Being polite is a standard that has to apply to all. Agreed. > I consider the original post not to be. I do believe it could have been "more considerate", but it didn't "cross my line", which your post did. That's why I took the time to write the "please be respectful" email. My main point of criticism is that independently of the original post, it's a bad idea to escalate the situation by being sarcastic. I prefer to directly confront the poster with the problem (as I'm doing in this case) and ask for a different communication style. > To me I see an outstanding example of laziness ... I guess that's where the main clash is. Sometimes I find myself thinking the same way about what other people do. But after some experiences of being nasty with other people, ruining relationships for almost nothing, I've come to the conclusion that "Assume good faith" as mentioned in the Debian Code of Conduct is a much better strategy to deal with issues of that kind. In many cases I've often found that my initial judgement (he's lazy, nobody needs that feature, etc.) was wrong and it was a good idea not to express my opinion. In other cases I find myself to be right. Usually there's no need to point to that. People expose their faults (lazyness, etc.) themselves - sooner or later. Sometimes I support them doing so with polite questions ;-) Best regards, Christoph
Please be respectful (was: one thing i don't like about Thunar file manager)
On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 23:06:55 -0700 Weaver wrote : > > "as I learnt to read years ago," > It's appropriate sarcasm. Disagreed. It's simply disrespectful. > For those who require spoon feeding: As is this comment, too. Sarcasm can be fun sometimes, but I believe it's no appropriate way to communicate on debian mailing lists. It can lead to misunderstandings and people being hurt, apart from making a bad impressions on others reading this list. Please re-read the Debian Code of Conduct and consider being more polite: https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct Best regards, Christoph
Re: Looking for a generic drag and drop gui for custom commands
Am Tue, 08 Sep 2020 17:41:55 +0100 schrieb Tixy : > # > ~$ cat Desktop/test.desktop > [Desktop Entry] > Encoding=UTF-8 > Version=1.0 > Type=Application > Terminal=true > Exec=/home/tixy/test.sh %F > Name=Test launcher > Icon=/home/tixy/test.svg > > # Thanks so much Tixy. To my shame I have to admit that I was missing the %F (or %U) in my desktop starter file. Now with '%F' I can drag and drop, the programm accepts the argument, but only one. When I give two arguments (select two files from the desktop, drag and drop them on the starter), xfce will spawn two instances, even though I used capital '%F'. I've asked a question in the xfce forums about this: https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?pid=60260 > This is what I did to test, including some code to distinguish audio > files from extension. (The 'file' command would probably be best for > testing file type properly, never used this though.) Thanks for your audio/video code, but I *really* want a gui that will handle stuff in a more generic way. Your example inpired me to "auto sort" the arguments if there are multiple that need to be in exact order. That would be a super feature for the really lazy "grab all - drop all" users ;-) Actually I've got the basic idea implemented already (using Python/QT). The GUI lets me select the task from a list (by files in a configuration directory) and load the "command template" from that file. The program will then substitue the placeholders with my drag and drop arguments. For now I can combine/split video files and also upload files to a server using scp and interactivly ask for a password (spawned a terminal running bash). And of course I have a "hello argument" test ;-) There are plenty of ideas how to improve the program. The source code is still quite dirty (it's more a proof of concept at the moment). But I might decided to release it in case some of my friends find it useful ;-) Best regards, Christoph
Re: Looking for a generic drag and drop gui for custom commands
Am Tue, 08 Sep 2020 13:40:03 +0100
schrieb Tixy :
> > Put the (ffmpeg) command in a script and run it with argument/s ?
>
> And run the script from a 'desktop entry' [1] and your desktop GUI may
> let you run it with file arguments just by dropping files onto it. You
> can put these 'desktop' files on you desktop or in there own directory
> you can open when you have tasks to do.
That ssound like a good idea and close to what I want to achieve, but it
doesn't seem to work in XFCE. When I drop some a file on a desktop file
("starter") that is associated with my testdnd.sh script, the script
doesn't get any input:
testdnd.sh
#!/bin/bash
echo 'testdnd.sh'
echo 'First two arguments:'
echo -n '$1: '
echo $1
echo -n '$2: '
echo $2
echo 'Standard Input: '
while read line
do
echo "$line"
done < "${VAR:-/dev/stdin}"
read
end
When I drag a text file on the starter / desktop file, the mouse cursor
displays a '+' Symbol, as if the starter accepts that file. But when I
drop it, I get neither parameters nor standard input (that's what I
expect).
output
testdnd.sh
First two arguments:
$1:
$2:
Standard Input:
end
In contrast, when I call the script from the command line, it gives me
both, parameters and stdin:
$ cat test.txt | ./testdnd.sh a b
testdnd.sh
First two arguments:
$1: a
$2: b
Standard Input:
This is
a multiline
text file
> The above works for me with LXDE. Though you don't get to edit
> parameters to you scripts, just pass files to them.
It doesn't work for me. Am I doing something wrong?
Anyway, this wouldn't be an optimal solution. In some cases I need to
pass multiple arguments in a specific order. For example an audio and
video file that should be combined into a single .mp4 file.
Christoph
Re: Looking for a generic drag and drop gui for custom commands
Hello David, Am Tue, 8 Sep 2020 02:57:30 -0700 schrieb David Christensen : > There are a great many ways to implement graphical user interface > applications. Drag-and-drop support implies good integration with the > window manager or desktop environment. One option is to use a > programming language and a GUI library to build a script or executable > (e.g. Tcl/Tk, C/GTK). That's what I'm thinking about. I'll probably go with the QT GUI Framework with either C++ or Python as programming language. > You should define some criteria to narrow the choices. This is a Debian > mailing list, so I assume you want to build and run apps on Debian using > tools packaged on Debian (?). Yes, mostly. But if there's some nice command line utility that doesn't ship with Debian (such as stereo tool audio processor), I'll use that as well. BTW I'm doing a lot of audio / video editing at the moment. > Do you want to develop and/or deploy on other platforms? I was primarily aiming at Linux, but you made me realize it would be useful to have the same applications on other system, e. g. Windows (which I'm using occasionally). I'll develop on Linux (Debian). > Will the apps be single-user or multi-user (including > yourself on multiple devices)? Single User. Did you get the idea of what I want to do? Did you just copy/paste an app development questionaire? ;-) I'll answer the rest of your questions anyway ... > Will the app include accessibility features? Privacy? Security? No. It'll be just one window that accepts files and folders to drag onto. The only goal (for now) of this "app" is to execute a single command. > What license(s) will apply to the app? I don't care. Maybe MIT or Public domain. > Will you use any external development infrastructure (e.g SourceForge, > GitHub). I'm not planning to do that, but if a lot of people find my command-gui useful, I might do that. Are you interested? ;-) > Tell us about your programming knowledge and skills. I've done similar, more complicated Projects in the past. Some experience with C/C++, Python, Kivy, wxWidgets, perl, php, etc. > How much time and money do you want to put into developing the first app? As little as possible. That's why I asked if there's a similar app available already. There are many beautiful and useful pieces of software out in the world. The main reason to ask here on the list is that I assume people know more about those tools than I do. > What about apps after that (and how many)? Are the apps a hobby, or do you > want to leverage this into a programmer job and/or commercial venture? > And, whatever else comes to mind. The program is meant to be used by myself – to simplify my life / workflow. So you could call it a hobby. And I haven't done programming for a couple of months, which I would like to do now. And I would enjoy to learn something new (QT in this case). I've just installed the QT Designer this morning, clicked around for a couple of minutes and managed to get the window displayed with python (PyQT / Pyside2). The next step will be to get the drop functionality working. After that, I will put some predefined command statements in the list of selectable tasks. Then I'll go for the argument replacement and with that in place, I have a working tool. Everything else will be "nice to have". But I'll soon figure out it's annoying to only have predefined commands, so I will add some configuration file whicht might be editable from the gui. That's my plan for now. Thanks for your support, Christoph
Looking for a generic drag and drop gui for custom commands
Dear all, I'd like to "automate" a couple of tasks that I (until now) do on the command line manually. Examples include splitting of video files using ffmpeg, run backups with specific parameters, display checksums(md5), etc. I'm tired of typing the same long commands that I often need to look up in my wiki and just replace one or two parameters, usually just the file names. So I was thinking about writing an application which will do just what I want. But then I thought: Maybe someone did that already! ;-) So that's my question: Is there a kind of generic drag and drop gui for custom commands? My idea is that I'd start up the gui and select a task (e. g. split a video file). A command line will be loaded (maybe from a config file) with placeholders for input, output and other parameters. I will then drag some file on the gui and the filename will be used as a parameter, in this case as the input file. Then I will click some run button, which executes the command. Ideally the output and exit code will be displayed. Any hints will be appreciated. Thanks, Christoph
grub broke boot of debian stable: error: symbol 'grub_calloc' not found
Dear all, this morning my desktop computer (HP Z220) running debian stable, instead of booting, gave me a bad surprise. It read something like this: error: symbol 'grub_calloc' not found I was able to fix it by booting from cd into rescue mode and re-install grub. As far as I remember I didn't do any "suspicious" things to my computer yesterday. First investigations: Check the update log: # tail -20 /var/log/apt/history.log Start-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:35 Commandline: /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade Upgrade: grub-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-xen-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub2-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-pc:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-pc-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1), grub-xen-host:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1) End-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:47 Start-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:52 Commandline: /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade Upgrade: firefox-esr-l10n-de:amd64 (68.10.0esr-1~deb10u1, 68.11.0esr-1~deb10u1), firefox-esr:amd64 (68.10.0esr-1~deb10u1, 68.11.0esr-1~deb10u1) End-Date: 2020-07-30 12:50:58 Start-Date: 2020-07-31 09:30:07 Commandline: /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade Upgrade: grub-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-xen-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub2-common:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-pc:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-pc-bin:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2), grub-xen-host:amd64 (2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u1, 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u2) End-Date: 2020-07-31 09:30:21 Start-Date: 2020-07-31 09:44:40 Commandline: apt-get remove unattended-upgrades Remove: unattended-upgrades:amd64 (1.11.2) End-Date: 2020-07-31 09:44:41 # uname -a Linux -Debian 4.19.0-9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2+deb10u1 (2020-06-07) x86_64 GNU/Linux Ok, there's the unattended-upgrade (which I honestly wasn't even aware of) and it did some upgrade to grub which apparently broke the boot process. I guess there's something wrong with a recent grub update, as I'm not the only one facing this problem during the past days: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=966575 https://askubuntu.com/questions/1263125/how-to-fix-a-grub-boot-error-symbol-grub-calloc-not-found I didn't expect this to happen with a debian stable. Please let me know if you're interested in further investigation and let me know what to do or what information you need. Best regards, Christoph
Wordpress UTF-8 problem after PHP upgrade (from 5.6 to 7.3)
Hello, I've just upgraded from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.3 (and reverted back for now). With PHP 7.3 there is a problem in Wordpress displaying german Umlaute and other UTF-8 related characters. I guess it's just some locale-related setting somewhere, any suggestions? Thanks, Christoph Software version information: Debian 10/Buster on amd64 MYSQL server 5.5 Apache 2.4.38 Wordpress 5.0 (that ships with Buster) PHP / Wordpress compatibility chart https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/php-compatibility-and-wordpress-versions/
