Recent publications | Jean-Philippe Fleury

Clearlooks-Phenix: GTK3 port of the Clearlooks theme

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Overview

The Clearlooks-Phenix project (formerly known as Clearwaita) aims at creating a GTK3 port of Clearlooks, the default theme for Gnome 2. Style is also included for GTK2, Unity and for Metacity, Openbox and Xfwm4 window managers.

Here are screenshots (if applicable, click to download the original image):

Requirements

Requirements for Clearlooks-Phenix 1: packages gtk2-engines (if GTK2 applications are used) and gnome-themes-standard.
Requirements for Clearlooks-Phenix 2: packages gtk2-engines (if GTK2 applications are used), gnome-themes-standard and gtk3-engines-unico.
Requirements for Clearlooks-Phenix 3: package gtk2-engines (if GTK2 applications are used).

Installation

Regardless of the installation method chosen, the theme must be selected once the installation is complete:

On Gnome: with gnome-tweak-tool, by setting Theme > Window theme and Theme > GTK+ theme, or in a terminal:

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/theme \'Clearlooks-Phenix\'
dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme \'Clearlooks-Phenix\'

On Xfce: by going to Settings > Appearence > Style in the main menu for the GTK theme, and to Settings > Window Manager > Style for the Xfwm4 theme, or in a terminal:
```
xfconf-query -s Clearlooks-Phenix -c xfwm4 -p /general/theme
xfconf-query -s Clearlooks-Phenix -c xsettings -p /Net/ThemeName
```

Manually

Manual installation ensures you get the latest version of the theme. See below for other installation methods.

Download the appropriate version according to your situation:
- for GTK 3.0 and 3.2: download Clearlooks-Phenix 1;
- for GTK 3.4: download Clearlooks-Phenix 2.
- for GTK 3.6 and newer: download Clearlooks-Phenix 3.
To find your GTK version:
- You can check in your package manager the version of the package libgtk-3-0.
- If you use Ubuntu, here's a correspondence between its versions and those of GTK (for a default installation of Ubuntu):
  - Ubuntu 11.10: GTK 3.2
  - Ubuntu 12.04: GTK 3.4
  - Ubuntu 12.10: GTK 3.6
Extract the archive.
Rename the extracted folder to Clearlooks-Phenix.
Copy the folder Clearlooks-Phenix in one of the following two locations:
- ~/.themes/ for the current user;
- /usr/share/themes/ for all users, including style for programs ran with root privileges (e.g. Synaptic).

Arch Linux

An AUR package is maintained by eworm.

Debian

The package clearlooks-phenix-theme can be installed on Debian unstable.

Gentoo

See the following package:

http://packages.gentoo.org/package/x11-themes/clearlooks-phenix

Ubuntu

The package clearlooks-phenix-theme can be installed on Ubuntu 12.10 and newer. However, this package is not up-to-date, and the PPA maintained by Andrew Shadura can be used instead.

Configuration

Wallpaper

The wallpaper used for the Gnome 3 desktop screenshot is available in the folder wallpapers.

Icons

The icon theme used for the same screenshot is Mist, installed with the package gnome-themes, under LGPL. However, this package is no longer available with last Ubuntu versions. Here's an easy way to install Mist:

Download the archive of the Mist icon theme.
Extract the archive.
Copy the folder Mist in one of the following two locations:
- ~/.icons/ for the current user;
- /usr/share/icons/ for all users.
Then, choose Mist:
- on Gnome: with gnome-tweak-tool by setting Theme > Icon theme;
- on Xfce: by going to Settings > Appearence > Icons in the main menu.

Also, color schemes were made by DDZ to fit with Clearlooks-Phenix:

Gnome-Colors-Clearlooks, color scheme for the icon theme Gnome-Colors;
Humanities-Clearlooks, color scheme for the icon theme Humanities.
KDE3-Clearlooks-Colors, color scheme for KDE 3.
KDE4-Clearlooks-Colors, color scheme for KDE 4.

Desktop managed by Nautilus

By default, the font color on a desktop managed by Nautilus is black. To set it to white, open the file gtk-3.0/applications.css with a text editor, find the code relative to Nautilus:

/************
 * Nautilus *
 ************/

/*
COMMENTED
CSS
CODE
*/

and uncomment it, as follows:

/************
 * Nautilus *
 ************/

UNCOMMENTED
CSS
CODE

To get a custom color, change the color directly in the file gtk-3.0/applications.css.

Color variants

From Clearlooks-Phenix 2, it's very easy to create color variants of the GTK3 theme. Only a few color declarations must be changed in the file gtk-3.0/gtk-variant.css.

About button borders, they come from SVG files. Inkscape can be used to modify them. For more details, see the screencast Utiliser Inkscape pour modifier la couleur de la bordure d'un bouton. A Bash script is also shipped with Clearlooks-Phenix to assist the modification of SVG and PNG files. To use it, copy the file doc/images.sh.txt, paste it in the root folder of your development theme (same emplacement as the file index.theme) and rename it images.sh. Then, change variables in the first section of the file according to the color variant desired and run the script in a terminal (bash images.sh). The package imagemagick is required.

Window buttons layout

If after installing or updating Ubuntu, the window buttons are on the left side, but you want them to the right, run the following command in a terminal:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string ":minimize,maximize,close"

Development

Last version: 3.0.15 (2013-02-06)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

Clearlooks-Phenix has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted. Comments can also be posted on the webpage Clearlooks-Phenix on GNOME-Look.org.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Third-party code

Adwaita theme, from the package gnome-themes-standard, under LGPL.
File gtk-2.0/gtkrc, from the package gtk2-engines, under LGPL.
File metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml, from the package gnome-themes-selected, under LGPL.
File openbox-3/themerc, from the package openbox, under GPL.
Clearlooks XFWM4 theme, under GPL.
Files in wallpapers, based on an image from volvoguy, under GPL.

pdfmm: graphical assistant to reduce the size of a PDF file

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

pdfmm (for "pdf minus minus", or "pdf--") is a graphical assistant to reduce the size of PDF files.

Here are some results obtained with PDF files randomly selected:

Input size	Output size	% optimization
29 KiB	23 KiB	20 %
363 KiB	72 KiB	80 %
733 KiB	658 KiB	10 %
991 KiB	349 KiB	65 %
1.7 MiB	0.8 MiB	52 %
1.9 MiB	1.1 MiB	40 %
2.3 MiB	1.6 MiB	31 %
3.4 MiB	1.3 MiB	60 %
7.1 MiB	5.4 MiB	23 %
14.8 MiB	9.4 MiB	36 %
54.3 MiB	14.6 MiB	73 %

Of course, this table is presented only as example. The result will certainly not be the same with other files of similar size. It depends on the content.

Requirements

pdfmm is a shell script requiring bash (>= 4.0), sed, zenity and ghostscript.

Installation

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.

Current user

The script is ready to be used by the current user.

All users

To make the script available to all users, add the file pdfmm in the folder /usr/bin/ (root privileges needed).

In this case, the folder created by the extraction can be deleted after the copy.

Uninstallation

Current user

Just delete the folder created by the extraction.

All users

Delete the file pdfmm previously copied in /usr/bin/ (root privileges needed).

Usage

Notes:

No original files are modified. The optimized file is created in the same folder as the original.
A configuration file is created in the home folder of the user running pdfmm:
```
~/.config/pdfmm.conf
```
This file contains the parent folder of the last file selected. This folder will be proposed teh next time pdfmm will be used.

Current user

To use the script in a terminal, run the file pdfmm with the appropriate access path:

path/to/pdfmm

If your working folder is the same as the parent of the file pdfmm, the command is:

./pdfmm

In any case, the PDF files to optimize can be specified as an argument, for example:

./pdfmm path/to/the/file1.pdf path/to/the/file2.pdf

The script can also be opened by clicking on the file pdfmm (single click or double click depending on your configuration) and choosing to run it.

If you prefer, you can create a launcher with the absolute path as command, for example:

/home/USER/path/to/pdfmm

All users

In a terminal, just enter pdfmm. The PDF files to optimize can be specified in command line.

A launcher can also be created with the command pdfmm.

Localisation

pdfmm is translatable. Anyone interested can translate all strings in the section Localisation of the file pdfmm and send me the result. For now, pdfmm is available in French and English.

Development

Last version: 1.2.1 (2012-06-02)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

pdfmm has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

oneko-css: small black and white image of a cat or a dog for a website

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

oneko-css adds a small black and white image of a cat or a dog in a website column. Each time the page is refreshed, an image is taken at random from a set of 64 images (32 of cat and 32 of dog).

Here are examples:

Usage

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.
Copy the extracted folder on a web space.
Visit the demo (file demo.php).

It only remains to integrate the files to your website depending on your configuration and preferences.

Development

Last version: 1.0.2 (2012-05-22)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

oneko-css has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Third-party code

All images come from oneko, released into the public domain.

Corbeille-SpaceFM: trash plugin for SpaceFM compliant with the FreeDesktop.org Trash specification

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

Corbeille-SpaceFM ("Corbeille" is the French for "Trash can") is a plugin adding trash support in the file manager SpaceFM.

Corbeille-SpaceFM is compliant with the FreeDesktop.org Trash specification, so it's interoperable with other compliant implementations, that will be able to manage files moved to trash by Corbeille-SpaceFM, and vice versa. Tests were made with Thunar, Nautilus and Dolphin.

Corbeille-SpaceFM supports filenames containing any characters, for example newlines.

Also, Corbeille-SpaceFM was coded with speed in mind. It has multi-core support and can manage hundreds or thousands of files without suffering significant delays. See the section Details below for benchmarks.

Requirements

Special attention was given to have minimum requirements. It's written in Bash, and only a few external tools from the package coreutils are used (ls, mv, rm...), so it should work out-of-the-box for everyone. If not, read the message error displayed while using a command of the plugin.

Installation

Instructions to install a plugin in SpaceFM are available in the SpaceFM manual. In short, you can:

install a plugin, so it will be root protected (root password needed) and available to all users in the SpaceFM menu Plugins, or
copy a plugin, and paste it elsewhere (no root password needed).

For both options, you can proceed by downloading yourself the plugin, then selecting it on your computer, or by providing an URL, so SpaceFM will handle downloading. See the list of files available for download.

Alternately, you can build an archive from the source code:

Download the source code..
Extract the archive.
Open a terminal in the extracted directory.
In the terminal, run the following command:
```
./script.sh archive $LANG
```

Possible values for $LANG are en and fr. An archive will be created at the root of the directory. You can use it to install the plugin in SpaceFM.

Uninstallation

See instructions about uninstalling a plugin on the SpaceFM manual.

Usage

Corbeille-SpaceFM consists of 9 commands (available in the SpaceFM menu Plugins | Trash if installed with root protection). Note that there's no command confirmation dialog before proceeding to the selected action.

Move to Trash: you must select at least one file outside the trash directory to have this command enabled. Selected files will be moved to the trash.

Hint: it may be useful to create the keyboard shortcut Shift+Delete for this command.
Restore: you must select at least one file in the trash directory to have this command enabled. Selected files will be moved to their original location. If the original location already exists, the file won't be moved and an error will be displayed.
Delete Permanently: you must select at least one file in the trash directory to have this command enabled. Selected files will be deleted permanently, so they will no longer be recoverable in the trash.
Go to Trash: this command is always enabled. It will open the trash directory in a new tab in the current SpaceFM window. Also, if top directory trashes are detected (for example, a trash in a removable device), they will be open each in a new tab.
Display Properties: this command is always enabled. It will open a pop-up dialog displaying the number of files in the trash and the total size of the trash.
Empty Trash: this command is always enabled. It's just a convenient way to delete permanently all files in the trash. You can get the same result by selecting all files in the trash and choose to delete them permanently.
Limit the Size of the Trash: this command is always enabled. It allows to reduce the trash to a given size. The files are deleted in ascending order of date of trashing (older trashed files are deleted first).
Delete Old Files: this command is always enabled. It allows to delete files moved to the trash for a given number of days.
Delete Big Files: this command is always enabled. It allows to delete files moved to the trash and whose size is greater than or equal to a given size.

Details

Speed

Corbeille-SpaceFM was designed to be fast, even when handling a great number of files. Multi-core is supported, Bash built-in commands were favored as much as possible and subprocesses in loops were reduced to a strict minimum.

Here are benchmarks comparing Corbeille-SpaceFM with Thunar, the default file manager of Xfce (I chose Thunar because Xfce is the desktop environment I'm using). Each command handled 1000 plain text files and was run 5 times. Results are the average time in seconds.

The first benchmark was on a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor and 4 GiB of RAM. SpaceFM 0.7.3 and Thunar 1.2.3 were used on Xubuntu 11.10. Results are:

	Corbeille-SpaceFM	Thunar
Move to Trash	3	12
Delete Permanently	3	12
Restore	4	15
Empty Trash	1	1

The second benchmark was on a netbook with an Intel Atom N450 and 2 GiB of RAM. SpaceFM 0.7.3 and Thunar 1.2.3 were used on Ubuntu 11.10. Results are:

	Corbeille-SpaceFM	Thunar
Move to Trash	15	41
Delete Permanently	14	44
Restore	19	50
Empty Trash	10	6

Symbols used for file size

Corbeille-SpaceFM uses the conventional binary prefix meaning when displaying file size, i.e. power of 2, but with the new prefixes proposed to unambiguously differentiate binary prefixes from SI prefixes (power of 10). For example, MiB is used for 1024 KiB, and 1 KiB refers to 1024 bytes.

Trashable files

Files on the same device as the home trash are moved to this trash, i.e. $XDG_DATA_HOME/Trash. Most of the time, this will result to move files to /home/user/.local/share/Trash/files.

Files on other devices are not handled by Corbeille-SpaceFM, as allowed by the specification. Reasons are that such trashing is complex and, in my humble opinion, not very ergonomic.

According to the specification, files on other devices may be moved to the home trash. However, consider these situations:

Moving external files to the home trash would result in copying these files from their original location to the home trash device. It may be fine for a few files from an USB 2.0 removable device, but what about trashing 50 GiB, or trashing files located on network resources or on slow devices?

The specification allows to use exceptions, for example disabling trashing for network locations. However, it doesn't really solve the problem, and I think that moving files from a device to another should result from an explicit action taken by the user.
Removable devices are sometimes mounted with different names, so a file trashed one day may not be restorable if the device was unmounted and mounted again in the meantime.
A file trashed from a removable device won't be restorable if the device in question isn't mounted.

An implementation may choose instead to support trashing in top directories, i.e. directly at the root of a mounted file system. However, consider the following:

Two locations are possible, $topdir/.Trash/$uid and $topdir/.Trash-$uid, so there are two locations to check, with the risk of two non empty trashes on the same device for a single user.
A lot of cases are very tricky: file systems without sticky bit support, without numeric user ID or without user ID at all, without permissions, etc. If there are too many exceptions, is it still useful?
One can use a removable device on multiple systems with different user IDs, so each time with a different trash directory. His own files previously trashed aren't accessible to him (except to use root privileges).

Also, I consulted bug reports in Launchpad about trashing mechanism and found some interesting cases:

The trashed files are located in a hidden directory, so they're not displayed by default in most file managers. There are bug reports regarding users who shared their device without knowing that their deleted files were located in a hidden directory. People with whom the device was shared had access to the trash, especially when taking into account that the trash isn't a hidden directory on Windows.
There are bug reports about users not able to add files on their device while they trashed contents. They didn't know that a hidden trash was present on their device and was still using disk space.
There are bug reports about the fact that hidden trash directories are created automatically and never deleted, even when empty.
There are bug reports about adding ability to disable top directory trashing.

See for example this old (2005) bug report with 13 duplicates and 104 comments, Shouldn't put .Trash-$USER on removable devices, or this other one (2004), Ask to empty when unmounting media with items in trash, with 12 duplicates and 44 comments. Both are marked as fixed, but they're not. What we can observe is a lot of confusion from users and unclear implementations (or specification).

Personally, I would add that some file managers display files from top directory trashes directly in the home trash without any differentiation between them and the local ones. One may empty the home trash without knowing that it will also empty trashes located on other devices. One may want to empty a top directory trash without emptying the home trash, but find no way to accomplish this. One may also think that all files listed on the home trash are (logically) located on the home device, but after unmounting a removable device (and maybe sharing it), realize that some trashed files are no longer accessible (or, in other words, that the device still contains the trashed files). All of this is confusing.

I really think that the best way to handle trashing of files located on a different device is to let the user manage it manually. For example, one can manually move files to the home partition, then decide to move them to the home trash.

However, note that the Corbeille-SpaceFM command Go to Trash will display top directory trashes, if any, since the specification states:

If an implementation does NOT provide such trashing, and does provide the user with some interface to view and/or undelete trashed files, it SHOULD make a “best effort” to show files trashed in top directories (by both methods) to the user, among other trashed files or in a clearly accessible separate way.

Localization

Corbeille-SpaceFM is translatable:

Right-click on any Corbeille-SpaceFM command name and choose Command | Browse | Files. Open the file init.inc.sh, located at the root of the directory. Strings to translate are present in the sections Localization, 1 of 2 and Localization, 2 of 2.
Right-click on any Corbeille-SpaceFM command name and choose Command | Browse | Plugin. Open the file plugin, located at the root of the directory. Strings to translate are in the following format:
```
cstm_00000000-label=String to translate
cstm_00000000-desc=String to translate
```

Anyone interested can translate all strings and send me the result. For now, Corbeille-SpaceFM is available in French and English.

Development

Last version: 1.0.4 (2012-05-22)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

Corbeille-SpaceFM has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

gedit-url: URL syntax highlighting in gedit

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

gedit-url adds URL syntax highlighting in gedit, the default Gnome text editor.

Here's a screenshot (click to download the original image):

Installation

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.
Copy the file url.lang in one of the following two locations (create the folder if it doesn't yet exist):
- for gedit 2: ~/.local/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/
- for gedit 3: ~/.local/share/gtksourceview-3.0/language-specs/

URL syntax highlighting will be added for the current user (so no need root privileges). The folder created by the extraction can be deleted after installation.

Uninstallation

Remove the file previously installed.

Usage

First of all, restart gedit if it's already running.

Choose syntax highlighting by going to View > Highlight Mode > Others and selecting URL.

The folder doc contains a demo file.

Development

Last version: 1.0.1 (2012-05-22)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

gedit-url has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Bascule: move the active window from a screen to another

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:48:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

Bascule is a Bash script for GNU/Linux allowing to move the active window from a screen to another using a keyboard shortcut.

Bascule supports two screens (with or without the same display resolution) sharing part or all of a vertical side, regardless of the position on the y-axis, for example:

            |¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
            |           |
            |           |
            |           |
            |___________|
|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
|           |
|           |
|           |
|___________|

            |¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
            |           |
|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|           |
|           |           |
|           |___________|
|           |
|___________|

|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
|           |           |
|           |           |
|           |           |
|___________|___________|

|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
|           |
|           |¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
|           |           |
|___________|           |
            |           |
            |___________|

|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
|           |
|           |
|           |
|___________|
            |¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯|
            |           |
            |           |
            |           |
            |___________|

Bascule also takes into account panels, regardless of their number and location. Thus, a window moved to another screen will never be partially hidden under a panel or be off-screen. A maximized window will remain as it is on the new screen.

Bascule was inspired by a script posted on the English forum of Ubuntu.

Installation

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.

Current user

The script is ready to be used by the current user.

All users

To make the script accessible to all users, add the file bascule.sh in the folder /usr/bin/ (requires root privileges).

In that case, the folder created by the extraction can be deleted after the file is being copied.

Uninstallation

Current user

Simply remove the folder created by the extraction of the archive.

All users

Remove the file previously copied in /usr/bin/ (requires root privileges).

Usage

Open the script bascule.sh with a text editor and change variable values at the beginning of the file (section Variables à modifier.).
Open the keyboard shortcut manager shipped with your desktop environment (example on Xfce: Main Menu > Settings > Settings Manager > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts).
Set a keyboard shortcut for Bascule. The path to the script is either in the local folder or in /usr/bin/.

Using this keyboard shortcut will move the active window from a screen to another.

Development

Last version: 1.0.2 (2012-05-22)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

Bascule has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

gedit-mediawiki: syntax highlighting for MediaWiki in gedit

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

gedit-mediawiki adds MediaWiki syntax highlighting in gedit, the default Gnome text editor.

Here's a screenshot:

Installation

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.
Copy the file mediawiki.lang in one of the following two locations (create the folder if it doesn't yet exist):
- for gedit 2: ~/.local/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/
- for gedit 3: ~/.local/share/gtksourceview-3.0/language-specs/

MediaWiki syntax highlighting will be added for the current user (so no need root privileges). The folder created by the extraction can be deleted after installation.

Uninstallation

Remove the file previously installed.

Usage

First of all, restart gedit if it's already running.

Choose syntax highlighting by going to View > Highlight Mode > Others and selecting MediaWiki.

The folder doc contains a demo file.

Development

Last version: 1.0.1 (2012-05-22)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

gedit-mediawiki has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

Open URI Context Menu: open an URI from gedit

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

"Open URI Context Menu" is a plugin for gedit, the default Gnome text editor. This plugin adds two context menu items when we right-click on an URI present in the file content: open on the browser or open on gedit to view source code.

Original version was developed by Martin Szulecki for gedit 2.

The current repository is a port of the plugin to gedit 3.

Requirements

The plugin uses the command xdg-open from the package xdg-utils.

Installation

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.
Copy files open-uri-context-menu.plugin and open-uri-context-menu.py in the following folder:
```
~/.local/share/gedit/plugins/
```
Enable the plugin in the gedit menu Edit > Preferences > Plugins.

Development

Last version: 1.0.1 (2012-05-22)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

"Open URI Context Menu" has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

gedit-markdown: support for Markdown language in gedit

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

Overview

gedit-markdown adds support for Markdown (or Markdown Extra) in gedit, the default Gnome text editor.

Specifically, it adds:

Markdown syntax highlighting and snippets;
plugin Markdown Preview for gedit, displayed in the side panel or the bottom panel and previewing in HTML the current document or selection (this plugin can also be used as a Web browser; see section Usage);
an external tool exporting to HTML the current document or selection;
a color scheme, optional, highlighting Markdown files in a manner more similar to HTML rendering.

Requirements

gedit-markdown supports gedit 2 and gedit 3. It's shipped with an installer for GNU/Linux. On Windows XP, only a few files work, and must be installed by hand.
The plugin Markdown Preview depends on Python 2 (>= 2.6) or Python 3 (>= 3.1), although for now gedit only supports Python 2. The installer will copy the plugin only if the right version of Python is installed.
Deactivation of check spelling for irrelevant highlighted contexts (for example in URL) depends on GtkSourceView >= 2.10.
For users of Ubuntu 11.10 or later: the package gir1.2-webkit-3.0 must be installed to use the plugin Markdown Preview.

Installation (or update)

GNU/Linux

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.
Open a terminal in the extracted folder.
Run the installer in the terminal and answer questions asked:
```
./gedit-markdown.sh install
```

Markdown support will be added for the current user (so no need root privileges). The folder created by the extraction can be deleted after installation.

Windows XP

Here are steps for gedit 2:

Syntax highlighting: in the extracted folder, find the folder language-specs, copy the file corresponding to the Markdown version desired, for example:
```
language-specs/markdown.lang
```
and paste it in the following folder:
```
C:\Program Files\gedit\share\gtksourceview-2.0\language-specs\
```
Optional color scheme: in the extracted folder, copy the file styles/classic-markdown.xml and paste it in the following folder:
```
C:\Program Files\gedit\share\gtksourceview-2.0\styles\
```

Uninstallation

GNU/Linux

Open a terminal in the extracted folder.
Run the uninstaller in the terminal:
```
./gedit-markdown.sh uninstall
```

Tip: it's possible to specify in command line the version of gedit. Possible values are 2 and 3. It can be useful when updating from gedit 2 to gedit 3. Thus, the script can be run to remove files from the old version of gedit. Example:

./gedit-markdown.sh uninstall 2

Windows XP

Simply remove by hand the files added during installation.

Usage

First of all, restart gedit if it's already running.

Syntax highlighting

Syntax highlighting should automatically be activated for files recognized as Markdown files (extensions .markdown, .md or .mkd), otherwise choose it manually by going to View > Highlight Mode > Markup and selecting Markdown.

Plugin Markdown Preview

To enable this plugin, go to Edit > Preferences > Plugins and check Markdown Preview.

Two items are added in the gedit menu Tools:

Update Markdown Preview: displays in the side panel or in the bottom panel a preview in HTML of the current document or selection.

Note: there are two other ways to update preview:
- with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+m (can be changed in the configuration file);
- by right clicking on the preview area (side or bottom panel) and selecting the item Update Preview (gedit 3 only).
Toggle Markdown Preview visibility: allows to display or hide the Markdown Preview panel tab.

Note: the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+v (can be changed in the configuration file) can be used to do the same.

If gedit 3 is used, when right clicking on the preview area, a context menu appears and lists several options. Besides the default ones (previous page, next page, copy, etc.), we have:

Copy the current URL: copy in the clipboard the URL of the document or the page being displayed in the preview tab. If it's a document that has not yet been saved to disk, this menu item is disabled.
Go to another URL: allows to manually enter a local or distant URL of a document or page to visit in the preview tab.
One of the following two options, depending on the value of the property externalBrowser in the configuration file:
- Open in an external browser: allows to open the link in an external browser.
- Open in the embedded browser: allows to open the link in the panel.
Update Preview: reloads in the side panel or in the bottom panel the preview in HTML of the current document or selection.
Clear Preview: clear content of the preview tab.

Here's a screenshot of the plugin when it's displayed in the bottom panel:

Now the same plugin displayed in the side panel (click to download the original image):

Note that when the cursor passes over a link in the preview area, a tooltip displays the URL:

Snippets

To use Markdown snippets, activate the plugin Snippets in Edit > Preferences > Plugins. Then, go to Tools > Manage Snippets... to see the possibilities.

External tool Export to HTML

To use the external tool, activate the plugin External Tools in Edit > Preferences > Plugins. Then, go to Tools > External Tools > Export to HTML to access the tool. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+h does the same. The code of the currently opened Markdown file or the selection will be converted in HTML, and the result will be put in a new document.

To edit the tool, go to Tools > Manage External Tools....

Optional color scheme

An optional color scheme is installed by gedit-markdown. To use it, go to Edit > Preferences > Font & Colors > Color Scheme in gedit and select Classic Markdown. This color scheme is more similar to an HTML rendering, for example strong emphases and headers are in bold and black font, links are blue and underlined, etc. Here's a screenshot of a Markdown document highlighted with this color scheme:

Configuration file

The configuration file of gedit-markdown is the following:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gedit/gedit-markdown.ini

Most of the time, it will correspond to:

$HOME/.config/gedit/gedit-markdown.ini

Only the section markdown-preview can be edited. It contains several properties:

externalBrowser: open links in an external browser by default. Possible values: 0 (don't open links in an external browser by default; default value) or 1 (open links in an external browser by default).

If externalBrowser has a value of 0, the context menu displayed when right clicking on a link will contain an option to open the link in an external browser. If externalBrowser equals 1, the context menu will contain an option to open the link in the embedded browser.
panel: emplacement of the preview. Possibles values: side or bottom.
shortcut: shortcut to refresh the preview. The default value is <Control><Alt>m.
version: the Markdown version to use for the HTML preview and to export to HTML. Possible values: standard or extra.
visibility: visibility of the Markdown Preview panel tab when gedit starts. Possible values: 0 (hidden) or 1 (displayed; default value).
visibilityShortcut: shortcut to toggle Markdown Preview visibility. The default value is <Control><Alt>v.

Details and limitations

Syntax highlighting and snippets for standard Markdown were officially added in GtkSourceView and gedit > 3.1.1. The installer of gedit-markdown will ensure that no already existing files are copied (no check is done for Markdown Extra because this is not the default version shipped with GtkSourceView and gedit > 3.1.1).
Older versions of gedit-markdown also added Markdown MIME type and recognition of an additional extension (.mdtxt). Since Markdown support was added directly into the shared MIME database shared-mime-info (see the bug report), gedit-markdown no longer adds its own Markdown MIME type file. Also, for purposes of compliance with the specification, the extension .mdtxt is no longer supported.
Since HTML code can be directly used in a text written in Markdown, HTML syntax highlighting was added to Markdown syntax highlighting. However, keep in mind that, even if they're highlighted, Markdown syntax within HTML blocks (e.g. <div>) and Markdown Extra syntax within HTML blocks without markdown attribute set to 1 (e.g., <div markdown="1">) are not processed.
Within a paragraph, text wrapped with backticks indicates a code span. Markdown allows to use one or more backticks to wrap text, provided that the number is identical on both sides, and the same number of consecutive backticks is not present within the text. Examples:
```
`lorem lorem lorem lorem`

`lorem lorem `` lorem lorem`

`lorem lorem ````` lorem lorem`

``lorem lorem lorem lorem``

``lorem lorem ` lorem lorem``

``lorem lorem ````` lorem lorem``
```
Syntax highlighting in gedit supports code span highlighting with up to 2 backticks surrounding text.
Blockquote can contain block-level and inline Markdown elements, but gedit-markdown only highlights inline ones (emphasis, link, etc.).
A full context analysis can't be done (because line break can't be used in regex). Here are some consequences:
- According to the Markdown syntax, to write several paragraphs in a list item, we have to indent each paragraph. Example:
```
- Item A (paragraph 1).

    Item A (paragraph 2).

    Item A (paragraph 3).

- Item B.
```
  So there is a conflict in terms of syntax highlighting between an indented paragraph inside a list item (4 spaces or 1 tab) and an indented line of code outside a list (also 4 spaces or 1 tab). The choice was made to highlight code block only from 2 levels of indentation.
- Only the underline of a Setext-style header is matched and highlighted, so there's no guarantee that it's indeed a title underline.
- With Markdown Extra, some elements are matched and highlighted with no guarantee that they're in the right context: Setext-style header id attribute, colon used as separator in a definition list and separator line of a table.

Localization

gedit-markdown installer is translatable. Anyone interested in the translation can copy the file gedit-markdown.pot in the folder locale, rename it to LANG.po, translate all strings and send me the result.

Similarly, the plugin Markdown Preview is also localizable. The file containing strings is plugins/markdown-preview/locale/markdown-preview.pot.

For now, gedit-markdown is available in French and English.

Development

Last version: 1.4.1 (2013-01-17)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

gedit-markdown has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Third-party code

The plugin Markdown Preview shipped with gedit-markdown is a modification of the plugin of the same name written by Michele Campeotto, under the GPL v2 or any later version, and uses Python Markdown, under the BSD-style license.

RapportHamster++: a tool to customize Hamster's HTML report

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Lire cette page en français.

About

RapportHamster++ (literally "HamsterReport++" in French) is a set of PHP functions to customize HTML reports created by the Gnome Time Tracker Hamster. The parsing and the modification of HTML reports are mainly performed with DOM PHP extension.

Dependencies

RapportHamster++ requires a version of Hamster using the new HTML report structure. Version 2.31.6 uses this new structure. It is possible that this is also the case of an earlier version.

It also requires of course a PHP interpreter, on a web server or in command line (PHP CLI). To use PHP in command line, install the package php5-cli (tested in Ubuntu).

Installation

There is no installation needed. An index file is available by default to show the possible uses with PHP CLI of the different functions.

Download the archive of the latest version.
Extract the archive.
Open a terminal in the extracted folder.
Run the index script (the parameters are there for example):
```
php index.cli.php "/path/to/the/report.html" 1 1 1 1 1 "h" "min" 0
```
The modified report will be saved in the same directory as the original report, for example /path/to/the/report - 2.html.

The folder exemple contains two files:

Gestion du temps, 2010-07-30 - 2010-08-05.html: a report created by Hamster;
Gestion du temps, 2010-07-30 - 2010-08-05 - 2.html: the same report, but modified by RapportHamster++.

For more details about the parameters and the functions, analyze the file index.cli.php with a text editor and read the comments of each function in the file inc/fonctions.inc.php. See also the feature overview below.

Feature Overview

The file index.cli.php is delivered by default to show a possible use of the functions of RapportHamster++. These functions are:

ajouteClassesLignesTable(): adds CSS classes to the rows of a given table. The visible result is a background color for even rows;
ajouteDureeTotale(): adds the total duration of all activities in the report;

colonneMarkdownVersHtml(): converts the text of a column from Markdown syntax to HTML. Useful to write descriptions in Markdown. For example:

Lorem *ipsum* dolor **sit** amet, `consectetuer` adipiscing [elit](dictum).

becomes:

<p>Lorem <em>ipsum</em> dolor <strong>sit</strong> amet, <code>consectetuer</code> adipiscing <a href="dictum">elit</a>.</p>

dateSansZeroInitial(): removes all the leading zeros (0) in the dates appearing in the report. For example:
```
May 08, 2010
```
becomes:
```
May 8, 2010
```
Another example:
```
Activity log for May 01 – 07, 2010
```
becomes:
```
Activity log for May 1 – 7, 2010
```
dureeFormatHamsterVersMinutes(): converts duration in minutes. For example, for the duration 8h 15min, the return is 495;
fusionneActivites(): merges the activities of the table "Activity Log" (second tab) of the report. The columns "Start" and "End" are removed.

The merge looks for similar activities (same day, activity, category and tags) whose description uses a special syntax to link activities between them. Say the following five activities:
- description of the activity 1 (1h 35min): [1] Start of the activity. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
- description of the activity 2 (20min): [1]
- description of the activity 3 (2h 15min): [1] Class aptent tacit sociosqu ad torquent per conubia nostra Litor, per inceptos himenaeos.
- description of the activity 4 (1h 10min): [1]
- description of the activity 5 (2h 50min): [1] End of the activity. Praesenta tempus, odio ac sagittae vehicle; pede tincidunt mauris lacus, euismod orci in mauris quam has.
These five activities, if they have the same date, activity, category and tags, are linked by the number in brackets located at the beginning of each description, and will be merged. The total duration of the activity is the sum of all activities (8h 10min in this example) and the resulting description will contain if necessary the description of each activity:
```
[1] Start of the activity. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Class aptent tacit sociosqu ad torquent per conubia nostra Litor, per inceptos himenaeos.

End of the activity. Praesenta tempus, odio ac sagittae vehicle; pede tincidunt mauris lacus, euismod orci in mauris quam has.
```
minutesVersDureeFormatHamster(): converts the number of minutes in duration displayed by Hamster. For example, for 495, the duration returned is 8h 15min;
supprimeColonnes(): removes the given columns in the given table;
supprimeJquery(): removes jQuery from the report. Useful when some tables are removed and only one is left;
supprimeTables(): removes the given tables. A table corresponds to a tab at the top of the report.

Development

Last version: 1.0.1 (2012-05-22)

Git is used for revision control. Repository can be browsed online or cloned.

RapportHamster++ has an issue tracker, on which bug reports and feature requests can be submitted.

License

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Third-party code

PHP Markdown: under the BSD-style license.