Rarst.net

Change interface language in auto-detecting GTK apps

Rarst — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:00:00 +0000

I was somewhat puzzled by encountering few apps (GIMP and Inkscape for which I had recently posted link to excellent tutorial) that defaulted their interface to language of Windows installation and gave no option to change it.

It can be quite inconvenient because it is often easier to work with complex interface in original language rather than [lacking] translation.

Problem

I may be wrong but it seems that issue is common for software using GTK+ for interface. However it is probable for other software that picks language from Windows settings as well.

Solution

Common advice is changing preferred language in Windows or adding environment variables. Not only inconvenient but also affects all software so might create need to toggle back and forth.

Other way I like much more is creating simple command line script that will set preferred language and launch specific app with that setting.

Example for Inkscape:

set lang=en
start inkscape.exe

Save as inkscape.cmd, copy to Inkscape folder and use for launching. Change language code and executable name as needed.

Start command is used so console window doesn’t get stuck open waiting for Inkscape to close.

Overall

Relatively simple and per application way to change auto-detected interface language.

By the way do you always prefer apps in your native language or used to working with software in some other (possibly more popular) one?

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

Vote for my WordPress story!

Rarst — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:01:00 +0000

Exactly month ago I had posted WordPress story of Rarst.net that happily made it to contest finals. I won’t pour on you heartbreaking details about how I want to win and get that nice hosting prize… because I see no reason for you to be concerned about that. I can handle stuff like hosting myself. :) Still.

if you like this blog;
want to easily help and promote it a bit;
have few second of time;

Spare me two clicks and vote for rarst.net :) Thanks in advance.

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

How to ask tech question and get answer

Rarst — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Novice users may perceive that those who are more tech savvy never have a need to ask. On the contrary – the more you know the deeper holes you will dig for yourself and the more often you will have to look for answer and advice.

As with rest of thoughts posts this was kind of hovering around me for a long time and suddenly gained substance to put in words.

How to ask. How to get answer. How to escape emotionally unscratched (hard part).

Photo by alexanderdrachmann

How to ask right question

There are three parts to good question:

1. Details

There is no more frustrating tech problem than unidentified one. Uncertainty is waste of precious time and resources.

Be ready to provide every excruciating detail about your issue – from model of hardware and version of software to how close your cat sleeps (I had one desktop’s insides melted because of fur).

2. Honesty

It is very probable that you did something wrong. No matter what kind of stupid things it was or how irrelevant you consider it to be – never omit or lie about details, especially if directly asked.

If you want to look smart get used to broken computer. Otherwise be honest and help them to help you.

3. Question

“Nothing works” is not a question. Real question is story of what you are trying to do, where you fail and showing that you deserve an answer (getting let me google that for you links or RTFM in response is a sign that you don’t).

How to deal with people

If you deal with support or online forum either you are likely to encounter those who meet [angry] people with questions on daily basis. Few can manage that and even less enjoy it. Rest are in for paycheck or ego.

The moment you try to push and demand you had lost your answer.

Always know who you are dealing with. Staying anonymous is basic technique of those who do not want to bother with you. Less of an issue online but by phone few things improve answer rate faster than politely asking whom you are speaking with (possibly with their position and department).

Never try to make things right. Even if you are treated like dirt it is going to be your fault for asking question. Save your nerves.

How to get answer

Second week into having my brain picked about connection problems in local network barely seeing Internet through consumer grade ADSL modem I decided it is time to ask properly. I found specialized forum, read stuff there for a day, posted in topic about that modem model (99 pages long, there are sure some issues with it) my precise question with as many details as I could provide.

Thirty minutes later my question was transferred to trash sub-forum by moderator who didn’t like it. Without particular reason that made sense to me. I wanted to go ballistic.

Instead I politely said goodbye and left that forum for good. And briefly tweeted about [censored] – safely out of moderator power reach.

Key moment – to get answer you have to find person who is willing to give you one. Never waste your time on those who are not. Keep looking until you find someone who does.

Overall

Do not be shy to ask, do not become frustrated about anything and sooner or later you will find someone who would be happy and qualified to help you. World is simply so big that such people statistically exist. :)

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

Q10 – portable dark place for writing

Rarst — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:00:00 +0000

I often start my posts with few words on how life led me to the topic for today.

Today I was tired (it’s HOT here lately) and in no particular mood to write so that led me through my research bookmarks to Q10 – text editor that urges to adopt distraction-free writing.

What it does

Q10 has very minimalistic interface – full dark screen (or whatever color you change it to) where you type text.

Personally I find it quite calming but also slightly annoying because it lacks convenient controls. Only thing beside text on screen is status bar on the bottom, that can be configured to display various statistics or turned off altogether.

Most of controls are tied to hotkeys and list of those can be displayed by pressing F1.

Strong features

Q10 is concentrated on writing process and productivity (while many text editors get too busy with making result look cool).

It has a number of very fitting features:

display of statistics – from characters to pages;
support for automatic corrections;
support for text expanding;
setting goals as amount of text to write;
setting alarms if your time is limited;
and it makes charming retro typewriter sounds.

Needs and wants

I can’t say writing in English is challenge for me. However writing quickly, accurately and without misspelling similar words – often is.

While Q10 has version with optional spell checker, check process must be deliberately called. I find that disruptive and less convenient than real time checking in Windows Live Writer.

Overall

Tiny and completely portable app that is quite good and what it does – setting right mood for some writing in plain text. I find it charming but for blogging text would require copying it to WLW and post-processing anyway. Which makes process more complex – something I try to avoid.

Still I will definitely keep it around for hot and tiresome days like this. Sometimes a little darkness and calm sounds is exactly what is needed for inspiration.

Home&download http://baara.com/q10/

PS as proper in such cases this post was completely written in Q10 and I overdid my 300 words target by 18 percent :)

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

Desktopwallpaper.org – another wallpapers site

Rarst — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:00:00 +0000

I got email from Giles Dawe about my post on Interfacelift, suggesting that I should also check out Desktop Wallpaper site.

I must admit that Interfacelift is probably best wallpapers site that I am aware of, but the more the merrier. Let’s see what this one has to offer.

What it has

Desktop Wallpaper has wallpapers split by numerous categories. Some of those are further split into sub-categories.

No indication of quantity per category (sitemap lists 650+ wallpapers overall). I’d say nature and cars seem most populated and rest of categories can be anywhere from single wallpaper to few pages of those.

Shortcomings

In few minutes of browsing site managed to pile up mountain of gripes:

wallpaper quality is all over map – from excellent ones to anime fan site grade (which is lowest on my scale);
no attribution or sources of any kind. I noticed at least one image that is simply digital camera shot (not even properly cropped);
choice of image sizes sucks (one-two for most wallpapers I clicked) and site loads full-sized images for thumbs (slow and bad practice).

For laughs – site terms prohibit linking to anything except index page and claim ownership of all content. I wonder how can one can claim and protect copyright over such wallpapers as default one from Windows XP. :) As usual no logo or screenshots to illustrate how well such ToS work.

Overall

There are some cool wallpapers there and that’s probably it. One can say it is all that’s required from wallpaper site. Personally I trust Interfacelift to supply wallpapers for my desktop automatically, but I won’t trust Desktop Wallpaper to do that.

Link http://www.desktopwallpaper.org/

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

OpenOffice.org (plus portable)

Rarst — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:00:00 +0000

I had thought for a while what should I write in a post about OpenOffice. Frankly it is not one of my core apps.

However it is one of the very important apps overall so I will write exactly about that.

What it does

OpenOffice is extensive software suite for common business tasks. It has:

Writer word processor;
Calc spreadsheet editor;
Impress presentation editor;
Base database manager;
Draw vector image editor;
Math formula editor.

It does a lot of things eerily similar to Microsoft Office. That is how OpenOffice is most often presented – viable and free alternative to expensive Microsoft’s product.

Why bother

Much like what I said about 7-Zip – this one changes your life for better even if you do not use it. OpenOffice is open source under LGPL which is quite permissive. It is backed by power of Sun Microsystems which ensures needed leverage.

Powerful office suite that you can not only use but also modify and incorporate in your own products is very big deal in software world. With piracy [very] slowly pressured it is not uncommon choice in some countries to look for open source solutions instead of diving in Microsoft ecosystem. And OpenOffice is one of the first products that comes up.

Portable version

It took some time but PortableApps had released latest and greatest OpenOffice 3.1 in its portable incarnation. This is package I use at home and recommend highly. Most of calculations, statistics and diagrams posted on this blog are done in Calc.

Another very interesting improvement is that PortableApps now also offers Java Runtime as portable package. This makes OpenOffice Portable even more contained because parts that require JRE framework limited its usage as portable.

Overall

OpenOffice is one of open source flagships. It has important target market, set of powerful functions and company more than willing to support it.

What’s not to like? :)

Home http://www.openoffice.org/

Portable http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

Three free online tech tutorials I want to try

Rarst — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Internet is endless stream of information and ultimate way to look up something you need right now. However for in depth stuff or picking up completely new skills information often seems way too fractured. Luckily there are resources that go beyond realm of simple articles and blog posts to offer very extensive tutorials.

I want to share few that I have bookmarked (for a while already) to go through in spare time.

Learn How to Use and Get The Most out of Regular Expressions

Regular expressions (commonly abbreviated regex or regexp) are probably as confusing as they are widespread. In simple terms it is way to describe text patterns – from very easy to very complex. Regexp is essential part of many programming languages and common feature of powerful text editors.

Sounds nice but it is hardly something you can master by skimming few blog posts. I am using them for few years probably (and for few months of those it was integral part of my job) but I feel like I barely scratched surface and hope to sit and properly learn from this one.

Tutorial covers regular expressions from very basics to advanced things such as behind the scenes logic of regexp engines.

Link http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html

Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program

I am completely hopeless with raster image editors. Cropping picture neatly is about my limit and I got through Photoshop exam only with memory, bit of color theory and too much luck.

On other hand I have a hunch that vector editor may suit me better but again it is not something that you can sit and do. Inkscape is one of the most known free vector image editors and one I want to try using.

Tutorial is actually online version of published book. I think I picked up link somewhere in official documentation or site. Guide is extremely extensive with multiply chapters, in depth instructions and a lot of visual materials.

Link http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/index.php

jQuery for Absolute Beginners

For years I was at odds with JavaScript. A lot of sites openly despised Opera, which is my browser of choice, and quite often I met JS used and abused to the point of utterly breaking web.

Lately I came to understand that things has much improved and JS graduated from being used for various crap into essential part of both modern web and its future. jQuery is one of the more known JS frameworks that is often recommended as vital for easy development.

Tutorial is series of fifteen videos. Not my preferred format but I hadn’t seen another that extensive ones and for a change videos might be good change of pace when I am exhausted from too much reading from screen. It covers stuff from downloading jQuery itself to creating some real world grade things.

Link http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/jquery-for-absolute-beginners-video-series/

Overall

So, while my generic evening is still full of semi-random googling, these are things I am likely to go through when I have some free time and nice mood (latter is scarce which pleases me not lately).

Do you like large extensive tutorials? Are there any that you had completed or want to go through some day?

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

Use System File Checker (SFC) without disc

Rarst — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:00:00 +0000

SFC is highly useful utility, bundled with Windows (mostly talking about XP in this post, mechanics slightly differ on other versions) that checks system files and replaces them with original versions if needed.

However there are some logic faults that often make it endlessly ask for Windows installation disc, in some cases refusing to recognize one.

What it does

SFC is very easy to use, it is launched by running

sfc /scannow

Then it displays scan progress, makes use of dllcache system folder and restores files if needed.

Up to the point where things go wrong and it starts asking for installation disc.

Nature of problem

There are a lot of possible causes this but most common are:

disc is long gone;
disc is present but not recognized by SFC;
disc is present but has different Service Pack version to that SFC asks for.

To make SFC shut up and do its job following is usually needed:

I386 folder from installation disc;
sometimes full service pack installation files;
some registry edits.

File sources paths

Overall SFC must know where are original files, service pack files and does media used fits. All of this is controlled by registry keys in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup

SourcePath – path to where I386 folder of Windows installation files is located;
ServicePackSourcePath – same for I386 folder of Service Packs, which may or may not be the same;
CDInstall – was CD disc used during installation.

I suggest to:

copy I386 folder to hard drive
- Service Packs may need to be unpacked, if not included on CD you are using – it is best to use folder named I386 for this as well;
set paths accordingly, note that they refer to folder where I386 resides, not I386 itself;
set CDInstall to 0.

Most of the time this is enough to stop nagging for correct disc.

Relocating DLL cache

dllcache folder may often seem like space hog so there are some tweaks for that in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

SfcQuota – determines how much space can dllcache occupy, it is hex number in megabytes.
SFCDllCacheDir – sets directory where dllcache resides, this key is not present by default and must be created manually.

Overall

SFC is highly useful utility when something goes wrong with system files (like being chewed by virus) but it can be annoying when encounters problems with configuration of source file paths. Hopefully this post will be remedy enough.

For interested (or desperate) I also suggest reading:

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

USBDeview – USB viewer and manager utility

Rarst — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:00:00 +0000

It may seem that interaction of USB device (be it flash drive or mouse) ends at unplugging. Actually Windows remembers quite a lot about device after that.

USBDeview shows information about all USB devices that are or were connected to computer and allows some advanced tricks with those.

What it does

USBDeview has interface typical (as usual) for Nirsoft apps with information in multiply columns.

There are some extras in this case like colored icons that show device status but most of interesting things are hidden in context and options menus.

Strong features

Aside from providing information app can (as long as it is running):

unplug and uninstall devices (I still prefer USB Disk Ejector);
make autorun work on flash drives;
display different messages on device connection and/or disconnection;
run custom scripts on device connect;
connect to remote computers and manage their USB devices (admin rights required).

Speed test and online database

Recent update brought quite cool function of testing speed of flash drive (right click > Speed Test). I had posted about HD_Speed that does similar test.

USBDeview goes further and allows to submit results to online database where you can already find those of my Extreme Ducati flash drive and Prestigio Pocket Drive II external hard drive. :)

Test measures by writing and reading temporary file so result is affected by factors such as fragmentation and is close to real-world performance (as opposed to theoretical figures manufacturers usually provide).

Depending on how full and up to date it will be database might become excellent resource to check before buying any kind of USB storage.

Overall

App in single executable that works without installation, has plenty of interesting functions for those who use external storage a lot plus good potential to fill database with real information on different hardware storage performance.

Home&download http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts:

Developer’s Tips&Tricks (DTT) – code snippet manager

Rarst — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Few evenings ago I was updating Appnews as usual and DTT description caught my interest. Most of the time while working with code I am torn between holding snippets right in Notepad++ in a beautiful mess or in highly organized but less suitable WikidPad.

DTT seemed like a nice middle ground – dedicated holder for code snippets with support of multiply programming languages.

What it does

App adopts usual tree view plus content area formula. What is unusual – top level are folders by specific programming languages.

It comes pre-filled with some snippets and few separate packages of those available for download on developers’ site.

All code is automatically highlighted and saved on disk with folder structure duplicating internal tree and fitting file extensions. Images are supported as well (as separate entries).

Strong features

multiply programming languages support out of the box makes it quite universal;
plain text format and overall structure would be easy to integrate with other software;
it has very interesting feature of reading tips from network folder.

Limitations

App is free for non-commercial use (which is already considerable limitation in context) but some features are limited to version released to those who made donations.

It would be perfectly fine except that limited features are:

export (copy/paste works but it gets worse);
search (deal killer or close to it);
hotkey to restore from tray (did I mention it always minimizes to tray?).

DTT also has familiar looks of an exercise in re-creating standard interface elements without good reason to. Which as usual feels familiar and like interface from another planet at the same time.

Oh, and silently adding itself to autorun is low, especially coming from program that works without installation.

Overall

I like the idea. I like it a lot actually – consolidating mountain of snippets and examples in few languages I currently use (AutoIt, PHP, C/C++) would be awesome.

But I don’t feel this is right app – losing search would be degradation instead of improvement and interface usability is… self-destructing.

Home http://fsl.sytes.net/dtt.html

Download http://fsl.sytes.net/download.html#dtt

Vote for WordPress story of Rarst.net

Possibly related posts: