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<H1><A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">
<IMG SRC="../gx/newlogo.jpg" ALT="Linux Gazette" border="0"></A></H1>
<H4>May 1999, Issue 41 Published by <I>Linux Journal</I></H4>
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<H1><font color="#BB0000">Table of Contents:</font></H1>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="../index.html">The Front Page</A>
<LI><A HREF="./lg_mail41.html">The MailBag</A>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_mail41.html#help">Help Wanted & Article Ideas</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_mail41.html#gen">General Mail</a>
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<LI><A HREF="./lg_bytes41.html">News Bytes</A>
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<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes41.html#general">News in General</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes41.html#software">Software Announcements</a>
</ul>
<LI><A HREF="./lg_answer41.html">The Answer Guy</A>, by James T. Dennis
<LI><A HREF="./lg_tips41.html">More 2 Cent Tips</A>
<LI><A HREF="./nielsen1.html">Breaking Into Your Own System</a>, by Mark
Nielsen
<LI><A HREF="./sevenich.html">Compiler Construction Tools, Part II</a>, by
Richard A. Sevenich
<LI><A HREF="./lopes/lopes.html">Compiler Construction Tools, Part III</a>,
by Christopher Lopes
<LI><A HREF="./searls.html">A Conversation with Craig Burton</a>, by Doc
Searls
<LI><A HREF="./smyth.html">Direct Cable Connection between Win95 and Linux</a>, by Thomas P. Smyth
<LI><A HREF="./gm/gm.html">Graphics Muse</a>, by Michael J. Hammel
<LI><A HREF="./jenkins9.html">Linux Primer, Part 9</a>, by Ron Jenkins
<LI>New Release Reviews, by Larry Ayers
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<li><A HREF="./ayers1.html">Ray-Traced Backgrounds</a>
<li><A HREF="./ayers2.html">A Visual Packet Monitor</a>
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<LI><A HREF="./weaver.html">Official Reaction of Software Forge Inc. to
"LinuxCAD Review</a>, by Robert Weaver
<LI><A HREF="./rogers.html">The Standard C Library for Linux Part 6</a>, by
James M. Rogers
<LI><A HREF="./nielsen2.html">Using diald to Connect to the Internet</a>, by Mark
Nielsen
<LI><A HREF="./raymond.html">Will Microsoft leave Mindcraft twisting slowly
slowly in the wind?</a>, by Eric S. Raymond
<LI><A HREF="./lg_backpage41.html">The Back Page</A>
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<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage41.html#authors">About This Month's Authors</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage41.html#notlinux">Not Linux</a>
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<A HREF="./issue41.txt.gz">TWDT 1 (gzipped text file)</A><BR>
<A HREF="./issue41.html">TWDT 2 (HTML file)</A><BR>
are files containing the entire issue: one in text format, one in HTML.
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<I>Linux Gazette</I><img src="../gx/tm.gif">, <A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">http://www.linuxgazette.com/</A><BR>
This page maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
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<H5>Copyright &copy; 1996-99 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.</H5>
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<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"</H4>
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<H2><a NAME="mail"><IMG SRC="../gx/mailbox.gif" ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT=" ">
The Mailbag!</a> </H2>
Write the Gazette at <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com"> gazette@ssc.com</A>
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<H3>Contents:</H3>
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<li><a HREF="./lg_mail41.html#help">Help Wanted -- Article Ideas</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_mail41.html#gen">General Mail</a>
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Answers to these questions should be sent directly to the e-mail address of
the inquirer with or without a copy to gazette@ssc.com. Answers that are
copied to <I>LG</I> will be printed in the next issue in the Tips column.
<P> <HR> <P>
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<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 17:59:43 -0400 (EDT)<BR>
From: Scott Searcy, <A HREF="mailto:searcys@BAYDENOC.CC.MI.US">
searcys@BAYDENOC.CC.MI.US</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Macintosh Disks</font>
<P>
Is it possible to read from, write to and format 3.5 floppies that use the
Macintosh format?
<P>
--<BR>
Scott Searcy
<blockquote> <I>
(Check out the HFS utility programs: hcd, hcopy, hdel, hmount, et al.
There's even a GUI for them called hfs. --Editor)
</I> </blockquote>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 11:24:45 +0100 (GMT)<BR>
From: Jason Douglas Brand, <A HREF="mailto:J.D.Brand@swansea.ac.uk">
J.D.Brand@swansea.ac.uk</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Can Linux extract frames from an AVI?</font>
<P>
I only have one question. Can Linux extract frames from a compressed AVI?
If so, what is the software called and where can I get it.
I have heard that xanim can play AVI file but can it extract frames from
them.
Please help me!! You are my only hope.
<P>
--<BR>
Jason
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 12:30:01 -0200<BR>
From: Clovis Sena, <A HREF="mailto:csena@hotlink.com.br">
csena@hotlink.com.br</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Network boot disk for i386 without hd</font>
<P>
I have a Linux machine in my office network and several i386 that has no
hd, but has 1.44 floppy. They also have ne2000 network card, without no
proms. Is there a way to make a boot disk that allow my i386 to boot
and login into my Linux machine??? I searched the web but found only
solutions that reffer to using network cards with eproms/proms.
Thanks.
<P>
--<BR>
Clovis Sena
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 18:35:49 -0700<BR>
From: Mark Waddle <A HREF="mailto:markw@skeeg.com">markw@skeeg.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Linux partitions from Windows</font>
<P>
I got a question for ya... is there a driver or application I can use
to get at least read access to my Linux partitions from Windows?
Thanks,
<P>
--<BR>
Mark Waddle
<P>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 19:29:44 -0700 (PDT)<BR>
From: Will Stevenson, <A HREF="mailto:transgression2@yahoo.com">
transgression2@yahoo.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">FTP access methods...</font>
<P>
Ok tough guys,
I have written down more one-liners and cool tricks
from the Linux Gazette pages than from anywhere else.
<P>
And I finally have a good question:
In both Window$ and O$/2 I had apps that would treat
ftp sites as folders (directories). It worked real
well with keeping data in sync off-site. Is there a
tool that will allow an FTP site to be mounted under
Linux? It seems fairly useful to me, but freshmeat
and other resources turned up nada.
<P>
I am working on a cool 1 disk Linux distro that has
pilot backup features and other remote file access
ideas that could really benefit from this.
<P>
Thanks for your input guys...
<P>
--<BR>
Will
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 09:42:13 -0500<BR>
From: "Trace & Sandy Schroeder", <A HREF="mailto:tsssjs@inxpress.net">
tsssjs@inxpress.net</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">question for the board</font>
<P>
I am confused about what I will need to install Red Hat 5.2 on my new dell
system
last attempt met me with a command line only --- xfree 3.3.3.1+ was needed
for my video card TNT chipset
however I was looking for the files - and I am hoping for RPMS outr there for
me to do it the easy way
<P>
Are there RPMS out there? and if not, why does the RPMS lag behind the
releases -
thank you very much
I am anxious to get rid of the bloatware of ms on this zippy pentium 3
<P>
--<BR>
Striker
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 00:23:52 +0100<BR>
From: "Darren McAndrew", <A HREF="mailto:d_mac2000@dmcandrew.freeserve.co.uk">
d_mac2000@dmcandrew.freeserve.co.uk</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">a.out binaries not working</font>
<P>
I have recently installed Linux RH5.2 and have
started learning some C. When I compile programs however I am left with
an a.out binary which does not execute. I get the message no such
command when I try to run it. I have loaded the aout libs from the cdrom
but it still does not work! When I check file permissions on it it is
listed as an executable. Could you please help me on what idiotic thing
I am doing wrong? All help appreciated.
<P>
--<BR>
Darren
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 14:32:48 +0200<BR>
From: Pawel Szabelski, <A HREF="mailto:szabla@vega.umcs.lublin.pl">
szabla@vega.umcs.lublin.pl</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">SCSI problem</font>
<P>
I've got some problems with my SCSI disk (IBM DDRS Ultra2Wide)
and the adapter (AIC 7880): There are some errors during read/write
operations (specially in the case of big files). The message on the
screen is like that:
<PRE>
Apr 28 14:28:57 vega kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout :
pid 38902,
scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0 Write (10) 00 00 2b 80 93 00 00 04 00
Apr 28 14:28:57 vega kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout :
pid 38903,
scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0 Write (10) 00 00 2b a3 ff 00 00 f4 00
Apr 28 14:28:59 vega kernel: SCSI host 0 abort (pid 38902) timed out -
resetting
Apr 28 14:28:59 vega kernel: SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel
0.
Apr 28 14:28:59 vega kernel: (scsi0:0:6:0) Synchronous at 11.4
Mbyte/sec, offset
8.
</PRE>
I do not use shielded cable. What to do with this?
Thank for any help.
<P>
--<BR>
Pawel
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 11:55:47 +0200<BR>
From: Pepijn Schmitz, <A HREF="mailto:p.schmitz@xpuntx.nl">
p.schmitz@xpuntx.nl</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Windows NT and Linux hate each other?</font>
<P>
I've installed Linux Red Hat 5.2 on my friend's computer, and now for
some extremely odd reason the Red Hat machine and the NT Server 4.0
that's on his other machine can't see each other over the network. At
all. They don't even respond to each other's ARP requests.
<P>
The link is alive (judging from the lights on his switching hub), and
the machines can see each other fine when he runs Windows 95 on the
machine where I've installed Red Hat. TCP/IP is installed and configured
correctly on both machines. The Red Hat machine has a 10 Mbps 3COM card,
the NT machine a 100 Mbps 3COM, and the lights on the hub say that it's
using those speeds on the interfaces that the machines are on,
regardless of whether the one machine is running Linux or Windows 95.
<P>
What on Earth could be going on here?
<P>
--<BR>
Pepijn
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 07:03:42 -0400<BR>
From: <A HREF="mailto:brownh@hartford-hwp.com">
brownh@hartford-hwp.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Question: Editing x client fonts</font>
<P>
I experienced a dirty shutdown when some software went bezerk and
repeatly copied files from a cdrom until a HD partition filled. Running
fsck seems to have cleaned up most things, but one permanent result was
that x client fonts (the title bar and menus of windows) are a large
Helvetica regular that causes difficulty.
<P>
I run Red Hat 5.2. I found no .fvwm2rc on that system. So I copied the
file /etc/X11/fvwm2/system.fvwm2rc as .fvwm2rc into my home directory
and edited the specification for WindowFont and MenuFont. I restarted
Fvwm2, but nothing changed (my system fonts are accessible).
<P>
Is a copy of .fvwm2rc mandatory or only optional if one wants the user
to define x client fonts, etc.?
Should a copy of system.fvwm2rc as .fvwm2rc into my home directory have
provided the user with the ability to customize X client fonts?
<P>
--<BR>
Haines Brown
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 13:13:45 +0700<BR>
From: Ruangvith Tantibhaedhyangkul, <A HREF="mailto:ruangvith@linuxfan.com">
ruangvith@linuxfan.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Need help on Internet connection with Linux</font>
<P>
I'm having (rather serious) problems with Linux. I'm using Caldera's
OpenLinux 1.3 with KDE 1.0 on Pentium 200, RAM 64 MB and SupraExpress
336i on COM3 (which works fine on 'Microsoft' Windows 98), the 2.0.35
kernel was compiled to support pentium and ppp internally. It can't be
configured to connect to Internet at all.
<P>
First I used kppp (script based), it dialed, logged in, and told me that
it was 'logging on to network'. But that was that, it stayed put, until
timed-out.
<P>
Here's what happened on script debug window:
<PRE>
+++ATH
OK
ATZ
OK
ATDT2718000
CONNECT 115200Welcome to Asia-Access Internet
Host: US1
Port: S6/2
Username: ruangvit
Password:
PPP session from (203.145.0.204) to 203.145.3.105 beginning.
</PRE>
And the corresponding /var/log/messages:
<PRE>
Apr 10 17:41:39 janbond syslog: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1
Apr 10 17:42:00 janbond CRON[810]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/sbin/cronloop ]
&& /usr/sbin/cronloop Hourly)
Apr 10 17:45:42 janbond xntpd[643]: synchronized to LOCAL(0), stratum=3d7
Apr 10 17:45:42 janbond xntpd[643]: kernel pll status change 89
Apr 10 17:47:01 janbond kernel: registered device ppp0
Apr 10 17:47:01 janbond pppd[842]: pppd 2.2.0 started by root, uid 0
Apr 10 17:47:01 janbond pppd[842]: Using interface ppp0
Apr 10 17:47:01 janbond pppd[842]: Connect: ppp0 /dev/modem
Apr 10 17:47:32 janbond pppd[842]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests
Apr 10 17:47:32 janbond pppd[842]: Connection terminated.
</PRE>
Someone told me to try minicom. I could log in, quited without resetting
and typed at commnd prompt 'pppd /dev/modem 38400 crtscts modem
defaultroute'. I also commented out /etc/ppp/options. Here's what
happened:
<PRE>
----------start of /var/log/messages----------
Apr 13 18:25:03 janbond pppd[947]: pppd 2.2.0 started by root, uid 0
Apr 13 18:25:03 janbond pppd[947]: Using interface ppp0
Apr 13 18:25:03 janbond pppd[947]: Connect: ppp0 /dev/modem
Apr 13 18:28:03 janbond pppd[947]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests
Apr 13 18:28:03 janbond pppd[947]: Connection terminated.
----------end of /var/log/messages----------
</PRE>
Of course, on interface, it was nothing but quiet.
<P>
I tried minicom again, this time using /etc/ppp/options which looked
like:
<PRE>
----------start of /etc/ppp/options----------
-detach
modem
lock
crtscts
defaultroute
asyncmap 0
mtu 552
mru 552
lcp-max-configure 60
----------end of /etc/ppp/options----------
</PRE>
Here's what happened on the terminal:
<PRE>
----------start of login terminal----------
CONNECT 115200
Welcome to Asia-Access Internet
Host: US1
Port: S6/2
Username: ruangvit
Password:
PPP session from (203.145.0.204) to 203.145.3.105 beginning.
----------end of login terminal----------
</PRE>
I then pppd, which resulted:
<PRE>
----------start of pppd result----------
[root@janbond /root]# pppd
~=ff}#=c0!}!}!} }8}!}$}"(}"}&} } } } }%}& =ac=93=f6}'}"}(}"]}.~~=ff}#=c0!}!=
}!} }} } }
}%}& =ac=93=f6}'}"}(}"]}.~~=ff}
----------end of pppd result----------
</PRE>
And this is the corresponding /var/log/messages:
<PRE>
----------start of /var/log/options----------
Apr 14 11:16:41 janbond pppd[831]: pppd 2.2.0 started by root, uid 0
Apr 14 11:16:41 janbond pppd[831]: Using interface ppp0
Apr 14 11:16:41 janbond pppd[831]: Connect: ppp0 /dev/ttyp0
Apr 14 11:19:41 janbond pppd[831]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests
Apr 14 11:19:41 janbond pppd[831]: Connection terminated.
Apr 14 11:19:41 janbond pppd[831]: Receive serial link is not 8-bit clean:
Apr 14 11:19:41 janbond pppd[831]: Problem: nothing was received
Apr 14 11:19:41 janbond pppd[831]: Exit.
----------end of /var/log/messages----------
</PRE>
I tried looking up the howto's. Nothing seems to help. Neither do those gur=
us in any Linux webboard. :-(
<P>
Waiting for your kindly reply.
<P>
--<BR>
Ruangvith Tantibhaedhyangkul
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 05:47:53 +1000<BR>
From: "Andrew K Smith", <A HREF="mailto:Andrew.Smith@webspinning.com.au">
Andrew.Smith@webspinning.com.au</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Linux and Subnets over PPP</font>
<P>
I've tried searching the Internet for this and got generally quite confused
about how to do it (and unable to get it to work!)
What I need to know is how to setup a PPP access to my Linux computer
where I give a subnet to the computer dialled in rather than just a
single IP address (i.e. networking two networks together - ISP side)
The target machine dialling in via PPP is actually WindowsNT - get no
problems when it is setup as a single IP address (and the WindowsNT
machine has it's own IP address not in my subnet) but can't seem to
get it right when the NT machine has part of my subnet.
Any help greatly appreciated
Thanks,
<P>
--<BR>
Andrew
<a name="gen"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">General Mail</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 14:01:47 +0200 (MEST)<BR>
From: Stephan Petersen, <A HREF="mailto:sp@gtt.lth.rwth-aachen.de">
sp@gtt.lth.rwth-aachen.de</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Re: "Web pages design under Linux" (#39)</font>
<P>
I just browsed to the latest Linux Gazette, and for the life of me I can't
figure out how the article "Web pages design under Linux" got in there.
I'm not a fequent reader of the LG (but a subscriber to LJ almost from the
beginning :-), and I'm pleasantly surprised about the good quality and
high standards of the other contributions in this issue. Given that, how
did this article made it in there? :-)
<P>
If I were new to Linux, but knew something about web design, after reading
this article I would say even DOS must be a better choice of OS for web
design! If I knew Linux, but I'm new to web design, this article would
easily convince me that Linux has next to nothing to offer to get a gentle
start into web design. And if you know both, well, you wonder how many
people who count themselves to the previous two groups get scared off...
<P>
The title has not much at all to do with the article. Giving an overview
is fine, but not mentioning even a fraction of the many great tools that
Linux *does* have for web design, and not even giving *one* useful link to
follow up on and to find a page that *does* have some info that deserves
the name of the title, but instead sports silly things like "A true web
page is made by hand" should be enough reason to not publish such an
article until its reworked.
<P>
An article doesn't have to be long to be right for LG, nor does it have to
cover a subject completely. But an article with *this* title should give
the reader a little kickstart in the right direction, and I just don't see
that happening.
<P>
Otherwise, keep up the great work, I enjoy the LG! I consider it a very
useful addition to LJ.
<P>
All the best,
<P>
--<BR>
Stephan
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 17:07:52 -0400<BR>
From: "Scott Carle", <A HREF="mailto:carle@sccoast.net">carle@sccoast.net</A>
<BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Web page design under Linux</font>
<P>
I have a request. Find some programs equivalent to FrontPage by Microsoft
that can run under Linux and do a second article in the Linux Gazette. I
found your statement that "A true web page is made by hand" to be very
narrow minded and limiting.
<P>
I learned how to code by hand a long time ago and was never so happy as when
WYSIWYG editors came out. Coding by hand is incredibly slow compared to a
decent program such as Aolpress, FrontPage, Hotdog, Dreamweaver, NetObjects
Fusion, or one of the other drag and drop editors. Today's websites with
Java scripts and dhtml and all the other extras that are taken for granted
would take forever to develop by hand. I agree that hand coding is leaner
and meaner but trade offs have to be made between that and speed, especially
when done commercially and charged by the hour. Also the site management
features offered in a decent websuite are something that a
webmaster/developer desperatly needs on large multi-page sites.
Thank You,
<P>
--<BR>
Scott
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 23:48:51 -0600<BR>
From: Warren Young, <A HREF="mailto:tangent@cyberport.com">
tangent@cyberport.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">LG email on DTP under Linux</font>
<P>
In Issue 40, there's an e-mail from Michael J. Hammel answering some
complaints someone had about the current state of GUI prepress software
for Linux. In it, he said that "there aren't any such tools yet
announced for Linux". That hasn't been true for a couple of months now:
like many other people, he's forgotten that Corel has a full-scale
publishing package: Corel Ventura.
<P>
As everyone's heard now, Corel has promised to port all their apps to
Linux by the beginning of next year. So far as I recall, this includes
Ventura.
<P>
One other nit: Michael wrote that Windows has an 8-year lead on Linux.
Actually, it has a 14-year lead: Windows 1.0 was released in 1985, and
their focus has always been on ease of use. Recall that Windows was
started in late 1983 after some Microsoft folk visited Apple and saw
preproduction versions of the Mac.
<P>
Although X was started around the same time, Michael is right that the X
world hasn't focused on newbie-user simplicity until very recently.
Sure, X makes a Unix box easier to use just because it's a GUI, but
until GNOME and KDE came on the scene, X never really hid anything the
way that the Mac and Windows do.
<P>
-- <BR>
Warren
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 09:26:01 -0500<BR>
From: "Clements, John", <A HREF="mailto:jcclemen@SHERWIN.RMC.com">
jcclemen@SHERWIN.RMC.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Linux Gazette Format</font>
<P>
Maybe a detail,
<P>
Many of us have and use Linux, but are still bound by the need to
standardize in the corporate world to the Windows environment. As a Linux
newbie, I still do not have a high speed modem bought and installed on my
Linux box at home so have no way to get the tar, etc formats, and, of
course, many of us have a higher speed lines at work. Is there a way to
download the file in a format that can be unzipped, etc. on a Windows
workstation then print out? Also, a format easily read by Windows machines
would make publicizing the Linux system possible to others now using
Windows. For example, our local PCC users club(Coastal Areas PC Users
Group, www.caug-pc.org http://www.caug-pc.org) has a web site. I guess
what I'm saying, is if we only publish Linux documents in formats that Linux
users and/or Linux gurus can use, how do we grow the user base?
<P>
Thanks for listening to the rant...
<P>
--<BR>
JCC
<blockquote> <I>
(I must admit to being a total Linux/UNIX person. Our office is a Linux shop
and UNIX tools are what I have access to. I have never used Windows
and have no idea what sort of files might be compatible with that system. I
assume HTML is, so when you are at work, just download the TWDT file.
Perhaps someone else knows a better answer. --Editor) </I> </blockquote>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 08:37:00 -0500<BR>
From: Dwain Hargrave, <A HREF="mailto:dwain.hargrave@udfc.com">
dwain.hargrave@udfc.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">www.linuxgazette.com</font>
<P>
I like the changes you made to it. It look very good. Thought I let
you know.
<P>
--<BR>
Dwain
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 00:49:46 -0800<BR>
From: Richard Mckinney, <A HREF="mailto:rmck@alaska.net">rmck@alaska.net</A>
<BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Not Linux</font>
<P>
Replace the Explorer in the shell= statement of your system.ini file and
watch those mouse addicts cringe in horror.
<P>
--<BR>
Rich
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 17:10:50 -0500<BR>
From: "Ronald E. Bloss", <A HREF="mailto:rebloss@swbell.net">
rebloss@swbell.net</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">re: KDE is bloated and slow</font>
<P>
Hear, Hear.
<P>
I feel the same way. One very obvious example is running StarOffice
5.0. Under KDE, I thought it was really slow and would not have even
considered using it. However, under just fvwm2 or another standard
window manager, it is quite responsive. I was ready to throw StarOffice
away until I tried without KDE.
<P>
--<BR>
Ronald E. Bloss
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 22:09:58 -0500<BR>
From: "Diane Gartner", <A HREF="mailto:dgwhiz@earthling.net">
dgwhiz@earthling.net</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Linux people excluded</font>
<P>
On Tuesday, April 27th, I stopped by the Ralph Nader/James Love "Appraising Microsoft" site, just to see what was up with their upcoming conference on April 30th. I found the pages outlining their agenda plus speakers.
<P>
At http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/ams2-panels.html, you'll find their Agenda, where the last panel supposedly covers...
<ul>
<li> Panel Four 3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.
<li> Non antitrust remedies
<ul>
<li> Government and private procurement policies
<ul>
<li> Consumer Boycotts
<li> Linux, xBSD and other free software
<li> Alternative commercial operating systems, such as
<li> BeOS, Mac-X OS, Amiga, New Deal
</ul></ul></ul>
<P>
Notice that NewDeal Office, which isn't an operating system, is listed there, while OS/2, DOS, Netware, QNX, etc. are missing. Secondly, the workshops don't actually discuss the other OSs in an detail; so even if those platforms are listed, they still have no representatives at the conference.
<P>
The same applies to Linux. If you check their list of speakers [URL below], you'll see that while the list includes CEOs from Caldera and RedHat, it has no corporate official from other software vendors, nor any independent Linux programmers, resellers, or user groups who could offer their own insights to the public.
<P>
This conference is much like their first one in Nov 1997. After so many of us had protested the first conference's mistakes and had asked for corrections to the A.M. site-- e.g. their handling of operating systems and user groups-- it's hard to just sit back and attribute this 2nd conference as some sort of "mistake" or "oversight" based merely on ignorance.
<P>
James Love isn't merely forgetting about the software and groups we care about. He simply doesn't _respect_ us and doesn't want to include us in his conference.
<P>
As he told me in a telephone conversation, "[not verbatim] "What have these user groups and programmers done? What remedies have these people ever proposed that would convince us they deserve to be included? We need people who have ideas, who know what they're talking about, who can speak...."
<P>
It's time to send him your answers to his questions.
<P>
Steps you can take:
<ol>
<li> Go to the A.M. website, and check out the Speakers [http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/speakers2.html] and Agenda [http://www.appraising-microsoft.org/ams2-panels.html pages.
<li> E-mail a respectful complaint to James Love and Ralph Nader. Politely let them know that their conference should be open and inclusive to all OSs, user groups, developers, resellers etc..
<P>
NOTE! If you yourself belong to a group that should be included, then give Love all the contact info he needs to reach you, so that you may be invited to his next conference. Insist on it. :)
<li> If you can telephone them, consider calling the A.M. contact person, Donna Colvin, at 202-387-8030, where James Love also can be reached.
</ol>
<P>
--<BR>
Diane Gartner,
IACT Co-ordinator<BR>
International Alliance for Compatible Technology,
<A HREF="http://pages.cthome.net/iact/">http://pages.cthome.net/iact/</A>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 19:11:31 -0700<BR>
From: "John F. Kohler", <A HREF="mailto:jkohler2@earthlink.net">
jkohler2@earthlink.net</A> <BR>
Subject: <font color="navy">Re: Something for very new beginners</font>
<P>
I suggest a portion of your publication be devoted
to really simple answere to very basic questions.
<P>
I have installed Red Hat Linux in an i486 computer, and
have just picked up bits and pieces of how to connect
to a modem, how to setup ppp configuration using the
command line prompts, and how to start XFree86.
<P>
For old-time experienced Linux users, these must sound like very simple
tasks, but from my ignorant state, they are like unclimbable mountains.
<P>
--<BR>
John
<blockquote> <I>
(Well, the way it works is you send your questions to me, I post them in the
Mail Bag and then you get answers by e-mail. Copies of answers sent to me are
posted in the 2 Cent tip section. We get a lot of basic questions so you could
just search issues for keywords. (When the search works again--hopefully next
week.)
</I> </blockquote> <blockquote> <I>
Ron Jenkins series Linux Primer is really good for newcomers.
He's done 9 installments now so go back and read the first one.
</I> </blockquote> <blockquote> <I>
I hope you'll find answers in our mag. If not
today, then send in your questions. I guarantee you'll get plenty of answers.
--Editor)
</I> </blockquote>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<center>Published in <i>Linux Gazette</i> Issue 41, May 1999</center>
<!--====================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<P>
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"</H4>
<HR>
<center>
<table cellpadding=7><tr><td>
<IMG SRC="../gx/bytes.gif" border=1 ALT="News Bytes">
</td><td>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes41.html#general">News in General</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes41.html#software">Software Announcements</a>
</ul>
</td></tr></table>
</center>
<a name="general"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">News in General</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><IMG ALT=" " SRC="./gx/cover62.jpg"></center>
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
June 1999 <I>Linux Journal</I>
</font>
</H3>
<P>
The June issue of <A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/"><I>Linux
Journal</I></A> will be hitting the newsstands May 14.
This issue focuses on Standards with an article by Daniel Quinlan about what's
happening with the Linux Standard Base Project and one in which the various
distributions tell us how they feel about standards.
<I>Linux Journal</I> now has articles that appear "Strictly On-Line".
Check out the Table of Contents at
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue62/index.html">
http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue62/index.html</A> for articles in this
issue as well as links to the on-line articles.
To subscribe to <I>Linux Journal</I>, go to <A
HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/ljsubsorder.html">
http://www.linuxjournal.com/ljsubsorder.html</A>.
<P>
<font color="green">
For Subcribers Only</font>: <I>Linux Journal</I> archives are now available
on-line at <A
HREF="http://interactive.linuxjournal.com">http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Open Source Modeller for Povray & AutoCAD forming nicely
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 12:00:41 +1200<BR>
<P>
An Open Source 3D Modelling program using GTK is shaping up; it's called
"Giram" (Giram Is Really A Modeller). Giram can already create scenes
and provide a front-end to Povray, the clever part being that it both
reads and writes Povray scripts - the only one that does that we know
of. AutoCAD import and export filters are shaping nicely and we would
like to include other formats too. Animation and post-production
features are planned.
<P>
If you are interested, or would like to help create the free 3D modeller
that Linux so badly needs, please visit the Giram website.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.minet.net/giram/">http://www.minet.net/giram/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
LinuxGT Release Date Announcement / Drawing info
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 08:40:56 -0500<BR>
LinuxGT is happy to bring you the OFFICIAL release dates for the
LinuxGT CD and ftp. May 5th we will begin taking orders via telephone,
web, and snail mail. May 10th we will begin shipping the LinuxGT CD
with (1)Bootable CD, (2) Floppy Disks (One for graphical install without a
bootable CD BIOS, one for non-VGA Installation), (1) Quickstart Booklet,
and (1)Users Guide. We are STILL Taking pre-registrations, please see
the note about the drawing below.
<P>
** DRAWING ** : Pre-Register, and you will be entered into the drawing
for the FIRST PRINT CD of LinuxGT! Not only do you get LinuxGT FREE,
but you get the very first package! (They are numbered sequentially).
Hey, we'll even foot the shipping bill! Pre-Registration does NOT mean
you are obligated to purchase.
<P>
To pre-register, simply visit http://www.greysite.com/ordering.html or
<A HREF="http://www.greysite.com/">http://www.greysite.com/</A> and click
the links!
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Rick Collette, <A HREF="mailto:corick@bgosh.com">corick@bgosh.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Tripwire Expands into Japan
</font>
</H3>
<P>
PORTLAND, Ore. - April 19, 1999 - Tripwire(tm) Security Systems, Inc.
(TSS), a leading supplier of information security solutions, selected its
first Japanese distributor today. The agreement with Tokyo-based
Matsushita Inter-Techno Co. (MITC) will support and expand the growing
Japanese demand for TSS' Tripwire(tm), the most widely deployed File
Integrity Assessment (FIA) tool for the Unix platform.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Matsushita Inter-Techno, Co. Ltd. (MITC)
Tripwire Security Systems,
<A
HREF="http://www.tripwiresecurity.com/">http://www.tripwiresecurity.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Sane Solutions Announces Alliance with HP
</font>
</H3>
<P>
NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI - March 29, 1999 - Sane Solutions, LLC today
announces an alliance with Hewlett-Packard Company to offer Sane
Solutions' NetTracker Internet usage tracking software as part of HP's
worldwide Covision Internet solutions program. Through the Covision
alliance, Sane Solutions, HP and other Covision members will work together
to deliver comprehensive Internet solutions to meet specific customer needs,
including electronic commerce and other high value-added Internet solutions.
<P>
NetTracker is server-based software designed to analyze the traffic from
multiple web servers, proxy servers, firewalls & FTP servers and provide
companies with detailed information about their web site visitors, as well
as their employees' use (or abuse) of the Internet.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Sane Solutions,<A HREF="http://www.sane.com/">http://www.sane.com/</A>
HP's Covision Program, <A HREF="http://www.hpcovision.com/">
http://www.hpcovision.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Strategic Alliance Between Corel, KDE and Debian
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Ottawa, Canada - April 21, 1999 - Corel Corporation (NASDAQ: COSFF,
TSE: COS) today announced an alliance with two major Open Source developer
communities to advance the development of its proposed Linux distribution;
a user-friendly Linux installation and graphical user interface (GUI) for
the desktop PC.
<P>
Corel and the K Desktop Environment (KDE) Project will be working together
to enhance the KDE GUI for inclusion in the upcoming Corel version of
Linux, aimed for the desktop user.
<P>
Corel will also build its desktop Linux offering around the Debian
GNU/Linux distribution, which already has one of the largest installed
bases in the Linux community, and is known for its stability and security.
<P>
With a recent alliance with Cygnus, which will provide Cygnus
GNUPro software technology to enable Corel to move its market-leading
productivity applications to Linux, Corel is firmly on track to deliver
its proposed Linux distribution to the market by the fall. This will be
in advance of its WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux productivity suite
and CorelDRAW 9 for Linux graphics application in the fourth quarter
and beginning of 2000 respectively.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Corel Corporation, <A
HREF="http://www.corel.com/">http://www.corel.com/</A><BR>
The K Desktop Environment, <A HREF="http://www.kde.org/">http://www.kde.org</A> <BR>
Debian GNU/Linux, <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Linux Links
</font>
</H3>
<P>
The High School Underground site:
<A HREF="http://www.hsunderground.com/">http://www.hsunderground.com/</A>
<P>
Database of Linux resources: <A HREF="http://www.LinuxStart.Com/">
http://www.LinuxStart.Com/</A>
<P>
Italian ``HOWTO book'':
<A HREF="http://www.pluto.linux.it/ildp/">http://www.pluto.linux.it/ildp/</A>
<P>
Comdex 99 Photos:
<A HREF="http://www.bwill.net/comdex/">
http://www.bwill.net/comdex/</A>
<P>
SoundPro Sound Card:
<A HREF="http://home.gelrevision.nl/~h.wolter/CMI8330_Mini_HOWTO.txt">
http://home.gelrevision.nl/~h.wolter/CMI8330_Mini_HOWTO.txt</A>
<a name="software"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Software Announcements</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
O'Reilly Guide to Learning Python Released
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 12:53:03 -0700 (PDT)<BR>
Sebastopol, CA--O'Reilly has announced the release of a new beginner's
guide to Python, "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz & David Ascher.
Python is gaining in popularity as
an object-oriented language for writing standalone programs, quick
scripts, and prototypes of complex applications. Python is free,
open-source, and easy to use. Python scripts are portable across many
platforms, including all major Unix systems, Linux, Windows 95/98,
Windows NT, and MacOS.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/">http://www.oreilly.com/</A>,
<A HREF="mailto:order@oreilly.com">order@oreilly.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
HP Delivers 24x7 Worldwide Support for Linux...
</font>
</H3>
<P>
PALO ALTO, Calif.--April 20, 1999--Hewlett-Packard Company
today announced the availability of HP Linux support services, which provide
customers with around-the-clock, worldwide support of Linux and HP Linux
applications. HP's new support services include a maximum two-hour response-time
commitment, and immediate response for critical calls, on multivendor Intel-
based platforms. HP is mobilizing on all fronts to meet the anticipated strong
demand for Linux systems, software and services.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Hewlett-Packard Company, <A HREF="http://www.hp.com/">http://www.hp.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Linux GNUPrO Tools for Intel's Future IA-64 Processors
</font>
</H3>
<P>
SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 26, 1999 - Cygnus Solutions today announced it
is working closely with Intel to optimize its industry leading GNUPro
software development tools for Intel's future IA-64 Architecture,
beginning with the Merced processor. With this announcement, Cygnus'
market leading Linux tools now span all key Intel processors, beginning
with the latest Celeron;, Pentium II and Pentium III processors, as
well as high performance, low power StrongARM processors.
<P>
The GNUPro Toolkit for the IA-64 Architecture will be available from
Cygnus when Intel's Merced moves into production in mid 2000.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Cygnus,
<A HREF="mailto:info@cygnus.com">info@cygnus.com</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.cygnus.com/product/gnupro.html/">http://www.cygnus.com/product/gnupro.html</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Arco Announces New IDE Backup Device DupliDisk
</font>
</H3>
<P>
HOLLYWOOD, Florida (April 22, 1999) -- Arco Computer
Products, Inc., www.arcoide.com, a leading provider of low
cost IDE disk mirroring technology, today announced the
DupliDisk-POS, a real-time backup device designed for
small chassis PC users who want the security of a
duplicate hard drive but not the high cost of a SCSI RAID
system.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
ARCO Computer Products, Inc.,
<A HREF="mailto:arco@arcoide.com">arco@arcoide.com</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.arcoide.com/">http://www.arcoide.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Programming with Qt Book Release
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 09:48:58 -0700 (PDT)<BR>
Sebastopol, CA--Qt is an easy-to-use, multi-platform C++ GUI toolkit.
With Qt, a developer can write an application once and run it on UNIX,
Windows 95/98, and Windows NT platforms. Linux developers can acquire Qt
for free (unless they wish to develop closed-source commercial
applications in which case they must purchase a license). Now O'Reilly
and Associates has published a book on Qt"Programming with Qt" by
Matthias Kalle Dalheimer.
<P>
Qt's benefits are impressive, but the learning curve can be steep. Qt
comes with excellent reference documentation, but beginners often find
the included tutorial is not enough to really get started with Qt. "We
felt there was a need for a book that guides you through the steps of
writing a Qt application and presents all of the GUI elements in Qt,
along with advice about when and how to use them, so that you can make
full use of the toolkit." said Elke Hansel, Managing Director of
O'Reilly Germany, "There's also lots of information for seasoned Qt
programmers, including material on advanced 2D transformations,
drag-and-drop, and writing custom image file filters."
<P>
For more information:<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/">http://www.oreilly.com/</A>,
<A HREF="mailto:order@oreilly.com">order@oreilly.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Penguin Computing Announcement
</font>
</H3>
<P>
San Francisco, CA - April 1 - Penguin Computing, Inc., the nation's
largest and fastest-growing company focusing exclusively on turn-key
Linux solutions, announced today that it now begun offering Linux-based
computer systems that use AMD K6 series processors from Advanced Micro
Devices Inc.(NYSE: AMD). These desktops, servers and workstations offer
all the reliability of a Penguin system with the speed of an AMD K6
series inside. To mark the expanded offering, Penguin is pricing
systems featuring high performance AMD processors extremely
aggressively, starting at just $990.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Penguin Computing, <A HREF="http://www.penguincomputing.com/">
http://www.penguincomputing.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Linux Announcements from Dell and Red Hat
</font>
</H3>
<P>
ROUND ROCK, Texas--April 26, 1999--Dell Computer Corporation,
the world's leading direct computer systems company, today
announced it plans to factory-install the new Red Hat Linux 6.0 operating system
on select, "Red-Hat Ready" certified configurations of its PowerEdge(R) servers,
Dell Precision(tm) WorkStations and OptiPlex(R) business desktop computers.
<P>
Dell is also the first company to receive multiprocessor certification from Red
Hat for its four-processor PowerEdge 6300 enterprise server and its dual-
processor Dell Precision WorkStations. Dell will offer the new Red Hat software
factory-installed on configurations of its PowerEdge 1300, 2300, 4300, 4350,
6300 and 6350 servers; Dell Precision 410 and 610 WorkStations; and OptiPlex GX1
and GX1p desktop PCs.
<P>
Red Hat Linux 6.0, which was announced by Red Hat today, adds symmetric
multiprocessing support for up to four processors and other new features to
deliver improved performance and reliability in enterprise and Internet
applications that run the day-to-day business of companies worldwide.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Dell Computer Corp., <A HREF="http://www.dell.com/products/poweredge/linux/">
http://www.dell.com/products/poweredge/linux/</A>
Red Hat Software, <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">http://www.redhat.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Linux Announcements from IBM, Red Hat and Caldera
</font>
</H3>
<P>
SOMERS, N.Y.--April 26, 1999--IBM today announced its award-winning ViaVoice speech recognition technology is available for the Linux
operating environment. ViaVoice is the first commercial speech recognition
technology to be ported to the Linux environment.
<P>
IBM's initial Linux offering will include a beta version of IBM ViaVoice
Software Developers Kit (SDK) for Linux, IBM ViaVoice Run Time Kit for Linux and
open source sample applications. These technologies provide the foundation for
application developers to incorporate speech recognition technology into the
next generation of applications. The initial beta version of ViaVoice engine and
SDK for Linux is available in U.S. English. Red Hat Software will be the first
to distribute IBM's speech technology as part of the company's Linux 6.0
Application CD(a), also announced today. In the coming months, IBM plans to
extend its ViaVoice for Linux offering to support a variety of languages,
additional content and distribution channels, including Caldera Systems.
<P>
In addition to offering its ViaVoice SDK and engine for Linux, IBM will host a
Web site for new technology downloads and a discussion group for technical
information and collaboration with fellow developers. For more information about
these services, visit IBM at <A HREF="http://www.software.ibm.com/speech/">
http://www.software.ibm.com/speech/</A> and select "Linux."
<P>
For more information:<BR>
IBM Speech Systems, <A HREF="http://www.software.ibm.com/speech/">
http://www.software.ibm.com/speech/</A><BR>
Red Hat Linux, <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">http://www.redhat.com/</A><BR>
Caldera Systems, <A HREF="http://www.caldera.com/">http://www.caldera.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Official Red Hat Linux 6.0
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Durham, N.C.--April 26, 1999--Red Hat=AE Software, Inc., a
developer and support provider of the Linux operating system, today
announced Official Red Hat Linux 6.0. This major new release of the
award-winning Red Hat Linux server operating system (OS) adds
symmetrical multi-processor support (SMP) for up to four processors and
many other new features to deliver tremendous horsepower and
reliability for the most demanding enterprise and Internet applications
running the day-to-day business of companies worldwide.
<P>
Red Hat Linux 6.0 includes the new Linux 2.2 kernel. The new kernel
supports more hardware and improves the overall performance of the
Linux OS. The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) is freely available under
the GPL license and automatically installs and updates the various
pieces of the Linux OS and lets systems administrators easily
distribute Linux across the enterprise.
<P>
Red Hat Linux 6.0 has pricing options available from $39.95 to $79.95.
It can also be downloaded from ftp.redhat.com immediately.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Red Hat Software, <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">http://www.redhat.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Linuxcare and Terra Soft Solutions
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Linuxcare Inc. --the first company to provide complete technical support, consulting, education and product certification for Linux--recently joined forces with Terra Soft Solutions, developers of Yellow Dog Linux (www.yellowdoglinux.com) for Apple Macintosh PPC and G3s, to provide enterprise-class support for Yellow Dog Linux solutions.
<P>
Linuxcare draws from a worldwide network of Linux developers and experts to offer 24 x 7 Linux support services. Known for its vendor-neutral support of Linux software offerings, Linuxcare adds Yellow Dog Linux to the roster of major Linux distributions supported by the firm's per-incident, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum technical support packages. Yellow Dog Linux offers a compelling solution for Macintosh environments looking to adopt the proven OS platform: Linux.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Linuxcare, Inc., <A
HREF="http://www.linuxcare.com/">http://www.linuxcare.com/</A> <BR>
Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., <A HREF="http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com">
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
Linux Announcements from Pacific HiTech
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 07:18:46 -0700<BR>
Pacific HiTech is the first major Linux company to ship a general purpose
Linux server package, TurboLinux Server. TurboLinux Server, to be released
for general shipment in North America in June, is now available in Japan.
Pacific HiTech has already shipped more than 30,000 copies through systems
integration, retail, and magazine bundle distribution channels.
<P>
TurboLinux Server makes it easy to install and administer a Linux server to
a server on a company's web site, e-mail, file and print serving and FTP.
The installer also performs automatic partitioning and offers different
Linux kernel types from SMP (more than one processor) to APM (advanced power
management). In addition, it features built-in virus and security
protection. Bundled with TurboLinux Server is commercial backup software as
well as drivers to support the most popular server RAID and UPS solutions.
<P>
Pacific HiTech will also announce that it is the first major distributor of
Linux in Chinese, having shipped more than 110,000 units of TurboLinux to
date to the People's Republic of China.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Pacific HiTech, <A HREF="http://www.pht.com/">http://www.pht.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
PowerQuest's Lost & Found
</font>
</H3>
<P>
Johannesburg, 3 May 1999 - The Chernobyl virus, which was
responsible for destroying data from thousands of hard drives
throughout the world, has proven just how powerful PowerQuest Corporation's
data recovery tool Lost & Found can be when facing damaged data. People
throughout the world are using Lost & Found to retrieve files from
their Chernobyl-infected computers and, in all known cases, have recovered
100 percent of the lost, deleted or corrupted data. Search & Rescue, the
enterprise version of Lost & Found, is also being used to help businesses
recover from virus infections. Both products are available from
Johannesburg-based software distributor OS/2 Express SA.
<P>
Lost & Found is a fast and easy way to restore lost data on your PC.
Lost & Found automatically recovers and restores data after virus
infection, accidental (or intentional) data loss, a disk crash or
logical system failure. As long as the disk is still spinning, Lost &
Found can locate and recover almost any lost file for FAT and FAT32.
In addition, Lost & Found does not need to be installed prior to data
loss.
<P>
OS/2 Express SA markets utilities, tools and applications for Windows, OS/2
Linux and Netware, including all PowerQuest products, as well as Linux
distributions, including RedHat, SuSE, OpenLinux, Slackware, TurboLinux,
Mandrake, Debian, FreeBSD and LinuxPro
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Power Quest, <A
HREF="http://www.powerquest.com/">http://www.powerquest.com/</A> <BR>
OS/2 Express, <A
HREF="mailto:os2express@icon.co.za">os2express@icon.co.za</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.os2.co.za/software/">http://www.os2.co.za/software/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<center>Published in <i>Linux Gazette</i> Issue 41, May 1999</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<P><HR><P>
<h5>This page written and maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A><BR>
Copyright &copy; 1999 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. </H5>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<H4>"The Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="answer">
<img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="(?)"
border="0" align="middle">
<font color="#B03060">The Answer Guy</font>
<img src="./../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="(!)"
border="0" align="middle">
</A></H1>
<BR>
<H4>By James T. Dennis,
<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</a><BR>
LinuxCare,
<A HREF="http://www.linuxcare.com/">http://www.linuxcare.com/</A>
</H4>
</center>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- endcut ======================================================= -->
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<p><a href="#tag_greeting"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" border="0"
align="middle"><strong>Greetings From Jim Dennis</strong></A></p>
<DL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<dt><A HREF="#tag/1"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
></a>Here's a shell scripting question for you. --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag/1"
><strong>
How to Make a Shell Script "Unbreakable"
</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/2"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>Best Place to "Download Linux"</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/3"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
></a>How to Build Own Linux Distribution ? --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag/3"
><strong>
Building a Personal Distribution: Take II
</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/4"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
></a>"core" files appearing here and there --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag/4"
><strong>
Dealing with "core" files
</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/5"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
></a>Xterm and "Log to file" --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag/5"
><strong>
Flexible Logging of Terminal Output to Files: Use 'screen'
</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/6"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>file timestamp off Got it !</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/7"
><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong></strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</DL>
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/greeting"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(!) " border="0"
>Greetings from Jim Dennis</H3>
<!-- begin greeting -->
<!-- end greeting -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 1 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>How to Make a Shell Script "Unbreakable"</H3>
<p><strong>From Nick Moffitt on Mon, 29 Mar 1999
</strong></p>
<!-- ::
How to Make a Shell Script "Unbreakable"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:: -->
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
How do I get a shell script to ignore ^C and ^Z?
</STRONG></P>
<P><em>
"The software is intended to be as unobtrusive, unintrusive and
unconstraining as possible. In software as elsewhere, good
engineering is whatever gets the job done without calling attention to
B
itself."
<br>-- Cynbe ru Taren, on Citadel (<A HREF="http://zork.net/cit/citadel.txt"
>http://zork.net/cit/citadel.txt</A>)
</em></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Well, with limitations you can do it with the
following:
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE><pre>
trap "" 2 20
</pre></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
As in this simple script example:
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<blockquote><pre>#!/bin/bash
trap "" 2 20
B
while : ; do
echo -n .
sleep 1
done
</pre></blockquote>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
All I'm doing is setting the INTerrupt and terminal
stop signal handlers to a null string (to ignore
[Ctrl]+[C]) and [Ctrl]+[Z]).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The rest of the script just prints an endless stream
of dots at one second intervals to give you a chance
to play with the keyboard.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You see, your default terminal settings "cook" the
[Ctrl]-[C] into a <tt>SIGINT</tt> (generate a interrupt signal
to the foreground task) and [Ctrl]-[Z] to a <tt>SIGTSTP</tt>.
The default signal handlers for these "cancel/exit"
and "suspend" respectively.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
This technique will also prevent '<tt>kill -INT</tt>' and
'<tt>kill -TSTP</tt>' from having their normal affect on
these processes.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You could also do something like this using
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<blockquote><pre> stty susp 0 intr 0
</pre></blockquote>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
... which merely changes the terminal settings so that
these keystrokes are no longer "cooked" into their
usual signals.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
I believe that these tricks are inherently subject to
race conditions (there is a finite and "exploitable" amount
of time between the start of the script's execution and
the time that these commands have their effect.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
So I think that they should not be used in any attempt to
provide security through some notion of an "unbreakable"
shell script.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 1 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/2"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 2 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Best Place to "Download Linux"</H3>
<p><strong>From Dan Gibson on Mon, 29 Mar 1999
</strong></p>
<!-- ::
Best Place to "Download Linux"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:: -->
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Hi:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><BlockQuote>
I'm looknig for the best place to download Linux from the net. And
also any accompanying documentation. Can you point me in the right
direction? Thanks
</BlockQuote></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Dan Gibson
</STRONG></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
The best place to download Linux (the kernel) is
<A HREF="http://www.kernel.org"
>http://www.kernel.org</A> or if you are in the U.S. try
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org"
>ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org</A>. The latter of these will connect
you to one of over a dozen U.S. mirrors of the kernel
archives. There are numerous other regional sets of mirrors
so you can connect using <A HREF="ftp://ftp.XX.kernel.org"
>ftp://ftp.XX.kernel.org</A> where XX is
your country's two letter ISO code.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
I realize that this answer might be considered
disingenuous. You probably meant to ask where you can
download a full Linux distribution. This includes <EM>much</EM>
more than the kernel --- and involves getting dozens of
FSF GNU packages, XFree86 and other packages.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
A typical Linux distribution fills a full CD, or several.
So it's often not practical to "download" Linux. It's
generally much cheaper, quicker and easier to buy a set
of Linux CDs (<A HREF="http://www.cheapbytes"
>http://www.cheapbytes</A> offers them for as
low as three or four bucks, U.$.)
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
It's also possible to download a <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A> boot diskette
and install the entire distribution over the Internet.
Basically you boot it up, configure it for your Internet
connection, and point the install script at a suitable
mirror of the Red Hat FTP site. I won't describe that
in great detail (search the LG archives, I think I didn't
go into more detail a few months ago). However, I don't
recommend this method. It is slow and unreliable (and will
keep your modem busy for a couple of days if it works).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Using the <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</A> GNU/Linux distribution you download a
base set of about 6 diskettes, install those (one of them
is a boot diskette, naturally). That base distribution is
sufficient to install the rest. It's still a pretty
geeky process and NOT recommended for newbies.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
As for "accompanying documentation" --- all of the
"official" documentation for Linux is linked off of the
LDP (Linux Documentation Project) web site:
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE><DL><DT>
LDP
<DD><A HREF="http://www.metalab.unc.edu/LDP"
>http://www.metalab.unc.edu/LDP</A>
</DL></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
... that's the best source of info on the subject.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
So, in summary, you need to pick a distribution first.
Take a look at the Linux Online list of
distributions (<A HREF="http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html"
>http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html</A>)
for starters. For those that can be "downloaded"
look at their FTP Sites (<A HREF="http://www.linux.org/dist/ftp.html"
>http://www.linux.org/dist/ftp.html</A>).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
That should get you going.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 2 -->
<hr width="40%" align="center">
<!-- begin 7 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
></H3>
<p><strong>From Dan Gibson on Thu, 01 Apr 1999
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG>
Dear Jim:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><BlockQuote>
Thanks for all your advice. I checked out the sites, and then
looked around locally. I am in the Middle East, so it is hard to
find things, but I did find a pirated copy of <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A> 5.1 CD that
I had to pay $20 for, but I am ready to get up and
running. Installing this thing is rather hard! I hear Corel is
going to produce a more friendly version! I hope that once it is
installed it will be easier to run than the installation process
is!
</BlockQuote></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Thanks again for your help.
<br>Dan Gibson
<br>Jordan
</STRONG></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I wouldn't worry about its being "pirated" --- it's
perfectly legal to duplicate most Red Hat CDs (according to
their license). There are companies besides Red Hat that
distribute the Red Hat Linux distribution (including
Cheapbytes <A HREF="http://www.cheapbytes.com"
>http://www.cheapbytes.com</A>) and there are
derivatives of Red Hat, like Mandrake. These start with the
Red Hat distribution and add their own packages
(like <A HREF="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</A>
which Red Hat Inc refuses to ship with their distribution
for their own reasons).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
For now Red Hat is probably the easiest to install on
most PCs. I don't know how long it will take Corel to come
up with their OS offering.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 7 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/3"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 3 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Building a Personal Distribution: Take II</H3>
<p><strong>From Seymour Cakes on Mon, 29 Mar 1999
</strong></p>
<!-- ::
Building a Personal Distribution: Take II
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:: -->
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I know building a personal distribution is no two or three
paragraph thing, but I really want to know how to do it. Won't it
be nice if anybody can have a personal distribution of their own.
</STRONG></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
It is nice that anybody can have their own personal
distribution. But what does that MEAN!
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
If you take <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A>, add a couple of your favorite
packages (RPMs from it's contrib directory, for example
and may some crypto RPMs from Replay <A HREF="http://www.replay.com"
>http://www.replay.com</A>)
... is that a new distribution?
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Mandrake is derived from Red Hat. I haven't used it
personally but it seems that they've added a significant
amount of additional work.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
At what point is something sufficient divergent that
you would call it a new distribution?
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
It's a moot question.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
There's no "how to do it" because you can't clearly
define "it."
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
What <EM>I</EM> would call a "new distribution" would take an
immense amount of work and expertise (beyond my own).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I would be more than happy if anyone could send some links or
pointer or something.
</STRONG></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Start with the LDP (<A HREF="http://www.metalab.unc.edu/LDP"
>http://www.metalab.unc.edu/LDP</A>)
After you've read EVERYTHING there you'll have a good
idea of "how to do it" (for almost any concievable
"it" in the Linux world).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Sey.
</STRONG></P>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 3 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/4"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 4 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Dealing with "core" files</H3>
<p><strong>From Joe Newby on Thu, 01 Apr 1999
</strong></p>
<!-- ::
Dealing with "core" files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:: -->
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Dear Answer Guy:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><BlockQuote>
Love your column, it has given me a lot of information. I've been using
Linux for a while, and I have set up two Linux machines at work for
shared Internet access plus I run Linux exclusively at home, so I'm
somewhere between "newbie" and "guru". I have a question, maybe it's a
stupid one, but it's bugging me anyway.
</BlockQuote></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Periodically, I see files named core appearing here and there throughout
my filesystems. One just showed up in <TT>/etc/X11</TT> directory. They range
in size from 400K to nearly 2MB in size. Looking at them with Midnight
Commander reminds me of reading the old DOS .EXE files, as they all seem
to start with "ELF".
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
What are these things, and can they be safely removed? I should point
out here that I do experiment with different window managers and
sometimes X windows has crashed intermittently. Are these a result of
those crashes?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Thanks for your input - I look forward to hearing from you.
Joe
</STRONG></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
A "core" file is a snapshot of a process' memory state just
prior to its abnormal termination by the system. It's an
image of the program's "core" which is an old term for RAM
dating back to a time when computers actually used little
ferrite "donuts" suspended in a wire mesh for their memory
and storage. These can be used by programmers for
post-mortem analysis, clues as to what caused the failure.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
core files can be generated any time one of your programs
crash for just about any reason. Most of us mortals just
delete the things.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 4 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/5"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 5 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Flexible Logging of Terminal Output to Files: Use 'screen'</H3>
<p><strong>From Phillip Nguyen on Thu, 01 Apr 1999
</strong></p>
<!-- ::
Flexible Logging of Terminal Output to Files: Use 'screen'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:: -->
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Hi,
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
The Linux xterm does not give me the option to log the screen to
file in the pop up windows (Ctrl-leftbutton).
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I know I can use script to log the screen, but that means I have
to get out of telnet run the script program then run telnet again.
My problem is I don't want to log the whole session, I only wants
part of the session here and there to do debugging. Is there a
way that I can make Linux xterm to give me the "Log to file"
option in the pop-up window.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Thanks.
Phillip.
</STRONG></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Use '<tt>screen</tt>' --- you'd start that before you start
your '<tt>telnet</tt>' session (assuming that you want to
log to a file on your local system).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
'screen' has a number of nice features for users of
consoles, telnet, dial-up terminals, and xterms.
When you start it, 'screen' reserves one key ([Ctrl]+[A]
by default) as a way to access it's many options. Of
course you can set that meta key to some other value.
I'll refer to it in the following text as [Meta]
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You use [Meta],[H] (upper case) to start logging. This will
create a file, in the directory from which you started
'screen' named screenlog.0 (the first time you start one).
You can toggle this on and off (and it will close and reopen
the file as appropriate). Actually the "Hardcopy" file will
be named screenlog.N where N is the number of the window
from which you started the logging. 'screen' allows you to
start multiple interactive "windows" or "screens" through
the same terminal connection (xterm, on the same virtual
console, whatever). You can do this using [Meta],[c] to
"create" additional screen sessions.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You can switch among screens (using [Meta],[Meta] to switch
to the most recently used screen, [Meta],[Space] to cycle to
the "next" screen, and [Meta] followed by a digit, to switch
directly to one of the screens). You can "grab" a screen
shot using [Meta],[h] (lowercase "H").
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You can detach 'screen' from your terminal (all
jobs started through it will continue running as though
they were still connected to your terminal). You can
then re-attach to any terminal you like. So you can
detach from your xterm, logout, dial or telnet in from
some other place, and re-attach to your 'screen' session
where you can continue working right where you left off.
(I'm running xemacs under 'screen' right now). 'screen'
can also be configured to "autodetach" --- which is
handy if you are logged in through a flaky modem or
network connection. You just log back in and re-attach
with the command '<tt>screen -r</tt>'
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You can also cut and paste using 'screen' keyboard
bindings. So you use [Meta] "[" (left bracket) or
[Meta],[Esc] (escape), to get into "cut/backscroll"
mode. Then you use cursor movements (mostly like
'<tt>vi</tt>' bindings by default) to move your cursor to a starting
location (on the screen or somewhere in 'screen's backscroll
buffer). The you hit the space bar to start marking ---
move you cursor to some later location and hit the space
bar again to "cut/copy" the intervening text. You can
then use [Meta]"]" (right bracket) to "paste" that
text (which will act exactly as though you'd retyped
it). This cut and paste feature can be very handy when
you can manage to log into a system where you don't
have any file transfer capabilities. You can at
least cut and paste bits of configuration text to
get things working on the remote system. It's also
handy when you have something in one text mode app that
you want to put in an editor. (I use it all the time
to copy link information from Lynx, my web browser, into
xemacs (my mail reader is an emacs mode, <tt>mh-e</tt>).
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
So, '<TT>screen</TT>' is the power tool you need for this job.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 5 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/6"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 6 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="./../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>file timestamp off Got it !</H3>
<p><strong>From Ted Potter on Thu, 01 Apr 1999
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG>
Jim -
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Thank you! by setting the TZ variable to UTC the time/date stamp on files is
now correct. Thank you
for the detailed and accurate response.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I appreciate the time and effort you put forth in your response. I certainty
did not expect my question
to involve such a extensive solution.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Once again both Linux and the people involved with it come out shining.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Sincerely,
Ted "TZ" Potter
</STRONG></P>
<p><em>Linux: because a PC is a terrible thing to waste</em></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><IMG SRC="./../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I wouldn't be able to spend as much time on these
if I wasn't assured that they'd get published so that
these answers get to everyone who wants to search the
web for them.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
That's why I spend a bit of extra time on them. I
take a few questions a month and put lots more into
them than I do into the rest. That's to help everyone
ELSE that's going to ask the same sort of question.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
I learn quite a bit from the research I do to answer
these questions and to find interesting and relevant
links to embed in the answer.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 6 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H5 align="center"><a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
>Copyright &copy;</a> 1999, James T. Dennis
<BR>Published in <I>The Linux Gazette</I> Issue 40 May 1999</H5>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- QUICK TIPS SECTION ================================================== -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="tips"><IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT="" SRC="../gx/twocent.gif">
More 2&#162; Tips!</A></H1> <BR>
Send Linux Tips and Tricks to <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">
gazette@ssc.com
</A></center>
<p><hr><p>
<H3><font color="#CC0000">New Tips:</font></H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#primes">
motd $0.02 tip
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#grace">
IP Addresses
</a>
</ul>
<H3><font color="#CC0000">Answers to Mail Bag Questions:</font></H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#brown">
LG39 - Dodgy Hard Drive
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#crane">
Linux, PalmIII, and Email
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#olaf">
Uninstalling Software
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#derek">
KDE - so what?
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#crane2">
What is a *.ajr file?
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#francois">
CD Autoloader
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#leroy">
RE: Problem with the proxy
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#hawkins">
Re: what is my dialup (ppp) IP number?
</a>
</ul>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="primes"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
motd $0.02 tip
</font> </H3>
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 01:53:44 PDT<BR>
From: primes, <A HREF="mailto:primes@hotmail.com">primes@hotmail.com</A>
<P>
For many Linux home boxes, the message-of-the-day file (/etc/motd)
serves no real purpose. I've instead used it to display ascii art,
something like a splash screen, which changes every hour. i've found
this to be a welcome change from the normally blank motd at each
login, at least visually.
<P>
Just create a new directory, say /etc/splash and dump all your ascii
art files there. next as root, add an hourly cron job with the
following script. This script cycles through each ascii file
alphabetically and the sed command works using gnu sed. Different
versions of sed might require slight changes.
<PRE>
#!/bin/sh
# Different splash screens (motd) every hour.
cd /etc/splash/
[ -f .splash ] &&
SPLASH=`/bin/cat .splash`
[ -z "$SPLASH" ] ||
[ ! -f "$SPLASH" ] &&
SPLASH=`/bin/ls | /bin/sed -n '1p'`
/bin/cp "$SPLASH" ../motd && {
/bin/ls | /bin/sed -n '1h;/^'$SPLASH'$/{${x;p;q;};n;p;}' >.splash
}
</PRE>
You can also replace the ascii files with more informative motd files
to be displayed each day of the week by issuing daily cron jobs
instead of hourly. This can be done for example to remind me of the
things i'm supposed to do for the day.
<P>
--<BR>
primes
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="grace"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
IP Addresses
</font> </H3>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 02:52:34 +0000<BR>
From: Allen Grace, <A HREF="mailto:a.grace@mailbox.uq.edu.au">
a.grace@mailbox.uq.edu.au</A>
<P>
In your New Tips section you've published a tip describing a method of
finding the IP address for a PPP session with a Perl script.
<P>
There is a simpler way, which you may like to append to his tip. Under
bash:
<PRE>
IPADDR=`/sbin/ifconfig | \
grep P-t-P | \
awk 'BEGIN{FS=" "} {print $2}' | \
awk 'BEGIN{FS=":"} {print $2}'`
</PRE>
And then you do whatever you like with $IPADDR.
<P>
This will work for the same ifconfig output as the gentlemen who
submitted the Perl script.
<P>
N.B. There are formatting issues here. The command list must be enclosed
in backquotes, but the font used for Netscape mail doesn't seem to have
a backquote character, as it has substituted the forward quote.
<P>
Cheers and many thanks for the enjoyable reading.
<P>
--<BR>
Allen
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<H4><font color="maroon">
Tips in the following section are answers to questions printed in the Mail
Bag column of previous issues.
</font></H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="brown"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
ANSWER: <font color="navy">
LG39 - Dodgy Hard Drive
</font> </H3>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 17:11:59 +0200<BR>
From: Nick Brown, <A HREF="mailto:Nick.BROWN@coe.fr">
Nick.BROWN@coe.fr</A>
<P>
<blockquote><font color="navy">
hda: SAMSUNG SV0644A, 6105MB w/490kB Cache, CHS=778/255/63, UDMA
hdb: FUJITSU MPC3064AT, 6187MB w/0kB Cache, CHS=838/240/63, UDMA
hdc: ST34321A, 4103MB w/128kB Cache, CHS=8894/15/63, UDMA
</font></blockquote>
<P>
I hit a related but different problem after a BIOS upgrade, which led me to
the kernel sources. There is a routine in there which gets old-style (lots
of heads, fewer cylinders) info for the first two HDs only. If you have
partitioned the disk with, say, FDISK, or possibly even with Linux when it
was hda, then you will have old-style head/cyl counts in the partition
tables. You'll probably find that fdisk, lilo, etc, are complaining about
your disk's geometry as well.
<P>
One possibility is to try booting with the kernel option hdc=&lt;c&gt;,&lt;h&gt;,&lt;s&gt; -
see the BootPrompt HOWTO. Another might be to completely zap the disk
(writing 512 zeroes with dd to /dev/hdc should do it) and repartition it
under Linux.
<P>
In my opinion, this "extra" treatment of just hda/hdb is a bug - the system
should work out the "old-style" geometry of all the IDE drives in a
consistent manner. Mark Lord, who maintains much of the IDE code, thinks
that the old-style init code should be junked for 2.3.
<P>
I patched my kernel to fix my problem (which was causing the CHS numbers for
hda to be overwritten by data for a SCSI drive), but it wouldn't work for
yours. You might try editing ide.c in your kernel source tree and reducing
the routine probe_cmos_for_drives() to an empty pair of {} braces.
<P>
--<BR>
Nick
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="crane"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
Linux, PalmIII, and Email
</font> </H3>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 13:35:02 +0100BR
From: Stephen Crane, <A HREF="mailto:scrane@flexicom.com">
scrane@flexicom.com</A>
<P>
Hi Mark,<BR>
If you have sendmail set up correctly from your
Linux box to your ISP, the process should be
transparent. When you sync email from the Palm
(using PilotManager <A HREF="http://www.moshpit.org/pilotmgr/">
http://www.moshpit.org/pilotmgr/</A>)
it transmits the email from the Linux user-id (i.e.,
the user-id under which you ran the sync) via sendmail
or whatever MTA you've configured.
<P>
Hope this helps. If you need help on setting up
email to your ISP, have a look at the Mail HOWTO.
If you have to, there are very few lines in the
standard /etc/sendmail.cf (from RedHat) which need
to be changed.
Cheers,
<P>
--<BR>
Steve
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="olaf"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
Uninstalling Software
</font> </H3>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 12:43:01 -0400 (EDT)<BR>
From: <A HREF="mailto:olaf.greis@iname.com">
olaf.greis@iname.com</A>
<P>
<blockquote><font color="navy">
Have you had any articles on uninstalling application
software in Linux.
</font></blockquote>
<P>
There is no such thing as a generalized uninstall method
in linux. it really depends on the way you installed
the software.
<P>
Two widespread package formats (.deb and .rpm) come
with their own install utilities which are also able to
uninstall packages. Please see your system documentation
(or manpages) on the various options these installers
offer.
<P>
If you just installed from a .tgz (or .tar.gz) archive
containing the binaries your mostly lost, since tgz
offers no uninstall mechanism at all. All you can do is
watch the system at installation time and manually remove the files.
<P>
If you compiled the sources by yourself make sure to
keep a copy of the makefile, since recent applications
often come with a 'make uninstall' directive. If you
don't have the makefile or the makefile doesn't offer a
uninstall option your just as lost as with a .tgz binary
<P>
--<BR>
olaf
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="derek"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
KDE - so what?
</font> </H3>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 08:49:26 +0100<BR>
From: Derek, <A HREF="mailto:fountai@hursley.ibm.com">
fountai@hursley.ibm.com</A>
<P>
Lou,
<blockquote><font color="navy">
Am I just being obtuse, or does KDE feel like a heavy, bloated, resource-intensive desktop environment? If that's what I wanted, I would stay with M(I'm
sorry, I can't say the word)t. Features and benefits be damned, FVWM2 comes real close to the type of responsiveness I feel should be expected of the
desktop ... KDE doesn't even come close.
</font></blockquote>
You're not being obtuse, but you are missing the point. KDE comes in
pieces, so if you don't want a particular feature bloating up your
system and hogging your resources, comment it out of the startup script.
Don't need the sound manager? Switch it off. Don't want the background
manager? Switch it off. Don't need the panel? Switch it off. Of course,
if you do that, you won't be using KDE anymore, and you won't get the
benefits of the environment.
<P>
The "GUI tax" is something you have to pay if you want as nice
environment. Pretty pictures and sounds cost memory, disk space and CPU
time. With Linux and KDE you have a choice. Some would say that Fvwm2 is
a complete resource hog, and why can't we all just use a CLI from a
console? We can, but you don't have to. You pays yer money and takes yer
choice. On this platform at least, that's an option, only you don't have
to pay any money.
<blockquote><font color="navy">
And WHY hasn't anyone else complained? At least, not in a forum that I've been aware of. Is it that everyone is so enamored of the acceptance that Linux has
been getting that they are afraid to rock the boat?
</font></blockquote>
Because everyone else just makes a simple decision. "Does this do what I
want at a cost I'm prepared to pay?" If it does, they use it. If it
doesn't, they use something else which better matches their needs. Linux
isn't about complaining. It's about solving problems. If you can write a
desktop environment which does all the nice things KDE does within the
resource constraints matched by Fvwm2, I'll use it.
<blockquote><font color="navy">
On the other hand, I suppose that we (the Linux user community) feel like we can pass this KDE thing off as a ready replacement for W(I'm sorry, but I can't
say that word, either)s, given that it is so slow and bloated that W(you know)s users will feel right at home.
Yeah, that's the ticket, we'll make 'em feel right at home.
</font></blockquote>
Nope, we're just offering another solution to user's problems. It might
be, in your opinion, another slow, bloated solution, but it's faster
than Windows, more stable, open source and free of charge. It suits a
lot of people. If it doesn't suit you, fine. Use something else. No need
to moan about it...
<P>
--<BR>
Del
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="crane2"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
What is a *.ajr file?
</font> </H3>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 00:44:35 +0200<BR>
From: Steve Crane, <A HREF="mailto:tux@datapro.co.za">
tux@datapro.co.za</A>
<P>
Hans Jensen replied to an erlier 2c tip:
<blockquote><font color="navy">
I think what you see here is the result of Win98 stumbling over a
filename with multiple periods in it. I get a similar result on Win95,
as well as on Win-NT4.0, only the name in my case is mangled into
xxx_tar.tar. So when you have the dialog for the download on screen,
you can simply change the name into something like xx.tgz, which is
unpacked by e.g. WinZip with the same ease as if it were a real ZIP
file. Note for LG: maybe this would be an alternative for the names
you use on the website?
</font></blockquote>
This appears to have been a bug in one of the Internet access components
used by Windows. The error occurred in files downloaded from both
Internet Explorer and Netscape.
<P>
However, the bug appears to have been corrected as I have not seen file
names being broken on downloads from either browser since I have
installed Internet Explorer 5.
<P>
-- <BR>
Steve
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="francois"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
CD Autoloader
</font> </H3>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 19:16:32 +0000<BR>
From: Francois Desarmenien, <A HREF="mailto:desar@club-internet.fr">
desar@club-internet.fr</A>
<blockquote><font color="navy">
I have Caldera OpenLinux 1.2 with 2.2.5 kernel installed.
I need to know if the NEC 4X6 CD changer is supported under Linux, and
so how do you set up
Linux to access the 3 other platters?
</font></blockquote>
I'll suppose NEC 4x6 CD changer is an SCSI device.
<P>
If it is, it is made of two distinct SCSI devices:
<ol>
<li>A cdrom player
<li>A medium changer robot
</ol>
which share the same SCSI id with 2 distinct LUNs.
<P>
Here is my idea (maybe it will require some hack, but maybe not):
<P>
Leonard N. Zubkoff ( lnz@dandelion.com ) wrote a piece of software that d rives a medium changer robot
for DDS tape loaders. It is called MTX and can be found at www.dandelion.com/Linux . Works as a breeze.
<P>
As the notion of "medium changer devices" is well defined and very generic in SCSI RFCs, I suspect the
SCSI inquiries for the cdrom changer should be very close to tape changer
ones, so this code could
probably do the job.
<P>
Unfortunatly, I have no such cdrom changers, so I haven't tried it. But I'm sure it is worth the test.
<P>
--<BR>
Francois Desarmenien
<H3>
<font color="navy">
Re: CD autoloader
</font> </H3>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 09:47:54 PDT<BR>
From: "Trenton Hergesell", <A HREF="mailto:lethalbyte@hotmail.com">
lethalbyte@hotmail.com</A>
<P>
I should have added that it is an ATAPI compliant device ( IDE
Primary channel, Slave drive). Thank you for your response. I have
recently upgraded to Caldera 1.3, but I am having problems upgrading
the Kernel.
<P>
--<BR>
Trenton
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="leroy"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
RE: Problem with the proxy
</font> </H3>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 12:41:19 -0500<BR>
From: "Nicholas R LeRoy", <A HREF="mailto:nick.leroy@norland.com">
nick.leroy@norland.com</A>
<P>
The socks5 package can be found at www.socks.nec.com. It works quite well.
Linux is well supported, as well.
<P>
--<BR>
Nick
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="hawkins"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
Re: what is my dialup (ppp) IP number?
</font> </H3>
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 19:10:40 +1000<BR>
From: Matthew Hawkins, <A HREF="mailto:matt@mail.goldweb.com.au">
matt@mail.goldweb.com.au</A>
<P>
pppd passes this to the ip-up script as the 4th argument.
<P>
man pppd.
<P>
-- <BR>
Matt
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<center>Published in <I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 41, April 1999</center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<h5>This page maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A><BR>
Copyright &copy; 1999 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. </H5>
<P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
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<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Breaking Into Your Own System</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:mark@tcu-inc.com">Mark Nielsen</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
Hello!
<BR>If there are any changes to this article, it will be located at <A HREF="http://www.tcu-inc.com/mark/articles/Breaking.html">http://www.tcu-inc.com/mark/articles/Breaking.html.</A>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
This brief article is just my easy way to break into my own system if I
screw up the root password. There are much easier ways to do it, but this
can also be used if you cannot log into your system if a configuration
file is messed up.
<P>Okay, this isn't a Linux independent OS solution. I use a bootable cdrom
that I got from www.cheapbytes.com which is a cheapbytes version of the
RedHat 5.2 cd.
<P>For this documentation, I am going to assume the computer is partitioned
in the following manner:
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /dev/hda1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
swap partition
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /dev/hda2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
root partition for Linux or "/"
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /dev/hda3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
DOS partition (yes, I know, it is scary to put nasty software on the same
hard drive as Linux)
<P>/dev/hda2 means we are using the master hard drive on the primary IDE
controller and root is on the 2nd primary partition on the hard drive.
If your root is on the first primary partition, it would be /dev/hda1.
<P>Here are the steps I use to hack into my own computer.
<P>1. Make your system bootable off of the cdrom in your computers BIOS.
If your computer doesn't support booting off of the cdrom, then you will
have to figure out how to do it with bootable floppy disks. For me, I just
want to use what is the fastest and easiest method, and so, I boot of off
cdroms. I haven't booted off of a floppy drive in ages.
<P>2. Put in your cdrom into your cdrom drive and turn on your computer.
<P>3.&nbsp; Pretend to go through the installation of RedHat 5.2, and after
it asks you to put in the cdrom and it gets to next screen, you can now
goto the second console window.
<P>4. Press Alt-F2, Alt-F3, Alt-F4, Alt-F5, and then Alt-F1. You should
see various screens with different messages. The one we are concerned about
is Alt-F2.
<P>5. Okay, press Alt-F2.
<P>6. Type "cd /tmp" and press enter.&nbsp; This takes us to a directory
where we can make files, directories, etc.
<P>7. Now we need to make a temporary directory and a temporary device
for the partition on the hard drive that we want to look at or edit. Type
in the following commands
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
mkdir /tmp/my_dir
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
mknod /tmp/my_dev b 3 2
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
mount /tmp/my_dev /tmp/my_dir
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
df
<P>8. "mkdir" makes a directory for us to mount the a partition to.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "mknod" makes a device for 2nd partition on the
master hard drive. This lets us "see" the partition.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In particular, "b
3 2" means the following. "b" is for block device. "3" is the master hard
drive on the
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; primary IDE controller
on your computer. "2" means the second partition.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "mount" takes the device we can "see" and puts it
on top of the directory "/tmp/my_dir"
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "df" just lets you see what file systems are mounted
and where they are mounted to.
<P>Now, for our example, we could either edit the password file or perhaps
do something simple like turning off xwindows from starting up if you have
your computer set to use xdm. Let's do the xwindows example.
<P>10. Do the following steps:
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; cd /tmp/my_dir/etc
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; vi inittab
<P>11. Now you need to know how to use vi which is a fantastic editor,
but it is a pain to learn. Here are some simple commands in vi.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "x" deletes a character.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "i" makes it so you can insert letters or characters.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Esc" turns off inserting characters.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "wq!"&nbsp; writes, quits, and ignores any problems
with read only files.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "h" moves one character to the left
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "l" moves one character to the right
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "k" moves up one line
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "j" moves down one line
<P>12. Now, go down to the line which should have something that looks
like
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; id:5:initdefault:
<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Delete the "5" by positioning the cursor at
the "5".
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Press "x".
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Press "i" to insert a number. Press "3".
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Press the "Esc" key.
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Type "wq!" and press enter.
<P>13. Now you are done editing a file! What is the problem now? If you
reboot you will most likely loose all of your changes. You must unmount
the directory and then reboot.
<P>14. Do this
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; cd /tmp
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; umount /tmp/my_dir
<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; df
<P>15. Now Press Crtl-Alt-Del to reboot. Also, take your cdrom out of
the cdrom
drive. When your computer restarts, I would recommend having your BIOS
boot off of the hard drive instead of a CDROM.
<P>That is it! You can also use this method to change the password file
and do other stuff.
<P>Naturally, having a password in your computers BIOS would be ideal.
If you haven't physically secured your computer, then anybody can do this
to the computer. Even if you put a password in the BIOS, someone could
always take out the hard drive by taking apart the computer.
<P>-------------------------------------------------------
<BR>Mark Nielsen&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
"Where 98 has no meaning."
<BR>www.tcu-inc.com&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
sales@tcu-inc.com
<BR>The Computer Underground, Inc.&nbsp; 614-485-0506
<BR>computers, programming, networking, Perl, PHP, SQL, HTMl, Linux, Unix
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Mark Nielsen <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Compiler Construction Tools</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:rsevenic@penguin.sirti.org">Richard A. Sevenich</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<h1>
Part II: Installing JFlex and CUP - Specific Instructions</h1>
by Richard A. Sevenich, Department of Computer Science
<br>April 26, 1999
<p>This is the second of a series whose first article appeared in the April,
1999 issue of Linux Gazette. [see:&nbsp; <a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue39/sevenich.html">Compiler
Construction Tools, Part I</a> ]. The traditional example, the calculator,
is provided in <A HREF="./lopes/lopes.html">Part III</A>, which is intended as a companion to this part
and also appears in this issue.
<p><b><font size=+1>0.0 Background</font></b>
<p>The JFlex and CUP software packages come with installation instructions.
These are well written and straightforward. Nevertheless this document
was written to give a very specific installation scenario. In the author's
experience, this specificity can be useful to certain new users who find
the generality and flexibility of less specific installation instructions
somewhat difficult upon first exposure. The downside is that this specificity
takes away flexibility.
<p>These instructions are intended for use with a Linux box, with bash
as the default shell and with the tcsh also installed, but not as default.
It is assumed that the user has a version of jdk (Java Development Kit),
or some equivalent, installed already. If not, you can find such at <a href="http://www.blackdown.org/">www.blackdown.org/.</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
In the system used by the author, the compressed tarball of jdk1.1.5-v5-glibc.tar.gz
from blackdown was downloaded into /usr/lib and exploded there.
<p>The author would appreciate corrections and constructive suggestions.
He can be contacted at:&nbsp; rsevenich@ewu.edu
<p><b><font size=+1>1.0 System Preparation</font></b>
<p>Note that the specific choices made in this section are arbitrary. For
starters, it is assumed that you have logged into your home directory,
say, /home/jsmith. All paths will be relative to that position within the
file hierarchy. Make new directories as follows:
<p>> mkdir javatools
<br>> mkdir javatools/CUP
<p>Next revise your .bash_profile and .bashrc files to have the needed
java CLASSPATH etc. Here are some example lines:
<p>JAVB=/usr/lib/jdk1.1
<br>JAVT=/home/jsmith/javatools
<br>CLASSPATH=./:$JAVB/lib/classes.zip:$JAVT/JFlex/lib/JFlex.jar:$JAVT/CUP
<br>PATH=$PATH:$JAVB/bin:$JAVT/JFlex/bin
<br>export PATH CLASSPATH
<p>Note: The directory /usr/lib/jdk1.1 is meant to denote the site of the
java files exploded from the blackdown tarball. In the author's case it
was a symbolic link to /usr/lib/jdk1.1.5v5-980311/.
<p>For these changes to take effect you must log out and log back in.
<p><b><font size=+1>2.0 JFlex</font></b>
<p><u>2.1 Obtaining JFlex</u>
<p>JFlex is available from&nbsp; <a href="http://www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~kleing/jflex/index.html#Download">www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~kleing/jflex/index.html#Download</a>
<br>in a tar.gz format. At this writing the file name was 'jflex-1.2.tar.gz'.
This tarball includes an extensive manual with its own installation instructions.
<p><u>2.2 A Specific Installation Scenario</u>
<ul>
<li>
Download the tarball,&nbsp; jflex-1.2.tar.gz, into directory javatools/</li>
<li>
from within the javatools/ directory explode the tarball at the command
line by typing 'tar xvfz jflex-1.2.tar.gz'</li>
</ul>
This will create the directory 'JFlex' with associated subdirectory hierarchy.
It should contain everyting needed, including documentation in the 'doc'
subdirectory. The manual found there is comprehensive and indicates how
JFlex can be used to produce stand alone lexical analyzers (as in the example
in section 2.3, below) or lexical analyzers to be used with parsers produced
by other utilities, such as CUP. In directory JFlex/bin you will find the
shell script 'jflex' which should be modified as follows:
<ul>
<li>
change JFLEX_HOME to be your equivalent of 'JFLEX_HOME=/home/jsmith/javatools/JFlex'</li>
<li>
change JAVA_HOME to be your equivalent of 'JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jdk1.1'</li>
</ul>
<p><br><u>2.3 Testing the Installation</u>
<ul>
<li>
Change directory to javatools/JFlex/examples/standalone (e.g. 'cd /home/jsmith/javatools/JFlex/examples/standalone/')</li>
<li>
Follow the instructions in the README file found in that directory, which
should result in this screen output:</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hello someone !
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is a sample
input file for the
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; standalone example
scanner.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Have a
nice day!
<br>&nbsp;
<p><b><font size=+1>3.0 CUP</font></b>
<p><u>3.1 Obtaining CUP</u>
<p>CUP is available from <a href="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/java/">www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/java/.</a>&nbsp;
There you'll find the needed source code (compressed tarball) and a user
manual. The manual can be downloaded in html to provide an on-line manual
or in a form (e.g. postscript) suitable for printing. The next section
deals with downloading the source file.
<br>Note: The above website also contains an alternative to JFlex, called
JLex.
<p><u>3.2 A Specific Installation Scenario for CUP with test</u>
<ul>
<li>
Download the compressed tarball into directory javatools/CUP</li>
<li>
Change to that directory (e.g. cd /home/jsmith/javatools/CUP)</li>
<li>
Explode the tarball</li>
<li>
Run the installation/testing file by typing at the command line './INSTALL'
.Note that install is a script to be executed by csh, or its equivalent,
tcsh. So tcsh should be available.</li>
</ul>
This should result in activity ending with a success message, e.g. 'Install
and test was successful'.
<br>&nbsp;
<p><b><font size=+1>4.0 What Next?</font></b>
<p>The manuals downloaded with JFlex and CUP provide enough information
so that users can get up and running.
<P> <HR> <P>
<center><H4>Previous ``Compiler Construction Tools'' Columns</H4></center>
<p>
<A HREF="../issue39/sevenich.html">Compiler Construction Tools Part I, April 1998</A><BR>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Richard A. Sevenich <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Compiler Construction Tools, Part III</font></H1>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<a NAME="top"></a>
<h1>
Creating A Calculator Using JFlex And CUP</h1>
by Christopher Lopes, student at Eastern Washington University
<br>April 26, 1999
<p>This is the third part of a series begun in the April 1999 issue of
Linux Gazette.
<br>[see:&nbsp; <a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue39/sevenich.html">Compiler Construction
Tools, Part I</a> ]. <A HREF="./sevenich.html">Part II</A>, giving detailed installation instructions
for JFlex and CUP appears in this same issue.
<p>This particular example is a modified version of the calculator example
shown in the CUP manual. In particular, the companion JFlex specification
file is included. Further, that file and the associated CUP specification
file are commented extensively. The calculator example is the traditional
first example to display the use of tools in the lex/yacc family. We are
currently working on a project that would comprise a deeper example - an
initialization language for a fuzzy logic engine to be used for decision
making applications. If there is sufficient interest expressed in that
longer term project, we will prepare an article for this or another venue.
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<ul>
<li>
&nbsp;<a href="#jflex">Using JFlex</a></li>
<li>
&nbsp;<a href="#cup">Using CUP</a></li>
<li>
<a href="#main">&nbsp;Main for our Calculator</a></li>
<li>
<a href="#main">&nbsp;Compiling the Calculator</a></li>
<li>
<a href="#example">&nbsp;Sample Input and Output</a></li>
</ul>
<a NAME="jflex"></a>
<br>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<h3>
Using JFlex</h3>
&nbsp;The purpose of JFlex in this project is to build a lexical analyzer
for our calculator.&nbsp; This lexical analyzer, or scanner, will check
the input for our calculator and make sure all character groupings are
valid.
<p>The lexical specification file for JFlex is broken up into three sections.&nbsp;
Each of these sections are separated by <i>%%</i>.
<p>User Code Section
<br>%%
<br>Options and Declarations Section
<br>%%
<br>Lexical Rules Section
<h4>
User Code Section</h4>
Everything in this section will be copied into the generated lexer class
before the class declaration.&nbsp; In this section one typically finds
<i>package</i> and <i>import</i> statements.&nbsp; Our lexical specification
for this section imports two classes, <i>sym</i> and <i>java_cup.runtime.*</i>,
and looks like the following.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; import java_cup.runtime.*;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; import sym;
<p>In our example, the sym class is generated (along with the parser) by
CUP.
<h4>
Options and Declarations Section</h4>
This section contains options, lexical states, and macro declarations.&nbsp;
Setting options will include extra code that will be included inside the
generated scanner class.&nbsp; Options must begin a line and start with
a <i>%</i>.&nbsp; There are many options that can be included.&nbsp; To
obtain a list of options that can be included consult the manual that comes
with JFlex.&nbsp; The options used in our lexical specification are below.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; %class Lexer
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; %line
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; %column
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; %cup
<p>The first option, class Lexer,&nbsp; tells JFlex to name the generated
class <i>Lexer</i> and to write the code to a file called <i>Lexer.java</i>.&nbsp;
The line option turns on line counting letting you access the current line
number of the input with the variable <i>yyline</i>.&nbsp; The column option
does a similar thing except it is for the current column number with the
variable&nbsp; <i>yycolumn</i>.&nbsp; The last option, cup, puts JFlex
into a mode that will make it compatible with a CUP generated parser, which
is what we are using.
<br><a NAME="decl"></a>
<br>You next can declare member variables and functions for use inside
the scanner.&nbsp; The code that can be added is Java code and is placed
between <i>%{</i> and <i>%}</i>.&nbsp; It will be copied into the generated
lexer class source.&nbsp; For our lexical specification two member functions
will be declared.&nbsp; These functions create <i>java_cup.runtime.Symbol</i>
objects.&nbsp; The first one just contains position information of the
current token.&nbsp; The second contains this information as well as the
value of the token.&nbsp; A link to this declaration is below.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="./lopes/lcalc.htm#decl">Declarations</a>
<p>The last part of this section contains macro declarations.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Macros are used as abbreviations for regular expressions.&nbsp; A macro
declaration consists of a macro identifier followed by <i>=</i> and then
the regular expression that it represents.&nbsp; A link to the macro declarations
used in our lexical specification follows.&nbsp; A link is also supplied
below that contains a list of what can be used to create a regular expression
and what each item in that list means.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="./lopes/lcalc.htm#macro">Macro
Declarations</a>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; List of what can be
used in <a href="./lopes/reg_exp.htm">Creating Regular Expressions</a>
<h4>
Lexical Rules Section</h4>
The last section of the lexical specification contains the regular expressions
and actions that will be executed when the scanner matches the associated
regular expression.&nbsp; The scanner will activate the regular expression
that has the longest match.&nbsp; So if there existed two regular expressions
"to" and "too" the scanner would match "too" since it is the longest.&nbsp;
If two regular expressions are identical and have the same length then
the scanner will match the regular expression that is listed first in the
specification.&nbsp; If the scanner read in the string "to" and was looking
for a regular expression to match what it read in it could activate either
regular expression listed below.&nbsp; The second regular expression is
possible since it contains a character class which allows for the string
"to" to be matched. The scanner would pick the first regular expression
in the list below since it was listed first.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "to"
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; [a-z]*
<p>Actions can then be attached to each regular expression that the scanner
can activate when it matches that regular expression.&nbsp; The actions
for each regular expression are just Java code fragments that you can write.&nbsp;
Actions that you might want to use could be printing something out or returning
the token that the scanner just found to the parser.&nbsp; Example code
that prints the token found by the scanner and returns it to the parser
could be done as in the following.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "+"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ System.out.print(" + ");&nbsp; return symbol(sym.PLUS); }
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "-"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ System.out.print(" - ");&nbsp; return symbol(sym.MINUS); }
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "*"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ System.out.print(" * ");&nbsp; return symbol(sym.TIMES); }
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "/"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ System.out.print(" / ");&nbsp; return symbol(sym.DIVIDE); }
<p>JFlex allows the programmer to refine the specification by defining
special <i>lexical states</i> used as start conditions. YYINITIAL is a
predefined lexical state and is the state in which the lexer initiates
scanning input. It's the only one we'll use. Consequently, all our regular
expressions will be recognized starting from that lexical state. However,
one can define other such states which will essentially constitute the
start of a new branch of the state machine. In the example below, lexical
state &lt;STRING> is reached by a transition from YYINITIAL. Regular expressions
defined in that state section &lt;STRING> will only be recognized in that
branch.
<br><a NAME="rule"></a>
<br>&lt;YYINITIAL> {
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ string.setLength(0); yybegin(STRING); }
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "="&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ return symbol(sym.EQ); }
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "=="&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ return symbol(sym.EQEQ); }
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "+"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ return symbol(sym.PLUS); }
<br>}
<p>&lt;STRING> {
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ yybegin(YYINITIAL);
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
return symbol(sym.STRINGLITERAL,
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
string.toString()); }
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; [^\n\r\"\]+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{ string.append( yytext() ); }
<br>}
<p>In the above code the scanner will begin in the state YYINITIAL.&nbsp;
When it matches the regular expression \", which just means it is found
a double quote, it will change the scanner to the STRING state.&nbsp; Now
the only regular expressions that can be matched are the regular expressions
listed for that state.&nbsp; So the scanner will stay in this branch until
it matches another double quote - whereupon it will return to the YYINITIAL
state again.&nbsp; Again, for our calculator we never employ such starting
conditions other than the original YYINITIAL state.&nbsp; A link to the
lexical rules we used are below.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="./lopes/lcalc.htm#rule">Link
to Lexical Rules</a>
<br>&nbsp;
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p>Link to the JFlex file <a href="./lopes/lcalc.htm">lcalc.flex</a> .&nbsp; This
is the lexical specification used for our calculator.&nbsp; In it there
are lots of comments explaining what is happening.&nbsp; It can be copied
and both the CUP and Main files which are also supplied in this article
can be copied so you can run this example project.&nbsp; Instructions on
how to prepare each file and run the calculator are included.&nbsp; Jdk,
JFlex, and CUP are needed to do this and can be downloaded for free at
the web sites listed in this article.
<center>
<p><font size=-1>For more information on JFlex consult the JFlex manual
that is available when you download JFlex at the web site that is listed
in this article.</font></center>
<p>&nbsp;<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>
<br><a NAME="cup"></a>
<br>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<h3>
Using CUP</h3>
The purpose of CUP in this project is to build a syntactic analyzer for
our calculator.&nbsp; This syntactic analyzer, or parser, will check the
input for our calculator and make sure it is syntactically correct.
<br>That is to say that the statements in the input are arranged in a valid
order according to our syntax specification.
<p>The specification syntax for a CUP file is broken up into four sections.
<ol>
<li>
Preliminary Declarations</li>
<li>
Declarations of Terminals and Non Terminals</li>
<li>
Precedence and Associativity of Terminals</li>
<li>
Grammar</li>
</ol>
<a NAME="prelim"></a>
<h4>
Preliminary Declarations</h4>
This section provides preliminary and miscellaneous declarations to specify
how the parser is to be generated and supply parts of the runtime code.&nbsp;
This section is optional and doesn't need to be included in a CUP specification
file.&nbsp; For our calculator we will have three items in this section.&nbsp;
The first item will be an import declaration.&nbsp; We will import the
class <i>java_cup.runtime.*</i>.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; import java_cup.runtime.*;
<p>The next item we will add is parser code.&nbsp; The parser code will
be placed directly into the generated parser class definition.&nbsp; It
begins with <i>parser code {:</i> and ends with <i>:} </i>with all coded
inserted in between.&nbsp; In the parser code we will change two methods.&nbsp;
We will change the report_error and report_fatal_error method.&nbsp;&nbsp;
We will modify these methods so the if a syntactic error or a fatal error
occurs in the input then the error message that will be printed out will
contain the line and column number in the input of where the error occurred.&nbsp;
This extra information in error messages could prove very helpful when
determining errors in the input.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="./lopes/ycalc.htm#parser_code">Link
to Parse Code</a>
<p>The last item we will add in this section indicates how the parser should
ask for the next token from the scanner and has the form <i>scan with {:
... :}</i>.&nbsp; We will use this to tell the parser to call the scanner
we created with JFlex.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; scan with {: return lexer.yylex();
:};
<br>&nbsp;
<h4>
Declarations of Terminals and Non Terminals</h4>
This section contains the symbol list and contains declarations that are
responsible for naming and supplying a type for each terminal and non terminal.&nbsp;
This section is required in a CUP specification.&nbsp; Terminals are declare
with the syntax <i>terminal classname name1, name2, ...;</i>.&nbsp; Classname
is the type of the object, such as Integer.&nbsp; If no classname is given
then the terminal has no content for the lexer to pass up to the parser..&nbsp;
After the classname the name of the terminals are listed that you want
to declare of that type as in the following.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; terminal PLUS, MINUS, TIMES,
DIVIDE, SEMI;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; terminal Integer NUMBER;
<p>Note that only NUMBER has an accompanying <i>classname</i>. In our example,
it is the only terminal that carries&nbsp; content. For example, when the
lexer recognizes a PLUS, it passes the associated code to the parser; but
when it recognizes a NUMBER it not only passes the associated code for
NUMBER, but also its value within the type wrapper class, <i>Integer</i>.
<p>Non terminals are declared in the same manner.&nbsp; The only difference
is the beginning of the declaration reflects that it is a non terminal
instead of a terminal as in the following.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; non terminal expr_list, expr_part;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; non terminal Integer expr;
<br><a NAME="prec"></a>
<h4>
Precedence and Associativity of Terminals</h4>
This section specifies the precedence and associativity of terminals, it
is an optional section that doesn't have to be included.&nbsp; This section
can be used when parsing ambiguous terminals.&nbsp; Instead of using this
section you could structure the grammar so that it is not ambiguous.&nbsp;
For instance TIMES should have a higher precedence then PLUS.&nbsp; When
the parser runs into a statement such as 5+4*3 it doesn't know whether
the expression needs to be calculated as 5+(4*3) or (5+4)*3.&nbsp; To eliminate
this ambiguity using this section you would declare the precedence as below.&nbsp;
The highest precedence starts at the bottom of the list and the precedence
gets less going up.&nbsp; The word left means that the associativity of
the terminals at that precedence level goes from left to right.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; precedence left PLUS, MINUS;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; precedence left TIMES, DIVIDE;
<p>To structure a grammar to eliminate the ambiguity you would create a
structure like the one below.&nbsp; This structure eliminates the ambiguity
because TIMES is further down in the grammar than PLUS.&nbsp; This will
result in TIMES being applied before PLUS as you go back up the grammar.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Example of <a href="./lopes/ycalc.htm#grammar">Grammar
Structure</a>
<br>&nbsp;
<h4>
Grammar</h4>
The last section in the specification syntax contains the grammar for the
parser.&nbsp; Each production in the grammar has a non terminal left hand
side followed by <i>::=</i>, which is then followed by zero or more actions,
terminals, or non terminals, and then followed by a semicolon.&nbsp; Each
symbol on the right hand side can be labeled with a name, which can be
used to carry content (e.g. a value) up the parse tree.&nbsp; A label name
is given by a colon after the symbol name, then the name of the label as
in the following where e1 and e2 are labels for expr.&nbsp; The left hand
side automatically is assigned the label RESULT.&nbsp; An example using
the label RESULT appears latter in this section.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; expr ::= expr:e1 PLUS expr:e2
<p>The label names must be unique in the production.&nbsp; If there exists
several productions for the same non terminal they can be declared together
and separated by |.&nbsp; The semicolon then needs to be placed at the
end of the last production as in the following.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; expr ::= expr PLUS expr
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
| expr MINUS expr
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
;
<p>Actions can also be inserted into the production.&nbsp; The action is
just Java code and will be executed when the production has been recognized.&nbsp;
Action is placed between the delimiters <i>{:</i> and <i>:}</i>.&nbsp;
An example of part of a grammar with these options is below.&nbsp; A link
to a file with the specification syntax for CUP named <i>ycalc.cup</i>
also follows and the grammar in it can be studied.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; expr&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
::= factor:f PLUS expr:e
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{: RESULT = new Integer(f.intValue() + e.intValue()); :}
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
|
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
factor:f MINUS expr:e
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{: RESULT = new Integer(f.intValue() - e.intValue()); :}
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
|
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
factor:f
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
{: RESULT = new Integer(f.intValue()); :}
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
;
<br><a NAME="cupcode"></a>
<br>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p>Link to the CUP file&nbsp; <a href="./lopes/ycalc.htm">ycalc.cup.</a>&nbsp;
This is the specification syntax used for our calculator.&nbsp; In it there
are lots of comments explaining what is happening.&nbsp; It can be copied
and both the JFlex and Main files which are also supplied in this article
can be copied so you can run this example project.&nbsp; Instructions on
how to prepare each file and run the calculator are included.&nbsp; Jdk,
JFlex, and CUP are needed to do this and can be downloaded for free at
the web sites listed in this article.
<center>
<p>&nbsp;<font size=-1>For more information on CUP consult the CUP manual
that is available at the web site listed in this article.</font></center>
<p>&nbsp;<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>
<br><a NAME="main"></a>
<br>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<h3>
Main for our Calculator</h3>
There is more than one way you can write the main for our project.&nbsp;
One way expects the user to enter input as the program runs.&nbsp; The
other way requires that you give it the name of an input file when you
start up the program.&nbsp; The main described here uses the second way
mentioned to retrieve&nbsp; input.&nbsp; The first thing we do is import
three classes that we will use.&nbsp; The first class is for our parser,
the next is the java_cup.runtime.Symbol class, and the last is the java.io.*;
class.&nbsp; We then declare are class <i>Main</i>.&nbsp; In it we will
call the parser to begin the syntactic analysis of the input file.&nbsp;
The parser will then call the scanner, that will lexically analyze the
input, when the parser needs the next token in the input file.&nbsp; The
class <i>Main</i> contains two items.&nbsp; It first sets the variable
<i>do_debug_parse</i>
to false.&nbsp;&nbsp; We then define a method called
<i>main</i>.&nbsp;
We pass into <i>main</i> an array of strings which contains the parameters
passed on the command line when the program was started.&nbsp; So in our
case the first element of the string will contain the name of the text
file we passed in when we started the program.&nbsp; The method then goes
into a <i>try</i> block which is what actually calls the parser.&nbsp;
The <i>try</i> block means that whatever is in the <i>try</i> block will
attempted.&nbsp; If something fails, the program will exit that block.&nbsp;
The first line in the <i>try</i> block creates a new parser object.&nbsp;
The parser object invokes a new Lexer object.&nbsp; The new Lexer object
will use the string passed into <i>main</i> for its input when it is created.&nbsp;
The second line will then start the parser.&nbsp; The code for the above
follows.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; try {
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; parser p = new parser(new
Lexer(new FileReader(argv[0])));
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Object result = p.parse().value;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }
<p>Following the <i>try</i> block is a c<i>atch</i> block.&nbsp; The purpose
of the <i>catch</i> block is to clean up an errors that happened in the
<i>try</i>
block.&nbsp; The <i>catch</i> block will take the exception, the reason
why we were kicked out of the <i>try</i> block, and do whatever is needed
to clean things up before the program exits.&nbsp; We don't do anything
in the contents of our <i>catch</i> block.&nbsp; After the <i>catch</i>
block we have the method <i>finally</i>.&nbsp; This method closes everything
out.&nbsp; We don't do anything in this method either.&nbsp; The code for
the <i>catch</i> block and method <i>finally</i> are below.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; catch (Exception e) {
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
/* do cleanup here -- possibly rethrow e */
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
} finally {
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
/* do close out here */
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
}
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
}
<p>That completes the contents of the method <i>main</i> and the class
<i>Main</i>.&nbsp;
We now have created a simple calculator using JFlex as our lexical analyzer
and CUP as our syntactical analyzer.
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p>Link to the Java file&nbsp; <a href="./lopes/main.htm">Main.java</a> <a href="./lopes/ycalc.htm">.</a>&nbsp;
This is the main used for our calculator.&nbsp; In it there are comments
explaining what is happening.&nbsp; It can be copied and both the JFlex
and CUP files which are also supplied in this article can be copied so
you can run this example project.&nbsp; Instructions on how to prepare
each file and run the calculator are included.&nbsp; Jdk, JFlex, and CUP
are needed to do this and can be downloaded for free at the web sites listed
in this article.
<p>&nbsp;<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>
<br><a NAME="compiling"></a>
<br>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<h3>
Compiling the Calculator</h3>
To setup the files to run the calculator you first need to use JFlex on
the lexical specification file lcalc.flex.&nbsp; This will produce the
file Lexer.java.&nbsp; The next step is to setup the CUP file ycalc.cup.&nbsp;
Afterwards you compile the Lexer.java file that was created by JFlex.&nbsp;
You finish the process by finally compiling the Main.java file.&nbsp; To
do the above you would enter the following at the command line.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; > jflex lcalc.flex
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; > java java_cup.Main &lt;
ycalc.cup
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; > javac Lexer.java
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; > javac Main.java
<p>Then to run the calculator you would enter the following at the command
line.&nbsp; The file test.txt is the input file for the calculator that
will be scanned and parsed.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; > java Main test.txt
<p>&nbsp;<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>
<br><a NAME="example"></a>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<h3>
Sample Input and Output</h3>
A sample input file could look like the following.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2+4;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 5*(6-3)+1;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 6/3*5+20;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4*76/31;
<p>and so on.&nbsp; The output for the following input should then appear
as follows.
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2 + 4 = 6
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 5 * ( 6 - 3 ) + 1 = 16
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 6 / 3 * 5 + 20 = 30
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4 * 76 / 31 = 9
<p>&nbsp;<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>
<P> <HR> <P>
<center><H4>Previous ``Compiler Construction Tools'' Columns</H4></center>
<p>
<A HREF="../../issue39/sevenich.html">Compiler Construction Tools Part I, April 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../sevenich.html">Compiler Construction Tools Part II, May 1998</A><BR>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Christopher Lopes <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">A Conversation with Craig Burton about Business
Prospects for Linux</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:doc@searls.com">Doc Searls</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
Craig Burton knows what makes platforms succeed. It was his strategy at Novell that established NetWare as
the first Network Operating System (a term Craig coined), and completely changed the whole network conversation in the process. Later, at <A HREF="http://www.tbg.com/">The Burton Group</A>,
Craig and his colleagues successfully moved the same network conversation to a new understanding of networks themselves: not as "pipes and protocols," but rather as <I>services</I> such as <I>print</I>, <I>file</I>, <I>
management</I>, <I>directory</I>, <I>security</I>, <I>messaging</I> and <I>Web</I>.<P ALIGN=LEFT>Now Principal of Burtonian, Craig modestly describes himself as "a voice of common sense and reason with proven sensibility." I disagree. Craig is
an exceptional voice of <I>un</I>common sense. That's why we wanted to talk with him. More than anybody I know, Craig is the Voice of Reality. Don't talk to the guy unless you want to face straight shots and tough questions. That's what
businesses want from their customers. And that's what Craig gave us.<P>-- Doc Searls<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>What are the real business prospects for Linux?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>I see three:
<OL TYPE="1">
<LI>Linux has a great shot at being an alternative platform to NT in the back office for serious infrastructure. </LI>
<LI>Linux will never replace Windows on the desktop. </LI>
<LI>Like alternative music of the 80's, Linux will have to shrug its "grunge" image to go mainstream, and there is a price to pay for that. </LI>
</OL>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>Let's start with number one. <P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Linux has already passed the first big milestone. There is no other hardware independent OS -- besides Windows -- on the map. And by all
accounts, Linux will have exponential growth over the next twelve to eighteen months, while NetWare and NT sales will only grow incrementally. So the Linux stake is already in the ground and no one can take that claim from the movement.<P
ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>Which brings us to your second point. <P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>The question at hand is, can Linux make the next jump? That jump is to <I>prime-time back-office</I>. Some Linux vendor needs to provide
a platform with a set of services that is more robust and innovative than Windows, and do it faster than Microsoft. These services need to really solve customers' backend problems. I think it is up to one primary vendor.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>
Doc: </B>Who will that be? <P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>I just don't see a back-office vision coming from any existing Linux supplier. Clearly Red Hat is making a run for it. But does Red Hat have the lineage and leadership to
make the jump shift this market needs? We don't know. Time will tell. In the meantime Red Hat is doing its best to drive a sense of growth and excitement around Linux right now. But excitement alone does not a jump shift make. There must be
real meat to the commitment and sound vision behind the hype. So far, I don't see that showing up.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>Red Hat's publicity is focussed on the desktop, and modeling itself after the great mass market success
stories. That's why they talk about "branding" and "audiences" of "consumers." This attracts a lot of investment from guys who want to place bets with the Linux company that looks like a winner.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Yet Linux will
never be a contender for the mass client market. Do the numbers. It is simply impossible. Windows growth would have to go to zero and Linux would have to grow exponentially for the next eight to ten years before it would even begin to gain on
Microsoft. And until Linux is at 20% market share, no serious developer is going to give it any respect.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>What about the work that has already been done on the desktop? Gnome and KDE look pretty good.<P
ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B><I>Those</I>
are going to attract developers? Why? Where's the standard? More to the point, where is the alignment with reality? Look, Linux is in a hell of a good position. It is past the first major hurdles. But now what? If Linux intends to win on the basis of "mine is better than yours," Linux will loose. But if some Linux vendor can marshal a plan that leverages Linux momentum and lays serious infrastructure foundation that Microsoft simply can't match because of its legacy, then by God we have something. The job of Linux is to make the back office pie bigger, not to steal desktop market share from Microsoft. That can't be done. Why try?
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>How can Linux make the pie bigger?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Let's focus on the real opportunity here. Microsoft is caught in workstation hell. Linux is totally unfettered from Windows legacy. So why
try to be Windows? Do what Microsoft and no one else is doing. Deliver infrastructure capable of changing computing. And stop attacking Microsoft because it's "bad." That's not strategic.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>Why not?<P ALIGN=LEFT>
<B>Craig: </B>When enterprises choose Linux, the logic will be AND, not OR. And Linux will succeed not to the degree it displaces or replaces Microsoft, but to the degree it adds new computing benefits to enterprises where Microsoft is
already established. Enterprises are not going to throw away Microsoft operating systems, services and applications. Those things are serious infrastructure. And many companies develop their own internal solutions using Microsoft tools; and
Microsoft is extremely supportive of that development. <P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc: </B>Why is Microsoft in workstation hell?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Microsoft can't move fast because it has too much legacy to support. Look at the
list of operating systems they're dragging along: DOS; Windows 3.1, 95 and 98; Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server, plus NT Service Packs 1,2,3,4 and 5 on the way (which are functionally all releases of the OS); Windows 2000; and Windows NT
2000 Workstation and Server. And Microsoft is anything but consistent across all those OSes. Linux has none of that, and it's a big advantage. A much cleaner slate. But there are down sides to Linux as well.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B>
Such as?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Open source. It's a great rallying cry, but is it what customers want? Are enterprises praying for open source? On the contrary, they <I>fear</I> open source.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B>
So you think the coverage of open source is misleading?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Totally. Take Apple's announcement about "opening" its OS/X server software. It was completely misleading. Every Apple OS is full of proprietary and
closed code that they are not even in a <I>position</I>
to open up. I would wager that there is code in the original Mac OS that Apple can't put into the open source model. Just as Netscape convieniently just left it out of the mozilla code, so will Apple just convieniently leave it out of Mac OS X.
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B> That subject almost never comes up.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>It never needed to--until now, when companies like Apple are making a virtue of going "open source' when in fact they can't open more than
some percentage of their code base. Open source for Apple was a desperation move. Apple is nowhere in the server space, so "opening" that source was safe. Same with Netscape's browser. It was headed nowhere when suddenly they yelled
"everything is open source!" Then they whisped, "Oh, by the way, it doesn't include the object request broker"--which is fundamental technology that Netscape used to make a big deal about. <I>Not included</I>. It's a joke. A marketing ploy. If
open source is so great, why don't Apple and Netscape open all their sources? Because it would make no business sense whatsoever. I'll battle any of the open source guys, any time, on that one. Get this straight: Mozilla is broken because it
doesn't come with all the necessary pieces. And ironically--next to Linux--it's the Open Source guys' biggest success story.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B>
Do you think the battling browsers give us a controlled experiment right now, between open and closed source?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Absolutely. And the closed side--Microsoft--is winning, big time. Going open source was great PR
for Netscape, but the timing was bad because Netscape was about to get bought by AOL, which had to screw up the whole open source appeal. Who wants to back on <I>that</I>? <P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B>
Meanwhile the press plays Linux as David, Microsoft as Goliath, and open source as Goodness.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Screw that. This is not a Spielberg production pitting good against evil. This is not a question of right vs. wrong
or good vs. bad. It's a question of choice. Can a serious vendor do what is needed to field a sound choice for customers? It has nothing to do with Gates or the size of Microsoft. It's just business.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B>
And you think it's doable.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig: </B>Of course it's doable. Is there a doctor in the house? Can someone holding the reigns drive this puppy home? We don't know. That is the question.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B>
Speaking of people holding the reins, have you read <A HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/index.html">The Cathedral and the Bazaar</A>, by <A
HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric Raymond</A>?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig:</B>
Yes. But I don't think it's cathedral vs. a bazaar here. It's a cathedral vs. a cult. They're both religions. This isn't to say that Eric Raymond doesn't make some very good points. But they are essentially partisan points: right vs. wrong. And they ignore the customers being served by the cathedral. He says the cathedral is what I call EWBU: evil, wrong, bad and ugly. Well, maybe it is. But if you want the cathedral's customers, you can't just tell them their church is EWBU and yours is holy, correct, good and beautiful. That's no business case.
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B> Have you read Eric's various cases for open source? The <A HREF="http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html">businessperson's case</A>, the <A
HREF="http://www.opensource.org/for-hackers.html">techie/hacker's case</A>, the <A HREF="http://www.opensource.org/for-buyers.html">customer's case</A>
...<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig:</B>
Linux needs proof, not just cases. Corporate customers want accountability by a single company they can call up and demand service from. Not from a community of hackers, no matter how expert and helpful those hackers may be. They want to see software developed by command, not by consensus. And they trust a commanding company like Microsoft to pay attention to what they want. And I see no evidence the open source community cares about what the market wants. What I see is some guys saying Microsoft sucks and what they're doing is great. Well, that's a big hat, but where are the cattle? Show me the beef.
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B>
What about the reliability argument? We hear people telling us if you put Apache and Linux on a box and let it run, it just isn't going down. While NT crashes all over the place. Isn't that a technological argument?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>
Craig:</B> It's just not so. If somebody says <I>any</I> operating system isn't ever going down, they're not saying it like it really is.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B> Well, the faithful are legion.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig:</B>
It's religion. Linux is the only "true" operating system. God/Buddha/Allah guided Torvalds' hands across the keyboard and caused him to build the only true and chosen operating system. Right. No disrespect intended, but Linux is not a predestined set of algorithms. The question should be simple: is Linux inherently less brittle than NT, and is the difference measurable? Let's see the MTBF numbers, and then let's see
<I>what</I>
makes a difference, if we can tell. Which we probably can't because it's too hard to make them truly comparable. I think a better question is one of maturity. If Linux had the same number of applications as NT--applications that could potentially raise havoc with an OS--I would wager it would be no more reliable than NT. There is no magic key to building reliable platforms. Even the microkernel vs. monolithic kernel argument becomes religious at this point. I'm not saying technology doesn't matter. I am saying that technology alone is not a reason to make a business decision. And no business decision gets made in a vacuum. Linux technology is simply one piece of an equation; not the answer to life, meaning, and the universe.
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B> What about customer demand? We hear from Oracle, IBM, HP and other big vendors that there is a groundswell of customer demand for Linux.<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig:</B>
There used to be big demand for OS/2 and DR DOS. So far I've heard very little in the way of specifics about Linux. Here's one question I'd have if I were a customer: are the Linux vendors afraid of each other? Does Red Hat feel threatened by Caldera and vice versa? My guess is: you betcha. And what I expect is that everybody will try to differentiate in ways that don't work for the customer who wants real interoperability. But I honestly don't know. Yet.
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B> What specifically, as a customer, would you like to see coming from the Linux community?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig:</B> I would want to see answers to these questions:
<OL TYPE="1">
<LI>What is the business case for the long term success--technical merits aside--of Linux? </LI>
<LI>How do the suppliers meet the requirements of that case? </LI>
<LI>What has shifted in the marketplace that has moved any customer to Linux from NT, and how do you measure that? Give me reasons. Give me numbers. </LI>
<LI>What will it take to get Linux to the next level--beyond easy pickings in the ISP space? Can Linux really compete as a general purpose platform? </LI>
<LI>How will the open source model play in business reality? Is it strategic for the customer? Can you erase customer fears and replace it with confidence? </LI>
<LI>What are the Linux vendor business models? Who profits? What are the cost points? And will any of these take the strain of mainstream demand? </LI>
<LI>Can the industry scale to meet the long term business need for a supportable platform that has the rest of the cottage industry surrounding it that any platform requires to provide the elements needed--services, support, applications;
and the infrastructure for doing business on that platform, including third party development, drivers, technology, channels and the rest? </LI>
<LI>What is the vision of each Linux vendors' business model? They are not the same, clearly. </LI>
<LI>What are the big Red Hat investors really up to? </LI>
</OL>
<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Doc:</B> What about cost?<P ALIGN=LEFT><B>Craig:</B> Linux is not free. That's a myth. The real costs are people and change maintenance. How many bodies do you have to throw at a project?<B> </B>We need to
debunk the myth that Linux is cheap and easy--and that cost is why it's being adopted. Saving $495 on a license doesn't cut enough mustard. There are too many other costs, and if you don't factor them in, your customers will.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Doc Searls <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Direct Cable Connection between Win95 and Linux</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:smytht@netscape.net">Thomas P. Smyth</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<b>Abstract</b>
<br>A serial connection at 115200 baud can be set up between Win95 and
Linux. The transfer rate is about 10k/sec which approaches the speed achieved
with a PLIP connection.
<p><b>Copyright 1999 Thomas P. Smyth</b>
<br>You may copy this document as is without any alterations.
<p><b>Disclaimer</b>
<br>Use this information at your own risk. The author will not be liable
for any damages that occur as a result of using this document.
<br>&nbsp;
<h1>
<hr WIDTH="100%"></h1>
<dl>
<h2>
1. Introduction</h2>
This document details how I set up a direct serial cable PPP connection
between a Windows 95 PC and a Linux machine. Essentially, the trick is
to make the Linux machine emulate a modem to the Windows 95 PC. This allows
the standard Windows 95 Dial-up networking tools to be used to make the
connection. I achieved transfer rates of 10k/sec on ftp transfers.
<h2>
2. Serial Cable</h2>
You need a null modem cable which has DSR linked to DCD at each connector.
I used a cable connected as follows:-</dl>
<table BORDER COLS=2 WIDTH="50%" >
<tr>
<td>Txd</td>
<td>Rxd</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Rxd</td>
<td>Txd</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RTS</td>
<td>CTS</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CTS</td>
<td>RTS</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>GND</td>
<td>GND</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>DTR</td>
<td>DSR &amp; DCD</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>DSR &amp; DCD</td>
<td>DTR</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>See the Serial-HOWTO Chapter 8 for more information.
<h2>
3. Linux Serial Port Configuration</h2>
On the Linux machine (I am using Redhat 5.2 on a Pentium 200MMX) set up
a terminal connection to your serial port. In /etc/inittab put
<p>S1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS1 DT115200 ansi
<p>and in /etc/gettydefs put
<p># 115200 fixed baud Dumb Terminal entry
<br>DT115200# B115200 CS8 CLOCAL CRTSCTS # B115200 SANE -ISTRIP CLOCAL
CRTSCTS #@S login: #DT115200
<p>This is a copy of the 38400 entry with all 38400<30>s changed to 115200.
<p>Run telinit q to reread /etc/inittab.
<p>Using a terminal program (ie. Hyperterminal) you should be able to login
to the Linux machine over the serial cable. Remember to set the communication
parameters to 8N1 and 115200 baud with ansi emulation.
<p>See the Serial-HOWTO Chapter 8 for more information.
<h2>
4. Linux PPP Configuration</h2>
Create a user ppp95 on the Linux machine, make the shell pppd by editing
the /etc/passwd entry as follows:-
<p>ppp95:&nbsp; ........ your password, etc ...........&nbsp; :/home/ppp95:<u>/usr/sbin/pppd</u>
<p>In /home/ppp95 put a file named .ppprc with contents:-
<p>connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v ATH OK AT OK ATE0V1 OK ATX3 OK ATDT CONNECT'
<br>-detach
<br>modem
<br>crtscts
<br>lock
<br>:192.168.100.4
<p>The IP number is the address to use for the Win95 computer. The chat
script mimics a modem so that Win95 can start the PPP connection. See the
file /usr/doc/ppp-2.3.5/README.linux for information on setting up Linux
PPP. It is important to setuid the pppd daemon (chmod u+s /usr/sbin/pppd).
<h2>
5. Windows 95 Configuration</h2>
On the Windows 95 computer (using version 4.00.950 B) create a new Dial-up
networking connection. Put the following settings into it:-
<br>&nbsp;
<table BORDER COLS=2 WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td>Telephone Number&nbsp;</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Connect Using</td>
<td>Standard Modem</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Modem Configuration</td>
<td>COM1 with speed 115200 at 8N1, &amp; no wait for dial tone. Use Hardware
flow control only. Bring up terminal window before dialing.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Server Type</td>
<td>PPP</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Advanced Options&nbsp;</td>
<td>Software Compression only</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Network Protocols</td>
<td>TCP/IP only. Settings: Server assigned IP address, Server assigned
name server. Use IP header compression, use default gateway.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2>
6. Connecting</h2>
To connect double click the new Dial-up Networking connection icon, and
press Connect. The terminal screen should appear - login as ppp95, and
press F7. The dialog box should indicate dialing, and then verifying username,
etc. Finally, there should be an indication that you have successfully
logged in to the network.
<p>From an MSDOS prompt you should be able to ping your Linux machine (using
the IP address, not the URL), and from your Linux machine ping 192.168.100.4.
See /usr/doc/ppp-2.3.5/README.linux for other checks of the PPP connection.
<p>In order to allow telnet and ftp to work, I changed /etc/hosts.allow
to
<p>ALL: LOCAL, 192.168.100.4
<p>You may wish to be more restrictive in the services you allow here.
You should now be able to telnet from Win95 to your linux machine using
the IP address.
<h2>
7. X Windows</h2>
To run X Windows on your Win95 computer, get the free MI/X server from
http://www.sunsite.auc.dk/tucows/xwinserver95.html. Install The MI/X server.
To get it going:- run the MI/X server, and from a DOS box telnet your linux
machine. Login as your normal user name, and type the following:-
<p>&nbsp;DISPLAY=192.168.100.4:0.0
<br>&nbsp;export DISPLAY
<br>&nbsp;xterm &amp;
<p>This should make an xterminal appear in the MI/X server. The interface
is a bit slow, but it works.
<p>For more information see Running Remote X Sessions on Windows 95/98/NT/Mac/PPC
Clients by Ron Jenkins in Issue 32 of Linux Gazette, September 1998.
<h2>
8. Other services</h2>
I also have a ftp server and Apache on my Linux machine - if you run Netscape
on the Win95 computer and put in the location http://192.168.100.1, you
will reach Apache, or ftp://192.168.100.1 - you will reach your ftp server.
<h2>
9. Shutdown of the Link</h2>
To shut down the PPP link, disconnect the dialup connection - it hangs
for a while because Win95 is sending reset commands for a modem, but these
are being received by the Linux getty as login/passwords. It disconnects
after a short while, and Linux does not seem to mind.
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<br>If you have any comments, please email me at&nbsp; <a href="mailto:smytht@netscape.net">smytht@netscape.net</a>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Thomas Smyth <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !--><!-- The Button box as a client side imagemap --><map NAME="nav-main"><area SHAPE="rect" HREF="#mews" coords="10,10 170,40"><area SHAPE="rect" HREF="#webwonderings" coords="0,55 175,85"><area SHAPE="rect" HREF="#musings" coords="75,115 170,145"><area SHAPE="rect" HREF="#resources" coords="5,170 110,195"></map>
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 COLS=2 NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/gm-logo-3.jpg" height=169 width=400></td>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=CENTER NOSAVE>
<br><b><font size=+1>muse:</font></b>
<ol>
<li>
<i><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>v; to become absorbed in
thought&nbsp;</font></font></i></li>
<li>
<i><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>n; [ fr. Any of the nine
sister goddesses of learning and the arts in Greek Mythology ]: a source
of inspiration</font></font></i></li>
</ol>
<center><font size=-2>&copy; 1999 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">mjh</a></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 COLS=2 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td WIDTH="187" NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/muse-image-map.jpg" ALT="Button Bar" USEMAP="#nav-main" height=200 width=185 align=LEFT></td>
<td VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="65%" NOSAVE>
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/w.gif" ALT="W" height=28 width=36 align=BOTTOM><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>elcome
to the Graphics Muse! Why a "muse"? Well, except for the sisters aspect,
the above definitions are pretty much the way I'd describe my own interest
in computer graphics: it keeps me deep in thought and it is a daily source
of inspiration.&nbsp;</font></font>
<center>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>[<a href="#mews">Graphics
Mews</a>][<a href="#webwonderings">WebWonderings</a>][<a href="#musings">Musings</a>][<a href="#rsrc">Resources</a>]</font></font></center>
<p><img SRC="./gm/images/t.gif" ALT="T" height=28 width=26><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>his
column is dedicated to the use, creation, distribution, and discussion
of computer graphics tools for Linux systems.</font></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table BORDER=0 COLS=2 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>After returning in early
April from a month long trek through New Zealand, I found myself with a
slew of work to catch up on.&nbsp; Aside from the mountain of email, I
had three articles and some cover art for the Linux Journal, a new issue
of TheGimp.com, and some things I've been sworn to secrecy on.&nbsp; I
also bought a new camera, so I could stop rumaging around for affordable
stock photography and just go take the pictures myself.&nbsp; I find photography
as much an artistic outlet as my Gimp galleries, and plan to merge the
two immediately.&nbsp; Just as soon as I finish the classes that explain
what all the knobs do on that thing.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Of course, I also had lots
of laundry to do when I got back.&nbsp; But thats an article for my HouseCleaning
Muse column.*</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>I did a lot of catching up
on the Web once I got back.&nbsp; There is a new Web site for artists interested
in Linux, <a href="http://www.linuxartist.org">linuxartist.org</a>.&nbsp;
After taking a look over there and seeing the list of vector graphics tools,
I found my topic for this months Musings and Web Wonderings.&nbsp; So,
in this months column you'll find:</font></font>
<ul>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The Macromedia Flash Plug-in
for Linux</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Vector Drawing on Linux - XFig,
TGIF and friends</font></font></li>
</ul>
<center><table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=5 COLS=1 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=CENTER NOSAVE><a href="http://www.clbooks.com/home.html?from=CJK692"><img SRC="./gm/images/cla_small.gif" HSPACE=10 BORDER=0 height=60 width=234 align=CENTER></a></td>
</tr>
</table></center>
<center>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>* If you ever catch me writing
one of those, please, shoot me.</font></font></center>
</td>
<td ALIGN=CENTER VALIGN=CENTER WIDTH="220" NOSAVE>
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 COLS=1 NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=CENTER VALIGN=CENTER WIDTH="219" NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/artistsguide.jpg" height=140 width=110></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><b><i><font face="Arial,Helvetica">The Artists' Guide to the
Gimp</font></i></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Available online from <a href="http://www.fatbrain.com">FatBrain</a>,
<a href="http://www.softpro.com/softpro/1-57831-011-3.html">SoftPro
Books</a> and <a href="http://search.borders.com/fcgi-bin/db2www/search/search.d2w/Details?&mediaType=Book&prodID=51315727">Borders
Books</a>.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>In Denver, try the <a href="http://www.tatteredcover.com/cgi-bin/bookfind.pl?lit_ttl=Gimp&Id=733947.13300&refer=list&page=book&isbn=1-57831-011-3&str=1">Tattered
Cover Book Store.</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Also, check out the associated
web site, <a href="http://www.thegimp.com">TheGimp.com</a>, sponsored by
SSC, Inc. and edited by The Graphics Muse - <b><font color="#993300">Michael
J. Hammel</font></b>.</font></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="mews"></a><img SRC="./gm/images/mews.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table BORDER=0 COLS=3 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="140" NOSAVE>
<table BORDER CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=2 COLS=1 WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="100%" BGCOLOR="#FE992B" NOSAVE >
<tr>
<td><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Other Announcements:</font></font></b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#GIMP Dynamic Text">GIMP
Dynamic Text</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#GNU plotting utilities V2.2">GNU
plotting utilities V2.2</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#gView 0.1.2">gView
0.1.2</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#Giram 0.0.14">Giram
0.0.14</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#X-Mame 0.35b10.1">X-Mame
0.35b10.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#tgif 4.1.7">tgif
4.1.7</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#R, a system for statistical computation and graphics.">R,
a system for statistical computation and graphics.</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#XawTV 2.41">XawTV
2.41</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#Ilib 1.1.1">Ilib
1.1.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#GXanim 0.20a">GXanim
0.20a</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#gfontview 0.2">gfontview
0.2</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#Scitech Display Doctor 7.0 Beta5 fixed">Scitech
Display Doctor 7.0 Beta5 fixed</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#GIMP Imagemap plug-in 0.7">GIMP
Imagemap plug-in 0.7</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#Panorama 0.11.1">Panorama
0.11.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#Raychase 2.05">Raychase
2.05</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#LAGII 0.1.0">LAGII
0.1.0</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#kdem 1.0.1">kdem
1.0.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#XawTV 2.43">XawTV
2.43</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#CMatrix 0.98a">CMatrix
0.98a</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="./gm/mews.html#Gqcam 0.1">Gqcam
0.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=CENTER NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&lt;
<a href="./gm/mews.html">More
Mews</a> ></font></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<center>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Most announcements courtesy
of <a href="http://freshmeat.net">freshmeat</a>.</font></font></center>
</td>
<td WIDTH="1" NOSAVE></td>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE>
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=3 COLS=1 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><b>Disclaimer</b>:
Before I get too far into this I should note that any of the news items
I post in this section are just that - news. Either I happened to run across
them via some mailing list I was on, via some Usenet newsgroup, or via
email from someone. I'm not necessarily endorsing these products (some
of which may be commercial), I'm just letting you know I'd heard about
them in the past month.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<hr NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<a NAME="aKtion! 0.3.4"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>aKtion!
0.3.5</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Frederic L.W.Meunier (fredlwm)
- April 08th 1999, 22:40 EST&nbsp;</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>aKtion! is a video player
based on xanim. It (xanim) supports many different file formats like FLI
animations, FLC animations, IFF animations, GIF87a and GIF89a files, GIF89a
animation extensions, DL animations, Amiga MovieSetter animations, Utah
Raster Toolkit RLE images and animations, AVI animations, Quicktime Animations
and SGI Movie Format files.&nbsp;</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/3864/aktion.html">http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/3864/aktion.html</a></font></font>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Photo Mosaic plug-in
for the Gimp</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://registry.gimp.org">http://registry.gimp.org</a>
or <a href="http://www.kirchgessner.net">http://www.kirchgessner.net</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes:</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Works with Gimp V1.04</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Enhanced scale algorithms</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Quality=100 saves PPM-files
instead of JPEG-files (no loss in quality)</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Random select of sequence
for tile replacement</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Peter Kirchgessner</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="mailto:peter@kirchgessner.net">peter@kirchgessner.net</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>SideEffects to port Houdini&reg;
3D animation software to Linux</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>From the press release:</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Side Effects Software
announced its plans to port its Houdini&reg; 3D animation software to the
Linux operating system. Side Effects Software is the first high-end 3D
animation company to announce plans to adopt the Linux platform. While
many hardware vendors support the popular operating system, there ar presently
few graphics software packages available for it. It is expecte that a Linux
version of Houdini will be beta tested with Houdini 4.0 beginning in May.</font></font></blockquote>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Full press Release:&nbsp; <a href="http://www.sidefx.com/news_events/press_linux.html">http://www.sidefx.com/news_events/press_linux.html</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>SideEffects Software: <a href="http://www.sidefx.com/">http://www.sidefx.com/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Gimp @ SIGGRAPH 99</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>This years <a href="http://www.siggraph.org/s99">SIGGRAPH</a>
in Los Angeles runs from August 8-13. The exhibit days are Tuesday throughThursday.
August 10-12.&nbsp; Calvin Williamson is organizing a Gimp SIG for the
conference.&nbsp; Here is his announcment:</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>I've made some enquiries
and we can have a Gimp SIG (special interest group) meeting without paying
any money. (The conference costs though). I have a form we have to submit
to reserve a spot.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>It would be nice if we made
this for any and all gimp users/developers and would basically be a reserved
room that we can meet in for a couple of hours.&nbsp; If we get our form
in soon, it will probably be listed in various programs/schedules.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Anyway we're free to organize
our SIG anyway we want.&nbsp; I'm sure we can do that fine.&nbsp; But what
I wanted to find out was a guess at how many people we might get, and what
times would be best. I need this for the forms to send in to set this up.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Heres some considerations:</font></font>
<blockquote>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The exhibits/papers/courses
usually run to about 5 or 6 each day.</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The Exhibit is Tuesday -Thursday.&nbsp;
Papers are Wednesday - Friday.&nbsp; Courses are Sunday -Tuesday.</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>In my humble opinion, a good
time might be something like 5:30-7:30 PM on Tuesday or Wednesday, which
reduces the chance that it will actually overlap with anything else you
might want to do.</font></font></li>
</blockquote>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>As for number, Yosh "guessed"
that we wouldnt get more than 40 people.&nbsp; If all this sounds good,
I'll fill out the forms accordingly and send them in a week or so.&nbsp;
If not let me know what you think.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Yosh has set up an account
(gimpsiggraph@gimp.org) we can use for logistics /suggestions/comments
about the upcoming meeting. If you have an organizational issue or have
a request of some sort, please email that account. It will help us keep
things under control as time nears.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>In case your interested in
conference costs:&nbsp; <a href="http://www.siggraph.org/s99/registration/catNfees.html">http://www.siggraph.org/s99/registration/catNfees.html.&nbsp;</a>
($25 for exhibit only, but other stuff is pretty expensive.)&nbsp; Last
year the Linux3D group had a good meeting I think. (I missed it cause I
didnt know about it though...)</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Calvin</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Calvin Williamson &lt;<a href="mailto:calvin@rhythm.com">calvin@rhythm.com</a>></font></font></blockquote>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="MathMap 0.8"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>MathMap
0.8</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>MathMap is a GIMP plug-in
which allows distortion of images specified by mathematical formulae. For
each pixel in the generated image, an expression is evaluated which should
return a pixel value. The expression can either refer to a pixel in the
source image or can generate pixels completely independent of the source.
MathMap not only allows the generation of still images but also of animations.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The MathMap homepage can
be found at</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.unix.cslab.tuwien.ac.at/~schani/mathmap/">http://www.unix.cslab.tuwien.ac.at/~schani/mathmap/</a></font></font></blockquote>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>It includes a user's manual
as well as screenshots and examples.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes since 0.7:</font></font>
<ul>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Now runs under both GIMP 1.0
and GIMP 1.1.</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Features a transparent MathMap->C
compiler under GIMP 1.1 boosting performance by a factor 2 to 8.</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Simple vector and matrix algebra.</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Pixels outside the image can
now be either wrapped or given any color (including transparency).</font></font></li>
</ul>
<p><br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Mark Probst</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Student, Programmer</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.unix.cslab.tuwien.ac.at/~schani/">http://www.unix.cslab.tuwien.ac.at/~schani/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="GIMP 1.1.4 and 1.0.4"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>GIMP
1.1.4 and 1.0.4 now available:</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Version 1.1.4 (developers
release):</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Download:&nbsp; <a href="ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/unstable/v1.1.4/">ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/unstable/v1.1.4/</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>It <i>requires</i> GTK+
1.2:&nbsp; <a href="ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gtk/v1.2/">ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gtk/v1.2/</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Stuff that's new:</font></font>
<ul>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>gradient brushes</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>started using pdbgen</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>spiffy new prefs dialog</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Gimp::Perl updates</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>unit system updates</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>added GAP</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Paths PDB functions</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>other stuff in the ChangeLog..</font></font></li>
</ul>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Version 1.0.4 (stable release):</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Download:&nbsp; <a href="ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v1.0/v1.0.4/">ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v1.0/v1.0.4/</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>It <i>requires</i> GTK+
1.2:&nbsp; f<a href="ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gtk/v1.2/">tp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gtk/v1.2/</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>This release fixes the broken
menu items and 8-bit display issues in 1.0.3.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>-Yosh (current GIMP source
maintainer)</font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="GATOS 0.0.1-isg2oaa1bc1"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>GATOS
0.0.1-isg2oaa1bc1</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Insomnia (Stea Greene) -
April 07th 1999, 23:32 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The GATOS (General ATI TV
and Overlay Software) Project is an effort to create standard drivers for
all currently unsupported features of ATI video cards, specifically TV
features.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: First release and
it's still very buggy. Please read the "Original GATOS announcement" on
the hompage and submit a report as specified there.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~insomnia/gatos/">http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~insomnia/gatos/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="libgeom 0.0.6"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>libgeom
0.0.6</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Whitestar47 - April 07th
1999, 23:31 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>libgeom has many data types
to handle common geometrical sub-primitives, such as point, line, line
segment, vector, plane, arc, circle, and many functions to manipulate,
convert and make new information. All functions are reasonably computation
efficient. It is all coded in C and works well with gcc and egcs.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.calvin.edu/~jdemaa17/programs/programs.html">http://www.calvin.edu/~jdemaa17/programs/programs.html</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"><a NAME="Dr Geo 0.7.5"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Dr
Geo 0.7.5</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Hilaire Fernandes - April
07th 1999, 23:29 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Dr Geo stands for 'Dr Geo
Refer to Geometry Exploration Observatory'. It is an interactive geometry
software and allows the construction of dynamic figure. It's possible to
draw basic geometric object as point, line, segment, locus, intersection
beetween object but also to use geometric transformation as rotation, translation,
etc. The usal geometric tools as parallel line are also available.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.drgeo.seul.org/">http://www.drgeo.seul.org/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="Meteor 1.5.4"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Meteor
1.5.4</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; Mark Sutton
- April 07th 1999, 22:51 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Meteor is a device driver
and set of usefull applications for the Matrox Meteor frame grabber.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Enhancements to
this version over the previous version include several minor bug fixes
and the ability to auto-configure itself for kernel version. It correctly
configures itself for 2.0.* and 2.2.* kernels. It should also work correctly
on most 2.1.* kernels if anyone is actually using them anymore.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.gnofn.org/~marksu/meteorman.html">http://www.gnofn.org/~marksu/meteorman.html</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="Terraform 0.2.10"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Terraform
0.2.10</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; RNG - April
07th 1999, 13:29 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Terraform allows you to create
fractal terrain (also called a height field) and transform it using a number
of algorithms. It is meant to be a tool for those who want to generate
digital terrain models for use in raytracing or other simulations.&nbsp;
Terraform features different views and colormaps and has a preview mode
which features interactive real-time rotation of the terrain object. Terraform
is written using Gtk-- (the C++ wrapper for Gtk+).</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.peoplesoft.com/peoplepages/g/robert_gasch/terraform/">http://www.peoplesoft.com/peoplepages/g/robert_gasch/terraform/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="mpg_applet 0.1"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>mpg_applet
0.1</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; laertes - April
07th 1999, 13:24 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>mpg_applet is an mpg123 frontend.
It supports playlists and uses almost no screen real estate. It uses mpg123
version 0.59q and GNOME version 1.0.4.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: This is the first
public release.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://condor.stcloudstate.edu/~hebl9901/mpg_applet/">http://condor.stcloudstate.edu/~hebl9901/mpg_applet/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<p><!--
-- Did You Know Section
-->
<h2>
Did You Know?</h2>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>...<a href="http://www.dv.com">Digital
Video</a> magazine's March 1999 print issue has a terrific article on color
spaces, written by Ben Waggoner.&nbsp; If you've ever wondered about what
the different color spaces are and why you might use them (and which programs
and industries use which color spaces), check out this article.&nbsp; A
PDF version of this article is available online at <a href="http://www.dv.com/magazine/1999/0399/">http://www.dv.com/magazine/1999/0399/</a>.
PS:&nbsp; no, I don't get anything from DV for promoting them, its just
a really good article!</font></font></blockquote>
<!--
-- Q and A Section
-->
<h2>
Q and A</h2>
<i><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Q:&nbsp; Perhaps there's
a question you can answer.&nbsp; I scanned most of my pictures at 75dpi
using a Windows program.&nbsp; But I did a few at 150dpi.&nbsp; For some
reason, when I retouched the latter, they looked fine in the GIMP, but
when I later used display or another viewer, they were twice as big (both
directions) as I expected, and they took up much more disk space than they
should.&nbsp; It's like the GIMP had somehow gotten into a mode where it
was showing me things at half the real size they were, without telling
me.</font></font></i>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>A:&nbsp; Gimp will rescale
the visual display of the image to fit your screen but the actual image
size remains the same.&nbsp; A 150DPI scanned image would look twice as
large on a computer as the 75dpi image.&nbsp; Each "d" is a pixel, essentially.&nbsp;
Gimp scaled it down so you could work on it.&nbsp; But the other programs
don't know about "inches" (the "i" in DPI), just about total number of
pixels in the image.&nbsp; So those other programs displayed all the pixels
it read, one image pixel per one screen pixel.</font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<h2>
Reader Mail</h2>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>No really interesting reader
mail this month.&nbsp; I had lots when I got back from New Zealand, but
most of it was covered over in the <a href="http://www.thegimp.com">TheGimp.com</a>.</font></font>
<br>
<hr NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="webwonderings"></a><img SRC="./gm/images/webwonderings.jpg" height=57 width=246>
<h2>
The Macromedia Flash Plugins for Linux</h2>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Animations on the Web, for me
at least, have been limited to what you can squeeze out of a really good
multi-image GIF file.&nbsp; For the most part, those haven't been very
exciting or creative, and they really were limited to small spots within
the browser window.&nbsp; I haven't seen too many MPEG&nbsp;movies online
but even those would be a little limited in a browser.&nbsp; As for audio,
well, I mostly just listen to the various tech news sites. and those only
a couple times a day at most.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>So I was rather interested
to see two versions of a Macromedia Flash plugin for Netscape recently
announced.&nbsp; One comes directly from Macromedia in binary format only,
the other is an Open Source version which includes source code.&nbsp; Since
I'd never seen a Flash site in action (I run Linux - and only Linux - at
home and work normally revolves around the various commercial Unix systems),
I decided I'd grab these and take a look at what I'd been missing.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Wow.&nbsp; I'm stunned.&nbsp;
Apparently there was a whole other world out there.&nbsp; Sites with full-window
animation accompanied by driving electronica-style soundtracks.&nbsp; My
Graphics Muse site seems rather dull all of a sudden (maybe it already
did to some of you, but I don't get out much).&nbsp; Maybe the "Wow factor"&nbsp;(as
one site put it) will wear off eventually, but I'm rather excited about
this format.&nbsp; Although I can't author the Flash files on Linux yet
(you still need the Macromedia Flash 3 authoring software, which only runs
on non-Linux systems), at least now I can visit Flash sites and not stare
at those blank boxes with notes about where to download a player for Windows.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The two plugins I looked
at are:</font></font>
<ol>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&P2_Platform=Linux&P3_Browser_Version=Netscape4">Macromedia
Flash plugin</a>, available from <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/">Macromedia's</a>
Web site</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The Open Flash plugin by Olivier
Debon, available from <a href="http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/5084/flash.html">http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/5084/flash.html</a></font></font></li>
</ol>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>I found links to both on the
linuxartist.org site, which is how I got the idea for this article in the
first place.&nbsp; I jumped to their respective Web sites, downloaded binaries
for both (plus the source for the Open Flash version) and installed them.&nbsp;
Installation of both plugins is easy enough - just copy the plugins (files
with .so suffices) to your $HOME/.netscape/plugins directory.&nbsp; If
you don't have a plugins directory under $HOME/.netscape, just create it:</font></font>
<blockquote><tt><font size=-1>% cd $HOME/.netscape</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>% mkdir </font></tt>plugins</blockquote>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Don't put both into the plugins
directory at the same time.&nbsp; Its not clear which one will get run
if you do this, although I suspect the first matching plugin wins.&nbsp;
After you copy the plugin into its directory, and if you already have Netscape
running, you can type the following in the Location field:</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font size=-1><font face="Arial,Helvetica">&nbsp;&nbsp; </font><tt>javascript:navigator.plugins.refresh</tt></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>That will get Netscape to
update its plugins list.&nbsp; You can verify this</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>worked by typing</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font size=-1><font face="Arial,Helvetica">&nbsp;&nbsp; </font><tt>about:plugins</tt></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>in the same Location field.&nbsp;
If for some reason this doesn't work, exit and restart Netscape and you
should see the plugins listed when you use the "about" command.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Note:&nbsp; There is a Linux-based
Flash Generator available from <a href="http://www.swift-tools.com/">http://www.swift-tools.com/</a>.&nbsp;
This doesn't create the Flash file, it only allows you to manage it <i>after</i>
its created, such as to modify it to generate on-the-fly weather maps.&nbsp;
You still need the Macromedia Flash 3 authoring tool to create the original
Flash 3 file.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Both of these are Flash 3.0
plugins, although they don't both support the complete 3.0 specification
yet.&nbsp; The test system was a Cyrix 200, 64Mb memory, running Netscape
4.51 with an Xi Graphics AcceleratedX X server on a stock Red Hat 5.2 (Linux
2.0.36) system.&nbsp; Sound on my system is run through the commercial
version of the Open Sound System driver from <a href="http://www.4front-tech.com">4Front
Technologies.</a>&nbsp; I restarted Netscape between invokations of each
plugin, to make sure there weren't memory leak problems in one that might
cause the other to fail.&nbsp; In testing these, I picked out a set of
Flash 3.0 web sites that were linked from either the Open Flash site or
the Macromedia gallery site, or both.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>&nbsp;
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>&nbsp;
<table BORDER CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=2 NOSAVE >
<tr BGCOLOR="#33CCFF" NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Web Site</font></font></b></td>
<td NOSAVE>
<center><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>MacroMedia Flash
Plugin</font></font></b></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Open Flash Plugin</font></font></b></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.flash.com/software/flash/gallery">Macromedia's
Flash site</a></font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>worked fine</font></font></td>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Ran faster than Macromedia's
plugin on this page, but after the thumbnail images were positioned at
the bottom of the window the images inside the boxes disappeared.&nbsp;
Moving the mouse in the window caused the Flash file to replay, and moving
the mouse out of the window caused the flash file to clear (ie nothing
was displayed but the blue background).&nbsp; If you try to click on a
box, everything starts over but if you don't move your mouse <i>after</i>
you do that you can actually select that box the next time.&nbsp; Unfortunately,
nothing plays after that.&nbsp; At this point I gave up on this site.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr BGCOLOR="#33CCFF" NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.fusionary.com/fm/flash3.html">Fusionary
Media's Flash 3 samples page</a></font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>worked fine</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Crashed Netscape as soon
as I placed the cursor over the animated tree.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.sarbakan.com/ARCANE/">ARCANE</a>
- An animated online mystery game.&nbsp; Very little sound as far as I
could tell.</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>worked fine</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>worked fine, but might have
been a little slower than the Macromedia player.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr BGCOLOR="#33CCFF" NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/5084/flash/linux.html">The
Open Flash test site</a></font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>no problems</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>no problems</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.shockrave.com/
">ShockRave</a>
- various music, cartoons, and games based on Flash and Shockwave.&nbsp;
Took too long to load, though.</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>no problems for what little
I&nbsp;played of it</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>no problems for what little
I played of it</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr BGCOLOR="#33CCFF" NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.buffy.com/home.html">Official
Buffy the Vampire Slayer site</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Takes a while to load, but
the feed was continuous (no stalls) so it loaded moderately quick.&nbsp;
Doesn't play much while its loading, however.&nbsp; Kind of a corny site
- the sounds really don't add much to the animations and all the individual
animations/sounds are very short loops.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>&nbsp;</td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>played all of it just fine</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Appeared to play the small
"Buffy" animation (center of screen) better than the Macromedia player.&nbsp;
This site is supposed to have PNG-based (or PNG-like?) animations so maybe
the Open Flash player handles those better.&nbsp; However, it plays the
animations and audio for all the navigation images much faster, plus it
only plays the loops once.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.snarg.net/">http://www.snarg.net/</a>
- Artistic, for lack of a better description.</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>played all of it just fine</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Crashed netscape</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr BGCOLOR="#33CCFF" NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.secretops.com/">Wing
Commander SecretOps site</a>, from Origin</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Another big download, but
it does play some as it loads.&nbsp; You get to see the UI for Wing Commander
using a Flash 3.0 implementation.&nbsp; Kinda neat.&nbsp; The audio wasn't
all that interesting, though.</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>played all of it just fine</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>played all of it just fine</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN="3" NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">And the three coolest sites I found...</font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr BGCOLOR="#33CCFF" NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.gabocorp.com/">Gabocorp</a>
- Fairly cool site for Gabocorp, a graphics arts/Web design company.&nbsp;
A little slow in loading but plays a little background musing (booming
sounds) while it loads).</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>played all of it just fine</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The intro text, which sort
of unscrolls top to bottom, plays more jumpy than the Macromedia player
did.&nbsp; The Open Flash player was playing from the cache while Macromedia
played from the net.&nbsp; I wonder if that makes a difference?&nbsp; Hitting
the "next" key didn't clear the previous text so the newly displayed, unscrolling
text became garbled.&nbsp; This site didn't quite work right with the Open
Flash player, although it didn't crash Netscape.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.matinee.co.uk/">Matinee
Sound and Vision</a> - includes sound but take a long time to load over
a 28.8 modem (over 300K downloads).&nbsp; Fairly high "Wow" factor (as
they say on their site).</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>&nbsp;</td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>no problems with audio or
video</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Played intro quite well,
but then opened a new Navigator window while playing second page audio.&nbsp;
Sound got completely out of sync too.&nbsp; The second page should have
played completely in the original Navigator window - I don't know why the
second window opened.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr BGCOLOR="#33CCFF" NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.eye4u.com/">EYE4U
Active Media site</a> - includes sound and video; one of the absolutely
coolest sites I've ever been too!&nbsp; Plays while it loads!&nbsp; Easily
the fastest site I went to.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>&nbsp;</td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>no problems with audio or
video</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Sound played badly but the
animations seem to be ok (a little jumpy but ok).&nbsp; However, when it
reached a point where the user is supposed to place the mouse over some
small balls, the original Flash file replayed.&nbsp; That wasn't supposed
to happen.</font></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The Open Flash package includes
a standalone Flash player so you can test Flash files without having to
run Netscape Navigator.&nbsp; However, its README states it doesn't currently
support morphing, alpha blending or anti-aliasing and its sound support
is limited.&nbsp; Running this version (0.4.3) of the Open Flash plugin
wouldn't allow me to get to the Gallery from the main Flash Web site at
<a href="http://www.flash.com">www.flash.com</a>.&nbsp; I had to go directly
to the gallery page (see link in table).</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>While testing all the sites
running with the Macromedia Flash plugin there was not a single crash of
Netscape.&nbsp; I'd say thats a pretty solid plugin.&nbsp; I&nbsp;had absolutely
no problems using this plugin with any site I visited.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>So, although the Open Flash
plugin still has a few problems, both of these plugins offer you a chance
to see some very interesting sites out there.&nbsp; I highly recommend,
if you're into some flashy (pardon the pun) pages, that you give these
plugins a try.&nbsp; You've got little to lose, right?</font></font>
<p>
<hr NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<p><a NAME="musings"></a>
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=3 COLS=2 NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="245" NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/musings.jpg" height=50 width=245></td>
<td NOSAVE></td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">Vector Drawing on Linux - XFig, TGIF and friends</font></h2>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Over the past year we've heard
a lot about the killer app for Linux - Gimp, the Photoshop-like tool for
graphic arts work.&nbsp; By now many of you may even be sick of hearing
about it.&nbsp; Especially if what you really need isn't a raster-based
effects package, but a vector-based drawing tool.&nbsp; For the past several
years you really only had two choices:&nbsp; XFig and TGIF.&nbsp; Recently,
a number of new projects have sprung up that aim to provide more modern
interfaces and features for vector-based tools.&nbsp; Despite the abundance
of enthusiasm from the developers of those projects, none is quite ready
for the average Joe Newbie, particularly because few of them are as easy
to build and install as the two grandfathers in this category of applications.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The first thing I did was
try to find what vector tools are currently available.&nbsp; A new site,
<a href="http://www.linuxartist.org">linuxartist.org</a>,
has several listed.&nbsp; A couple aren't tools for creating vector graphics.&nbsp;
The Flash plug-ins are only for viewing images, so I didn't look at them
for this article (but see this months <a href="#webwonderings">Web Wonderings)</a>.&nbsp;
The other tools I did look at were</font></font>
<ul>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>xfig</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>tgif</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>sketch</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>killustrator</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>GILT</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>ipad/xebot</font></font></li>
</ul>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>There are also vector based
drawing tools available in the <a href="http://www.applix.com">ApplixWare</a>
and <a href="http://www.stardivision.com">StarOffice</a> commercial packages.&nbsp;
The ApplixWare version is a little limited in features, but very stable
and easy to use.&nbsp; Installation of ApplixWare was quite simple as well.&nbsp;
I haven't used StarOffice's StarDraw package so can't speak of its ease
of installation, stability, or feature set, although the specifications
for it on the StarDivision web site seem fairly impressive.&nbsp; Core's
CorelDraw package is also due out sometime this year, I believe.&nbsp;
I don't know anything about it, however.&nbsp; I'll save a head-to-head
review of these commercial packages for a later date.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>By far the easiest vector
tool to build and install was <b><font color="#993300">tgif</font></b>,
which required only an "xmkmf; make" for Linux systems.&nbsp; No editing
of any configuration files was necessary.&nbsp; <b><font color="#993300">XFig</font></b>
was probably the next easiest, although it had quite a few configurable
items to set in the Makefile if you wanted to get things optimized and
looking their best.&nbsp; Of the rest, I was only able to get XEBOT running
under a limited environment.&nbsp; The others required extra packages that
were not already available on my Red Hat system or that were not complete
enough on my system in order to build or install the drawing tool.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><b><font color="#993300">Sketch</font></b>
is based entirely on the Python intepreted language.&nbsp; Along with the
interpreter and libraries, you also need an additional image library called
PIL - the Python Imaging Library.&nbsp; Unfortunately, this doesn't build
with my RPM-based Python that was installed when I installed Red Hat 5.2.&nbsp;
This library expects some other parts which I could only get if I built
Python itself and installed it.&nbsp; I tried to build Python without installing
it to see if I could tell PIL where that was, but it became too much work&nbsp;
in the long run.&nbsp; Sketch, therefore, is more of a developers toy than
an artists (or average users) tool.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><b><font color="#993300">KIllustrator</font></b>
turned out to be much like Sketch, at least for me and from an installation
point of view.&nbsp; Its tied to KDE, which means I need to install KDE
just to get it to work (not to mention the Qt libraries).&nbsp; I glanced
through the KDE web site and decided there were far too many packages to
try to install just to get KIllustrator running.&nbsp; Red Hat 6.0 is supposed
to include KDE so maybe I'll try it then, when I have less work to do in
order to get it running.&nbsp; Personally, I think applications should
be KDE and GNOME aware, but they shouldn't be tied to those environments.&nbsp;
Not if you want to reach the largest possible audience.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><b><font color="#993300">GILT</font></b>
simply didn't compile.&nbsp; It does include a "configure" script-based
build process, but apparently its not quite ready for the average Joe's
use.&nbsp; I sent email to the author but really didn't give him much time
to respond (Muse deadlines, once again, running up against work that pays).&nbsp;
In fairness, GILT is listed as being in very early development so its not
unexpected that this particular tool isn't ready for the average user.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><b><font color="#993300">IPAD/XEBOT
</font></b><font color="#000000">required
an 8-bit display to function.&nbsp; I tried XEBOT first, which is supposed
to contain all of the features of IPAD, plus a few more.&nbsp; Even when
I switched to 8-bit mode (which was a bit of a pain because my FVWM environment
doesn't look correct in that mode) I wasn't able to do anything useful.&nbsp;
The UI is very user unfriendly.&nbsp; It uses an interface that is obviously
platform inspecific and drops it inside of a generic X window.&nbsp; It
just wasn't what I was looking for, especially since I'm not concerned
with usability on non-Unix platforms.&nbsp; IPAD looked and worked about
the same as XEBOT.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>When it came right down to
it, I was back to the old favorites, XFig and TGIF.&nbsp; Since I couldn't
really get the others to work very well, I thought I'd do a little side
by side comparison of these two.&nbsp; A little head to head competition,
if you will.&nbsp; If you don't like these two, and are up to the challenge
of getting one of the others to work, you at least have a choice these
days.</font></font>
<h2>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>TGIF vs XFig</font></font></h2>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The easiest to learn to use
was probably TGIF, but both TGIF and XFIG have so many features its easy
to get lost in them.&nbsp; I'd have to say TGIF's interface is more intuitive,
using familiar menu configurations (File is on the left of the menu bar,
for example).&nbsp; TGIF is a little easier to use initially.&nbsp; Its
seems more intuitive to be able to draw a shape, then select it to edit
its points.&nbsp; XFig allows this, but the method to get to editing the
points seems a little harder to figure out.&nbsp; For example, with TGIF
you select an object to edit by clicking on it while in selection mode.&nbsp;
In XFig you select "Move Points" and all the points for all visible objects
are shown.&nbsp; You then click on one to move it.&nbsp; The hard part
was finding the hotspot for the points in XFig.&nbsp; You really have to
get right on the little boxes (which represent the points) to grab them.&nbsp;
In TGIF, however, the hot spots are larger and you only mess with the objects
you specifically selected.</font></font>
<br>&nbsp;
<center><table BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=0 NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td COLSPAN="3" NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Sure,
the problem here may be my unfamiliarity with using XFig.&nbsp; But I'm
also a GUI designer by trade so I understand about usability issues.&nbsp;
XFig's buttons across the top are either discreet features or menus, with
the menus on the right side of that set of buttons.&nbsp; This is counter
to standard UI design styles, where menus are on the left, especially the
File menu.&nbsp; Additionally, TGIF uses standard layouts for most of its
dialogs.&nbsp; XFig does not.&nbsp; For example, look for the Cancel button
on the File Selection dialog in XFig versus where its located on any other
dialog.&nbsp; Seldom the same twice.&nbsp; TGIF's dialogs are more standardized,
which makes them easier to learn.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>One feature which both tools
have is a visual display of what the mouse buttons do for any selected
feature.&nbsp; In TGIF this is along the bottom of the window.&nbsp; In
XFig it is in the upper right corner.&nbsp; I like XFig's implementation
of this better because its simpler - three buttons side by side, with text
to the sides or above the buttons.&nbsp; TGIF's is cute - the icons for
the mouse are more realistic - but visually it takes a moment to get your
bearings on which text goes with which button.&nbsp; Its not difficult,
mind you, I just prefer XFigs implementation.</font></font></td>
<td ALIGN=CENTER VALIGN=CENTER NOSAVE>
<center><table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=2 BGCOLOR="#66FFFF" NOSAVE >
<tr BGCOLOR="#FFFF99" NOSAVE>
<td WIDTH="110" BGCOLOR="#993300" NOSAVE>&nbsp;</td>
<td NOSAVE>
<center><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#993300"><font size=-1>TGIF</font></font></font></b></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#993300"><font size=-1>XFIG</font></font></font></b></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Ease of Setup</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>4</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>4</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>User Interface</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>4</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>2</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Look and Feel</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Ease of Use</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>4</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>2</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Online Help</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>2</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>4</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Documentation</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>3</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>4</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Example files</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>1</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>5</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>File Import</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>3</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>3</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>File Export</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>3</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center>3</center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Overall Rating</font></font></td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>3</font></font></center>
</td>
<td>
<center><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>3.375</font></font></center>
</td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN="3" BGCOLOR="#993300" NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#FFFF99"><font size=-1>Ratings:
1=Poor, 5=Superb</font></font></font></td>
</tr>
</table></center>
</td>
</tr>
</table></center>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>One feature which both tools
have is a visual display of what the mouse buttons do for any selected
feature.&nbsp; In TGIF this is along the bottom of the window.&nbsp; In
XFig it is in the upper right corner.&nbsp; I like XFig's implementation
of this better because its simpler - three buttons side by side, with text
to the sides or above the buttons.&nbsp; TGIF's is cute - the icons for
the mouse are more realistic - but visually it takes a moment to get your
bearings on which text goes with which button.&nbsp; Its not difficult,
mind you, I just prefer XFigs implementation.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Rulers are handled differently
in the two programs too.&nbsp; In TGIF you have the traditional slider
bars to move the page around.&nbsp; The bottom slider is rather small,
it doesn't expand the width of the visible page.&nbsp; In XFig you click
and drag within the rulers themselves to move around the page.&nbsp; This
one is a toss up.&nbsp; TGIF's method is familiar, but XFig makes the rulers
serve a dual purpose and thus saves a little screen space.&nbsp; I like
both methods equally well.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>TGIF imports XBM, XPM, GIF,
and EPS files and has an interface for adding other import filters.&nbsp;
XFig imports the same, plus JPEG and PCX files.&nbsp; The difference is
that TGIF calls this "Import", while you have to know to click on the camera
icon to import a "Picture" in XFig.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>XFig easily wins on the file
export side.&nbsp; If you're into Latex then you're in luck because XFig
supports a wide range of Latex export options.&nbsp; Additionally, it supports
all the well supported Web image formats: PNG, JPEG, GIF, XBM, etc.&nbsp;
TGIF supports GIF and a few others, but its export capabilities aren't
quite as extensive as XFig's.&nbsp; TGIF also exports via its print function,
which isn't the obvious place to put it.&nbsp; Both tools support export
to Postscript.&nbsp; Strangely enough, I wasn't able to get XFig to export
to any file format.&nbsp; I also wasn't able to print because XFig said
it couldn't open a temporary file.&nbsp; I think my installation wasn't
quite correct and may have been the cause of these problems.&nbsp; Still,
the print features of both appear fairly decent, with both making use of
the basic print facilities on your Linux box.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>All this talks about fairly
mundane issues.&nbsp; What about real feature comparison?&nbsp; Well, both
support a wide range of drawing primitives:&nbsp; circles and ovals, boxes,
freehand drawings, polygons, polylines, and arcs.&nbsp; TGIF has a few
other canned shapes that may or may not be useful.&nbsp; XFig provides
a few different methods for doing splines (closed or open curves).&nbsp;
Both provide text input, with XFig providing far more fonts.&nbsp; However,
neither makes use of your complete set of installed fonts - they each have
their own font support.&nbsp; I have to say, although XFig offers far more
font options, the dialog which provides it is rather, well, unusual looking.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Summary:</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>When I first started looking
at XFig I thought it was pretty nifty.&nbsp; This was even after having
used TGIF in the past.&nbsp; But when I compared the two side by side I
found I much preferred TGIF.&nbsp; Its just simpler to use.&nbsp; Looking
at the rating chart you might think I'd recommend XFig over TGIF.&nbsp;
Not necessarily.&nbsp; In my case I'm concerned with ease of use and the
time it takes to get to doing productive work.&nbsp; Here, TGIF is a better
choice.&nbsp; XFig wins points for extensive documentation (and should
be applauded loudly for this considering how many Open Source products
come with so little, and/or so poor, documentation) and a large collection
of examples that come directly with the source distribution.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>There may be a few more features
in XFig that TGIF doesn't have that some users will need.&nbsp; If thats
the case then definitely check out XFig.&nbsp; In fact, I recommend you
take a look at both of them anyway.&nbsp; You may find the problems I see
in the XFig UI just don't bother you as much.&nbsp; Both tools are quite
extensive in basic drawing features and I'm sure one of them will provide
at least some measure of satisfaction for your vector-based needs.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>[ <a href="./gm/musings.html">Summary
of Vector Drawing Tools for Linux ]</a></font></font>
<br>&nbsp;
<table BORDER=0 COLS=1 WIDTH="100%" BGCOLOR="#000000" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><img SRC="../images/cleardot.gif" height=2 width=2></td>
</tr>
</table>
<a NAME="rsrc"></a><img SRC="./gm/images/resources.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The following links are
just starting points for finding more information about computer graphics
and multimedia in general for Linux systems. If you have some application
specific information for me, I'll add them to my other pages or you can
contact the maintainer of some other web site. I'll consider adding other
general references here, but application or site specific information needs
to go into one of the following general references and not listed here.</font></font>
<br>&nbsp;
<table BORDER=0 COLS=2 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Online Magazines
and News sources&nbsp;</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.news.com/">C|Net
Tech News</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/">Linux
Weekly News</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://slashdot.org/">Slashdot.org</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://TheGimp.com">TheGimp.com</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>General Web Sites&nbsp;</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.graphics-muse.org/linux.html">Linux
Graphics</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linux_soundapps.html">Linux
Sound/Midi Page</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://linuxartist.org">Linux
Artist.org</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Some of the Mailing Lists
and Newsgroups I keep an eye on and where I get much of the information
in this column&nbsp;</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.gimp.org">The
Gimp User and Gimp Developer Mailing Lists</a>.&nbsp;</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.irtc.org">The
IRTC-L discussion list</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing">comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="news:comp.graphics.rendering.renderman">comp.graphics.rendering.renderman</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="news:comp.graphics.api.opengl">comp.graphics.api.opengl</a></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="news:comp.os.linux.announce">comp.os.linux.announce</a></font></font></td>
<td><img SRC="./gm/images/gmuse-2.jpg" HSPACE=10 BORDER=2 height=248 width=200></td>
</tr>
</table>
<a NAME="future"></a>
<h2>
Future Directions</h2>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Next month:</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Let
me know what you'd like to hear about!</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<div align=right><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&copy; 1999
<a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></font></div>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <HR> <P>
<center><H4>Previous ``Graphics Muse'' Columns</H4></center>
<p>
<A HREF="../issue11/gm.html">Graphics Muse #1, November 1996</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue12/gm.html">Graphics Muse #2, December 1996</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue13/gm.html">Graphics Muse #3, January 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue14/gm.html">Graphics Muse #4, February 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue15/gm.html">Graphics Muse #5, March 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue16/gm.html">Graphics Muse #6, April 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue17/gm.html">Graphics Muse #7, May 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue18/gm.html">Graphics Muse #8, June 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue19/gm.html">Graphics Muse #9, July 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue20/gm.html">Graphics Muse #10, August 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue22/gm.html">Graphics Muse #11, October 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue23/gm.html">Graphics Muse #12, December 1997</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue25/gm.html">Graphics Muse #13, February 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue26/gm.html">Graphics Muse #14, March 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue27/gm.html">Graphics Muse #15, April 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue31/gm.html">Graphics Muse #16, August 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue32/gm.html">Graphics Muse #17, September 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue33/gm.html">Graphics Muse #18, October 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue34/gm.html">Graphics Muse #19, November 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue37/gm.html">Graphics Muse #20, February 1999</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue38/gm.html">Graphics Muse #21, March 1999</A><BR>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Michael J. Hammel <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/mews.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1999 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table BORDER=0 COLS=3 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="140" NOSAVE>
<table BORDER CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=2 COLS=1 WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="100%" BGCOLOR="#FE992B" NOSAVE >
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="#GIMP Dynamic Text">GIMP
Dynamic Text</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="#GNU plotting utilities V2.2">GNU
plotting utilities V2.2</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#gView 0.1.2">gView
0.1.2</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#Giram 0.0.14">Giram
0.0.15</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr NOSAVE>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#X-Mame 0.35b10.1">X-Mame
0.35b10.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#tgif 4.1.7">tgif
4.1.7</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#R, a system for statistical computation and graphics.">R,
a system for statistical computation and graphics.</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#XawTV 2.41">XawTV
2.41</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#Ilib 1.1.1">Ilib
1.1.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#GXanim 0.20a">GXanim
0.20a</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#gfontview 0.2">gfontview
0.2</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#Scitech Display Doctor 7.0 Beta5 fixed">Scitech
Display Doctor 7.0 Beta5 fixed</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="#GIMP Imagemap plug-in 0.7">GIMP
Imagemap plug-in 0.7</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#Panorama 0.11.1">Panorama
0.11.1</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#Raychase 2.05">Raychase
2.05</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="#LAGII 0.1.0">LAGII
0.1.0</a>&nbsp;</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#kdem 1.0.1">kdem
1.0.1</a>&nbsp;</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#XawTV 2.43">XawTV
2.43</a>&nbsp;</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#CMatrix 0.98a">CMatrix
0.98a</a>&nbsp;</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;<a href="#Gqcam 0.1">Gqcam
0.1</a>&nbsp;</font></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
<td WIDTH="1" NOSAVE></td>
<td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP NOSAVE>
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=3 COLS=1 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><b>Disclaimer</b>:
Before I get too far into this I should note that any of the news items
I post in this section are just that - news. Either I happened to run across
them via some mailing list I was on, via some Usenet newsgroup, or via
email from someone. I'm not necessarily endorsing these products (some
of which may be commercial), I'm just letting you know I'd heard about
them in the past month.</font></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<hr NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<a NAME="GIMP Dynamic Text"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>GIMP
Dynamic Text</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>GIMP Dynamic Text is a GIMP
plug-in that works like the text tool but allows you writing multi-line
text and made you able of modifying it later as you want (text/font/font
size/color/...).</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Currently at version 1.4.2.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>It's available for download
at &lt;<a href="http://registry.gimp.org/">http://registry.gimp.org/</a>>
and &lt;<a href="http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1474/gimp/">http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1474/gimp/</a>></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Marco (LM) Lamberto</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="mailto:lm@geocities.com">lm@geocities.com</a></font></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"><a NAME="GNU plotting utilities V2.2"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>GNU
plotting utilities V2.2</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>This is to announce the
release of version 2.2 of the GNU plotting utilities ("plotutils") package,
including version 2.0 of the underlying C/C++ vector graphics library.&nbsp;
This is a major release.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The source code for the package
is available as a gzipped tar file, 2.8 megabytes in size.&nbsp; It's available
on the main GNU ftp site, as ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/plotutils/plotutils-2.2.tar.gz
, and at many GNU mirrors (see http://www.gnu.org for details).</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>For the benefit of people
using Red Hat or similar versions of GNU/Linux on Intel systems, I've created
a pair of RPM's for the package.&nbsp; They're at:</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;ftp://platinum.math.arizona.edu/pub/plotutils-2.2-1.i386.rpm</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;ftp://platinum.math.arizona.edu/pub/plotutils-2.2-1.src.rpm</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The long-awaited library-level
support for graphing didn't make it into this release, unfortunately.&nbsp;
But it may make it into the next release (2.3).&nbsp; The next file format
to be supported will probably be CGM.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>All bug reports and suggestions
for improvements are welcome.&nbsp; It would be a good idea to mail them
to bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org as well as to me, to give other people the chance
to respond.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="mailto:rsm@math.arizona.edu">Robert
S. Maier</a>&nbsp;&nbsp; rsm@math.arizona.edu</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Dept. of Math.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Univ. of Arizona</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Maintainer of the GNU plotting
utilities package</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>(see <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils/plotutils.html">http://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils/plotutils.html
</a>)</font></font>.
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="gView 0.1.2"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>gView
0.1.4</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Bruce Smith - April
13th 1999, 22:13 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>gView is a GTK/ImLib image
viewer with an interface similar to ACDSee.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Fixed a compile
time bug in the Save Config functions, added image grab-n'-scroll and red/blue/green
color adjustments.&nbsp; Other bugfixes included.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/1468/sg/">http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/1468/sg/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"><a NAME="Giram 0.0.14"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Giram
0.0.15</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; David Odin - April
13th 1999, 11:35 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Giram Is Really A Modeller
(or at least will be). It is written with the GTK+ User interface v1.1
or v1.2. It is still in early stages of development. It can load and save
Persistance of Vision Scenes, some basic modelling tools are already there
and it's growing very fast.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Cool plugins interface,
two plugins, Cut, Copy and Paste of objects, double clicking on a Tool
will now bring up the 'Tool Options Box', a little bug about Cone selection
has been removed, and better documentation.&nbsp; There are also Light
Sources, parsing, creation and drawing of 'Surface of Revolution' objects,
online tutorial, new version of Povfront, and bugfixes.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.minet.net/giram/">http://www.minet.net/giram/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"><a NAME="X-Mame 0.35b10.1"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>X-Mame
0.35b10.1</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Lawrence Gold - April
13th 1999, 11:29 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>X-Mame is the Unix version
of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, an arcade (coin-op) video game
emulator. The latest development release is capable of playing over 1241
arcade and Neo Geo games.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Added everything
from MS-DOS b10, the debugger should work again, GGI support has been updated
for GGI 2.0b2, and various Solaris fixes have been made (sound, working
XIL, and MITSHM).</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://xmame.retrogames.com/">http://xmame.retrogames.com/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="tgif 4.1.7"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>tgif
4.1.7</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Bill Cheng - April
13th 1999, 11:28 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>tgif is a vector-based draw
tool, with the additional benefit of being sort of a web-browser. That
is, you can fetch drawings from a web server with it, and you can make
objects in your picture into hotlinks to other parts of the drawing, or
to other drawings accessible via http.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Added NLS support
for menus, fixed bugs with overthespot for the xim input method, open/save/import
gzipped obj files, and add a bunch of internal commands to make it a little
easier for third party code to drive tgif.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/">http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="R, a system for statistical computation and graphics."></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>R,
a system for statistical computation and graphics.</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Friedrich Leisch
- April 13th 1999, 11:25 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>R is a system for statistical
computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment
with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the
ability to run programs stored in script files. R implements a language
which is not entirely unlike the S language developed at AT&amp;T Bell
Laboratories by Rick Becker, John Chambers and Allan Wilks.&nbsp; Indeed
in the absence of an R manual, you can (mostly) get along by using the
S manual.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: This is a major
new release with many new features and bug fixes. New features include
filled
contour plots, improved X11 color handling, shading in perspective plots,
socket interfaces, planar convex hulls, and more.&nbsp; There is also now
an experimental GNOME version of R.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/R">http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/R</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="XawTV 2.41"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>XawTV
2.41</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Gerd Knorr - April
13th 1999, 11:22 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>XawTV is a simple Xaw-based
TV program which uses the bttv driver or video4linux. It contains various
command-line utilities for grabbing images and avi movies, for tuning in
TV stations, etc. A grabber driver for vic and a radio application (needs
KDE) for the boards with radio support are included as well.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: avi recording completed,
minor alpha fixes, mklinux support, improved Xideo extention support, a
few tweaks here and there.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/xawtv.html">http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/xawtv.html</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="Ilib 1.1.1"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Ilib
1.1.1</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Craig Knudsen - April
12th 1999, 21:40 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Ilib is an image manipulation
library for developers. It's capable of reading and writing images (PPM
&amp; GIF) and many drawing functions including drawing lines and text
using and any BDF (X11) font. It's great for generating GIFs from a CGI
and generating graphs. Ilib includes sample applications for generating
graphs for HTTP access.log files and QuakeWorld server frag log files.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Bug fixes and a
new client application that will draw all a BDF font's characters to an
image.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/Ilib/">http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/Ilib/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="GXanim 0.20a"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>GXanim
0.20a</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; R. Warren - April
12th 1999, 21:40 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>GXanim is a graphical frontend
for the XAnim movie player program based on the GTK+ widget set. The user
can quickly locate a Quicktime/AVI/etc. file, play it, and use basic VCR-like
features on the playing clip. You can now interactively set the volume
as well as playing preferences.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: This is a service
subrelease. A bug in config.h that could have complicated installation
as well as a bug which prevented the playing of certain AVI files have
both been fixed.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.iag.net/~aleris">http://www.iag.net/~aleris</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="gfontview 0.2"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>gfontview
0.2</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Roberto - April 12th
1999, 11:53 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>gfontview is a small font
viewer for PostScript and TrueType fonts. It allows you to display any
character or string in a particular font as well as all glyphs present
in it. It supports antialiasing and kerning. It can also print font samples
in several sizes.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Ported to GTK+ 1.2
and uses the autoconf package now.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Foothills/1458/">http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Foothills/1458/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="Scitech Display Doctor 7.0 Beta5 fixed"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Scitech
Display Doctor 7.0 Beta5 fixed</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; St&eacute;phane Peter
- April 12th 1999, 11:52 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Scitech Display Doctor is
the ultimate graphics utility package that will improve your PC's graphics
performance, ensure that applications run correctly and fix many common
graphics problems.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: This release is
the same as the previous Beta5, but it fixes a few fatal problems that
prevented it from installing correctly. It should install fine now.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.scitechsoft.com/sdd_linux.html">http://www.scitechsoft.com/sdd_linux.html</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="GIMP Imagemap plug-in 0.7"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>GIMP
Imagemap plug-in 0.7</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Maurits Rijk - April
26th 1999, 12:53 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The GIMP Imagemap plug-in
enables The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to create clickable imagemaps
in CSIM, CERN or NCSA format.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Plug-in now works
correctly for GIF and grayscale images, finished implementation of NCSA
and CERN mapfiles and implemented 'Close' menu item. A serious bug in 'Zoom
To' menu has been fixed as well.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://home-2.consunet.nl/~cb007736/">http://home-2.consunet.nl/~cb007736/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="Panorama 0.11.1"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Panorama
0.11.1</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; Angel Jimenez - April
26th 1999, 12:53 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Panorama is a framework for
3D graphics production. It will include modelling, rendering, animating,
post-processing, etc. There's currently no support for animation, but this
feature will be added soon.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Added PNG and JPEG
plugins, added subdivision surface experimental plugin, fixed some minor
compilation problems, and better support of different operating systems.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/panorama/panorama.html">http://www.gnu.org/software/panorama/panorama.html</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="Raychase 2.05"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Raychase
2.05</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp; flux - April 26th
1999, 12:51 EST</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>RayChase is a fast random
recursive raytracer which will render cool images all by itself and will
display them on your desktop. It has been tested on KDE, Gnome, WindowMaker,
Enlightenment, etc. One can also write the output to a image file (interactivly
updating web pages). RayChase versions exist for FreeBSD, MSDOG, WinNT,
Win9x, OS/2 and PowerPC.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: This version (2.05)
is a specific Linux (and FreeBSD) version with some added features. Visit
the webpage for additional info.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://members.linuxstart.com/~flux/">http://members.linuxstart.com/~flux/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="LAGII 0.1.0"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>LAGII
0.1.0</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; XoXus - April
30th 1999, 09:59 EST</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>LAGII lets you run AGI games
natively under Linux. AGI games include the Sierra classics such as Kings
Quest, Space Quest, etc. Most games don't work fully, but they work quite
well most of the time.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.zip.com.au/~gsymonds/LAGII/">http://www.zip.com.au/~gsymonds/LAGII/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="kdem 1.0.1"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>kdem
1.0.1</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; Jamie Moyers
- April 30th 1999, 09:58 EST</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>kdem is an OpenGL viewer
for USGS Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). It can read the new Spatial Data
Transfer Standard (SDTS) format as well as the old text format. It supports
the SpaceTec "SpaceOrb 360" game controller.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://home.i1.net/~jamoyers/kdem/">http://home.i1.net/~jamoyers/kdem/</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="XawTV 2.43"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>XawTV
2.43</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; Sean P. Kane
- April 30th 1999, 09:54 EST</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>XawTV is a simple Xaw-based
TV program which uses the bttv driver or video4linux. It contains various
command-line utilities for grabbing images and avi movies, for tuning in
TV stations, etc. A grabber driver for vic and a radio application (needs
KDE) for the boards with radio support are included as well.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: Video updates, some
bttv changes to make it more compatible to the kernel version, removed
the "unmute-on-open", updated the open/close for radio too, unbundled the
bttv driver, errors are reported with a dialog box now, channel handling
is completely rewritten. added some missing channels for japan, the -i
and -n switches in streamer work again, fixed core dump with nonaudio devices,
updated videodev2.h.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/xawtv.html">http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/xawtv.html</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="CMatrix 0.98a"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>CMatrix
0.98a</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; astyanax -
April 30th 1999, 09:52 EST</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>CMatrix is an ncurses program
that simulates the screensaver from "The Matrix" from the movie's website.
It works with your terminal settings (up to 300 columns wide) and can scroll
lines all at the same rate or asynchronously.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Changes: New scrolling motion
(more like the movie, less like the Mac/Win screensavers). To get the original
scrolling effect, flag -o has been added.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://www.plattsburgh.edu/faculty/allegrcr/cmatrix/index.html
">http://www.plattsburgh.edu/faculty/allegrcr/cmatrix/index.html</a></font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%">
<br><a NAME="Gqcam 0.1"></a><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Gqcam
0.1</font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>&nbsp;&nbsp; Cory Lueninghoener
- April 30th 1999, 09:44 EST</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Gqcam is a GTK based clone
of QuickPict, the program that comes with QuickCams.</font></font>
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1><a href="http://cse.unl.edu/~cluening/gqcam/">http://cse.unl.edu/~cluening/gqcam/</a></font></font>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1999 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
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(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
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<table WIDTH="100%" >
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<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
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<tr>
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</table>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+1>Summary of Vector Drawing
Tools for Linux</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="http://epb.lbl.gov/xfig/">XFig
</a><font size=-1>-
<a href="./gm/xfig.html">screen
shots</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Requirements:&nbsp; just
a regular X Window System installation, plus the Xaw3D library if you want
the 3D buttons and so forth.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Probably the grandfather
of vector tools on Linux, xfig is a fairly feature rich package that requires
no extra packages to get running on a stock Linux distribution - basically
it should build and run pretty quick on any Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Pacific
High Tech system.&nbsp; Any distribution with a standard X Windows System
installation (and that should be all of them) should work.&nbsp; You can
build xfig using the Xaw3D libraries, which will give the UI a much nicer
3D effect, but thats not required.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The main window opens pretty
large and resizing doesn't automatically realign the buttons along the
left side of the window.&nbsp; You can specify the use of smaller icons
during the build process.&nbsp; This may help if you use a smaller display
resolution like 800x600.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The HTML based help system
tries to launch Netscape but doesn't check for an existing Netscape process
first.&nbsp; It also doesn't open the browser to the pages of interest.&nbsp;
The code looks like it tries to do so, but for some reason it didn't do
it.&nbsp; Maybe it was my Netscape configuration, I don't know for certain.&nbsp;
Besides HTML based help, there are PDF help files too.&nbsp; These require
the Adobe acroread program.&nbsp; Information is provided in the documentation
that accompanies the source on where to find this tool.&nbsp; Unfortunately,
if xfig doesn't find acroread at run time, there are no messages saying
it wasn't found.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>One good thing about xfig
is that it installs under /usr/local by default, which is better for system
administration purposes.&nbsp; Tons of examples are provided in the source
distribution, but these do not get installed so hang on to the source directory
if you want to take a look at them.</font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="50%">
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/">TGIF</a>
- <font size=-1><a href="./gm/tgif.html">screen shots</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>TGIF gets installed under
/usr/X11R6 by default, which is a little more difficult in terms of managing
software packages.&nbsp; Its not clear from the Imakefile, the README or
the Imake templates how to change this behaviour, either.&nbsp; Requirements:&nbsp;
just a regular X Window System installation, plus the Xaw3D library if
you want the 3D buttons and so forth.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The interface has improved
dramatically since the last time I used TGIF, probably 2 years ago.&nbsp;
Its amazing how a little 3D look can improve the impact of the UI.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>An annoying aspect of the
new UI is that mouse clicks don't get recognized unless I move my mouse
after clicking.&nbsp; Seems a minor thing, but after a while it gets to
be a bit annoying.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>TGIF, like xfig, doesn't
realign buttons along the left side either but it does a better job of
UI design by allowing a much smaller window to be fully viewable.&nbsp;
You don't lose as many buttons, options, etc, when you sqeeze the window
way down like you do with xfig.&nbsp; Thats useful on smaller displays.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>I found it a bit hard to
find help using this package, but you can find useful info in the FAQ at
<a href="http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/faq/">http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/faq/</a>.&nbsp;
You can also find the very large man pages, in various formats (ASCII,
PDF, HTML, etc) at <a href="http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/download.html">http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/download.html</a>.&nbsp;
The man page is also available in nroff format in the source distribution.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>There are some examples at
<a href="http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/goodies.html">http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/goodies.html.</a>&nbsp;
There are a few interesting examples there, but not as many as XFig has.</font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="50%">
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="http://www.online.de/home/sketch/Default.htm">Sketch</a>
- <font size=-1><a href="./gm/sketch.html">screen shot</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Sketch is implemented completely
in Python, a high level interpreted language.&nbsp; It has some limitations,
such as the visuals it will support.&nbsp; The Web site says:</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>For Sketch to work
properly with transformed text, you also need an X-server capable of scaling
and transforming fonts. (XFree86 does support this.&nbsp; Otherwise, you
need X11R6 as far as I know).</font></font></blockquote>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Xi Graphics AcceleratedX also
supports this, at least from version 4.1.&nbsp; I don't know if Metro Link
does, but assuming its an R6 conformant server, it should.&nbsp; This is
the first time I've seen this requirement on any X program.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Sketch requires Python v1.5.1
or later, the Python Imaging Library, v1.0b1 and Tcl/TK, version 8.0 or
later.&nbsp; To build the Python Imaging Library (aka PIL) you can't use
the RPM version of Python - you have to build the python distribution from
source and install it.&nbsp; This is because you have to build PIL under
the "Extensions" directory of the Python 1.5 directories.&nbsp; Although
I have Python 1.5 installed on my stock RH 5.2 box, there is no Extensions
directory.&nbsp; Plus, if I just made the directory where 1.5 is installed
(/usr/lib/python1.5), I'd have to build the PIL as the root user.&nbsp;
Not a good thing.&nbsp; So I downloaded the Python 1.5 source, built it,
then tried the PIL buid.&nbsp; It didn't work - something about missing
a config directory.&nbsp; And all this before I could even try to build
sketch.&nbsp; Can you say "pain in the butt?"&nbsp; Why do I have to install
10 packages every time I want 1?&nbsp; I&nbsp; find myself yearning for
the dear old days of Xt and Athena based tools.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Sketch appears to come with
a lot of pages of HTLM documentation, but there isn't really much content
in them.&nbsp; Keep in mind, of course, that sketch (like most of the other
tools) is still in early development.</font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="50%">
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="http://wwwiti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~sattler/killustrator.html">KIllustrator</a>
- <font size=-1><a href="./gm/killustrator.html">screen shots</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>KIllustrator requires the
QT 1.41 libraries and the K Desktop Environment (KDE) version 1.1 or later.&nbsp;
The web site specifically states the current version does not compile with
gcc 2.7.x, which comes standard on RH 5.2.&nbsp; It will compile with egcs-1.x,
however, and that <i>does</i> come with RH 5.2.&nbsp; Its getting annoying:&nbsp;&nbsp;
first the migration from a.out to ELF, then migrating from libc5 to libc6
(aka glibc), and eventually migrating to egcs from gcc.&nbsp; I hope this
last migration is simpler than the previous two.&nbsp; <i>sigh</i>&nbsp;
Is Linux ever going to go 2 full years without some major migration?</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The information on the web
site is quite useful and the tool looks impressive.&nbsp; If you run KDE
already then you might want to take a look at this one.&nbsp; Let me know
if you had much trouble getting it up and running and I'll pass that along
to my readers.&nbsp; (No fair saying it was a breeze if you're one of the
developers!)</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>I didn't try this one because
the installation of KDE is an adventure in itself (there are a ton of packages
listed on the KDE home page and its not completely clear which ones are
mandatory and which are not).&nbsp; Any application that is so tied to
some other application is a little more than I'm willing to deal with right
now.&nbsp; Even the Gimp isn't tied to GNOME.&nbsp; Killustrator should
be decoupled, if possible, from KDE so non-KDE users could enjoy its benefits
as well.</font></font>
<br>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="50%">
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="http://www.vicksburg.com/~phoenix/main.html">GILT</a>
- <font size=-1><a href="./gm/gilt.html">screen shot</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>This is a merge, of sorts,
of XFIG and Gimp, in very early stages of development.&nbsp; The project
is currently a one-man work. The goal is a freehand-like program with the
following features:</font></font>
<ul>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>uses openGL (hardware acceleration
possible)</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>transparent objects</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>gimp user-interface (means good
user-interface)</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>plug-ins and scripting (currently
under work)</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>most wanted: loading most postscript
files</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>multiple layers</font></font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>guides</font></font></li>
</ul>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>According to the author, Ralf
Engles:</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The current state
of the project is pre-alpha and not usable but making fast progress.&nbsp;&nbsp;
I am currently looking for experienced programmers. My plan is to be faster
than the Correl-Draw Version for Linux, which is hard as a one man team.</font></font></blockquote>
<hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="50%">
<br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="http://www.demon.co.uk/titan/">IPAD/XEBOT</a>
- <font size=-1><a href="./gm/xebot.html">screen shots</a></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>These tools are neither shareware
nor freeware.&nbsp; They are currently only available in binary format
and are free for evaluation purposes.&nbsp; XEBOT has not superceded IPAD,
but the Web site recommends looking at it instead since it includes all
the functionality of IPAD plus some extras. According to the author, Sergio
Masci:</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>IPAD is a vector
graphics tool and XEBOT is a forms / dialog editor come IPAD-Pro core interface.&nbsp;
IPAD, XEBOT and ZMECH are all derived apps built on the IPAD-Pro core.&nbsp;
IPAD uses a large subset of the IPAD-Pro interface in its raw form. In
the past users were encouraged to use XEBOT instead of IPAD because XEBOT
has all the vector manipulation capabilities of IPAD and at that time I
did not have the time to spare to maintain the seperate IPAD release.</font></font></blockquote>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The binary comes in SVGA and
X11R6 versions.&nbsp; The X11R6 version is not completely statically linked
and is compiled with libc5.&nbsp; That means RH5.2 users (and possibly
others) may have to do a little fiddling with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment
variable to get this to work.</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>When I ran both XEBOT and
IPAD I got a bunch of X protocol errors.&nbsp; This is because neither
program likes running in 24-bit (TrueColor) colour visuals.&nbsp; I had
to restart in 8-bit mode (256 color) to run this.</font></font>
<br>&nbsp;
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/webwonderings.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1999 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1999 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/musings.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">GILT Screen Shot</font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>This screen shot of GILT&nbsp;was
taken from the GILT&nbsp;Web site.&nbsp; It looks a lot like the GIMP because
its based on GIMP&nbsp;code.</font></font>
<center>
<p><img SRC="./gm/images/GILT.gif" height=652 width=470></center>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/musings.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">KIllustrator Screen Shots</font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>These screen shots of KIllustrator
were taken from the KIllustrator Web site.</font></font>
<center>
<p><img SRC="./gm/images/killu-new.gif" height=407 width=576>
<p><img SRC="./gm/images/killu-polygon.gif" height=278 width=418></center>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/musings.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Sktetch Screen Shots</font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>This screen shot of sketch
was taken directly from the Sketch web site.&nbsp; The following text is
also from that site:</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>The drawing shown
in the window is, you might have guessed it, the tiger from ghostscript
(tiger.ps in the examples diretory). It can be imported into Sketch as
an Adobe Illustrator file (this means that you can edit it just as if it
had been drawn in Sketch in the first place. The only other file in ghostscript's
examples directory that can imported in this way is golfer.ps).</font></font></blockquote>
<center><table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/sketch-main-window.gif" height=523 width=558></td>
<td NOSAVE></td>
</tr>
</table></center>
<br>&nbsp;
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/musings.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">TGIF Screen Shots</font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>These screen shots of tgif
were taken on my system.&nbsp; The first shows an example file provided
from the Goodies Web page.&nbsp; The second shows a unique feature for
TGIF - tear off menus.&nbsp; This can be quite handy, although if you're
like me they can get lost easy if you have AutoRaise configured in your
window manager.</font></font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>Sorry for the poor detail
in the images.&nbsp; I just wanted to give a little idea of what you get
with TGIF, so you can at least see some of the UI&nbsp;differences in the
various tools.</font></font>
<br>&nbsp;
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 COLS=2 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/tgif-1.gif" height=345 width=364></td>
<td NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/tgif-2.gif" height=345 width=364></td>
</tr>
</table>
<br>&nbsp;
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/musings.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">XEBOT/IPAD Screen Shots</font></b>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>These screen shots of IPAD
were taken from the XEBOT/IPAD web site.&nbsp; They don't show the interface,
only what you can do with the package.&nbsp; I don't have any screen shots
of the UI.</font></font>
<center>
<p><img SRC="./gm/images/ipdm7001.gif" height=259 width=269>
<p><img SRC="./gm/images/ipdm7002.gif" height=265 width=300></center>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- =============================================================
These pages are designed by Michael J. Hammel. Permission to
use all graphics and other content is granted provided you give
me (or the original authors/artists) credit for the work and this
copyright notice is not removed.
(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
============================================================= !-->
<br><img SRC="./gm/images/musings.jpg" height=50 width=245>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH="100%"><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">XFig Screen Shots</font></b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>These screen shots of xfig
were taken on my system.&nbsp; The first two show a couple of the example
files provided with the source distribution.&nbsp; There were some even
better ones than these, but they had restrictions on public use so I thought
I'd better not use them here.&nbsp; The last image is the file selection
box.&nbsp; It looks a little different than what you might be familiar
with when using GTK, KDE or Motif applications but considering the widget
set it used its pretty good.&nbsp; You even get a little preview window
of the files!</font></font>
<br>&nbsp;
<br>&nbsp;
<table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 COLS=2 WIDTH="100%" NOSAVE >
<tr NOSAVE>
<td NOSAVE><img SRC="./gm/images/xfig-1.jpg" height=414 width=399></td>
<td><img SRC="./gm/images/xfig-2.jpg" height=414 width=499></td>
</tr>
</table>
<center>
<p><img SRC="./gm/images/xfig-3.jpg" height=560 width=497></center>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="4" BGCOLOR="#000000" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><img SRC="./gm/images/cleardot.gif" ALT="indent" align=LEFT></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table WIDTH="100%" >
<tr>
<td ALIGN=RIGHT><font size=-2>&copy; 1998 by <a href="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">Michael
J. Hammel</a></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Linux Primer Series</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:rjenkins62@netscape.net">Ron Jenkins</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<h2>
Introduction to Disaster Recovery</h2>
<b>Copyright 1998 - 1999 Ron Jenkins. All Rights Reserved.</b>
<br><b>P.O. Box 229, Kirbyville, MO, 65679</b>
<p><b>Introduction</b>
<br>The Linux Primer Series, FKA the Linux Installation Primer, is a body
of work designed to provide the reader with clear, concise information
about the Linux Operating System and it's many powerful features.
<p><b>Disclaimer</b>: While the author takes every precaution to insure
the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author assumes no
responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the
use of the information contained herein.
<p><b>Disclosure</b>: Here I will declare any affiliations or business
relationships I have, as soon as I get some, (hint, hint.)
<p><b>New versions of this document</b>
<br>You can view the latest version of this document via the URL:
<br>http://www.grapevine.net/~jenkinsr/primer/&nbsp; (Not up Yet, hopefully
by the end of the month.
<br>I encourage you to mail any questions or comments about this document
to Ron Jenkins, rjenkins62@netscape.net.
<p><b>Recent Changes and News</b>
<br><i>News -</i>
<br>I had intended to address printing issues this month, but after getting
all my goodies in the post - I'm not making any money yet, but I'm getting
free stuff - always a good sign.
<p>Caldera and Debian have just put the latest release of their distribution
into the fray, and RedHat announced 6.0 today (although so far I've played
h*ll getting into the FTP site, and Slackware draws ever closer to it's
next release (with KDE for those that have to have it!)
<p>So, I will hold off a bit until I can make sure the changes in the new
distributions won't alter the printing functions.
<p>So, I've decided to discuss that nasty thing we all hate called disaster
recovery.
<p>I have received hundreds of email messages from people inquiring about
assistance in resolving a problem they might have.
<p>As always, I am happy to help whenever I can, in any small way that
I can, however, I get 50-100 messages per day, so please be patient with
me, I will answer messages in the order they are received.
<p>Finally, there have been several instances where I have replied to a
request, only to have my mail bounced back to me by the remote server due
to "excessive spamming" from netscape.net.
<p>This is silly and completely unnecessary. Only unskilled or lazy admins
take the approach of denying an entire domain based on the action of a
few bad individuals.
<p>So, if you do not receive a reply from me within a week, it is likely
you have a lazy or unskilled admin at your ISP. I suggest you call them
and request they deny service properly, on a case by case basis. If they
are unwilling or unable to do this, get another ISP.
<p><i>Changes</i> - none
<p><b>Before You Start</b>
<br>Sit down for a minute, and run through your disaster recovery plan
in your mind. Get out a pencil and paper, and let me share a few of my
mistakes with you, hopefully preventing you from making them all over again.
<p><b>Hardware and Software, and Wetware Requirements</b>
<br>While I will discuss various hardware and software solutions, as well
as some things you probably may have overlooked - (don't feel bad, I did
too and hosed some machines.)
<p>The most important quality, or requirement, is the diligence to make
a plan, stick to it, always, and constantly strive to update and improve
it.
<p>As we move more and more to an information dependent society, a critical
failure can cause heinous, cascading effects that could conceivably deny
you your basic human rights, like your phone line and power for your computer
and modem, and oh yeah civilization as we know it.
<p><b><i>And most important of all, learn Ron's two rules of Disaster Recovery:</i></b>
<br><b><i>1. FEAR IS GOOD.</i></b>
<br><b><i>2. PARANOIA IS BETTER.</i></b>
<br>&nbsp;
<h4>
Disaster Recovery and it's place in the information age</h4>
<b>Overview</b>
<br>The purpose of this column will be to give you some ideas you may not
have thought of before, remind you of a few we all skip all too often.
<p>By the time you are finished with this column, you should have a broad
grasp of the spectrum of tasks and problems grouped under the heading "Disaster
Recovery," and know where to find further information and tools to develop
your own unique implementation suitable to your installation.
<p><b>Basic Tasks</b>
<br>Environmental Concerns
<br>Electrical Concerns
<br>Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS)
<br>Logical Diversity
<br>Physical Diversity
<br>Geographical Diversity
<p><b>Detailed Tasks</b>
<br><i>Environmental Concerns</i>
<br>Computers, like all Electronic devices are sensitive to heat, dust,
and gunk.
<p>While it may not be practical for a you to build a cold room for your
home computer, there are still things you can do to minimize the wear and
tear on your system:
<p>Get an air cleaner to remove the dust from the room.
<p>Either place your computer in a cool room in the house, or possibly
get a
<br>window unit.
<p>Don't smoke in the same room as the computer. You have no idea the nasty
goop I've found inside a customer's case.
<p><i>Electrical Concerns</i>
<br>Make sure you have sufficient power to operate your gigafloppin', numbercrunchin'
game mother. And printer. And scanner. And fax. And so on.
<p>Surge suppressers are a big market item, and deservedly so, as far as
they go. However, to protect your data whether at home or at work (sometimes
these are the same places,) it is critical to insure your equipment is
provided a clean, filtered, consistent, and constant source of power.
<p>Surge suppressers merely attempt to reduce the amount of excess energy,
or spike from damaging your computer.
<p>They do this by placing a Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) between the energy
source and the computer, sort of like a fuse. (this is not really how it
works, but you get the idea.)
<p>However, they have two great failings - most of them don't inform you
when the MOV is no longer functional, and they provide no power themselves
to allow the user to perform a clean shutdown of he system.
<p>"Harshing" a UNIX box, or any box for that matter, can do really nasty
things to the file system.
<p><i>Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS)</i>
<br>Enter the UPS. The UPS provides surge protection for the line cord,
and the phone line in some cases, contains a battery to provide the clean
shutdown capability, and can usually be configured to shutdown your machine
without human intervention.
<p>There are many good companies out there, producing many good UPS's.
I can only say that I use Tripp-Lite and APS products exclusively, for
two reasons - one, they are damn good units, and two, I have had occasion
to put them to the test on the "Lifetime Warranty" claim, and both companies
have come through and went out of their way to get me back up and running.
<p><i>Logical Diversity</i>
<br>Here comes the dirty word - BACKUPS!
<p>We all know we should do them, and we have all been caught without them.
But with the nature of business today, a backup failure can literally mean
life or death for a company.
<p>I'm not going to get into the specifics of the best device, best programs,
etc.
<p>Rather, I will try to inculcate (scare) you into adopting a plan, and
STICKING WITH IT!
<p>Whatever the media you have or plan to get, it is important to develop
a written backup plan, coupled with a hard copy backup log.
<p>These two tools are essential to make sure the backup was performed,
verified, and labeled and stored in the proper place. It is also a good
idea to have the backup operator sign in and out of the log.
<p>How often to back up?
<br>A good question with no set answer.
<p>What I usually tell my clients is to backup anything critical to operations
daily and weekly using a minimum of 16 media if they are a Monday - Friday
shop, 18 if they are a Monday - Saturday shop.
<p>This is implemented as follows:
<br>5 tapes per week lasting two weeks 10 tapes total for incremental backups.
<p>2 tapes per week lasting three weeks 6 tapes total for full backups.
<p>This gives you a three week rollback capability for when someone in
a suit comes in freaking out about a report they deleted a week ago. (This
could also be a good time for salary negotiation.)
<p><i>Physical Diversity</i>
<br>This is the idea of storing the same data in or on more than one physical
device. Some common implementations of this idea are disk mirroring, striping,
and other hardware and software solutions grouped under the term Redundant
Array of Inexpensive Devices (RAID.)
<p>Linux comes with md raid utilities, on board, and I understand these
are expanded in the new releases using the 2.2 kernel. Stay tuned.
<p><i>Geographical Diversity</i>
<br>Remember the backup tapes you make? make copies and put them somewhere
other than your primary installation.
<p>If they contain sensitive or proprietary data, a safety deposit box
is a good idea.
<p>All done now right? Oh, no grass hopper. Now send one to a different
part of the country than where you reside.
<p><b><i>Can you say FLOOD? EARTHQUAKE? TORNADO? Sure, I knew you could.</i></b><b><i></i></b>
<p>Now that I've hopefully scared the heck out of you, or before you start
laughing at the skinny, crippled UNIX nut that gets paid obscene fees,
think for a minute about two things - <i>What if your company lost all
it's data irrevocably. Could you still stay in business?</i> Ah, now you
see why the cryp makes the bucks.
<p><b>Finishing Up</b>
<br>All kidding aside, I hope I have impressed on you in some small way,
the importance of a thorough, comprehensive plan to deal with data Disasters.
<p>I have seen companies go out of business because of this. I wrote this
to try to keep you from being one of them.
<p><b>Other sources of Information</b>
<p><b>General Linux references</b>
<br>http://www.redhat.com/
<br>http://www.slackware.com/
<br>http://www.calderasystems.com/
<br>http://www.suse.com/
<p><b>Topic specific references</b>
<br>Network Administrator's guide
<br>System Administrator's Guide
<br>UPS HOWTO
<p><b>To learn more</b>
<br>http://www.ugu.com/
<br>http://www.webzone.net/jimm/dr_links.htm
<br>&nbsp;
<P> <HR> <P>
<center><H4>Previous ``Linux Primer'' Columns</H4></center>
<p>
<A HREF="../issue32/jenkins1.html">Linux Primer #1, September 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue33/jenkins2.html">Linux Primer #2, October 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue34/jenkins3.html">Linux Primer #3, November 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue35/jenkins4.html">Linux Primer #4, December 1998</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue36/jenkins5.html">Linux Primer #5, January 1999</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue37/jenkins6.html">Linux Primer #6, February 1999</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue38/jenkins7.html">Linux Primer #7, March 1999</A><BR>
<A HREF="../issue39/jenkins8.html">Linux Primer #8, March 1999</A><BR>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Ron Jenkins <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Ray-Traced Backgrounds</font></H1>
<h4>By <a href="mailto: layers@marktwain.net">Larry Ayers</a></h4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<center><h3><font color="maroon">Introduction</font></h3></center>
<p>Ever had the feeling that your CPU, able to execute floating-point
calculations with lightning speed, isn't working hard enough as it idly coasts
along? A new automatic ray-tracer called Raychase will remedy this situation.
A Dutch programmer known as flux, who seems to be associated with a company or
organization called Squashed Rabbits, has released a multi-platform
&quot;random recursive ray-tracer&quot; which will periodically render
desktop or web-page backgrounds, either tiled or full-screen. It is intended
to be run continuously; on my low-end Pentium machine a new desktop background
is generated every three or four minutes. Flux, when asked the question
&quot;What is the purpose of Raychase?&quot;, answered:
<blockquote>
Create pretty & wacky pictures - arty farty stuff - eye candy -
you name it - sorta ...
</blockquote>
<center><h3><font color="maroon">Installation and More Details</font></H3>
</center>
<p>Installation of Raychase consists of nothing more than unpacking the tar.gz
archives (there are two, one containing datafiles and the other binaries) in a
convenient location. Two executables are included, an optimized fast-running
one called <i>raychase.fast</i> and a slower debugging version,
<i>raychase.debug</i> which will output copious messages to the console while
it is running.
<p>Raychase makes use of a variety of pigment settings, graphic filters, and
preset templates which are chosen randomly for each successive image. These
generated images aren't completely random, though. They remind me of images
from science fiction movies; shaded spheres, lens-flares, and odd textures
abound. They could be called geometric abstractions. Here is a typical
rendering:<br>
<p><img alt="Raychase Image" src="./gx/ayers/ray.gif">
<p>
<p>and here is another:<br>
<p><img alt="Raychase Image" src="./gx/ayers/ray2.gif">
<hr>
<p>Raychase's behavior is controlled with command-line options. The command<br>
<p><b><kbd>raychase.fast -e</kbd></b>
<p>will generate fullscreen desktop backgrounds, while the command<br>
<p><b><kbd>raychase.fast -e -x64 -y64</kbd></b>
<p>will tile the desktop background with 64x64 tiled images. Naturally the
smaller images render faster; a background which changes every few seconds
would be distracting, but running Raychase this way for a while will provide a
demonstration of the different types of images. It's also possible to run
Raychase without a display, with the images saved to PPM files. As an
example, this command will save 640x480 images to the <kbd>/tmp</kbd>
directory:<br>
<p>
<b><kbd>raychase.fast -x640 -y480 -d -s /tmp/%04d.ppm</kbd></b>
<p>A command such as this could be used to save files to a cgi-bin directory
where they could be used as a source of periodically changing web-page
backgrounds.
<p>You don't have to run Raychase randomly. There are command-line options
which allow you to specify the filters and pigments. Even the faster binary
outputs a certain amount of status information to the console, so the
variables randomly chosen to generate a particular image are accessible and
could be re-used as command parameters.
<center><h3><font color="maroon">Availability</font></h3></center>
<p>The current home site, from which binaries and data-archives can be
obtained for a variety of operating systems (including both libc5 and glibc
flavors of Linux) is this
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7845/">web-page</a>.
Raychase at this time is a binary-only application, but there is a chance that
at least a portion of the source-code will be released in the future.
<hr>
<!-- hhmts start -->
Last modified: Sat May 1 12:09:14 CDT 1999
<!-- hhmts end -->
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Larry Ayers <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">A Visual Packet Monitor</font></H1>
<h4>By <a href="mailto: layers@marktwain.net">Larry Ayers</a></h4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<center><H3><font color="maroon">Introduction</font></h3></center>
<p>For the past few years I've used internal modems, but I still miss the
flickering lights on the first modem I ever used, an external unit which
seemed fast at the time. One of these lights indicated incoming data-packets
while another showed the outgoing. The advantages of these inobtrusive
lights were that they didn't occupy screen real-estate and they could be monitored
with peripheral vision.
<p>Recently Matthew Bevan released a new version of NetLED, a small utility
which monitors any of several interfaces such as PPP, SLIP, or ethernet using
the keyboard's light emitting diodes (LEDs). This is a great idea, since
these LEDs aren't particularly useful in their native state. I've never had
any use for the Caps Lock key, or its LED; I like to have that key generate
the Escape key key-code (easing VI mode-switching), which leaves its LED open
for alternate uses such as NetLED.
<p>NetLED is a tiny program (meant to be run as a daemon) which can be left
running even when a network interface is inactive. The command syntax is
simple:<br>
<p><kbd>netled [console] [interface]</kbd><br>
<p>As an example, I use it to monitor activity on a dial-in PPP
connection:<br>
<p><kbd>netled console ppp0</kbd><br>
<p>The <b>console</b> parameter, if just &quot;console&quot; is specified,
allows the LEDs to flash on all consoles, while <b>ppp0</b> tells the program
to monitor the first PPP device. Substitute <b>eth0</b> in order to monitor
the first ethernet device.
<p>A strongly worded warning in the README file encourages the user to follow
the recommended syntax:<br>
<pre>
NOTE: DO NOT PREPEND /DEV/ TO ANY OF THE DEVICES!!!
I MOCK ANYONE WHO ASKS ME HOW TO FIX THEIR COMPUTER
WHEN THEY ARE DOING THIS!
PROPER: netled console lo
NOT: netled /dev/console /dev/loop0
</pre>
<p>I'm curious as to the nature of the dire consequences implied by this
warning, but not curious enough to try it!
<p>NetLED can be started manually (I've aliased&nbsp; <kbd>'netled console ppp0'</kbd>
&nbsp;to &nbsp;<kbd>'led'</kbd>) or it could be started in either an init script or as an
addition to a PPP start-up script.
<p>If you would like to try it out, the source code can be obtained from this
WWW <a href="http://mars.ark.com/~mbevan/netled/">site</a>:
<p>http://mars.ark.com/~mbevan/netled/.
<hr>
<!-- hhmts start -->
Last modified: Sat May 1 12:15:07 CDT 1999
<!-- hhmts end -->
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Larry Ayers <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
In our July 1998 issue, we printed an article called <A
HREF="../issue30/wuest.html">LinuxCAD Impressions</A> by Robert Wuest. In the
interest of fair play, here is the official response to that review from
Software Forge, Inc.
<P> <HR> <P>
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Official Reaction of Software Forge Inc. to "LinuxCAD Review"</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:Unixguy@aol.com">Robert Weaver, President Software
Forge Inc.</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
To put this in context let us briefly answer the question "What is
LinuxCAD?":
<P>
LinuxCAD, <A HREF="http://www.linuxcad.com/">http://www.linuxcad.com/</A>,
is an AutoCAD for Linux for all practical purposes it implements
all major features of ACAD in such a way that new users (who had ACAD
experience before)
do not need any additional training to start working with LinuxCAD).
<P>
But more then that LinuxCAD is a general purpose visual modelling system
that runs on
all Unix platforms (Linux, LinuxPPC, Solaris x86, RS/6000, BSDI, FreeBSD,
Solaris SPARC,
SCO UNIX) and on Windows NT.
<P>
LinuxCAD can be used in:
<ul>
<li> Software Development Flowcharting
<li> Entity Relationship Diagramming
<li> Network planning
<li> System Administration Diagramming and you actually can start
your sysadmin tasks from inside LinuxCAD
<li> Mechanical Engineering drafting
<li> PCB and schematic design (easily integrated with routing programs)
<li> Geographicsl Information Systems,
<li> Any kind of drafting where integration with database is important
<li> Floor plans for buildings and facilities
<li> Architectural Drafting
<li> Front end for programmable rendering systems like OpenGL
<li> Front end for any software that may require graphics editor functions
<li> Can be used to replace ACAD in every application later is used!!!
</ul>
LinuxCAD as general purpose CAD and Visual Modelling System directly
competes
with CAD system AutoCAD by Autodesk which currently approaching status of
complete monopoly
in CAD marketplace as Microsoeft is in Operating Systems.
<P>
Do the math yourself:
<P>
To do typical CAD works you need to install so called "AutoCAD for PCs" on
Windows NT workstation:
<ul>
<li> AutoCAD for PCs costs $2900 a copy
<li> AutoCAD upgrade alone costs $400 at least or more (up to a dealer).
<li> Windows NT costs $200 or more.
</ul>
<P>
You can replace all of the above to:
<ul>
<li> Linux which is free
<li> LinuxCAD which is only $99
</ul>
You have at the least $500 in savings per one drafters workstation,
if you are new user you will save $3000 in comparison to AutoCAD!
<P>
LinuxCAD indirectly competes with Microsoft as well, although we support
Windows NT.
We do not distinguish it as main or dominant platform and we trying to level
the platforms
as it relates to LinuxCAD with emphasize to Linux for Intel as main platform
for LinuxCAD.
<P>
LinuxCAD captures the most important aspects of ACAD as: entity selection
mechanism,
same dialog in the command line, object snaps (as intersect, mid, center
, tangent, perpend
and others), LinuxCAD allows to use SHX formats and can exchange data to
ACAD and many
other systems.
<P>
<HR>
<P>
LinuxCAD imposes tremendous threat to Autodesk, as it provides all the
features the
AutoCAD provides including programable AutoCAD's architecture. More then that
LinuxCAD
allows smooth transition from AutoCAD to LinuxCAD without additional training.
<P>
In any case: about 70% of 2D drafting works and 50% at least of 3D works
may be done
in $99 LinuxCAD on Linux instead of $3000 Acad on Ms-NT. Every sale of
LinuxCAD translates
to automatic $3000 loss to Autodesk, THAT IS WHY MR ROBERT WUEST is out there
trying to discredit us. They are afraid of the LinuxCAD, the product that
has achieved that
kind of major market impact and user support as LinuxCAD has achieved, just
in one year!
<P>
They want not to allow us to grow, now when we are small, and they have
used that review
to do it. Autodesk wants again to rob the consumer from his right to choose
as they did it with Generic CADD
and many other small CAD packages! But they are not succeding this time!
<P><HR> <P>
Our official responce to LinuxCAD review is long overdue and here it is:
<ul>
<li> The review does not reflect reality and it is outdated.
<li> The business goes as usual, we ship LinuxCAD immediately after receiving
your orders, we are continuing
our development efforts, THE QUALITY OF LINUXCAD HAS IMPROVED 10 TIMES OVER
SINCE THAT REVIEW WAS WRITTEN.
<li> Not one, not hundreds of organized fraudulent reviews will stop us from
commitment to our product.
<li> Consumers can relay on LinuxCAD in the long run, especially Enterprise
Customers will be provided
with exceptional support and with great volume discounts.
So far we have promised half year of free downloads for new versions when
we started a year ago,
and no one really has been cut off from new versions. We have denied
upgrades to only one customer:<BR>
the author of that fraudulent review. <BR>
Users of LinuxCAD are actually getting more then a year of free
upgrades and that may last even longer, we have no reason to cut people off--
we got enough new customers out there.
<li> The review also distorts our pricing policy:
<ul>
<li> We sell LinuxCAD (all modules and extension included) for one flat
price - $99. (for Intel).
<li> $99 includes: All 2D, 3D, printing, plotting, programming
extension, all again included
<li> in $99 for Linux Intel platform.
</ul>
<li> The reason that demo is available only from time to time: because of
significant workload we carry
supporting LinuxCAD on great variety of platforms , supporting and regularly
synchronising demo version would
waste our efforts, although we looking to release demo at a time and place
of our choice.
<li> LinuxCAD is something every Linux user can benefit from and not only
designers and drafters.
<li> LinuxCAD in our opinion will give entirely new face and capabilities to
your Linux desktop,
moves it one step close to Linux worldwide dominance.
</ul>
We are hard working, good guys!
Disregard that "anti-Linux" lie you may have seen in that review!
<P>
Robert Weaver, President<BR>
Software Forge Inc. (makers of the leading CAD product for UNIX and X/Windows), http://www.linuxcad.com
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Robert Weaver <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Using diald to Connect to the Internet</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:mark@tcu-inc.com">Mark Nielsen</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
Hello! This is a brief article about how to setup Diald on a RedHat 5.2
system. Yes, I know RedHat 6.0 is out, but this will be for a RedHat 5.2
system anyways. I wasn't able to test it on a RedHat 6.0 system in time.
<p>
What is Diald? It is program that runs in the background of your Linux
system which will connect you to the internet through a modem anytime you try
to get something from the internet. Thus, instead of manually dialing to get
connected to the internet, all you have to do is type a url into your
web browser, and if you are not already connected, it will attempt to connect
for you. It also has the capability of disconnecting you after a period
of inactivity with the internet.
<p>
Here are some more resources to help you.
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.loonie.net/~eschenk/diald.html">
Diald homepage</a>
<li><a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com/support/QuickNet.html"> Mark's setup</a> for QuickNet customers.
<a href="http://www.qn.net">QuickNet</a> is a local ISP in Columbus, Ohio which
supports Linux.
<li><a href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/network/serial/">FTP
site where diald is located</a>
<li><a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com/mark/articles/diald/">
My copy of the diald rpms.</a> I don't remember where I got
them from.
</ol>
<hr>
This article is going to briefly tell you how to setup diald easily with RedHat 5.2.
<ol>
<li> First, download the
<a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com/mark/articles/diald/">
RPMS</a> or from
<a href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/network/serial/">
sunsite the tar files</a>.
I usually use the rpms.
<li> Install the two rpms
<br> rpm -Uhv diald*.rpm
<li> Next, use my configuration of <a href="#diald.conf">/etc/diald/diald.conf</a>
</ol>
After you have downloaded the rpms, installed them, and replaced the
diald.conf file, you need to do three things, edit diald.conf, activate
the diald service, and make sure you have added ppp0 to the RedHat control
panel.
<ol><li>
Replace MY_USERNAME_FOR_MODEM with the username you are connecting to your
ISP. I am not sure if you actually need to do this, but it works for me.
</li>
<li>Okay, now add a "ppp0" interface (modem interface) to your computer.
This can get lengthy. Here is
<a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com/support/QuickNet.html">
TCU's article about setting up
ppp0</a> for <a href="http://www.qn.net">QuickNet</a> users. If you are
unable to get to that article, look at
<a href="#brief">my brief notes about how to setup</a> a
ppp0 connection using RedHat's Control Panel.
<li> Next, you need to activate diald. The easiest way to do this is
<br> /etc/rc.d/init.d/diald start
<p>Or if you want to have it activated when your computer starts,
<br>chkconfig --add diald
</ol>
DONE!
<p>
<hr>
<a name=diald.conf></a>
<pre>
#
# diald.conf modified by Mark
#
accept any 1200 any
mode ppp
device /dev/modem
speed 57600
modem
lock
dynamic
local 137.130.2.44
remote 137.130.1.14
pppd-options name MY_USERNAME_FOR_MODEM
up-delay 5
defaultroute
crtscts
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/chat-ppp0"
redial-timeout 10
fifo /etc/diald/diald.ctl
</pre>
<p>
<hr>
<a name=brief></a>
To setup your modem to com1 or com2
<OL>
<LI>
# For com1</LI>
<LI>
rm /dev/modem</LI>
<LI>
ln -s /dev/cua0 /dev/modem</LI>
<LI>
# For com2</LI>
<LI>
rm /dev/modem</LI>
<LI>
ln -s /dev/cua1 /dev/modem</LI>
</OL>
<p>
<P><BR>Here are the steps I did to get ppp setup. I did this as root.
First, log in as root
and start xwindows. The command to start Xwindows is "startx".
<OL>
<LI>
The control panel should be there, choose network configuration.
If it is not there, type this command in the xterm prompt to start
the control-panel "control-panel".
</LI>
<LI>
In this program, choose "Interfaces".</LI>
<LI>
Click on "Add".</LI>
<LI>
Choose "ppp".</LI>
<LI>
Enter in the phone number, username, and password.</LI>
<LI>
Click on "Use pap authentication".</LI>
<LI>
Click on "done".</LI>
<LI>
Click on "save".</LI>
<li> Now we need to set your DNS up correctly. Click on "Names" in the top
menu of the Network Configurator. You should see "Nameservers" there.
<li> Enter "127.0.0.1" as one of the entries unless you have the number
which should have been given to you by your ISP. 127.0.0.1 is a bad choice
and should only be used as a last resource. Also, if you enter 127.0.0.1,
you must have your DNS server installed locally and running in order for
it to work. It is highly recommended to put in a nameserver number which
your isp should have.
<li> Click on "Save".
<li> Click on "Interfaces" in the top menu.
<LI>
Now click on "Activate" for the ppp option you just made.</LI>
</OL>
To activate and deactivate the modem as root, again, in the control-panel,
choose "Network Configurations", then choose "Interfaces", select "ppp0",
then click on "Activate" or "Deactivate" or turn the modem off and on.
<hr>
<a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com/mark">Mark Nielsen</a> works for
<a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com">The Computer Underground</a> as a Linux geek.
It is his first job that is 99% Linux oriented which leaves him ethically
clean and feeling good about the work he does.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Mark Nielsen <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Will Microsoft leave Mindcraft twisting slowy, slowy in the wind?</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com">Eric S. Raymond</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
Microsoft's latest FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) tactic may be backfiring.
<P>
A 21 April ITWeb story [1] reported results by a benchmarking shop
called Mindcraft that supposedly showed NT to be faster than Linux at
SMB and Web service. The story also claimed that technical support
for tuning the Linux system had been impossible to find.
<P>
Previous independent benchmarks (such as [2]) have found Linux and
other Unixes to be dramatically faster and more efficient than NT, and
independent observers (beginning with a celebrated InfoWorld article in
1998 [3]) have lauded the Linux community's responsiveness to support
problems. Linux fans smelled a rat somewhere (uttering responses
typfied by [4]), and amidst the ensuing storm of protest some
interesting facts came to light.
<P>
1. The benchmark had been paid for by Microsoft. The Mindcraft press
release failed to mention this fact.
<P>
2. Mindcraft did in fact get a useful answer [5] to its request for
help tuning the Linux system. But they did not answer the request for
more information, neither did they follow the tuning suggestions given
Also, they forged the reply email address to conceal themselves --
the connection was made after the fact by a Usenetter who noticed that
the unusual machine configuration described in the request exactly matched
that of the test system in the Mindcraft results.
<P>
3. Red Hat, the Linux distributor Mindcraft says it asked for help,
reports that it got one phone call from them on the installation-help
line, which isn't supposed to answer post-installation questions about
things like advanced server tuning. Evidently Mindcraft's efforts to
get help tuning the system were feeble -- at best incompetent, at
worst cynical gestures.
<P>
4. An entertainingly-written article [6] by the head of the
development team for Samba (one of the key pieces of Linux software
involved in the benchmark) described how Mindcraft could have done a
better job of tuning. The article revealed that one of Mindcraft's
Samba tweaks had the effect of slowing their Linux down quite drastically.
<P>
5. Another Usenet article [7] independently pointed out that Mindcraft had
deliberately chosen a logging format that imposed a lot of overhead on
Apache (the web sever used for the Linux tests).
<P>
So far, so sordid -- a fairly standard tale of Microsoft paying to get
exactly the FUD it wants from a nominally independent third party.
But the story took a strange turn today (22 Mar) when Microsoft
spokesperson Ian Hatton effectively admitted [8] that the test had
been rigged! "A very highly-tuned NT server" Mr. Hatton said "was
pitted against a very poorly tuned Linux server".
<P>
He then attempted to spin the whole episode around by complaining that
Microsoft and its PR company had received "malicious and obscene"
email from Linux fans and slamming this supposed "unprofessionalism".
One wonders if Hatton believes it would be "unprofessional" to address
strong language to a burglar caught in the act of nipping the family
silver.
<P>
In any case, Microsoft's underhanded tactics seem (as with its clumsy
"astroturf" campaign against the DOJ lawsuit) likely to come back to
haunt it. The trade press had largely greeted the Mindcraft results with
yawns and skepticism even before Hatton's admission. And it's hard to
see how Microsoft will be able to credibly quote anti-Linux benchmarks
in the future after this fiasco.
<P>
[1] "Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 out performs Linux"<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/1999/9904211045.asp">
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/1999/9904211045.asp</A>
<P>
[2] "Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX"<BR>
<A
HREF="http://www.kirch.net/unix-nt.html">http://www.kirch.net/unix-nt.html</A>
<P>
[3] "1997 Product of the Year"<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayTC.pl?/97poy.supp.htm">
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayTC.pl?/97poy.supp.htm</A>
<P>
[4] "Mindcraft Reality Check"<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.linux-hw.com/~eric/mindcraft.html">
http://www.linux-hw.com/~eric/mindcraft.html</A>
<P>
[5] "Re: Need help with performance"<BR>
<A HREF="http://x14.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=453900037&CONTEXT=924792680.312 147973&hitnum=7">
http://x14.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=453900037&CONTEXT=924792680.312 147973&hitnum=7</A>
<P>
[6] "Trust no one: How Mindcraft could have made a better Linux file
server"<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-04/lw-04-mindcraft.html">
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-04/lw-04-mindcraft.html</A>
<P>
[7] "It's the old DNS logging trick, Re: Is NT really 3.7 times faster than
Linux?"<BR>
<A HREF="http://x13.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=qs]/getdoc.xp?AN=469420638&CONTEXT=924804285.163 6696091&hitnum=6">
http://x13.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=qs]/getdoc.xp?AN=469420638&CONTEXT=924804285.163 6696091&hitnum=6</A>
<P>
[8] "Outrage at Microsoft's independent, yet sponsored NT 4.0/Linux
research"<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/enterprise/1999/9904221410.asp">
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/enterprise/1999/9904221410.asp</A>
<P>
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1999, Eric S. Raymond <BR>
Published in Issue 41 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1999</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H2>
<A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">
<IMG SRC="../gx/newlogo.jpg" width=600 height=256 border=0
ALT="Linux Gazette... making Linux just a little more fun!"></a>
</H2>
<H4>Published by <A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/"><I>Linux Journal</I></A></H4>
</center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H1><font color="maroon">The Back Page</font></H1>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage41.html#authors">About This Month's Authors</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage41.html#notlinux">Not Linux</a>
</ul>
<a name="authors"></a>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">About This Month's Authors</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Larry Ayers</H4>
Larry lives on a small farm
in northern Missouri, where he is currently engaged in building a
timber-frame house for his family. He operates a portable band-saw mill,
does general woodworking, plays the fiddle and searches for rare
prairie plants, as well as growing shiitake mushrooms. He is also
struggling with configuring a Usenet news server for his local ISP.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Jim Dennis</H4>
Jim is the proprietor of <A href="http://www.starshine.org">
Starshine Technical Services</A> and is now working for <A
HREF="http://www.linuxcare.com/">LinuxCare</A>.
His professional experience includes work in the technical
support, quality assurance, and information services (MIS)
departments of software companies like
Quarterdeck, Symantec/Peter Norton Group and
McAfee Associates -- as well as
positions (field service rep) with smaller VAR's.
He's been using Linux since version 0.99p10 and is an active
participant on an ever-changing list of mailing lists and
newsgroups. He's just started collaborating on the 2nd Edition
for a book on Unix systems administration.
Jim is an avid science fiction fan -- and was
married at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Michael J. Hammel</H4>
A Computer Science graduate of Texas Tech University, Michael J. Hammel,
mjhammel@graphics-muse.org, is an software developer specializing in X/Motif
living in Dallas, Texas (but calls Boulder, CO home for some reason).
His background includes everything from data
communications to GUI development to Interactive Cable systems, all based in
Unix. He has worked for companies such as Nortel, Dell Computer, and
Xi Graphics.
Michael writes the monthly Graphics Muse column in the Linux Gazette,
maintains the Graphics Muse Web site and theLinux Graphics mini-Howto, helps
administer the Internet Ray Tracing Competition (http://irtc.org) and
recently completed work on his new book "The Artist's Guide to the Gimp",
published by SSC, Inc. His outside interests include running, basketball,
Thai food, gardening, and dogs.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Ron Jenkins</H4>
Ron has more than 20 years experience in the RF/Satellite Communications
and Networking Industry. He divides his time between his Ozark homeland
and the "nasty stankin' city." I change this thing every time just to see
if anyone notices. ;-)
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Christopher Lopes</H4>
Chris is a computer science major in his senior year at Eastern Washington
University.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Mark Nielsen</H4>
Mark founded The Computer Underground, Inc. in June of 1998. Since then,
he has been working on Linux solutions for his customers ranging from custom
computer hardware sales to programming and networking. Mark specializes in Perl,
SQL, and HTML programming along with Beowulf clusters. Mark believes in the
concept of contributing back to the Linux community which helped to start his
company. Mark and his employees are always looking for exciting projects to do.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Eric S. Raymond</H4>
Eric is a semi-regular contributor to <i>Linux Journal</i>. You
can find more of his writings, including his paper ``The Cathedral and
the Bazaar'', at http://www.ccil.org/~esr/.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Doc Searls</H4>
Doc is the Sr. Editor at <I>Linux Journal</I>.
He has been writing on technology and other issues for most of his life, but
resists learning vi.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Richard Sevenich</H4>
Richard is a Professor of computer science at Eastern
Washington University in Cheney, WA. He is also a part-time ski
patroller at Schweitzer Mountain near Sandpoint, Idaho. His computer
science interests include Fuzzy Logic, Application-Specific Languages
and Parallel, Distributed, Real-time Industrial Control. He is an
enthusiastic user of Debian/GNU Linux.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Thomas Smyth</H4>
Thomas works for the state electricity utility ESKOM in Cape Town, South Africa
as a Support Engineer. He have used Turbo Pascal for many years, and more
recently Delphi. He started learning Red Hat Linux 5.1 after hearing about
the stability and features of Linux. He is now on a steep UNIX learning
curve, reading the various HOWTO's, Guides and Man pages whenever he has
a spare moment.
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">James Rogers</H4>
James and Shala Rogers live on the Olympic Peninsula in the middle of
nowhere. James is a systems programmer for the University of Washington
Medical Centers, Harborview Medical Centers and the University of
Washington Physicians Network. He is a Health Level 7 Interface
programmer who is currently writing a GNU licensed HL7 interface. These
interfaces allow approximately 40 medical computer systems to
communicate with each other across the entire Seattle Metropolitan area.
<a name="notlinux"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H3><font color="maroon">Not Linux</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
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<P>
Thanks to all our authors, not just the ones above, but also those who wrote
giving us their tips and tricks and making suggestions. Thanks also to our
new mirror sites.
<P>
<img align="left" src="../gx/rose.gif">
The time has come for me to again pass on the reins of <I>Linux Gazette</I>.
I need my weekends back for sanity. I have enjoyed doing <I>LG</I> and will
miss it. You can bet that I will still be keeping an eye on things as
overseer.
<P>
SSC hired Mike Orr as webmaster in April and he will be taking over <I>LG</I>
with the next issue.
<P>
Have fun!
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.ssc.com/ssc/Employees/Margie/margie.html">
Marjorie L. Richardson</A> <br>
Editor, <A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/"><i>Linux Gazette</i></A>, <A
HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</a>
<P> <HR> <P>
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<center>
<I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 41, May 1999,
<A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">http://www.linuxgazette.com</A><BR>
This page written and maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com"> gazette@ssc.com</A>
<H5>Copyright &copy; 1999 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.</H5><br>
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