Make your own PDF from FLOSS Manuals

Yesterday I search for Inkscape documentation that match for 0.47 version from http://en.flossmanuals.net/Inkscape/. However their generated PDF is lack of images and quite old, so I decided to made my own. The tool that I use is OpenOffice Writer, yup that's should be enough.

1. From that link click on Print All button in the topleft menu. This will bring you complete content in single page.
2. Lauch OO Writer, copy the webpage and paste it on Writer.
3.Now you are ready to Export as PDF, but I need to do workaround a little to make PDF bookmarked correctly. Press F11 and modify heading 1 paragraph style to match this screenshot below:

Download always stopped at exact bytes position

Have you ever experience your download was stopped at exactly same byte position and won't proceeded? It happen to me lately and the cause is remain unknown.

My attempts to resume download include:
- Use download manager and ftp manager
- Try with Opera 10 and all other major browser
- Restarting Windows
- Re-connect dial-up internet
- Switch to linux and re-download
- Use mirror sites to resume
- Re-plug Modem
- Re-insert SIM card
- Waiting untill monthly renewal subscribe
- Use multipart mode in download manager

Combo Gimp and Inkscape Silent Installer

Last weekend I begin compiling Inkscape 0.47 as an alternative to the officials release. Knowing my habit of optimizing for small code, I use the general mingw -TDM sjlj- to build inkscape, later I also build GIMP 2.6.7 too. So now both have uniformly same dependencies. While there is no obvious advantages of doing uniform build, it bring a more closer look of linux counterpart build environment where dependencies should be compatible to each other to application require it.

During MinGW compilation, packages are optimized for Core2 Processor (mmx, sse, sse2, sse3)

Then I merged my little work months ago in this post and add some little more.

PyWebkitGTK Windows Binary

Python armed with webkitgtk? pywebkitgtk
See the demo:

This tabbed browser use 15KB of python code. Small eh?
But as you see we might need to impersonate the userAgent string into something like Safari (also using webkit) to shut facebook up... lol

Personally I didn't like its performance, it's nothing compared to safari (original implementator) not to mention Chrome! But talk about integration, WebkitGTK probably a bit ahead of QTWebkit by using Gstreamer (for multimedia backend) which I think still better than QT's phonon in Windows.

When both binded, HTML 5 will be a snap rather than what Opera 10 tries to do with their own way..

Homepath oddity for win32 ported linux apps

Probably this is not important but if nobody started to loathing, its probably too late. Homepath in windows refer to root directory for lot of user's personal setting folders in which %appdata% aka application data folder exist.

Now there is only few OSS application that understand this correct convention. Pidgin and Inkscape are good example while the rest simply ignore this and filling homepath (C:\Documents And Settings\%user%) with dozen bizzare .%appname folder. That's bother me

Msi installer will bombardier your registry

MSI installer has important benefit over standard .exe setup files.
taken from http://repository.windowsdream.com/updater/why_msi.html

* You are sure to find an entry on Add/Remove programs, in the Control Panel.
* What has been installed will be uninstalled, and only this. This means that if the MSI created a C:\MyDir\ folder, copied a Myfile.exe inside, and if afterwards you added a C:\MyDir\Myconfig.ini file, at the uninstall process, everything will disappear, except the Myconfig.ini file. This is clean.
* The install/uninstall process is even more clever. It makes use of a counter. So, if a registry key is used by 4 applications, and you uninstall 3 of them, then the registry key will remain... until you uninstall the 4th application.
* There's a repair mode, which operates automatically in case one key file has been deleted.
* Shared ini files are never overwritten. Instead, they are read, and appended or modified. When uninstalling, the ini files are restored to what they were before the installation of the MSI.
* No DLL conflict to fear.
* Upgrades from a version to a newer one can be done easily.
* And many more similar features.

But if you ever track down an installation process using MSI, in most case you will know that list of files that need to be uninstalled later and other huge redundant file information are stored inside registry.

Just imagine if a package contain 1200 files and then you stored it in deep/long directory name (like C:\Program files\The Registry Killer Company\Let me fill the registry Apps\) and also if inside that folder installer put 5-level directory, I'm pretty sure it will add some megabytes to registry...
Now make it 5 installation of such, and how much megabytes wasted for that? Why don't relocate it to log files?


And you know the rest what to be happened if registry is too big.

Finding files with FTP search engine

Many ftp sites, especially that have anonymous access rarely being indexed by google. It's kind of old fashioned mode of filesharing which have minimal role for commercial purpose. A true direct mode... not the waiting link (cough.. direct link..) we seen today, says rapidshit and friends

Recently I find ftp search engine that still survived: http://proisk.ru (other is gegereka.com), a slow but extensive (probably excessive) ftp search engine. This is really great deal alternative that offer direct as well as parallel and resumable download. The sites itself is not compatible with Opera or at least I found its best for Firefox.

Put x264 and Vorbis in sync (VirtualDub)

Among audiophiles, vorbis is the best choice for midrange to very low bitrates format for lossy audio compression. Beside its opensource, what could be better than that. AAC which is later came with giant corporate support (noticeable Apple) have quickly embraced more widely than vorbis. Without become audio professional you will barely notice that at very low bitrates, ogg vorbis was unbeatable in fidelity.

This fame however not equally accepted by video enthusiast. Though the standart has periodically shift toward x264 (an Open Source implementation of H264) and leaving xvid/divx (H263 family) in the dust. The choice for audio was still held by trashy mp3/mp2, thanks for its MPEG video legacy. But why not x264+Vorbis?

I have an anime movies to give it a try and I use VirtualDub here instead of Mediacoder. Before telling you why not mediacoder, I want to tell the quirks of VirtualDub. One of VirtualDub main forte is it act as video capture tool at very beginning. I have use it extensively with my poor webcam to enhance the image quality by utilised VirtualDub's excellent real-time noise reduction. Lucky enough both best video and audio compression is available in VfW and ACM though vorbis version is very outdated. Now this VfW architecture is VirtualDub's quirks as a technology that has no future at least for non-real-time processing. VirtualDub could optionaly use directShow filter too... yeah remind me the era of ffdshow's chaos yikes.

Now, I could say that I don't even care what the A/V format is as long as it played on MPlayer and probably in my DVD player box.

Why not mediacoder then? because: it can't mux any video format with vorbis correctly. I tired of finding the right encoder/decoder/muxer combination. The symptom might not obvious at first but its there. The produced video may look no good even at first sight as audio will mostly delayed, so it should be fixed by put negative delay on the audio right? No. The video will ooks insync but if you keep watch carefully just about few minutes you may notice that audio is gradually loose sync then fluctuated sometime it get insync again. This is bad as crap when there is a delayed dialog and the character has already changed to other char. So this is clearly not a proportional delayed audio.

Back to VirtualDub, in Audio>Compression menu you may see vorbis (if installed) has some modes:
mode1: Original stream compatible
mode2: Have independent header
mode3: Have no codebook header
mode*+: pseudo CBR

AFAIK vorbis is known for using quality-mode at default, but there is VBR too. So what is pseudo CBR? No matter, Mode1+ is the one you should choose and you probably need to resample the audio too (just get it reinitialized in case of mp3 format). Mode2 or 3 generally will render unplayable video stream. And quality based will result fluctuated delayed audio thus mplayer was unable to seek (forward rewind) the video. If after encoding with mode1+ it still out of sync, apply delay effect on it.

As for my encoding task, a HD resolution anime movie is enough with 400kbps x264(multipass) and 64kbps (minimum) Vorbis. Although 32kbps aoTuV still sound kind of convincing for dialogs.

note: I tested on VirtualDub 1.8 and 1.9

Blender 2.5 Optimized 32bit (with QuickTime support)

This weekend is the last day in October and Blender 2.5 will not finalized any soon considering BGE & Player still broken. I try for the first time to build the latest SVN. After reading building guide at Blender.org, my first impression is I need python 2.6 or 3.1 to build. I'm lol'd to find out that it's actually about the blender runtime which is the latest version only support python 3.1. In fact while I build using 2.6 using latest beta scons I found strange errors with MSVC compiler while GCC done its job. I try switch back to Python 2.5 with stable scons, now it's the opposite that happened. MSVC finished and GCC failed but I still got both compiled :)

GCC version is very odd one, even at its default -O2 flag it is crash-prone binary. So I need to apply -Os instead to compensate thus GCC version runs much slower than MSVC in many test.

September 18 2010
Updated: Blender 2.54.0 Beta Win32 SVN r32000 with OpenMPJuly 27 2010
Updated: Blender 2.53.0 Beta Win32 SVN r30777 with OpenMP

Blender 2.5 snapshot CHM Documentation (5.84MB)
Get Blender 2.4 Manual PDF by Marco Ardito here
Blender 2.4 Complete CHM Manual by me here
Find other Blender stuff here 



To build with OpenMP support without buying M$ VisualStudio you could use WDK 7.0 that available for free and contain Visual C++ 2008 Standard Edition (Compiler only)


Oh, my svn client really fucked up, this page won't updated until I get less intrusive svn client.

So the earthquake never alleviated?

A couple minutes ago another largescale eathquake struck Maluku (Moluccas) at 7.3 this is one day followup of scale 6 in Irian. Damn! sometime I always feared that this chained quakes is just a beginning of more larger disaster.

Nonetheless, I never worried about myself (north coast of Java) being threatened by earthquake/tsunami but volcanoes. Still this country seems suffer too much, too often and too painful. Borneo does a safer place from any kind disaster IMO except from flood.

Good luck for everyone who lived near subcontinental plate! Keep alert!

Cool Shell Extensions Installer For XP

This is a collection of freeware to extend explorer's ability that feature:

- Create new folder via context menu
- Change case of a filename
- Select All files from context menu
- "Back" via context menu instead of button
- Change file's date and time from file properties
- Change file attributes via context menu
- Toggle show hidden file/extension via context menu
- Create directory listing (current or recursive) via context menu, saved as dirlist.txt in target folder
- Show Extended properties of Font files
- Show File's Hash from properties or saved as checksum file
- Spawn Command box in current folder from context menu
- Decode email encoded attachment file -> I think its unstable
- Show "Copy To.." and "Move To.." via context menu
- Show extended File's InfoTip including audio file's tag such as ogg -> I think its annoying
- NTFSLink : Create and Manage Hardlink and Junction
- Enable Thumbnail mode for commonly unsupported image files such PSD, TGA, PCX and many more
- Show Context Menu Thumbnail for common images and some unsupported image files
- Find target of a shortcut immediately via context menu
- Copy selected file's filename to clipboard via context menu
- Enable IPTC creation in supported image file's properties
- Encrypt / Decrypt file -> I think its unstable
- Run application with arguments
- Resizing common images

from [windows]\system32\shellext (default install folder) you could see the author from dll's infotip.

Personally I called it PimpShell (1.3Mb)

note: this is unattended installer good for svcpack injection of unattended windows installation, to uninstall goto Add/Remove and look for PimpShell



(OK this post is off-topic anyway)
Enjoy!

Manage duplicate files with NTFSLink

NTFSLink is an opensource software that act as shell extension to make creation of hardlink and junction as easy as clicking which is more comfortable than M$ fsutil or other console-based alternatives. Both (hardlink & junction) have been "hidden" part of NTFS in a decade, yet there are not many user use it.

Linux symlinks does better suited here because by using centralized root "/" of filesystem there is no confusion about "where the starting point is?". Here M$ Windows come with multi volumes of C:\ D:\ or more apropriately a mountpoint stuff that imply limitation to hardlink and junction fuctionality. Which in some extent M$ saw that as a threat rather than benefit.

I'll not go into details here (its pretty much low-level stuff), instead I will give some examples:


1. Arrange a repository or such thing in a project involving external dependencies

When I create a project, usually I place it in organized folder like [date]\[project name] or similar. In a project like 3d, cad, webpage, video-editing or flash I work with many other files arround which is generally located in a repository.  Now I not used  to alter repository files directly (always save as somewhere). With junction I could link this folder (in repository) into my own project folder without additional space needed and it will treated like ordinary folder regardless the software I run (It will just always worked). Even with NTFSLink uninstalled it will permanently worked (but without icon folder that indicated a junction).

D:\Repo\Textures\House --> D:\Data\[Username]\[Date]\[Project]\House

We should see the benefit of relative path immediately from that...


2. Spacesaving related

First remember the rule that junction is used to only link folder within volume or across volume (mountpoint) while hardlink is only for files across directories inside the same volume.

A simple example, when I play a games, sometime times its more convenient if we create ISO images to the original CD, installed them (which usually just create a duplicate of  CD content into harddisk) then play. With juntion we could delete the game's data inside installation folder and replace it with junction from Virtual CD Drive instead.

remove "C:\Program Files\MotoGp\pcdata" first
H:\pcdata --> C:\Program Files\MotoGp\pcdata

the same case for Encarta DVD and other related thing..


3. Resolve shared dependencies by hardlink instead of copying duplicate

Say you have a software that rely on a big files (for ex. a database) and you have several several version of it, worse the software didn't give you option to choose the location of the file aka it must be under \db folder. With hardlink you can distribute the large file throughout all version with no diskspace.

Same thing for large shared dll files. Like QT 4.5 Runtime DLLs that generally huge


4. Relocate a folder

Your aging C: partition has running low space. Even so you need to install a software that store its huge temporary files just to failing the installation itself cause you running out of space

Using junction you can relocate your temp folder outside C: partition, thus give your C: some extra breath. All done without messing with registry setting.

remove "C:\Document and Settings\[username]\local settings\Temp"
D:\tmp --> C:\Document and Settings\[username]\local settings\Temp

note: folder didn't need to be the same name, system will read setting from regisitry which is "C:\Document and Settings\[username]\local settings\Temp" then mapped into D:\tmp

But let say "whooa It still not sufficient !" then you felt regret for placing GTA installation in C:\ ? Ok don't uninstall your GTA :) use junction to relocate it to somewhere spacious. Likewise system will recognize GTA as it was installed on C:\Programs Files but when GTA run all with be redirected to new location and your software can now be installed :)

or

With junction you can create a folder in other partition e.g. D:\Programs\Miktex then junction it to C:\Miktex and then proceed installation with C:\Miktex as installation target thus you will not losing a single bytes on C:\. Same case can be applied to software that just can be installed in C:\

Of course there are endless possibilities of what you can achieve with hardlink and junction.

warning: 
M$ didn't seems to care much about this feature, as you might eventually wondering why. Infact M$ use it extensively in Vista and 7 to manipulate compatibility with older windows directory structure.
For example there is C:\Document and Settings but there is also C:\Users which one of them contain junctions.

I build shell extension package (freeware including NTFSlink) here

A trojan named unwise_.exe in Windows\Fonts

A virus with filename unwise_.exe have just went on rampage undetected (at least by task manager even by Process Explorer) on my windows. A new method of penetration?

In my experiment executing application under Fonts folder will normally listed by task manager, however if I kill the process the application itself won't die but task manager reported it as it was already died (not listed anymore) interesting huh!. Anyway due to the nature of special folder, any files that not a font files is never shown on explorer despite what you do to counter (set to show hidden files for  ex.).

The trojan seems break firewall policy through administrator account as confirmed by registry entries HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy. Then create services named Windows Hosts Controller which you could remove it later after terminating unwise_.exe by Sysinternal pskill (we can search the PID from [netstat /b]) then [sc delete "Windows Hosts Controller"] command for further deletion. In command box under Fonts folder: [attrib unwise_.exe -s -h -r]. Finally [del unwise_.exe].

The obvious impact of this trojan is causing a windows socket error which as long as trojan active, other activities like browser went defunct (unable to connect). Although from [netstat /b] command, its clear that unwise_.exe process was actively sending packets.

M$ never ceased us to end of worries lol

Ok.. shame on me.. I got infected with this virus again (8x actually) and certainly its came from internet. But how? I decide to do full analysis by self infecting the virus in VM.

Stunning, this trojan depend only to kernel32.dll.. could it be written in assembly? More, my two watchdog (regmon and filemon) didn't get any duplication routine other than in fonts folder and self deletion of its original source nor it harm/modify other windows file. Now thats strange...

Damn now I lose my only one specimen. Next time when I get infected, I will note its network activities as reported by netstat..

Hmm.. the trojan always has different filesize, and attack microsoft sites
OK.. finally I set deny "write" policy for administrators to fonts folder temporarily...

Hotlinking enabled free file hosting service

I was seeking a free service for hosting my files here. I have tried the list from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_hosting_service) yet I have losing trust from my two favorite (hotlinkfiles.com and fileden.com).

I use hotlinkfiles way back before fileden, the most obvious problem with it was it's consistency. For example, I've uploaded 2 archive and tested it, in the next week the file could be reported as "cannot be found" although its there. And that happened consistenly while my space usage is 50% or more.

Feeling disatisfied I move on fileden. Its great actually, up to now its have been 3 month since I registered for free there. Most of the problem was related to bandwidth reset period. But this time I felt that my files has been fully unobtainable anymore... and still no answer from fileden.com and I'm sure my files are legit (just freeware and open source stuff)

From wikipedia's list I get one that meet my criteria : dropbox (referral, help me gain more space :))
Its perfect feature is a client application (based on python) that enable seamless integration (almost like svn) with explorer (also available for Mac & Linux) other feature like hotlink, resumable download are works as expected. Plus, it doesn't have file extension restriction too. All this too nice feature sometime make me feel suspicious sometime :-/. Oh  yeah, don't get too excited with wikipedia stats as most of them no longer offer DIRECT (instant or hot or whatever you call) link.

I'm also try other risky possibility like:

1. Public ftp, one of my candidate is ftp.lesliedombi.com which after 2 days examination it has a big downtime in a day. But hey they got interesting stuff there :))

2. Public hfs, In case you don't know its ftp like http server which focus on file sharing. There are hundreds of them some may active others may defunct. To find them (which allow you to upload) in google way, use these search string : "HttpFileServer" "Servertime:" upload.
Many of them are russian site. Sometime you can also find other illegal material there such as movies and warez...
However the issue by using hfs : finding a good host (one that server-like) is pain and mostly there is no warranty about uptime and security (what if they use windos? lol)

Now its time to put files on dropbox, and all files will get online soon.

My apologize about screwed-up fileden

I'm pretty unaware about this down. I've been busy lately... And realized that my fileden account has been locked up. I'm not sure whats happened, it used to be normal monthly bandwidth renewal but also lately there are many visitor from deviantart.

Its also possible that my account was overloaded. But in case of that it should be resetted by now. I will try to find new alternative now... once again sorry... T_T

If you searching fileden alternatives like me, visit this post

Setuptools for Python 2.6 in EGG?

Have just recently migrated to python 2.6.2 then I search for setuptools for my egg packages. In my sense, since one of the tool's purpose is for installing egg so it shouldn't be egg -_-? Nope its provided as egg, err windows here.. it can't be as easy as "sh setuptools-0.6c4-py2.6.egg" .

I know later on that "all" I have to do is finding ez_setup.py file. Where this have been told anyway? pypi.python.org didn't tell but google will... To conclude: In case you are preparing python from scratch then unless you're wired, you'll need both ez_setup.py & egg files kept in your storage. How convenient was that? I know distutil isn't the supported way and egg will be the preferred one but still...

Maybe I will make distutil installer...oh here you are

I'm wearing batik today

KOMPAS.com -  Employees of state-owned companies and government institutions have for years adhered to a tradition of wearing batik on every Friday of the week.

But today is special because President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has called on all Indonesians to wear batik on that day to celebrate UNESCO’s decision to include batik in its list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" items.

"Batik is regarded as a cultural icon with its own uniqueness. It conveys certain symbols and a profound philosophy, including man’s life cycle,  and it has been touted  by Indonesia as a non-material element of its cultural heritage," Coordinating Minister for people’s welfare Aburizal Bakrie told a press conference at Bogor State Palace on Sept. 7, 2009.

"We’ve been told that batik has been recognized as an element of global cultural heritage produced by Indonesians. The President has called on all Indonesians to wear batik on Oct. 2, to celebrate batik," the minister said.

Indonesia’s Batik, together with the Tango of Argentina and Uruguay, the traditional Ainu dance of Japan and France’s Aubusson tapestries were among the 76 elements inscribed on 30 September in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, WAM, the United Arab Emirates’ news agency, reported on Wednesday.
These 76 inscriptions were decided by the 24 Member States of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage, currently holding its 4th session in Abu Dhabi, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, 2009,  under the chairmanship of Awadh Ali Saleh Al Musabi of the United Arab Emirates.

UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization)’s list describes Indonesian Batik as: The techniques, symbolism and culture surrounding hand-dyed cotton and silk garments known as Indonesian Batik permeate the lives of Indonesians from beginning to end: infants are carried in batik slings decorated with symbols designed to bring the child luck, and the dead are shrouded in funerary batik.

The president’s call for batik dress has been supported by regional heads in a number of provinces and district, such as the Jakarta Governor, the East Java governor, and the Cirebon district head.

Earlier, on September 25, Jakarta Governor  Fauzi Bowo had issued an official appeal to  all Jakarta residents to wear Batik on October 2.

"Students, people who work in hotels and bars as well as those who work for private companies are also urged to wear Batik although there will be no sanctions if they fail to do so," said Aurora Tambunan, deputy for cultural and tourism affairs to the Jakarta governor, recently. 
      
UNESCO has already acknowledged the Keris (ceremonial dagger) and the Wayang (puppet show) as part of Indonesia`s cultural heritage. "Traditional music instruments namely Angklung and Gamelan are also in the process of being registered with UNESCO," Aurora said.
    
In the spirit of supporting Jakarta residents who wear Batik on October 2, the Jakarta city government would give special discounts to those entering recreation centers  in the city. "Museums run by the Jakarta regional government will give free tickets in the period October 3-7, 2009 only for those who wear Batik," chief of Jakarta city’s culture and tourism office, Arie Budhiman, said.
    
Among the museums to give free tickets are the Jakarta History Museum, Ceramic and Art Museum, Maritime Museum, Joeang Museum, MH Thamrin Museum and Textile Museum. "We will also distribute  Batik pins among visitors wearing Batik to the museums," Arie added.
    
On October 5, Ragunan Zoo would  give free tickets only to those who come wearing batik dress. On the same day, Ancol recreation park will give a 50-percent discount on tickets at its main gates, Atlantis and Gelanggang Samudera park.  Dunia Fantasi would  also give a 40-percent discount on the same day.
    
Batik, which has been developed for centuries particularly on Java Island, is cloth which traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique.  But, thanks to modern advances in the textile industry, the term has been extended to include fabrics which incorporate traditional batik patterns.
    
Some scholars believe that batik was originally reserved as an art form for Javanese royalty in Central Java around Yogyakarta and Solo under the patronage of the Sultan and his court.  But, other scholars disagree and believe that batik was prevalence even to the common folk.

It was regarded an important part of a young ladies accomplishment that she be capable of being able to skillfully hand draw batik using the canting (the pen-like instrument used to apply wax to the cloth).  Batik or fabrics with the traditional batik patterns are also found in several countries such as Malaysia, Japan, China, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal and Singapore.
    
But, unlike in other countries, Indonesia is particularly very proud of its batik which is considered as formal dress in official functions.  Batik are usually made of cotton or silk, which are comfortable to wear. And this benefits not only Indonesians, but also some foreign diplomats who prefer to use batik, and avoids suits, amidst Indonesia’s heat.
     
The government, through some of its agencies concerned, was giving special attention to batik makers as part of the efforts to perpetuate and  develop the Batik trade. The government, according to Cultural and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik, has provided the batik-making industry with assistance in the form of low-interest credits and  training in production processes and design making in several potential areas across Indonesia.
     
First Lady Ani Yudhoyono recently had called on all parties to expedite the regeneration of traditional batik craftsmen and women so as to preserve the craft as part of the nation’s cultural legacy. "It is a pity that batik development does not happen hand in hand with the regeneration of traditional batik craftspeople. Doing batik work actually needs patience but the skill can be bequeathed to the younger generation," Ani Yudhoyono said.
   
She said the younger generation should be immediately involved in the development of batik craftsmanship so that they can keep the craft alive and even make masterpieces themselves, and prevent batik from being claimed by other countries. "UNESCO itself has asked  Indonesia to ensure regeneration in the craft as a precious world cultural heritage," the first lady said.
    
Meanwhile, neighboring Malaysia, which shares a number of similar cultures with Indonesia including on batik but with its own unique specification, said it would study UNESCO’s decision, said Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 17.
     
The government would make the study to ensure whether the decision would have a bearing on the traditional batik making in the country, he said.
    
"I do not have the full details (UNESCO’s decision) because Malaysia too has batik. We will analyse the actual meaning of the decision and whether the decision will affect the production of batik here," Yassin told reporters.

So what  can I say Malaysia? Should you lie to the world again?

Repository for Centralized GTK-based Software (Win32)

It seems my previous attempt is a failure about create single package for graphics apps that doesn't even have a level of integration to be said as suite. It not even suitable as portable apps either...A portable need to be small in installed size to overcome bottleneck in removeable media I/O too. Thus require binary compression such as upx and if possible recompiled with size optimization like -Os / -s or both.

UPX'ed binary tend to have larger outcome in memory usage compared to normal binary right after execution, but thats of course not a problem as with memory management (or just minimize it and restore) both (upx'ed or not) will end up at the same level. In a fast harddisk (rAID 0 for example) the penalty goes with UPX'ed at being 10%-15% slower in startup time.

This time I uploaded some more manageable & portable packages as continuation of previous attempt.

Plan:
I'd to do uniform rebuild of (probably) all dependencies with mingw's optimization flags that I usually used for building Blender but with minimum binary size in mind.

Main dependencies (download this first):

1. GTK 2.16.5 Runtime including GTKMM, aspell-en dict, dozen themes and some deps (10.8 -> 19.8 Mb)
2. Python 2.5.4 required by GIMP, Inkscape, MyPaint, Gramps and optionally needed by Gnumeric (7.6 -> 20.0 Mb)
3. Converter contain external deps such svg2swf, ghostscript and so on.. optionally needed by Gimp & Inkscape
   

Portable Packages (English only, UPX'ed and lack of docs):

1. GIMP 2.6.7 + plugins (9.7 -> 19.3 Mb)
   Our proudly raster editing software
   
2. Inkscape 0.47  (7.5 -> 22.7 Mb)
   Our proudly vector creation software
3. Gnumeric 1.9.14*  (2.6 -> 7.0 Mb)
   Sometime you don't need too big+slow+unresponsive OpenOffice Calc, use Gnumeric spreadsheet!
4. Bluefish 1.3.8 unstable 2.9 -> 5.2 Mb)
   I'm sure this will break the realm of  free web editor for windows, but currently any spawning of external program (like previewing in FireFox) didn't work at all, as gspawn-helper died in the process
5. Pidgin 2.6.2 + plugins (10.3 -> 12.8 Mb)
   IM anyone?
   
6. Nip 2-7.18 (2.3 -> 5.2 Mb)
   A very hardcore image processing software in logical way
7. Dia 0.97 (1.9 -> 8.0 Mb)
   Our proudly diagramming software
   
8. X-Chat 2.8.4 GPL (0.6 -> 0.6 Mb)
   This is GPL version of official x-chat for windows
   
9. MyPaint 0.7.1+git* 16/11/2009 (1.9 -> 2.4 Mb)
   Digital Painting oriented software
   
10. Homebank 4.0.4  (2.1 -> 3.4 Mb)
    The little brother of the big badass GnuCash
    
11. MtPaint 3.31 (0.4 Mb)
    A pixel art / sprite creation oriented software
    
12. GIMP Animation Package 2.6 (3.6 -> 54.0 Mb) and Script-Fu pack provided separately due to its contra efficient in distribution/portability/performance aspect
13. Abiword ? (there is ongoing effort to fallback to GTK-based backend which may bring GOffice integration and other interesting features)
14. Avidemux 2.5.1 (5.1 -> 9.2 Mb)
    Better than MovieMaker video editor with a lot of modern file format choices
    
15. Gramps 3.1.2 (1.6 -> 9.2 Mb)
    Family tree maker
16. Stardict 3.0.1 with Wordnet (6.6 -> 8.9 Mb) dictionaries
    I can't find any commercial alternative that feature like this old one.
    

* custom build
GIMP, Inkscape and MyPaint package updated (under progress) here

As usual, prepare an empty folder first, and extract any package there
Execute using provided .cmd files

Now it just more looks like in Linux ehh? smaller and efficient
You might also interested to visit my personal oss collection here

**changelog**
____________
30 November 09
- revert some dlls in GIMP and GTK from UPX's flaw

____________
3 October 09

GIMP
- enabling eps/ps import through ghostscript 8.01

Inkscape
- move out deps to separate converter folder

MyPaint
- updated to 03 October 2009 git with "pen-tilt" fix attempt and use single window interface like Gimp 2.6

Python
- updated missing deps

____________
30 September 09

GIMP
- rename gimp-2.6.exe to gimp.exe and change executables location
- modify default.env, pygimp.interp so gimp can be called by external apps (inkscape)
- remove happy-valley-relief.py (not work?) and add pspi plugins
- removal of several hundreds script-fu plugins and revert to standart to reduce startup time since scm files didn't cached for for next startup

Inkscape

- implement Dia diagram import and Gimp xcf export for windows (previously coded for linux only)
- implement import ps and eps through gpl ghostscript 8.01 which considerably smaller than current 8.7
- implement swf (flash w/o animation) export through svg2swf
- enabling xfig import through xfig2dev

____________
28 September 09
initial upload

Play GTA IV PC without reinstalling

I had heard someone say that GTA IV can't be played without reinstalling. I did check it with regmon and filemon for any interesting registry injections. These what I found

Apart of Games for Windows Live, registry only slightly modified:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

Bluefish 1.3.7 (unstable) on Windows

This is huge improvement!
Finally a coder friendly web editor is make its way on Windows platform. Look at the shot below:

On the fly auto-completion, code folding and on-demand spellchecking (F5)

After download it from their homepage. I had recogized a glitch at first glance. The spellcheck doesn't work at all. It reveal that Installer had been missing some aspell files. No problems, I quickly grab inkscape's aspell-0.60 and overwrite bluefish's and now as you can see in above shot...

Another thing... if you run external program that doesn't exist (you'll need to put it on PATH) like tidy in outputbox menu, You will get crashed, instead of friendly "not found" message. So beware


That's my quick review so far... Here is another shots

Numerous web language that Bluefish currently support

regex support

Bluefish have any feature that I expected from code editor. If stable version released, I will surely replace my sluggish resource-hog Komodo-Edit and crippled CodeLobster!

Favorite Open Source Software Part I

The first post will contain my mosty used OSS. This is however an open source related blog. Making some hint about freeware may ruins the objective. Say comparing Mingw+Codeblock with Visual C++ Express 2008.. hu hu

1. Archiver

Criteria:
- Being reasonably slower to achieve better compression is always acceptable
- Faster and lower memory for  decompression is a must have
- Stable operation under heavy load
- Shell integration
- Support for other major format

7-Zip 9   Learn more

Still in beta phase, 7-Zip by Igor Pavlov slowly but surely become one of most reliable archiver (be it freeware or commercial). Now with support for updating 7z archive, better cancellation under heavy load and new LZMA2 compression method.7-Zip will find its way to replace your favorite archiver and will be embraced in the same league as ubiquitous Zip.

7-Zip is one of few that has numerous support for surprisingly oddball format like shown in the shot above. It also have quirk like manual mutiple decompression for multilevel archive such tar.bz2

Alternatives:
Peazip GUI is... odd
SharpArchiver Nice theme and simple interface, I'll looking forward
KGB Archiver Ever experience instability with it
FreeARC  GUI is...odd

---

2. Browser

Criteria:
- Flawless page rendering
- Simplicity vs feature ratio
- Efficient memory usage

This time my choice goes to two browser.
One use gecko other one use webkit. huhu that mean no Opera no IE already (they are not OSS anyway)
One is a fork other one is mainstream browser. WTF no firefox then?
One is single process other one is parent-child process. Yeah you know the last one
One is extremely lightweight other one is extremely memory-hog. uhh haven't you noticed that?
One is looks unpolished and odd other one is very sleek and intuitive. Thats the tradeoff
Both are the fastest browser. Yes beating Opera 10 too.
Both support latest web standart. Facebook should displayed flawlessly :)

They are K-MeleonCCF ME 0.096 and Chromium 4

Chromium >>>

<<< K-Meleon

K-MeleonCCF ME is another fork of an already lightweight K-Meleon by Hao Jiang, the other fork is K-Ninja. The fork focusing on making K-Meleon even more lighter while keep update with current standart (Gecko 1.9.1). It missed RSS Reader but add IE tab function. In many interface area there are glitches everywhere and dialogs was mostly unpolished (another chinese typical software). If you don't satisfied, you can wait for K-Meleon 1.6 (Gecko 1.9.1) which soon to be released. K-Meleon project itself is not a fork of Mozilla, mainly its a native win32 interface for gecko thus remove the need of XUL. This also considerably bring incompatibility with Mozilla extensions.

Chromium is a project behind Google Chrome, and an autobuild for Win32 is provided daily here. Not much I could say about this very well known browser.

Alternatives:
Flock  This is better than Firefox itself  IMO
Iceweasel  Another prove that firefox fork is necessary
Seamonkey  I use this exclusively before switch to K-Meleon
Arora  Promising chrome alternative based on QT and Webkit
Firefox  Sometime the most popular is over-rated  
Amaya  I will use it for web development instead
Links?  Q: Do you need text mode?
Lynx?  A: Text mode is good for spider analysis...

---

3. Text Editor

Criteria:
- FAST, seriously I don't want to wait more than a second for opening text files
- Lean, in case my rig is under heavy-load I don't wish to wait it loaded either
- Built-in Regex
- Good language syntax support and programming purpose feature


Notepad2 4.0 Mod
This is a modified version of original notepad2 (another scintilla based editor by florian ballmer)
Notepad2 bring you most useful feature of Notepad++ at the cost of notepad. No more wait!

Alternatives:
Notepad ++ Too big, too slow Scintilla based.
SCITE The original Scintilla but GUI need more work. Otherwise love the tab and leave notepad2
JEdit I'm not Java-based software fans

---

4. Internet Messenger

Criteria:
- Simple / Minimalistic interface
- Low bandwidth consumption, this is for chatting not browsing ehh...
- Multi-protocol


Pidgin 2.6 (formerly GAIM)



While windows version doesn't not support Voice/Video chat yet. Pidgin is getting near to AIO chat apps you ever needed. Me myself has replaced x-chat with it. Some alternative like MirandaIM offer more simpler interface. But none has close the sheer number protocol combined with simple interface pidgin has. Not  to mention its low bandwidth usage when compared to YM.

---

5. Media Player

Criteria:
For Audio Player:
- Lowest memory/CPU usage as possible cause I will listen to song as much as I work
- Option to hide the interface (e.g as systray) and control it from 100% hotkeys
- Support Ogg and at least one lossless-compressed format like FLAC

For Movie Player:
- Should play most popular format
- Smooth playing, yes I'm talk about seek time too
- Basic video control would be nice

CoolPlayer

This is somehow too simple audio player but fill all criteria (if you have multimedia keyboard), playlist also faraway from competing Winamp's. The good side, memory (3,5MB) /cpu (mostly 0) usage is one of the lowest of every GUI player I have tried before :) In short: listen and leave it run in backgroud.

Alternatives:
- aTunes Java-based player that gaining popularity. If you don't mind the java-hog thingy this is a great choice that similar to iTunes, use MPlayer as engine, have global hotkeys and many excellent online features which cost (>80MB/>40MB minimized) memory usage.
- wxMusik  Absolutely powerful yet low-resource player that should unset CoolPlayer easily, but interface is somewhat unresponsive. (project seemed terminated)
- Songbird  a popular odd combo, hmm.. what the dev think about it...
- Jukes  Another decent Java-based player, but give me a hardtime finding the volume slider...
- Jajuk  Java apps always has new trick for GUI, but this time its too much for a player
- Zinf  Buggy FreeAmp clone (didn't respond multimedia keyboard event?)

MPlayer & MPUI-hcb

Long before mplayer world of windows was ruled by codec (vfw, acm, dshow, activex etc) package that enable regular movie player to support additional format. For the record I 've experienced the pain ACEs Mega Codec too. Then ffdshow is coming, but all was proven to be no more than a mess and incompatibility. MPC bring a slightly better solution but still have the same backend. So here you go the winner: MPlayer bring all decoder natively inside itself.

Now whats left is selection of GUIs. My choice goes to MPUI-hcb, an updated MPUI with perfected features but still as lightweight.

Alternatives:
none, or maybe SMPlayer & MPlayer

---

6. Burning Tools


Criteria:
- Decent burning engine, Nero still the best AFAIK
- Feature complete (including format, methods etc)

CDRTFE 1.3.5 (CDRTools Front-End by O.Valencia and O. Kutsche)

It reminds me to X-CD-Roast on linux. A front-end to cdrtools (burning engine by joerg schilling) that bring you the most of it and more (Mode2CDMaker and VCDImager). It can eat and spit (CD and DVD), Audio CDs, XCDs, (S)VCDs and DVD-Video in RAW, TAO or DAO

Filesystem support includes:
ISO9660 up to level 4 (my favorite)
Joliet extension
UDF
Rock-Ridge (Amiga and most Unix)
AFAIK mkisofs did support hfs, you might try it from additional command option from setting dialog

CDRTFE's interface is nowhere like others, its name isn't so. Its really focus on features (which I suggest you to read it by yourself before even try this apps). A good thing you need to know is that CDRTFE use native cygwin emulation of cdrtools, which mean produced ISO or disc could benefit from POSIX.

For example:
- Inside CDRTFE, Filesystem become case sensitive. Yes! cdrtfe.exe is not the same as CDRTfe.exe
- Support hardlink-like handling for duplicated files

Like X-CD-Roast, CDRTFE doesn't offer explorer inside its GUI. Instead a clever solution is done from explorer context menu integration.

Alternatives:
InfraRecorder More polished UI, less powerful, much popular

---

7. Download Manager


Criteria:
- Support multisource, multipart and accelerated mode
- Able to fully hide itself as systray
- Wide protocol support such as bittorent or able to retrive from youtube or rapidshare
- Scheduler or Bandwidth limiter (like wget) is a good addition

Still stick with IE's download dialog? Even FF and Chrome offer decent download manager. Opera 10 has torrent support too. So why we need another download manager. That would be criteria no.1 that most browser didn't implement it reasonably due to traffic balance. No.2 also not make sense for browser too.

FDM 3
Frankly nowadays dozens of  freeware was comparable to download manager veteran like GetRight, DAP or Mass Downloader. Even, you can't see significant differences between OSS, freeware and shareware. Need another excuse? If you want commercial grade inside OSS thats where FDM shine. FDM memory usage is one of highest among download manager. At <8MB I doubt thats important issue in regard to its complete array of features.

Have been started as freeware and converted as OSS, FDM face almost no competition from original startup OSS Downloader like alternatives below:

wxDownload Fast   Low-resource DM with great feature
widestream DM  Despite its small size, its .NET 3.5 architecture made it resource-hog
True Downloader  One of earliest OSS of its kind and currently no longer active

Is there a chance for me to switch the linux way?

I have tried many *nix distro since 2001 from the venerable redhat, suse, freebsd, first version of gentoo, plan9, QNX and several oddballs but nothing keep me stayed for more than 2 weeks. Everytime I try to adapt a new software, documentation is mostly poor. GUI also never become consistent solution either, which require reinforcement from shell session to make adjustment, troubleshoot and so on.

Let say someone that pretty dumb about computer (I'll assume atleast he/she is internet-aware) is given Linux as her/his OS. Thats no problem at all, what she/he need is launch a broswer and type url. Same thing for office-people all they need to know is formula, indentation, layout standart and so. They will simply done their work perfectly whatever the OS is. These people category is belong as end-user.

This is exactly how average people moaning why so-called power-user hate to switch platform. Yes thats because we do care about system's internal, how to speedup thing, automate task efficiently and so on that end-user mostly dont care or not notice.

Its common that the more complex a system is the more longer user take to adapt when new major release coming. A simple example: Most user will mostly want updated MyPaint as soon as possible, meanwhile MyPaint developer will hold back as lower as possible PyGTK (higher system) requirement, then PyGTK dev just do the same things to Python (the main dependencies). All will end at platform level (combination of OS and Processor).

Provacating words like "move to linux now" is simply ignorant from my view. Thats the same for "move to vista now". Basically the less dependent (or care) of user to the OS itself will certainly make faster transition to be happened.

Just years later, *nix distro released  (mostly linux-based) evermore. Even Linux kernel (in general not custom one) is subject to bloatness and sluggishness as it evolve. Fortunately many distro like MEPIS AntiX, DragonFlyBSD and Milax (solaris) are care about people like me who crave lightness over bloatness. So will I switch to *Nix? Of course not

Bored of Building Binary

Almost two month since this blog inception, all I do is provide file and files with very few review or tips. So I'm planning on creating list of my favorite OSS as this blog entitled for. But it won't be random absurd list by popularity or by  gathering other so many similar list. No, my list will be my very own list aka absolutely biased review based on my criteria.

Maybe few days later I will issue the list one by one per category per post.

After that, I will published my graphics art gallery... then write a guide about MyPaint, Nginx, NTFS hack, Registries... Start my own OSS project...  Meh, who knows

Open Source Graphics Suite Portable for Windows 32-bit

OK, I'm tired of waitin. Here is my test-release of Open Source Graphics Suite.
All applications are portable and efficiently share their dependencies.

Packages:

Portable GIMP 2.6.7 + GAP 2.6 + plug-ins + current Docs (Bitmap/Photo Editing and Creation)
Portable Inkscape 0.47 pre2 + PDF manuals (Vector SVG Creation and Editor)
Portable Dia 0.9.7 (Flowchart Creation)
Portable MyPaint 0.7.1 git 08-09-09 layermodes-branch (Digital Painting)
Portable MtPaint 3.31 (Pixel-Art Creation)
Portable RGBPaint 0.8.5 (MS Paint-like tool)
Portable Nip 2 (Hardcore Image Processing based on VIPS and ImageMagick)
Portable Phatch 0.1.5 (Batch Image Processing based on PIL)
Python 2.5.4
GTKmm 2.16 with theme selector
Bonus: GreenShot 0.7 (Powerful yet straight Screen Capture, need .NET 2.0 framework)
What's Not: Localisation, IMO that's big ass redundant!

I have tested it in Windows XP32 and Seven 32

Advantages:

- Space saving, both download size and installed size
- Unified theme for most apps, I have pack a lot of themes inside too
- Save your time for hunting GIMP's plugins and add that to GIMP's startup time :/
- Flexible and updateable, you may modify cmd files your own way and I'm not interested to make it executable loader.
- Python-Fu GIMP is enabled, unlike PortableApps (correct me if I wrong)

Usage:

- Extract file OSGS.7z using WinRAR or 7-Zip to a folder in Flashdisk or Harddisk
- Double-Click your desired command file... Enjoy
- To change Appearance and font, run gtk_theme.cmd and choose the theme you like. check "Apply for all user" and save. All apps should reflect the changes.

Download: updated here

Open Source Graphics Suite (Portable) broken

filetype: 7-zip archive
filesize: 70MB
installed size: 311MB

Troubleshoot:

- In case you want to change directory structure, like rename Userdata folder to your language. You will also need to modify the .cmd file accordingly.
- If some newer package need updated python (e.g. GIMP 2.7 need Python 2.6) add python2.6 there, update cmd file and look for my previous post about GIMP exception.
- This way hopefully I don't need to upload it again once Inkscape 0.47 and upcoming MyPaint released.

Create your own GIMP Portable with simple batch command

While waiting the final release of Inkscape and upcoming MyPaint. I'm stumbled on few drawbacks of my unified Installer for All-in-One graphics OSS. Such problems are:

1. What if user have python already, should I force them to uninstall the conflicting one?
2. And if I tolerated it. What happen if they have Python Packages that newer or older?
3. What about mutiple different Python? Pythonpath?
4. Same thing for existing GTK Runtime/Devel that might be installed already and so on...

PyGTK 2.16.0 Win32 Unofficial Build

Looking for PyGTK installer? go here (official)

This page is obsolete!  updated here (complete installer)

Update 14 August 2010:
- Experimental PyGTK 2.21.0 Build

Update 6 July 2010:
-Move webkit, clutter and poppler from this page
-Bundling runtime all in one 
-Add pygtkhtml2, a lightweight html browser which good enough for embedded help viewer

7-Zip 9.07 beta LZMA2 vs LZMA

Being fully supported through compression method option, lzma2 has the same setting as older LZMA. And its time for some test. I prepare a set of files in which contained a lot of binary, a huge english dictionary plain text, some html, couple of waves and few already compressed file.

The fileset size before compression is 199MB (1822 files)
My System : E2160 Oced at 2,9Ghz; 2GB DDR2-667; rAID0 HHD on XP-32

with LZMA (ultra)
time: 1:41
compressed: 57.4MB

with LZMA2 (ultra)
time: 1:39
compressed: 57.3MB

A very slightly faster and better :D, but it still beta anyway and afterall both beat rar/zip/bz2/gzip by far.

Arora 0.9, QT4's WebKit based Browser

When I looking for modern low-resource browser, friend at IRC suggest arora. At that times I already check out Firefox 3 fork called Iceweasel 3. Surprisingly both logo are polar bear, heh but no they are made by different developer.

Arora is probably the first well-know WebKit based browser, meaning it has different rendering engine than any current mainstream browser though interface is strikingly similar to Firefox. More it has lower memory usage than mainstream browser except iceweasel (both tied).

Arora also support flash (and Click to Flash feature similar to Opera). In a test arora's rendering is far slower than firefox especially to Chromium and Opera not slower than IE, like shown in below screenshot:

Page rendering of sf.net and slashdot.org in Arora

Iceweasel and Arora use around 50-60MB of memory in my system to render both sites. While Chrome, Firefox and IE climb up to 90-110MB. All in vanilla configuration. The only browser that match both OSS browser is freeware Opera 10.

Futhermore, when browser minimized only arora and opera that dramatically unloaded from memory become just several MB. IE and Chromium unload its parent process while child (each tab) process remain the same. On the other hand, Mozilla-based don't reduced at all.

Galeon based browser K-Meleon is currently still the most efficient browser for windows.

All-In-One OSS Graphics Suite for Windows (plan)

So I guess this holiday, I will continue put my time on this Installer.

Todo-list:

- Naming this package

- Custom build some software that out of sync (that would be Synfig)

- Custom build another that out of dependencies (looks like Clash)

- Unified theme for the suite through single gtkrc with gtk-pref.exe included (done)

- Unified GTK & Python Dependencies (done)

- Keep stay around 50Mb of installer (need more tweak, currently 47Mb)

- Consider whether Flash-like animation, QCad & fractal thingy belong to this package

- Ensuring that all software is truly OSS, preferably xGPLx type (done)

Building MyPaint in Windows

mypaint_build_env (both 32bit and 64bit) last update: June 02, 2012 [BROKEN]
older build environment  for 0.8-0.9.1 version

Consider this as very minimal (patched and precompiled) package to build MyPaint. As long as Mypaint doesn't introduce new dependencies this should be future-proof.

Extract it [somewhere], directory's name may not contain space.
Read the included README.txt

MyPaint source:
http://gitorious.org/mypaint/mypaint
June 02, 2012: temporary workaround for windows

Note: while you may try other than main branch, I do not support them. Do not report error of other than main branch.

Audacity need High-end Audio System

When doing audio editing/compositing in Windows I use REAPER exclusively (a software by creator of Winamp). Why? First its insanely lightweight in both term (speed and size) and second it does support ASIO backend.

Casual user often neglect the meaning of latency simply because they rarely feel it while doing single mp3 file editing. Try edit and record multitrack audio, you will know how important is latency. Audacity as it once a linux software that support jack audio (in Linux) a similar ASIO alternative. But when JACKDMP (windows version of JACK) ported successfully audacity (win32) not even put it as an option. Weird eh? My mistake, vanilla Audacity 1.3.8 does have DirectSound support! Mine must be obsolete lol! :D

IMO, there is another option that quite good, that is SDL (used by LMMS). But it seem audacity overlooked it while feel happy with portaudio (MME) instead.

However audacity does support DirectSound and ASIO as long as you provide the required library don't know about JACKDMP though. Try to build that!

edit: just tried to build it, it seems everything fine. DirectSound and ASIO enabled. Jack also suported as ASIO device though "looks heavy" (I prefer ASIO4All still).

here: Audacity-1.3.8.exe

(this is just minimal unicode binary, no dlls and you may need to download VC2008 runtime, Jackdmp, ASIO4ALL and other addons)

WARNING: this is my personal build you are not authorized to use it :)) Well that will break GPL term. if you insist :p

Inkscape 0.47pre2 Win32 build

Inkscape 0.47 should be released at anytime soon. This screenshot is taken from here [updated build by Chris Morgan], that's the latest devel-build on Windows before final release. And I just tried use my genius tablet on it, the calligraphic pen get major haul!!

MyPaint and Genius MousePen 8x6 Tablet

Its Cheap!! just $45 (direct). Personally this is my first time using a tablet. So everything seems just as expected too lol. A few distraction to note however:

- Surface was rather scratchy
- There were bumps in some place
- Strangely I can't draw a straight diagonal line even after using ruler. Odd

I don't know how to tell you technically but this tablet rocks!!

my very initial draw:

Don't know what this thingy called.. just doing random dabbler

OpenERP 5 Documentation CHM format

When I worked for a financial company a year ago. I've been assigned a task to evaluate a bunch of open source based ERP packages. And one of the interesting one is OpenERP (a loosely derivative of Compiere, which could be extended easily through python instead of Java). Thus make OpenERP slim enough to be developed/maintained by less number of programmer though with strength of Compiere. Learning ERP is enormous task (and should be guided by financial expert), despite I have quit the company too soon before even get a quarter of ERP. I still keep a CHM that I made while learn it.

So here is, It might be worth for those with limited internet connection.
openERP_doc.chm

note:
Jut hide the sidebar, it has its own navigation and TOC :))

QCad Community Edition Win32 Installer

In case you didn't informed, someone called ximuntxo at SF has build Windows binary QCad from source using QT 3.3 long time ago. And I have give it a try for a week, given that I'm an AutoCAD avid and QCad certainly not try to imitate AutoCAD whatsoever I'm quite happy. Its stable however it just don't fill my style (it doesn't have scripting support too), I really want an open source of AutoCAD clone. There are some clone... but all are neither stable or useful for real work. So if you persistent, try learn its workflow especially how each tool works cause indeed its quite capable cad software.

Today I'm visiting Ribbonsoft and it is such a shame that they still offer very outdated version 2.0.5 of Community Edition sources, while windows binary (commercial) is way up to 2.2.2. Since no new source offered I pack the binary bundled with library and docs into an installer. Also I have hardcoded the qcad.exe so it will called Assistant (Docs) correctly right from Help menu.

qcad_ce-2.0.5.0_win32_installer.exe

note:
- there is glitch in qcadrc between Library path and Pattern path, just set them through GUI instead.
- the uninstaller is full of redundant due to 4500 files of part library lol
- you need msvcr71.dll for documentation work properly

7-Zip 9 beta has new LZMA2 format

After trying the beta version for about 2 month. I just recently know that it support .xz extension (use LZMA2 compression). Later it revealed that .xz only available when we compress single file that's why I kind of skip that new format.

Interesting enough the LZMA2 didn't have advantage over old LZMA (.7z). In my test regardless the file type (plain-text or binary) LZMA2 result is on par with LZMA infact in some binary (Mplayer.exe file) LZMA beat the new format a bit. Worse, LZMA2 required more than twice memory (a mere 2GB) at the same "maximum" setting.

Maybe this is why 7-zip 9 still in beta. We should wait then...

MPlayer + MPUI-hcb Installer

What you can't play through MPlayer? none? I have several flv format that have scaling issue that MPlayer refused to play but FLVPlayer play it. Also some real media format was known to not played unless addons codec installed.

Choose the GUI
SMPlayer, yeah its somewhat dense, but it's creeping slow especially during initialization.
MPUI, cmon the way its window keep reset position is very annoying.
MPlay its a faster than SMPlayer and has neat skinned GUI, which I will choose it if it does play audio of some 3gp files that other gui will play even with the same core.

..and the best is MPUI-hcb. Its neat, fast and has all feature you need including file association.

So, judging from what format commonly used and circulated today. I make a silent installer (appropriate for svcpack.inf of Windows unattended install) that consist:

- MPUI-hcb
- MPlayer Multithreading (without Mencoder, you don't need it)
- RealMedia codec addons (I don't add anything else, as I think H264 was defacto now)

Download here

note:
-this is SILENT install you wont notice anything when double click it. Just check startmenu whether it has installed.
-about the installer: its not NSIS, its just use modified 7-zip sfx + standard inf setup files so you can reconstruct it relatively easy.

MyPaint Git Build for Win32

MyPaint

I'm no longer offer git build of mypaint from 1.0 onward please use build environment below
Build instruction for Windows (there is a build environment package too)

Now Mypaint support localisation, In case you want to help us by becoming translator.

Install Instruction:
- download and install 7-zip here (you may also use recent WinRAR)
- download your preferred git version archive, and extract to somewhere e.g C:\mypaint-210908
- double click on mypaint.exe
- to hack MyPaint just extract library.zip to somewhere, edit py files (inside gui & lib folder) once you done, zip it again as library.zip

- report to http://gna.org/bugs/?group=mypaint if you found bug

note:
don't extract this archive over your stable version folder (official build).


Tablet Problem
When you want to report bug, please be specific about windows version, tablet's product name and if  possible the driver version. A screenshot will be helpful, also visit mypaint forum first just in case someone have the workaround for you.

Git build archive (dd-mm-yy) :

Since version 0.7.1:
mypaint-git-130110.7z
mypaint-git-271209X.7z
mypaint-git-111109-portnov.7z
mypaint-git-260909-portnov.7z
mypaint-git-300809.7z

Since version 0.8.0:
mypaint-git-021010.7z
mypaint-git-130710.7z
mypaint-git-260610.7z
mypaint-git-040410.7z
mypaint-git-160310-wacom.7z [w/ updated wacom driver]
mypaint-git-060210P.exe
mypaint_0.8RC.7z [SSE2 Optimized]

Since version 0.9.0:
mypaint 0.9.0rc1P.7z
mypaint-git-071210P.7z
mypaint-git-170111.7z [pen hotkey mapping]
mypaint-0.9.1P.7z [Portable with brushpack]

mypaint-git-061111.7z [revision 2]

MyPaint 1.0.0 released!
Download at http://mypaint.intilinux.com/?page_id=6 (if you can't launch mypaint at startup please re-download)



Troubleshoot:

Recover corupted ora file. This is unlikely happen in version 0.8 as the bug (also windows-specific) that cause it is already fixed. So just in case this happened to you, keep in mind that ora is a zipped container of individual PNGs (each layer) which arrangement is ruled by xml file. Thus you could examine the content of ora file (even the corrupted) using your archiver (mine is 7-zip) by just use open with.. and choose 7-zip manager. Inside, you will see "data" folder (contain individual PNGs), mimetype (a descriptor) and stack.xml (probably missing on corrupted file). You may extract your PNG files or even reproduce stack.xml and resave  it from 7-zip. FYI a normal ora also contain [Thumbnails] folder which contain a small preview file (intended to be shown in filemanager but not explorer).

MyPaint is based on python (interpreted language). If you know about it, feel free to experiment with its source code. To do this, extract library.zip (make a backup first) to somewhere, inside it you will find mypaint source code under "brushlib", "gui" and "lib" folders. Once you done editing py files, save your work and zip it again as library.zip overwrite older library.zip and try your new MyPaint.

Why Windows + OSS

Lets me see this from simple and basic consumer's perspective.

• Hardware support (you really3x can't beat this)
  
• User Interface (excluding Apple Mac Os X)
  

Services support is a factor too, but if you are a power user/ IT staff that's not a big difference and that's your homework anyway.

You may flame about anything, but I think that's a fact. Risk? of course there is a risk from become popular like MS Windows, so does if other OS get it.

About why OSS, you may follow this links:
www.nosoftwarepatents.com --> a serious issue if your read carefully
www.gnu.org --> common license explanation
www.opensource.org --> more license explanation

Other may see a general fact that most OSS are free (at no cost)
:)

BTW, its not 90's anymore. Look at sourceforge and see how much OSS has grow.
With better education and better programming language for novices/non-programmer, in 10's thing will get more exciting. OSS will prospering in every type of software, I hope!

MyPaint 0.7.1 for Windows XP 32-bit Released

MyPaint 0.7.1 screenshot

MyPaint 0.7.1 is released, visit their website mypaint.intilinux.com and download here.

Taken from their sites:

MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. You work on your canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the interface only when you need it.
features :

• exists for several platforms
• supports pressure sensitive graphics tablets
• extensive brush creation and configuration options
• unlimited canvas (you never have to resize)
• basic layer support

MyPaint comes with a large brush collection including charcoal and ink to emulate real media, but the highly configurable brush engine allows you to experiment with your own brushes and with not-quite-natural painting.

In my opinion this software has great potential to complement GIMP, an alternative to Autodesk Sketchbook though not gonna be Corel Painter-like. Especially due to its dynamics brush system that wired through fast paced keyboard shortcut.

brush settings

I currently made the official windows build, so you can visit here and get informed for next bleeding-edge unofficial build.