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Re: [ALUG] Ubuntu update screen woes
by Christopher Dawkins 01 Apr '16

01 Apr '16

Nvidia! That's the problem. Not that it's a lot better with other graphics chips, except when you are lucky. You only need the correct graphics driver, which you can download from the Nvidia site. Much easier said than done - it has taken me days of googling in the past. But twice recently I have been gobsmacked by KDE. Install KDE5, and a pop-up box recognises the situation and offers to find and install for you the correct driver. And that works perfectly. You can probably then deinstall KDE and go back to Xubuntu. -- Christopher Dawkins Archivist, Felsted School http://archives.felsted.org Garnetts Corner, Jollyboys Lane North, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DU cchd(a)pjcd.org 07816 821659 01371 821076

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Ubuntu update screen woes
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 01 Apr '16

01 Apr '16

I've just updated a machine to XUbuntu 14.04 (LTS) from the last LTS release. I've had numerous problems, but something I'm making no progress with is a problem with the display. Text and window borders etc seem to display OK, but standard file manager icons don't. Some graphics look a bit odd - e.g. Tweakubuntu splash screen which I recall as green and dark grey, comes out washed out, very faint grey and barely readable. Some lines of text that should be highlighted, seem to be almost anti-highlighted - thin faint green foreground text with no highlight line (whereas on another machine, there should be background highlight). In synaptic and log file viewer, the text in the top right pane of the display, that is the pane that displays packages that you are choosing to install or uninstall, is cunningly displayed in white on white, i.e. completely invisible. Sometimes by scrolling the mouse wheel or resizing the window, I can get the text to appear. I know that synaptic is working because if I use ssh -X to connect to this machine from another, and run synaptec remotely using x windows forwarding, then synaptic appears and works correctly. This confirms to me that it's a display issue, but I'm at a bit of a loss on how to tackle it. File managers: they show the file names, but some of the file or folder icons appear, some don't. Moving the mouse around makes some appear, and some disappear. The machine has an old nvidea card, and uses the nouveau display driver. I've tried reinstalling this. There's no obvious (to me) display problems shown in dmesg. I will be trawling through the log files to have a look, (but log-file-viewer doesn't show log text either). Any ideas how to go about fixing this? Where are display config settings to tweak. How can I reinstall/fix? There is an xorg.conf file but removing this makes no difference. Any help/advice gratefully received! Steve

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st April.
by Viperfang 29 Mar '16

29 Mar '16

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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get_iplayer help
by Chris Walker 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

Perhaps somebody can point me in the right direction here as I'm failing to achieve what I want. On Radio 4 is a new series by Hal Cruttenden called simply Hal. But if I say get_iplayer --type=radio "Hal" I end up with several Asian programmes along with Hancock's Half Hour and so on. Also listed though is Hal - Career, BBC Radio 4 so my question is, how can I differentiate between those unwanted programmes and the one sole programme I do want? My first thought was that I could simply put a space in the name but then I don't get Hal Cruttenden, just the Asian programmes. I then tried to add stuff like "--fields comedy" but that didn't find anything so I'm stuck! I assume other people have overcome similar problems so how did they solve it? Any help appreciated. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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How to debug a bit of javascript?
by Chris Green 23 Mar '16

23 Mar '16

I am using a thing called editablegrid which is mostly javascript. I've got it working pretty well displaying my data in an editable grid but there's a couple of niggles that are driving me mad. One is that the setting for the number of lines to be displayed in the grid doesn't work. I can set the number of lines in the code but I can't select it with the displayed selector. The HTML has:- <label for="pagecontrol">Rows per page: </label> <select id="pagesize" name="pagesize"> <option value="5">5</option> <option value="10">10</option> <option value="15">15</option> <option value="20">20</option> <option value="25">25</option> <option value="30">30</option> <option value="40">40</option> <option value="50">50</option> </select> Which displays the numbers one can select OK. Then, in the javascript is the following:- $("#pagesize").val(pageSize).change(function() { editableGrid.setPageSize($("#pagesize").val()); }); In the demo it works perfectly, in my copy it doesn't work at all. One can select a value but nothing changes. How can I debug this? There are no errors in the Browser Console (firefox) nor in the apache log. It's as if the hooks are not being set but other hook functions in the initialisation are working OK. Can I set a break point or something on the select and see what gets called? -- Chris Green

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DNS go bye-bye
by Bill Hill 18 Mar '16

18 Mar '16

This is the third time I've been unable to log out; the problem: $ cat /etc/resolv.conf # Generated by NetworkManager $ Any ideas why? (NB, this is a really complex setup consisting of an archaic item of technology termed a "network cable" and a very non-standard configuration of a "fixed IP address".) Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action. $ sudo apt-get purge network-manager

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Customising a Pi image
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '16

17 Mar '16

This is really just a sanity check! Background: The current standard Pi Rasbian image is 3.8GB in size. If I write that to (say) an 8GB card it'll only give me access to that 3.8Gb until I resize the partition (for which Raspbian includes scripts). Assume I *don't* do that resize. I set things up the way I want on the Pi, and I then want to create a new image of the SD card to restore to another card (possibly a different size). "dd" will get me an 8GB image by default (since it's an 8GB card) but am I correct that I can safely limit the image to the exact size of the original Rasbian image? The objective here is that (a) writing a 3.8GB image to a new card is much faster than writing an 8GB image, and (b) that it will safely write to any 4GB/8GB/16GB/etc card (where an 8GB image might not fit on a different model of 8GB card). The third benefit (c) of a smaller image is less of a concern as I can compress it anyway and unused space should pretty much disappear that way. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Automatically selecting the best wifi adapter
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '16

17 Mar '16

The new Pi 3 has built in Wifi, great! But it'll never be as good as a USB adapter with proper antenna, although it might often be sufficient. Out of the box, if I connect it to wifi using the onboard adapter and then add a second USB adapter is connects the second one in tandem (ie both connect to the same network and get distinct IP addresses via DHCP). This is a waste of DHCP allocation resources and (correct me if I'm wrong) could cause routing issues? What I'd like is to have the Pi use the built in adapter if that's the only one present but switch to the added adapter if one is present (and working[1]), switching back to the on-board one otherwise. None of this is Pi-specific of-course, the same would apply to any laptop with built in adapter where an additional dongle might be used periodically. However my Googling has so far only thrown up more permanent solutions, and not automatic switching between them. [1] Ideally it would fail over to the onboard adapter if the USB one wasn't reliable, but I'd settle for it always using USB if present, and onboard otherwise. I'm guessing I should be able to detect the arrival/departure of wlan1 and use it to enable/disable wlan0? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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DNS Provider
by Karl Foley 14 Mar '16

14 Mar '16

I have a simple .co.uk domain that I currently have with Daily Internet that is due for renewal shortly. This domain is just for home use and just hosts a single A record pointing to my home server, a few TXT records for SPF and DKIM, MX records and a few CNAMEs for my Google Apps account along with a few other CNAMEs for some simple locally hosted sites, and a redirect to a Blogger site. I'm quite happy to renew with Daily, though they, like Free Parking before them seem to have pushed their prices up quite a bit. So I would be prepared to transfer. Does the list have any recommendation for DNS providers please? ATB, Karl.

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Running code on startup
by Mark Rogers 11 Mar '16

11 Mar '16

Simple question: Is there anywhere I can dump a script file that will cause it to get run on startup? System is Debian (actually Raspbian although it could apply to other Debian derivatives). On this occasion it has a GUI but I'm looking for something that would work in a GUI-less environment. Caveats: What I want to do is just copy a file there (eg dropping files onto the SD card of a Pi). I'm trying to keep things simple so ideally I don't want to edit any files, which means appending to rc.local is out, for example. I tried creating /etc/cron.d/mystuff with @reboot root /root/mystuff.sh .. which works fine on reboot but doesn't run from any other startup, so not what I need. I'm thinking about creating a script for /etc/rc.d and also creating all the symlinks manually that would otherwise be created by update-rc.d, but that's messy. It seems odd that there isn't a /etc/rc.local.d directory (or similar) which automatically runs all scripts present at the end of rc.local, but unless I'm missing something there isn't any such approach. (Background: I want a simple way to configure a Pi (or similar) by writing the latest Raspbian image to a disk then extracting a tar file of my changes over the top. I want to supplement existing files rather than replace any that could obviously change between Raspbian versions.) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Satnav updates
by James Freer 07 Mar '16

07 Mar '16

Just wondering what folk use. One can use the Garmin/Express updates on windows but I was thinking of a way in Linux. I gather one can use a VM but then also have a windows version after Vista in order to do so. The only way I have found is to use maps from Openstreetmap.nl and copy to a mini SD card. Seems ok but not as good as Garmin/Express - is there a better way using linux. james

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APC UPS and Ubuntu
by Mark Rogers 07 Mar '16

07 Mar '16

I had a couple of power cuts yesterday so today I have installed an APC UPS. Connecting the USB cable to my Ubuntu PC has given me a battery icon showing status so everything "just works" without messing around installing nut or anything similar, which is what I was expecting to do. However: I have two PCs being protected by the same UPS, the second being a Win10 box. I was expecting to use something like nut to share the status between the two boxes so both will shut down on low battery. Given that "it just works" so far, I'd like to supplement the existing config rather than replace it. Anyone here done something similar or know where I should start? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 10th March
by Viperfang 07 Mar '16

07 Mar '16

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 10th March at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Software for the blind.
by Nev Young 04 Mar '16

04 Mar '16

Our erstwhile companion Mr Anson is currently wired to machines that go ping in the cardio ward of the local hospital and has asked if I could put the following to the knowledgeable folk of ALUG. Could any body comment on the availability of a good Linux speech-operated program to suit a totally unsighted person. Thanks Nev on behalf of Tony.

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How to timeout a process after inactivity?
by Chris Green 04 Mar '16

04 Mar '16

I want to close an editor window (it's vile a vi clone, but something that works for vim would work with vile) after some minutes of inactivity. It's a security thing, I have a nice wrapper script that allows me to 'transparently' open and edit files encrypted using GPG but I want it to automatically close the editor window after a few minutes of inactivity. Currently I use the following in the wrapper script just before starting the editor:- # # # time ourselves out after five minutes by typing ZZ in the window # (sleep 300; xdotool type --window $WINDOWID ZZ >/tmp/log 2>&1) & This works OK but has some problems:- It doesn't work when used via SSH because xdotool is using X and there's no WINDOWID. It will *always* send a ZZ to the window five minutes after being started, even if I've exited from the editor. Can anyone suggest a better way of doing this? Ideally it should detect activity in the editor and only shut it down (or kill it) if there is no activity. -- Chris Green

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List down?
by mick 04 Mar '16

04 Mar '16

Hi Guys This is a simple test email to the list. It appears to be down as there has been no traffic since 14 February - and I at least have sent mail. Unfortunately, my mail to the list was about mail problems my end (!) so I'm not /entirely/ sure the problem is not just mine..... Mick (As promised, this is the other email from an address which is not registered to the list in the hope that it will get bounced to a moderator who may notice a problem. -- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th March.
by Viperfang 01 Mar '16

01 Mar '16

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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List down?
by mick 24 Feb '16

24 Feb '16

Hi Guys This is a simple test email to the list. It appears to be down as there has been no traffic since 14 February - and I at least have sent mail. Unfortunately, my mail to the list was about mail problems my end (!) so I'm not /entirely/ sure the problem is not just mine..... Mick (I'll send another email from an address which is not registered to the list in the hope that that will get bounced to a moderator who may notice a problem. -- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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How to test a mouse (well, a laptop Trackpoint device)
by Chris Green 20 Feb '16

20 Feb '16

I have a Lenovo T430 and the Trackpoint is playing up. It has both a Trackpoint (nipple plus three buttons) and a Trackpad (pad plus two buttons). It has started producing very odd symptoms when I use the Trackpoint, the pointer can be moved all over the screen but it's functionally stuck in one window. For example if it was in a terminal window the pointer stays as a text cursor and won't do any actions elsewhere on the desktop. This doesn't happen immediately but after not very long, usually just a minute or so, select text and paste seems to be what provokes it most but sometimes it just goes screwy all by itself. When this happens the Trackpad is the same, so I'm stuck unless I switch to a console to reboot or, if I can, restarting the Window Manager sorts things out. The Trackpoint *seems* to be acting oddly in Windows as well (dual boot to Windows 7) so it would be good if I could run some sort of basic diagnostic to see if the Trackpoint is working right but I can't find anything to do this. Can anyone suggest a way to test if the Trackpoint hardware is working right? (There is a good reason for wanting the Trackpoint to work, the middle button is very handy) -- Chris Green

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More impressed by my OKI MC342 now
by Chris Green 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

Well having fixed the scanner software installation with my OKI MC342 I like it even more. The scanner utilities are really neat! When you select 'Start scan' in the panel applet you are offered a straightforward scan or save as PDF or save to folder. Each of these can be configured from the applet to specify destination directory, scanner options, etc. In addition you can add new scan types so you can, for example, add a 'Scan to Tiff' if you want. By default the basic scan squirts the scan into the Gimp, scan to PDF saves the PDF and then fires up the default PDF viewer, etc. It's nearly all written in Python too so if one really wanted to change things radically it wouldn't be too difficult. All in all I'm very pleased with it now, I was fairly happy before I got the scanning to work from Linux, now it's well nigh ideal. It is rather big but the price from eBuyer (£171 inc shipping) seems pretty reasonable for an all singing, all dancing, all-in-one printer, copier, scanner, fax machine. It prints duplex (of course) and has an ADF for the scanner and fax which also does duplex. -- Chris Green

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How to diagnose startup script not running?
by Chris Green 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

I have worked out why the 'scan from computer' utilities don't work with my new OKI printer. They expect a device /dev/okiscand which should be created when '/etc/init.d/okiscand start' runs. If I run '/etc/init.d/okiscand start' manually as root then everything is fine, I can scan from the computer. However I can't work out why it's not working correctly at startup. There's nothing in the logs at all and it always works fine when run manually. I *suspect* now I look a bit harder that the oki installation is for an old V5 setup using the /etc/rcN.d directories. There is a link from (for example) /etc/rc5.d/S03okiscand to the script in init.d but there's nothing in /etc/init that refers to it. What do I need to do to get upstart to start it? (Don't tell me I should use systemd, a step too far!) -- Chris Green

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claws-mail POP3S failure with Dovecot
by mick 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

OK guys this is now driving me crazy. For some yaers now I have run my own mail service using postfix and dovecot on debian. My preferred email client is claws but I use K9 when out and about on my android (cyanogenmod) devices. For purely historic reasons I use IMAPS on all portable devices so that I leave mail on the server until I sit at my desk where claws is configured to use both IMAPS and POP3S. I do this so that mail is actually downloaded from my server over POP3S and stored locally (where it is backed up to two separate external systems. I also use IMAPS on claws so that I have access to the "sent" folders for my email boxes (in case I send from a mobile device). I can then simply move sent mail to tjhe mailbox of my choice locally where it matches the incoming mail. So far so hunky dory for some long time. Yesterday I upgraded my mailserver from Debian 7.9 to 8.3. As expected, everything went fine and all seemed well - until I fired up claws. Claws successfully connects to IMAPS and to my submission port (587) but it fails to connect to POP3S with the error: * Account 'mbm(a)rlogin.net': Connecting to POP3 server: smtp.rlogin.net:995... *** SSL handshake failed Sure enough, the mail.log shows entries like: Feb 19 12:27:59 pipe dovecot: pop3-login: Disconnected (no auth attempts in 0 secs): user=<>, rip=178.238.155.43, lip=213.138.100.26, TLS handshaking: SSL_accept() failed: error:14076102:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_CLIENT_HELLO:unsupported protocol, session=<Bu4YnR4swgCy7psr> No athentication takes place because I insist on TLS (on both client and server ends) before I allow credentials to be passed. Here's the bonkers bit. The X509 certificate I use on the server is self generated and is identical for SMTP, POP3S and IMAPS. Using openssl client ("openssl s_client -connect smtp.rlogin.net:pop3s" and "openssl s_client -connect smtp.rlogin.net:imaps3") to test the connections returns identical (successful) results. I see: New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 Server public key is 2048 bit Secure Renegotiation IS supported Compression: NONE Expansion: NONE SSL-Session: Protocol : TLSv1.2 Cipher : ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 blah, blah, etc. Nothing has changed client side and the fact that K9 and claws can successfully send/receive indicates server side is OK too. I have been over the dovecot configuration probably a dozen times now and can see nothing wrong (though dovecot's configuration files are a nightmare). Doveconf -n shows a perfectly acceptable setup. So my suspicion is that claws cannot handle the elliptic curve cipher offered by the server in its new configuration for POP3S (but why for IMAPS?????) (Debian 8.3 shows "OpenSSL 1.0.1k 8 Jan 2015" whereas 7.9 shows "OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013") I really don't want to have to change from claws on the desktop (I'm not a tbird fan) so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Meanwhile I'll keep on searching (there's nothing on the claws buglist) Mick (I suppose I could just stick to IMAP - I know POP is an old protocol, but I like the way I work, and this is just bugging me.....) (Or I could try Cyrus...) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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TV Progs
by Chris Walker 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

With the move of BBC3 to online I can plainly use get_iplayer to grab any files from there should I be so desperate. The problem I have is with another stream where the only option is to watch it as it's broadcast as my tv won't record it as "It's not a digital broadcast". The programme is Auto Mundial on Motors TV which is now only receivable on Ch240 on terrestrial or some satellite streams , none of which I have. Has anybody managed to circumvent this restriction? Or does anybody have any suggestions about which forum to frequent to gain further info? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Mint blues!
by Michael Goddard 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

Using Mint 17.3; it has suddenly started supplying a folder and a separate file when d/l an article when I just want the file. Something this newbie has got wrong or not perhaps? Any guidance much appreciated. Michael Goddard <emmjee(a)mypostoffice.co.uk>

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Does anyone here use wxGlade, or even any other Python GUI generator?
by Chris Green 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

I've recently been banging away at my 'grid view of a database' requirement. I've actually got a Python program that does basically what I want (modified some code I found on the Web) and I could develop from there. However it would be much easier if I could use something to do the spade work of designing the layout etc. so to that end I've been trying wxGlade. I'm beginning to understand how it's supposed to work but seem to keep hitting bugs and 'infelicities' that stop it working. For example I now have a saved wxGlade app that is totally unresponsive when reloaded into wxGlade. Is this normal, i.e. is wxGlade this bad? I tried the Windows version (in a VirtualBox guest) and that actually seems somewhat better in that I don't keep hitting a situation where wxGlade doesn't respond. Should I persevere with wxGlade or are there better GUI designers out there? .... or should I just go back to writing native Python with wxPython? -- Chris Green

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