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Re: [Alug] Abstraction
by MJ Ray 07 Aug '01

07 Aug '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)alug.org.uk> writes: > So the question is still out, how can I generate my pages for upload onto > the server. Please bear in mind that I can ONLY USE HTML on the server. Makefiles are wonderful things. > As for the comment above about the usual suspects not replying I would > like you to explain this! Your mail client generates neither In-Reply-To or References, so I can't ever see what you were talking about after I read your first message unless I search the spool and that's more effort, so less likely to occur.

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Sun cables
by David Freeman 07 Aug '01

07 Aug '01

Does anyone know what the pinouts are for a sun Monitor plug, I have a Sun IPC I would like to connect to a normal monitor? Also how different are sun keyboards to PS/2? Thanks D ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Here's an interesting game to play
by Alexis Lee 07 Aug '01

07 Aug '01

I have a sigs file of the form: <count> . sig . sig . and so on. Right now I use a perl script to generate a random number between 0 and (count-1), skip that many sigs and copy the next one into .signature. It does this three times, so it's not very efficient. Can anyone suggest another fair means to do this, reading the whole file at most once? I can reformat the sigs file if it would make the problem easier, but I don't want to include any more 'metasig' than I have to, since that would make my Vim macros excessively complicated. Each sig can contain anything except /^\.$/. Alexis ps. Here are some interesting things to say... (paraphrase, Dr. Seuss) -- The more you know, the more you know you don't know. Corollary: Those who know nothing think they know everything. "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok "Don't say don't quote me, because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying" - KMFDM, Dogma

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Re: [Alug] re: Abstraction
by MJ Ray 07 Aug '01

07 Aug '01

Alexis Lee <alexis(a)turton.com> writes: > My way, it would be 7. It would also be easier to get extra candy in, > like a datestamp on every file. (You'd have to split tail into tail1 and > tail2, then cat tail1 >> product.html; date >> product.html; cat tail2 > >> product.html) Any scripting language offering regexps would make it fairly easy to build the site from templates and external files. 6 pages would need 9 files (6 content, 1 template, 1 build script, 1 Makefile). This is more or less how I build my website at http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ I don't see how you arrived at a total 7 files unless you're doing some nasty things in the content ones?

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Re: [Alug] re: Abstraction
by David Freeman 07 Aug '01

07 Aug '01

On Mon, 06 Aug 2001 10:02:33 -0400 Alexis Lee wrote: > What I understand you want is a way to generate pages with a customisable > sidebar and main page on your home computer, which can then be uploaded to > a static webspace. Bingo, exactly what I want! No more no less. > You certainly don't need a database for this ($0.02: pg). You don't > need to > learn a 'web language' such as PHP for it; since you're going to be > throwing > text into files, C could do it. But web languages weren't designed by > fools. Yup, RDBMS is over kill for what I want. > You can build PHP as a CGI executable (which can then be used just > like any > UNIX CLI app), pipe your source through that, and upload the result. > Alternatively, you could set up Apache/PHP on your home machine > hosting the > pages. Use wget to grab each page into export/, rename all to end in .html > (for X in `ls export'; do mv $X ${X%.php}.html; done), then upload to your > space. getting more like it, although PHP does not ender itself to me > AFA designing your source goes, I'd suggest something like this: > > > html.php: > <? > function htmlopen() { > // html, head and body tags; set up for the sidebar content > } > function htmlsplit() { > // close sidebar, open main page > } > function htmlclose() { > // footer, close main page, close html > } > ?> > > > mainpage.php: > <? > include_once('html.php'); > htmlopen(); > // sidebar content > htmlsplit(); > // main page content > htmlclose(); > ?> > > > That looks fairly simple to me, and it shouldn't be too hard to add extra > sections to the layout later on. I learnt PHP from the reference > manual, and > I knew enough to write that after day one. cat head body tail > index.html :o) I think this is the most sensible suggestion sofar, I am just skeptical about PHP, my past history with it is not good (3 weeks trying (and failing) to install it last year! The one I am surprised no one has mentioned is Slashcode! Thanks D > Alexis > -- > "Don't say don't quote me, because if no one quotes you, you probably > haven't > said a thing worth saying" - KMFDM, Dogma > "Imagine a world without hypothetical situations" - Bram Moolenaar > `man` first, ask questions later. > > > > _______________________________________________ > alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list > Send list replies to alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug > See the website for instructions on digest or unsub! ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Re: [Alug] Re: The ongoing best way to do a website debate
by MJ Ray 07 Aug '01

07 Aug '01

Paul Tansom <paul(a)whaletales.co.uk> writes: > and seen so far I'm not inspired with confidence of its flexibility, and I > definately didn't like the small text input box that I appear to have to > type/past my html pages into. Of course I haven't look far into it yet so I > could be wrong/unjustly biased! Well, you can enable an FTP service on it too, but you'll want to be restricting that to specific domains for upload, IMO, and files uploaded in that way don't get types set correctly (at least not when I was doing it). The FTP also confuses some (many?) badly-behaved windows clients, as you can't list the starting or root directory if you're a normal user. I'd love to hear that there was a new upload method and/or FTP set object types correctly now.

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Re: The ongoing best way to do a website debate
by David Freeman 07 Aug '01

07 Aug '01

On Mon, 6 Aug 2001 09:19:20 +0100 "Earl Brannigan" wrote: > David, > One word... ZOPE > www.zope.org > In a box, if you haven't got a functional site within an hour, and if you > can't get a more site up and running in basic form within a day of reading > the tutorial (included in installation) > then your a donkey!!! > Have now donned asbestos clothing and await.... > Regards > Earl Earl, Great in theory but I can't put anything other than plain old HTML. Thanks D PS EuroDMCA is scary! ===== -- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Re: [Alug] Sun cables
by David Freeman 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

On Sun, 05 Aug 2001 23:12:56 +0100 Neill Newman wrote: > David Freeman wrote: > > > > Does anyone know what the pinouts are for a sun Monitor plug, I have a > > Sun IPC I would like to connect to a normal monitor? > > aahh that old chestnut, I tried that a while back, it's not as easy as > just hacking the cables.. Oh goodie. > The sun monitors have RGB and sync on the green signal, but standard VGA > has seperate sync lines, you need to either get a graphics card that can > do sync on green, or hack teh sun monitor and patch the sync into the > right place on the board.. A friend has modifoed a SGI monitor to do > this, but it took him a while... This looks fun, will need to do more of a Google. > to be honest, an IPC is about the same speed as a 33MHz 486 (ish!), I > have an IPX as a doorstop ;) Whats wrong with a 486 33? I still have two 386's which are in use! I use a IPX as a monitor stand! > > > > Also how different are sun keyboards to PS/2? > > erm.. no idea about that one... Cheers D > Sz > > > > > Thanks > > > > D > > > > ===== > > -------------------- > > "We all know Linux is great... > > it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." > > Linus Torvalds > > > > _______________________________________________ > > alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list > > Send list replies to alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > > http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ > http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug > > See the website for instructions on digest or unsub! > > -- > Open Source Specialists http://www.entora.co.uk/ > Tel: +44 (0)701 0723686 Fax: +44 (0)870 3214368 ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Re: [Alug] Abstraction
by David Freeman 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

On Mon, 6 Aug 2001 07:35:09 +0100 Richard George wrote: > On Sunday 05 August 2001 10:27 pm, David Freeman wrote: > > yes you suggested I use a language which mixes content with formatting, > > requires two new services be installed on the server and something which > > took 7 months to code, I want something I can knock up in an evening and > > then just add content to easily. I also want something which can > have the > > format changed easily perhaps with the editing of one file. > > Obviously I'm wasting my time trying to help you here, and I can only > assume > that this is why those more familiar with your posting here have not even > attempted to do so. I'm not going to repeat the reasons why what you have > written above is innacurate, as it's really of no interest to me if > you write > your pages in C, M4, perl, Fortran or Cobol. I shall just wish you > good luck > and consider this conversation closed. Well stop being a zipper head and turn your hearing aid up! Its quite simple, I beleive I have explained this in other mails. I can not be certain that my hosting will always have PHP or the practical alternative to RDMBS (MySQL) and as such your option is no good, especially if it will take me many months to code. You have yet to give me any endering reasons for me to choose it. Also PHP is notorious for heavily loading a server, ask Adam about his MySQL and PHP horror stories. I want a simple system for generating what I have at the moment from say a list of text files. The PHP code someone else had can be done equally simply by a simple shell script. Put head in file head, body in body and tail in tail cat head body tail > index.html Somehow I think PHP is a bit bloated for this. I did also say in my original mail that PHP was out. Last summer I spent 3 weeks trying to get it to install, it never even compiled! Most of what PHP can do Perl does just as well. So the question is still out, how can I generate my pages for upload onto the server. Please bear in mind that I can ONLY USE HTML on the server. As for the comment above about the usual suspects not replying I would like you to explain this! Thanks D > Richard > ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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The ongoing best way to do a website debate
by Earl Brannigan 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

David, One word... ZOPE www.zope.org In a box, if you haven't got a functional site within an hour, and if you can't get a more site up and running in basic form within a day of reading the tutorial (included in installation) then your a donkey!!! Have now donned asbestos clothing and await.... Regards Earl

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re: Abstraction
by Alexis Lee 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

What I understand you want is a way to generate pages with a customisable sidebar and main page on your home computer, which can then be uploaded to a static webspace. You certainly don't need a database for this ($0.02: pg). You don't need to learn a 'web language' such as PHP for it; since you're going to be throwing text into files, C could do it. But web languages weren't designed by fools. You can build PHP as a CGI executable (which can then be used just like any UNIX CLI app), pipe your source through that, and upload the result. Alternatively, you could set up Apache/PHP on your home machine hosting the pages. Use wget to grab each page into export/, rename all to end in .html (for X in `ls export'; do mv $X ${X%.php}.html; done), then upload to your space. AFA designing your source goes, I'd suggest something like this: html.php: <? function htmlopen() { // html, head and body tags; set up for the sidebar content } function htmlsplit() { // close sidebar, open main page } function htmlclose() { // footer, close main page, close html } ?> mainpage.php: <? include_once('html.php'); htmlopen(); // sidebar content htmlsplit(); // main page content htmlclose(); ?> That looks fairly simple to me, and it shouldn't be too hard to add extra sections to the layout later on. I learnt PHP from the reference manual, and I knew enough to write that after day one. Alexis -- "Don't say don't quote me, because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying" - KMFDM, Dogma "Imagine a world without hypothetical situations" - Bram Moolenaar `man` first, ask questions later.

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Re: [Alug] Abstraction
by David Freeman 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

On Sun, 5 Aug 2001 22:16:51 +0100 Richard George wrote: > On Sunday 05 August 2001 9:41 pm, David wrote: > > OK, so my web of mail seams to have been distorted into a holy war > before > > I got a good answer. > > > > So this still leaves me with how can I seperate content from formatting > > such as to give an elegant and simple solution which doesn't need a week > > to code, two high level languages, a relation database and an > excerise in > > normalisation. > > You have my answer, reasons, and example. I apologise if it wasn't "good". > If you want any more info, let me know - I'm no expert, but I know > what works > for me. yes you suggested I use a language which mixes content with formatting, requires two new services be installed on the server and something which took 7 months to code, I want something I can knock up in an evening and then just add content to easily. I also want something which can have the format changed easily perhaps with the editing of one file. > Yes, the example took 7 months to code, uses DBs, CSS and js as well > as PHP, > but these are all optional. In between all that, it lets me modify > the site > from a small number of files - which I think pretty much serves your > purpose. > > Rereading your initial mail, it suggests that you want to reformat > prior to > upload; I can't say I have any brilliant suggestions on how to do > that, as I > think the more normal method would be server-side modification or CSS. Yup, I can't guarentee that I will have PHP and mysql on every server I ever use so it gives me compatablity issues, I want simple HTML, no more no less with CSS and a nice easy way to add to it. Thanks D > Richard > -- > Technical Webmaster, http://www.cyclists.org.uk/ > > > _______________________________________________ > alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list > Send list replies to alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug > See the website for instructions on digest or unsub! ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

This is the automated ALUG irc meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an irc meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.openprojects.net in the #alug channel, you can take a look at www.openprojects.net to get more info on the openprojects network. Popular irc clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and ircII on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.bitchx.com http://www.xchat.org http://freshmeat.net http://www.epicsol.org/ (for Brett!) Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Abstraction
by David Freeman 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

OK, so my web of mail seams to have been distorted into a holy war before I got a good answer. So this still leaves me with how can I seperate content from formatting such as to give an elegant and simple solution which doesn't need a week to code, two high level languages, a relation database and an excerise in normalisation. Thanks D ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Profanity
by David Freeman 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

"the only language all progammers understand is profanity" Has anyone Ever heard of the programming language, "Universe"? Thanks D ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Re: [Alug] IRC Nick names
by David Freeman 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

On 05 Aug 2001 13:39:24 +0100 MJ Ray wrote: > David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > > > I would just like to remind members that it is incredibly rude to take > > the Nick of another Member. I cannot emphasis enough how offensive this > > and if it is done again action will be taken. > > Nicknames are not owned, although nickserv thinks differently to me on > that one and will win in a fair fight. This is true, how ever Taking a nick for the purpose of impersonating someone is rude. Especially as the only thing which has ever been able to impersonate my writing style accuratly and fool people was a perl script written by James McGowan at BT (not sure where he works now) Thanks D > _______________________________________________ > alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list > Send list replies to alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug > See the website for instructions on digest or unsub! ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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Re: [Alug] Web of mail
by MJ Ray 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

Raphael Mankin <raph(a)panache.demon.co.uk> writes: > > * Encourages mixing of code, layout and content > But that is its whole rasion d'etre. As it is for TTK and mason. I'm not saying that's a good thing... > > * It has an object system but no-one uses it > You clearly mix in the werong company. Mix with quality design and > implementation teams and you will find that the object system is > used, and used consistently and extensively. "No-one" is an approximation. Please assume a 1% observation error, as usual. ;-) > > * It has all the security problems given in the "study in scarlet" doc > It is quite possible to write bad PHP, as well as bad perl or C/C++. It is > also possible to write good PHP. *Possible* but far more difficult and no-one (see above) does. Interestingly, I don't like perl either. The better string handling is nice and is the main reason I use it at all any more, but the price of the bolted-on and under-used OO system is too high.

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[Cyril Bouthors <cyril@bouthors.org>] Geographical representation of Free Software Developpers
by MJ Ray 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

From: Cyril Bouthors <cyril(a)bouthors.org> Subject: Geographical representation of Free Software Developpers Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:54:32 +0200 Hello, A tool allowing geographical representation of Free Software Developpers and organizations on a terrestrial globe map is now available at http://france.fsfeurope.org/coposys/index.en.html I'd like to reach as much people as possible involved in the Free Software Foundation. Please have a look and register. Please feel free to forward this announcement to other appropriate mailing lists. Thank you for your patience. -- Cyril Bouthors -- phone:+33 1 41 66 47 06 fax:+33 1 41 66 47 10

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Re: [Alug] Web of mail
by Martyn Drake 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

On 04 Aug 2001 23:44:52 +0100 Andrew John Savory wrote: > Gah! Sorry, but MySQL is probably the worst choice you could ever > make if you want to use SQL or have a dynamic web site. For > goodness sake, please use a PROPER database! Oracle, Postgres, even > SQL Server is a better choice than MySQL. Where I work, we're nowing using Postgres for all new clients. We will be converting the majority of clients that use MySQL over to Postgres over the course of many months. But everbody agrees that Postgres is the way to go.. Regards, Martyn

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Re: [Alug] Web of mail
by MJ Ray 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

"D" <dsc(a)clara.net> writes: > PHP/MySQL one of the best combinations for any website! PHP is bad because... * Encourages mixing of code, layout and content * It has an object system but no-one uses it * It has all the security problems given in the "study in scarlet" doc MySQL is bad because... * It encourages use of lots of non-standard SQL extensions * It doesn't crash neatly (full disks are sometimes fun) * Its performance for non-trivial operations is often suboptimal Why do I fell like dropping chaff now?

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Re: [Alug] Document Formats
by MJ Ray 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)alug.org.uk> writes: > I have just tried to download a document from the web site of my local > MEP only to find its in bloody MS Word Format! Antiword, Abiword, even StarOffice/OpenOffice. It can be very entertaining to run strings over it and see what they didn't mean to publish, though ;-)

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Re: [Alug] test message
by MJ Ray 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

Andrew John Savory <a.savory(a)btinternet.com> writes: > Actually, I've just switched to Evolution, as I was getting fed up with > mutt's misbehaviour. I have to say, I'd thoroughly recommend it to > anyone looking for a decent GUI Outlook-style mail client. Aside from a > few annoying crashes (hey, it *is* beta), it's a very nice package. > > I particularly like the absurdly easy to configure mail filtering. > Goodbye procmail, you won't be missed! Well, while people are recommending stupid email clients, I'll just mention that Gnus does everything you could ever possibly wish for in a mail client, including indexed mail spools (for fast searching, no database server required), write-and-forget automatic mail filtering (such silliness as auto-creation of new folders is possible), adaptive scoring (watches what you read and scores up and down as needed) and of course off-line newsgroup reading from multiple servers. The price for this power is a bit of extra effort to set the damn thing up. If you know (X)Emacs already, it will help. As with all mail clients though, back up your mail before trying it ;-)

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Re: [Alug] IRC Nick names
by MJ Ray 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > I would just like to remind members that it is incredibly rude to take > the Nick of another Member. I cannot emphasis enough how offensive this > and if it is done again action will be taken. Nicknames are not owned, although nickserv thinks differently to me on that one and will win in a fair fight.

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Re: [Alug] Code Red worm is unreliable because...
by MJ Ray 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

Since modularisation of apache, it looks like all but one of those alerts are in extension modules. Interesting :-)

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Re: [Alug] Grub Glorious Grub!
by David Freeman 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

On Sat, 4 Aug 2001 13:43:20 +0100 Steve Fosdick wrote: > On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 12:27:19AM +0100, Adam Bower wrote: > > > What I meant to actually say in simple english was that I believe > > the MBR only stores the current active partition and looks there for > > the boot record instruction bit. > > Perhaps it would help to understand more of the boot process, so here > it as to the best of my knowledge. > <snip discription of how linux boots> I have just worked out who borrowed the understanding the Linux Kernel book at the last meet :o) Steve, will you be at the next meet? Thanks D ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds

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