main

main@lists.alug.org.uk

10372 discussions

Re: [ALUG] Norwich Christmas Meal on the 10th
by Sam Tuke 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

On Thursday 03 Dec 2009 19:55:31 Montmorency wrote: > Menu here.... pick what you'd like. Risotto > Turkey > Christmas Pudding please, assuming that we are having starters. If not, just the last two please. Thanks for organising this event! Sam.

1 0

Hello! Bad penny strikes again
by Anthony Anson 03 Dec '09

03 Dec '09

Since Zetnet has been dying I've been unable sensibly to retrieve any postings since August. Now with a proper ISP again I really *NEED* access to the list as my (Shhh!) Windows box has suddenly refused to take part in anything NT-related. DOS and Win 98, yes, but not 2000 or anything subsequent to that. Box still runs Lenny with no problem, also (unsurprisingly) Knoppix from DVD. This Eee is still running Fisher-Price for now. So, hello again, and if anyone has a reasonably-priced laptop for sale, I'd love to hear about it. Eees are ok - at a pinch innit. -- Tony

1 0

How do you get podcasts/iPod apps etc without itunes?
by James Elsey 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

Someone here must have an iPod/iPhone/iTouch, how do you tap in to the apple store directory of podcasts, applications and such, without using itunes? There are some podcasts I'm subscribed to, but after replacing window7 with fedora12, I can't get hold of any updates. They are only hosted via the itunes store and not available as downloads from websites I did mention something on IRC about running iTunes under wine, but lets not go there.. :P I can't see any immediate way of Rhythmbox having access to the podcast listings, at least I haven't found a plugin yet. Any suggestions? Whack XP on virtualbox and get them via itunes? Cheers James Elsey

3 2

Cross-Compiling Debian Kernel - AMD64 and i386
by Steve Fosdick 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

It occurred to me that building a kernel for an older Pentium 4 machine would be much faster on a three-core AMD Phenom than on the original P4 as long as I can get it to cross compile. I found that with the following command line: make-kpkg --revision 1 --us --uc --rootcmd fakeroot --cross-compile - --arch=i386 --initrd --append-to-version=-scenic --config gconfig kernel_image make-kpkg appears to run 'make config' with defaults for the target i386 architecture and when it moves on to the build step is invoving gcc with options telling it to generate i386 code. The fly in the ointment is that at the end it then wraps the kernel up into a package whose architecture as declared in the filename and in the control file as AMD64. When looking inside the package though all the modules are ELF32 as I would expect for i386. I have checked the man enty for make-kpkg but didn't find any other clue as to how I get make-kpkg to feed through whatever options are required to get the final package the correct type for the architecture it was actually build for. Any ideas? TiA, Steve.

2 2

FW: Re: Using ImageMagick to overlay text
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

Apologies -- I just noticed that at the end of the message below which I recently posted, I said "the length of "This is my Text" in inches, when printed in Helvetica-Bold in point-size 15." That was incorrect, since everything preceding was done in terms of Courier-Bold! To see what it comes to in terms of Helvetica-Bold, substitute "HB" for "CB" in the commands. Thus: echo "\f[HB]\w'This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0/72000}' results in 0.988889 the length in inches of "This is my Text" in Helvetica-Bold in the default point-size of 10 points, while echo "\f[HB]\w'\s[15]This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0/72000}' results in 1.48333 the length in inches of "This is my Text" in Helvetica-Bold in 15-point (1.5 times as long as in 10-point). Also note (which I forgot to mention) that this length takes account of kerning (the slight left-shift of some letters relative to a preceding letter -- e.g. in "Text" the "ext" is moved left so tht the "e" is slightly overlapped by the preceding "T"). Kerning can be suppressed. Also, of course, the length is computed in terms of the font-metrics in the font files referred to by troff, and in other applications different font files may be used; however, the result is unlikely to be greatly different. Sorry for the sloppiness! Ted. -----FW: <XFMail.091201122319.Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk>----- Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:23:19 -0000 (GMT) Sender: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk From: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] Using ImageMagick to overlay text On 01-Dec-09 09:06:14, Mark Rogers wrote: > MJ Ray wrote: >> I'd either run identify on the image beforehand, or test PHP's libgd >> module to see if it was good enough for this. > > I will try GD today and see what the results are like (the results from > ImageMagick are pretty amazing, to be honest). > > I'm not sure what you mean about using identify though - I can see how > I'd use it to work out the size of the image but I can't see how I'd > use > that information to calculate the pointsize to use with my text? > > -- > Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 Your basic problem here is to find the printed length of a given text string, in a given font, at a given point size! You could incorporate something like the following in a script: echo "\f[CB]\w'This is my Text'\fP" | troff -Tps from which the output (to screen, when I entered the above on the command line) is; x T ps x res 72000 1 1 x init C p1 x font 6 CB f6 s10000 V12000 H72000 md DFd t90000 n12000 0 x trailer V792000 x stop The key line in there is t90000 which is the evaluation of the width ("\w'...'")of the string "This is my Text" in point-size 10 (the default) using font Courier-Bold ("\f[CB]"). The numerical result "90000" is the length of the text in units of (1 point)/1000, i.e. 1/72000 of an inch, so the physical printed length would be 90000/72000 = 1.25 inches You could feed that to 'awk' to do the sums (and this time I'll feed in an explicit point-size 15 ("\s[15]...\s0") as well): echo "\f[CB]\s[15]\w'This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t'/ results in: t135000 while echo "\f[CB]\s[15]\w'This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0}' results in 135000 so, finally, echo "\f[CB]\w'\s[15]This is my Text'\s0\fP" | troff -Tps | awk '/^t/{sub(/t/,""); print $0/72000}' results in 1.875 which is (15/10)*1.25, the length of "This is my Text" in inches, when printed in Helvetica-Bold in point-size 15. There may be some discrepancy, depending on how spaces are handled in the output. You can probably exploit the above ideas to get what you want! Hoping this helps, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Dec-09 Time: 12:23:16 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! --------------End of forwarded message------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Dec-09 Time: 14:22:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

1 0

Using ImageMagick to overlay text
by Mark Rogers 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

I'm playing with ImageMagick's "convert" program to add text to an image. I have something like this (which works): convert "infile.png" -font "font.ttf" -gravity 'south' \ -stroke '#fffc' -strokewidth '3' -pointsize '300' \ -annotate 0 "Test" "outfile.png" However, the only way I can find to size the text is using the -pointsize option. What I want to do is make the text proportional to the image size, eg have the text work out to 50% of the available width, or similar. I can't find any good way to do this - and nor can I find a suitable query for Google to assist me. The "convert" program is being called as part of a PHP script so I can be quite flexible in what I do if I need to be (eg if I need to create dummy images to see what sizes they come out as, etc). Suggestions for other programs I can use instead welcome. I know ImageMagick and I know I can trust it with high quality images if I need to (and will need to here) which is why I stated there. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

5 8

Re: [ALUG] Using ImageMagick to overlay text
by Mark Rogers 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

James Taylor wrote: > I think there is a question about whether swapping from inside PHP to > ImageMagick and back is a good thing or not - why spawn a separate > process to do essentially the same work? > > Another possibility is: > > 1) Load image. > 2) Create new image to store text in > 3) Render text (make it vector based if possible) > 4) Resize-text-image to being correct size/proportion > 5) Merge text-image over image > The actual processing is slower than the spawning, so it's not particularly a problem, but I am moving towards using the Imagick PHP libraries which will bring the processing inside PHP rather than spawning a new process. Spawning a process has the advantage that I can experiment at the commandline first (and can seek advice from a wider range of people), but the options are pretty straightforward to convert between library and commandline. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

1 0

Hi to All
by Rob Snow 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

Hi there Luggers, I have just signed up to this list and the lug. My interest in Linux stems from a spell working in the Charity Sector. We managed to convert our whole organisation to Linux across ten to fifteen sites (It varied as the project evolved and then unfortunately wound up). My current interest is fueled by offering family and friends an alternative to the commonly available "commercial" offerings. My favored flavors are Opensuse for modern kit and Puppy for the rest. I have recently moved to Norfolk near Downham Market, and am currently a full time parent! I look forward to meeting you all, either on-line or at one of the social meets. Regards Rob

5 5

remote update of debian etch to lenny
by mick 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

Advice please people. I have two VPSs. One runs Lenny, the other etch. There are sufficient differences between the two for me to want to standardise on lenny. (I also run lenny internally on a couple of NSLU2s). Upgrading should not be a problem. I have experience of doing exactly that on local machines - but I have never done it from the end of an ssh connection when the machine in question is housed in a remote datacentre (and, moreover, is a virtualised image). The debian site (at http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.html) recommends against upgrading remotely using telnet, rlogin or rsh, but suggests that ssh will be OK. So, before I jump in with both feet, any experience anyone could share would be good. Particulary I would like to be aware of any potential gotchas. I really don't want to be stuck with a partial upgrade that I can't get back in to. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

4 6

Christmas Meal - Who's coming?
by Montmorency 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

OK... for the Christmas meal at the Coach and Horses on the 10th of December. we have: Sam Tuke Ian <ian(a)titanexplorer.co.uk> Steve <steve(a)offend.me.uk> Adam Bower Richard <richardbensley(a)gmail.com> Myself Bill Hill Reply to the mailing list if you want to come. The menu is here http://i.imgur.com/bcvVP.jpg I'll repost this on the mailing list in a week's time as a final-call. Then get in touch with the pub next Tuesday or Wednesday to let them know the number coming. Montmorency montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

1 0

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

main