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Character display problem
by Eur Ing Chris Green 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

On this new-fangled Fedora 6 system at work I'm getting what I assume are meant to be quotes displaying as a strange sequence, e.g.:- âmainâ Note that the above appears to me as:- â\x80\x98mainâ\x80\x99 I think the above is meant to be `main', or something like that. It's only happening in some places, for example man pages and compiler error messages. I suspect that the original Gnome incarnation was doing something 'clever' and now that I'm using plain X and fvwm2 I need to turn something off - but what? -- Chris Green

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How to get rid of Gnome
by Peter Alcibiades 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Not at all an expert on Fedora (I installed it for a while but replaced it with Debian). However, the problem is how to configure GDM. When I start up GDM, there is a button someplace, it depends exactly how its configured where it is, which lets you pick the session. It should be something like Options > Select Session, and on my version of GDM its down at the bottom left of the screen. This should show you all the different WMs you have. When you pick the session option you want, it should then ask you whether you want to make the new session your default or not. But I'm left feeling that it cannot be this simple a problem or you'd have seen it at once. Is it maybe that when you install the other WMs they are not finding their way into the Sessions menu? That seems very odd. As far as I recall, it worked fine with my short lived Fedora install. Peter

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.profile *never* executes
by Eur Ing Chris Green 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

I thought I understood (vaguuly) the reasons for .profile and .kshrc or, for bash, .bash_profile and .bashrc but on this new Fedora system it doesn't work as I expect. The system boots and runs gdm which allows me to log in and, as far as I can see, my .profile (or my .bash_profile) *never* gets executed. Surely it's supposed to get executed at least once when you first log in, but it's not getting executed here for me. If I ssh into the system then the .profile gets executed (as expected by a 'login' shell), but isn't gdm (or kdm, or xdm) meant to do the login shell bit for you before starting your window manager? -- Chris Green

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Opera
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

Hi Folks, I've just been playing a bit with the latest version of the Opera browser (I tried it a few years ago, when it was fairly new on the scene; but it wasn;t really up to sbuff then). It seems to work very smoothly, on the whole, but I have a couple of queries so far. 1. I went to the BBC TV page, andlaunched a video clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/eastenders/episodes/episode_hub.shtml Up it came, and duly played (I have RealPlayer already installed, and Opera seemed to find it easily), but I also got a popup with the warning message from RealPlayer: You are using a browser that does not support scriptable plugins. Many embedded player sites may not work correctly. I've never had this from Firefox (which I've been using for a few years). and I wouldn't have expected it from Opera, if it's as smooth as it claims to be. Comments? 2. I've tried to import my existing Firefox bookmarks, to see what would happen. Procedure was: File --> Import and Export --> Import Netscape/Firefox bookmarks and gave the dialogue window (with "Look in /home/ted/" at the top) the path to the file relative to that directory: .mozilla/firefox/y8f9fahn.default/bookmarks.html after which I got the message "One entry has been imported"; the I clicked "OK". Now, after Bookmarks --> Opera I have a new item "Netscape bookmarks" -- but it seems to be null and void! Any ideas? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 12-Mar-07 Time: 21:46:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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How to get rid of gnome?
by Eur Ing Chris Green 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

So who is a Fedora expert? How do I get rid of the (vaguely horrible) Gnome desktop on this here Fedora machine and then choose a more acceptable window manager? OK, I can do the choosing and installing of the Window manager I want as I have done that on my home machine. However I can't see how/where to find the hooks that gnome uses to start the gnome desktop. The system is running gdm by the way, which is OK but I can't see where *it* decides which window manager to start. If it's easier I'm quite happy to ditch gdm and use something else (or even nothing, run startx directly). -- Chris Green

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"JPEG Quality"
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

Hi Folks, I have a little query which someone may be able to clarify. Background: I download photos off my digital camera. These are 2304x1728 (4:3) JPEGS, 8pits/pixel, around 2MB in size. As well as storing the originals, I also re-size them to 1024x768 (also 4:3, linear reduction by factor 2.25) because (a) at that geometry they exactly fit my screen, (b) they then come out much smaller in byte-size, convenient for emailing for instance. I do the re-sizing as follows, in ImageMagick: 1. display photo.jpg 2. View --> Resize --> 1024x768 --> Resize 3. File --> Save --> new filename --> Save and here's where my query comes. At this point I get a popup window which asks me the "Choose JPEG quality" with default option 75%. I've wondered how much this "quality" matters, so I've done a bit of experimentation, saving the re-sized file both at 75% (the default) and 100%. Then I put both of them up (on different "workspace" panels) and flip between them. Try as I may, I can't visually perceive any difference between them. Yet, for example, one 75% file has 171064 bytes, and its 100% counterpart has 694833 bytes, 4 times larger. At that difference in byte size, I'm surprised that there's no perceptible difference! Any ideas? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Mar-07 Time: 18:00:49 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Syleham kit meet
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 11 Mar '07

11 Mar '07

Is the Syleham kit meet on 1 April definitely on? A recent posting suggests it is, but the Wiki only says it is "Proposed" [posted 22 Feb 2007]. If it's on, then I'm on! (Thanks, John). Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Mar-07 Time: 12:35:32 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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A CSS and HTML question
by Eur Ing Chris Green 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

How do you know which CSS properties apply to which selectors? I.e. given that I want to change the spacing around lists how do I find whether it's padding or margin (or border?) that I need to change and/or what the defaults are? Not to mention how to know whether it's the space below the heading above or the space above the list that needs reducing. Personally I think we should throw the whole lot in the bin and start again! After playing with this for quite a while and having looked at lots of templates and stylesheets they're all a total mess of the worst sort of unstructured 'code' - it's the equivalent of the worst excesses of spaghetti code in Basic. I don't think it's the fault of the writers of the code, it's inherent in the way that HTML and CSS work. It's almost invitable that the template and stylesheet will become a horrible interwoven mess of classes, IDs and so on. Not to mention - why is it that the default spacing of HTML headings, lists, etc. is so awful? The defaults are such that paragraphs and lists are spaced equally from the things above them and below them. Surely a heading (for example) should be closer to the text/list below it that it refers to and further from what's above it? I always have to go and play games with the spacing to get what looks to me a reasonable layout that I would expect to get by default. .... end of Friday rant! :-) -- Chris Green

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RF Band for Wireless Routers?
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

Hi Folks, Anyone know what Radio Frequency Band is used by Wireless Routers? Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Mar-07 Time: 09:53:09 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Against the Day
by Richard Lewis 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

Hello ALUG, At the pub meet last night one of the bar staff directed our attention to a copy of /Against the Day/ by Thomas Pynchon which was found on the evening of the annual nosh in February in a Waterstones bag near our table. They've kept hold of it. If its yours, they would probably be happy for you to go in there and claim it. Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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