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Working with Graphics Text in OpenOffice.org

By Bruce Byfield | Feb 25, 2010

One of the least understood features of OpenOffice.org is graphics text. People understand vaguely that it differs from regular text, but exactly how it differs or why anyone should care is mostly unknown. However, if you know the distinction, graphics text can work for you in ways that regular text cannot. more>>

Update on Controlling Konsole via DBUS

By Mitch Frazier | Feb 23, 2010

Recently I wrote about controlling konsole with dbus. As I've begun to use that script for setting up my konsoles I, like others, have discovered that the tab title that you set with dbus doesn't stick. This short note shows you a workaround to make your tab titles stay put. more>>

HOWTO: Customized Live DVDs with Reconstructor's Web UI.

By Ross Larson | Feb 18, 2010

I've been taking a Java programming course this semester at the local technical college, which has been a wonderful learning experience. The programming course uses the Eclipse 3.5.1 IDE along with the Java Development Toolkit for programming in Java. In addition to using Eclipse, I use Dropbox to save the source code and preferences from my home install of Eclipse, eliminating the need to carry a USB key or email/transfer the files through any other method. This Dropbox storage method also ensures that every machine I use has the latest version of source code files with minimal interaction and fuss on my part. more>>

Tech Tip: Fun With Gawk

By James Hinnant | Feb 15, 2010

When grep and sed aren't enough, gawk may provide the extra horsepower that you need. The following tip contains a sampling of some of the things one might do with gawk. more>>

Determine If Shell Input is Coming From the Terminal or From a Pipe

By Mitch Frazier | Feb 10, 2010

Working on a little script the other day I had the need to determine if the input to the script was coming from a pipe or from the terminal. Seems like a simple enough thing to determine but nothing jumped immediately to mind and a quick internet search didn't help much either. After a bit of pondering I came up with two solutions: the stat command and using information from the proc file system. more>>

konsole

Start and Control konsole with DBUS

By Mitch Frazier | Feb 02, 2010

Some time back I wrote about creating a number of konsoles automatically using dcop. Although we were at the time well into the KDE4 era I had not yet upgraded since there were still things that weren't quite working with KDE4, most of these have now been fixed so I've upgraded some of my systems to KDE4, which means it's time to update the original code to now use dbus. more>>

Tech Tip

Tech Tip: Use gxmessage for Displaying GUI Messages from Scripts

By Kris Occhipinti | Jan 28, 2010

There are many dialog programs out there, Zenity, Kdialog, xdialog, etc. I love programs like these. They make it so easy to spice up a shell script with a little GUI action. Today I'm going to go look at a dialog program called gxmessage. more>>

Tech Tip: Keep Your Monitor Awake with Caffeine

By Kyle Flanagan | Jan 21, 2010

One of my favorite new apps is a little system tray app called caffeine (and here). It's simple, yet very practical, its purpose is to inhibit a screen saver or sleep mode, which is great while watching flash videos on sites like hulu.

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Bash shell

Tech Tip: Dereference Variable Names Inside Bash Functions

By Mahaveer Darade | Jan 15, 2010

We often read (including in the book Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide by Mendel Cooper) that if we pass variable names as parameters to functions, they will be treated as string literals and cannot be dereferenced (ie the value is not available). But this is not so, variable names can be passed as parameters to functions and they can be dereferenced to obtain the value of the variable with the given name. more>>

Tech Tip: Start a Kiosk Style Machine Running a Single X11 Application

By Jim Peterson | Jan 12, 2010

By changing your Xsession file you can start a kiosk-style machine that starts a single X11 application. more>>

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