Detexify

A symbol recognition program allowing one to look up the syntax for LaTeX symbols by drawing them. After some experimentation I’ve concluded that it doesn’t work all that well yet (or perhaps I draw really badly). But it has some sort of machine learning algorithm built in so that users can teach the program which is the ‘right’ symbol for their drawing. A great idea — I always hated poring through those symbol tables.

TTYtter

After I started using Tweetie as my Twitter client on my Macbook, I began hankering for a Twitter client for my desktop at work that could thread conversations like Tweetie did (together with other more common functionalities like tracking hashtags, direct messaging, search, retweeting, URL shortening, and many others). But most of the feature-rich Twitter clients that are compatible with Linux seemed to be based on Adobe AIR, which is quite a chore to install on 64-bit Linux. After some painstaking reading through feature lists, I found TTYtter, which runs from the command line and had all the features I wanted. Lightweight with simple commands without (unlike other command line scripts like BLT) sacrificing functionality.

Emacs and Xfce

Per my last post, I spent the greater part of the morning customizing Xfce for my office desktop. An annoying quirk I noticed is that Xfce sets Alt-Del and Alt-Space as default keyboard shortcuts for some window manager functions. In Emacs, Alt-Del is supposed to delete the word before the cursor. I tried doing this several times today, only to find myself reduced to one workspace, with the programs from the other workspaces suddenly popping into the one I was working in. I eventually figured out that Alt-Del deletes a workspace from Xfce every time it’s invoked (it will not, of course, delete the only workspace left, if you have only one). Alt-Space, which sets markers in Emacs, does something more benign — I used it many times without noticing any changes.

In any case, to save my future self or others the trouble of Googling for the solution, you can restore the functionality of Alt-Del and Alt-Space in Emacs by customizing the keyboard shortcuts in Xfce’s Window Manager settings. Confusingly, Xfce has two places to configure keyboard shortcuts — one under the Keyboard settings, and one under Window Manager –> Keyboard. It’s the latter you need to disable the shortcuts that interfere with Emacs.

Another thing — the latest Xfce installations don’t seem to come with a default panel that includes shortcuts to the web browser and the terminal. You have to add them yourself to the empty panel, and to do this you need the command for the application. It took me some time to figure out what command would invoke a terminal, since I’ve never invoked a terminal from the command line! I’m using gnome-terminal now, but if you have it installed, you can use xfce-terminal, or even the minimalist xterm.

In other news, I am very, very sick of C++.

Enough Gnome

I’ve been having problems with Gnome and Firefox 3 crashing in Ubuntu Hardy Heron. The Firefox crashes don’t bother me much, since upon restart Firefox remembers the tabs that were open before the crash. Gnome crashing, however, is annoying — I lose all the processes that were running beforehand, and some programs cannot be restarted after I immediately log into a new session of Gnome (they can be restarted only after I restart the computer, rather than just starting a new Gnome session).

So I’m going back to Xfce. I’d used Xubuntu Dapper Drake before on the old desktop with limited RAM they dumped on me when I started work, and Xfce never crashed.

I also installed Xubuntu Intrepid Ibex on my 256MB RAM, ancient Dell laptop. It was practically frozen on Windows XP, but runs at a passable speed with Xubuntu. I was driven to do this because I’m sick of using Windows while Applecare takes forever with my Macbook.

I still prefer OS X to Ubuntu, but I’m not at all happy that Apple wanted to charge me the equivalent of US$200 to backup my data and reinstall the OS. (I told them to just change the defective hard disk, a free service under the warranty, and screw the data — I have all the important bits backed up anyway.) Also, I was inadvertently left with time to kill in an Apple store recently, and, strolling the aisles, was struck by how evil their marketing was. So I’m reconsidering giving more money to Apple for my next laptop.

Update: After 8(!) working days, I have my Macbook back with a new hard disk, and a Leopard installation as a bonus (I only had Tiger beforehand). Does not make up for the long delay and the generally bad service from the frontline staff, but a nice silver lining nonetheless.

Spotlight + torrent of PDFs = disaster

Spotlight goes crazy updating its indices when you’re downloading a good number of PDFs through Bittorrent. I just learned this the hard way. I left Bittorrent running, went off to run an errand, and when I returned, my hard disk was full thanks to Spotlight’s hyper-indexing. At length, the system hung, and I did a forced shut-down, only to get the dreaded question mark when I restarted. The good news is that Disk Utility tells me that my disk ‘appears to be OK’. With the install disc, I can even change my password for the startup disk. What I can’t seem to do, however, is to get it to boot.

I’m cheesed off not because of the probably lost data (all the files I need are backed up), but because of the time I’ll have to waste either reinstalling the system myself or going to the Apple shop and asking them if they can do anything better than a reinstallation.

Update: Attempting to start in safe mode indicated that it was a kernel panic, probably brought on by the full hard disk.

Back to Pen and Paper for Today

Either that or brave the Sunday downtown crush to get this thing replaced:

Slow Skim

I’ve tried Googling for instances of this problem, but can’t find anyone else who’s having it. Skim, a PDF reader-cum-annotator for Mac OS X, reads some PDFs, particularly (it seems) PDFs from JSTOR, painfully slowly. Top tells me that when I’m scrolling through a JSTOR PDF with Skim, Skim occupies up to 80% of the CPU. Skim’s annotation system is signficantly superior to Preview’s annotation system pre-Leopard, but its slowness might just compel me to return to the much leaner Preview. I’m using Tiger 10.4.11 on a 2GHz, 512MB RAM Macbook. There seems to be no reason why Skim should need so much of my CPU.

Late Update: It turns out this is because JSTOR encrypts all its PDFs and Apple’s PDFKit is slow at decoding that encryption. No solution, sadly.

Forward Deleting in MacBook Terminal

Ok, finally the lack of a forward delete key in the MacBook’s Terminal is seriously annoying me. I followed the instructions here but am told that the command “\e{3~” cannot be found. I downloaded DoubleCommand but found that its settings don’t apply to Terminal. Yes Fn+Delete works as a forward delete key in most applications. Just not in Terminal, which is where I need it most.

Frontends for LaTeX on Linux?

I have been quite spoilt by TeXShop on Mac OS X. I have used Emacs + TeX on Linux before but find it extremely user-unfriendly compared to TeXShop. It appears that TeXLive is one of the more popular LaTeX alternatives for Linux, but for some undefinable reason I’ve not been terribly excited by what I’ve read about TeXLive. And I’m tired of Googling for reviews of TexLive or other Linux LaTeX frontends, so this is a last wave for help before I give up and do all my typesetting on my MacBook rather than on my work PC. (I’m lazy about lugging my MacBook to and from work, but since I miserably failed to install VMD on Xubuntu Dapper Drake, and I can’t abide Windows, and they provide only PCs here, I might as well get used to retreating to Mac OS X for the right mix of security, programming tools, and usability.)

Update 18/10/09: I now use AucTeX with Emacs, and am pretty satisfied.