iface thoughts | Thoughts on software development and related, by Abhijit Nadgouda

Mar 14, 2010

Help Yourself With xdg-open

I am a keyboard junkie, and I encourage others to use it more than the average use and experience the change, whether it is in the console or one of the modern keyboard-driven launchers.

One of the complaints I keep hearing is that with the command line, people have to type in name of the executable to open a document. Whereas in the GUI world, you just double-click on a document, or on the application icon. And I realized it was not so much about typing the application name, it was more about having to remember application executable name along with the file name.

So here is a solution for those of you on Linux and possibly other Unix systems. What we need is an application which can identify the application for a specific file type and open it for us. And we already have something for this – xdg-open. It is part of the XdgUtils toolkit which aims at better desktop integration across various desktop environments. And most of the popular DEs qualify to be XDG compliant.

xdg-open opens a file, including URLs, using the preferred applications. In short, you can type xdg-open resume.odt and it opens up OpenOffice, or your preferred application, for you to edit the document. If you find xdg-open to be cumbersome to type, create a symbolic link with your favourite command. For example, if I want to open files using the command o, I do

ln -s /usr/bin/xdg-open /usr/local/bin/o

Now I type o resume.odt or o blog.py or o http://ifacethoughts.net to open any of the corresponding applications and work on those files.

We can perhaps take this one step further by using command_not_found extension for bash to invoke the application by just typing in the file name, without having to worry about the application name at all.

Mar 5, 2010

Software Patents And Open Source

Patents are once again in the focus, courtesy Apple’s suit on HTC. There is a lot of talk about right and wrong, and this time even the Apple fans seem to dislike Apple’s step. I think John Gruber has it right when he says that ,this is not about patents, but about poaching the idea – the grand revolution of the mobile phone. I personally think that the best way for patents to be implemented for software, is the open source way. If a patent is about exclusive rights in exchange for public disclosure of an invention, there is no way to claim a patent other than open sourcing the software invention. [Continue]

Mar 2, 2010

Another FUD Against Open Source

Countries which recommend open source software are to go under scanner for being anti-capitalist. Why? Because this recommendation creates a bias against the proprietary non-open source companies. If we apply this logic, every recommendation will be against some competitor. If the Government recommends Microsoft platform, the Linux or Mac guys can raise a hell. [Continue]

Mar 1, 2010

A Xubuntu User Again

Till now I was a loyal Arch Linux user. And before that I was an avid Kubuntu, another one from Ubuntu family, user. It might seem as if I am back to square one, but in fact I have learned a lot about the organization of a Linux distribution, and interaction between various components. The motive behind moving to Arch Linux from Ubuntu was to explore under the hood operations. Arch Linux is more of a meta distribution using which you can build your own. [Continue]

Feb 13, 2010

Advice On Building Great Products

Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, has a valuable piece of advice on building a great product, citing examples of Gmail and iPod: If you’re creating a new product, what are the three (or fewer) key features that will make it so great that you can cut or half-ass everything else? Are you focusing at least 80% of your effort on getting those three things right? Very nicely and concisely put. A must read, even if you are only a user and not a designer. Both Gmail and iPod followed this advice and managed to revolutionize how things worked. [Continue]

Feb 6, 2010

Ubuntu Defaults To Google Docs For Netbooks

Ubuntu Netbook Edition has dropped OpenOffice in favour of Google Docs. One of my friends asked me if this was because a netbook’s resources were not enough for Ubuntu and OpenOffice. I doubt. We were able to get 55MB of RAM usage with plain Openbox and some XFCE accessories on a stock Ubuntu installation (so that the machine could still use the local repository). Even with Abiword or Gnumeric it did not exceed 90MB, and that worked quite swiftly on a machine with 256 MB RAM and old enough to be low-powered than today’s netbooks. [Continue]

Jan 15, 2010

Inherently, Design Is A Combination Of Art And Engineering

I witnessed yet another debate whether Web development was art, or engineering, or both. I personally believe that it is a combination of both, which requires close collaboration between corresponding experts. To think of it, this is true about every design. Different individuals might choose different starting points, but in the end it has to reach a balance. Many argue that Web design is no different than other art streams, like painting. [Continue]

Jan 1, 2010

New Tools I Picked Up In 2009

I have picked up some interesting new tools last year. Some of them have changed the way I work. xmonad: A wonderful tiling window manager that has found a place in all my monitors, with different resolutions dmenu: IMHO the best launcher out there centerim: Console or not, this is the best and least intrusive way of chatting GNU Screen: An immensely useful terminal multiplexer git: A version control system that lets you code first and worry about version control later Chromium: It just sped past all the existing browsers. Some others are sitting in my experimentation lab: uzbl: A Webkit based browser, which has changed my perception of a Web browser zsh: A powerful shell, though I am still finding out what I stand to lose if I move away from bash. Which ones have you picked up?

Dec 17, 2009

Microsoft Agrees To Free Browser Choice

Microsoft has agreed to offer its users a choice of Web browsers. This has ended of a long antitrust case started by the European Union. Now Microsoft will offer a ballot screen to its European users who have Internet Explorer as their default Web browser. It is commendable that Microsoft is complying with the Europen Commission policy and is doing its job. However, as a Web community, we face a bigger challenge in educating the users and corporates who do not care about getting rid of IE-specific applications or working with a better browser. [Continue]

Nov 26, 2009

Get OpenID With Google Profiles

Google profiles can be now used as OpenIDs. Unlike the federated login, now Google will allow the profile URLs will work with any site that accepts the generic OpenID. Though this is good for OpenID, I doubt of the average Joe is aware of Google profiles itself. I do have a profile, but I have never used it, nor has anyone requested it. Unlike other Google services, Google profiles is hardly visible visible to a Google user. [Continue]