SLUG Pearls #5 For 2 Jul 2000

By Jeff Waugh

Check out the Sydney Linux User Group!

Table Of Contents

• Printer-Friendly Format
• Text Format
• XML Source
• Introduction
• Threads Covered

  1.	25 Jun 2000 - 26 Jun 2000	(7 posts)	Slug Efficiency Test #57
  2.	26 Jun 2000 - 28 Jun 2000	(29 posts)	Tools for Documentation
  3.	26 Jun 2000 - 27 Jun 2000	(21 posts)	From Outlook to Netscape Mailboxes
  4.	26 Jun 2000 - 29 Jun 2000	(18 posts)	Statisticians Should Be Shot
  5.	26 Jun 2000 - 27 Jun 2000	(13 posts)	Newbie Quickies
  6.	28 Jun 2000 - 29 Jun 2000	(27 posts)	Slug Efficiency Test #58
  7.	29 Jun 2000 - 30 Jun 2000	(52 posts)	Uptime Thread With Too Much Uptime
  8.	1 Jul 2000 - 2 Jul 2000	(16 posts)	You Can't Diss The 'Hat
  9.	2 Jul 2000	(1 post)	The Real Vi vs. Emacs

Introduction

Another KC SLUG Pearls ripe for the pickings! - Jeff

Announcements & Information

• FAQs about Fax

  David Kempe posted this great HOWTO, answering some of the previous week's questions about using Linux to receive and send faxes.

• NFS Talk Report

  Jamie Honan posted this report of Neil Brown's talk at our Friday meeting.

1. Slug Efficiency Test #57

25 Jun 2000 - 26 Jun 2000 (7 posts) Archive Link: "recursive %20 to space"

People: Alex S, James Wilkinson, , Angus Lees

Starting yet another round of "How Clean Is My Shell Script", Alex S wondered that, after ftp'ing from a Windows box, "if there is an easy way /script to make all the names back to normal, ie my folder instead of my%20folder" . Some very "unleet" recommendations for more useful ways of copying were put forward, but these soon gave way to the good stuff!

James Wilkinson offered, "find /dosdir -name '*%20*' -exec mv {} `echo {} | sed 's/\%20/ /'` \;" and one which would process a single directory at a time. He commented:

Rathnor gave a multiline script, then tried putting it all on one line, "for a one line shell command (Hi Gus)" , tipping his hat to one of our resident shell-meisters, Gus Lees.

(ed. [] Surely this technique should be grounds for instant diqualification!)

Of course, Gus did give some solutions. The first, after a quick correction:

and his Perl solution (yes folks, two lines for clarity):

2. Tools for Documentation

26 Jun 2000 - 28 Jun 2000 (29 posts) Archive Link: "Tools for documentation."

People: , Jeff Waugh, Michael Lake, Jamie Honan

Rodos set off some latent quibbles between users of TeX and DocBook with this post, playing the two off each other to find a documentation standard that suited him. His main requirement was "something that is open, and will not cause version problems in 10 years time (will Word 2010 read Word6 documents?)" .

Jeff Waugh posted a summary of DocBook's features and strengths, leaving us with:

Along with a rundown of LaTeX and noweb, Michael Lake posted a quick rebuttal, quite rightly asking for more information from Rodos:

Rodos provided further information about his own situation, also putting forward a different scenario - the common problem of documenting Open Source software - just for the challenge.

Again, Mike and Jeff's views differed wildly. Mike offered both LaTeX and noweb (a literate programming tool) as solutions to both, explaining the powers of noweb in a programming situation:

He also gave a comparison of the markup, showing much shorter LaTeX source for similar documents.

Interesting DocBook links that surfaced during the discussions included:

• Using DocBook
• The Conglomerate Editor
• DocBook.org
• DocBook: The Definitive Guide

Finally, Jamie Honan noted the importance of substance over style and the need to concentrate on what you're writing, not its format.

3. From Outlook to Netscape Mailboxes

26 Jun 2000 - 27 Jun 2000 (21 posts) Archive Link: "MS Outlook to Netscape mail conversion"

People: , Jeffrey Borg, Graeme Merral

Graeme Merrall, whilst using Linux as his primary OS, had heaps of old email stuck in good old proprietary Outlook format and wondered if it was possible to convert it all to Netscape compatible mailboxes (mbox format). This a great hurdle when moving to another OS, and now that email is such an important part of our computer use, it's a widespread problem.

Jeffrey Borg posted a popular solution to this, using an imap server to make the transition.

There was a bit of random discussion about large mail files, and using Maildirs with Pine

4. Statisticians Should Be Shot

26 Jun 2000 - 29 Jun 2000 (18 posts) Archive Link: "Hi posters."

People: , Matt Allen, Michael Lake, Andrew Macks, Peter Samuel, Howard Lowndes, Charlie Brady, Rachel Polanskis, Ken Yap, Anthony Rumble, Terry Collins

Thus spake Rodos:

Rank #MSG Name
---- ---- ------------------
   1 1392 Ken Yap
   2 1138 Terry Collins
   3  641 Charlie Brady
   4  605 DaZZa
   5  480 Howard Lowndes
   6  411 Anthony Rumble
   7  347 Rachel Polanskis
   8  299 Grant Parnell
   9  293 Michael Lake
  10  272 Peter Samuel

There was much rationalisation (for SLUGgers who felt they should have been represented more) and celebration (for SLUGgers surprised at their positions).

A couple of the less-couth committee members had a light-hearted public flame, inspiring the idea of a Draconian SLUG Scoring System. Matt Allen dreamt of a "script that automatically judged an email on Quality of Answer ....." Rodos had a plan:

It was quickly suggested that both misspelling "lose" and correcting spelling and grammar were ripe for losing points. As if the thread weren't silly enough, Andrew Macks complained that changing his email name from "?" to "Moo!" and finally to "Andrew Macks" affected his standing.

This being the Sydney Linux User Group, there's always something in the water!

5. Newbie Quickies

26 Jun 2000 - 27 Jun 2000 (13 posts) Archive Link: "Simple Newbie Questions"

People: , Terry Collins

Getting used to both the Linux way of doing things, and the Right Way of doing things is often hard when you're starting out. There's also a few simple differences between apllications. Matt had a whole bunch of questions, so we'll summarise them, and go through the solutions one by one:

1. How do I start system things at startup?

   Terry Collins suggested putting simple things at the end of "rc.local" for a RedHat system.

2. Where's the best place for my own utility script?

   Rodos recommended using /usr/local/bin.

   (ed. [] One could always make a $HOME/bin directory and put it in your path. This is - to my knowledge - universally accepted.)

3. How do you make a "script" a "program"?

   Rodos suggested making "the first line #!/bin/sh or whatever shell you want to use to execute your script"

4. How do you open a link in a new window in Netscape?

   Just about everyone in the thread mentioned that the middle button did the same thing in Netscape, and that if Matt had a two button mouse, he could use the Emulate3Buttons feature.

6. Slug Efficiency Test #58

28 Jun 2000 - 29 Jun 2000 (27 posts) Archive Link: "search and replace"

People: Dean Hamstead, Herbert Xu, 

Need a Smart Shell Script? Want it Short and Sweet? Ask SLUG! Fellow SLUGger, Dean Hamstead did:

The only unargued solution was (unsurprisingly) Herbert Xu's:

The thread wandered, delving into such subjects as DNS serial numbers, haiku (definitely a theme for the week), and regexp extensions.

7. Uptime Thread With Too Much Uptime

29 Jun 2000 - 30 Jun 2000 (52 posts) Archive Link: "uptimes"

People: George Vieira, Peter Samuel, Alexander Else, Andrew Macks, , Rachel Polanskis, Terry Collins, Danny Yee

While claiming that she didn't start the thread, but merely happened to see that her print queue machine had a longer uptime than most of the others noted in last week's thread, Rachel Polanskis managed to incite a small riot. A bitter George Vieira:

Peter Samuel: "Wimp. That's only half the age of the planet. Where are the figures for the first 2 billion years :)"

George Vieira: "Linux didn't compile properly.. it didn't handle the E+94783 at the end of the counter..."

Alexander Else just had to top Rachel's time:

Andrew Macks felt there was a pattern emerging, "Alright alright, now which of you are running from a residential location without power backup? :) Give my 260 days a break :P"

After hearing of Danny Yee's web server (reported in a previous SLUG Pearls), Terry Collins threatened to pull down his server and install a 486SX20 with 8Mb RAM.

8. You Can't Diss The 'Hat

1 Jul 2000 - 2 Jul 2000 (16 posts) Archive Link: "Red Hat slagging"

People: Jamie Honan, David Sainty, Kevin Waterson, Andrew Macks, , Angus Lees, Simon Rumble, Danny Yee

Jamie Honan posted his response to the now-trendy attitude that RedHat have become too similar to Microsoft. He heartily disagreed, and laid his points out as follows:

There was agreement almost all around. David Sainty gave his reasoning and commented, "I'm sick of people saying Red Hat is like Microsoft. Look at the facts." Kevin Waterson asked, "Where does it say in the GPL that thou shall not make a wad of cash?"

Andrew Macks felt that RedHat don't put money back into the community sensibly, rather "throwing [it] around at people who don't really care about money or can not use it to benefit their projects."

Danny Yee and Kevin Waterson used Gnome and the Linux kernel as examples of where RedHat certainly do give back to the community. Simon Rumble mentioned that he, whilst not even using their distribution, used some RedHat-developed applications.

Marty, who Jamie quoted at the beginning of his post without attribution, responded to the reactions, saying, "the quote was then taken completely out of context which allowed everyone apply their own interpretations and assume the comment refers to Red Hat's corporate practices, scene contributions, ethics, <add your issue here> etc."

(ed. [] It was fairly clear that Jamie used the quote more as an example of the attitude against RedHat, than as a response purely to Marty)

Kevin Waterson posted an article on his site covering this topic further, whilst Angus Lees posted his perspective on the argument, rather different from the rest of the thread. There was no reply.

9. The Real Vi vs. Emacs

2 Jul 2000 (1 post) Archive Link: "rms on vi and emacs"

People: Anand Kumria, 

Gag posted by Anand Kumria.

Sharon And Joy