SCIM and XIM - 2008-03-12 10:53:16

SCIM and XIM

After a long time struggling with SCIM and XIM in Ubuntu and finally switching to UIM, I managed to solve my headache. It seems the reason some Americans were not suffering the same issues I had finally lead to a locale issue.

en_US or en_GB

SCIM will by default support en_US in Ubuntu, but for anyone outside of the US, we have to add manually this support by editing the ~/.scim/global file. This isn't a problem, but what gave me a one year headache was the way that SCIM interprets this file. Just adding your local is not necessarily enough.

Beware the space

You see for whatever reason, I had: "/SupportedUnicodeLocales = en_US.UTF-8, en_GB.UTF-8"

And no luck. What I needed was:

"/SupportedUnicodeLocales = en_US.UTF-8,en_GB.UTF-8"

Note the lack of space after the first locale. Annoyingly, is SCIM finds a space here, it will them proceed to ignore everything else on the line. This is a shame as most other systems are more forgiving in their config file parsing and the space certainly make the file more readable.

What should I add?

If you're having the same problem, run the "locale" command at the terminal, find the line that starts with LANG=, in my case it's LANG=en_GB.UTF-8. Then add that locale into your global file (in homedir/.scim). Should sort the problem of SCIM not working in non GTK or QT apps.

Install Sopcast - 2008-02-21 14:57:15

Sopcast

This guide will help you install sopcast on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy. It will also help you get a special modified version of the GUI running and setup firefox to send sop:// links to the program.

Installing packages

Make sure you have all universe and multiverse repositories switched on. Then, in terminal:

sudo apt-get install qt3-apps-dev vlc build-essential

Downloading the latest SopCast binary

Sopcast ix86 binary

Unzip it and cd into that directory using terminal. Then run:

sudo cp sp-sc-auth /usr/bin/sp-sc

Downloading and building the latest GUI

Download this specially modified source package. I have added URL handling.

RKMOD version of QSopCast

Aga‌in, unzip it and cd into that (src) directory using terminal. Then run

sudo qmake
sudo make
sudo make install

This should compile the source and install the binary into the correct location.

Creating a menu shortcut

Go to System / Preferences / Main Menu... then 'Internet' and 'Add New Item'. Give it the name "QSopCast" and command "qsopcast". You should now be able to launch from the main menu.

Setting up the GUI

Once the gui is open, goto config then config again. Make sure that the player settings are all set to "vlc" and that the channel URL is set to "http://www.sopcast.com/gchlxml"

You should now be able to watch sop casts by selecting a channel, launching it and then hitting player when the stream is at 100%

Firefox sop:// URLS

Go into firefox and enter URL: "about:config". Right click, select new and string. The string name is "network.protocol-handler.app.sop" and the value is "qsopcast". It should now sent sops to the modified version of QSopCast ready to be launched.

Installing Moblock - 2008-02-19 16:56:22

Installing Moblock

This will install Moblock on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

Repositories

You need to add extra repositories to allow Ubuntu to download and update Moblock automatically.

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add these two lines:

"deb http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/debian gutsy main"
"deb-src http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/debian gutsy main"

Now you'll need to import the keys for the repositories:

gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv 9072870B
gpg --export --armor 9072870B | sudo apt-key add -

Install the package

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install moblock-nfq mobloquer

Setting it up

You can find all the options you want in "/etc/moblock/moblock.conf". I suggest adding:

WHITE_TCP_OUT="80 443"

This will turn off blocking to outgoing http and https protocols. Also, you will need to whitelist your router and you could get internal network blocking.

GUI

The GUI for configuration can be run using the "mobloquer" command. I added a launcher to my applications menu. This is a god way to whitelist IPs on your own network because it allows you to easily see which ips are being blocked in the logs and turn blocking off individually using the graphical interface.

Installing AWN - 2008-02-19 16:39:48

Avant Window Navigator

This is a guide to installing AWN in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy). I have used information from: Ubuntu Forums

Adding Repositories

AWN is not available as standard in the default repositories, so you'll have to add some extras.

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Then add this 2 lines:

"deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator"
"deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator"

Then run "sudo apt-get update".

Installing

Run "sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr awn-core-applets-bzr"

This should set up you up nicely. It will put it in the menu under Applications / Accessories. I chose to make it autorun by adding it to my session. This can be dome by clicking on System / Preferences / Sessions and adding a new item with the command "avant-window-navigator".

Setting it up

Right mouse clicking on the bar will give you access to its settings. I recommend the zoom effect, 3d look and using the launcher taskbar applet. Please have fun trying some of these. Also, I'd say it's better to remove the standard gnome bar at the bottom of the screen and replace it with this as it looks much better and does everything the old one did... plus more!

Avant Window Navigator - 2008-02-18 22:05:12

Mac Style Launcher Bar

For all those people who've used gnome and never been truly satisfied with the look of the task bar... there is a solution. Avant Window Navigator.

AWN

Basically, AWN is a handy little application that sits at the bottom (or anywhere for that matter) of your screen and provides not only a launcher space, but also a task (window) list for running applications. It has all the cool effects that you'd expect in a modern OS and looks a hell of a lot better than the default gnome taskbar.

More Space

For a start, windows are displayed using their icons and not their names, you you have space for more of them. Hovering over causes a cool effect (choice of many)

Launcher / Tasklist

One of the greatest things is that when you launch an application, the task it represents sits behind the launcher, but with a small triangle to show it is activated. This is a really nice touch that saves space.

Extras

There are also a number of extras that you can add like a popup terminal and application menu. More modules are being written as we speak.

Installation

For instructions on installing AWN in Ubuntu, please see my guide: AWN in Ubuntu