LaTeX characteristics being adopted by Microsoft Word 2010

I have used LaTeX fairly extensively in my academic work for producing research papers, CVs, reports and so on. I have always felt that the final document produced by LaTeX justifies the steeper learning curve and somewhat obsolete method of document production. In a nutshell, documents produced using LaTeX look good. The page at [Dario Taraborelli: The Beauty of LaTeX] explains some of the reasons this is so.

But Microsoft Office 2010 has, finally, added some typesetting features to it’s Word application, even though they are turned off by default. Calibri and Cambria are excellent expert fonts – at par with Libertine or Hoefler, perhaps. Kerning is now supported, as are ligatures. Glyph variants can now be selected manually, even if it is still rather cumbersome. Line breaks and paragraphing is still not intelligent, though. And true small caps are not offered either. Font transparency can only be achieved using the trick of textboxes.

Nevertheless, it is a step ahead, like so many others. Text styling offered by Microsoft Word 2010 is almost at par with LaTeX. Large documents are now less prone to problems. Direct PDF output is also now a Word feature.

Unless LaTeX offers ease of use and greater features, I can see even fewer people who will want to move to LaTeX’s niche world.

Firefox 4.0, Safari 5, Chrome 6 and Opera 10.53

In recent days, the browser war has heated up. Development is continuing at a breakneck pace. Firefox 4.0 is in development, as is Chrome 6. Safari 5 and Opera 10.53 were released very recently.

Safari and Chrome are the undisputed speed kings, with Opera and even Firefox far behind. Still, Firefox usage is not expected to fall down. That, of course, would be primarily due to the the customization of Firefox.

• Firefox: For power users
• Safari: For it’s very, very useful Safari Reader – a utility that allows screen reader view of any article Safari detects. It even unifies multi page articles.
• Chrome: For speed and simplistic UI
• Opera: Falling behind the times – it’s difficult to think of even one uniquely compelling reason to use Opera.

Just a rant.

The Excellent SUSE Studio (and tips)

I study in an engineering university full of geeks and nerds. Most of them use some (pirated) version of Windows, though they all know how superiorly Linux would perform on our sprawling LAN network.

They do not. And one of the major reasons is that there are some particular softwares that everyone here uses, but cannot be bothered to download for a Linux distro. People in Pakistan do not like the idea of not being able to double click and install, and when they see their favourite apps missing, they don’t bother to enable a repo and download them. They ditch Linux altogether.

Enter SUSE Studio. I’m a SUSE apologist, and nothing could be more exciting then a simple, easy way to build a personalized (or in my case, universitized) Linux distro – one that can keep the people on board the Linux ship longer, until they find out how good it can be.

SUSE Studio is still by invite only, but I got mine fairly quickly (in under a day).

And I went in. Many people in the blogosphere have already commented on how easy it is, how it runs in a browser, and how simple it is to test created distros. TuxRadar has a particularly nice account of the SUSE Studio.

My point is that in under 30 minutes, I had added the necessary repos, added the required software (recommended packages + DCPP, XChat, Blender, some DTP software, CAD, and some others). I also put in some artwork (our logo and wallpaper). But most importantly, I put in place of the license some basic starting instructions for getting up and about with iGIKI OS. I also set some of the fancier network settings that every node on our LAN has.

(The SUSE Config Panel screenshot. Taken from a VMWare guest running Windows Vista on a stock openSUSE 11.1 host)

The Test Drive works extremely well too. After making sure nothing was broken, I downloaded a LiveDVD image.

The result was a beautiful, custom, effortless openSUSE 11.1, that worked flawlessly. And it was a first time build. No second builds needed.

All I can say is that I am speechless in front of the technology Novell has brought to us. It is astounding. The bar has been lowered so much, even toddlers can vault.

My only gripe is the SUSE Studio itself is closed source. Hope you’re listening, Novell!

I have, since, built several distros for different purposes. I would like to share a few tips, that may come in handy:

• For initial testing, build hard drive images. You can then test, and also know what files changed when you ran it.
• Pay particular attention to the Messages in the left hand column. It often helps you avoid bloat.
• The software section is the one to which you must pay utmost attention. That, in all probability, is where any breaking or making of the produced distro will take place.
• Package dependencies are automatically resolved in most cases. However, I have found that some software that calls on E17 repos causes conflict with Gnome libraries. The Message section will notify you – take care.
• Live images test best. No matter which format you want to deploy in, I have found live images to be the best indicator of final performance. Then again, that may just be me.
• Don’t forget to create a new user account in the config section! It looks nice when you can show off to a first timer with a custom login.
• If you enable the firewall and also install some odd-port-requiring server or other networking tools like Samba or Nmap or Cain & Abel or something, then be sure to configure the firewall later through YaST. I have found the default firewall to be VERY draconic.
• (Other tips if somebody suggests them)

Happy building with this great service!

RockMelt – New Browser in the Making

The technology world never fails to surprise. The latest surprise comes from the ever more traction-gaining browser wars – the battle to make the most accepted web browser in the world.

The news, of course, is the creation of a new ‘mystery browser’ (as the blogosphere is labeling it) called RockMelt.

Almost nothing is known about it except for two very vital facts:

1. The people involved in the making of this browser from ‘ground up’ are Tim Howe, Eric Vishria and Marc Andreessen. All of them were involved in the making of the once universal, but now dead, Netscape browser. Marc Andreessen, of course, the creator of Netscape.
   • The point to ponder would be: why is he willing to back a complete underdog and startup in this deadly game?
2. The browser is supposed to be different from other browser. How different, we don’t know. But for one, it will be extremely integrated with the social network Facebook.
   • The RockMelt team is leaking nothing. What unique differences can RockMelt bring in, that will set it up over other existing browsers? Remember, one social browser (Flock) already exists.

Personally, I cannot see why a company would be willing to invest so much money (reportedly many millions of dollars) into a new browser. Browsers are free, and there is not much to be gained unless widespread adoption is reached. Chrome, Safari and Opera are already around, and have very little share.

I wonder what’s RockMelt’s top secret weapon?

KDE 4.3 Released – One Great Desktop

KDE 4.3.0 is now officially released, and the first looks are amazing.

I was using the stable KDE 4.2, and the differences with in 4.3 are obvious and many. The most noticeable, of course, is the completely new ‘Air’ default theme, which, in my opinion is the best default theme for any OS or desktop.

I have just downloaded the binaries for openSUSE 11.1 from the KDE4 repositories. And my first experience is that it is great, perhaps even better than great. The overall pliability and verve of the whole system has gone up. I loved the highly improved response of the whole desktop and the improvements to Dolphin. Some of them are so finely implemented, I wonder why KDE didn’t release them earlier.

(The picture is not my desktop – it’s on the KDE announcement page. I have to yet to check out the widgets properly)

There is complete announcement and changelist back at the KDE website.

The Junk that is IE8

I have never been much of a fan of the Internet Explorer franchise. Why Microsoft is bent upon forcing IE through is beyond me – they should have simply given after IE6 was drubbed by Firefox 2.0 and onwards.

Nevertheless, we saw the miserable IE7 and now, we have IE8.

I was piqued by press hype, saying that IE8 was good, the new features were excellent, how it was very secure, etcetera etcetera. But I was not expecting much. I had tried the beta, and the beta had been a nightmare. Nothing had worked at all, ranging from the display of the pages, right down to the very interface display.

And now came the final release. I took a deep breath and installed.

Alas, the bad things began immediately. I needed to reboot for the installation to complete. I run three different servers for my university, and rebooting just to install a browser is hard for me to swallow (when did Firefox ever ask me to reboot?). After a lot of deliberating, I did.

Back came my old nightmares. Bad display. The interface looked as if it had been designed for a 640×480 resolution and had been zoomed to meet my 1680×1050 resolution. It was slow, too. It took ages for the Google homepage to load, though that was mainly due to the time it took for IE to properly initiate itself. Pages did load perceptibly faster after that first tank, but only if you call mangling a page ‘loading’. The worst part of the whole affair is that even the Microsoft website had a few rough edges here and there. Not exactly my cup of tea.

I rolled back to IE7. Not that I ever use IE anyway, but at least IE7 worked when it had to.

Safari 4 vs Firefox 3.1 (aka 3.5) – Which will win?

First, the interesting part. As the web watching community knows, what was going to be Firefox 3.1 is now to be Firefox 3.5 as a better “representation of scope”. Of course, that is not what us users have to worry about.

What we have to worry about is that Firefox 3.5 and Apple’s Safari 4 are probably going to be released around the same time. And we have to worry about which is better.

And if we are to listen to the developers, we would have to settle for both. Both are deemed to be “fast”, “secure”, and “powerful”. They are both standards compliant, but both still in beta, so we hardly have much material to work with. As far as I can tell in my tests – they both do their basic job (loading websites) well and fast.

Truth is, one cannot really tell yet. Both have some serious bugs and problems to fix – in particular, stability problems. Safari seems to have introduced plenty of eye-candy, in a particularly useful manner: galleries, top sites, quick dial kind of things. On the other hand, Mozilla seems has been up to a few tricks of it’s own: super-speed, super-security, and a very powerful administration mechanism that makes it completely independent of the host operating system’s settings.

In the end it will come down to whichever is most convenient to use. And that is where, I think, Firefox will take the cake. I am talking about the Firefox Add-Ons. The one true advantage in Firefox. I cannot work my browser without my myriad of addons, such as FireFTP, DownThemAll!, Ubiquity, Fasterfox, and the many personalisations themes and extensions.

I think Firefox will take this round home.

Packet Crafting – and how to to go about it

There are many reason one may want to to delve into packet building, i.e. the building of raw data packets to send into a network. Security testing, responsiveness checks, or even special communications, no matter what, you may need them.

Fortunately, there are a few free tools that may help. Each of the tools listed allow packet generation.

The salient point about the ones I have given is that they are all Windows compatible, unlike most of the rest, which are Linux-only tools.

The first two work from commandline, and the other two have GUIs. But be wary: none of them is for the novice. You need to know a god bit about networks to use them – but then again, unless you do, there’s probably no reason you would want to either.

And you will need WinPcap (a free socket tool for Windows) to use the first three.

Note: The links are not given as these tend to vary very rapidly. Google the names.

1. Hping3
2. Nemesis
3. PackEth
4. Colasoft Packet Builder

Application Virtualisation – VMware ThinApp

I have had a good experience with VMware.

First, I found their Workstation (virtual machine software) to be top notch – the best in its class. Of course, many will support VirtualBox, but despite being open source in a category where being open source should be an advantage, it does not match up. You pay for VMware, but you get your money’s worth.

But this article is not about VMware. This is about another VMware tool I just tried – ThinApp. It comes with a fancy claim – being able to make any software portable, and thus be able to do it without conflicts. If you can install ThinApp somewhere, your ThinApp’ed software will work simply on copying and pasting, settings intact.

That piqued me. Think of the advantages: able to take your Office suite home with you, save your browser on your USB and take it along, and it runs. And as for testing, the ‘no conflicts’ clause means that technically, you should be able to test (or run) two or three different antivirus software on your system. Wacky.

So I downloaded it.

And it’s not free. Nevertheless, I went on ahead with a trial. The install is simplicity itself. Next, next, next…

The fun begins when it asks for the starting setup. It asks to be able to scan a Clean PC. Where would I get a clean PC from, anyway? It didn’t make much sense to me, and even though there a little explanation given there, it just serves to confuse more.

And then comes the installation part. It is rather unusual. I was expecting that I would have to open my application installers in ThinApp. All it asks is to minimize the screen, install, and maximize the Window again.

By now, I was beginning to get a good idea of how it works. It scans the registry hives, settings etc. and then rescans them after the installation and configuration of the software. It captures the changed files, as well as the changes in the registry and all, and runs them together in some way. Of course, this also implies that a software that was packaged on, say, Windows XP, will probably not run on Windows Vista.

After installing a software package (I chose to install Safari 4 beta, for experiment’s sake), I let it do another scan. Given that I was into the scheme of things now, this was no real surprise. I might as well specify that the scans are slow, and that I did not have a Clean PC to begin with.

It then generates a comparison, and asks you to set a few parameters that are rather straightforward. Simple, and convenient. By now, I had gotten used to the ugly, and unpolished interface of the software, and working.

It took an half an hour from start to end. And this excludes the time taken for the actual install. And there’s more. It actually used ALL the files that had changed between the two scans. While I certainly understand the clean PC requirement, this isn’t exactly making me very happy – must I install a clean system just for making ThinApps? For me, it would not be too hard – I would just install it a virtual machine, but that would be beyond most people.

And unorthodox conclusion:

It’s a real pain to get up and running. But it works really well!

On Bypassing Restrictive Firewalls with Your Freedom

As promised, here’s a full walkthrough for getting past restrictive firewalls that allow only HTTP access:

1. Get the Your-Freedom installer. If you already have Java installed on your computer, the minimal install is god. Otherwise, you need to get the full installer that includes the Java Virtual Machine.
2. Install it.
3. Get OpenVPN. Install that too. Leave all default settings.
4. Open your Network Connections (the place where you can see all the connections – differs for different versions of Windows).
5. Right click the TAP32 connection (this one is new). Go to properties, then TCP/IP properties. In the DNS section of this, choose Manual selection, and enter 85.214.18.161 in the first field. Leave everything else as such, and click OK.
6. Create a free account from the Your-Freedom website.
7. Run Your-Freedom from the icons it places on the Desktop and Start Menu. Vista users need to run it with Admin privileges (Right click > Run as Administrator)
8. Follow the wizard that pops up. End it.
9. In Ports setting, check the box that says “Use OpenVPN port 1194” (or something like that).
10. Restart Your-Freedom.
11. You’re through! All you need to do is to channel your applications through Your-Freedom: change the prock-sies on your applications to point to: localhost, port 8080 (for HTTP, FTP, etc) and localhost, port 1080 (for SOCKS)

This should work as wonderfully for you as it did for me.