29th June, 2009
notes on OOo and ARM
To build OOo under ARM, (an apparently massively popular hobby in China at the moment for some reason other), try downloading the normal source from www.openoffice.org and…
./configure
make
that should go a long way. Though for < 3.2 you may need (ooo#100469) applied.
Of course, given that ARM isn’t generally fast, then there are likely cross-compilers, qemu-user hackery, or other stuff involved, but nothing specific to OOo, so if you can, say, build gedit with your environment, then OOo should generally build fine too. Try the same hackery you’d try with a simpler project with OOo.
And it is not porting something to simply build it. You actively have to change something before bandying around the term porting
Posted at 4:33 pm | Comments Off
26th June, 2009
MS XML decryption
Based on Bill Seddon’s rather excellent notes I’ve implemented decrypting MS XML documents, though only tested it on .xlsx files protected with the default VanillaSweatshop password.
MSO new-format encrypted documents aren’t in .zip format, but instead the .zip is encrypted and bundled as a stream into a classic OLE2 structured storage container which has some other streams that describe how it’s encrypted. Unlike our own which remain as .zips with encrypted streams.
Posted at 11:37 am | Comments Off
23rd June, 2009
Celebrate with Packt as We^W They Turn 5
I was emailed this a short while ago – thought it worth sharing 
<quote>
Five years ago, Packt published its first book, ‘Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management’. In the years that followed, Packt has published over 200 books on many different subjects and technologies.
We think it’s important to take the time to celebrate and thank the people who have made this possible. Therefore as our way of saying thank you for your support over the last five years, we have decided that over the next few weeks, Packt will be offering new and existing customers’ five exclusive offers.
The PEAR Installer Manifesto is one of the eBooks that we are offering to our readers. This book shows users the power of this code management and deployment system to revolutionize their PHP application development.
To download a free PDF copy of this book, simply visit http://www.packtpub.com/account and login to your account, or create one if you don’t already have one, and scroll down to your download area. Here you will see a link to the eBook, which you can download as many times as you like. In addition to this book, you can also download other eBooks on various technologies for free.
You can find more information on this offer by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/article/celebrate-with-us-as-packt-turns-5
</quote>
Posted at 12:58 pm | Comments Off
16th June, 2009
OpenStreetMapping Nenagh
So yesterday I had a quick interview with a journalist from the Nenagh Guardian – my local paper – about this OpenStreetMap (OSM) mapping malarky.
As most of you will probably know OSM is to printed atlases from AA, Ordnance Survery etc, as wikipedia is to encyclopedias. People can contribute data to the project through a variety of activities: going out and actually mapping an area with a sat nav or gps unit [even a mobile phone with GPS in it such as an iphone, nokia n95 or whatever], tracing data off Yahoo [and other] aerial imagery, filing bugs on the openstreetbugs website or literally drawing in information via the walking papers map making website. And better again, this is about providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.
Anyway…I mentioned how the OpenStreetMap map of Nenagh is more complete than even the latest commercially available maps for Garmin and Google Maps and listed off a few ways how OSM could be used commercially: by real estate agents, courier companies, how being able to pin-point where all the amenities are would be useful for tourists, and so on.
Compare the Open Street Map of Nenagh with the Google Map of the area – as you can see, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done – Millers Brook needs to be marked as such along with the various groves, avenues etc that comprise that estate. Plus all the amenities, shops [perhaps even their opening hours] and the Shannon Development Industrial Centre still need to be added – as I’m sure are some other small portions of the town that I’ve unknowingly neglected.
It’s fair to say that this will never be finished – existing housing estates will be extended, there will always be urban development plans that when implemented would also need to be included on the map.
It would also be cool to have the new “Nenagh Cycling Hub” rendered on the opencyclemap.org website.
I discovered the OpenStreetBrowser site to be a great test of the data that myself and others have entered – it’s also a great way of demonstrating just what can be done with OSM data.
If you happen to spot something that I’ve missed please either drop me a comment or use the openstreetbugs website.
On a related note: it would be good to see a PEAR/PHP based client/component for interfacing with the OpenStreetMap server so that interesting apps utilising that data could be implemented on the LAMP stack – something to go alongside the Services_GeoNames package from pear
Posted at 11:38 pm | Comments Off
16th June, 2009
Book Review: Learning jQuery 1.3
A while ago I was sent a review copy of “Learning JQuery 1.3” by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg, as published by Packt. I’ve now had a chance to read it objectively and compare it against the original “Learning JQuery” which Packt also sent me to review about a year ago. That earlier edition covered a much less mature version (version 1.1.3.1 to be precise) of this popular Javascript framework.
Aimed at web developers and designers with a basic understanding of HTML and CSS (and some level of comfort with Javascript), the later book is thicker than the original – it weights in at some 440 pages compared to the 360 pages that were required for the first. A new chapter, “Developing Plugins” covers how to write plugins for the framework and how to “share it with the world” – naming conventions, documentation style and other advice are included. There is also a new “Quick Reference” appendix which just begs to be reproduced in “Cheat-sheet” format for pinning up on your wall. Chapters already present in the earlier book are more detailed and read better.
The subject matter is expertly covered and unless you were aware of the changes in jQuery 1.3, compared to the older version that the original was focused it would be difficult to tell which portions of the book are new – the revision and updates to the original are seamless.
Quite rightly, Swedberg and Chaffer do not explain all differences between jQuery 1.3 and its predecessors – they rightly assume that if you’re reading “Learning JQuery 1.3″ then you don’t need to be informed of exactly how jQuery 1.3 differs from the version they previous covered. The book flows better because of this and remains very easy to understand because of this approach.
There is no hint of the selector engine in 1.3 being any different than what was already covered. The language used for explaining the different concepts to the reader is more precise, especially so in the Events chapter and this makes understanding the concepts being covered much more easy – for this reason alone buying the revised edition is well worth the money.
The book doesn’t focus on new additions that were freshly added to jQuery 1.3 but also ones that had been added to jQuery since the first edition was published; JSONP, which was introduced in jQuery 1.2 is covered in the chapter on AJAX, as is the more low-level $.ajax() method; it also mentions which features have been removed from jQuery since the first edition was published – XPath being one such example. The listing of development tools has also been reworked, as has the Online Resources section. These listings mention resources that are current and up-to-date.
I remember mentioning in my review of the first book (trying hard not to use the word ‘original’ again!) that until a later edition of it was released that you wouldn’t be able to find a better book on the subject. I stand by that assertion – the only book that covers jQuery better than the first edition of “Learning jQuery” is the second edition of the same.
Posted at 12:16 pm | Comments Off
11th June, 2009
DEV300_m50
DEV300_m50 callcatcher report, now back under 1000 again as chart2 unused removal etc. comes on stream
Posted at 9:52 am | Comments Off
4th June, 2009
line numbering doc odt im/ex
In both word (2007) and writer (3.1.0) paragraphs can opt out of line numbering at a paragraph level. On the other hand though, restarting line numbering is done at a paragraph level in writer, but at a section level in word. Which is unfortunate for an interoperability point of view.
For doc->odt conversion it’s fairly easy, just whack the restart value from the word section onto the first paragraph following that section break and all is well, though we have to be careful when munging two facts from the doc of a) paragraph opts-in/out of line numbering and b) section declares that line-numbering starts at value X, into one writer fact of “line numbering properties for a paragraph to not overwrite the other half of the fact.
On odt->doc, its not so easy. In the case where we’re re-exporting a odt which was imported from a doc then we can on export of a section have a quick peek to see if the first paragraph of that section happens to have a restart line numbering property and if so place it on the exported section. That’ll take care of doc->odt->doc round-tripping at least. where the final doc is the same as the initial doc
But for the generic odt->doc case we can’t be sure of a handy section existing right before a paragraph that uses restart line numbering so as to load the paragraph restart number onto the section. I guess we could add that circumstance to the already complicated reasons to export a section logic, its not an appealing solution, but the only one I can think of
Posted at 1:47 pm | Comments Off