Lacking Natural Simplicity (Posts about tools)https://tkurtbond.github.io/categories/tools.atom2024-01-23T18:49:33ZT. Kurt BondNikolaPDF-XChange Viewerhttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2009/04/28/pdf-xchange-viewer/2009-04-28T11:12:45-05:002009-04-28T11:12:45-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>I like to stick to Free/Libre (as in freedom) and Open Source Software
as much as I can, but I haven't found a open source program that lets
me add text on existing PDF documents yet, so I use a commercial but
free (as in costs nothing for personal use) program
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_viewer">PDF-XChange Viewer</a>, which can be downloaded <a class="reference external" href="http://www.docu-track.com/downloads/users/">here</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike most of the other commercial but free programs that allow you
to add text to existing documents, PDF-XChange Viewer doesn't add any
nagware watermarking to the document to indicate that it was produced
with the free version, so you can use it fill out forms in PDF
documents that don't have electric form fields, which is very useful on
long forms.</p>
<p>It's not perfect — I've had trouble with it on a few PDFs that seemed
to have pathological defects — but overall it works well.</p>
<p>I'd still rather have a Free/Libre or Open Source program, though.</p>Mousing in Emacs under Screenhttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/12/11/mousing-in-emacs-under-screen/2008-12-11T12:46:02-05:002008-12-11T12:46:02-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>It <a class="reference external" href="http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?14930">turns out</a> that if you execute the command <cite>xterm-mouse-mode</cite> (or
evaluate <cite>(xterm-mouse-mode 1)</cite> in your initialization file) when
running <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">Emacs</a> under <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/">Screen</a> it allows “non-modified single clicks” to
work. Normal mouse functionality is still available by holding the
Shift key while clicking. I use the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">PuTTY</a> ssh client for remote
access to various servers, and this works well Emacs in Screen under
PuTTY, too.</p>Cygwin setup crashes updating bashhttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/11/26/cygwin-setup-crashes-updating-bash/2008-11-26T15:57:51-05:002008-11-26T15:57:51-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>Thanks to the wonders of Google and <a class="reference external" href="http://rubenlaguna.com/wp/2007/11/05/cygwin-setupexe-crashes-whem-upgrading-packages/">Ruben</a> I finally found the answer:
remove (you'll want to make a backup copy before you remove it,
though) <code class="docutils literal">/etc/setup/bash.lst.gz</code> which apparently had become
corrupted.</p>
<p>According to a comment on that post, running <code class="docutils literal">gunzip <span class="pre">-t</span></code> on all
files in <code class="docutils literal">/etc/setup</code> will tell you which setup files have been
corrupted.</p>bash startup on Ubuntu 8.04.1 ridiculously slow!https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/09/13/bash-startup-on-ubuntu-8041-ridiculously-slow/2008-09-13T01:20:23-05:002008-09-13T01:20:23-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>I installed <a class="reference external" href="http://www.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu</a> 8.04.1 on a Pentium II machine with 256MiB and was
disturbed by how slowly it seemed. It turns out that it was just that
<code class="docutils literal">bash</code> was starting incredibly slowly. Removing the default Ubuntu
<code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">~/.bashrc</span></code> fixed it. It turns out to be something in
/etc/bash_completion which causes the slowdown, but I haven't figured
out what yet.</p>Chromehttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/09/12/chrome/2008-09-12T22:53:22-05:002008-09-12T22:53:22-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>On the advice of a coworker I tried out <a class="reference external" href="http://chrome.google.com/">Chrome</a>; after a day I think
it has almost become my favorite browser. If only it built on the
BSDs and Linux, and a had a noscript equivalent. I wonder what
RSS/Atom reader will integrate with it well? [2019-11-10: Turns out
it was Google Reader, which was eventually abandoned. sigh.]</p>E-mail Crisis, part 2https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/09/06/e-mail-crisis-part-2/2008-09-06T02:24:16-05:002008-09-06T02:24:16-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>I'm still having my personal e-mail crisis.</p>
<p>I said, <a class="reference external" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/08/05/e-mail-crisis/">earlier</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Anyway, I've finally come up with a way to switch back and forth
between Gnus, Mew, and MH-E while keeping up with my current
e-mail[…].</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That was a bit premature. What I should have said was that I'd found
a way to make sure I didn't lose any e-mail permanently when switching
back and fourth between e-mail clients. I'm using <a class="reference external" href="http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/">maildrop</a> to copy
my incoming mail to the normal mail spool file and to a separate
archive mail file for each day. So, for instance, all the mail I got
on 2008/09/05 is archived in the mbox-format file
<code class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">~/Inboxes/2008-09-05.inbox</span></code>.</p>
<p>I also said, <a class="reference external" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/08/05/e-mail-crisis/">earlier</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="reference external" href="http://www.gohome.org/wl/">Wanderlust</a> seems moribund.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It turns out that Wanderlust only <em>seems</em> moribund, especially to those
who only speak English. If you check the mailing lists there's still
some activity, and if you poke around on the Wanderlust site you can
<a class="reference external" href="ftp://ftp.jpl.org/wl/snapshots/">find</a> a newer snapshot. Unfortunately, Wanderlust uses several other
libraries (<a class="reference external" href="http://www.kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~tomo/elisp/APEL/">APEL</a>, <a class="reference external" href="http://www.kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~tomo/elisp/FLIM/index.html.ja.iso-2022-jp">FLIM</a>, and <a class="reference external" href="http://www.kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~tomo/elisp/SEMI/index.html.ja.iso-2022-jp">SEMI</a>) and these are also hard to find
much information about if you only speak English. So I've been
fiddling around with it, and have figured out enough to get it working
for me. (Thank goodness for the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD</a> <a class="reference external" href="http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html">ports</a> system.)</p>
<p>Oddly enough, although Wanderlust mostly understands MH-format
mailboxes, there seems to be no built-in way to get it to read mail
out of a standard mbox-format spool file and into your inbox. I guess
the assumption is that if you're not using IMAP then you've probably
moved on to using a maildir-format spool file, since they're supposed
to be more reliable.</p>
<p>Well, I'm not. I'm trying to compare Wanderlust, <a class="reference external" href="http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/">MH-E</a>, and <a class="reference external" href="http://www.mew.org/">Mew</a>, and
MH-E doesn't understand maildir-format mailboxes, so I have to stick
to mbox-format. (Ok, I suppose I could mung things so MH-E uses Mew's
<code class="docutils literal">incm</code> to read the spool file.)</p>
<p>Moreover, I've got a fairly odd pattern of e-mail folders. For years
in <a class="reference external" href="http://www.nongnu.org/viewmail/">VM</a> I've saved my e-mail in in separate folders with names like
<code class="docutils literal">2008/08/users.bond_tk</code> or <code class="docutils literal">2008/08/list.clisp</code>, with VM
defaulting the folder names automatically. I think I've mostly
figured out how to do this in MH-E, Mew, and Wanderlust, and I've
mostly figured out how to get the three of them to coexist peacefully,
so I can really give them a good comparison. We'll see how it goes.</p>
<p>Like many Emacs subsystems, the Emacs e-mail clients tend to use modes
with single-character commands for many things, and most the commands
are just regular keys, not key combinations. I've gotten so used to
this that I find using e-mail clients that require mousing to be
extremely painful. Moreover, I've become very accustomed to being
able to customize my e-mail client extensively using Lisp.</p>
<p>What it all boils down to is that I'm not happy unless my e-mail
client is part of Emacs.</p>Now 100% More Static! Rendering, that ishttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/08/11/now-100-percent-more-static/2008-08-11T11:33:12-05:002008-08-11T11:33:12-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>I've changed the blog to using pyBlosxom's static rendering.
Unfortunately, this meant getting rid of tags and the tag cloud.
Perhaps I'll be able to add them back in later. Oh well.</p>Blogging Software: Static Renderinghttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/08/10/blogging-software-static-rendering/2008-08-10T22:39:26-05:002008-08-10T22:39:26-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>I'm slowly figuring out more about <a class="reference external" href="http://pyblosxom.sourceforge.net/">pyBlosxom</a>, and will eventually end
up with a reasonable set of blog tools. This evening I've been
figuring out more about statically rendering my blog, which ought to
overcome the noticable lags when accessing my blog. I haven't
switched the actual blog over to static rendering yet, but I'm getting
closer. So far the incremental part doesn't seem to be working.</p>
<p>I considered moving to <a class="reference external" href="http://jared.henley.id.au/software/awb/">awb</a>, an <a class="reference external" href="http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/">AsciiDoc</a>-based Website Builder, but I
still find the <a class="reference external" href="https://docutils.sourceforge.io/rst.html">reStructuredText</a> markup slightly nicer. If only there
was a good reStructuredText to <a class="reference external" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/07/08/docbook/">DocBook</a> path I'd have no qualms at
all.</p>E-mail Crisishttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/08/05/e-mail-crisis/2008-08-05T10:38:04-05:002008-08-05T10:38:04-05:00T. Kurt Bond<p>I've been having a personal e-mail crisis for the past couple of
months. (If you've noticed that my e-mail has been even slower and
more erratic than usual, that's why.) I've been trying to figure out
a better mail setup and due to my complicated use patterns it has been
tricky.</p>
<p>I have dialup Internet access at home, at speeds that are moderately
slow even for dialup. I have a personal server elsewhere that does
have good internet access, and that's were my e-mail is delivered. My
main work computer is a Windows XP laptop. I often work at client
sites, and sometimes work at places that have no Internet access, or
very limited access with strict controls. I need to read, or at least
refer to my e-mail at all those places.</p>
<p>For years I've used <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">Emacs</a> and ViewMail (aka <a class="reference external" href="http://www.wonderworks.com/vm/">VM</a>) to read my personal
e-mail, syncing my e-mail directories between my Internet server, my
home machine, and my work laptop with <a class="reference external" href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/">Unison</a>, and primarily reading
e-mail on my Internet server. This has worked reasonably well.</p>
<p>I live in Emacs anyway (the Control key is the most worn key on my
keyboard for some reason…) and am thoroughly happy with it for editing
(and probably dependent on it), and VM has been very comfortable as
well. However, development of VM went into hibernation after the
release of version 7.19, and so hadn't kept pace with later e-mail
developments. Recently the original author of VM, <a class="reference external" href="http://wonderworks.com/">Kyle Jones</a>,
handed over development to <a class="reference external" href="http://www.nongnu.org/viewmail/">Robert Widhopf-Fenk</a> and development has
picked up again, but it's still lacking some features that I need, and
unfortunately I don't have time to devote to adding them myself.</p>
<p>I can't imagine giving up Emacs for reading e-mail, since it
integrates so well with the rest of what I do and I enjoy using Emacs
and Emacs Lisp, so I'm looking for a new Emacs-based mail reader. So
far I haven't been happy with any of my choices.</p>
<p>Back when I read USENET news regularly I used <a class="reference external" href="http://gnus.org/">Gnus</a> and loved it. It
is distributed with Emacs and seems to have regular development and
maintenance. In theory, Gnus can also be used to read e-mail, but
because of its news reader design it takes a very unconventional
approach to reading e-mail. I'm not entirely comfortable with it, and
I haven't figured out the best way to integrate my huge archive of old
mail. Moreover, the documentation is quirky and difficult and the
programming interfaces are quirky and complicated.</p>
<p>There are other Emacs mail readers. I used <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Rmail.html">RMAIL</a> for a while before
I moved to VM, but I can't see moving back. <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gohome.org/wl/">Wanderlust</a> seems
moribund. I've used the RAND MH Message Handling System (<a class="reference external" href="http://rand-mh.sourceforge.net/">MH</a>) in the
past, outside of Emacs, and there are a couple of modern versions of
that (<a class="reference external" href="http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/">nmh</a>, <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gnu.org/software/mailutils/">Mailutils</a>). It turns out there are actually a couple of
extensive Emacs interfaces to it: <a class="reference external" href="http://www.mew.org/">Mew</a> and <a class="reference external" href="http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/">MH-E</a>. I've looked a
little at both, and have had some luck with each. I'll have to see
how they compare over time.</p>
<p>I'd be interested in learning about any other Emacs-based e-mail
clients. The <a class="reference external" href="http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CategoryMail">EmacsWiki</a> doesn't seem to have any other likely
prospects, though.</p>
<p>Anyway, I've finally come up with a way to switch back and forth
between Gnus, Mew, and MH-E while keeping up with my current e-mail,
so I can search for better ways to deal with my old e-mail and
compare new email. I should be back to dealing with e-mail
quickly and effectively.</p>
<p>A <strong>really</strong> impressive and unlikely success would be to find a new
way of reading mail that lets me access my work e-mail, which is in
our corporate Notes e-mail system, from Emacs.</p>Gaming Weekend: 2008/07/20: The Eternal Nazihttps://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2008/07/20/gaming-weekend-2008-07-20-the-eternal-nazi/2008-07-20T00:00:10-05:002008-07-20T00:00:10-05:00T. Kurt Bond<section id="actual-play">
<h2>Actual Play</h2>
<section id="savage-worlds">
<h3>Savage Worlds</h3>
<p>Second, I ran <a class="reference external" href="http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/Eternal%20Nazi.pdf">“The Eternal Nazi”</a>, a <a class="reference external" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/pages/roleplaying-games-played-with-the-kids/#savage-worlds">Savage Worlds</a> pulp one-sheet
for them. Like many of the one-sheets, it didn't come with a map, so
I made one a couple of nights before using printable PDF tiles. The
<a class="reference external" href="https://tkurtbond.github.io/categories/cat_gaming/actual-play/the-kids/">kids</a> had fun, but I can see why Kator the Ape Boy wasn't in the most
recent pregenerated pulp characters download intended for use with
“The Eternal Nazi”: as the sole melee-only character he was at a serious
disadvantage.</p>
<p>I think this was actually the first time I've used modern weapons in
Savage Worlds. It went ok, although I did forget each shot on
auto-fire counts as three bullets expended. I think I'll add some
grenades to the PCs gear the next time I run it, suggest the PCs other
than Buck pick up some of the germain submachine guns, and up the
number of extras with the big bad.</p>
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