tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73440272024-03-08T04:16:22.333+01:00Yeah!zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-65128331924400247422012-10-28T11:43:00.001+01:002012-10-28T11:43:48.725+01:00snip2codeA friend of mine is working on a new project: <a href="http://www.snip2code.com/" target="_blank">http://www.snip2code.com</a><br />
It's very much oriented to programmers: it's the place to go when you're looking for a code snippet and you don't want to reinvent the wheel.<br />
<br />
Give it a go if you think it sounds interestingzinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-11285542079173051292009-03-15T22:04:00.002+01:002009-03-15T22:07:31.698+01:0074 bugs<div id="content"> <p>In <a href="http://zinosat.blogspot.com/2008/03/font-tips-3-digits-width.html">a previous post</a> I've talked about a bug affecting the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/ttf-dejavu.html">ttf-dejavu</a> package; I've extended the test to all font files in the Debian archive and come up with the following numbers: of the <span style="font-style: italic;">192</span> packages containg at least one <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Type_Font">TrueType</a> font file, <span style="font-style: italic;">74</span> are affected by the digits width problem for a total of <span style="font-style: italic;">672</span> ttf files.</p> <p>Result are available <a href="http://www.alioth.debian.org/%7Ezinosat-guest/digits_bug/">here</a></p> <p>The bug can be reproduced with pango-view (<strong>ttf-tmuni</strong> was chosen in this example):</p> <pre>perl -e 'for my $i (0..9){print "$i" x 80; print "\n";}' > sample.txt<br />pango-view --font="Tibetan Machine Uni" --waterfall --dpi=72 -q -o out.png sample.txt<br /></pre> <p>Comments are welcome before I start filing the bugreports</p> </div>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-56058316734881184812008-10-13T09:02:00.003+02:002008-10-13T09:15:21.402+02:00Font updatesWith the help of Monsieur Perrier, both <a href="http://packages.debian.org/experimental/ttf-freefont">ttf-freefont</a> and <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/ttf-dejavu.html">ttf-dejavu</a> font packages have been updated and uploaded to experimental.<br />Both changelogs are full of fixes and improvements:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=5451">freefont 20080912 changelog</a></li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://dejavu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/dejavu/tags/version_2_27/dejavu-fonts/NEWS">dejavu 2.27 changelog</a></li></ul>get them while they're hot!zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-69699245442595378382008-03-26T10:30:00.002+01:002008-03-26T10:39:50.987+01:00Almost two years...After almost two years, a new version of <a href="https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/">freefon</a>t has been released. Credits go to Steve White who took over the maintainance and to bubulle who took care of reviewing and uploading <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/ttf-freefont.html">the new package</a>, and who kept the project alive through the Debian BTS during all these months of inactivity.zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-48021910381606586732008-03-15T15:45:00.003+01:002008-03-15T15:54:57.527+01:00Font tips #3: digits widthA while back Frans filed <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=411308">an interesting bug</a> explaining the reason why digits width should always be the same.<br /><br />Finding out if the previous condition is true, is just a matter of creating a sample text file<br /><pre><br />FONT="DejaVu Sans Oblique"<br />OUTFNAME=$(echo ${FONT} | sed -e "s| |_|g")<br />numdigits=100<br />for i in $(seq 0 9) ; do<br /> for j in $(seq 1 ${numdigits}) ; do<br /> echo -n $i >> numeri.txt<br /> done<br /> printf "\n" >> numeri.txt<br />done<br /></pre><br />and creating a waterfall image:<br /><pre><br />pango-view --font="${FONT}" --waterfall --dpi=72 -q -o ${OUTFNAME}.png numeri.txt<br /></pre><br />The resulting image shows how Dejavu Oblique is victim of a regression at size <span style="font-weight: bold;">9</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">10</span> (credits to fjp who spotted it once more!)<br /><p><img src="http://www.alioth.debian.org/%7Ezinosat-guest/dwiki/blog/draft/DejaVu_Sans_Oblique.png" /></p><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=471024">bugreport</a> filed.zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-76806808021017349682008-02-21T14:44:00.001+01:002008-02-21T14:47:52.942+01:00Font tips #2: comparing fonts<p>Being able to compare images can be really useful sometimes; I found it extremely helpful when I wanted to know what changed between two releases of the same font.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php">Imagemagick</a> does the trick via a set of really powerful command line tools.</p> <p>Here's a very simple demonstration:</p> <pre> <br /> pango-view --font="DejaVu Sans Mono" -t "Hello World" -w 180 -q -o a.png<br /> pango-view --font="DejaVu Sans Mono" -t "Hello world" -w 180 -q -o b.png<br /> compare a.png b.png hello_diff.png<br /></pre> <p>which results in the following output:</p> <p><img src="http://www.alioth.debian.org/%7Ezinosat-guest/dwiki/blog/draft/hello_diff.png" /></p> <p>We can now apply the previous tip to something more useful; let's say we want to know how the glyphs in a font changed from a release to another. <a href="http://zinosat.blogspot.com/2008/02/font-tips-1-pdf-charts-with-fntsample.html">In a previous post</a> I've explained how to render all the glyphs into a nice PDF using <strong>fntsample</strong>; we just need to create PDFs for both releases and compare them... ain't that easy?</p> <pre># Let's suppose you have already created PDF files inside the following dirs<br />a=dejavu-2.22<br />b=dejavu-2.23<br /><br />vsdir="${a}_vs_${b}"<br />mkdir $vsdir<br /><br />for f in $(find $a -name '*.pdf') ; do<br /> f=$(basename $f)<br /> apng=${a}/${f/.pdf/}<br /> bpng=${b}/${f/.pdf/}<br /> mkdir ${apng} ${bpng}<br /><br />echo "*** ${f} ***"<br /><br /> # pdf -> pngs<br /> convert ${a}/${f} ${apng}/${f/.pdf/}.png<br /> convert ${b}/${f} ${bpng}/${f/.pdf/}.png<br /><br /> # compare pngs and, if different, show whre they differ in a png<br /> for p in $(find ${apng} -name '*.png') ; do<br /> p=$(basename $p)<br /> meas=$(compare -metric AE ${apng}/${p} ${bpng}/${p} ${vsdir}/${p} 2>&1)<br /> if [ ${meas} -eq 0 ] ; then<br /> rm ${vsdir}/${p} ${apng}/${p} ${bpng}/${p}<br /> else<br /> echo " - ${p}"<br /> fi<br /> done<br />done<br /></pre> <p>This is what you get when a glyph was modified:</p> <p><img src="http://www.alioth.debian.org/%7Ezinosat-guest/dwiki/blog/draft/changed_glyph_diff.png" /></p> <p>In case of newly introduced glyphs you get the following:</p> <p><img src="http://www.alioth.debian.org/%7Ezinosat-guest/dwiki/blog/draft/new_glyph_diff.png" /></p>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-3666613761474889722008-02-20T17:16:00.000+01:002008-02-20T17:48:02.646+01:00Font tips #1: PDF charts with fntsample<p>Around the end of 2006 I come up with the idea of setting up something I called <em>font-machine</em>: a collection of scripts / utilities, intended to improve quality of fonts by defining and implementing automatic tests able to catch errors and provide screenshots.</p> <p>Some pioneering work on this area was done a while ago by <a href="http://www.miriamruiz.es/weblog/?p=39">Miriam</a> who set up <a href="http://www.miriamruiz.es/debfonts/">a page</a> showing how fonts currently in Debian look like.</p> <p>I did <a href="http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/gtk-frontend/screenshots/">something similar</a> focusing on the fonts used by the Debian graphical installer (will write a separate post to describe the way it works).</p> <p>I'll start describing the tools which I've used more frequently; of course my preference goes to the ones which can be run non-interactively: those that can be invoked inside shell scrips and keep your CPU busy!</p> <p><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/fntsample/">fntsample</a> is probably one of the programs I've used more frequently during the last months: it was written by <strong>Eugeniy Meshcheryakov</strong>, who also made it available as a <a href="http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/fntsample">Debian package</a>, and creates really nice and professional PDF / PS charts showing all the glyphs contained in a particular font file.</p> <p>The following code snippet shows how you can use <strong>fntsample</strong> to create pdf charts for each of the <em>ttf</em> files contained in <a href="http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/ttf-dejavu">ttf-dejavu</a> package (will often refer to this package since I maintain it :-) ):</p><pre>font="http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/t/ttf-dejavu/ttf-dejavu-core_2.23-1_all.deb"<br />deb=$(basename ${font})<br />wget $font<br />dpkg -x ${deb} ${deb/.deb/}<br /><br />outdir="out"<br />mkdir $outdir<br />for ttf in $(find ${deb/.deb/} -name '*.ttf') ; do<br />pdf="$(basename ${ttf} | sed -e "s|\.ttf$|\.pdf|")"<br />fntsample -f ${ttf} -o ${outdir}/${pdf} -l > ${outdir}/${pdf/.pdf/.outline}<br />pdfoutline ${outdir}/${pdf} ${outdir}/${pdf/.pdf/.outline} ${outdir}/${pdf}<br />done<br /><br /></pre><p>Note that PDF files will have useful outlines (aka bookmarks) courtesy of the <em>pdfoutline</em> tool shipped with the <strong>fntsample</strong> package.</p> <p>Results are IMHO very imperessive!</p><p> </p><p><img src="http://www.alioth.debian.org/%7Ezinosat-guest/dwiki/blog/draft/fntsample_screenshot.png" /></p> <p>PS: looking at the above chart for Cyrillic, I've just noticed the glyphs are ordered as to read "SEX"... I did not choose that particular chart snippet on purpose!</p>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1170058024336017062007-01-29T09:03:00.000+01:002007-01-29T09:07:33.490+01:00ttf-dejavu 2.14-1bubulle has kindly uploaded a new version of ttf-dejavu: 2.14-1. This<br />includes <a href="http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/News">the latest upstream changes and fixes</a>, plus a patch (see <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=408311">#408311</a>) which<br />fixes hinting instructions for the sans-oblique variant. Hopefully<br />this version will make into Etch and make justice to this great font<br />package.zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1154091031388961742006-07-28T14:13:00.000+02:002006-07-28T14:50:31.713+02:00No more tarballs<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/GUI">G-I</a> is finally built using official <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/udeb?highlight=%28udeb%29">udeb</a>s only!<br />Getting in the archives the nine <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/GUIFonts">font udebs</a> needed to display all the (65?) languages currently supported has been a long journey. This was only possible thanx to the _huge_ support of <a href="http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog">bubulle</a>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1153811332402805152006-07-25T09:08:00.000+02:002006-07-25T09:11:19.033+02:00FTFTAfter rather <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/07/msg00932.html">unsuccessful messages</a> on <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/">debian-boot</a> and <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/">debian-i18n</a><br />there are still errors in level1 translations for d-i; since there's a<br />chance that new uploads can be made to fix those before Beta 3 is out,<br />I'm taking advance of this blog to ask people to spend a couple of<br />minutes to fix those.<br /><br />so please... Fix The Fu***ng Translasions!zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1137750164200449992006-01-20T10:33:00.000+01:002006-01-20T10:42:44.210+01:00Hola!I'm blogging right in the middle of the G-I meeting in Extremadura.<br />We got <a href="http://it.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/extremadura_2006/detail?.dir=208a&.dnm=2e7fre2.jpg&.src=ph">the storks</a>, <a href="http://it.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/extremadura_2006/detail?.dir=208a&.dnm=8dd9re2.jpg&.src=ph">the people, the food</a> and <a href="http://it.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/extremadura_2006/detail?.dir=208a&.dnm=13bare2.jpg&.src=ph">the nice weather</a>: what else could we<br />ask for?<span class="down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Collegamento" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><br /><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Collegamento" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Collegamento" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1135333171047791932005-12-23T11:13:00.000+01:002005-12-23T11:30:56.946+01:00GTK DD wanted!Looking foreward to the <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstallerWorkSessionExtremadura2006jan">G-I meeting </a>scheduled for Jan 18-22 in<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremadura">Extremadura</a>. Among the attendees we'll have upstream main developers<br />of the (gtk+) <a href="http://www.directfb.org/">DirectFB </a>project; a unique opportunity to know them,<br />their plans and to get <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=cdebconf-gtk-udeb">bugs</a> fixed.<br /><br />We haven't found yet a (possibly European) DD who can make the perfect<br />connection between Debian and DirectFB; please <a href="mailto:zinosat@tiscali.it">get in touch</a> ASAP if<br />you can come up with a name (my choice was Alastair McKinstry but I<br />haven't heard anything from him yet and I've been told is very busy)zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1127250307077731002005-09-20T22:44:00.000+02:002005-09-20T23:05:07.086+02:00rm -frThe <a href="http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/spellcheck/">spellchecker</a> has finally been switched as to use <a href="http://aspell.sourceforge.net/">aspell-0.60.3</a> on <a href="http://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>.<br />It's been so nice running <span style="font-style: italic;">rm -fr</span> to free 500 megabytes of stuff!<br />Finnish translations for the <a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">d-i</a> are finally spellchecked on a daily basis.zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1126560348967533602005-09-12T23:23:00.000+02:002005-09-12T23:25:48.973+02:00Faccia da pirlaHere it should be,<br />this is what <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">frankie</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>said about my hackergotchi...<br />Thanx for the uploadzinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1126210303945397462005-09-08T22:03:00.000+02:002005-09-08T22:11:43.950+02:00aspell on AliothTonight I asked on #alioth if it were possible to install <span style="font-style:italic;">gnuplot,</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">aspell</span> and a bunch of dictionaries on alioth; within a few minutes everything got installed...<br />Thanx alot to wiggy for his precious help.<br />Can't wait to switch <span style="font-style:italic;">s10r</span> to use those for spellchecking d-i translations.<br /><br />This is is what I call efficiency!zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1124914974936220692005-08-24T22:22:00.000+02:002005-08-24T22:22:54.960+02:00Uncle Davide<br /><p>Today my sister finally delivered my nephew <strong>Mattia</strong>! Can't wait to see the baby :)</p>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1120029663952822262005-06-29T09:13:00.000+02:002005-06-29T09:21:03.956+02:00Having fun with google mapsEveryone's been talking about google maps; today I had fun going to places I've never been to before...<br /><br /><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=cairo,+egypt&ll=29.977881,31.133934&spn=0.006405,0.009828&t=k&hl=en">Pyramids</a>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1113938505796002782005-04-19T21:21:00.000+02:002005-04-19T21:21:45.796+02:00Abemus Papam<br /><p>Joseph Ratzinger aka Benedetto XVI</p>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1106179480212112042005-01-20T01:04:00.000+01:002005-09-08T23:02:54.546+02:00no more typos in d-i po files<br /><p>I finally announced the project I've worked on in the past few week (should I say months?!): a set of shell scripts which automatically spellcheck translations (po files) of the d-i using <strong>aspell</strong>.</p><p><br /><a href="http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/spellcheck/">Here</a>'s the link in case you wanted to take a look:</p><p><br />Within a few hours I got positive feedback and I'm glad I've been asked already things that were just in the back of my mind for a long time:</p><p><br /><em>"could it be used for other projects (kde,gnome)?" </em></p><p><br />the answer is yes... the thing is not that flexible yet but one day it'll be indeed</p><p><br /><em>"I see a potential for improving the dictionaries as well, to detect missing words."</em></p><p><br />definitely; I also think we'll see more languages with a debianized aspell dictionary.</p><p><br /></p>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1104876284512721492005-01-04T23:04:00.000+01:002005-01-04T23:04:44.513+01:00I'm an web addict<br /><p>Tonight I got back home earlier from the office with a lot of plans and energy... I could not connect to the provider: I got mad! I tried to call the company and they said everything was ok so I thought something in my config was wrong; after a couple of hours spent changing configurations (I even tried using Windoze!) I phoned again and they said that they already knew something was wrong because of my previous call and within 48 hours somebody would fix the problem and when I asked "but they said everything is ok: is it ok or is not?" the lady sounded lost... I didn't give up and when I tried using the default login and password given to nw users it worked!!! they somehow did a sort of big reset... I felt so bad and lost not being able to to my daily tasks: do I need a shrink?</p>zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1099953219142054362004-11-08T23:16:00.000+01:002004-11-08T23:33:39.143+01:00Having fun checking d-i translations<span class="on" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Upload" title="Upload Image / File" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);uploadFile();;ButtonMouseDown(this);"><img src="http://www.webalice.it/zinosat/zinosat.jpg" alt="Upload Image / File" border="0" /></span>
<br />Lately I tried to see if and how I could improve the quality of italian translation for the new installer; I ended up playin' with converters, spell checkers and shell scripts. I'm writing down some notes that I'd like to share as soon as they're finished. Obviously what I've done can be used for all languages so... stay tuned!zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1092726184400637902004-08-17T08:55:00.000+02:002004-08-17T09:03:04.400+02:00Back to workMy holydays are finished! I can't believe it: I'll have to wait until xmas to get some days off...
<br />I still have to sort out so many things with my new laptop: first of all I'd like to know why Realplayer stopped working.
<br />d-i is getting there and I think I'll spend some time helping with translations.
<br />I don't know if this post will look ugly on Planet Debian as the last few posts did... we'll see: in case it did could somebody please tell me what to do?
<br />
<br />ciao
<br />zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1089277068477613092004-07-08T10:54:00.000+02:002004-07-08T10:57:48.476+02:00Broken posts on Planet DebianLooks like I'm not the only blogger whose blogs look ugly on Planet Debian...
<br />Is it my fault or www.blogspots.org's?
<br />Can anyonle tell me what can be done in order to prevent this?
<br />Holydays are coming... don't know where to go yet
<br />ciaozinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1089100506428761672004-07-06T09:45:00.000+02:002004-07-06T09:55:06.440+02:00Planet Debian here I am!Hi,
<br />I'm so glad I've been added to the list of bloggers: it's an honour!
<br />Thanx a lot to Scott who took care of adding me.
<br />Now I need to make hackergotchi... don't know how yet but I'm sure I'll figure out.
<br />Seems that I'm getting out of a really BAD period: maybe today I'll have hot water in my flat (no more cold showers!), Debian Sarge is finally working great on my brand new laptop: d-i is just a dream come true!
<br />I'll be back soonzinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344027.post-1088508362910075252004-06-29T13:20:00.000+02:002004-06-29T13:26:02.910+02:00frustration...frustration is:
<br />
<br />1) having a new laptop ready to host linux but NO linux installed on it yet
<br />
<br />2) waiting the new adsl connection to be installed... can't apt-get yet...
<br />
<br />3) no gas running through the pipes of my flat: no hot water (i.e. cold showers to get me started in the morning) and no cooking possible
<br />
<br />4) stupid people which don't give a damn about all of this (too many to mention)
<br />
<br />but I know I'll be happy and everything's gonna be allright really soon!!!zinosathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09970688239263362080noreply@blogger.com0