fast throw-away git repository
August 22nd, 2016Based on the article How to Run Your Own Git Server, I’ve constructed a small list for fast git setup for temporary projects.
DANTE e.V. Frühjahrstagung 2016
April 20th, 2016I was a speaker at the TeX users meeting in Wuppertal, with the talk “Erfahrung und Vorhersagen für automatisches XML-nach-PDF-Publizieren mit TeX” (experience and prediction for automatical from-XML-to-PDF publishing using TeX).
python libxml2 dita
January 21st, 2016python libxml2 dita
For correct transformation of DITA files (XML-standard for modular documentation), it is necessary to pull information from DTD (document type definition). In my python code, sometimes I did get this information and sometimes not. Now I’ve tracked the source of instability and corrected the code.
Printing unusually sized PDFs
December 21st, 2015The PDF is of some non-standard landscape layout, the printer is an usual A4 printer, the software can’t handle the mix correctly. The solution is to tune the dimensions of the PDF pages manually.
le-tex transpect: how to use docbook-to-docx stylehseets
December 10th, 2015For XML to DocBook to .docx conversion, I found that “le-tex transpect” framework has solved many technical issues already, so I overcame the “not invented here syndrome” and decided to rely on this tool. To tune the stylesheets for own needs, I created a github copy of the repository: docxtools. To run the stylesheets outside the framework, a special setup is required. The setup is described in the folder “doc/hello-world“.
Generating Excel XML, avoiding “found unreadable content”
September 30th, 2015In theory, changing content of an Excel file is easy:
* Parse XML from the zip-file
* Change XML
* Save XML into the zip
In practice I got the error: >>Von Excel wurde unlesbares Inhalt in … gefunden. Möchten Sie den Inhalt dieser Arbeitsmappe wiederherstellen?< < (English: "Excel found unreadable content...") Read the rest of this entry »
Tkinter sample application for a long operation
July 9th, 2015In the year 2001 I started to experiment with GUI applications in Python. The experience was summarized and published in the article “A complete Python Tkinter sample application for a long operation“. Now, in the year 2015, a programmer have sent me an updated code. With the minimal changes, which mostly are update of the names of Tkinter modules, the code works.
fast-disable css in firefox
April 17th, 2015Sometimes I want to read a web page without its design “improvements”. In many case it is enough to switch off css, and in firefox this functionality is built-in. Shift+F7 to get the developer tools. Thanks stackoverflow for the hint.
Workaround for: CTR mode needs counter parameter, not IV
February 20th, 2015After upgrading the local Linux system, my python paramiko (ssh protocol implementation) program stopped working, with the error message:
CTR mode needs counter parameter, not IV
using freebidi from python using ctypes
December 8th, 2014GNU FriBidi is an implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (bidi). There is a Python binding PyFribidi, but it is not complete. What I need is not a visual presentation of a string, but information where direction is changing. This function is not provided by the binding, therefore I’ve made an alternative using ctypes.
certification 77-887 Microsoft Office Word 2010 Expert
October 6th, 2014My advice: do use the “second shot” option. At least, I failed to pass the first attempt and had to try again. What was wrong:
* I needed time to adapt myself to the testing interface, and probably made something wrong in several first exercises.
* A few tasks are a bit unusual and I spent too much time on them. You should remember them and do homework.
* I work bad under under time pressure.
The best preparation resource I found is this youtube transcript: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mm31GLUiNE. It is in French, but everything is clear, especially after the first certification attempt.
On the second attempt, passed. 918 out of 1000 is more than enough.
User TeX Live 2013 repository when 2014 is the default
July 7th, 2014I’ve tried to install a TeX package and got the error message:
tlmgr: The TeX Live versions supported by the repository
http://ftp.fernuni-hagen.de/ftp-dir/pub/mirrors/www.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet
(2014--2014)
do not include the version of the local installation
(2013)
how to start vmware
March 17th, 2014By me, vmware doesn’t start without twicks. A normal rum produces something like:
process 3954: Attempt to remove filter function 0xb6ad0690 user data 0xb7896048, but no such filter has been added
D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace
In my case the solution is to start HAL daemon before running vmware.
python libxml2: save XML as HTML
October 31st, 2013HTML is the main output format for XML transformations. Every XSLT-processor, including libxslt/libxml2, supports it. But if you transform a libxml2 tree manually, you are in trouble. You can save XML only as XML, not as HTML. A solution is required. My version is not elegant, but works.
using xlrd and formatting Excel numbers
October 22nd, 2013The number (and dates) in Excel are float numbers. How these numbers are displyed to an user — as an integer, or with two digits after a point, etc — are defined by the cell format. Unfortunately, xlrd does not support number formatting. It is your task to interpret the format and display the number as expected. My code can probably help. Download xlrd-format-excel-number
from an audiodisk to a mp3 player
August 17th, 2013My sequence to grab audiobooks from a cd to hear later on a mp3 player. Grab as mp3:
abcde -o mp3pyinstaller, wxpython, _core_ not found
July 31st, 2013Sometimes an error and the error message are different things. One of the examples is that my wxpython-program did not want to start after converting to exe using pyinstaller:
ImportError: No module named _core_
learn foreign language with Audacity
June 6th, 2013Pauken, a plugin for Audacity, adds silence and multiplies a selected audio fragment. It helps when you learn foreign languages by listening and repeating phrases after a speaker. Download Pauken here or from the audacity forum.
latex cals tables version 2.2
June 6th, 2013I’ve updated “cals” package — multipage tables with wide range of features — to version 2.2. In the new version, alignment of tables should work. Also, I’ve added hooks for the package “bidi” (right-to-left writing support). CTAN is updated, and the coming TeX Live 2013 should include the new version.
wxPython GIFAnimationCtrl: embed animation gif in the source code
March 27th, 2013In some cases it is useful to store media files inside the python code itself. For images, PyEmbeddedImage and the script img2py.py work well. But for GIFAnimationCtrl no obvious solution is available, therefore I had to investigate the source code of wx.animate to find one.
