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  • using SVG for graphics within HTML generated from DocBook Website

    I learned the hard way, that SVG graphics must get referenced via EMBED, not via IMG. I do that now.
    But still…
    I created a “generic logo”. It’s white on a transparent background, the real background determined by the context. That’s the idea. But I found this on the web – now I am confused:

    How do I set the background color of an SVG image?

    Sadly, SVG does not support directly specifying an image background color. With aiSee, however, you can easily work around this drawback by artificially enlarging the layout plane as follows: Open the SVG file with a text editor and manually adjust the four values of the viewBox attribute. This attribute is to be found in the third line of the SVG file.

    The idea is to share this logo with the DocBook community. So far all new DocBook Websites are branded NM like Norman Walsh, that’s because he started that software. I asked him for the sources of the logos a couple of days ago, but he couldn’t find them, and they were GIMP XFC anyway, and not scalable as SVG. SVG is the hit IMO. I thought I should mention this: I am using O’Reilly’s SVG Essentials, that’s IMO a great book, and you can read and print it for free on their O’Reilly Commons wiki.

     

  • editing XML documents in emacs using nxml-mode / cont’d

    I was suffering for many weeks now with emacs on Snow Leopard, as I had forgotten that nice customizable variable nxml-sexp-element-flag. Setting that one to t (Lisp, yes!!!) really gives XML editing a boost. Now you can “move” forwards and backwards beyond entire tags enclosing huge amounts of text. I had been too lazy digging into that thing the first time, I noticed XML editing on my Snow Leopard MacBook is harder than on my openSUSE Linux ASUS notebook. I do confess that. Being lazy is always bad.

  • this was a rather good day DocBookWebsite’ing

    Migrated all relevant web-sites to DocBook Website. Simple HTML from DocBook documents looks quite a little different and not so appealing. I can only recommend using DocBook Website.That’s another good reason, why I want to spread the good word of DocBook in Berlin. Have a look at the block “my most exciting web-sites” in the right column here!
    Update / 2010-07-15:
    If goals are easy to achieve, you don’t delay them for very long, you just do them. With DocBook Website things are easy to achieve, and I keep simplifying, improving, and renovating my web-site(s). I guess, the need to change will saturate rather sooner than later.
    Hayek.name is now as short and as nice, as it has never been before.
    BTW: Now I removed xmllint‘ing my documents from my Makefile, as it kept spitting out weird messages. Alright, I agree, that sounds rather silly, but … I use nxml-mode, and that constantly validates my documents, so I assume, I am on the safe side.

    The next step:
    Continuous Integration. That means, each web-sites gets recompiled, as soon as its sources got modified. Pretty cool stuff, serious!
    For now I am using the Unix batch command. Pretty neat as well, of course, but not as neat as Continuous Integration, that’s for sure.

  • no more Reactions and Ratings on my blog posts

    Nobody ever made use of them, so I rather remove them, so that the entire thing loads faster.

    Of course, you can always leave your comments, that’s for sure – so far 😉

  • an article on railsfreak.com: the right tool for your job

    My second thing to do this morning might me digging into this tweet by rubyflow, the twitterer:

    The right tool for your job

    A tweet pointing to an article on railsfreak.com.

  • an interview with Stevan Little about Moose

    Starting my day with an interview with Stevan Little about Moose, an idea I picked up from a tweet from perlbuzz, the twitterer.


    (Do I really have to keep in mind, that this will be picked up by ironman.enlightenedperl.org? BTW it’s bad, that they even match “perl” within words of my blog-articles, even if that does not have anything to do with perl as a programming language.)

    Listening to the “perlcast”,
    reading the text at the same time
    (keep in mind: I am not a native English speaker/reader/listener, so that helps!!),
    drinking my breakfast coffee …

    »Audrey coined the term “O-fun,” optimized for fun.«
    “O-fun” – I think I will use this term a lot from now on.

    »We’re hoping that Moore’s Law will catch up, and we’ll have a break.«

    »I didn’t want it to have “feature-itis”«

    »It’ll probably be a good idea to let people know where to go to get started if they wanted to learn about Mouse. …«
    »… Yes, we have the Moose.Perl.org domain. …
    The IRC channel has Moose on IRC.Perl.org. …
    And the mailing list.
    The mailing list has been getting a lot of traffic lately,
    which I’m very happy about
    because that means we have a lot of indexed content in there.«

    (wow, I am still learning how to make better use of my Mac keyboard.
    what do you think, where are these “guillemet” quotation characters hidden?
    at q like quotation, of course … .
    have a good laugh: at some stage, when I tried using that, I confused the Alt and the Cmd key, and … ;-( my browser shut down,
    but luckily enough it restarted with all the right places.)

    that perlcast was a very good thing to start my day with.
    it boosted my motivation to use Moose.

    this article was actually first “prepared” as a Google Buzz.
    follow me there, if you want!
    I would welcome that very much.

  • DocBook Website

    All the relevant pointers in one place:

    • Norman Walsh’s example on SourceForge – enjoy it!
      (IIRC he says, you shouldn’t regard the information contained in there as up-to-date)
    • the example within the Website release on SourceForge is slightly more extensive
    • the release notes for the current release on SourceForge
    • Bob Stayton’s book DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide, chapter 31. Website
      (I do own the dead tree version of it, and if I got a bundle price for the PDF, I would go for it)
    • searching Bob Stayton’s book: “site:www.sagehill.net sitemap“
    • Dave Pawson’s article How to use the DocBook Website system
    • searching Dave Pawson’s article: “site:www.dpawson.co.uk website sitemap“
    • …

    DocBook, The Definitive Guide (the book) (I honestly do own various versions of it):

    • http://docbook.org/tdg/ – the book’s website
    • http://docbook.org/tdg5/ – the new book’s website (DocBook 5, The Definitive Guide)
    • http://docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/docbook.html – the new book as HTML
    • http://docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/docbook.html – the book in progress as HTML
    • http://docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/variants.html#s.variants – Website only gets mentioned there
    • …
    General pointers:
    • http://wiki.docbook.org
    • …

    Update / 2010-07-24:

      I found the mailing list docbook-apps hosted on oasis-open.org very, very valuable.
      I read the mailing list archive via my newsreader at news.gmane.org.
      Not that you want to know that, but my newsreader is Gnus.

    • how to answer the phone in Portuguese?

      I subscribed for a phone number in Brasília recently, that’s because my SO stays there for the summer, and that makes communication easier.
      Looks like an important person has had the number before for quite a while, and I keep getting calls from strangers.
      I don’t get away with explaining in my pigeon Portuguese, that I am Jochen from Berlin, and that I prefer talking in English or German.
      So in the tradition of my early social bookmarking customs, I will list here a couple of phrases mainly of interest for myself, but maybe also for you.

      • who is talking? = quem está falando?
      • this is Jochen speaking = Jochen está falando aqui
      • how can I help you? = como posso ajudá-lo?
      • I assume you dialed the wrong number = suponho que você discou o número errado
      • I am a software developer = eu sou um desenvolvedor de software
      • may I develop some great software for you? = posso desenvolver um software excelente para você?
      • may I set up an amazing web-site for you? = posso criar um incrível web-site para você?
      • do you speak English, German, French, Hebrew or Esperanto? = você fala Inglês, Alemão, Francês, Hebraico ou Esperanto?
      • …

      If they steal my time, I can just as well have some fun with them, right?
      Luckily enough I can pronounce and also understand these phrases quite properly. Son#2 and quite a big part of my social context keep speaking Portuguese, and finally I have start practicing Portuguese after all these expensive courses – if not with friends and family, then with strangers. Exciting, I tell you.
      There should be a button, helping me to redirect them from simple VoIP to Skype videophoning – that could be even bigger fun, I mean at least with one half of the Brazilian population 😉 But to be honest with you: Like 95% of the callers are male. I still have to achieve that somehow!!! Maybe like that:

      • shall we talk over Skype? = vamos falar pelo Skype?
      • do you have a webcam? = você tem uma webcam?
      • my Skype ID is J-o-c-h-e-n-_-H-a-y-e-k = meu ID Skype é J-o-c-h-e-n-_-H-a-y-e-k
        (I will have to remember, how to spell the names of the letters properly;
        Google Translate actually also speaks that for me, but that’s way to fast)
      Update:

      I am very grateful to my 1st commentator, who corrected my Google Translate provided initial phrases. I incorporated his suggestions here immediately.


      Update:
      You may regard this as bragging, and it may be that, but I hope you also enjoyed reading these lines and I also hope you had a very good laugh, that’s supposed to be healthy. Maybe my SO or her daughters will pick this up. OMG! I deserver, what I deserve.

    • Ruby 1.9.2 gets a second release candidate – The H Open Source: News and Features

      Ruby 1.9.2 gets a second release candidate – The H Open Source: News and Features

      … According to the developers, the final version is expected to arrive in August …

    • defunct Ethernet cables because of broken “thingie”

      Over the last many years quite some of my Ethernet cables got defunct because of that broken “thingie”, which should in theory make the plug stay in the jack. If you don’t replace the plug yourself (which looks quite difficult to me), you can just through the entire cable away. No shop offers a service to fix that. Why should they? They earn more money selling you new cables. Does anyone know of such a service anyhow?
      And if you tell me the proper name for that “thingie”, I will happily use it from now on.