CorelDraw Basics: Drawing speed lines and blast lines

Category: Techwriter

Blast lines, motion lines, and perspective lines are used to emphasize movement in a comic book or provide emphasis to a particular object, face, or person. The classic effect is still used in product packaging and is still used in comic books (though today more frequently in manga than Western comic books).

Blast lines are used to emphasis this team-up between Spider-Man and Molten Man. Panel taken from Web of Spider-Man #66 and art by Alex Saviuk.

To quickly create blast lines in CorelDraw, users can draw two simple shapes using one of the many drawing tools available and "fill out" the space between the two using the Blend Docker options.

To create a simple blast lines effect in CorelDraw:

1. Click the Bezier tool and draw a line at an angle. Adjust the line width and Outline Pen properties to adjust the appearance of the line segment.
2. Select the line segment and click CTRL+D to duplicate the line segment. Position the second line segment at an opposing angle. Alternately, open the Transformations Docker by clicking Window then Dockers to rotate, reflect, or skew a duplicate line segment.
3. Select both line segments using the Pick tool.
4. Click Window, then Dockers. Select Blend to open the Blend Docker. The Number of Steps option is selected by default. Enter a number in the field. Add a rotation angle and tick the Loop box for additional effect. Click Apply.

The blast lines can be duplicated, rotated, skewed, and colored to produce different visuals. The Blend tool fades the colors between the two objects, so by using a darker color on the first line segment and a lighter color for the second, you can produce a useful vector-based fading effect. Adjusting the Rotate settings, selecting the start and end point, and attaching the Blend to a path also produces a variety of useful effects.

Blast lines created in CorelDraw can be added to bitmap images such as this modified panel from Web of Spider-Man #67 (art by Alex Saviuk)

This simple ad uses speed lines in the background to create a retro 80s look. All graphics were created in CorelDraw. Art by author.

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Thoughts on Web Design

Category: Techwriter

Smashing Magazine and a host of other web sites have web design down into a science, expanding into the smallish realm of smart screens and tablets and dealing with topics such as line-spacing, effects, and CSS3 . As fascinating and as incredibly complex as the science of design is, I'm afraid it's not something that comes naturally to me even after going through books such as Design Elements and  browsing through well-written articles and tutorials online. When I write code, I don't even bother with hex color numbers. Green is green and if it comes out as teal on an iPad, so be it. My design IQ is easily satisfied with a Summer Glau wallpaper on my LXDE desktop with a single color theme.
 
I'm probably in the minority but I can do without fancy Javascripts or Flash animation on my favorite websites. When I browse highly-complex sites with all the bells and whistles, I feel sorry for the company or web designer who built it - he must have spent hours on a single transparent control switch and that constantly shifting menu panel (not to mention the cost of spending for the Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe membership). Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort of coding Actionscript or Java, but all I really want is readable text positioned properly next to nice, good-looking images that aren't pixelated. My favorite web site feature? Collapsible text trees and a table of contents.

The following sections are my thoughts on the different web sites I frequent and my views on their web design.
 
Technical Web sites
 
I have absolutely no problem scrolling up or down but I do have quibbles about scrolling left to right when reading through highly technical documents.  
Bread crumbs used to be all right, but now I find them cumbersome especially if there's a nice place to put a navigation tree or table of contents. One of my favorite web designs is the Fedora documentation site. The collapsible panel on the left and navigation tree just works so well for browsing articles. The icons are clear and the blues are just enough without blindingly Windows 7 glaring.  The arrow controls on the table of contents even displays options to download a particular article as EPUB, HTML, or PDF. It's very true to the ideals of Linux, actually. Other favorite web sites of mine like IBM Developerworks and MSDN Learning Center are as equally text-intensive and I do wish for more screenshots but these web site resources are for serious learners and not viewers looking for Selena Gomez or Rihanna pictures.


 
Movie web sites
 
I don't often visit movie web sites but every time I do, they're pretty clunky. They're flash intensive and noisy (the background music can be disabled but it kind of defeats the purpose). I remember the Troy website a few years back and it was all sound and fury, confusing navigation controls, with gold trimmings everywhere. The first Iron Man movie web site was slick and did what it needed to do: endorse the movie and Audi, one of the products the film endorsed.

 
 
The Amazing Spider-Man was a great movie but the website was a downer. I visit movie web sites for film clips, wallpapers, and high-resolution images. The Spidey web site had very few downloads and wasn't exactly Spidey fun. The Skyfall movie website for the next James Bond film was equally disappointing. It was minimalistic but not in a good way. Perhaps it's my intense fanboy side, but I get a thrill out the Indiana Jones web site every time I visit - navigation is slick and it loads fairly quickly.
 
One movie web site that I fully explored was for the underrated flick Push with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning which came out a few years ago. It gave a sophisticated feel and provided a great deal of background about the superhuman powers featured in the movie. I could have done without the Flash menus and effects-laden panels, but it was done well enough that the web site didn't lag and text was readable.
 
Articles, Functional and News web sites
 
BBC News has a layout that hasn't changed much over the years but it's easily accessible and I've grown used to it. The news site uses slideshows sparingly (unlike the horrendous Yahoo.com human interest articles and PCMag reviews) and iPlayer videos with much of the content in just text and a few images. CNN has great pages for individual articles but their home page, revised a few times over the last decade, feels cluttered and disorganized with small text and in-your-face hyperlinks. Channel News Asia is owned by a huge company in Singapore but their news web site seems oddly crippled and small with some pages (such as the Health and Entertainment section) left neglected for days.
 
Although I visit CNET, PCWORLD, and PCMAG out of habit, I must admit their layout needs a lot of work. PCWorld, in particular, had a boring site previously and now sports a commercialized and confusing look after a recent facelift. All three have grown so big that it's hard to find what you're looking for anymore.  Wired and Ars Technica, two of my favorite sites, carry similar-looking home pages. The layout is bright and occasionally confusing, but thankfully works for me because there are no distracting animations floating or embedded on the page. Wired and Ars has a very professional-looking layout but I have to admit I prefer the linear and late-90s feel of Engadget - I just scroll down to view all the new articles uploaded just like the old-school forums and BBS pages.
 
Distrowatch, Gutenberg.org, LoveHKFilm.com, and IMDB.com are all text intensive pages but they're so functional and informative all the developers need to do is keep the content up-to-date. Lifehacker and Gizmodo sport the same design. These two sites are great for learning and reading practical articles though their content is so immense it's easy to lose sight or miss out on some of their best articles.
 
Apple.com
 
I don't drink the Apple Kool-aid and I can't afford 90% of what is being sold over at Apple.com but I have to admit I keep going back there just to look at the huge pictures of the Macbook Pro and Mac Mini. What I like about the site is the generous size of the images and just enough product description to make me work harder to save up for an iMac and Time Capsule. I wouldn't want comic book web sites like Newsarama.com  to look like Apple.com but if Apple doesn't have proprietary rights to the CSS and XHTML on their website, I'd like to see other product sites go the same route.

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The Reading Experience: EPUB and PDF

Category: Techwriter

Unlike other readers who boast of reading a hundred ebooks a month, I like to take my time reading. Reading is both an educational and entertaining activity and reading ebooks should be hassle-free. Navigating, viewing, reading, and even annotating an ebook should be easy and straightforward. Thankfully, two file formats have emerged to be become the ebook file format standard: the venerable PDF and the spunky but plain EPUB.

There are great articles online about how to produce an EPUB file and it's easy to get into the arguments regarding the nuances of publishing an EPUB file. EPUBs are certainly getting easier to produce and are becoming more dynamic and interactive, but it's only getting started. PDF's maturity, stability, and usability, on the other hand, is undeniable. No effort is practically needed to produce a PDF with today's software.

For commercial ebooks, we're more concerned about the book itself than the file format. If it's available from iTunes, then send me that EPUB now so I can get started. But what about freely downloadable ebooks? Two of my favorite legitimate ebook sources, for instance, Gutenberg.org and Archive.org, provide options to download either PDF or EPUBs. So which do you choose?

Leisure Reading

Forget about XHTML, XSLT, and FO processors for one moment - which is the better format for readers? The easy answer is that once you get the EPUB or PDF on to your device and it renders properly as the author had intended, there really is no difference between the two.

EPUB is designed for reading. Unlike the mostly static PDF file, text in EPUBs reflows when resized. It's easy to believe that EPUB loses the fancy formatting and layouts PDF executes with ease (this is not entirely true - it just takes more effort to create the stylesheets). But a properly coded EPUB should look as good as any paperback. Although EPUB can accommodate images, EPUB's strength lies in displaying text.

I find EPUB perfect for smaller screens like my smartphone, iPod Touch, and 7" Sony Reader PRS-600. A book with 300 pages is actually smaller in EPUB than it is in PDF, though file size is actually negligible considering the processors and storage in tablets and readers these days. Besides text reflow and resize, what I really, really like about EPUB is that it renders faster than PDF. My old Sony Reader stutters and chokes on PDFs downloaded from Archive.org, but opens EPUBs like they were .txt files (which is actually true).

Work, Study, and Entertainment

There's a reason why whitepapers, technical documents, and research papers are published in PDF - support for annotation and structure. Although there are options and apps to annotate EPUBs, PDF was designed for this very purpose. Of course, you're only left with bookmarks if you're working with a commercial PDF magazine like Esquire or FHM or a scanned image converted to PDF, but freely accessible PDFs, say from Adobe's documentation, IBM's Redbooks, or marketing material from 95% of the company web sites out there, allow notes, highlights, and comments. For serious historical or technical studies, I definitely prefer PDFs.

I've already mentioned that PDF is horrible for underpowered tablets and older readers. Pages take a few seconds to display (if they display at all) and can even crash an app or two. Poorly produced PDFs can tax even a Linux-powered netbook. There are also occasions when I've encountered PDFs that are just not meant for ereaders and tablets that are smaller than 9". Scrolling around web pages is fine, but moving around and resizing each page of a PDF is a headache. Besides, PDFs just look much better on huge screens.

PDF is flexible and retains so much fidelity that colored magazines, picture books (like encyclopaedia), art books, and technical illustrations (for computer books) are rendered perfectly. I've stopped viewing PDFs on a small screen. They just function and work better on a 10" tablet like a Galaxy Tab or ASUS Transformer. Unlike EPUBs, however, PDFs are best viewed on a machine that has at least a dual core processor.

Love letter to EPUB and PDF

I remember Stephen King being interviewed about digital books more than a decade ago and he said that they would have to pry his cold, dead fingers from paperbacks before he would switch from paper. How times have changed. For me, it has been a long, long wait for a reading device such as tablets. I could never sit still long enough in front of a desktop or laptop to read 300-plus pages of PDF. Monitors are great for browsing the Internet, coding, and working - but reading? It took me a few years to finally own a tablet, but now that I do, I realize that it wouldn't be half as useful without PDFs and EPUBs.

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Review: Sylpheed E-mail Client for Linux

Category: Linux

With Mozilla effectively discontinuing updates to the venerable but popular Mozilla Thunderbird, there's a vacuum for a default e-mail client application for Linux users. Thunderbird is still the most popular e-mail client today in Linux boxes but the news about Mozilla's plans is disconcerting at least. Evolution is a popular alternative, particularly in Ubuntu-based distributions while KDE users are left with KMail, a somewhat ungainly e-mail application. 

If you're running Lubuntu or possibly even an LXDE-based distribution, chances are you have Sylpheed installed and probably even using it. In anecdotal use, Sylpheed is fast and efficient in delivering, receiving, displaying, and storing e-mail. It doesn't have the occasional anomalies Thunderbird suffers, such as Thunderbird being unable to save a Sent message. Thankfully, it makes exporting and importing e-mail data very simple in comparison to Windows Live Mail and even Thunderbird. Sylpheed even supports the old Outlook Express .dbx file format for e-mail.

Sylpheed is equipped with standard features found in most e-mail clients and users can configure Actions, Filters, Templates, and Accounts. Although the Sylpheed web site describes the e-mail client as simple to use, it's actually a fairly advanced e-mail client in comparison to Apple Mail, Windows Live Mail, and even Evolution. Setting up Actions, for example, involves at least a basic understanding of writing commands for the CLI. Sylpheed also prominently offers PGP signatures and encryption, not exactly a common feature found in general clients. Sylpheed, however, really is lightweight compared to the dizzying options found in Outlook or Thunderbird and devoted users would probably be running all the included advanced features in no time.

Limitations

For secure and general handling of e-mail, Sylpheed will do in a pinch, especially if you're accustomed to backing up and organizing your Gmail. However, it does lack HTML rendering, which prevents me from pretty much writing blogs with images and sending them to Blogger.com.

Having been a user of Thunderbird on Linux and Windows for years and a Windows Live Mail user in Windows 7, there are a few things I had to get used to. For instance, using the Insert file on the control bar to insert an image will actually display the code of the image rather than placing the image inline (the same is true if you tried to insert a PDF). Adding a simple hyperlink is also somewhat of a challenge. Sylpheed, however, does offer to change the default editor for composing messages.

For users who want more, they can opt for Claws, a Sylpheed-based application which matches the features of more mainstream e-mail clients.

The Future of E-mail Clients

There's little doubt that the need for e-mail clients will never quite disappear, though users are now more accustomed to e-mail clients that are web-based (such as the excellent Outlook.com) or integrated to their mobile OS (iOS's popularity has contributed a lot to this). I'm a firm believer that the cloud, instant messaging, and mobile devices have not killed e-mail any more than tablets have killed PCs. E-mail's role has just evolved and developed. It's still indispensable to enterprise users and still useful for formal communication. With the changing of e-mail's role in computers today, e-mail clients such as Sylpheed may take a backseat to the browser, but intelligent users will always find a place for it in their rapidly growing and changing tech arsenal.

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Digital Preservation: James Bond, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones and the 80s

2012, the year of the Dragon, is a great year for guys who were around during the 80s. The magic that is technology, taken for granted by billions of people around the world, has taken great leaps to preserve media that triggers memories and recaptures the sights and sounds of the good old days.

The Indiana Jones movies is finally on Blu-Ray and fans around the world who still don't own the series can purchase their first copy and on HD no less. I own VHS copies (2 sets), special DVD releases (2 sets), AND bootleg 720p files of the trilogy . . . and the new release only gives me another reason to finally buy a Blu-Ray player. Thankfully, aside from superficial improvements to the reel, the movies are untouched. As a huge fan, I can't wait until George Lucas finally gives in and creates a special Blu-Ray set of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - one of the best TV shows of all time. The movies and series are timeless and I'd rather hand a complete Blu-Ray set to my nephews than provide them a Blu-Ray copy of Michael Bay's Transformers.


"The past isn't always preserved properly. That's why we have archeology, YouTube, and the iTunes store." Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Spider-Man, on the other hand, was featured in a new movie that in many ways is the definitive Spidey flick and despite being compared to the much-loved Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series was actually more in tune with the Spidey stories from the 60s and 70s. The updated technology, from film-making and the film plot (e.g. cellphones and web-shooters), plays a hand in Peter's adventures more now than it did during the golden age of Spider-Man during the 70s and 80s, but there's little doubt that it keeps the Spider-Man character true to his roots more than the current crop of badly illustrated and lazily written Spider-Man comic books being published today.


The web-shooters were more unrealistic than Spidey himself even way back in the 70s, but it did add a bit of sci-fi to the superhero's character.

I've written about the excellent 1960s Spider-Man series you can watch online and the digital comic books of the 80s available from Marvel. It's amazing how the Internet can keep alive so much from so long ago. The Spider-Man comic books  today are garbage and preys on the blissfully ignorant Marvel readers of today while the past issues, anachronistic, silly, and innocent, shines and entertains. With Amazing Spider-Man ending this year with issue #700 after a pathetic 50th anniversary celebration from an inept Marvel staff, the classic Spider-Man of yesteryear (preserved through the magic of digital comics) is what readers should start picking up.


Spider-Man (1981) - Spidey poses in this extremely funny scene in the episode "The Sandman is Coming"

And then there's James Bond - the "oldest" character in this list. The original James Bond novels are now being published by Amazon to celebrate 50 years of the films. Vintage Books in the UK and Amazon are both re-releasing Ian Fleming's underrated series in ebook format. Forget about the romanticized Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Sebastian Faulks, and Jeffrey Deaver novels of James Bond - the original Fleming books may have been dry and meant for a select audience, but they were the real Bond. The rest of the authors wrote with the films in mind with little awareness of the life and times of the Bond Fleming wrote about. Ebooks, free or otherwise, allow today's audience to appreciate literature that has largely been overshadowed by more flashy media such as film.


"I'm bored. You don't happen to have a Kindle with you, do you?" Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No.

Time moves so swiftly and technology even more so. Physics and the laws of entropy dictate that we can never preserve the past. Memories are flawed. History is a fallacy and facts aren't immutable  But thankfully, technology and its users are self-aware enough to at least attempt to preserve pieces of an era - be it comic books from a more innocent time, a pulp movie about an archaeologist, and stories of a British assassin of the Cold War.

Now let me search for The Chipmunk Adventure (1987) and Monster Squad (1987) on Netflix   

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openSUSE 12.2 KDE Review - Now is the right time Part 3

Category: Linux

Multimedia Codecs and VirtualBox

Introduce me to a guy complaining about multimedia support in Linux and I'll show you the nice folks at the openSUSE Community web site who have tirelessly produced One-click installation files for Gnome and KDE users of openSUSE. In the old days, the venerable VLC player was a godsend for Linux users, but today you can pretty much do without it on a Linux box assuming you know how to search for "ugly" in a software manager (which produces the restricted "Ugly" set of Gstreamer codecs). I've personally never had any problems with multimedia in Windows or Linux for years, though I don't really recommend streaming Quicktime in openSUSE via a browser.

VirtualBox, everyone's favorite user-friendly mainstream virtual manager, handles openSUSE just fine. Although setting up Shared folders between a Windows OS host and a Linux OS guest could be a little simpler, that's not really openSUSE's fault.

Nepomuk

Long-time KDE users hiss the word Nepomuk and consider it a blot in KDE's otherwise happy environment. Although Nepomuk is still switched on by default, it's no longer as annoying as before especially in terms of notifications (users were previously badgered endlessly if you disabled Nepomuk and failed to switch off notifications). To be fair, the indexing service isn't as intrusive as it may seem but neither is it any more useful for users. As a footnote, Nepomuk is disabled automatically when running on openSUSE LiveUSB or LiveCD.

KDE Plasma Workspace

There really isn't any improvements anyone can make to the KDE desktop in terms of features. Moreover, openSUSE developers have done a great job optimizing the admittedly heavy system. In fact, it could use a little bit of trimming, though one could argue that with today's powerful processors and speedy RAM the bulk is a non-issue. The Run command window (triggered using ALT+F2) is still the best command manager ever. I may not use the KDE Kickoff menu very often but I still prefer it over the Unity Launcher or Gnome Shell any day of the week. openSUSE KDE comes with some of the most impressive desktop widgets, but they are more to impress the rubes than anything else (which is pretty much the same thing you can say about Windows 7 widgets and Mac OSX's Launchpad).

Considering the much heralded "death" of netbooks, I'm surprised that the Plasma Netbook feature is still included with openSUSE. It's better than ever since the first release 2 or 3 years ago and I'd want to use the Plasma Netbook mode if I had an extra non-production machine lying around. Perhaps KDE or openSUSE would rebrand it as Plasma "Touch" when mainstream users can finally install openSUSE on a tablet or RT machine in the near future.

Set up and Customization

I've been using openSUSE consistently for more than five years now so setting up my applications and the desktop is automatic for me. Yast2 makes printer installation, software management, boot up, and networking straightforward and even if it didn't, SUSE provides some pretty comprehensive manuals to point you in the right direction.

One minor niggle I keep wishing for are new color themes and KDE window designs. Obviously, the included theme manager allows you to search for tons of available themes, but having the preinstalled options revamped would be nice - even the most ardent KDE fan can get tired of Oxygen, Air, Plastic, and the other traditional themes included with KDE. openSUSE can also use a little bit more color beyond the grey, steel, blue, and black color combinations that are available as presets.

Who should install openSUSE 12.2?

It's easy to get biased about a particular Linux distribution especially if you've grown accustomed to its eccentricities. So objectively if you're already running a lightweight and working distribution on your netbook or laptop, then I don't recommend openSUSE 12.1 KDE unless you're looking for a new Linux distribution to migrate to. openSUSE is recommended to users who are the following:

1. Users who need to learn a Linux distribution that is closely related to Novell's enterprise desktop operating system.
2. Users who have used openSUSE before and ready to return to openSUSE after trying out other Linux distributions.
3. Users who want a complete library of applications via a comprehensive repository and prefer a desktop with a fully-featured control center that isn't Mandriva/Mageia Control Center to administer a Linux network, server, or desktop.
4. Users who abhor Unity and Gnome 3 and are patient enough to uninstall included KDE applications and replace them with their preferred utilities/tools.

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Writing Linux instructions for a Product Manual

Category: Linux

When I was given the task to write Linux instructions for a product being released by a major manufacturer, I was ecstatic. Having contributed to the online openSUSE wiki and Mandriva wiki a few times and a devoted Linux evangelist via this blog, I was raring to write about Yast2, Synaptic Package Manager, or even Yum.

Let's be honest: Windows users don't use product manuals and Mac users don't even know they exist. Linux users, on the other hand, either don't need any sort of printed instructions or consult community pages instead. If you've been using Linux for at least a year, chances are you're not too worried about making a basic consumer product like a Bluetooth dongle, external optical drive, or wireless card work.

Getting the chance to write Linux instructions for an official mainstream product manual felt like an enormous privilege. Most manufacturers ignore that Linux even exists although there are some companies like Samsung, Brother, and even Wacom that provide Linux pages on their support site.

I asked the product manager via chat for details regarding which Linux distribution should be featured on the chapter. He responded with:

"What is the most popular?"

I forced myself to shut up about preference, forks, desktop environments, Linux communities, and types of users. With gritted teeth, I answered:

"Ubuntu."

The product manager probably knew a little about Linux or he wouldn't have asked. And then I asked how many pages I could devote to the Linux section. Mac OSX Mountain Lion had 4 pages of screenshots and instructions to set up the procedure while Windows 7, Vista, and XP accumulated a total of 7 pages. I prayed fervently for slightly more than Mac OSX with visions of the command line, Ubuntu Software Center, and Synaptic package manager floating in my head. What he asked me was:

"Could you fit it in one page?"

If there was a Linux hell where penguins would routinely bite me, I deserved to be there. I wrote a four step procedure with two notes and three screenshots. I consoled myself that a real Linux user would never read an instruction manual and that there were tons of Ubuntu experts in the online community anyway.

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openSUSE 12.2 KDE - Now is the right time Part 2

Grub2 and Plymouth

It's actually the small things that make a Linux users heart beat fast. Adding Plymouth and migrating to Grub2 was a timely choice although casual users wouldn't really notice any difference other than the spanking new splash screen. A Plymouth boot screen in openSUSE was a change of pace and seemed to complement whatever speed modifications were added to openSUSE. Personally, I couldn't wait to run informal benchmarks with the new setup.

I was surprised, however, that openSUSE's installation wizard failed to detect Lubuntu on my ASUS EEEPC 1000H. Instead, setup prompted to use the whole hard disk instead. Unconvinced, I tested the LiveUSB on my Lenovo Ideapad Z360 with an Ubuntu Unity and Windows 7 setup. The installation wizard was able to detect Windows 7 and the Ubuntu partitions though I'm not quite sure it would list Ubuntu once openSUSE 12.2 has been installed. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with modifying the partition setup and Grub2 to chain load other Linux systems, but it isn't exactly fun for those who haven't tried it before.

Other Linux systems are pretty good with detecting and working with another Linux system and I was somewhat surprised openSUSE didn't fare too well in this regard. On the other hand, I can understand why most Linux installation procedures are focused on dual-booting with Windows - unless you're a Linux distribution fanatic, there's really no need to have more than one Linux distro on your machine. Just install your other favorite Linux distribution on another desktop or laptop.

Applications Galore and Online Update

I've discussed openSUSE's penchant for having too much bloatware in my previous openSUSE reviews. To this day, I am amazed at just how many KDE utilities and applications are pre-installed with openSUSE KDE. Most users can ignore the presence of KsCD, KOrganizer, KMail, Amarok, Kaffeine, and the rest and just install their preferred applications. Hard drives today are huge anyway and most of the applications don't really run in the background.

For my part, I've been using openSUSE long enough to automatically go to Yast2 and uninstall all the unnecessary applications without it really bothering me. I prefer going through this procedure than customizing my own openSUSE via SUSE Studio (though DIY-ers with plenty of time should go this route). One thing I did notice is that users of openSUSE 12.2 should start uninstalling applications after the first Online Update.

Linux distributions are designed to get you started immediately after installation, but due to issues regarding proprietary technology there are some Linux distributions like Fedora and openSUSE that don't package MP3 and video codecs with their release. openSUSE, however, works around this issue via Online Update. After installing openSUSE 12.2, I don't recommend installing applications (or uninstalling applications) until after doing a basic online update - the online update will actually offer to install Adobe Flash and the Gstreamer MP3 audio codec. Plus, openSUSE 12.2 adds a new twist to their Online Update - they add several other applications that weren't included in the LiveCD including Marble Desktop, a standalone Flash Player, DNG image converter, Panorama stitcher, Photo Layouts editor, SIP phone, IceTea and OpenJDK(for Java), and the Synaptiks touchpad utility.

I'm pretty sure long-time Linux users might resent this approach as a type of force-feeding (though you can easily uncheck the applications during the Online Update). This is, however, a pretty good way of introducing new applications that users aren't aware of and getting the Linux community to try them out. There are plenty of exceptional utilities that are undiscovered out there. Surprisingly, the new additions bundled with the Online Update were mostly photography applications.

For users who are somewhat put off by the thought of having to uninstall applications in openSUSE KDE, it actually takes less time than it seems, especially with the speed gains in Yast2. It took me less than four minutes to search the 9 applications (plus the KDE games) in Yast2 and uninstall them.

Apper - KDE's undependable software manager

Ubuntu Software Center was a good idea though I hardly ever used it, but Apper in KDE is as bad as Fedora's packagekit manager. Apper is slow as molasses and suffers from the same packagekit issue that prevents user from running Yum in Fedora, but this time affecting Yast2 and Zypper. After hoping for the best and searching for the note-taking utility Cherrytree, Apper crashed and I had to reboot to be able to run Yast2. My recommendation? Uninstall Apper with the rest of the bloatware.

openSUSE 12.2 repositories available in China!

This particular section is only for users in China. I had been running openSUSE for over a year until I lost the ability to access the openSUSE 12.1 repositories here in Shanghai. I couldn't update nor could I install any applications using Yast or via Zypper even after a clean install. The issue no longer applies to openSUSE 12.2. In fact, the updates were fast and refreshing the repositories now only took a minute or two. I now have a reason to remove my Ubuntu Unity LTS install and switch to openSUSE 12.2.

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openSUSE 12.2 KDE - Now is the right time Part 3: Plasma Workspace, Multimedia, and who should use openSUSE 12.2?

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Adobe Reader app for iOS and Android: Unnecessary?

Category: Techtoday

PDF and Adobe

I distinctly remember a time when my Computerworld editor muttered oaths at the idea of using PDF in publishing. It was confusing, redundant, and irrelevant when PageMaker and Word files took care of most of his needs. Fast-forward to twelve years later and we find technical documents in PDF being exchanged daily in huge companies and organizations. Consumers with tablets and smartphones, on the other hand, use PDF for reading scintillating ebooks like Fifty Shades of Grey.

There's little doubt that PDF has successfully become a standard in both the professional and consumer environment. It's easy to forget to give Adobe credit for PDF especially when Linux users can print out PDFs without installing anything else and even Microsoft Word has now adopted the format over Microsoft's own XPS format.

Freeware and open source applications can easily convert almost any format to PDF. Moreover, there are literally thousands of utilities and desktop applications that can open PDF. Linux comes preloaded with Evince or Okular while the upcoming Windows 8 may or may not come preinstalled with an app simply called Reader.

iOS and Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader has had a long, tumultuous history on the PC. Historically, it's been bloated, vulnerable to malware, slow, and unusable. For many years, users opted for free alternatives that had the same function as Adobe Reader's parent and more powerful product, Adobe Acrobat. However, if you've ever worked in a corporate environment, there's little doubt that the IT department included Adobe Reader as part of the Windows image they use for each workstation. There are, of course, good reasons for this, but the question remains, is Adobe Reader on iOS or Android worth installing?

As a consumer who primarily uses his iPad for reading ebooks, I'm fairly happy with iBooks for PDF magazines and EPUBs and a plethora of free apps for reading CBRs, CBZs, and PDFs. Bookman, Sidebooks, and CloudReaders may not be the best apps on the iStore but they're free and serve my purpose well enough. iBooks, in particular, has become my primary reading app for the numerous PDFs I've downloaded from various web sites over the years. Until that is, I once again came across a PDF that didn't open properly and left me viewing blank pages.

PDF creation

I've encountered issues with PDFs that either had missing images or rendered improperly until you opened them in Adobe Reader. To be fair, it's not Evince or Okular (in Linux)'s fault when this happens and it most certainly isn't iBooks' fault either. It's actually pretty rare to encounter a PDF that doesn't open properly in any app or utility designed to open PDFs, but it does happen. The technicalities aren't quite clear but certain PDFs that weren't created using say, Acrobat or Adobe InDesign, tend to display differently on certain utilities. Numerous historical documents that were scanned and converted to PDF in Archive.org don't work as intended not only because the PDFs are bloated and poorly compressed, but because the documentations team formatted the file using a nonstandard application and for an old Acrobat standard.

It's easy to check how the PDF was created by opening the PDF using Adobe Reader and clicking File then Properties. The Advanced section on the Description tab will indicate the PDF Producer and PDF version. In the following screenshot, the free ebook, The Story of Shanghai from Archive.org, was produced using LuraDocument PDF v2.28 and exported based on the PDF 1.5 (Acrobat 6.x) standard.

This same PDF actually failed to display properly once loaded into iBooks for my iPod Touch and iPad 2. The PDF rendered slowly, all of the photographs did not appear, and most of the pages were blank. However, the PDF worked fine in Adobe Reader X for Windows and Adobe Reader 9.4.7 in Ubuntu and openSUSE.

A Crippled Adobe Reader

Although Adobe has abandoned any plans for releasing an updated version of Adobe Reader for Linux I always install the downloadable RPM or .DEB for my Linux machines anyway because of the reason I outlined here - you might actually encounter a PDF that won't open properly. In the same way, I decided to install Adobe Reader for iOS from iTunes and will install the Adobe Reader for Android if I ever purchase an Android tablet. Ironically, the Android Adobe Reader app is actually up-to-date at 10.3.1. I wonder if the Adobe devs are aware that Android is nothing more then Linux's kissing cousin (the last version for Linux was at 9.4.7).

If you're a user who always felt Adobe Reader for Windows or Mac somewhat crippled, you will find the app for iOS even more so. Although you can add bookmarks, create annotations, fill out forms, and access table of contents if it's available, viewing options are limited and there is no way to display a list of comments/annotations - you'd have to thumb through the document to find all of them. Extracting contents, as expected, is also absent. Adobe, however, admits that the app is in development and will add features based on user feedback (the lack of ability to view a list of annotations is particularly annoying). To its credit, the Adobe Reader app on my iPad 2 was able to display offending PDFs such as The Story of Shanghai and displayed them quickly, too.

Bottom line? For most users, popular PDF viewers are more than adequate for displaying PDFs on an Android or iOS machine. However, if you intend to view old PDFs or PDFs from obscure sources (like I do), then you should have the Adobe Reader app handy.

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openSUSE 12.2 KDE - Now is the right time Part 1

Like most incremental releases, openSUSE 12.2 doesn't bring  anything new to the table, but the  maturity of the Linux distribution makes it a compelling choice compared to  fledgling distributions or even  long-running releases such as  Debian or PCLinuxOS. KDE 4.x retains all its usability and power that makes it a dependable choice over new desktop environments such as Unity and Gnome 3. openSUSE KDE 4.x, in particular, is an exceptional desktop environment but the included applications may not be everyone's cup of tea.

openSUSE Live!

Using a LiveUSB or LiveCD to test  the performance of a new release  should never be the basis of  migrating or adopting a Linux  distribution. However, running on  LiveUSB does provide superficial  reasons to install an OS on a crash machine or hardware. A Linux  distribution, as a bare minimum,  should perform adequately when  running on a LiveUSB or LiveCD.  That said, there are occasions  when a Linux distribution performs  perfectly while running on Live but fails miserably when installed  on to a hard drive (and vice-versa).

Historically, openSUSE has been  consistent: openSUSE LiveCDs or  LiveUSBs work admirably and  perform similarly as they would after a full installation.

On testing openSUSE 12.2 via  LiveUSB on my Lenovo Ideapad Z360  and first-generation ASUS EEEPC 1000H, I observed the following:

1. The SUSE Studio Image Creator for  Windows, which once worked  perfectly for 11.x and 12.1, no  longer works for openSUSE 12.2. After two attempts  with two different USB sticks, I  switched to Ubuntu and ran the dd procedure via Terminal to create the LiveUSB  instead. A warning to users who create the LiveUSB using the dd command: Ubuntu and other Linux distributions would have problems mounting the USB and Windows will offer to format the USB stick once connected.



2. The under-the-hood improvements  to openSUSE 12.2 (such as  systemd, kernel 3.4, and Qt 4.8.1 ), does improve KDE boot  speed. openSUSE 12.2 loaded so  quickly on the Ideapad I never got  to see the openSUSE logo with  flying bubbles until I tried the  LiveUSB on the netbook (but I did get to see the KDE loading screen).  Obviously, openSUSE would perform well on any Core Duo system (even on my first-generation Core i3 processor with 4GB of RAM), but I was particularly impressed when I booted into a working desktop on the 1000H.

I had been using openSUSE 12.1 KDE on the system for over the last year or so until I switched to Lubuntu last month due to server issues in China. Although I had grown used to it, openSUSE KDE 12.1 took more than two minutes to boot up on the EEEPC 1000H even after optimizing desktop effects and startup options. The LiveUSB of 12.2 booted up much faster and the desktop effects performed like it was designed for the netbook. Hopefully, a full installation on the 1000H would contribute to an even faster boot up speed.

3. The LiveUSB, as previously noted, performed very well on the first-generation Intel Atom processor the 1000H toted. Window management and transparency was working without any lag. I switched off the desktop effects to check if the desktop would perform even better (which I normally did for any Linux distribution on a netbook). Surprisingly, the 1000H suddenly became sluggish and almost ground to a halt until I switched the desktop effects back on again (after patiently clicking on the icons and waiting for windows to come up).



This is a curious anomaly that I hope doesn't occur on a full installation. Although I do like KDE's transparency effects and collapsing windows, they don't really contribute much to me as a user.

4. The touchpad worked perfectly on the 1000H! Unlike recent releases of Lubuntu and Fedora, openSUSE still manages to support the touchpad of the 1000H out-of-the-box. Although this may not seem that important, openSUSE has been consistent in providing support for the tap-and-drag feature for the touchpad. I don't understand why Fedora and Ubuntu would require additional steps or packages just to get the touchpad working properly. Other users may rarely use their touchpad to tap and drag items on the desktop, but it's essential if you're working without a mouse.

5. The wireless FN key now worked for the 1000H! Previously, I've had to install and run the rfkill command to switch on wireless on the netbook. While running the openSUSE 12.2 LiveUSB, a quick FN+F2 did the trick. Of course, Lubuntu never had this issue but it's still nice to know that openSUSE corrected this problem (which had been around since openSUSE 11.x).  The release notes indicated improvements to the Network Manager but I didn't think they'd fix that age-old problem too. 1000H users, however, would be disappointed to find out Bluetooth still needs to be unblocked via rfkill but who uses Bluetooth anyway?

openSUSE 12.2 KDE - Now is the  right time Part 2: VirtualBox, KDE, and Yast2

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Matching the Avengers with Linux Distributions Part 2

Bruce Banner - Mark Ruffalo - Linux Mint

I've never been a huge fan of the Hulk and always preferred the character as a guest star in Amazing Spider-Man or Marvel Team-Up in the 70s and 80s. His storyline in the comic books have all been garbage since Peter David left the books, but Edward Norton's Incredible Hulk was . . .well . . . incredible. And then Mark Ruffalo and Whedon made Hulk lovable and charmed audiences worldwide (though I would like Hulk to show off his invulnerability and healing factor more just to educate audiences just how powerful he really is).
Why Linux Mint? Linux Mint came out from the left-field recently to become one of the most popular Linux distributions today. Linux Mint hardly requires any configuration and you don't have to be as brilliant as Bruce Banner to use it. In fact, you can be Hulk and still use Mint. And its theme is also green.

Clint Barton - Jeremy Renner - PCLinuxOS

Comic book writers and readers today have no idea what a huge douchebag and dork Hawkeye is. I hated Hawkeye in the 80s and I hate him even more now in the comic books (he's protrayed as having slept with every female superhero in the Marvel U AND was married to Mockingbird) His costume sucks and his skills are overrated (he's a circus archer for Peter Parker's sake!). In Avengers, he was protrayed by Jeremy Renner, a guy who oozes arrogance. But guess what? The movie actually makes him likable. Self-deprecating and easily beaten by ScarJo in a fair fight, his role as a sniper is perfect for the somewhat powerless SHIELD agent. And by the way, only ignorant fans believe Hawkeye can actually put Hulk to sleep with a special arrow(Riiiiiiggght).
Why PCLinuxOS? PCLinuxOS is actually a fairly popular Linux distribution with lots of dedicated fans, but is low-key compared to other Linux distros. It doesn't distinguish itself from other Linux distros, but is a competent Linux OS nevertheless. Sort of like Hawkeye.

Thor Odinson - Chris Hemsworth - Archlinux

Like Cap and Hulk, I prefer Thor in small doses, particularly when he would guest star in Spidey's books in the 70s and 80s. He was just so darn powerful (though Marvel has made him considerably weaker recently in both the comic books and in the movies). In Avengers, he was a particular favorite despite being treated badly in the script and in scenes involving Loki. Hemsworth gives the role justice, giving Thor both fighting skills, compassion, and power, not a musclebound oaf as he is normally portrayed in the comic books. Hemsworth and Evans are a toss-up as my favorite character in Avengers, with Thor winning by a small margin because of his earnest love for his brother, the fantastic costume, and the realistic use of the hammer.
Why Archlinux? Unlike other characters, Thor (and Archlinux) has a smaller fan base and is harder to understand compared to Cap, Iron Man, or Hulk. His mythical and rich background makes him interesting and complex. If you know how to use and set up Archlinux, you have a considerable leg up over other Linux distributions and is very much like wielding Mjolnir. Like Archlinux, Thor's powerset is pretty mysterious to those who haven't read the great stories by Walt Simonson and Jack Kirby - Thor can actually traverse time and space with his hammer and has won against some of the most powerful entities in the Marvel Universe.

Loki - Tom Hiddleston - openSUSE

Loki's plan in Avengers didn't make any sense, but anyone who was watching his character closely would realize Tom/Loki kept getting battered around. Cap deflected Loki's blast back to Loki and was shot by Coulson's funky rifle. He was repeatedly manhandled by Thor and received a repulsor blast from Iron Man at least twice plus caught Hawkeye's arrow that exploded into his face (and don't forget the Hulk's loving attention). But Tom Hiddleston still played his role with gusto and in interviews is actually more approachable than the rest of the cast. Hats off to Tom for a great performance. It's not easy being the bad guy.
Why openSUSE? openSUSE and Novell gets a lot of flak for cooperating with Microsoft, who could very well be the Chitauri of the Linux world. openSUSE (particularly KDE) can be grandiose, self-important, but very, very powerful. Now kneel!

As a final point, the departed SHIELD Agent Coulson could very well be matched with Mandriva/Mageia. Mandriva, despite being one of the earliest Linux distributions that went mainstream, fell apart in what many saw as an untimely death. In Marvel, death is a temporary state, and we could very well see Coulson pull a Mageia, the Mandriva fork that has currently climbed in popularity on Distrowatch.com.

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Matching the Avengers with Linux Distributions Part 1

Category: Linux

After watching The Avengers a second time and marveling on how bad-ass it still was, I thought it would be a good idea to make a delayed review of the characters and actors by matching them with popular Linux distributions.

Tony Stark - Robert Downey Jr. - Ubuntu

There's little doubt that RDJ and his armored alter-ego is currently the most popular Avenger despite historically being a second-stringer in the comic books for several decades (and embarrassingly replaced by Rhodey during an unsuccessful and poorly written run in the 80s). RDJ attempted to steal the show during the flick but was generally overshadowed by performances and even brief moments in the limelight by other characters such as Maria Hill and Steve Rogers. He's still likable though especially during scenes involving Tony, Pepper, and shawarma.
Why Ubuntu? Today, the Avengers is associated with Iron Man. Ditto for Linux and Ubuntu (though I personally contest this). There's also that color scheme and Mark Shuttleworth, the wealthy and generous entrepreneur who supported Ubuntu and Canonical's software services.

Steve Rogers - Chris Evans - Fedora

Chris Evans proved a hero is more than his sucky costume and gave a great performance as the living legend of World War II. Whereas comic book fans can easily gripe about how underrated Thor's power was in the film, Cap was infinitely believable and bad-ass. Only Cap would face down a god like Loki and supported only by Black Widow on a Quinjet. He was also the only gentleman to shield Natassha when Hulk punched that alien whale.
Why Fedora? Captain Rogers has a lot in common with Fedora: he stands for freedom, he's not everyone's favorite on the list, and his costume needs a lot of work (like Fedora's default applications). Like Rogers, Fedora, formely "Fedora Core", was "revived" after Red Hat Linux was discontinued.

Nick Fury - Samuel Jackson - Debian

Ok, so he's not an Avenger but he did contribute to the team and in the comics played important roles in the lives of Iron Man and Cap. Samuel Jackson, Nick Fury, and Debian have been around for a long time. In fact, the character Nick Fury has been around longer than Steve Rogers (thanks to the Infinity Formula). Jackson did what little he could with the screen time he received and the role he played in the film. Aside from Johansson, he was the only real veteran A-lister in the movie (RDJ was an A-lister in the 80s-90s but was largely forgotten until Iron Man).
Why Debian? Debian, like SHIELD and Fury, has influenced and contributed to almost every Linux distribution out there. Can you say old-school?

 

Maria Hill - Cobie Smulders - Knoppix

Maria Hill is a fairly new character. As a longtime Marvel reader as far back as the 70s, I hate that they chose her over classic SHIELD agents like Dum Dum Dugan. But after seeing Smulders' sexy and surprisingly convincing turn as Maria Hill in The Avengers, I realize that the franchise did need extra sex appeal. Considering the amount of macho testosterone in the helicarrier, I'd hire a supermodel as my second if I was head of SHIELD. Smulders' scenes were actually more memorable than Jackson's and I hope she gets to strut that tight-fitting SHIELD uniform again.
Why Knoppix? Knoppix is based off of Debian (see above) and was designed to be used as a LiveCD or LiveUSB. That is to say, Knoppix and Hill are proactive and "portable".

Natassha Romanov - Scarlet Johanssen - FreeNAS

The Black Widow is not one of my favorite Marvel characters. After failed relationships with her first Russian husband, Hawkeye, and Iron Man in the 70s comic books, she switched costumes/weapons and had the balls to test her skills against an injured and distracted Spider-Man (no surprise she STILL got her big ass handed to her). Later on, she had a long-standing relationship with Daredevil and recently was retconned to have had a relationship with Bucky Barnes - Cap's ex-partner who is now the Winter Soldier. She's one of the most overrated characters in the Marvel Universe, so I don't really mind that they miscast the character with the delectable Scarlet Johansson. To her credit, she was the only person in the whole movie who was able to convey the fear of facing the monster that is the Hulk (Loki should have known better . . . ).
Why FreeNAS? FreeNAS can support a lot of storage. And Scarlet has a lot of . . . uh . . . front-loading "storage".

Matching the Avengers with Linux Distributions Part 2: Loki, Thor, Hulk, and Coulson!?

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openSUSE 12.2 Gnome: A Quick Peek and Short Review

I tested openSUSE 12.2 Gnome first because I was eager to see what improvements the Gnome and openSUSE devs have made since the numerous criticisms against the desktop environment. I had recently been underwhelmed by Mageia Gnome 3's release but openSUSE rarely disappoints me so off I went with the ISO, a USB flash drive, and the dd command.

Bottomline, openSUSE 12.2 Gnome is fast - really fast even on LiveUSB. That's nothing new considering Linux systems are generally fast anyway and most releases are faster than ever, but in this case you would notice the difference. If you're using a USB with a blinking LED like my VerbatimGO, the LED would blink furiously as the distribution loads itself into the RAM. When I tested openSUSE 12.2 Gnome, I expected the typical churning of the HDD and the incessant blinking of the USB stick. None of that happened. It flashed a few times and I was on openSUSE 12.2's desktop. The experience reminded me of running Knoppix - but Knoppix was designed to be run on LiveUSB or LiveCD.

Gnome 3 - Nothing to see here

What I've always been impressed with was openSUSE's implementation of the Gnome interface to Yast. The icons on the Yast screen in Gnome are friendly and inviting and not at all as intimidating or as foreboding as Yast in KDE. Seemingly taking a page from Mandriva Control Center, Yast in Gnome 3 beckons new users to configure and explore the many features and capabilities of openSUSE.



The default Software Manager and Online Update utility, two indispensable but not always usable tools, launch quickly and is no longer as daunting (or as annoying) as previous releases. The default color palette is gentle and almost prevents you from wringing your hand if an error pops up (whereas you're likely to tear your hair out with Apper and Online update in KDE).



On the downside, Gnome 3 is still unusable as ever. The flashy Activities Overview is still not keyboard-friendly. What works for me is pressing the SUPER button and then typing the application immediately. Unfortunately, if you've started typing an application but decided to switch to an open application instead you would have to delete what you typed and then switch tools. Clicking Shift+TAB or ALT+TAB just moves you across the search results.



In the Activities Overview screen, you're still pretty much dependent on your mouse to click on active desktops or trigger any of the applications on the favorites bar. Your touchpad, however, isn't any better despite the huge icons. You can actually forget about using Activities and stick to the tried-and-true combination of Paging (ALT+up key), switching applications (ALT+TAB), and running commands (ALT+F2) but then the command widow is different from KDE's run window - typing Yast just triggers an error.  

Using the Activities Overview feature just takes a bit of getting used to and users can always install drop-down launchers or terminals like Guake, but what most users can't ignore is the pesky windows management issue that they still haven't changed (Gnome forces you to avoid minimizing windows and seemingly recommends you switch screens or applications instead). Again, there's an easy remedy to this: just right-click on the window bar and click Minimize. Somehow, however, I'm not sure everyone would want to make that a habit. It's not so bad on a big monitor or LCD screen, but a headache on a netbook.

It's all Good, openSUSE

Gnome 3 gripes aside, the LiveUSB worked smoothly. Writing on Gedit, browsing in Firefox, checking the repositories, taking screenshots, and testing the Activities Overview all worked perfectly. I'd definitely recommend openSUSE 12.2 Gnome 3 to Gnome 3 fans (or Unity haters who don't like Xfce or LXDE).

All Linux users know there's little you can test while running a LiveUSB/LiveCD. But my objective was to check if Gnome 3 on openSUSE can now be considered a viable option. openSUSE on Gnome 3 is lovely and like before would trigger some oohs-and-ahs from Windows and Mac OSX users, but like Unity, I wouldn't use it on a productivity machine. I did get a little taste of openSUSE's refinements to online update and software manager and was darned impressed.

Now it's time to move on to openSUSE 12.2 KDE and see how good openSUSE 12.2 really is.

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