I just wanted to slip a quick note in that I have just recently updated to the latest wordpress version here, which has a bit different interface for the admins and authors on the back end. I also changed the default theme here (which should be noticable now).
Other than those announcements, I also wanted to wish everyone reading/watching a very happy, safe and prosperous new year!
-Linc.
From the very beginning of my experience with GnomeSword 1.x, I had always seen it built, or built it myself, using GtkHTML. Indeed, I always heard it was a requirement. Not so.
You can build it using the Gecko display engine. Quite by accident, I built it that way on my CentOS 5 box. I was using the latest and greatest source and forget to add the switch for using GtkHTML. By default, the configure script found the Mozilla libs and built it with Gecko. I was quite surprised. The various windows render text just like Firefox. Further, when you turn on the Strong’s numbers in the old KJV, it places them in a row beneath the text, pretty much as you see it in certain famous inter-linear Scripture texts.
While there is one minor problem, in that this particular inter-linear display has lots of unnecessary white space around it, still, I find it much better than interspersing the Strong’s numbers in the text lines, or hiding it the way BibleTime does. So if you like the inter-linear display, consider building GnomeSword with the Gecko engine.
Somehow it slipped my mind to let you all know that the mailinglist server is being moved right now. So, if you have noticed that you can’t send the list an email, nor are you getting any, that’s why 
I expect that it’ll be back online by tomorrow sometime (12/23) if not before.
-Linc.
In keeping with my love for the commandline, I never tire of looking for ways to get more from terminal emulators. All the more so with my learning disability (Adult ADD), I really need to avoid distractions if I expect to get anything done. That includes web browsing.
For the longest time, I made good use of Lynx, and managed to make a good exploration of Links and W3m. While those all had various advantages, the introduction of Elinks held great promise. In both the Xterms and on the Linux framebuffer, you could use the mouse, open multiple tabs, make better use of cookies, and even implement some JScript features if you compiled it with Spider Monkey (Mozilla’s JScript engine). All good.
However, there had always been a nagging deficiency regardless of the Linux distro, and even in BSD — artifacts and ghost text on the screen. While I was given a good explanation of why this happened, it didn’t help any. The factor was a major distraction on par with moving images. Still, I kept checking, building each new incremental release on whatever system I had at the time.
Today that changed. I had a clean install of openSUSE 11.0. I decided to test the “unstable” release of Elinks, 0.12pre2. It built as usual, but to my amazement, no ghosts and artifacts! While this does not answer all my needs, it has removed the biggest problem I had with Elinks.
Just in case anyone wants to know, I still hope the developers make it possible to scrape text with the mouse buffer that wraps within the layout of the page. I don’t use Elinks on a page with information I wish to keep, because it takes a great deal of work to reformat it. When highlighting on the console or Xterm, it picks up everything within the window frame, include other columns, etc. Still, for just plain reading, Elinks is my number one web browsing tool now.
I am one who views each fine Open Source project as a gift from God. If it blesses me, I don’t care who was involved on a human level, God had a hand in it. A great many people in history were vessels unaware.
One of the greatest blessings to my calling as a writer is Lyx. I don’t have time to learn the nitty-gritty details of LaTeX formatting, but I often need the advantages of that advanced type-setting for something which has to look truly professional in print. No, my use is not entirely orthodox. Some of my documents have nothing more at the head than a subsection heading. I don’t always need all the bells and whistles of a formal document, but I can’t resist the beauty of the method.
With Lyx, all you need is some time spent becoming familiar with the way it works. Once you understand, you can forget most of the formatting details and simply focus on content. For longer articles, or even books, it’s perfect. Part of what makes it so wonderful is teaching you to focus on what you want to say, and forcing you to ignore those fussy details. Footnotes are displayed in the text body, but only if you open them. You can edit them right there next to the main content, helping you keep track of how they support it. Because the final display is a separate process, less power is used in maintaining the “final” view common in word processors.
Yes, you could probably emulate that behavior in OpenOffice Writer or anywhere else you like. But you’ll have to study the details of text styles and presets, and you’ll have to work over a great many details. Given the academic nature of Lyx, most of these are rather well established by long practice. Readers of your Lyx products won’t have to know you didn’t see more of college than the fancy gateway at the head of the main drive. As long as you can spell and use decent grammar, the standard output of Lyx resembles someone who spent several years immersed in the details of academic presentation formats. For those who won’t know the difference, Lyx simply offers a reader experience few other software packages can match.
For folks like me who actually know all the mechanics of human reading and brain processing of written material, Lyx offers very quick and easy access to the best practices: Bookman fonts for print, proper line-spacing, block format, sensible vertical white space between paragraphs, etc. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Lyx is superior to mere word processors.
Time to come clean. I admit I am a cult member; I belong to the Brotherhood of the Commandline. It’s like a drug. It started way back in the `80s when i started using DOS. Then it was the DOS LAN. I thought I had my habit beat while using Windows, but life was drab. Then I ran across Linux and tried a dose. Woohoo! What a rush. Not just the commandline, not just networking, but The Internet on the commandline!
Early this year someone gave me an ancient Toshiba Satellite laptop, still in really good shape. A screaming 300Mhz processor and a massive 186MB or RAM. A couple of lightweight distros failed, but I decided to mainline and installed Debian Etch… without the X server. Yeah, eventually I had to face reality and install it, but for a whole month I was rocking on the console, with full suspend modes, wifi, etc. It was a real trip. When I did install X, it barely worked, even with little old BlackBox. So I mostly never bothered to type that “startx”.
Sure, I could do that with my dual-core desktop beast, but it wouldn’t be the same. There’s something about a good solid machine too old and wimpy to run X. Just enough hardware to run that commandline. I could surf all day and never see a distracting graphic, like those naughty ads. I could write on my blogs, thanks to Elinks. I could do my email using Fetchmail and Postfix, with Pine running multiple config files, and that glorious 16 colors! Writing XHTML on the fly with Joe and full syntax highlighting. Good old MC stood by to manage files and handle FTP in both directions, and there was SCP, IM, music players, and all that heady full power of the full-blown commandline with a recent kernel. Just me and the Lord reading and writing stuff that might matter.
Oh, and of course the touchpad worked with mouse paste (that was a tricky deal).
I had to give the laptop to my son, who needed it for his job. I’m jonesing man. I need a new supplier. I need a clunky old laptop in good shape, so I can take my Brotherhood of the Commandline communion to the library and use the free wifi, or sneak around downtown and find some open wifi nodes, sit on the fountain and surf the web “naked.”
Anybody got a good connection? I need a fix.
My name is Lincoln and I approve of this message…
http://lincgeek.org/blog/?p=220
I just received an email today notifying me that linuxforchristians.com is up for sale. Just wondering if you, the l4c community would be willing to pitch in to purchase that domain or are we not interested? The price seems reasonable and the domain currently redirects to the Ubuntu CE project.
In my work as pastor of a small church, I have many tools at my disposal. The most important book in my library is the Bible, God’s eternal Word. Like most students of the holy writ, my shelf has several copies in various colors, sizes, bindings and translations. The Bible I both read, study and preach from the majority of the time is…..
Read the rest of this great article at The Preacherpen’s Desk
Linux is my operating system of choice, but there is a very real shortage of native Linux programs in the Bible study genre. There a few very capable Linux packages, but it seems to me Windows has the market share of exceptional programs for those people who rely on Bible study software. All hope is not lost, though, and there is possible some relief for this software void on the horizon, but nothing is definitive at the moment…..
Read the rest of this great article at The Preacherpen’s Desk