Recently Used Documents in Ubuntu Gnome

I don't like having my recently used documents get saved across Gnome. I prefer to set individual application preferences. For instance, in jEdit I like to record up to 80 recent documents.

Its a bit tricky to do this, and to be safe I'm using two different methods:

• Making ~/.recently-used.xbel not modifiable

rm ~/.recently-used.xbel
touch ~/.recently-used.xbel
sudo chattr +i ~/.recently-used.xbel

• Setting GTK preferences in ~/.gtkrc-2.0

gtk-recent-files-max-age=0
gtk-recent-files-limit=0

OpenOffice Page Margins

Took me forever to find the page margin settings in OpenOffice. Hope it helps others, but I know I'll come back here to remember!

Its not in any print dialogs, its under Format->Page. Easy as pie, once I found it!

Printing from the Command Line

Since I use a laptop (Lenovo g555), I'm not always connected to a printer. I wanted to print my documents to a PDF, then batch print them later. Rather than manually opening up the PDFs and then printing each one, I figured it could be done via the command line shell, in my case - bash.

Thanks to tkjacobsen, I'm trying out this function:

function printpdf ()
{
for i in $@; do
if [ "$1" != "$i" ]; then
dt=`date +%y%m%d%H%M%S`
pdftops $i temp-print${dt}.ps
lpr -P $1 temp-print${dt}.ps
rm temp-print${dt}.ps
fi
done
}

I haven't tried it, but I'm about to!

I'm going to set this up today and see if this item on my "to-do" list works:

To-Do: Test Apache2::S3 as a DAV Proxy with DAVFS2

Alas, it didn't work. I didn't use davfs2, but actually that's what encouraged me to try this today! After tinkering around the Lucid Lynx Ubuntu system I recently setup on my Lenovo G555 I noticed something that sounded familiar but hadn't actually seen before: .gvfs.

What is GVFS?

GVFS is the successor to the Gnome virtual file system. Thankfully, it doesn't need the usual hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and is apparently very modular, kind of like PAM. I happened upon the hidden .gvfs folder in my home directory while trying to clean it up, with a goal of putting all my settings in $XDGCONFIGHOME (aka ~/.config). Would I want to delete .gvfs? Turns out I definitely want to keep it -- in my humble opinion it is a very very cool little folder! Not so much for what it as a folder does, but for what it alerted me to - the brand new world of GVFS at large.

On my Lucid Lynx install, I have these gvfs related packages installed:

lash@lenovo-g555-2:~$ dpkg -l | grep gvfs
ii  gvfs                                  1.6.1-0ubuntu1build1                            userspace virtual filesystem - server
ii  gvfs-backends                         1.6.1-0ubuntu1build1                            userspace virtual filesystem - backends
ii  gvfs-bin                              1.6.1-0ubuntu1build1                            userspace virtual filesystem - binaries
ii  gvfs-fuse                             1.6.1-0ubuntu1build1                            userspace virtual filesystem - fuse server
ii  libgvfscommon0    

Get the idea? Good! I'll elaborate anyway! Docunext readers may be familiar with FUSE, I know I am - I've been using SSHFS to mount filesystems over the SSH protocol for years, though I've been using NFS more often these days. I still use FUSE all the time for Encfs, too.

Anyway, from what I've learned so far, gvfs is a set of tools, abstraction layers, and programming interfaces to provide tighter integration of FUSE, as well as other filesystem backends, with Gnome. While reading up on gvfs, I discovered that Thibault Saunier is working on a Google Docs interface to gvfs! Believe in the gDrive! The gPhone came true!!

This got me thinking and reminded me that I wanted to try connecting S3 to DAV with Apache2::S3. But as my test confirmed, that won't work at all:

[Sun Aug 22 18:07:02 2010] [error] [client 192.168.1.215] <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>\n<Error><Code>MethodNotAllowed</Code><Message>The specified method is not allowed against this resource.</Message><ResourceType>BUCKET</ResourceType><Method>PROPFIND</Method><RequestId>B0DA9D7EE6DE73AD</RequestId><AllowedMethod>PUT</AllowedMethod><HostId>tIbZEhZarXoApiO9wzD23fLIrGiYqZ+DKhUxiFYXmG5frXO6faXdpOLgGEAx2Fwc</HostId></Error> at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1/Apache2/S3.pm line 153.\n

So, it looks like S3FS it the best bet, though that one definitely needs some more work, too.

I've read that there are workarounds to get Gnash and YouTube to play nicely, but I haven't bothered. I had a binary blob Flash plugin for awhile - it was the alpha version for x8664 linux, but apparently there was a security issue with it, and the x8664 alpha has been discontinued and is no longer available. Ugh!

It seems so preposterous that Adobe is floundering with Flash where Macromedia made mega waves and had incredible penetration - I heard their plug-in was installed in over 90% of all browsers.

In my opinion, Adobe needs to really open up Flash. Macromedia sort of did it, but then pulled back. Flash has lost a lot of its luster in recent years, and they really need to do something to save it. Besides the fact that Apple refuses to support it on the iphone, javascript and CSS are catching up in terms of engaging, rich media, and obviously those are open technologies / standards.

With HTML5 on the horizon, Adobe needs to act fast. The open source community has already done so much for and with the SWF format, its time for Adobe to step up to the plate and open up the format!

At least this error page on YouTube is a little more informative:

Ooh! This one is even better:

I tried listening to New World in My View by King Britt.