Beyond the Sky

Computer user usually beautify their desktop when they just install a new OS, having free time, discover new themes etc. With murrine gtk2 cairo engine installed, you can make your desktop looks nice, and it is light weight.

Murrine have ability to change:
1. Menubar style
2. ListHeader style
3. Menubar Items
4. Style of the Glaze
5. Scrollbar Colors
6. Contrast

Murrine support:
1. Square all the theme
2. Animations ( on progress bar)

Screenshot?

This is one of the sample Murrina Kent uses murrine engine.

Ok, what should I install?
If you are using ubuntu, you can do as bellow:

wget http://malteo.homelinux.net/B54820BC.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Add the lines bellow to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://malteo.homelinux.net edgy-malteo all
deb-src http://malteo.homelinux.net edgy-malteo all

# sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-murrine

Ok, you need to download themes,
You can search around at http://gnome-look.org/ and http://xfce-look.org/ . Those themes uses murrine will usually have keyword murrina***

I find this nice too, but you need to do some modification, else it won't works.
(replace squaredstyle = 0 to roundness = 1)
http://www.kernow-webhosting.com/~bvc/theme/gtk/murrine/

Downloaded theme can extract at ~/.themes then to use apply the theme, can uses gnome-theme-manager. ( Simply goto system -> preference -> theme for gnome user.)

If you using fluxbox on top of ubuntu, add the line bellow to ~/.fluxbox/startup

gnome-settings-daemon &

What else?
You can modify the theme, its a text with options, edit the file gtkrc in the theme folder you have extract, search "murrine", and all the option can be configure easily. The author create a murrine configurator for easy configuration too, but some how the official murrine site cannot be access by my side. Thanks to linux toy, I able to download the murrine configurator at here

You wanna see all your results at once, with all the controls everything in one windows, use The Widget Factory.


Get it from http://linuxappfinder.com/package/thewidgetfactory

Have fun!

I was wasting all my time yesterday night, trying to find a way to correct the subtitle of a french movie. Some of us may always need subtitle, but sometimes the downloaded movie (oops!) do not sync well with subtitle we can obtain from the net which usually rip from DVD.

My case was, I need subtitle coz i can't understand french. I have few subtitle, which one of them is in correct sync, means the timing is correct. But unfortunately, the one is not english subtitle. I search from the net try to find alternatives subtitle which I can't find the ONE that sync.

Therefore, first thing come into my mind is, write a bash script to copy the correct timing from one subtitle file and copy the english subtitle from another then pasted one new file. I failed to do that, because the sequence of the line skipping is not always the same. (Donno what am I talking about? Forget about it, main point is I failed.)

At last, I search for subtitle editor, I should have done first! I find a good tool, "ksubtile". Okay, the name is funny, and it is KDE based application. But it works! because I just want to change the timing. There is a gnome app for that too, but I couldn't find it in my repo, so give up.

Try ksubtile, its easy! I have correct my subtitle timing less then 5 seconds with ksubtile.

Bellow are imported screenshot, not mine, I am using fluxbox

Fluxbox come with Ubuntu Edgy is the latest one, but it do not support imlib2 by default and it fails to display me information when i do

fluxbox -info

So I recompile the fluxbox and replace it. The fluxbox come with ubuntu edgy repo is installed at /usr/bin and /usr/lib. Fluxbox surce code configure by default is install in /usr/local/bin, do not support imlib2 too, no nls support either.

First I need X header and imlib dev stuff

apt-get install libimlib2-dev xlibs-dev libxrender-dev libxft2-dev

Then configure with nls and imlib support with correct prefix, so it will install at the same place when the current one.

./configure --enable-nls --enable-imlib2 --prefix=/usr

Observered the output of the configure, check whether nls and imlib2 is correct support, will appear at last few lines. Solves any dependencies if configure fail halfway.

Then? simple, make and sudo make install. Thats it!
Download here
Refers wiki here
-------

By the way, this is related but its another topic instead. I am just lazy to add another post, so I put it here.

If you like to edit your menu and key bindings in fluxbox with help of GUI, can check out this page
http://devaux.fabien.free.fr/flux/

It is helpful for beginners, but I prefer edit with vim myself, the key binding support control , alt and shift only, but fluxbox do not restrict you to use any key available on your keyboard.

I am too sleepy when I write about Ubuntu Edgy, chinese input in en_US.UTF8 local, why fcitx is better than scim. After chatting and making friends with people at #ubuntu-cn, I have learn how to makes my Ubuntu Edgy support chinese better.

What is better? Ubunutu Edgy by default support chinese viewing, which means you can read chinese website by using firefox, and maybe you can read some text file in chinese. Observed and discover or not, the characters of chinese are ugly by default. The size of the character is not equal, and sometimes some character might be missing or appear in noisy symbolic. Check this screenshot for an example of ugly looking chinese viewing. Ignore the album arts and Amarok.

By default, no chinese input support. Okay that is no big deal, simply install scim and it will works fine. But if you didn't set it properly, you won't feel nice while writing in chinese. Again, some charater is missing, not in a nice shape and not equal size.

You can login to chinese locale gnome, and it maybe makes you feel be better. But all your menu wordings will be in mandarin, which It is not my preference, I do not like it at all. I want to login my default locale but with chinese locale support too.

Thing I hate the most is, xmms no not support chinese viewing. It doesn't seems to work no matter how I configure and I was really gave up but finally I had found the solution and make it right.

If you are looking to solves anyone of those, read further. But bare in mind, the solution bellow might be missing some steps, because I have apt-get a lots of packages while trying. I might miss out some of the steps, please inform me if you discover any.

First, apt-get some chinese locale.

sudo apt-get install language-pack-zh language-support-zh zh-autoconvert

Second, apt-get some chinese fonts.

sudo apt-get install  xfonts-intl-chinese xfonts-intl-chinese-big ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp ttf-arphic-gkai00mp

Search for more chinese fonts using apt-cache, and download this one, you really need this one, much much nicer.

sudo apt-get install xfonts-wqy

The full name of this font is call "WenQuanYi Bitmap Song 12", use it, it is a very nice font.

Okay, now can install scim.

sudo apt-get install im-switch libapt-pkg-perl scim-chinese scim-gtk2-immodule scim-qtimm scim-pinyin scim-tables-zh scim-modules-socket scim-modules-table

Play some trick to make scim as a default input for everything.

sudo im-switch -s scim -z default

Okay! This step is going to make your chinese characters looks better! Equal size and nice!

sudo fontconfig-voodoo -f -s zh_CN

What the heck? too simple isn't it? Re-login and have a nice feel first. Oh wait! bookmark this page first, you still need to read further later.

------ Re-login --------

Okay, check out your locale,

locale -a

You should have this two ,"en_US.utf8" and "zh_CN.utf8", you should have more, but at least must including this two. Okay, you are almost done. Anything else? emm... to trigger scim for insert chinese input, press ctrl+space. To temporary turn off chinese input and switch to english, press shift and release (scim-pinyin must triggered for that) and vice versa.

Do you still want your xmms to support chinese viewing or not? Yes, further down.

This is a bit tedious, but it is not difficult.
Check whether you have this file /etc/gtk/gtkrc.zh_CN, if do, copy over with another name.

sudo cp /etc/gtk/gtkrc.zh_CN /etc/gtk/gtkrc.zh_CN.utf-8 

Then goto the font setting at xmms preference and paste this,

-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1,-*-*-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-gb2312.1980-0,*-r-* 

Before paste it, copy and backup the original one, in case you want to put back. If you don't have that file /etc/gtk/gtkrc.zh_CN, create it and paste the line bellows

 # $(gtkconfigdir)/gtkrc.zh_CN
 #
 # This file defines the fontsets for Chinese language (zh) using
 # the simplified chinese standard GuoBiao as in mainland China (CN)
 #
 # 1999, Pablo Saratxaga <pablo@mandrakesoft.com>
 #

 style "gtk-default-zh-cn" {
        fontset = "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1,\
                  -*-*-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-gb2312.1980-0,*-r-*"
 }
 class "GtkWidget" style "gtk-default-zh-cn"

Not yet can view correctly? you need another step.

Download this,

sudo apt-get install xmms-mpg123-ja

After that, check out your xmms preference at audio-plugin, disable xmms-mpg123 and enable xmms-mpg123-ja and then configure xmms-mpg123-ja, switch to "title" tab. Uncheck the disable-id3v2 and select convert input from GB2312 to UTF-8.

Okay, you should be able to view chinese in xmms. If in the case you still can't, it might be your chinese character in id3 have corrupted, rewrite it.

Something I am not cover at this post:

I haven't try chinese input at open office suit, so I have no idea whether will it trigger any problems or not. If you face any problem on that, consider search on keyword "scim-bridge".

                                                  
                                jjKKEE;;          
                    ..;;;;;;,,,,KKKKKKDD          
                  iiffLLLLLLjj;;KKKKKKEE          
              ,,::,,LLLLLLLLLL,,LLKKKKii          
            ;;tt;;  ttLLLLLLLLff,,,,..,,          
          ::tttttt::::;;::::;;jjLLffffLL;;        
          iitttttt,,            ;;LLLLLLff..      
        ::tttttt;;                iiLLLLLL;;      
  ..ii;;..iitttt::                ..ffLLLLtt      
  jjLLLLjj::ttii                    iiiiiiii      
..LLLLLLLL..ttii                                  
  jjLLLLjj::tttt                    EEKKKKDD      
  ..iiii::;;tttt,,                ;;KKKKKKff      
        ::ttttttii..            ..DDKKKKKK;;      
          ;;tttttt;;          ,,DDKKKKKKDD        
          ..iitttt..iiGGjjjjLLKKKKKKKKKK,,        
            ::tt,,..EEKKKKKKKKKKjj,,;;;;          
              ::  ttKKKKKKKKKKii,,iiii::          
                  iiLLKKKKKKEE::ttttttii          
                        ....  ::ttttttii          
                                ;;tttt,,          
                                  ::::            
                                                                   

It is a good page to generate you pix to ASCII, Check out here.