While trying to play a flash game with my daughter, I noticed that flash wasn’t working properly on Ubuntu 9.10 on some sites. The fix is trivial, and can be found here.

As Internet posts tend to disappear or move after a while, I copy the fix just in case:

First you need to edit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer file from terminal

gksudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer

Add the following line before the last line of text

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

Save and exit the file.

The best thing I have read on the subject: background and no FUD. Guess what, RMS is right (and guess again: he’s not talking about Mono).

Andy Lester was the first to point out that the we will have Perl support on the next release of Android! I guess asking nicely, does help.

I am not saying they listen to me, but I asked as well.

I have a dual-cpu Sun W2100z workstation I really like. It’s getting rather old, but it’s pretty fast for things like programming and Internet use. Until the release of Ubuntu 9.04, the machne was running fine. After installing the new release it was pretty obvious that the X performance was terrible. Things like glxgears ran fine on this dual screen setup, but things like switching virtual desktops (I use the shortcut ctrl+alt+arrows a lot) took a few seconds when windows were maximized. Sadly, the free driver didn’t work with the 3300 x 1050 resolution I use.

After playing around with the millions switch and config options of the nvidia driver, I found a working setting:

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2

To enable this permanently, you can add it to System – Preferences – Startup Applications:

(put “nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2″ (without “”) in the command field).

Installing DBD::mysql on Solaris 10 seems to be less trivial than “cpan DBD::mysql” when you want to use the system-supplied perl (5.8.4) and mysql (4.0.31) installation. Google shows a lot of people asking how to proceed, but surprisingly no answers. Typically, one gets this error at make time:

[...]
"dbdimp.c", line 4468: improper member use: com
"dbdimp.c", line 4468: improper member use: com
"dbdimp.c", line 4468: improper member use: com
"dbdimp.c", line 4630: undefined struct/union member: pmysql
"dbdimp.c", line 4653: undefined struct/union member: pmysql
cc: acomp failed for dbdimp.c
make: *** [dbdimp.o] Error 1

To install the module do this:

1. Install the following Solaris mysql packages (if not already installed): SUNWmysqlr, SUNWmysqlu, SUNWmysqlS, SUNWmysqlt.
2. Type the following as root:
   cd /usr/sfw/share/src/mysql
./configure
3. Download the tar ball of the modules or, easier, go to your cpan build directory (set at cpan configure time), typically at ~/.cpan/build/DBD-mysql-<VERSION> (already there if you previously tried to install the module with cpan).
4. Run the makefile with the following arguments (adapt to your own needs if necessary):
   cd ~/.cpan/build/DBD-mysql-<VERSION>
perl Makefile.PL --libs '-R/usr/sfw/lib -R/usr/sfw/lib/mysql -L/usr/sfw/lib -L/usr/sfw/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz -lposix4 -lcrypt -lgen -lsocket -lnsl -lm' --cflags '-I/usr/sfw/include -I/usr/include -I/usr/sfw/share/src/mysql/include'Installing /usr/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql
5. Complete the normal installation (make, make test (if you have a test db running), make install).

That’s it.

Just a small remark about something that got my attention on a pro-indepence post of Martijn on planet grep (in response to Wouter):

Cultural differences do exist. Wallonia is French, therefore latin culture. Flanders is Dutch, therefore Germanic. If you’ve ever even remotely looked at history, you won’t be able to deny there are huge differences between these two. Not all are better in Germanic cultures (pace of life eg), but the differences are clear.

Putting my linguist and culture scientist hat on, I can say that imagined north-south comparisons are very common and specifically very relative. Yes, within Belgium the South is Latin, warmer and bon-vivant. The North is Germanic, reserved and more intellectual. Looking how the dutch-speaking Netherlands (that used to be one region with Belgium in the past) looks at the north of Belgium (Flanders) is kind of funny. You get it: dutch-speaking (northern) Belgians are more Latin, warmer and bon-vivant. They like to party and eat. They are not like the North (the Netherlands): protestant, laborious and more reserved, and so on and on.

You can make the same exercise within Italy, between North en South Europe, within Spain, with Spain and Latin-America and so on. You’ll get tired of finding examples on all possible scales. And guess what, if Belgium was split, we would find differences with the more peripheral provinces (as they really are present today, e.g. in jokes). By the way, the name of the game is stereotype.

PS: If you want to read more about it, I suggest to have a look at the work of Dutch literary scientist J. Leersen.

PS2: maybe an important addition: stereotypes are instable and change through time. Not so long ago Flanders was the romantic region in the Belgian imaginery.

Auto-completion is a nice feature for an IDE. While Padre supports some auto-completion functions, method auto-completion is an important missing feature. This post is a short round-up of features present in other IDEs.

What auto-completion features does Padre support today?

Beside automatic bracket completion, Padre has a nice auto-completion implementation for variables (first character -including sigil- then ctrl + p):

Eclipse + Epic

Epic (an add-on to Eclipse) has a nice working auto-completion feature activated by the method invocator (->).

As a reference, the java auto-completion in Eclipse:

Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit also has auto-completion for methods, but does not show those inherited from parent classes making the feature rather useless for OO development.

Netbeans

Netbeans has no Perl support, nevertheless the java auto-completion feature is a good example:

The method auto-completion feature is activated by the “.” (“->” in Perl). Not only you get a list of accessible methods (with expected parameter type and return value), but also the javadoc documentation for the selected method.

How should Padre support method auto-completion? Some ideas

1. Method autocomplete should be activated by “->” and “::”. This way class hierarchies can be autocompleted as well. With “::” support for functions can be added.
2. Private methods should be hidden. By convention, private methods start with “_”.
3. Linking method autocomplete to perldoc is a winner combination when programming to not yet familiar APIs and certainly friendly to new Perl developers. While Perl is not strictly typed, a well formatted perldoc entry for a method should make clear what kind of parameters are expected and what the return value could be. However, documentation is rather freely formatted, so it would be difficult to implement in a generic way (without adding formatting restriction to classes).

Good news. It seems that Linux and Solaris are getting the JavaFX development kit. Finally. In the fight against Silverlight and AIR every developer counts. Still some questions remain open:

• Will SUN open JavaFX completely now (don’t make the JDK error twice!)?
• When will -at least- Netbeans get a JavaFX graphical editor in the same level as the Netbeans’ Matisse Swing editor?
• And last but not least, what will Oracle do with JavaFX when it owns SUN?

Anyway, if the apparently well-informed rumour is true, it is indeed good news.

You may see this when trying to decompress a rar file:

Too bad that file-roller does not tell you what to do (in contrast to Rhythmbox when new codecs need to be installed).

The solution is very simple, just install unrar like this:

sudo apt-get install unrar

That’s it. The Archive Manager can uncompress rared files now.

On our 64-bit series, we continue today with Vuze. There is a slightly older version on the Ubuntu repositories, so if you just want a running vuze, you can be happy and stop reading.

However, if you prefer to use the upstream latest version (vuze has its own update mechanism) on Ubuntu 64-bit, this is what you can do:

1. Create a local directory for applications. I use ~/bin.

mkdir ~/bin

2. Download and uncompress vuze.
cd ~/bin
tar xvjf  Vuze_Installer.tar.bz2

(Alternatively you can use the Archive Manager and copy the vuze directory to bin in your home directory).

3. Download swt (SWT binary and source, Linux (x86_64/GTK 2)) for Linux 64-bit. Open it with the Archive Manager and copy swt.jar to ~/bin/vuze (~ is your Home Directory). (The download page is rather confusing, make sure you download swt and not eclipse).

4. Create a launcher for  vuze by right clicking on Applications and choosing “Edit Menus”. The command is “/home/<YOUR USERNAME HERE>/bin/vuze/azureus %f” and the icon can be found in “/home/<YOUR USERNAME HERE>/bin/vuze/”

That’s it.