Update a package that is not in AUR

First uninstall old package.
Put the PKGBUILD and the package.install file in one folder.
Open terminal in that folder and do:
makepkg -sci PKGBUILD
This will build and install the new package.

And here is an example for adeskbar 0.3.8:
the new PKGBUILD
and adeskbar.install for 0.3.8.

Trying new font configuration has desastrous effect

I was experimenting with font configuration, made curious by this post:
Arch wiki Font Configuration page recommends the following:

Ubuntu uses the original LCD patched packages and adds extra configurations, and occasionally patches.

First, the conflicting packages need to be removed:

pacman -Rd libxft cairo fontconfig freetype2

Then install the patched packages from the AUR using an AUR helper of your choice. The package names are:

freetype2-ubuntu fontconfig-ubuntu libxft-ubuntu cairo-ubuntu

Halfway the installation I get into problems because there are some dependency problems and not all the ubuntu packagescan be installed. The lxterminal comes to a halt and when rebooting I can't login.Well I login but get thrown back.
The only solution in this case i sto start another terminal session at the login by doing Ctrl+Alt+F2.
In terminal session on tty2 I first uninstall what was recently installed.If you don't know exactly any more what was installed and not, just try everything, what you told pacman to do: sudo pacman -Rd packagename1 then on with package2 etc.In this situation I did it one for one to get precise feedback.Then I reinstalled freetype2 cairo libxft and fontconfig in this order.This all seems rather easy but it took me some experimenting to find out what went wrong. Didn't realize that a wrecked fontconfig could have such devastating effects.
But as always the most recent changes will be responsible for what wrecked your system.

Find your image back on the internet

Downloaded an image and want to find the place back where you found it or find similar images.
To find the same: upload the image to tineye: http://www.tineye.com/

To find similar use the find similar images function in Google Images Search:
http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/

Mouseless browsing in Firefox and Chromium

Shortcuts In Firefox:

I did not leave much out, even some the most obvious like F11 but if I forgot some important one and you have some good suggestions, let me know.
(chromium) means that in Chromium the shortcut is the same.

Navigation Shortcuts

Forward, backward, home, address bar and search bar can be done via keyboard shortcuts:

alt+left arrow : back (chromium)

might not work in debian: solution use backspace key: if this also won't work for you, make sure to set browser.backspace_action to 0 ( found in about:config iceweasel settings )

alt+right arrow : forward (chromium)

alt+Home : Home (chromium)

ctrl + or - : larger/smaller page layout (chromium)

F11, toggle full screen (chromium)

ctrl+n opens new window (chromium)

ctrl+f: opens search page dialogue F3=find again Shift+F3= find previous (chromium)
ctrl+h toggle history sidebar (chromium)
ctrl+b toggle bookmark sidebar (chromium)
ctrl +F11 Stumble Upon toolbar
super alt c Next Stumble (configure in tools, toolbar options, shortcuts).

/ (slash) : find as you type text
' (apostrophe) find as you type link and focus it(enter to activate), use the two following in combination with these two
ctrl+enter: opens already focused link in new tab
shift+enter: opens already focused link in new window

arrow down/up: Select Next/Previous Form Entry or Auto-Complete Entry

ctrl+l or F6: focus address bar (chromium)

ctrl+K : focus search bar

F4+arrow up/down +enter: only when search engine is focused: select from search engine list

Tab Shortcuts

Opening, closing and navigating your tabs can be done via these shortcuts:

ctrl+t : new tab (chromium)

ctrl+w : close tab (chromium)

ctrl+Page Up : previous tab (chromium)

ctrl+Page Down : next tab (chromium)

ctrl+tab : next tab (chromium)

alt+num (1, 2, 3, etc) : tab number (chromium)

ctrl+shift+T : open recently closed tabs (chromium)

ctrl+r : refresh tab content (chromium)

ctrl+shift+r : force-refresh tab content

ctrl+u : view tab source (chromium)

F7: toggle on/off caret browsing:(inserts a cursor into the text of the page and is very useful for highlighting and copying text)

More here:

http://www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Large_Print_Keyboard_and_Mouse_Shortcuts.php

Mouseless browsing takes keyboard control to a whole new level.
This site features two addons: the first is called Customize your Web and is a nifty Greasemonkey wysiwyg-editor addon for code dummies like me.

What is especially awesome, is how the developer manages to make page segments selectable and browsable with the keyboard. He shows how to focus elements of a search result page of Google with the keyboard. You can create extensive macro's of a couple of actions you perform regularly on a site and automate them with a keyboard shortcut. The downside of these great features is that each customization is limited and has to be tailored to a certain site. Of course when the build up a a page is similar you can try if it works with the similar pages/websites.




It's amazing and a wonderful add on to customize your webbrowsing.


The second add on from this site is the simpler but very effective mouseless browsing addon:

Mouseless Browsing (MLB) is a Firefox-Extension which enables you to browse the internet with the keyboard. The basic principle is to add small boxes with unique ids behind every link and/or form element. You just have to type in the id and press enter (there is also an automatice mode available) to trigger the corresponding action i.e. following a link, pressing a button or selecting a textfield.

You will need only the numerical keyboard to do your browsing. This is my preferred set up: that you only use the numkeys for controlling this add on.

You can toggle the visibility of the numerical id's. I set visibility out as default; visible by pressing a defined key; I chose to use the decimal key for this purpose.
The numerical id are quite unobtrusive to watch, compared to solutions I tried some years ago. Watch the two excellent videos to get a grip of the possibilities.
I use it most to select a certain tab, focus text fields and open links.

[solved]After update to xorg 1.8: Other partitions weren't shown in Pcmanfm

After updating today to the new xorg-server 1.8 I had this problem.
They said on the fora that rebooting would do the trick.
But not for me; editing the rc.conf file in the etc folder I made an @hal , putting the @ before hal makes the daemon load in the background.
Couldn't say if this really did the trick, but after rebooting again, the problem is solved!

Keybindings to manipulate windows Openbox

The wonderful thing about openbox is the great ease of configuring keybindings for very intense window managing. The use of the keyboard for managing windows and desktops is a very productive alternative to the use of the mouse. The level and complexity of the keybindings you will want is a very personal thing and will change all the time. This is a starter level set up which is intended just to stimulate you to start using keybindings for wm.


Activate windows or window switching

[Obkey variable mentioned between brackets, see below for more info on Obkey]

Super z Focus Next window [Obkey options Action: NextWindow; Raise AllDesktops or Desktop, linear; finalactions: Focus, Raise Unshade]
Super Alt z Tab Focus Previous window [Obkey options Action: PreviousWindow; Raise AllDesktops or Desktop, linear; finalactions: Focus, Raise Unshade]
Super Esc Unfocus, Iconofy [Obkey options Action: iconofy,unfocus]
(preferred here Super combinations because Alt combinations are often already in use by the active window app itself)
Alt F4 Close window

Super F5 ShowMenu [Obkey options Action: menu: ShowMenu client-list-combined-menu]
(shows all apps running on diverse desktops,select with up/down, enter)
Super Alt r Resize focused window [Obkey options Action: Resize edge:none]
Super Left - resizes window to half the screen then snaps it to the left [Obkey options Action: unmaximizefull, maximizevert, move resize to x=0,y=0, width:half horizontal monitor resolution 1920:2=960]
Super Right - resizes window to half the screen then snaps it to the right [Obkey options Action: unmaximizefull, maximizevert, move resize to x=960,y=960, width=960 change to half of your horizontal monitor resolution 1920:2=960]
Super F11 Maximize full, toggle [Obkey options Action:ToggleMaximizeFull]
Super F12 Iconofy
Super D Show/Hide Desktop [Obkey options Action:ToggleShowDesktop]

Moving to different workspaces and moving windows to them

Super F1 Go to Workspace 1 [Obkey options Action: Desktop desktop: 1]
Super F2 Go to Workspace2

Super Up Go to the workspace on the left [Obkey options Action: PreviousWindow]
Super Down Go to the workspace on the right [Obkey options Action: NextWindow]

Super Alt F1 Send window to workspace 1 [Obkey options Action:SendToDesktop, desktop:1 follow:yes]
Super Alt F2 Send window to workspace 2

Super Alt Left Send window to the workspace on the left [Obkey options Action:SendToDesktopLeft]
Super Alt Right Send window to the workspace on the right [Obkey options Action:SendToDesktopRight]

All above keybindings use the easy accessible super and alt keys.

When you use Pytyle; activate with Alt-a (halt it with Alt-u)
then Alt-Ctrl-C cascade windows, Alt-Ctrl-M maximize all windows,
Alt-Ctrl-h tile windows horizontal, Alt=Ctrl=v vertical.

Use Obkey to change keybindings

[For the lazy people: the first section of the keyboard part of the rc.xml with all the relevant keybindigns for manipulating windows you can find here http://aur.pastebin.com/6400yCJE ]

Select a keybinding, which one is not important and click on plus sign top left (insert sibling keybind); click on the new key till you see " new accelerator", press the key or keys whcih you wnat to use for that action.
Now add, action by clicking on plus sign action bottom middle right, you see as default possibility focus, click on that word and you will see a whole range of options of which you can choose by clicking an that option. When done don't forget to save.

For explanations on the terminology:

http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Actions#Window_actions

This is a conky file to memorize the keybindings (to be placed in home/username/)

File: .conkyrc

TEXT
#${color red}Manipulate Windows{color}

SHORTCUT KEYS:
${color beige}Change the Active Window
Super+z$alignr Raise Nxt Wind
Super+Alt+z$alignr Raise Prev Wind
Super+Le$alignr Raise Half wind Le
Super+Ri$alignr Raise Half wind Ri
Super F9$alignr Toggle Shade
Super F10$alignr Toggle fullscreen
Super F11$alignr Toggle Max Full
Super F12$alignr Iconofy
Super+d$alignr Show Desktop
Super+Esc$alignr Unfocus and Iconofy
Super Alt+r$alignr Resize Window
${color beige}Move between Windows
Super+up$alignr Go Left Wind
Super+down$alignr Go Right Wind
Super F1$alignr Go Desktop 1
Super F5$alignr Clientlist Combined Menu
Super+d$alignr Show Desktop
${color beige}Moving Windows
Super Alt Left$alignr Send Win to WoLe
Super Alt Right$alignr Send Win to WoRi
Super Alt F1$alignr Send Win to Wo 1
Super Alt F2$alignr Send Win to Wo 2

Want to discover other options?
Download Urukrama rc.xml file by doing in terminal:
wget http://dotfiles.org/~urukrama/rc.xml_07-2008


He shows a lot of options in his rc file;
see also http://urukrama.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/my-openbox-keybindings/


Epilogue: an interesting addition to keybindings are Keychains:
http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Bindings

A keychain is pressing two keys together, lets say Ctrl and f and releasing them and pressing another key for instance s to

ToggleMaximizeFull and x to ToggleShade

If you leave Openbox in a key chain state for too long without completing it, Openbox will cancel the key chain and restore your normal key bindings.

You can also use the "C-g" (Control key and "g" key together), in the default configuration, to cancel any key chain which you are in.

Make qt apps look better in an almost gtk only desktop

QGtkStyle

This is a Qt style which intends to make applications blend perfectly into the GNOME desktop environment by using GTK to render all components. To use this style you must have at least GTK+ 2.0 and Qt 4.3, although Qt 4.4 or higher is preferred.

Having trouble making your Qt applications use QGtkStyle?

Qt won't apply QGtkStyle correctly if GTK is using the GTK-QT-Engine. Qt determines whether the GTK-QT-Engine is in use by reading the GTK configuration files listed in the environmental variable GTK2_RC_FILES. If the environmental variable is not set properly, Qt assumes you are using the GTK-QT-Engine, sets QGtkStyle to use the style GTK style Clearlooks, and outputs an error message:

QGtkStyle cannot be used together with the GTK_Qt engine.

Users of Openbox and other non-GNOME environments may encounter this probem. Here is a solution:

• Tell Qt where to look for your GTK configuration file by adding the following to your .xinitrc file:
  • To add multiple paths, separate them with colons.
  • The $HOME part will expand to be path to your user's home directory. Using the ~ shortcut won't work.

File: .xinitrc

...
export GTK2_RC_FILES="$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0"
...

• In .gtkrc-2.0 you must specify a GTK theme. For example:
  • This is usually done for you by an application which sets GTK2 Styles

File: .gtkrc-2.0

...
gtk-theme-name="Crux"
...

However it seems in sume cases those tools insert only an include directive like

File: .gtkrc-2.0

...
include "/usr/share/themes/SomeTheme/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
...

which apparently is not recognized by all versions of QGtkStyle. You can hotfix this problem by inserting the gtk-theme-name manually in your .gtkrc-2.0 like above, note however that Gtk2-style-change applications might overwrite that change when you use them.

To choose your GTK theme for QT apps you must run:

qtconfig

source: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_Look_for_QT_and_GTK_Applications#GTK-QT-Engine

Pytyle nice tiler for Openbox

Don't care too much for window tiling but pytyle give some extra functionality to openbox. Alt+Tab changing apps and much more.
Edit the pytylerc in the /home/user/.config/pytyle folder

Uncomment by removing # before and read the file to see the other keybindings

'Alt-Ctrl-H': 'tile.Horizontal',
'Alt-Ctrl-M': 'tile.Maximal',
'Alt-Ctrl-C': 'tile.Cascade',
'Alt-Ctrl-V': 'tile.Vertical',

Read more
http://pytyle.com/wiki/Configuration

Setup Multiple conky with build in weather script

This is a report on recreating a complicated multiple conky script without a manual howto set it up.
This is how I did it.First created a folder in home/paul named .conky.
In the folder I put four, later five scripts named .conkyrc1, .conkyrc2, etc.
The content of these scripts I found here
Download the nice and clean conkyscripts here .
Wallpaper found here on Filckr, choose the resolution you want.

When unpacked you will find: conkydate, conkhr, conkymin, conkystats.
Rename these to .conkyrc1 etc and copy to folder .conky.

Conkydate:

background no
use_xft yes
xftfont Helvetica:size=40
xftalpha 0.9
update_interval 3.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 800
maximum_width 800
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color 808080
default_shade_color 101319
default_outline_color green
alignment top_left
gap_x 400
gap_y 415
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${color ce2c51}${time %d} ${color ffffff}${time %B}
${time %A}

Conkyhr:

background no
use_xft yes
xftfont Helvetica:size=100
xftalpha 0.9
update_interval 3.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 170
maximum_width 170
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color 808080
default_shade_color 101319
default_outline_color green
alignment top_left
gap_x 20
gap_y 400
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${alignr}${color 000000}${time %H}

Conkymin:

background no
use_xft yes
xftfont Helvetica:size=100
xftalpha 0.9
update_interval 3.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 170
maximum_width 170
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color 808080
default_shade_color 101319
default_outline_color green
alignment top_left
gap_x 195
gap_y 400
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${color ffffff}${time %M}

Conkystats:

background no
use_xft yes
xftfont Helvetica:size=15
xftalpha 0.9
update_interval 3.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 800
maximum_width 800
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color 808080
default_shade_color 101319
default_outline_color green
alignment top_left
gap_x 400
gap_y 615
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${color ce2c51}RAM Usage: CPU Usage: Weather:
${color ffffff}Used: ${mem} Core 1: ${cpu} % ${execi 300 /home/paul/.weather.sh "EUR|NL|NL004|NIJMEGEN"}
From: ${memmax}

So you get a hang of these scripts; the last one will need some extra editing.

The weather script has been placed in and as /home/paul/.weather.sh
It goes like this:
[code]#!/bin/sh
#AccuWeather (r) RSS weather tool for conky
#
#USAGE: weather.sh
#
#(c) Michael Seiler 2007

METRIC=1 #Should be 0 or 1; 0 for F, 1 for C

if [ -z $1 ]; then
echo
echo "USAGE: weather.sh "
echo
exit 0;
fi

curl -s http://rss.accuweather.com/rss/liveweather_rss.asp\?metric\=${METRIC}\&locCode\=$1 | perl -ne 'if (/Currently/) {chomp;/\Currently: (.*)?\<\/title\>/; print "$1"; }' [/code]

The weather.sh needs a rss localization code you will find here:
http://www.accuweather.com/rss-center.asp

Inside the US you can suffice with an easier ZIPcode:

${execi 300 /home/buttons/bin/weather.sh 08534}

More info on the weather script here.

The only thing we still need is to get the multiple conkies working:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 20
conky -c /home/paul/.conky/.conkyrc1 &
conky -c /home/paul/.conky/.conkyrc2 &
conky -c /home/paul/.conky/.conkyrc3 &
conky -c /home/paul/.conky/.conkyrc4 &

fi

Note the sleep delay of 20 seconds; this is done to be sure the internet connection is up and working else you won't have the weather info.
Put the multiconky bash script in usr/bin and put it in the autostart.sh in /home/.config/openbox: multiconky &
Don't forget to make the bash files executable!!

Result full image: http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/1020/2010060912761101201920x.png

Another wallpaper behind it: http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/7298/2010060912761103981920x.png

Some useful pacman commands

To install a package: sudo pacman -S packagename

To remove a single package, leaving all of its dependencies installed:

# pacman -R package_name

To remove a package's dependencies which are not required by any other installed package:

# pacman -Rs package_name

There should be a clear warning about regular dist upgrades,
Having explained that:
Doing an upgrade but excluding a package that causes trouble
sudo pacman -Syu --ignore libgl

In this case the libgl packages has a conflict with nvidia-utils
and shouldn't be installed or updated to avoid further conflicts.

sudo pacman -Ss dvd lists all programs connected to dvd.

Install a 'local' package that is not from a repository:

# pacman -U /path/to/package/package_name-version.pkg.tar.gz



see http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman

Info on tools and gui for pacman:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_GUI_Frontends

Add on for Chromium set minimum font size

You can find it here: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pofdgleodhojjnibdfnlapkadjepdnka

Minimum Font allows you to set the minimum font size that you would like to see on web pages. For instance, if you set the minimum font size to 8, and you visit a site that has text with a font smaller than size 8, this extension will increase the size to 8.  Currently, because I'm an incompetent JavaScript...author(?), only certain tags are checked (I'll list them below). If you know a better way, or if you want more added to the list, let me know!