Gabriel Saldaña's blog » GNU/Linux Free Software & Open Source

Easy CSS editing with Emacs

Gabriel Saldaña — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:18:00 +0000

Editing CSS in Emacs is very easy since the standard CSS mode comes included by default. But developer Julien Danjou created this nice minor mode called rainbow-mode which will display the color of the code as the background of the code’s text. It is very useful to immediately see the colors right there in the style sheet instead of trying to remember each code and then test in the browser window.

One of the problems I had was when opening any CSS file, it would open by default css-mode, but I had to manually load rainbow-mode every time. The elisp function auto-mode-alist is used to detect a file type by its name and running a function associated with it, generally the function to enable a major mode to edit that type of file. For minor modes I couldn’t find anything that would allow me to launch them without inhibiting the mayor mode’s startup.

So since auto-mode-alist takes a regular expression for the file type and only one function as its arguments, I wrote a function that will run both and use that as the second argument to execute.

;; CSS and Rainbow modes 
(defun all-css-modes() (css-mode) (rainbow-mode)) 

;; Load both major and minor modes in one call based on file type 
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.css$" . all-css-modes))

Hope you find it useful and you like the combination of css-mode and rainbow-mode as much as I do.

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Identica-mode 1.2 with OAuth support released

Gabriel Saldaña — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:06:00 +0000

The time has come to set up a new stable release for Emacs Identica-mode microblogging client.

It’s been almost a year since last release, but many people have been following the project’s progress through the git repository updates.

Download

Download the identica-mode 1.2

The two most relevant features of this release is first, support for OAuth (requires using oauth.el). This enables users who log in via OpenID accounts to be able to use Identica-mode as their client. The other big feature is the support for conversation timelines. Now you can press C-c C-c while cursor is on a notice to display that notice’s conversation timeline. Conversation timelines are not available on statusnet servers prior to 1.0 version, since the API didn’t include conversation ids until then. I’d like to give special thanks Kevin Granade for his time and effort on these two very requested features.

To use OAuth authentication instead of the default plain auth, add this to your .emacs file:

(setq identica-auth-mode "oauth")

Another very requested feature for those who won’t switch to OAuth, is to store the login credentials in a safer way than storing it in plain text in your elisp configuration files. Emacs can read authinfo and netrc files for authentication information. You can even encrypt the authinfo using EasyPG.

All you need to do is create a file ~/.authinfo (~/.authinfo.gpg if using encryption) and add the following:

machine servername login yourusername password yourpassword

Replace servername with your server (if connecting to Identica service, use identi.ca as server name), yourusername and yourpassword with your information. If you setup your authinfo file, you don’t need to set identica-password variable anywhere.

What’s new

OAuth support
Added support for authentication credentials stored in ~./authinfo (plain or encrypted) and ~/.netrc files instead of plain text elisp
Expand short urls by pressing ‘e’ while cursor is on a short url
Added is.gd to url shortening services
Added countdown minibuffer-prompt style
Retrieve server config page to set text limit of notices
Added conversation timeline support (only for APIs in Status.net 1.0+), when pressing C-c C-c over a notice it will display its conversation timeline
Added zebra stripes styling to timeline

Bug fixes

Fix highlighting of notices that are a reply to you but don’t have your nick in the text (as status.net 1.0 change)
Always crop avatars to 48×48 pixels
Improved vertical spacing between notices
Fixed icon placement when displaying dents in reverse order
Identica-mode buffer will no longer get killed on network error
Fixed support for gravatar images
Lots of code cleanup
Many other minor bugfixes

There is also a mailing list for the project to discuss any new features, ideas or bugs.

Hope you like the new release and thanks to everyone who during this cycle has spent time reporting bugs or sending patches. Your contributions are very valuable and keep improving this project.

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Will be speaking at FSLVallarta 2011

Gabriel Saldaña — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:13:00 +0000

This year I’ll be giving two talks at the Festival del Software Libre in Puerto Vallarta. This time I got invited on two topics, I’ll give my talk about DRM and for the first time I’ll be talking about Free Network Services (FNS), a topic I’ve been interested since my problems with google services and the increasing move of personal (and server) computing to the cloud. Although I definately cannot say that I do not depend on any cloud service (I do enjoy them), I am very aware of the risks. It’s not a technical talk at all, but a more philosophical one (FSF style).

I’m very happy to be invited to the event. I miss hanging around with all the friends from across the country, interesting and smart people that are always at software libre events. The exchange of ideas and debates are motivation boosters for new projects and great learning experience-sharing moments. Also the partying gets to be very hard as well… if you hang out with the right people.

It’s been a while since I went to my last free software/open source event and it’s been also quite some time since I’ve given my last talk. So I’m exited and nervous. I’m sure there’s going to be lots of interesting things going on and good stories to tell afterwards.

If you’re interested in the event’s schedule and the topics of all talks, you can consult FSLVallarta’s program.

Don’t foget to say hi if you see me over there, it’s fun meeting new people.

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The importance of Web frameworks in startup development teams

Gabriel Saldaña — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:08:18 +0000

In a start-up environment, things happen so fast that there’s very little time to polish your tools. Code gets done undocumented, development team members come and go with different programming styles and tools, and the chaos just builds up as the business goes.

At some point, you can’t finish or maintain something because one team member left the company with the knowledge of the code and without documenting. You either have to spend time figuring out what was done and how it works, or rewrite all that unmanageable code. I’ve seen this scenario happen too many times.

Just as the saying goes: “Stand in the shoulders of giants”, using an open source development framework is essential for the following reasons:

Access to lots of documentation, tutorials, forums, etc
Proven working code by a large user community
Everyone knows where to look when a certain change is needed
Development teams scale faster because new hires or people switching project teams can catch up and integrate to the team quickly
Benefit from patches and upgrades from outside your development team
Improve team productivity by not having to spend time writing basic common components from scratch every time

Even when using a closed source framework, you still get most of the benefits. Some companies prefer to build their own tools and frameworks. This approach will work out as long as they stay consistent and everybody agrees to use them in a standard way. But unless you’re addressing a very specific problem or facing a special situation, I recommend you not to reinvent the wheel and use one of the many existing open source development frameworks out there.

Here’s an old video of a chat with Steve Jobs, where he talks on how to improve productivity and saving time and resources in a development team, by eliminating lines of code to write and taking advantage of what is already out there.

Photo: SPNP #52 is Creative Commons by J_P_D on Flickr

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New media reading habits on tablets and ebook readers

Gabriel Saldaña — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:00:25 +0000

With the latest releases of ebook readers and tablet devices (iPad, xoom, galaxy tab, etc) reading habits are changing from paper based to digital in a faster pace than before.

I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy Tab for reading a lot more. I enjoy more reading my social media updates (Twitter, Google+, Facebook) on this device than using my laptop. Sometimes I even prefer to use that device even when having my laptop in front of me. Maybe touch scrolling feels nicer than wheel or trackpad scrolling. I still don’t know what exactly it is that makes it feel better.

I once borrowed a Kindle from work and one day, right before a 6hr long flight, the screen got damaged. On that trip I wanted to try out travelling with only the Kindle and no paper books, so I was left without any reading material. It was a frustrating waste of time. The advantage of travelling light is no longer very attractive to me over the advantage of reliable reading material.

On the other hand, I’m also very concerned about DRM in ebooks and the volatility of digital goods. Being in a “third” world country, I’m not used to buying digital goods, since there hasn’t been much services available and many US based services are blocked or restricted. The good side of it is that with free software like Calibre, I can convert any PDFs I find into Kindle format easily.

I am yet to try out the Google Books app in the tablet. I found a lot of excellent classic reading material for free so I can try before spending any buck like books from Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The advantage I see on reading on the Kindle over reading on my Android tablet is that the Kindle is a distractions free gadget. On my tab I’ll get easily distracted with new email notifications, app updates, status updates, etc.

Some friends claim to be reading more now that they have a Kindle than when having paper books. While other friends who own an android tablet or iPad device tend to use their laptops less at home after work is done.

So I still wonder why is ebook reading on these devices more and more attractive lately. Is it because of the novelty of the gadget? Is there a real advantage or commodity over paper books or is it just techie fashion?

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