Android on the PC
This is interesting:http://www.muktware.com/news/3275/soon-you-will-be-running-android-your-pcs
I have never used Android, so don't have any concept of how it's usability stacks up against our usual Linux distros. I don't know how well it will perform with the conventional keyboard/mouse input.
Very interesting though, if it does start to appear on laptops/desktops.
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Internationalization progress
I have finished putting rodin.s's internationalized files into Woof.In the Internationalization HOWTO page I mentioned technosauruses/L18L's 't12s' method and that it might be our preferred method. However, the DoOcracy has been demonstrated, with rodin.s submitting a huge collection of files using the 'gettext' method.
However, the t12s method is good and any existing non-internationalized scripts or future scripts will be welcome to use it.
Note, Woof currently only has one t12s'ed script, /usr/sbin/xdelta_gui.
Internationalization HOWTO:
http://bkhome.org/fossil/woof2.cgi/artifact/375a350ce4363addfd87592bd883b00d7f9fe112
Blog post on t12s:
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02620
Earlier blog post describing localization:
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02652
What I am planning on working on next is a GUI tool to make it easy to create translation files. We have the i18n'ed scripts (and some XML and .desktop files) but now need to make it very easy for users to create non-English translations. This will be for the gettext'ed scripts.
I might be a bit unresponsive to other to-do requests for a few days
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Puppy is a DoOcracy?
There is seeming disorder in the way that the Puppy project is run, for which I sometimes get criticized as a weak leader. However, what those people don't understand is that my strategy is deliberate. Although I am also sometimes viewed as the "benevolent dictator", that does not really fit the model -- I like to see individuals empowered to "run with the ball".A little while ago Jemimah posted to the Puppy Forum about "DoOcracy", which kind of fits how the Puppy project is run. Forum thread:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy//viewtopic.php?t=55028&start=75
A page introducing DoOcracy:
http://www.communitywiki.org/en/DoOcracy
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Yet more scripts internationalized
I have applied rodin.s's internationalised scripts connectwizard, connectwizard_2nd, cups_shell, delayedrun, dotpup and download_file to Woof. See Woof commit:http://bkhome.org/fossil/woof2.cgi/info/4978ad1d29
I decided to translate /usr/sbin/eventmanager myself, as I wanted to try doing it slightly differently.
That slight difference is just a small thing... in gtkdialog XML code, rodin.s translates strings by inserting directly, for example;
export DIALOG=" ... <frame $(gettext 'Name of frame')> ... "
However, if the string has a ' in it, rodin.s does it this way:
export DIALOG=" ... <frame `gettext \"Name of 'frame'\"`> ... "
Which is fine, however I wanted to consistently use only the $(gettext ....) syntax. So my translation is:
export DIALOG=" ... <frame $(gettext "Name of 'frame'")> ... "
This also works, and the " does not need to be back-slashed, in fact must not be back-slashed. It confuses Geany though, but we are accustomed to that
It works because everything inside $( ... ) gets evaluated first, and only the resulting string inserted into DIALOG.
It is interesting that the back-tick works differently.
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More scripts internationalized
I am working through the scripts that rodin.s has sent me. It is taking awhile as I am editing the Woof scripts line-by-line.These are the latest internationalized scripts:
http://bkhome.org/fossil/woof2.cgi/info/40efc714d4
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Xorg Wizard internationalized
Rodin.s has supplied me with a lot of internationaized scripts for Woof. I am starting to work through them.I have already upgraded 'dialog' to support wide-characters, see earlier post:
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02667
I have applied rodin.s's changes to /etc/rc.d/functions4puppy4, /etc/rc.d/rc.shutdown and /usr/sbin/xorgwizard.
The last one was a lot of work, as rodin.s's script is somewhat different from that in Woof. So, I went through line-by-line making the changes.
Anyone who wants to create a .mo translation file for 'xorgwizard' is welcome! Note, download 'functions4puppy4' also, as it is included inside 'xorgwizard'.
You can get the files from the Woof commit:
http://bkhome.org/fossil/woof2.cgi/info/229cbfcb8d
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The return of Underdog Distro
This is a feature that was last seen in Puppy 2.x, it was gone in 3.x. I was reminded as tronkel started a thread about it on the Forum:http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13750
It is an interesting concept, that is introduced here:
http://puppylinux.com/development/howpuppyworks.html
There are possible problems, mostly to do with mismatched libraries. The Puppy libraries would be in a higher layer, which might mean that an application that you want to run in the Underdog Linux layer might not work. With some care though, it should be ok, for example with Wary/Racy, use an older version of Ubuntu not the latest as the Underdog. Or, better, use a matching distro, example Slacko and Slackware 13.37.
Another possible problem is all the extra bootup stuff in an Ubuntu (or whatever) Underdog.
I do recall though, back in the Puppy 2.x days, Underdog did work surprisingly well.
I have modified the 'init' script in the initramfs, in Woof, so this feature will be in the next Puppy built with latest Woof. Here is the Woof commit:
http://bkhome.org/fossil/woof2.cgi/info/e82716c2f7
What you do is create a file 'underdog.lnx' in /mnt/home or in the subdirectory of a frugal installation. The file contains the name of a partition, for example "sda9", nothing else.
However, you will also be able to do it from the kernel boot commandline, ex: "underdog=sda9". The really interesting thing about this is it will work even on first boot before you have created a save-file. The partition is mounted read-only, and will be the very bottom layer.
I haven't tested it yet.
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dialog wide-char enabled
Rodin.s has sent me some files for improving internationalization in Puppy. One of those files is 'dialog' linked against 'libncursesw', for wide-character support (such as UTF-8).There is some history with regard to 'dialog' and wide-char support. See these two blog posts:
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02201
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02204
Despite having created a PET with wide-char support, I backed off and recent Puppies have used 'dialog' linked against 'libncurses' only. I don't recall why I backed off.
Anyway, I have compiled dialog version 1.1-20111020 with wide-char support, configured as per the second link above. Here are the PETs (72KB, 15KB, 17KB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-common/dialog-1.1-20111020-widechar-w5c.pet
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-common/dialog_DOC-1.1-20111020-widechar-w5c.pet
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-common/dialog_NLS-1.1-20111020-widechar-w5c.pet
I have put these into the 'common' repo, so that all Woof-built puppies can use them. Note, it does not require 'libtinfo'.
It is unfortunate that UTF-8 has to be enabled before dialog will display wide-characters properly. It really should recognise wide-characters regardless, so this perhaps should be reported as a bug to the dialog developer.
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Pfilesearch 1.28
Zigbert's Pfilesearch is a helper-script called by some of zigbert's other apps. I have updated to the latest version.PET (9KB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-noarch/pfilesearch-1.28.pet
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Snap2 4.21
This is Lloyd Standish's backup utility. project home:http://standish.home3.org/snap2
The version I had was getting a bit old, so I have updated to version 4.21. This requires 'rsync' but is itself architecture-independent, so I have put the PET into the 'noarch' repo (31KB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-noarch/snap2-4.21.pet
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