Converting an EMF (MetaFile) on Linux using unoconv

When I needed to convert a graphic from an EMF (Windows Enhanced MetaFile) on my Linux machine today, all of my Google searchers were turning up with conversion utilities for Windows or wine at best.

Fortunately, it appears as though unoconv converts from EMF and is available in the standard Fedora repositories. I issued:

unoconv MYMETAFILE.emf

and it spit out a MYMETAFILE.pdf, and I was happy.

Installing Adobe Digital Editions on Linux with Wine

UPDATE: I have not had time to address the download issues some people have had when trying to install ADE. However, see the comments on this post for some additional tips on where to find an ADE installer download that you can run inside Wine.

Unfortunately, Adobe does not provide a simple download link for the Windows version of Digital Editions, and so if you want to purchase a PDF or ePub e-book with Adobe ADEPT DRM protection, it is very difficult to get up and running on Linux even if you have Wine installed. Here's how I did it.

1. Install Wine on your system. Most Linux distributions provide Wine as an optional install (e.g., sudo yum install wine from the command line on Fedora).
2. You will need Gecko extensions available to run the iexplore.exe web browser that comes with Wine. Visit the Wine Wiki's Gecko page for information on how to install Gecko. Your Linux distribution may have a "wine-gecko" package. If it doesn't, then follow the simple instructions on the Wine Wiki.
3. You will also need Adobe Flash installed on your Wine system, and so you should visit the Wine Wiki's Flash page to get the install_flash_player.exe download link. Download the exe and run it in Wine (e.g., wine install_flash_player.exe from the command line).
4. Now, start the iexplore.exe browser bundled with Wine. After I ran Wine for the first time, it setup a .wine directory in my home directory (i.e., ~/.wine). I found the iexplore.exe in ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Internet Explorer. Change to that directory and run iexplore.exe (e.g, wine iexplore.exe from the command line).
5. Now you can visit the Digital Editions installer (which is written in Flash). From the Wine Internet Explorer, enter in the URL:

   http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/ade_web_library.swf

   That should startup a little installer. Follow the prompts to download and install Digital Editions. You will even be able to launch it from there.
   • The installer will install the single Digital Editions executable to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Adobe/Adobe Digital Editions as digitaleditions.exe.
   • You can run it again but executing that file through wine (e.g., wine digitaleditions.exe from the command line in that directory)
   • Alternatively, you can use the "Digital Editions" shortcuts that the installer probably placed on your desktop.
6. Once Digital Editions is started, you should be able to drag-and-drop ACSM files you've downloaded from e-Book commerce sites (like Google Books), and it should download the Adept-DRM'd version of your media.
   • DRM'd books are stored in the My Digital Editions folder that will be created in your home directory.
   • If you want to put them elsewhere, you need to edit the symbolic links in ~/.wine/drive_c/users/USERNAME where USERNAME is your Linux username. The My Documents folder was symlinked to my home directory by default. I got rid of the symlink and created a real directory there instead, but you could point the symlink somewhere else if you'd rather. Regardless, the My Digital Editions folder will reside inside the My Documents folder (alongside a My Books folder, but I don't know what gets put in there... maybe non-DRM stuff you put into ADE?).

Once you have your DRM'd books, you should be able to transfer them onto devices that have also been authorized with your Adept key (e.g., a Sony Reader that has been authorized with the same account you used inside Digital Editions). I suppose it's possible to get the Digital Editions running inside Wine to notice when your reader is connected, but I haven't tried it (that might involve installing the Sony Reader Library software within Wine, and I received some ugly errors when I tried to do that (but YMMV)).

The Shell is Back!

As of Windows XP, the shell is back. Microsoft now distributes PowerShell (PoSH). It has lots of nice features. See the Microsoft website where you can download it for free. You can find other PoSH links at Wikipedia.

Notice how command-line interfaces (CLI's) are making a huge comeback? After years of mousing, people have finally come to the (correct) realization that mousing sucks. So now we have things like QuickSilver, Spotlight (and Vista's equivalent), SlickRun, and others [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Mozilla Quick Searches and Google Desktop are just as much examples of this. The real hacker moves around with hot keys, macros, and short commands. Dare I say it is hip and trendy to stay close to the keyboard and use the mouse as little as possible?

I'm not saying the mouse has no place. Certainly, there are lots of applications where that interface is needed. However, the operating system is not one of those places. We need multiple interfaces, and the mouse probably belongs best to graphics applications that call for tugging and shifting things around in continuous ways. For the rest of the computer, just give me the keyboard.

MATLAB Quick Reference Cards (and more)

UPDATE: I list an AMSTeX reference card below. There is also an AMSLaTeX reference card available at refcards.com.

This is meant to be a follow-up to the "TeX Reference Card (and others)" post.

I found a list of a bunch more quick reference cards, which include applications/packages like MATLAB, MATLAB toolboxes, Perl, MFC, MySQL, Linux, UNIX, Vi, Vim, Windows, AMSTeX, TeX, and a bunch more...

However, I was just looking for MATLAB quick reference cards. So, here are these (some of which did not come from the above site):

• MATLAB quick reference
• MATLAB toolboxes quick reference
• MATLAB reference card meant for an ENG101 class
• MATLAB reference card
• An edited MATLAB reference card

So, that's nice. I recommend one of the bottom two [i.e., 1, 2].

Aurora: Ribbit all grown up

I just found out that Ribbit, the program that gave LaTeX support to Microsoft® Word (on Microsoft® Windows), has changed its name to Aurora and has lots more features. From its web page:

• No more mouse-hunting for symbols—enter great-looking math quickly and efficiently using the standard language of scientific typesetting.
• Express any scientific concept from mathematics, computer science, chemistry, engineering, and many other areas.
• Full integration with Microsoft® Word, PowerPoint®, Visio®, and Excel®.
• Built-in LaTeX document converter.
• Advanced support for equation numbering.
• Works with any Windows application that has an “Insert Object...” function or lets you paste images.

In short, Aurora brings to Windows what a countless many applications (e.g., LaTeX Equation Editor) bring to OS X.

There's a 30-day free trial. After that, Aurora is $45 for regular users and $35 for academic users. If you don't have MiKTeX (or some alternative) installed, it can install a free micro version for you.

Other notable examples of Windows applications with LaTeX integration include AbiWord, OpenOffice (see OOoLatex), and TeXmacs.

My LaTeX-using colleagues would want me to reminder the reader that if you know enough LaTeX to be entering equations using it, you probably should just be using LaTeX directly. Why fake it? Despite Aurora's claim that it is "even better than the real thing," it's a distant second at best. That being said, it is SO much better than the Microsoft® Equation Editor, which should absoultely never be used.

Pine, PASSFILE, all-patch, and Thunderbird 2.0 IMAP keywords

Thunderbird 2.0 has been released! It's fast and finally supports an arbitrary number of custom IMAP keywords (IMAP keywords are similar to the labels used in GMail). I'm thrilled about this.

However, regardless of how wonderful Thunderbird gets, I will always keep PINE around (which has supported IMAP keywords for a long time).

When I build PINE for my systems, I usually pick up a few of the most popular patches as well. I never noticed that there was an all of the above patch that packages ALL of the most popular patches, new features, and bug fixes. I think this is pretty exciting too.

To build PINE with PASSFILE support (i.e., support for saving passwords to file), I recommend using the infinite ink instructions:

#!/bin/sh
./build clean
./build 'EXTRACFLAGS=-DPASSFILE=\".pine.pwd\"' osx
#                                              ^^^
#                                              platform

You can find a list of platforms in the doc/pine-ports file. Some common ones include (see the document for any special build instructions):

    BSD (original BSD 4.3 from U.C. Berkeley)
        bsd     BSD 4.3

    BSDi
        bs3     BSDi BSD/386 Version 3 and Version 4
        bs2     BSDi BSD/386 Version 2
        bsi     BSDi BSD/386 Version 1

    Cygwin
        cyg     Cygwin environment under Windows 

    HP-UX
        hpx     HP-UX 10.x
        hxd     HP-UX 10.x w/ DCE
        ghp     HP-UX 10.x using gcc
        hpp     HP-UX 8.x and 9.x
        shp     HP-UX 8.x and 9.x w/ TCB
        gh9     HP-UX 8.x and 9.x using gcc

    Linux
        lnx     Linux using crypt from the C library
        lnp     Linux using PAM
        slx     Linux using -lcrypt for crypt()
        sl4     Linux using -lshadow for crypt()
        sl5     Linux using shadow passwords
        ldb     Debian Linux
        lmd     Mandrakelinux
        lrh     RedHat Enterprise and RedHat 7.2 or later
        lsu     SuSE Linux

    Macintosh
        osx     Macintosh OS X
        ox2     Macintosh OS X 10.2 and earlier

    NetBSD
        neb     NetBSD

    OpenBSD
        bso     OpenBSD w/ shared-lib
    
    QNX
        nto     Neutrino

    SCO
        sc5     SCO Open Server 5.x
        go5     SCO Open Server 5.x using gcc
        sco     SCO Unix
        gsc     SCO Unix using gcc

    Sun Solaris (Solaris 9 is the same as SunOS 5.9)
        gs5     Sun Solaris >= 2.5 using gcc
        soc     Sun Solaris >= 8 using Sun C
        gs4     Sun Solaris <= 2.4 using gcc
        so5     Sun Solaris >= 2.5    (try soc or gs5)
        so4     Sun Solaris <= 2.4

    Sun SunOS (This is pre-Solaris SunOS)
        sun     Sun SunOS 4.1
        ssn     Sun SunOS 4.1 w/ shadow passwords
        gsu     SunOS 4.1 using gcc
        s40     Sun SunOS 4.0

    System V Release 4
        sv4     System V Release 4

    Windows
        wnt     Windows NT 3.51

Happy mailing!