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Word to Latex converter

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Dude

Have you ever wanted to convert Microsoft Word files to LaTeX files? I have been always looking for an easy way to do so but never seriously went after it. Today, I came across this FREE program called: Word-to-LaTex (Word-to-XML) converter which can do a pretty decent conversion job. It can even convert the equations (provided that you have proprietary program MathType).  The images, tables and pretty much every thing else can be converted as well. I installed it and gave it a test run. The result was very promising but obviously not perfect. However, I assume it is good enough for most jobs.

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LyX: a Wordish LaTex

Posted on May 24, 2008 by Dude

LaTeX is by far the best professional typesetting program which is being widely used by academicians as well as by FOSS advocates throughout the world. It is free, standard, powerful, flexible, and enjoyable to work with. But STOP! This is a geeky narration of the story. The reality is that the vast majority of the individuals using the typesetting programs prefer the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs like MS Word over the scripting programs like LaTeX. The reason being:
In LaTeX:
1. The fact that you have to write programs (scripts) to produce documents scares many non-geeky people.
2. You do not immediately see what you have just produced and this gives many peoples the feeling that the document and the way it looks is not really under their control.
However, nobody denies the power and flexibility the LaTeX offers.

So, what can one bring the power and flexibility of LaTeX to average user? Answer: LyX.

LyX is a free and open source package which puts a user-friendly (kinda spelling idiot-friendly ;) Ha! Ha!) skin over LaTeX such that the user can see an interface much like MS Word or OpenOffice which is based on LaTeX. The binaries are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. The list of its features very impressive and it works just fine. Some of its features are (taken from the program’s website):

  • Mathematical formula editor
  • Structured document creation (sections, labels, bibliography, so on)
  • Extensive Graphics/tables support
  • Support for writing documents in many different languages including right to left languages (like Persian and Arabic)
  • Access to all LaTeX functionality with capability to insert plain LaTeX code anywhere in a document.
  • Import LaTeX. Export LaTeX, Postscript, DVI, ASCII, HTML or send a fax
  • Unicode support
  • Latex source code viewer
  • Extensive documentation

To see some screenshots of the program visit this link. There is also a Wiki for LyX. The binaries can be downloaded from here. The needed LaTeX packages come bundled with major Linux distros. For Windows, you can let the installer download MikTeX or can use that version of the installer which is bundled with MikTeX. Try LyX! you will be hooked.

Filed under: Open Sourcce | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The challenge of bringing Open Source to the masses

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Dude

One of the most important aims of the Open Source movement has always been to involve the masses in the movement. Until very recently, this aim has been too much like wishful-thinking. These days, however, there are some reasons to believe that we are close to reach, at least partially, this aim. In this post, I am trying to answer the important question that ‘how can we get closer to involve the big masses in the Open Source movement?’

I think the practical ways to popularization of Open Source can be categorized as either ‘positive push’ or ‘negative push’. The positive push ways are the ways of promoting the Open Source stuff by enhancing the products or the ways they interact with the masses. The negative push ways are the ways of demoting the most important trend rivaling the Open Source movement: proprietary/non-free softwares. I discuss either way in a separate section.

Positive push
There are three different things which can positively influence the impact of the Open Source movement. It appears to me that the Open Source community must concentrate on these three issues while trying to bring the Open Source stuff to the masses.

The first thing is “Plug and Play“. I don’t have any doubt that one of the features that has made the Windows XP overwhelmingly dominant OS is its rather good plug and play features. Many drivers are automatically installed at the very moment you connect a new device to your computer while a number of other hardwares are just a few clicks away from being installed. Most importantly, you can (still) find the XP drivers for virtually any single hardware in the market. That is one of the things that makes XP ‘The Standard’. I don’t like it just like (many of) you guys do, but it is true. Therefore, FOSS guys must invest a lot on Plug and Play feature. It is not sufficient that the things CAN be got done at the end; a non-tech-savy grandpa should be just as positive as you geeky guys are.

The second thing is Wine. Being able to run your favorite application seamlessly from within your Linux distro is what that eliminates the huge advantage of Windows that many applications are designed for it and are not available for Linux. Currently, Wine is not working as well as it must. Many applications fail to run with Wine at all let alone run easily and seamlessly . I believe that as many developers as possible should heavily work on Wine to make it as powerful as possible. What we really need is a plug and play Wine: grab a disk containing a native Windows application and you are just a few clicks aways from running it from within your Linux distro.

The third trick is monetizing the Open Source projects. Any Open Source project can sustain only if it can be somehow monetized by the developers. Of course, the worst thing is trying to sell the program just like the proprietary ones. The best way is to monetize the program while keeping it free for the consumers. Google’s model is an excellent one. If you prefer a more tangible example, take FireFox. It is Open Source. It is free. It is lovely. It generates revenue and simply gets the work done. Remember! they would let you play only if you are big enough to be seen while sitting around the table.

Negative push
Aside from making the FOSS products appealing, it is important to make the rival look just as ugly as they really are. Most important thing in this regard is to push for kind of legislation against bundling the softwares with the new computers. Most of the computers sold these days have so many proprietary softwares, including the OS, preloaded. The customers have little chance of selecting the OS they want and are in most cases forced to pay the software companies for the software they might finally through away. The Open Source community must push for such legislation. That is, in my opinion, one of the key points in bringing the Open Source to the masses.

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Review: Ubuntu 7.10

Posted on October 18, 2007 by Dude

Curious to know about Gutsy Gibbon? A list of improvements of Ubuntu 7.10 is already available in its official website. So, I am not going to duplicate those stuff and will try to tell you about my personal experience with Gutsy Gibbon.

I gave the new Ubuntu a try. As usual, I installed it by using my VirtualBox virtual machine not only because I do not have enough space on my Dell Latitude D820 laptop (Intel Core 2 T5600, 1GB RAM) but also because this reveals the interoperability of Ubuntu and VirtualBox. I think it is important to be able to easily install Ubuntu on virtual machines. Indeed, many people would need to run their Ubuntu along with another OS. In my case, I have to keep Win XP on my laptop simply because this is the default OS of my University and most of specialized applications are available and supported only for XP. As I said, I am already running out of space and hence I used my 4GB USB flash to store the virtual hard drive of my virtual computer.

I didn’t have any difficulty downloading the iso file as there were many mirror sites and I selected a site just a couple of hundred meters away from my apartment (actually the download was from my university’s server). The download was completed with the maximum possible bit rate of my ADSL connection and there was my Ubuntu iso file ready to be mounted. After mounting the iso file as CD drive of the virtual disk, making a hard rive of 3.8GB, and allocating 512MB RAM, I booted my virtual machined and it smoothly booted up. The initializing part took a few minutes (more than 7.04) and live session started. The visual appearance was clearly better (than 7.04) from the beginning. I noticed a few of changes at the first instance: a Bluetooth Analyzer in accessories, Pidgin internet messenger in internet, and OpenOffice.org Drawing in Graphic. Some new places are also added (Pictures, Videos, Music, and Documents). Having a Calculator in accessories might seem not much of improvement to many people but to me it is a great blessing as I was missing my calculator a lot.

Installing took a damn long time (about 70 minutes) which I do not consider unusual as I was using my USB flash. But, I was curious to know how much space has been occupied by the virtual hard drive after completion of the installation. It was 2.3 GB. After the desktop appeared it took a few minutes until the desktop was fully initialized and computer was responding. I had no eye-candy visual effects because my hardware was not detected to be supportive of that. Trying it in System>Preferences>Appearance did not help and I could not get neither “Normal” nor “Extra” visual effects meaning that the eye-candy stuff probably should be expected to work only if you have got a high-end machine.

Then I checked the internet which was available right away and visited youtube. The flash plugin was missing but the missing plugin was detected and two options (including Gnash flash player) were automatically suggested. Trying the first option which was Adobe Flash Player I got an error message complaining that “could not download all repository indexes” probably because repository servers were not available or something. But then I still could continue downloading and installing which caused my screen to freeze. After getting rid of the frozen screen I tried again and could succeed in installing the plugin and youtube started to work.

Trying to play an mp3 file returned the expected error message but the player (Totem) could locate the necessary plugins for playing mp3 files and offered to install it (I do not need to play mp3 files and so skip it).

screenshot.png

It seemed to me that the memory is managed better than in 7.04 (maybe just a feeling) and I had less difficulty running the applications. Login window could be accessed from System>Administration>Login Window where the local administrator (root) login can be activated (not recommended). Installation of Firefox extensions was readily possible through Add/Remove and the references to repository packages seemed to have renewed. Although due to lack of enough resources I missed many graphical features of this Gitsy Gibbon, I still would prefer it to the previous version though I am using it through VirtualBox. This is becasue as I said before, the memory management seems to have improved or it is the effect of bug fixes that make my application flow smoother. Because of those new places (Music, Picture, Video, Documents) look and feel of this new version is even closer to what expected by former Windows users.

I will keep using it in place of my Feisty.

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Top 15 Open Source and/or free apps for scientists and students

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Dude

1. Type-setting and office

- OpenOffice
Is a complete Office suite package including Writer, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Drawing, and Database applications. It is well suited to academic applications. The features of particular importance are built-in bibliography utility, possibility to export the Text files as LaTeX, BibTeX, MediaWiki, and XHtml, built-in pdf export capability, and good document formatting.
-LaTeX and MikTeX (for Windows)
LaTeX is a powerful mark-up language for writing papers, scientific reports, theses, and so on. It is based on the TeX system originally developed by Donald E. Knuth. LaTeX is super-powerful in writing and managing any sort of academic writing. As a mark-up language, it can be called a programming language for academic writing. Like many programming systems any LaTeX typesetting system should have a compiling component and an editor. Although normal plain text editors can be used for LaTeX typesetting, specialized LaTeX editors are also available. Most Linux distributions come with some sort of TeX system. MikTeX can be used for Windows. There is a huge ecosystem around LaTex and many things related o TeX can be freely downloaded from Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN).
- Kile
Kile is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for development of LaTex documents in Linux. It is based on KDE desktop environment. For screenshots of Kile see here.
-TeXnixCenter
A feature-rich LaTeX editor for Windows freely available under GPL license.

2. Bibliography and reference management

- Bibus
Bibus is a bibliography and citation management software designed to be Open Source, free, and integrative to OpenOffice and MS Word. Bibus is available for Linux and Windows but Mac support is limited at the moment. It can be downloaded from here. Bibus can import and export from EndNote/Reference Manager and also RIS files. For screenshots of Bibus check this link.
- Jabref
It has LaTeX bibliography files (BibTeX files) as its native file format and can be used for management, manipulation, and export of BibTex files. Jabref is maintained for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. It can directly search and download from some bibliographic databases. Screenshots can be accessed here.
- Zotero
Zotero is a Firefox browser extension which can be used for storing bibliographic data while browsing. It can be used for managing and citing as well and can save a lot of time particularly the time spent for collection of data. It works with many websites. Read this nice article about how to use Zotero to manage OpenOffice bibliographies.
- There are more Open Source bibliographic management softwares than these three. Read this Wikipedia article about comparison of different proprietary and Open Source reference management softwares.

3. PDF and Postscript related apps

- PDFedit
PDFedit is a great free and Open Source pdf editor for Linux. Read my previous post about editing pdf files with Linux to find more about PDFedit.
- Ghostscript
Ghostscript is an application written mainly in C for viewing ps and pdf files, converting ps files to pdf, and much more. This is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
- PDFCreator
It is a free and Open Source pdf creation application based on Ghostscript. This is available only for MS Windows but Vista is not currently well supported. However, the Vista bug is being fixed. PDFCreator was selected by the OpenCD project for creation of pdf files in Windows.
- Wanna more pdf apps (Open Source and proprietary) ? Check this link.

4. Math and computing

- Scilab
Scilab is a free and Open Source technical computing language. It’s syntax and application is very similar to MATLAB and if you already know MATLAB you wouldn’t have much difficulty switching to Scilab. It comes with a number of toolboxes and new applications can be easily added as interfacing with Fortran, Tcl/Tk, C, C++, Java, LabVIEW is possible. Downloadable binaries are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
- SciPy
SciPy and NumPy are two scientific computing and numerical analysis packages based on Python. NumPy provides the basic computational capabilities and SciPy is built on top of NumPy to provide a wider range of capabilities. For screenshots of the package see this and this pages.
- SAGE
SAGE is an Open Source mathematics application which is based on Python. Since SAGE is based on Python, the mathematical capabilities of SAGE can be combined by other general capabilities of Python to make more useful things. Interfacing with a number of non-free packages (such as Magma, Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB, and MuPAD) as well as free packages (such as Axiom, GAP, GP/PARI, Macaulay2, Maxima, Octave, and Singular) is possible. Here you can try SAGE online. SAGE can be integrated with some web browsers.
- Octave
GNU Octave is a high-level computational language which is similar to and mostly compatible with MATLAB. It is licensed under GPL license and is available for different platforms.
- Many other technical and scientific computing languages are also available. For other free and non-free alternatives see here, here and here.

5. Graphics and illustration making

- The GIMP
The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is an application for photo retouching and manipulating which is similar to non-free software Photoshop. It is available for many platforms including Linux and Windows. In Ubuntu Linux, GIMP is installed by default.
- Inkscape
Inkscape is a free and Open Source vector image editor. It is similar to non-free software Adobe Illustrator which is being widely used also by scholars to make scientific and educational illustrations. It has many advanced capabilities and is getting even better very rapidly.

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New FOSS releases- around mid October, 2007

Posted on October 16, 2007 by Dude

New versions of following FOSS projects are just released.

1. TikiWiki (ver 1.9.8.1): A multilingual Wiki/CMS/Groupware

2. Texlipse (ver 1.2.0): A Latex plugin for Eclipse Java IDE

3. GanttProject (ver 2.0.5): A project management package

4. Notepad++ (ver 4.4): A powerful editor for code development and general purposes

5. KeePass (ver 1.09): A password manager

6. RAP (ver 1.0): An Eclipse toolkit for making RIAs combining Java, OSGI and Ajax

7. OpenProj (ver. beta 6): Yet another FOSS project management software

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Open Source and Linux events in 2008

Posted on October 14, 2007 by Dude

This is meant to be a reference post. You can always find this post in the left sidebar under the title “Reference Posts”. I will keep updating this post to cover as many Open Source events as possible. An RSS feed with possibility of importing the events as ICAL and VCAL is available. But, please check the calender as it is still in its alpha state.

January
Open Source Meets Business, January 22-24, Nuremberg, Germany
Australia’s Annual Linux Conference (linux.conf.au), January 28 to February 2, Melbourne, Australia

February
Australia’s Annual Linux Conference (linux.conf.au), January 28 to February 2, Melbourne, Australia
Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE), February 8-10, Los Angeles, California, United States
Florida Linux Show 2008, February 11, Jacksonville, Florida, United States
LinuxDays 2008, February 19-20, Luxembourg
Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM 08), February 23-24, Brussels, Belgium
The 6th Linux Audio Conference 2008, Feb 28 to March 2, Cologne, Germany

March
The 6th Linux Audio Conference 2008, Feb 28 to March 2, Cologne, Germany
Eclipse Technical and User Conference (EclipseCon), March 17-20, Santa Clara, California
Open Source Business Conference (OSBC)-InfoWorld Events, March 25-26, Palace Hotel, San Francisco, California, United States
The UK’s Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) Spring Conference, March 31 to April 2, Birmingham, United Kingdom

April
The UK’s Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) Spring Conference, March 31 to April 2, Birmingham, United Kingdom
ApacheCon Europe 2008, April 7-11, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
MySQL Conference and Expo 2008, April 15-18, Santa Clara, California, United States

May
The Open Source Strategy Conference, May 20-22, Sydney, Australia
LinuxTag, May 28-31, Berlin, Germany

July
Ubuntu Live, July 20-22, Portland, Oregon, United States
O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), July 21-25, Portland, Oregon, United States

August
LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, August 4(5)-7, San Francisco, California, United States
DebConf8, August 10-16, Mar del Plata, Argentina

September
The 4th International Conference on Open Source Systems, September 7-10, Milan, Italy
The Linux Plumbers Conference, September 17-19, Portland, Oregon, United States

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Ubuntu Muslim Edition ver 7.04

Posted on October 13, 2007 by Dude

The final version of Ubuntu Muslim Edition (UbuntuME) ver 7.04 is released. This version is composed of a LiveCD/installation CD, a script to convert the original version to Islamic version, a second CD for additional softwares (OpenOffice, Arabic language packages, and Quran recitations), and a DVD with even more Islamic softwares.

Among the other features of this Ubuntu edition are parental Internet control tool (WCC), prayer time apps, Quran study tool (Zekr), Islamic calender, Islamic wall-papers and themes, special login screen.

For screen-shots of this distro see here. It can be downloaded from here. For a review of the contents check this link.

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First Linux infringement lawsuit just filed

Posted on October 12, 2007 by Dude

An infringement lawsuit was just filed against Red Hat and Novell. As far as I know, this is the first ever infringement lawsuit invloving Linux. This is happening just after Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) blamed FOSS community for violation of IP laws. Read the full story here.

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Open Source acounting package: GnuCash

Posted on October 11, 2007 by Dude

GnuCash is a free and open source package for small business and personal financial accounting. It is developed by a team of developers and is distributed under GNU GPL license. GnuCash is available for several platforms including GNU/Linux, Windows, Solaris, BSD, and Mac OS X.

GnuCash allows tracking the income, expenses, stocks, and bank accounts. Some important features of Gnucash include:
1. Double entry accounting: each transaction should equally debit one account and credit another meaning that the transaction balance is always preserved.
2. Different account types: for example income and expense accounts.
3. Multiple currencies can be used.
4. Stock/Mutual Funds
5. Small business accounting features such as payment, invoice, billing, and tax.
6. QIF and OFX import: GnuCash supports Intuit Quicken QIF files and Open Financial Exchange format.
7. HBCI support: GnuCash also supports German Home Banking Computer Information protocol
8. Reports and Graphs
9. Transaction finder
10. On-line Stock & Mutual Fund Quotes
11. Scheduled Transactions
12. Mortgage & Loan Repayment Druid
13. etc

For screen-shots of the program see here and here. The binary version is available for Windows. The source codes have to be compiled for other platforms.

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