Shaunak's Universe

Wordpress comes with a intuitive What You See is What You Get [WYSIWYG] input area for creating posts. This makes it really easy for users to format their posts, with little or no knowledge of HTML. Current versions of Drupal unfortunately lack such an arrangement. However, with the wealth of modules available, a responsive rich text editor is not hard to implement in Drupal.

The Wysiwyg module is best suited for the task. It allows a whole range of front-ends, namely : FCKeditor, jWYSIWYG, markItUp, NicEdit, openWYSIWYG, TinyMCE, WYMeditor, and the YUI editor. I like TinyMCE and FCKeditor from among among these.

The Editor interface:

To get started, upload the module to Drupal's Modules folder and enable the module from the administration interface. To use the module, you will need to obtain the front-end libraries and upload them to your server.

For example consider the TinyMCE library. The TinyMCE download library is available at: http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/download.php Upload it to the sites/all/libraries/ folder. You may need to create this folder if it does not exist. Once it is uploaded Wysiwyg should automatically detect it. You can use the drop down menus in the administration section to set the front-end for a particular input type.

Its important to note here that, if the Wysiwyg is assigned to the “Filtered HTML” input type, then it will not work correctly. Images, headings (the <h1>, <h2> tags) and tables will not appear in the final published post, although they are seen in the editor and preview. This is because, the “Filtered HTML” type is designed to strip out all tags that are not included in its safe list. By default its safe list includes:
<a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>

You can modify this list of allowed tags by going to the Administration>”Input Formats” section. Click on “configure” and then on “Configure” again. Here in the alowed HTML tags sections you can add other tags. For all practical purposes, you might want to enable these tags:
<p> <a> <em> <strong> <b> <i> <u> <strike> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td> <th> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <blockquote> <hr> <span> <br> <font> <sup> <sub> <div>
Once these tags have been allowed, Wysiwyg should function correctly.
Graphically, the configuration steps are:

You will notice from the screen-shots, that I have created a “Part HTML” input type. The site which I have used to illustrated the example, is a public site with general users uploading the content. From the point of view of security and not breaking the layout, I have disabled header, horizontal rule, table, font, and div tags, in addition to the ones listed above. However the moderators have been allowed the option of using these restricted tags through the “filtered HTML” input. Such a set-up can be implemented through user-roles and permissions.

There are some alternative rich-text modules available for Drupal as well. But the Wysiwyg module seems to be the best maintained among them.

Here is a screen-shot of the TinyMCE editor in action:

And yes, TinyMCE does come with Emoticons!

After months of exciting users with its new astounding new features via an alpha, beta and RC, the final build of Opera 10, the most awaited browser on earth, has finally been released. Opera 10 makes leaps and bounds in browser innovation. It add new and unheard of features and improves upon some old ones.

Opera 10 was meant to release with two major innovations. One is the "Turbo" feature for slow speed Internet connections. It works by connecting to a proxy server managed by Opera Software, and transferring cached and compressed versions of the requested web page to the user's terminal. The system is smoothly integrated into the browser and switches over automatically if Opera detects you are on a slow or weak connection.
Here is a humorous video from Opera, explaining the compressing technology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYEUFwJXVvw

The other feature is "Unite", which was meant to allow user to user file-sharing. It did not make it to Opera 10 yet, it is still under development. Apart from the major innovations, the UI has been totally overhauled. The new UI is much smoother and aesthetic. Many more subtle changes have been made to the browser. All of which work to enhance your browsing experience.

Opera 10 is also one of the two major browsers, as of now, to pass the Acid 3 test. Safari being the other.

The improvements to the development tool, Dragonfly was a tad bit disappointing though. However some improvement has been made. Web-developers however might want to hold onto Firebug for a little bit longer.

Opera Linux users will appreciate the much smoother Qt UI. The browser look and acts much more native to the system. Here is a screen-shot of Opera 10 with the Bookmarks side-tab open on my Fedora Desktop:

In other news, the logo has changed as well!

Opera 10 brings new and innovative features, looks and feel and a whole new level of browsing experience to the table. In my books, its the best browser out there. How did you like the new Opera?

Links:

• Opera Homepage: http://www.opera.com/
• Community Launch: http://bit.ly/2OylE7
• What's Missing: http://bit.ly/BiDGa

Some high octane drama and some determined and disciplined racing saw Force India clinch a podium place at Spa today. Giancarlo Fisichella finished the Belgian Grand Prix in a amazing second position.

Fisichella started strongly, having capitalizing on a mistake by Raikkonen and succeeded in building up a significant lead. Unfortunately a huge incident involving contact between multiple cars caused the opening laps to be raced under a safety car. This closed the gap between Fisichella and he was robbed of the race lead by the KERS on the Ferrari. The six second, 61 kW boost provided by system the was enough for Kimi Raikkonen to muscle the Ferrari into P1. Fisichella put up a brave fight, racing wheel to wheel for the rest of the race. Unfortunately, he was unable to find a way past Kimi. To his credit though, he breathed down Ferrari's neck all the way and did not allow them to pull away and open a gap.

The fairness in racing non-KERS enabled cars against KERS fitter cars is questionable. The huge boost provided by it is in no way offset by the added weight of the system. But unfortunately, like a lot of other things in Formula One, we just have to live with it. The playing field should be level next year though, with KERS becoming mandatory on all cars for the 2010 Formula One season.

It was really humorous to see, the team with arguably the lowest budget in formula one, go wheel to wheel with the team with arguably the highest budget. Racing for their best result yet, force India must have been under tremendous pressure. However they held their nerve and executed clean text-book pit-stops.

Adding to the high drama along the way, Renault had yet another tire failure, courtesy an early collision with Adrian Sutil. (Can't keep Force India out of the headlines today!) Ruberns Barichello provided a good illustration of car aerodynamics with thick smoke trailing out of his engine and tracing a slipstream for the last three laps. He just about made it home with his engine catching fire in the out-lap.

After 44 intense laps in one of the greatest formula one circuits, the Circuit De Spa-Francorchamps, Kimi Raikkonen classified first, closely followed by Force India's Giancarlo Fisichella and Sebastian Vettel. This is Force India's first ever podium finish. With this finish, they have finally opened their points tally, after having come so agonizingly close at Monaco last year. Teammate Sutil finished 11th.

I am delighted with this result, for it announces the arrival of Indian Motor-sport, at-least in part on the world stage. Only if it were not for the unfair KERS advantage, we could have tentatively seen a Force India victory.

Links:

• Classification: http://bit.ly/3RDlaR
• Force India Announcement: http://bit.ly/10QG1p

At the Circuit De Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium. Giancarlo Fisichella pulled off something that no one believed was possible. In the ultimate “triumph of the underdog” story, he raced Force India's car, the VJM02/04 onto the qualifying pole and into the history books. Giencarlo blazed the Spa track in precisely 1:46.114 seconds grabbing the top slot on the starting grid. For a team that is yet to secure a point in Formula One, this is an achievement of incredible magnitude.

I was so thrilled and excited at this, that I sent about a gazillion text messages, tweets and Face-book updates out. A feeling of jubilation, which I am sure all my fellow Force India fans can identify with. If all goes well, Fisichella could secure Force India her maiden victory tomorrow. The race starts in about 19 hours from now.

“Hope is the dream of a soul awake.”


Links:

• Force India announcement: http://bit.ly/GGv5U
• The Spa Circuit: http://bit.ly/Iuz7t

Over the course of your life on Linux (or Openoffice), you will come to a point where you will face a daunting task. You will one day find the inadvertent need to send some of you work, your hard-typed work, which you so happily created using you open-source tools, and which you so lovingly adorned with open-source fonts, over to a someone who more than contended to pay Mr. Gates hundreds of dollars every couple of years. In short, you will one day need to send an OpenOffice Writer document, laced with open-source fonts over to someone who uses Microsoft Office and has never even heard of Bitstream Charter or DejaVu Sans.

Windows users note: OpenOffice is also available as a windows download. The steps described here are identical for the windows operating system as well. "PDF export" is enabled by default in the windows package.

The easiest way to do this would be to export the document as a PDF. You will find the option under the menu File > Export to PDF. If you cant find this option under your install of OpenOffice, then you need to install the additional PDF export plug-in. Under Fedora the command is:
su -c 'yum install openoffice.org-extendedPDF'
Graphically, this package:

But the problem of the fonts still remains. By default, during the export the fonts will not be embedded into the PDF and the best possible substitutions will be made when the PDF is opened on the remote machine. To embed the fonts and ensure that the documents looks the same on all platforms you need to select the PDF/A1 option in the export dialogue.

This one (Highlighted with a Blue Box):

Note: This step is identical on Windows.

To check if the embedding has worked, you can use the pdffonts command. This script checks the PDF files and prints embedded font information. The usage for the script is:
pdffonts Filename.pdf
The script accepts parameters to limit the page range and enter passwords. Use the -? argument the see the usages.

The script in action, checking a PDF file 'report.pdf':

emb stands for 'embedded' and sub stands for substitutable.