I am pleased to announce beta 4 of Quasar Media Player.
This new version introduces some new features and big improvements in terms of performance and memory-usage.
The previously separate last.fm Audioscrobbler QScrobbler has been integrated into Quasar as add-on.
This release also marks the introduction of the Cover Art Downloader which uses the new open-source katastrophos.net Cover Art search engine to download cover art images for the new Cover Art Flow album browser.

Binaries for the previous platforms (Sharp Qtopia and pdaXrom) along with new binaries for Windows and OS X (universal) are available on the project’s homepage.

It’s been some time since the last update. In my previous post I mentioned I was in the process of setting up a nightly build system. This system has been running silently since May.
I guess it is finally time for me to officially announce the nightly builds of Quasar Media Player:

http://www.katastrophos.net/downloads/quasar/nightly/

Along with the most current sourcecode tarball, binaries are available for 4 platforms:
Windows (win32), OS X (universal binary), Sharp Qtopia and pdaXrom Linux (both for Zaurus PDA)
The Windows version comes in two styles: a generic setup (EXE) and a self-contained portable version (7z archive)

Enjoy and please leave a comment.

First step is to install Wine either as super user or by using sudo:

sudo apt-get install wine

As normal user fire up your X server and your favourite terminal application and get the latest Inno Setup QuickStart pack:

mkdir /tmp/innosetup
cd /tmp/innosetup
wget http://files.jrsoftware.org/ispack/ispack-5.2.3.exe
wine ./ispack-5.2.3.exe

This will start the installer in Wine. Note, for the installation you will need a running X11 server since the installer obviously is graphical. If you have not set up Wine before, the default location C:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5 will install to ~/.wine/drive_c/Programme/Inno Setup 5.

Luckily the Inno Setup compiler offers a command line interface, ISCC.exe, which will run in Wine without the necessity of having a X server running. So it is ideally suited for automated runs.

Here is a simple wrapper shell script called iscc:

#!/bin/sh
unset DISPLAY
scriptname=$1
[ -f "$scriptname" ] && scriptname=$(winepath -w "$scriptname")
wine "C:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5\ISCC.exe" "$scriptname" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" "$6" "$7" "$8" "$9"

I installed this script in my local bin directory (~/bin) and added it to the PATH environment variable.
This will allow running the Inno Setup compiler from anywhere and it also makes it very easy to integrate into a build script. You can even feed a script via stdin, e.g. something like:

iscc - < ./myscript.iss

So, I was wondering the other day how to implement a functionality similar to Firefox’s “Open Containing Folder” or OS X’s “Reveal In Finder”.
It turned out to be extremely simple. Here is the Pascal/Delphi-Code:

uses
  ShellAPI;

function RevealInExplorer(const Filename: string; ShowExplorerWithFoldersBar: Boolean = True): Boolean;
var
  Params: string;
begin
  if FileExists(Filename) or DirectoryExists(Filename) then
  begin
    Params := Format('/select,"%s"', [Filename]);

    if ShowExplorerWithFoldersBar then
      Params := '/e,' + Params;

    ShellExecute(0, 'open', 'explorer.exe', PChar(Params), nil, SW_SHOWNORMAL);

    Result := True;
  end
  else
    Result := False;
end;

I just installed Windows 7 Business Build 7000 on my U810. It is quite nice actually and seems to run faster than Vista.

I installed the Vista drivers from the driver CD. The Setup.exe on the driver CD will complain that the operating system is unsupported. To circumvent this problem, just start the setup in Vista compatibility mode:
Right-click on “Setup.exe”, “Properties” -> “Compatibility” -> “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” “Windows Vista”.

Install these items:

Drivers
04. Button Driver
05. Camera Driver
07. Fingerprint sensor (driver)
08. FUJ02B1 Device Driver (HotKey Driver)
09. FUJ02E3 Device Driver (System Extension Driver)
11. Pen Driver
12. Pointer device driver

Utilities/Applications
03. Button Utilities
07. Fujitsu System Extension Utilities

I could not get the Auto-Rotation feature to work. Also, you’ll probably have to calibrate the touch screen.
I also disabled the power management feature of the FCL USB Pen Tablet in Device Manager (Right-click on “Human Interface Devices/FCL USB Pen Tablet”, “Properties” -> “Power Management” -> Disable “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”). This improves the response of the touch-screen/tablet.

Oh, and BTW, Windows 7 “only” uses 7.5 GB of disk space, whereas Vista uses 15 GB I think.

void QProcess::writeToStdin( const QString& buf )
{
    QByteArray tmp = buf.local8Bit();
    tmp.resize( tmp.size() - 1 ); // drop the implicit \0
    writeToStdin( tmp );
}

should be:

void QProcess::writeToStdin( const QString& buf )
{
    QByteArray tmp = buf.local8Bit();
    tmp.resize( buf.length() );
    writeToStdin( tmp );
}

Verision 3.3.7-7 includes the latter method, same as the latest Qt 4.3 sources. So, it’s actually a regression in 3.3.x-8. If you require the latest Qt 3 / Q…/Free for your open source application and need to write to some other processes’ stdin, you can just use a wrapper workaround that uses the latter method and directly uses writeToStdin( const QByteArray& buf ) instead of the QString variant.

NOTE: You can skip over this rather technical part, if you’re not interested in the details. You’ll find the workaround below.

This hex value is actually a combination of defined bit flags. After some tinkering I found that the hex value 0×80 will enable font smoothing for the connection.
The file constants.h of the rdesktop sources contains these flags:

#define RDP5_DISABLE_NOTHING	0x00
#define RDP5_NO_WALLPAPER	0x01
#define RDP5_NO_FULLWINDOWDRAG	0x02
#define RDP5_NO_MENUANIMATIONS	0x04
#define RDP5_NO_THEMING		0x08
#define RDP5_NO_CURSOR_SHADOW	0x20
#define RDP5_NO_CURSORSETTINGS	0x40	/* disables cursor blinking */

So, naturally an additional flag constant can be defined like this:

#define RDP5_ENABLE_FONT_SMOOTHING 0x80

The file rdesktop.c would have to be extended preferably with an additional argument that controls the font smoothing.
If you want to use font smoothing with rdesktop now you have to combine the flags (bitwise OR, addition will do too) and specify the result via the -x switch.

Here is the workaround for the three defaults mentioned above:

rdesktop -x 0x8F mywinserver   # equals the modem default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x81 mywinserver   # equals the broadband default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x80 mywinserver   # equals the LAN default + font smoothing

http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/duplicity/duplicity-0.4.2.tar.gz

To install it you’ll need the same prerequisites as for rdiff-backup, most notably librsync. Please refer to these instructions on how to install it.
Additionally you should install the Utils/gnupg package in order to get the encryption working.
Here is how to compile and install duplicity:

First off, you need to grab the current version:

# wget http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/duplicity/duplicity-0.4.2.tar.gz

Now, unpack the archive:

# tar xzf duplicity-0.4.2.tar.gz
# cd duplicity-0.4.2

Next up: downloading and applying my patch bundle:

# wget http://www.katastrophos.net/downloads/duplicity-0.4.2_katastrophos.net.patch
# patch -p1 < duplicity-0.4.2_katastrophos.net.patch

Here is the final step:

# python setup.py install --prefix=/usr/local

Fin. :)

For Cygwin-Users:
I’ve made my build directory available, in case you are running into problems compiling librsync et al.:
http://www.katastrophos.net/downloads/duplicity-0.4.2_build.tar.gz
Just copy the extracted build directory to your duplicity-0.4.2 source tree and enter

# python setup.py install --prefix=/usr/local

The patch bundle above includes the following patches:
Andre Beckedorf:
- improved Cygwin/Win32 support
- FTP backend’s NLST and QUIT behavior fixed, visible with default OS X FTP server
Stefan Schimanski:
- FTP timeout patch (official Debian patch)

Tested and working on Cygwin and Darwin (OS X 10.4.5 PPC/Intel).

Here is a temporary workaround for the problem:
You’ll have to change the authentification settings on your XP/2k box and here is how to do that:

Start -> Run “secpol.msc”
In the tree open and click Security Settings -> Local Policy -> Security Options
Scroll the left pane down to ‘Network Security: LAN manager authentication level’
Change this to ‘Send NTLMv2 response only’

It works for me. Please let me know, if it works for you too…

Update: Apple has released OS X update 10.4.6 which resolves this problem.

Having said that, I’ve been a long time user of Y’z Dock, an abandoned implementation of an OS X-like Dock for Windows. Of all the Windows Dock’s out there it came closest in terms of imitating the original behaviour. I guess that’s also the reason why Apple pulled it via DMCA/C’n'D. ;)
Anyway, since Y’z Dock is no longer maintained and there are still some bugs in that software, I was looking for alternatives. Here is what I found: MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher and RocketDock. There is also AquaDock, but that’s just a repack of Y’z Dock.

RK Launcher has some potential to it, but also way too many bugs. I wasn’t able to access the website, so perhaps the program is pulled, too.

I’ve tried both MobyDock and ObjectDock several times in the past and didn’t like them at that time. This hasn’t changed and I won’t go into detail as to why. It’s really way too subjetive and I don’t want to start a flame war. ;)

So, finally, I’ve settled with RocketDock. It’s faaast and provides instant access to my program shortcuts even under heavy load. That’s what I missed in Y’z Dock. When Y’z Dock was autohidden, it also reduced the process working set size via a nice trick. This is a good thing in low memory conditions since this tells the virtual memory manager it can swap out most parts of the app. However, it can also impose serious delays in feedback. And instant feedback is what I was looking for.
RocketDock offers this, but at the price of higher memory utilization – ~10 MB in my case. I think this is still acceptable for the performance and my Subjective Productivity Boost TM, therefore.
So, now what was left to do was to migrate the dock items from Y’z Dock to RocketDock. Sadly, there is no way to import the itemlist.ini into RocketDock – at least I didn’t see it. ;)

So, being lazy and not wanting to recreate each and every icon manually on several boxes (repitition is harmful TM), I had to come up with a better solution.

And here it is: YzDock2RocketDock (binary and Delphi sourcecode included)

Simply extract the binary to a new folder and copy your itemlist.ini file from your Y’z Dock program directory into that same folder. Make sure to quit RocketDock and backup the registry key \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RocketDock-v0.9.4 before.
Now, running the binary should import the contents of itemlist.ini into the registry. It will not overwrite any existing items. Instead it does append the imported ones to the existing items.
Finally, make sure to copy all icons over to your RocketDock program directory. Put them into the subdirectory “Icons”. That’s it. Enjoy! :)