Editing menus on LXDE

The menus are created from the foo.desktop file for each application.

To find them, you can do a couple of things.

First, using Synaptic package manager, select the package, then click on the “Properites” icon in the toolbar. Use the tab “Installed Files”.

Second, you can use this command line, where the “package-name” needs to be the name of your package. Tab completion works for Bash shell on the name of the package, if you know how it starts.

dpkg -L package-name | grep desktop

I found this out because I needed to change the “EXEC” string in “d2x-rebirth-demo” (the “Descent 2″ rewrite) to:

/usr/local/games/d2x-rebirth/d2x-rebirth -hogdir /usr/local/games/d2x-rebirth/data

Proposed Stack Eschange site for DITA

Anders Svensson has created a proposal for a DITA Stack Exhange Site.
It’s at http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/49912

DITA is an OASIS standard for XML documentation.

User Group Connect has a new URL

“User Group Connect 2013″ has a new URL. You can find us at ugconnect.ca

If you don’t know about UGC, it is an opportunity for User Group’s in Ottawa to get together and for the Ottawa technology community to get together to meet some of the 30 or so User Groups in Ottawa.

On Saturday February 9, from 10am to 4pm, join us in the lounge at Shopify, 126 York St. The entrance is at the back of the building, from the parking lot.

Accessibility problems – Unfortunately, this location is not wheelchair accessible. It has stairs, and the washroom is up a flight of stairs.

Also, you can still reach the User Group Connect site at the old URL.

New Java 1.7 vulnerability

I found this in my email:

http://www.h-online.com/developer/news/item/Dangerous-vulnerability-in-latest-Java-version-1781156.html

I will disable Java plugin in all browsers on my machines at work on Monday.

Cert.org is taking this seriously: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/625617

This could be used against Linux, Mac or Android, not just Windows, if anyone cared to try. They would not have access to root without further exploits, although popping up a window that looks like your Updater, or Microsoft’s, would catch some inexperienced Linux users.

Paula duHamel Yellow Horn and her Snow Duck wing

Dr. duHamel Yellow Horn laid this wing on the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Nov. 11, 2012, Remembrance Day Ceremony.
She laid it to honour her father and two uncles and their participation in the Canadian war effort during the Second World War.
Paula’s father was posted to the factory that made the Lancaster bombers.
Her uncles flew Lancaster bombers over Europe.

World Usability Day 2012 in Ottawa

(From the CAPCHI newsletter)

CapCHI is proud to present two presentations on Tuesday November 6th, in celebration of World Usability Day 2012 (officially on Thursday November 8th).

Date: Tuesday November 6th, 2012

Time: doors open at 6:00 pm; talk begins at 6:30 pm

Place: TheCodeFactory, 246 Queen St., Ottawa, ON, Canada

1. “Mixed-media Computer Human Interfaces“, presented by Tim Moore, PhD CHFP, Ergosum Ltd.

2. “The Gist of NIST“, presented by Lorraine Chapman, Director of UX Research, Macadamian

Here is the CAPCHI web site:

-  http://www.capchi.org

Template Files in DITA Open Toolkit may not be needed

I learned in Eliot Kimber’s “DITA for Practitioners”, after some re-reading, how the integrator.xml ant script works. It looks for template files and creates the corresponding file from it. When the integrator script creates the corresponding xml file from the template, it inserts “stuff” (different for Ant files or SXL files) from all the places that add to that extension point.

As far as I can tell, and this is not explicit in any documentation I have seen, including Kimber’s book, you only need to create a template file in your new plugin when you have defined a toolkit extension point in it. For plugins that you are sharing, you probably want to add extension points to your plugin. For plugins only used in your own DITA deployment, you probably don’t need to do that.