How to write a screen presentation

If you are looking for a way to write a screen presentation you probably think about PowerPoint, or hopefully OpenOffice Impress. But such an application is t' suck to load. Actually all you need for a professional and beautiful presentation is a simple text editor.

Beamer is a LaTeX package which helps to create a PDF presentation. You will select a theme for the presentation, and type the titles, the sections and/or subsections, add some lists and the content.

To install Beamer on a Debian system type apt-get install latex-beamer.

Next try to "compile" this LaTeX example into PDF with the command pdflatex:

% example.tex
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage[utf-8]{inputenc}
\usetheme{Berlin}

\title{Wireless Networks}
\author{P. Pepin, M. Massonnet}\institute{IUT Nancy-Charlemagne}

\begin{document}

% A nice frontpage
\frame{\titlepage}

% Followed by the outline
\section[Outline]{}
\frame{\tableofcontents}

\section{Panorama of technologies}
\frame
{
        % This is an animation
        \begin{itemize}
        \item<1-> Bluetooth
        \item<2-> UMTS
        \item<3-> Wifi
        \end{itemize}
}
\frame
{
    \frametitle{Bluetooth}
    caca
}
\frame
{
    \frametitle{UMTS}
    pipi
}
\frame
{
    \frametitle{Wifi}
    cucul
}

\section{Local wireless networks}
\frame
{
        \textsc{Beamer}, is really beautiful!
}

\section{Network protocols}
\frame
{
        And it's easy.
}

\section{Security}
\frame
{
        \begin{itemize}
        \item<1-> Easy
        \item<2-> Fast
        \item<3-> Simple
        \end{itemize}
}

\end{document}

Brilliant! Isn't it? ;-)

Auto update the background list for Xfdestkop

I have written a quick script to update the list of the images for the background in Xfdesktop.

#!/bin/sh
# Update the background.list so the new downloaded wallpapers are available
# to show up in Xfdesktop.
LIST=$HOME/.config/xfce4/desktop/background.list
echo "# xfce backdrop list" > $LIST
find $HOME/images/background/ -type f >> $LIST

Note: change in the last line the folder to the backgrounds.

This script can be either putted in an .zshrc file. Or better, if you use Xfce, save the script, under the name update-desktop-list.sh for example, to your personal bin folder (in my case $HOME/.local/bin) which is correctly set in the PATH, and run xfce4-autostart-editor. You can add the command update-desktop-list.sh.

Finally you have to set up Xfdesktop to use the list (located at $LIST) of backgrounds. Go to Settings > Desktop manager, and select the list as the file. If it doesn't exist run the script a first time.

Real-transparent Terminal (yet again)

I have looked around the patch for gnome-terminal from Kristian Høgsberg and also the one for Terminal from Benny, and I managed to do the same for Terminal again since the vte libs have been modified, and support for real-transparency has been added. It was really simple, just init the rgba colormap, and call vte_terminal_set_opacity :) It requires version 0.13.3 or higher of vte.

Now someone could come with a good solution to integrate this nicely in Terminal. I think about a hidden option in ~/.config/Terminal/terminalrc, or even a slider.

Here is a first patch. It sets a hard-coded color for the alpha channel (0xDDDD).

Edit: And here comes a second patch which adds a hidden option for the opacity (ColorOpacity). It has to be in decimal, where 0xCCCC is 52428. Don't apply it over the first patch.

Edit 2: Benny commited changes to the trunk with support for real transparency, and a check for the version of libvte.

File-center

I have finally rewritten my File-center project. It is a simple interface to download and upload files. Now I use Smarty for this project and the default template is really nice. The scripts for download and upload are simple too, and you never need to get to another interface. You just upload a file, and next it appears in the current working directory. If you want to download a file, the page will be reloaded and the download will start within 3 seconds.

It is on Freshmeat.net/projects/filecenter/ but the webpage of the project is hosted on my french homepage.

White & Nerdy

"Weird Al" Yankovic's music video from his new album "Straight Outta Lynwood" (in stores Sept. 26) It is "yet another" great video from Yankovic :)