published by whitemice on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 13:21
In a few recent conversations I have become aware of an unawareness - an unawareness of the awesome that is gedit's best feature: External Tools. External Tools allow you to effortlessly link the power of the shell, Python, or whatever into an otherwise already excellent text editor yielding maximum awesome. External Tools, unlike some similar features in many IDEs is drop-dead simple to use - you do not need to go somewhere and edit files, etc...
published by whitemice on Thu, 07/25/2019 - 11:29
Uh oh, Active Directory password is going to expire!
Ugh, do I need to log into a Windows workstation to change by password?
Nope, it is as easy as:
published by whitemice on Fri, 02/03/2017 - 13:29
GNOME3, aka GNOME Shell, provides a comprehensive set of hot-keys for capturing images from your screen as well as recording your desktop session. These tools are priceless for producing documentation and reporting bugs; recording your interaction with an application is much easier than describing it.
published by whitemice on Tue, 05/19/2015 - 07:12
Which application manages this type of file? How can I, by default, open files of type X with application Y? These questions float around in GNOME forums and mailing lists on a regular basis.
The answer is: gvfs-mime .
published by whitemice on Sun, 01/19/2014 - 00:00
On the screen you have a pointer - it points at thing! It is used to point at, select [highlight], drag, and numerous other things. The mouse pointer has been there and looked more-or-less the same for decades now; my pointer in GNOME Shell looks and works almost identically to the pointer I had on my GEOS desktop (1986). It has stayed the same because it works.
published by whitemice on Fri, 11/01/2013 - 00:00
A little recognized feature in GNOME is the that e-mail messages can be drag-n-dropped from GNOME's Evolution to other applications. When a message from Evolution is dropped into Nautilus the message will be saved to the corresponding folder as an mbox file. This is useful, but probably not optimal, for a desktop environment.
To optimize this behavior the gsettings command can be used to change the default format as a PDF.
published by whitemice on Sun, 11/11/2012 - 00:00
Numerous applications in GNOME exhibit magically wonderful behavior, like they remember everything and know what you want. One example of such an application is the excellent PDF reader [Evince](http://projects.gnome.org/evince/; every time I open a PDF it opens to the same page as the last time I looked at that document.
published by whitemice on Mon, 12/12/2011 - 07:00
You're application almost always needs to know if there is a working network connection. This is typically handled by placing the connection attempt in a try...catch block. That works, but can be slow, and it means the UI can't really adapt to the level of current connectivity. A much better solution is to query the NetworkManager [used by every mainstream distribution] via the System D-Bus for the current connectivity.
