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Bosanska QWERTY tastatura u Windowsu

October 7th, 2010 eddsn 3 comments

Download
Za one koji žele da preskoče moju čitavu pricu i da direktno pređu na instalaciju, mogu nastaviti sa slijedećim linkom:

Download B_QWERTY tastature v1.0 (347kB)

MD5 hash: 5f84c104ba911dfdded60442b6eb4c10

U slučaju da negdje zapne kod instalacije, ispod se može naći čitavo upustvo za instalaciju. Poznati problemi i moguća riješenja se mogu naći na kraju članka.

Uvod
Konačno sam našao vremena i na kraju i uspio da riješim problem sa afrikatima u Windowsu. Problem je dakle bio da sam ubacivanje afrikata morao da radim putem unikod brojeva sa alt kombinacijom preko num lock-a ^[1]. Jedna druga mogućnost je bila da se stavi Bosanska tastatura (BS) koju Windows standardno nudi. Međutim ta tastatura nije QWERTY rasporeda kao što je na fizičkoj tastaturi koju ja lično koristim, nego QWERTZ koja u mom slučaju nije praktična zbog razloga da mi se sve tipke ‘poremete’ ^[2].

Bosanska QWERTY tastatura
Problem je riješen time da sam napravio svoju tastaturu u Windowsu. Nije sad neki genijalni pronalazak, ali ipak mi je dosta olakšao rad sa afrikatima na tastaturi.

Tastatura je ustvari US International tastatura sa dotatim afrikatima (i još par malih izmjena da bi se napravilo mjesta za afrikate). Tastatura je uglavnom definisana na slijedeći način (klikni na sliku za uveličan format):

B_QWERTY standardne tipke

B_QWERTY "AltGr" tipke (AltGr = CTRL+ALT)

B_QWERTY "AltGr + Shift" tipke (AltGr+Shift = CTRL+ALT+Shift)

Znači kombinacije su slijedeće (kombinacija ALT+CTRL je ustvari ista kao dugme AltGr koje se inače može naći na skoro svakoj sadašnjoj tastaturi):

ALT+CTRL+C = ć
ALT+CTRL+X = č
ALT+CTRL+Z = ž
ALT+CTRL+D = đ
ALT+CTRL+S = š
ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+C =Ć
ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+X = Č
ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+Z = Ž
ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+D = Ð
ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+S = Š

Meni lično ovo čini rad dosta lakše, pošto su mi sve kombinacije od prilike na jednom mjestu.

Instalacija
Ovdje ću opširno objasniti kako se instalira program, tako da nebi došlo do neke zabune. Krenimo od početka.

Kad skineš fajl, pokreni ga.
Pričekaj barem jedno desetak sekundi dok se sve instalira (može potrajati i malo duže, zavisno od sistema što koristite). Zatim će se pokazati prozorčic da je instalacija tastature završena.
Tastatura je sada instalirana.

Jedino je još potrebno da se aktivira EN tastatura umjesto tastature koju ste već bili koristili. U mom slučaju je to bila NL tastatura. Ovo se može naći desno dole u ćošku.

Aktivirati tastaturu

Tastatura koju ste već bili koristili će ostati kao primarna. To znači da će biti potrebno za svaku aplikaciju posebno odabrati EN kao standardnu tastaturu. Da bi se ovo izbjeglo mora se novo instalirana tastatura staviti kao primarna. To se može uraditi klikom desnim mišem na skraćenicu tastature u desnom doljnem cošku izabirajući postavke (Settings). Zatim se selektira novo instalirana tastatura kao standardna kao što je prikazano na slici ovdje ispod.

Promjeniti primarnu tastaturu - prvi korak.

Promjeniti standardnu tastaturu - drugi korak.

Kad potvrdite prozor sa OK, nova tastatura će biti standardno aktivna i moći ćete da konačno počnete koristi naše sjajne afrikate. Ako se ipak desi da ubacivanje afrikata sa gore navedenim kombinacijama neradi, onda provjeri te u ćošku da je tastatura na EN i budite sigurni da je instalirana verzija. U zadnjem slučaju možete isto probati na novo startanje sistema.

Samo još da dodam da je moguće da imate već EN tastaturu instaliranu. U tom slučaju će se vjerovatno pokazati tastaturica, na kojoj iste korake možete pratiti kao što sam gore već naveo.

EN tastatura

Brisanje tastature
Tastaturu možete jednostavno izbrisati ako pokrenete istu instalaciju ponovo. Zatim će vas installer pitati dali želite da izbrišete tastaturu.

Brisanje tastature

Klikom na Finish će se tastatura kompletno izbrisati sa vašeg sistema. Brisanje tastature je naravno isto moguce preko Control Panel-a u Windowsu.

Poznati problemi
Korištenje tastature u raznim programima može dovesti do problema gdje se određeni afrikati nemogu ubaciti. To se dešava u većina slučajeva zbog razloga da ti sami programi mogu biti naštelovani da koriste iste kombinacije tipki kao što je navedeno i na tastaturi.

Ispod ću držati listu programa koji su poznati da stvaraju ove navedene probleme, i moguća riješenja da se afrikati ipak potpuno mogu koristiti.

1. Microsoft Office Word 2007

Word ima svoje određene kombinacije tipki koje smetaju našim afrikatima kao što su definisane. Potrebno je da izbrišete ili da barem promjenite ove kombinacije. To se može uraditi slijedećim putem, kao što je pokazano na slikama (program kod mene lično je na Engleskom, ali na drugim jezicima će te se uz pomoć ovih slika sigurno isto vrlo lahko snaći) :

Dakle ovdje u ovoj zadnjoj slici se vidi da je naše definisavno slovo š zauzeto za drugu komandu pod imenom InsertEndNoteNow. Ovo se može selektirati i izbrisati, i ako vam je potrebno, novu komandu unijeti. Da izbjegnem još više slika, skupit ću sve ove akcije i njihove komande u jednoj listi.

Kod All Commands:

Formatting Pane (Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S)
Doc Split (Alt+Ctrl+S)
GoBack (Alt+Ctrl+Z)
InsertEndNoteNow (Alt+Ctrl+D)

Kod Common Symbols:

Ako još uvjek imate problema da nađete ove akcije, onda možete sami ubaciti komandu (naprimjer CTRL+ALT+C) u polju Press new shortcut key kao što je označeno u slici ispod. Sa ovom metodom će te naći sve definisane kombinacije koje su već zauzete, i stim ih i izbrisati/izmjeniti.

unassigned znači da komanda nije definisana uz neku akciju u wordu i znači da se afrikat č (ALT+CTRL+C) bez problema može ubaciti.

2. Cataclyst Control Center

Cataclyst Control Center je pogram koji se upotrebljava za grafičke ATI karte. Bez obzira sad na to, program ima, kao i gore navedeni Word, svoje unaprijed definisane kombinacije tipki kao što je CTRL+ALT+C. Pošto je program u pozadini aktivan, ovo će smetati tokom upotrebe afrikata u svim programima i zato je vrlo potrebno da se tzv. Hotkeys promjene (potrebno je CCC ugasiti ili restartovati da bi ovaj efekat postao aktivan).

^[1] Za one koji nemogu da prate ovo zadnje, uradite slijedeće: drži te ALT dok ukucajete brojeve 0154 i zatim pustite ALT. Ako ste uradili sve kako treba onda bi vam se trebalo pokazati slovo š. Ovo važi samo za tastature koje imaju NUM LOCK sa strane. Na laptopima naprimjer je moguće potrebno da se prvo aktivira num lock. ↩
^[2] QWERTZ tastature se koriste na primjer u Njemačkoj i Belgiji, dok su QWERTY tastature na primjer u Americi, Engleskoj i Holandiji korištene. ↩

Categories: Bosnian, Tools, Windows Tags:

Calling external programs from Python

October 3rd, 2010 eddsn No comments

The story
I’m currently automating a certain process with a Python script that needs to call external programs with some specific parameters. An additional problem is with this letter s in the word parameters, for my external call requires an execution with more than one argument.

I tried the os.system call but unfortunately it didn’t work on my system because the function was apparently not present. This conclusion followed after I got the error “ImportError: No module named system”. Instead of resolving this error, I decided to dig into google for some alternatives. And I did succeed, when I met the lovely miss subproccess.

Let subprocess do all the calls
To keep it short and skip the syntax explanation, learn from the following example:

import subprocess
subprocess.call(‘expand catalog-web.cab -F:* -r’, shell=True)

As you can see, the magic only happens when you pass the string (your complete command) together with the shell=True option.

Happy Python calling.

Categories: Fixes, Programming, Python Tags:

Extract Microsoft CAB Files in Windows

October 3rd, 2010 eddsn No comments

In short
To extract Microsoft CAB files, you can use the expand command in command line as follows:

expand cabfile -F:* path

which will extract all the files from the cabfile in the give path. For example

expand en-catalog-web.cab -F:* c:\expanded

Single files
I experienced problems with extracting a cab file where within a single xml file was stored. I found out that renaming the files after extraction can solve the problem. This is done by doing the previous example with an -r option:

expand en-catalog-web.cab -F:* c:\expanded -r

Extracting all the files to the current working directory can be done as follows:

expand cabfile -F:* -r

Categories: Fixes, Tutorials Tags:

Number converter

September 26th, 2010 eddsn No comments

Once in a while a man wants to convert a hexadecimal number to a decimal one, or even maybe a binary number to a decimal one. Google always helps if you ask “hex 2 bin”, but instead I decided to write an online application of my own.

The converter is implemented as very simple web page and can be found here. On the web page, on the fly conversions are possible between a decimal, hexadecimal and a binary number. So all conversions dec2hex, dec2bin, hex2dec, hex2bin, bin2dec and bin2hex are included in this basic form. See the complete junk of html and javascript code below.

<html>
<script type="text/javascript">
function d2h(d) { return d.toString(16); };
function h2d(h) { return parseInt(h,16); };
function d2b(d) { return d.toString(2); };
function b2d(b) { return parseInt(b,2); };

function idec(d) {
    // pre: d is int
    document.cform.hex.value = d2h(parseInt(d));
    document.cform.bin.value = d2b(parseInt(d));
};

function ihex(h) {
// pre: h is string
var d = h2d(h);
document.cform.dec.value = d;
document.cform.bin.value = d2b(d);
};

function ibin(b) {
    // pre: b is string
    var d = b2d(b);
    document.cform.dec.value = d;
    document.cform.hex.value = d2h(d);
};

</script>
<body>
<h1>Number converter</h1>
<p>Insert a decimal, hexadecimal or a binary number to convert it.</p>
<form name="cform">
Decimal: <input name="dec" onkeyup="idec(this.value)" />
Hexadecimal: <input name="hex" onkeyup="ihex(this.value)" />
Binary: <input name="bin" onkeyup="ibin(this.value)" />
</form>

</body>
</html>

Categories: HTML, JavaScript, Programming, Tools Tags:

Google Instant not working in Firefox

September 10th, 2010 eddsn No comments

Identifying the problem
Since a day or two I noticed that the auto-complete search field on Google was not working in Firefox (version 3.6.9 at least). Another problem that I was facing was that the Settings link was not working. Change background image was also missing (not that I ever use it).

My first intuition was that some plugin was updated and was causing the error. After disabling all the plugins and restarting firefox, the problem was still present. Some digging in the Error console in Firefox brought up the following error, which of course is causing all the unhappiness:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Security error" code: "1000" nsresult: "0x805303e8 (NS_ERROR_DOM_SECURITY_ERR)" location: "http://www.google.com/extern_js/f/CgJlbiswRTgBLCswWjgALCswDjgALCswFzgALCswJzgELCswPDgALCswUTgALCswWTgOLCswCjh_QC8sKzAWOAAsKzAZOCAsKzAhOD9AASwrMCU4z4gBLCswKjgLLCswKzgRLCswNTgELCswQDgTLCswQTgFLCswTjgGLCswVDgBLCswYzgALCswHThXLCswXDgXLCswGDgALCswJjgOLIACGZACGw/SdYmPxFHWrc.js Line: 114"]

So the problem is really with this Google script that you cannot do much about, but there is a workaround however that I will describe below.

Disabling DOM storage workaround
I came across a few pages [1][2] where the same problem is discussed and where a workaround is proposed. The solution is that you have to disable DOM storage in the configuration options in Firefox. You can do it as follows:

Type in a new tab and open: about:config
Then search for dom.storage.enabled and set it to true.
Google instant should be working now.

Just auto-complete
If you just want auto-complete working again, you can visit the preferences page where you can select Do not use Google Instant as your preferred choice.

Note that Google instant is currently only working on google.com and not for example google.nl or any other country specific domain. So if you just use your countries domain, you can also avoid the problem.

Update
The error seems to be fixed now. It is now wise to switch the dom.storage back to false.

Categories: Fixes, Google Tags:

How to clean up your Facebook

August 19th, 2010 eddsn No comments

I like minimalistic designs that are pure and simple. The layout of Facebook is just like that, but there are however still some annoyances that I wanted to get rid off. First there are those Farmville and Texas HoldEm posts that are just spamming up your News Feed. You can easily get rid of those by the provided remove option. But then there are the Events, Featured, Requests and Get Connected (and others) sections in the right column that you cannot control from the given options. Since I never use them, they are just a waste of space. I tried to remove/hide it with AdBlock Plus and RIP plug-ins (in Firefox ofcourse), but with no success. These plug-ins are usually just enough to hide/block certain parts of websites that you are not interested in. But it seems that Facebook did a little more trouble into protecting these fields from being hidden.

For this problem and many other Facebook fixes I used the Greasemonkey script FFixer in Firefox, which does a pretty good job in adjusting Facebook just as I wanted.

Now the world looks even more beautiful than before.

FFixer is easily accessible via the Account menu, and provides various options to tweak your Facebook.

Categories: Fixes Tags:

Enable transfers/sharing of files with potentially unsafe file types in Windows Live Messenger

June 23rd, 2010 eddsn No comments

Windows Live Messenger possesses some very unique “features” which can also bring a lot of frustration to its users. One of those features that I’ll cover here is the ability of WLM to block the so called “unsafe file types”.

This is actually a good step towards a more secure platform, since those blocked file types can indeed be misused to spread viruses. The point I want to make here however, and also provide a solution to the proposed problem, is that there is no clear option for the user to just disable this file blocking behavior.

Now you can imagine the situation where you want to send a file to your friend that has a file extension that is blocked by default. The frustrating thing is that not only executable files with for example an EXE file extension are blocked but also the frequently used ZIP and RAR files. In that situation you will probably get the following warning notification:

The options that Windows Live Messenger provides is to install Windows Live OneCare safety scanner, which might raise some security doubts. Or, to provide a self-defined virus scanner.

Now it is possible that you just do not have a virus scanner for some reason and then you might think that the story is over, but fortunately WLM does actually allow the transfer of files even if no valid virus scanner is provided. So you can for example provide Notepad as your wonderful and very secure antivirus software.

Actually, providing any string should get the job done. So the steps that you would need to perform are as follows:

Go to Tools >> Options >> File Transfer
Check the box Scan files for viruses using:
Now put any string into this field, click OK and you should be able to send any file from now on.

When sending a file from now on you will still get a warning dialog, but at least you can now send your “unsafe” files over.

Note that when you receive a file from someone you will get a message that the Virus scan has failed and

The virus scan could not be completed. Please check your settings in Tools > Options > File Transfer

Nevertheless, the file is received and you can open it by manually navigating to the folder where you receive your files.

Categories: Fixes, Windows Live Messenger Tags:

Zyxel P-2602HW-D1A VoIP Instellingen Telfort

June 17th, 2010 eddsn 1 comment

Vandaag was ik mijn router aan het configureren en bij de firewall settings heb ik “per ongeluk” een drop packets regel opgezet voor LAN naar WAN. Toen ik uitlogde en opnieuw probeerde in te loggen, kreeg ik pas door dat ik de router niet meer binnenkwam omdat alle packets gedropt werden.

Dit was dus zeker niet handig, en ik werd gedwongen de router te resetten. Het internet deed het zoals altijd direct, maar de thuis telefoon niet. De SIP instellingen voor de VoIP moesten ingesteld worden in de modem. Het grote probleem was dat ik het SIP wachtwoord niet meer wist en nergens meer kon terugvinden.

Na heel wat gezoek op het internet en de Telfort website heb ik het uiteindelijk opgelost, maar het heeft heel wat tijd gekost om uit te vinden hoe ik het SIP wachtwoord kon wijzigen. Telfort’s FAQ was in ieder geval niet behulpzaam omdat er hierover niets te vinden is (ik heb er niets over kunnen vinden in ieder geval).

Het probleem is op te lossen door simpelweg

naar de pagina Instellingen voor vast bellen te gaan en daar in te loggen met je telfort inloggegevens
vervolgens kiezen voor Ik wil mijn instellingen wijzigen
en tot slot het wachtwoord wijzigen onder Toegangscode wijzigen

Nu is datzelfde wachtwoord direct te gebruiken in de SIP instellingen van je router. Zie hier ook een handleiding van Telfort voor meer informatie.

Mijn internet lijkt nu ook sneller te werken, dus ik heb met dit avontuur toch iets positiefs bereikt naast het fixen van mijn telefoon.

Categories: Fixes Tags:

Quote Nelson Mandela

June 13th, 2010 eddsn No comments

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again!”- Nelson Mandela

Categories: Quotes Tags:

Windows Live Essentials Offline Installer

June 10th, 2010 eddsn 6 comments

Introduction
The current Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8117.0416 you can get by downloading the online installer from the official website. The installation files of all the components are downloaded during this setup. You might want to store these component files like Windows Live Messenger for offline installations for some reason. In this post I will describe my short analysis on how you can retrieve these installations for offline usage and maybe automate this information retrieval. Finally I will provide actual download links of both WLE and WLM from the official download site.

Windows Live Essentials Watcher Page
Before I continue with the analysis I just want to mention that you can find a complete list of all the available Windows Live Essentials components on the Windows Live Essentials Watcher Page. I will try to update the page with more older and newer versions when they come available.

Analysis
After analyzing the setup log of the online installer of Windows Live Essentials (version 14.0.8117.0416) I managed to extract some interesting information about the whole procedure the installer uses to download all the components. The location of the setup logs is dependent on the operating system you are on. The paths per operating system should normally be:

On XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\WLSetup\Logs

On Vista/7:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\WLSetup\Logs

Furthermore, all the components that are downloaded by the setup are read from a XML catalog file. See here the catalog file for the current English version 14.0.8117.0416 that is used.

The downloaded components have the following link structure

http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/../../../ID/LANG/FILE

which is generally used for all the language versions.

If you want to backup your current and/or future versions of Windows Live, then you can find the downloaded files after the installation is done in the following cache directory:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Windows Live\.cache

Official Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8117.0416 offline setup

Download Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8117.0416 (134MB)

Size: 141.399.376 bytes (134 MB)
MD5 hash: 4f079107f0d6fa1921f8a2f989864ac4

Download Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8117.0416 (23.9 MB)

Size: 25.148.416 bytes (23.9 MB)
MD5 hash: 819ff00b35959f5100ff787ef9484936 (MSI file inside the downloaded cab)

Official Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8089.726 offline setup

Download Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8089.726 (135MB)

Size: 141.402.440 bytes (135 MB)
MD5 hash: 0ff7f12bb44f91cad117632e3edd13ae

I also found out that there exists the same version of this full setup but with another file size from the official website. It seems older, and it is very strange that the version is exactly the same. Anyway, you can find it here (Size: 141.394.760 bytes – MD5 hash: 7a9f0e19f9d7ac193c8efd9d7f351b4a). The WLM cab is not downloadable from the same folder.

Download Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8089.726 (24.0 MB)

Size: 25.240.576 bytes (24.0 MB)
MD5 hash: 500e43ce39cede387e263ed886d24a74 (MSI file inside the downloaded cab)

Requirements:
Download .NET Framework
Download DirectX (x86)
Download DirectX (x64)
Download Windows Imaging Component
Download Windows Imaging Component Hotfix (Vista – x86)
Download Windows Imaging Component Hotfix (Vista – x86)
Download Windows Imaging Component Hotfix (Vista – x64)
Download Microsoft Visual Studio Runtime (MSVCRT)
Download Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 3.1
Download Microsoft Silverlight
Download Segoe Font

Update
The most recent full Windows Live Essentials Standalone Installer can also be downloaded from the link below. I also provided the Windows Live Essentials 2010 Beta link.

Windows Live Essentials 2009 – Wave 3 (most recent version)
Windows Live Essentials 2010 Beta – Wave 4 (most recent version)

http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/en/wlsetup-all.exe

Categories: Tutorials, Windows Live Essentials, Windows Live Messenger Tags:

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