Category Archives: Applications

Pâté, Kate and Kubuntu (KDE 4)

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Posted by Evandro Myller on August 10, 2009 – 4:31 am
Filed under Applications, KDE, Linux, Python
Tagged as , , ,

It’s quite a long time I’ve been trying to run this awesome plug-in for Kate (Pâté) on my Linux box, a Kubuntu jaunty (with KDE 4.3).

Recently, when I got contact with Paul, the Pâté creator, we got it working here (Thanks, Paul!). I was very excited to see things like expanders working on Kate, and I like – very much – to have the power to enhance my favorite text editor easily.

So, here’s the magic I gotta do to install Pâté:

$ sudo aptitude install cmake kdelibs5-dev kdesdk-dev python-kde4-dev python-qt4-dev sip4

After that, you’re ready to compile Pâté and enjoy it. Compiling: In a shell, switch to the Pâté directory that you just downloaded from the git repository.

Then, run these commands (you might be familiar with them):

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake .. --DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$(kde4-config --prefix)
$ make
$ sudo make install

There are some cool bundled plug-ins already. Can’t wait to use them?

$ cp -r src/plugins $(kde4-config --localprefix)/share/apps/kate/pate

One of these plug-ins is the awesome Expander, that can add code snippets to your code like Textmate does. Cool, huh? Now, start Kate, go to the plug-in list and voilà. Pâté is there. enable it and happy coding!

I noticed that it’s very easy to develop a python plugin for Kate. Please help us to make Kate even better and share your ideas with the community!

IRC: #kate @ Freenode

Kate color schemes

6
Posted by Evandro Myller on June 21, 2009 – 2:04 pm
Filed under Applications
Tagged as ,

I’m getting more impressed with the KDE news each day. One of the greatest tools I found on it is its default text editor, Kate. However, I’ve been looking for new color schemes (personally I hate to code on white background), but I didn’t find anything that I could use on the new Kate (KDE 4.2+).

Today a friend of mine just installed Kubuntu 9.04 in his machine. One of the first things he did was change the KDE color scheme to a darker one. Then he started out Kate and voilà! Kate also followed the color scheme that was set to KDE itself. No, don’t go try it right now.

Ok, I went to my PC like a child runs for a lolipop to change my KDE’s color scheme. Changed it; what now? Oh, start Kate. Damn, I didn’t notice any change on syntax highlighting. Everything else (related to Qt) was darker. Everything but my Kate color scheme. You know, I just got frustated. Anyway, still didn’t quit.

Desperate, I immediatelly closed Kate, removed every Kate config file from my system – please don’t do that – then started it again. Whoah! Its color scheme was darker too! First thing I did: try to save that color scheme (Settings » Configure Kate » Fonts & Colors). Done; yay! I got a darker color scheme. Then I tried to copy the color schemes from other KDE ones by closing Kate, changing KDE color scheme then starting Kate again. Once again I got sad: The color scheme didn’t change. It was just the same than the previous scheme.

kate screenshot

I started to hack on the Kate’s config files ~/.kde/share/config/kateschemarc and ~/.kde/share/config/katesyntaxhighlightingrc and I noticed that the scheme kate - Normal was there. Once it should inherit the global KDE colors, it shouldn’t have any predefined color setting. I just erased it and restarted Kate. Alright this time, it inherited the global colors as it should do. Then I repeated all this process for almost all the color schemes I have on my KDE.

You can get the files I did for myself here. If you don’t have any personal change to these files, you can safely overwrite them with my ones. Now, finally, I have my favorite text editor with various dark color schemes, and so you can do easily. [If you write another scheme, share with us!] ;)

Unavailable USB devices on VirtualBox 2

0
Posted by Evandro Myller on May 20, 2009 – 11:03 pm
Filed under Applications
Tagged as

I’ve been facing an annoying issue to use my USB devices on a VirtualBox guest system (on a Kubuntu host). The problem was that the devices were listed but I couldn’t use them – they were “unavailable”.

unavailable USB devices on VirtualBox list

Just to confirm, I ran this command on a shell:

VBoxManage list usbhost

(if you run this too, make sure that your devices aren’t busy)

After some research and a talk in some IRC channels, I found out what I just suspected: it was just a permission issue.

Some deeper look ups and I found two simple possible ways to solve this

  1. [try this one first] Add yourself to the vboxusers group. 
    sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $USER

    After this, log out then log back in to the change take effect. Don’t need to restart you system. Now the USB devices may be available on VirtualBox.

  2. Change permissions to the device address

    The previous solution must work, but anyway, here’s an alternative solution. Has some security disadvantages, though.

    • Run this: VBoxManage list usbhost and copy the address of your device. It may begin with /dev or /proc and end with a number (like 003.
    • Set read+write permission to the address: 
      chmod 777 /dev/address
    • Then turn on your guest OS on and you might see your USB device available.

Hope it solve the problem. =]

Banshee: watching and listening at Linux

4
Posted by Evandro Myller on December 12, 2008 – 9:14 am
Filed under Applications
Tagged as , ,

Some time ago I just found out another media player in my Ubuntu.
I was trying to find something more than the Ubuntu’s default players, and I got surprised with Banshee 0.2. It was really cool. Great tools, great music organization.

Then, after some days enjoying my new prefered music player, I finally had one idea: how about visit the Banshee website?
So I went there and saw that the current Banshee version was already 1.2. Damn, I was outdated. The Hardy Heron’s repository was kinda poor if I’d expect for newer versions of applications like Banshee. Today I use the version 1.4.1 on my Intrepid Ibex.

I downloaded and installed it on my PC and, wow, it wasn’t a music player anymore. It was a media player. Yes, music + video organized in one application.

Some of the things I like much in Banshee are:

Media organization and access

It’s very easy to organize and search for your media files: just sort, type and list.

Banshee Media Organization

Banshee Media Organization

Editing  Media Information

You can select multiple media files then update their meta information.

Banshee's Track Editor

Banshee's Track Editor

Smart Playlists

Banshee can go beyond organization with smart playlists.

Creating a smart playlist

Creating a smart playlist

It has many other features, like CD burning and extraction, media synchronization to media devices and album art automatic search & download.

Wanna see more? Go to banshee-project.org, download the latest version and enjoy!