Category: Computers

OpenOffice.Org horizontal rule revisited

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Ever since I wrote about my exciting adventures in inserting a horizontal rule into an OpenOffice.org Writer document, something has been bugging me: how could I, if I wanted to, add a graphical horizontal line to the rulers gallery?

I can see that if I go to the main gallery (“Tools -> Gallery” or the Gallery icon in the toolbar), and look under “Rulers,” I can browse the selection of graphics available under “Insert -> Horizontal Ruler…”.

As far as I can tell, there isn’t any way to add a graphic to “Rulers” though.  The graphics that are available on my installation are not particularly attractive to me.

Each one of the headings in the Gallery is a “Theme,” according to OpenOffice.org documentation, and the ones that come pre-populated don’t seem to be editable without going to the shared folder they live in, with administrator privileges, and adding files that way. In fact, I even tried that, and although the file was now in the folder, no new ruler became available in the Gallery.  I may have missed a crucial step, I suppose, so YMMV.  Also, I haven’t checked how all of this works under Windows; just Mandriva Linux running OOO 3.1.1.

Now although I can’t access my ruler with the “Insert->Horizontal Ruler…” menu dropdown, I can add an image to my own “theme” under “Tools->Gallery” using the “New Theme…” button, and after that, insert the image into my document by right-clicking on it in the Gallery and selecting “Insert->Copy”. I’m not sure this is any less trouble than doing “Insert->Picture->From File…” though.

It’s a good thing for me I haven’t yet come across a use for a graphical ruler.  A normal single or double line will do for me, so far, and I figured out how to get that a while back. More of a loss for me, in that light, may be that I actually felt compelled to spend time trying to figure this out.  There’s always the remote possibility this will be of use to someone else, though…

Playing with saturation in the GIMP

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I’ve come across a few queries on the net about whether the GIMP has a “sponge tool like in Photoshop.” (for example, here, here, and here). I was going to say people seem to come away without a good answer, but it turns out the answer comes up occasionally, as it does in that last link. That’ll teach me to write the post and then research my references. Not. Anyway, it seems to me that this “sponge” tool is more or less a paintbrush in saturation adjustment mode.

I’ve never really wanted to do this, but having come across the idea, I’ve thought about it a little, and now played with it a little. Say you had a picture of a girl with a purple jacket on, and you’d like it to really stand out, more intensely than it does in your photo. This sounds like a job for a layer mask to me (funnily enough, so does any adjustment you want to apply to only part of your picture).

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Google Chrome beta on Mandriva Linux

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As I just said, I like shiny new toys, so when I got the email earlier today inviting me to enjoy the Linux beta of Google’s Chrome browser, I dropped everything and went to check it out.

I was disheartened to find the following:

“Get Google Chrome (BETA)
It’s free and installs in seconds
New! For Linux
(Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE)”

Uh oh.  Really?  Because I don’t run any of those flavours of Linux. Never one to overanalyze before trying to install something on my computer, I downloaded the 32-bit Fedora/openSUSE .rpm for my Mandriva 2009.1 system.  I figured openSUSE and Fedora aren’t the same thing, so maybe the .rpm would be general enough for another .rpm-based system.  The Mandriva software installer ran, detected some dependencies, and was silent. I didn’t find Chrome in the menu afterwards, but typing google-chrome in a terminal started it up.

It imported my bookmarks from Firefox. I’ve tested it on Google Mail, Mandriva forums, and YouTube, and found no problems yet.  That’s right, Flash video worked out of the box.  Early days, of course.  I hope there will be official and explicit support for all distros in the very near future.  For now, I’m just pleased that when I signed up to be updated when Google released Chrome for Linux, it didn’t turn out to be simply a gesture.