Licq 1.3.7 contains many bugfixes, and several new features in the Qt4-Gui such as spell checking and configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Download it from the usual place.

I don’t normally write about Windows here, but this program was so good I figured I’d let you know about it. I have it set up to synchronize all files on the desktop and in My Pictures. Both computers share their desktop and My Pictures directory, allowing others to write to them. SyncToy is then set up with two folder pairs, one for the desktop and one for My Pictures. Both computers have the same configuration so that the synchronization can be initiated from any one of them.

To make it easy to synchronize, I created a shortcut on the desktop that runs SyncToyCmd.exe -R (to do the actual synchronization, for all folder pairs). SyncToyCmd should normally be run as a scheduled task, but since both computers must be turned on for the synchronization to work, I opted for a shortcut instead.

Combined with Picasa, they can now offload pictures from their digital camera to any one of the computers and then simply synchronize them. Sweet!

From the release note:

• Save the “Send through server” option to disk.
• Fixed bugs that caused Licq to leak memory.
• Fixed a bug where Licq would crash on authorization requests from new users.
• Added code (disabled by default) to help find locking issues that could cause Licq to hang and fixed the bugs that were discovered.
• Made Licq buildable with GCC 4.3.
• Updated autotools and friends.
• Use gdb if it’s installed to generate a better backtrace if Licq crashes.
• Display a dialog informing the user how to report the bug in case Licq crashes.
• ICQ: Fixed sending capabilities.
• ICQ: Fixed setting security settings (Require authorization, Show web presence).
• Qt/KDE: New emoticons theme FeltTip4.
• Qt/KDE: New “Date format” option for customizing date and time in message and history windows.
• Qt/KDE: The local time of contacts can be displayed in contact list and popup information.
• Qt/KDE: Made the history layout configurable.
• Qt/KDE: New option to use double return instead of Ctrl+Return for sending and in input dialogs.
• Qt/KDE: Skins can now set a separate background color for group headings in the contact list (parameter colors.groupBack).
• Qt/KDE: Tabs in chatdialog can be closed by middle clicking on them.
• Qt/KDE: Removed all Qt2 support.
• Qt/KDE: Open links in a new tab when using Opera.
• Qt/KDE: Made the standard group names translatable.
• Qt/KDE: Added %M modifier to print number of pending messages (if any).
• Qt/KDE: Popup information shows if contact is not authorized yet.
• Qt/KDE: Floaties are now saved properly for non-ICQ contacts.

Download and enjoy!

As always, there’s a lot of bug fixes and new features. My personal favourite is a rather simple, but useful, new feature: the ability to switch tab using the mouse wheel. But then, I might be a bit biased since I wrote it myself It was my first contribution to Licq and one of the reasons I’m now a Licq developer.

The sayings “It’s the small things in life” and “Scratching an itch” are oh so true.

Join us on #licq on chat.freenode.net if you wish to chat directly with the developers or just hang out with the friendly Licq users.

Yours truly, a.k.a. erijio on freenode.

Dell’s Enhanced Multimedia USB Keyboard

Last week wasn’t one of my most productive weeks. Instead of working on my thesis, I created a small utility to make it possible to use the volume knob on Dell’s Enhanced Multimedia USB Keyboard under Linux. Not because I needed it, but because it didn’t work (and my other option was writing).

Anyway, if you’d like to check out the program (it’s named knob btw), you’ll find it on my self-entitled wiki WikiErik (yeah I know, the name sucks. But that’s how far my imagination goes when it comes to names).

Update:
As some of you have noticed, WikiErik is no longer available. But the code is still available. Point your browser to git.ejohansson.se and the project dellknob.git. Or clone it by running

git clone git://git.ejohansson.se/dellknob.git

Update 2:
Added a README with the contents from WikiErik.

KDE

I’m pleased to announce the first public version of my plugin for KDE text editors: ktexteditor-yankbuffer. It gives you emacs-like kill line (C-k) and yank (C-y) behaviour. For non-emacs users: this means that you can delete (kill) lines and then paste (yank) them in at another place in the document (or in another document). The default keybindings for kill line is Ctrl+Alt+K and for yank Ctrl+Alt+Y, but they can of course be reconfigured to suit your needs.

As an extra feature the plugin supports multiple yank buffers. By pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K you create a new yank buffer (that all future kill line and yank operations will use) and then moves the current line to that buffer. If you press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y the current buffer is first inserted in the document, then removed and the previous buffer is made current. (The buffers are ordered as a stack with the “non-shift” operations operating on the top buffer and the “shift” operations pushing and poping a buffer on the stack.)

The kill line feature works as it does in emacs: it deletes the current line starting at the cursor and only includes the end of line (\n) if the cursor is at the end of the line. And if you kill a text segment, all lines are saved in the same buffer.

Download ktextedior-yankbuffer v0.2 and install it the usual way.

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install

If you are using debian unstable you can install the plugin by adding the following to your sources.list and apt-getting ktexteditor-yankbuffer.

deb http://eddie.ejohansson.se/debian/ sid main
deb-src http://eddie.ejohansson.se/debian/ sid main

If you like to be on the bleeding edge, the source is also available from my subversion repository.

svn co http://svn.ejohansson.se/repos/src/projects/ktexteditor-yankbuffer

To end this rather long post, I’d like to give two examples on how to configure the keybindings. Me, I use these settings (C = Ctrl, S = Shift):

This is what I would call an explicit push but an implicit pop.

A friend of mine instead uses these settings:

Which would then be implicit push and pop.

If you like to see the stack depth you can turn on the Yank Buffer Toolbar in the Settings menu.

I know I said I would end this post which the examples, but I’d like to add this as well: if you have any problems, suggestions, etc. leave a comment or drop me a mail. Now, that was the last thing. I promise.