Sunday, December 29, 2013

Fighting with screen and backspace

When using Mac OS and ssh-ing into a Linux box (I got a small Synology server @home), you might have encountered the issue, that on the Linux machine, the backspace key is not working properly.
Well, for me, it worked nicely - except using screen sessions - here it sent DEL (delete) commands instead of backspace (erase).
It took me quite a while to figure this bastard out: First, I thought, there's something wrong with my Linux box (login shell) or the screen config. However, it turned out it was the Mac OS terminal that did not send the proper code.

Fix: go to your Mac OS terminal preferences -> Settings -> Advanced and enable "Delete sends Control-H"

Done! For now …

Friday, May 24, 2013

Using Notepad++ to render Graphviz figures

Graphviz is a really neat tool to quickly draw (un)directed graphs of various kinds. I really like the way one can just stick together the nodes by elementary text commands.
On Windows you can use "gvedit.exe", but I don't like how the input text files and the graphics are displayed and just recently I encountered an issue where it would not render my *.gv files even they are valid (they rendered using the command line tools). Seemed to be an file encoding issue.
Since a colleague of mine (who does not like using the command line) asked me to setup the "rendering system" on her PC, I was looking for and found a feasible setup:
  • Notepad++ - to edit the source files
  • NppExec Plugin - to call the command line tools and render the graphics
  • SumatraPDF - to display the rendered PDF file
Here's how to do it:
  • Download & Install
    • Graphviz
    • Notepad++
    • SumatraPDF (of course you may use a different PDF viewer, just make sure it is able to update the preview when the pdf file changes)
  • Goto Plugins -> Plugin Manager -> Show Plugin Manager
  • Install the NppExec plugin
  • Configure the NppExec plugin (Reference)
    • Press F6 (run command) and enter the following script (all in 1 line)
      dot "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)" -Tpdf -o "$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)\$(NAME_PART).pdf"
      It calls "dot" from the Graphviz tools (which should be in your system PATH), passes your current Notepad++ file and renders a *.pdf file. You find a full list of available output formats in the documentation.
    • Save it as "dot" script
  • Update / render the graphics with Ctrl+F6 (run previous command again)
  • SumatraPDF will immediately update the graphics so you don't need to close and reopen the generated file.

Welcome

During my studies, work and free time I come across a lot of "interesting problems". Some solutions require extensive Internet research and usually combining the findings of several independent sources.
After having (some kind of) a delicious.com account for more than 7 years, I finally decided to publish my findings so others can also benefit.