nixternal

What do you use when you create a “Works Cited” or “Bibliography” page when writing? Is there any one application that totally rocks for this feat? It would be great to find one that polls a database upon an author name, or a book title, and then automagically fills in the rest of the bib. If you have some goodies, let me know. Thanks!

EDIT: I gave noodlebib a shot tonight, which is an online app through the university that is decent. I would rather have something local though.

OK, for those of you using Gutsy, have you experienced any printing issues lately? I have an HP PSC 1600 multi-functional printer. Previous to Gutsy, I printed to it without any issues at all. I was amazed at how well it worked. Lately I have noticed that it doesn’t respect margins all to well, and depending on which app I print from, it either:

• works as it should
• works but looks really bad, like printing outside the margins, cutting off text and so forth
• no printing at all, constantly causing the printer to jam, slamming of the print cartridges and so forth (I mean slamming to the point where I can hear it downstairs, whereas the printer is upstairs in a closed office)

Printing from Windows works as it should. I have also noticed these problems while on campus as well. There are a mix of HP printers to choose from in each classroom, however my printouts always look like garbage. Massive cutting off at the margins is what is happening at school now. Note I am using Kubuntu, so if you are experiencing this on Ubuntu, Xubuntu, or Edubuntu as well, please let me know I am not the only one. Next time I am on campus, I can going to take a couple of live CDs with me and test from them. Thanks all!

If you are a Kubuntu user then we have a very small request. Currently, the space on the Kubuntu CDs are next to nothing, which means that it is darn near impossible to add more applications to the CDs themselves in order to keep them on a single CD. After our recent OpenWeek sessions, one of the community members, mzungu, brought up some important applications that are available and would be nice to have on the CD. Since the CD is full, we have to turn this idea down at this time. However, after mzungu and I spoke a little more on the subject, we realized just how important it is to let new users know just how many applications are available to them in the repositories. And since we can’t add them all to a CD, I have decided to go forward with a new addition to the Kubuntu documentation called “Kubuntu Extras.” This document will make its way into the 8.04 (Hardy Heron) documentation installed with Kubuntu as well as live in a location, not yet determined, on the community documentation wiki.

So what is the request? If there is an application that you just absolutely love and cannot live without, that wasn’t installed by default when you installed Kubuntu, then we would like you to add that application to a page mzungu created on the wiki. You can find the page at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KubuntuExtras. If the application you were going to add is already on there, then just go ahead and put a checkmark next to it. To do a checkmark with the MoinMoin wiki language, you just add (./) next to the application you want.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me (nixternal) on IRC (in a ton of channels, so it isn’t hard to find me, or you can just /msg me), or leave a comment in this post. Thanks everyone!

Alrighty my fellow free software brethren. I have a few questions for you concerning the use of LaTeX when writing your educational papers. I have just recently started using LaTeX because I heard all of the cool people do, and well because, it just flat out produces a much nicer paper than using a word processor. Anyways, here are my questions to those who use LaTeX:

• When using MLA style, what kind of setup do you use?
• What packages do you use?
• What document classes do you use?
• What are your tricks when doing a works cited or bibliography page?
• Anything else you can teach me about LaTeX, using MLA and writing great papers?

I appreciate any and all help that you may have. I have ran around Google looking for answers, and it seems I am always finding a different way to do the same thing. As it stands, for my papers I have used a layout similar to the following:

\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,final,oneside,openbib]{article}
 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
\usepackage{simplemargins}
\usepackage{setspace}   % simplemargins.sty
\usepackage{url}
 
\setallmargins{1in}     %used with simplemargins.sty
 
% typical author, date, title block
 
\begin{document}
..........
\end{document}

So, if you can help me write a better paper for school, then I will buy you a drink of your choice if we ever meet. Deal? Thanks everyone!

I am currently updating the Kubuntu topic based help documentation and have a few questions I am hoping some of you can help me with. If you could, just leave a comment to this post. What I am looking for is the best guides you can think of for the following items:

• NVidia GeForce graphics cards with 3D support
• ATI Radeon graphics cards with 3D support
• Getting Java to work with AMD64 systems (both Konqueror and Firefox if possible)
• Getting Flash to work with AMD64 systems (both Konqueror and Firefox if possible)
• Top wireless card drivers
• Compiz Fusion

I would love if these guides:

• were for Kubuntu Feisty or Gutsy
• were the easiest and best routes for succeeding
• were licensed with CC-by-SA

The reason I ask for such a request is that I am currently time strapped and I know some of you have done the above more than I have and probably have way more experience in doing so. Another thing, these items will make it into the Kubuntu documentation, so if you are interested in writing anyone of those sections listed above for Kubuntu Gutsy, you would be my hero. You can write them in plain text, OpenOffice.org, KOffice, LaTeX, or whatever you feel like. If you can write them up in DocBook/XML, well then you rock hardcore. If you decide to do some writing, here are just a couple of guidelines to make incorporating them much easier:

• try to use GUI instructions for everything. I know at times it may be easier for a user to use the CLI, but we are writing these instructions for the newest of users.
• if you include a screenshot, try to use 1024×768 display resolution with the default Kubuntu Gutsy theme would rock hardcore. PNG files preferred, no GIFs. If you don’t include a screenshot, no huge problem, as I should be able to follow the instructions and take the screenshots myself.

Thank you ahead of time for any help that you can offer. If there is a great guide that works for everybody, or damn close to everybody, then a link will work great.

If you are interested in Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, or Xubuntu documentation, please do not hesitate to contact the Ubuntu Documentation list at ubuntu-doc AT lists.ubuntu.com. I know Edubuntu can use a lot of help, so if you are experienced in writing technical documentation, can read and write English decently (that is better than I can), know DocBook/XML, and know the distribution fairly well, then you can be a great help. Writing documentation is fairly easy actually, and is a great way to start contributing to free software projects. If you feel that you might have some time to review the current documentation, please email the list and let us know. There are many great people on the list who can direct you to where you can go to help out. Thanks again everyone!

Howdy folks. Today I purchased a Logitech QuickCam Deluxe for Notebooks. Not my best purchase by any means, but something my daughter, who lives in D.C., wanted me to get one so we can video talk.

I have been trying here, and reading how-to after how-to on getting a QuickCam to work. None of them have been successful for me. So far I have tried Camorama and it complains about not being able to locate/use /dev/video0. /dev/video0 is there, but Camorama doesn’t like it. I have tried Xawtv and still no success. The system (Kubuntu Gutsy) sees the camera and doesn’t report any errors, but it just will not work. Here is some of the output I have gotten from the typical locations:

lsusb

Bus 005 Device 003: ID 046d:09c1 Logitech, Inc.

dmesg

[ 1818.228000] usb 5-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[ 1818.608000] usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1818.876000] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[ 1818.888000] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio
[ 1818.956000] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device <unnamed> (046d:09c1)
[ 1818.976000] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[ 1818.976000] USB Video Class driver (v0.1.0)

lsmod

uvcvideo               42884  0
videodev               29312  1 uvcvideo
v4l1_compat            15364  2 uvcvideo,videodev
v4l2_common            18432  2 uvcvideo,videodev
snd_usb_audio          81024  0
snd_usb_lib            17920  1 snd_usb_audio

If you have any ideas, a great tutorial somewhere, or know how I can get it to work, I would greatly appreciate your assistance. Thank you!