The Exile's Mind

How to automatically download PDF instead of loading to the browser?

2010-01-30T08:33:00.000-08:00

Most of the time accessing a pdf link will lead the browser to load it if the pdf viewer add-on is installed.
But what if we need is to have the pdf to automatically be downloaded once we click the link? One approach that I have tried is to use a javascript that would enforce downloading of the pdf instead of loading it, yet the problem
with javascript is, if it was disabled on the users browser preference making the pdf link broken.
The solution that I have found is via .htaccess.

If your hosting allows you to use .htaccess files, add this directives into the .htaccess at the folder with your PDF-files:

ForceType application/octet-stream
Header set Content-Disposition attachment
Header set Content-Transfer-Encoding binary

This prevents loading the pdf’s into the browser.

N.B.
Make sure the LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so is loaded on your apache config file
or you will get "Invalid command 'Header'" error

Margin and Line Height effects on FireFox 3.5.5 on Mac

2010-01-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

If you set the margin top and bottom of a <p> tag you have to set the line-height as well as a work around for firefox 3.5.5 on Mac, this work around will not affect other browser both on mac and windows and this is to rectify the line-height spacing of the <p> tag.

Example:

<p style="margin: 11px 0; line-height: 13px">Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum </p>

- this is noticeable if you have multiple paragraph inside a box with a background image, the paragraph appears to be at the center of the box in other browser but not with firefox on mac and you will notice the line-height is not similar to the other browser that renders it.

Searching for word or phrase in a file using Windows XP Search tool

2008-05-30T04:55:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a Plone product and wanted to reference some existing product wherein I needed to search for a particular word in a file because I cannot remenber where it is. Im using Windows XP and it has a search tool wherein I can search for files that contains word by using the "A word or phrase in the file" search criteria, when I look for a word inside a .py file it doesn't show any results and I've noticed that it only works for .txt files only, googling around I've discovered that Windows XP search tool is using a filter component and a valid filter component must be registered for the .py file type in order for my to search word in a .py file, this behavior is to enhance the performance of searching and avoid irrelevant results, but where can I find the appropriate filter component for my python files? Is there a way I can set Windows XP search tool to search all files just like Windows 2000 wherein all files are searched for the content type I specify? Luckily there is a way, I've found it on Microsoft support website http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309173, method #2 works for me.

Enabling MySQL log_warnings variable

2008-05-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

I'm encountering a MySQL connection error [host "ip-address" is blocked because of too many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-host"] whenever I use my MySQL Tools to connect to our MySQL server, what the error means is that I'm having too many connection error and MySQL is now blocking any incoming connection. I had in my MySQL server configuration set the "max_connect_error" variable set to 10 and don't want to increase it but I would want to know what account is trying to connect and failed, by default the "log_warnings" variable is set to "OFF" in order to turn it "ON" you have to login to mysql and invoke the "set global" command like so:

My Laptop Broke

2008-05-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

My laptop broke last friday, when I came into office and open it up it just went on blue screen and when I restarted it, it won't boot and gives me the "Operating System not found" error, I tried to restart it several times but to no avail. I've asked our Help Desk to check and hopefully fixed my laptop, weekends passed then tuesday came and they informed me that the problem was the harddisk and they can't fixed it, which means that all my files and codes are lost. I feel disappointed because the Plone upgrade that I'm working on is in that harddisk. I was about to make a backup of it on that day, have not the blue screen. Now I'm just waiting for the spare laptop so that I can continue my work but before that have to start installing/copying all the necessary files again.

Plone 2.0.5 to Plone 3.1.1 upgrade

2008-05-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

I'd been working on upgrading our corporate website which is currently using Plone 2.0.5 to the latest version Plone 3.1.1, been googling around and reading stuffs on how to properly upgrade to the latest one. We've decided to do the upgrade because we've already missed several upgrades and wanted to avail new features and feature polishes but it turned out that upgrading from 2.0.5 to 3.1.1 is not an easy task most of the products and templates are already deprecated, new implementation of portlets, the use of viewlets in replacement to the default plone templates, acl user is upgraded, tabless skin is removed although you can use NUPlone tableless skin as an alternative, products that I am using in Plone 2.0.5 have no equivalent in Plone 3.1.1 and much more. I'll try to document as much as I can while doing the upgrade and hopefully I can post it here.

Python to Windows executable

2008-05-06T01:46:00.000-07:00

I'm working on freelance project which is a python application using PyQT as a GUI, during the testing phase the application needs to be installed on clients workstation and in order to do that I have to install Python and PyQT before I can run my application. This is fine If I'm the one who will install the application but the problem will arise if the end user will be the one installing it, they might run into problems such as installing the wrong version of Python and PyQt. I also need to include Python and PyQT installer to make sure that they have the right version but this will make my distribution package large. It would be great if i can redistribute my application that the end user can install on his machine minus the worries of incompatible Python version and the exclusion of Python and PyQT installer. So I googled around and found this site http://www.py2exe.org this can convert my Python script into packages and executable Windows program without installing Python, py2exe is not an installer builder what it does is convert and assemble the files needed in order to run Python program without installing Python.

py2exe requires the creation of setup.py and we just need to import py2exe package and setup script from disutils package like so:

setup.py
-------------------------------------------------------------

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe

setup(console=['testing.py'])

-------------------------------------------------------------

the next step is to run the setup script on the command prompt like this:
c:\testing > python setup.py py2exe

We will see lots of output printed on the console and at the end two directories will be created -- "build" and "dist" folder, we can delete build directory while dist directory contains the package and windows executables. As I have mentioned a while ago py2exe is not an installer builder if we need one we can use Inno Setup to build one.

Here's my setup script
-------------------------------------------------------------
from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe, os

class build_DIRIncludes(py2exe):
    def run(self):
    # First, let py2exe do it's work.
    py2exe.run(self)

    print "--- moving conf ---"
    print os.popen('move conf').read()

    print "--- moving inputs ---"
    print os.popen('move inputs').read()

    print "--- moving output ---"
    print os.popen('move output').read()

    print "done"

setup(
    options = {"py2exe": {"optimize": 2,
                    "packages": ["PyQt4","sip"],
                    "dist_dir": "my_application",
                      }
                },
    windows=['my_application.py'],
    cmdclass = {"py2exe": build_DIRIncludes},
    )
-------------------------------------------------------------

Replacing Xvnc with KDE/GNOME Desktop Environment on CoLinux

2008-03-11T04:16:00.000-07:00

I've just upgraded my Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 7, the latter is already configured to use Xvnc when using a VNC client and it can be configured using KDE and GNOME Desktop Environment so I've tried it out. What I did is access Fedora Core 7 using VNC as it is already configured and used Xvnc as the default Desktop Environment, unlike the prior version of fedora that I have used, I need to configure manually the X window and have it run under Windows and launch an X session using Xming and I had to deal with a lot of difficulties in doing so, but with the current version I just need to run "pirut" on the terminal and select KDE/GNOME Desktop Environment and install it, after that just restart colinux and you will be able to use KDE/GNOME as your default Desktop Environment.

KDE

GNOME

Initial Posting

2008-03-04T00:42:00.000-08:00

This will be my initial posting, am planning to post more as I go along...