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X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication

Inasmuch as using a frame from Emacs running on the laptop on the larger screen of the desktop machine using `make-frame-on-display' is one of life’s pleasures, it was less than a pleasure when it stopped working with a “X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication” message after an upgrade of one of the machines.

Several upgrades and much thrashing later, the solution by Gregory Grubbs at http://gregorygrubbs.com/development/get-remote-x-working-in-karmic/ works for me, and the script in the fifth comment by Ben Hyde for running emacsclient makes things even easier than I was used to. Continue reading “X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication”

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Debugging FOP process

Inasmuch as I sometimes want to debug (an extended version of) FOP “in place” and without too much setup, I can use this command line to suspend FOP on startup until I attach the debugger:

FOP_OPTS="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=9000,server=y,suspend=y" fop test.fo test.pdf
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XML Summer School 2011

Inasmuch as I was already asked to be on the Publishing track at XML Summer School 2011, I was then invited to co-teach “Developing and Testing in XSLT” with Jeni Tennison in the XSLT and XQuery track, so I’m pleased that I’ll be teaching two sessions at the XML Summer School in St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, on 18-23 September 2011. (Early bird discount ends 30 June 2011.)

My sessions are but 1/4 of their respective tracks, but I’ll be in the room for the entirety of each track and, indeed, like all Faculty at the XML Summer School, I’ll be around all week. Continue reading “XML Summer School 2011”

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Opening EPUB in Emacs

Inasmuch as there’s not, yet, an EPUB reader for Emacs, you can still set up Emacs to be able to open .epub files to see what’s inside them, since they are, after all, just ZIP files:

(setq auto-mode-alist
 (append
 (list
 '("\\.epub$" . archive-mode))
 auto-mode-alist))
(setq auto-coding-alist
 (append
 (list
 '("\\.epub$" . no-conversion))
 auto-coding-alist))
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Linux distro roundabout

Inasmuch as my computer had been flaky since the motherboard, the graphics card, and the OS were replaced in one go last year (and if I now replace the case and the disks, will it be my grandfather’s computer?) and as I had some time where there were no urgent deliverables and no conferences, I decided to replace the OS with a different version of Linux. Since the computer would lock up with either the Xorg process or interrupts taking 100% of a core and nothing else able to run, I was looking for it to be a problem with the OS (free) rather than the hardware (not).

Three days, six-or-so Linux distributions, and many installs later, I’m back on the original OS but with a different X driver. So far it’s been stable, but there had previously been times when it was stable for days on end between the times when it would crash with extreme rapidity. Continue reading “Linux distro roundabout”

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XML Prague 2011 a success

Inasmuch as the EPUB: Chapter and Verse talk went down well and, for many people, the Saturday evening libations at The Strahov Monastic Brevery went down even better, I judge XML Prague 2011 to be a success for me (and for my co-author, Mark Howe) and for Mentea and also a success in its own right.

Several people made approving comments about the talk, which was good (some even commented on last year’s talk, which, since this showed they still remembered it, was even better). The best comment about this year’s though is probably @Innovimax‘s tweet:

Tony is a real 21th century XML Monk! He sponsored the Beer Station at #xmlprague and works on nicely printing bibles. #consideringJoining

Continue reading “XML Prague 2011 a success”