Re: Learning What I Need To Know About Basic Linux

  • From: "Donald Marang" <donald.marang@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:19:25 -0400

I certainly have been working hard and quickly learning bash.  However, I am 
certainly not new to Unix / Linux.  I remember evaluating Linux over 16 years 
ago for Martin Marietta.  I hardly ever used bash before.  I had small exposure 
with many shells, but had gotten comfortable and became a guru in csh on Sun 
workstations.  I still had a long learning curve due to over a decade away from 
programming, a few near death episodes, and worst of all, a decade stuck on 
Windows!  

The bash script, speedy-ocr, uses accessible zenity dialogs to take the 
complexity of scanning and performing OCR for the blind and visually impaired.  
It provides:  
- Scanning one or more pages from a flatbed scanner
- Scan from an Automatic Document Feedder
- Select one or more files from a list
- OCR the window active when utility activated
- Select one of three OCR engines /flavors
- Select any of the languages available for the selected OCR engine
- Join the output results if desired into a single file
- all options can be specified on command line

If you can wait a few days, I am packaging this script  and submitting it to 
the Vinux repository today or tomorrow.  Creating and maintaining Debian 
packages is completely new to me, so I have been learning here too.  Once I get 
my speedy-ocr script packaged and subitted I plan to package an improved OCR 
program, cuneiform 1.0, which is optimized and available as one of the free OCR 
engines my script can call.  I did not write any of the software in this 
command line program, but want to make it easily available and optimized to the 
Vinux and Ubuntu universe.  

Check out the Vinux distribution at:  
vinux.org.uk

If you are using Vinux, there is an "EasyInstall - OCR" script on the desktop.  
It may not yet automatically install the latest speedy-ocr utility.  I have not 
tested that yet.  Alternatively type the following in a terminal window (Alt + 
Control + t):  

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install speedy-ocr

Remember to wait a few days to try this.  The latest version has many more 
features and more complete!

Don Marang


From: Chris Hofstader 
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 9:19 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Subject: Re: Learning What I Need To Know About Basic Linux


One more reminder: the FLOSS manual libraries, hosted by Elf and Jamal, have a 
great book on the GNU/Linux system running bash. Coming from Windows, you will 
be absolutely amazed at what you can do with a simple command line script.

Over on the accessibility@xxxxxxx mailing list, a guy named Don has posted a 
program he calls Speedy OCR and its a really useful scan and read program 
written entirely as a bash script that calls pre-made executables. Six weeks 
ago, he didn't know GNU/Linux from VMS or OS/2 and now he's making serious 
contributions. 

Jump on in, the water's great!


On 07/28/2010 08:46 AM, Jay Macarty wrote: 
  Jim,

  I find myself in somewhat the same boat just recently. I have just been 
informed that we are switching all our HP/UX environments over to Suse linux. 
While I have been asured that I can continue to use Tera Term for my SSH 
sessions, I know there are going to be some differences between the KSH shell I 
am used to and whatever shell linux is using. So, I will be jumping into some 
linux book or books myself shortly. 

  We use Weblogic instead of Apache but still I need to learn how to manage the 
Weblogic environment under linuyx right away. So, while I don't as yet have any 
suggestions, I will certainly be following this thread closely.

    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Homme, James 
    To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 7:36 AM
    Subject: Learning What I Need To Know About Basic Linux


    Hi,

    On the system I'm using, I don't have the authority to administrate the 
operating system, but I do have the authority, and need to, administrate the 
other software on the box that doesn't come with it, so I need to come up to 
speed yesterday. You know how that is. 

     

    I cracked open the book called Learning The Unix Operating System Fifth 
Edition and started using it to learn basic commands. Among other things, two 
things are tripping me up. First, I'm using Putty. I have it set up properly 
with JAWS, but I'm being driven crazy any time data needs to scroll the screen 
because the whole screen is being spoken. 

     

    The second thing has to do with knowing what I need to learn. I'm just 
trying to learn what I need to know for now, and branching out from there. 
Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly what all that entales. But fortunately, I 
do have some time, because we're just starting to use MySQL and PHP. 

     

    So I see three big tasks or things to learn. 

     

    * What's involved in administrating Apache, like not letting the logs get 
too big, possibly installing a friendly statistics package, or whatever.

    * Setting up daily backups of the changed MySQL database or databases that 
we have.

    * Whatever MySQL administration that I have no earthly idea I may need to 
do.

    * I'll have to upgrade MySQL at some point.

    * I'll have to upgrade PHP at some point.

    * I pray that I never have to upgrade Apache.

    * Possibly installing some nice, convenient packages like PHPMyAdmin. But 
I'm thinking that like the people who were advocating learning the dirty way, I 
think it's best to probably learn how to do it from command lines so that I 
have total control and really know what's going on.

     

    But I'm starting with basic commands, but at the same time, trying to do my 
first Drupal installation, and I'm in real trouble because of course there's 
this deadline. 

     

    Back to my UNIX book.

     

    Specifically, I didn't see in the book two things. First, what permissions 
do files and directories automatically get when you create them? Second, I used 
to know a little more about some sort of file in my home directory that I could 
put stuff in to customize the environment a little more. I know that that file 
has a name that starts with a period. Yet another thing. I'm pretty sure that 
the shell I'm using is called the bash shell, but I don't know how to find out. 
And how does that affect how I work with the system? For example, if there's 
another shell that's better, what is it, what does better mean, and how to I 
turn it on. 

     

    Like I was thinking of making aliases for cp and rm that automatically run 
the -i option to keep myself from trashing stuff. 

     

    Someone please hold my hand and tell me it'll be all right. <grin>

     

    Jim 

    Jim Homme,

    Usability Services,

    Phone: 412-544-1810. Skype: jim.homme

    Internal recipients,  Read my accessibility blog. Discuss accessibility 
here. Accessibility Wiki: Breaking news and accessibility advice

     



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