Hey Don,The other day when you described yourself as a, "jaded Windows guy..." I made the assumption that you were new to the various flavors of UNIX. Thanks for the correction, I'll update the bio I keep on you in my files <laugh>.
HH, cdh On 07/29/2010 11:19 AM, Donald Marang wrote:
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 lineIf 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.ukIf 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-ocrRemember to wait a few days to try this. The latest version has many more features and more complete!Don Marang *From:* Chris Hofstader <mailto:cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *Sent:* Thursday, July 29, 2010 9:19 AM*To:* programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>*Subject:* Re: Learning What I Need To Know About Basic LinuxOne 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 <mailto:james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx> *To:* programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto: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 <http://mysites.highmark.com/personal/lidikki/Blog/default.aspx>. Discuss accessibility here <http://collaborate.highmark.com/COP/technical/accessibility/default.aspx>. Accessibility Wiki: Breaking news and accessibility advice <http://collaborate.highmark.com/COP/technical/accessibility/Accessibility%20Wiki/Forms/AllPages.aspx> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This e-mail and any attachments to it are confidential and are intended solely for use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. 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