Posting around here has been sporadic, at best, lately. With little to no time to author full articles this time of year, I figured I’d better improve the efficiency of my quick linking to tidbits I’ve found elsewhere online. I’ve got a ‘hyper’ section in Textpattern (my CMS of choice) for just such a task, akin to and inspired by the Daring Fireball Linked List, but it’s actually more cumbersome to post to. I usually include a quote and the title from the target site, it’s URL, switch it to the ‘hyper’ section, add some tags and a little commentary. A bookmarklet that could pull in much of that data for me to just tweak and comment could drastically reduce the amount of tab switching and cutting & pasting required.

Fortunately, just such a bookmarklet exists. It pulls your selection into a new post body, sets the post title to the page title, and allows you to customize what section & category it gets posted in:

javascript:
var d=document,
w=window,
e=w.getSelection,
k=d.getSelection,
x=d.selection,
s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),
f='http://PathToYourTXPFolder/index.php',
l=d.location,
e=encodeURIComponent,
p='?bm=1&Section=SectionName&from_view=1&Category1=CategoryName&Title='+e(d.title)+'&Body='+e(s),
u=f+p;
a=function(){
  if(!w.open(u,'t','toolbar=0,resizable=0,status=1,width=800,height=800'))
    l.href=u;
}
;
if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))
  setTimeout(a,0);
else
  a();
void(0)

However, I require the target URL in a custom field in order to automatically build the link to the target site. It was designed to do that, but no example was given. You merely need to insert the following (replacing ‘custom_1’ with the number of the appropriate custom field) after Category1 and before Title¹:

custom_1='+e(l.href)+'&

But there’s one more thing I found necessary to tweak: the size of the pop-up window. It was a bit too narrow for my install, so I increased the width to ‘960’, but more importantly, I made it scrollable by adding scrollable=1 to the call to w.open().

So, with the my aforementioned modifications, you get something like this (still requiring replacement of PathToYourTXPFolder, SectionName, CategoryName, and custom_1 with your particulars, of course):

javascript:
var d=document,
w=window,
e=w.getSelection,
k=d.getSelection,
x=d.selection,
s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),
f='http://PathToYourTXPFolder/index.php',
l=d.location,
e=encodeURIComponent,
p='?bm=1&Section=SectionName&from_view=1&Category1=CategoryName&custom_1='+e(l.href)+'&Title='+e(d.title)+'&Body='+e(s),
u=f+p;
a=function(){
  if(!w.open(u,'t','toolbar=0,resizable=0,scrollable=1,status=1,width=960,height=800'))
    l.href=u;
}
;
if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))
  setTimeout(a,0);
else
  a();
void(0)

What now? Run it through something like Bookmarklet Builder to name it and further minify it, then merely drag it to your bookmarks bar. I ended up whipping up two: one for use on this site and one for use on Slotted Pig.

¹ You can obviously move it around elsewhere in the query if you’re careful with the quoting.

I published my fixDAVsvn script seven months (and one day) ago to automate the process of fixing apache configuration files that have been manually modified to serve up Subversion repositories (per Nayan Hajratwala’s instructions) when they’re overwritten by Server Admin. This has made managing my apache install considerably easier, but upon rolling it out on a colleague’s server this afternoon I realized it was only ever a half solution. Sure, I had saved myself considerable time just by running fixDAVsvn, but others aren’t necessarily going to want to and there’s really no need. Time to add the second half.

So, how does one automate the process of running a command on a particular file whenever it’s modified? With launchd, of course! launchd drives some admins nuts, but I find it to be quite a boon and this happens to be exactly one of the cases it was designed for. So, I whipped up /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.makkintosshu.fixDAVsvn.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC -//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd >
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>com.makkintosshu.fixDAVsvn</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/usr/local/bin/fixDAVsvn</string>
		<string>/etc/apache2/sites/0001_any_80_svn.domain.tld.conf</string>
	</array>
	<key>WatchPaths</key>
	<array>
		<string>/etc/apache2/sites/0001_any_80_svn.domain.tld.conf</string>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

The full path to the config file to run fixDAVsvn on needs to exist in both the ProgramArguments & WatchPaths arrays in com.makkintosshu.fixDAVsvn.plist. That said, you can add as many config files to watch and fix as you like.

So, the complete solution¹ is to install fixDAVsvn and com.makkintosshu.fixDAVsvn.plist, then edit the latter to watch & fix your modified apache configuration files. I’ll likely package this all up with a script to build com.makkintosshu.fixDAVsvn.plist’s list of files automatically, but it may be another seven months.

¹ This solution has been tested on both Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Server and Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Server.

Subversion, mod_dav, and mod_dav_svn are all pre-installed on Leopard Server, authentication via Open Directory is a piece of cake, and you can even mostly config & manage via Server Admin. Nayan Hajratwala has a good tutorial explaining the setup and the few lines you have to manually add to the apache config files, but there’s one problem: whenever you update any site using Server Admin, it replaces all occurrences of ‘DAV svn’ with ‘DAV Off’, completely defeating the purpose.

When I just had just a couple of Subversion repositories and wasn’t changing my apache configs very frequently it was fine to manually switch ‘DAV Off’ back to ‘DAV svn’ and restart apache, but recently I’ve exceeded my tolerance. So, this morning I whipped up the following bash script which accepts the names of config files that’ll need to be fixed, performs the substitution, and restarts apache:

#!/bin/bash

# 
# fixDAVsvn - Replace occurrences of 'DAV Off' in specified apache2 configs with
#             'DAV svn' and restart apache. This helps do some dirty work on Mac
#             OS X Server when using Server Admin to modify apache configs if
#             you use DAV svn anywhere.
# 
# v0.1   - 2009-03-07 - Morgan Aldridge <morgant@makkintosshu.com>
#                       Initial development.
# 

date=`date "+%Y-%m-%d-%H%M"`

function usage() {
	printf "Usage: fixDAVsvn file [...]\n"
}

if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
	until [ -z "$1" ]; do
		src=$1
		dst=$src-$date.bak
		rsync -a $src $dst	# back up the original file
		cat $dst | sed 's/DAV Off/DAV svn/g' > $src	# replace 'DAV Off' w/'DAV svn'
		shift
	done

	/usr/sbin/apachectl restart	# reload the apache configs
else
	usage
fi

I’d suggest installing it into /usr/local/bin/.

Example usage:

sudo fixDAVsvn /etc/apache2/sites/0003_any_80_svn.domain.tld.conf

Let me know if you find this useful.

Update: I’ve since released a launchd job which automates the process of running fixDAVsvn when the apache config files are modified (esp. by Server Admin).

This weekend I whipped up and launched a new side project: Slotted Pig.

I’ll be regularly posting about my quest to get out of debt and what I’m learning on the way. I’ll highly encourage discussion along the way because what works for me may not work for everyone and I’d like to hear what others are trying.

Another year, another mta_digg_it Textpattern plug-in update. This time, version 0.3:

mta_digg_it-0.3.txt (see full info)

This release brings some minor updates to the documentation, the compact attribute’s functionality has been moved to the more flexible skin attribute (you can now use either full size, compact, or icon sizes), and you can optionally use the article’s excerpt as the content of the bodytext attribute.

Drop me a line if you have any questions, comments, or bug reports.

I’ve been using em-based text-sizing on this site for a number years using Richard Rutter’s methods and have done well by them. He recently expanded upon his tricks for A List Apart and proved the consistency you can achieve with them.

But there’s one thing that’s occasionally in the back of my mind: what exactly is an em? I had some remembrance that it originally got its name from some aspect of the size of a capital M, but that’s about it.

I must have glossed over Richard’s definition having read the article too many times:

“Classically, an em (pronounced emm) is a typographer’s unit of horizontal spacing and is a sliding (relative) measure. One em is a distance equal to the text size.”

Oh, that’s right, it’s the height of the font. Actually, there’s more to it than that, especially depending on whether you’re a typographer, a type designer, or a software engineer. Font Beureu’s Type 101 blog has the full details (including illustrations) in their post The Em. Go read it.

I’ll leave you with the following excerpt (and many thanks directed at Grant Hutchinson for noting the article):

“In my view, the em is a fundamental unit of typography. It plays a critical role in the design of a typeface, in the technology to compose and render the typeface, and finally in the decisions made by the typographer when setting the type. In fact, from the type designer’s point of view, the em is what forms the basic module used to compose letters into words, words into lines, and lines into paragraphs. It makes movable type possible.”

Thomas Brand has updated [his] Newton Blog to even further emulate the Newton OS 2.1 experience by applying the Apple Casual font to his Tweets section.

This is a twofold implementation so as to support as many browsers as possible, using sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) and CSS2’s @font-face (see A List Apart’s CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing for further details).

Many thanks to Thomas for implementing the latter after a brief chat via Twitter!

I’ve updated my mta_digg_it Textpattern plug-in to v0.2 today.

This version includes the following fixes:

1. Correctly escapes apostrophes, quotes, backslashes, etc., when used in the title or bodytext attributes (pulled from the article title by default).
2. Prevents cross-pollination of variables when multiple “Digg This” buttons appear on a single page.

The latest version and full description can always be found on the development page or you can download it directly:

mta_digg_it-0.2.txt

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or bug reports.

I happened across the fact that Digg has implemented new ‘smart’ digg buttons on the 6th. The biggest new feature here is that you no longer have to first ‘submit’ an article to get its “digg url” to use with the “Digg This” buttons and can now just reference the article’s permalink instead.

With that, it means you no longer have to manually submit articles to Digg, copy the digg URL into a custom field in Textpattern, and have the “Digg This” button pull the URL from said custom field (or, worst case, paste the JavaScript into each and every article manually).

With this in mind, I decided it was finally feasible to write a plug-in to do this (I almost did it for the digg-url-in-a-custom-field solution). So, here’s version 0.1 of mta_digg_it: mta_digg_it-0.1.txt (full description here).

Please send in your comments, suggestions, and bug reports.

Update: Sorry about the broken link, it should be fixed now.

Update #2: Version 0.2 is now available.

I wrote a quick Textpattern plug-in today to spit back a “URL title” for an article ID instead of the numerical “ID” that <txp:article_id /> does and called it mta_article_id. Basically it’s intended to be a replacement of article_id.

I needed it to be able to implement human-readable anchors for articles in sections (for example the autobiograpy and colophon parts of this site’s about section) that aren’t sections that one would really “browse” (so no permalinks), but are mainly fake static pages. In fact, I had intended to have this functionality before I posted my holiday wish list, but I couldn’t find a way to extract just the “URL title” that appears at the end of a Textpattern “Clean URL” permalink (atleast not without writing some custom PHP code).

I asked around on the Textpattern support forum and one kind soul pointed me to this post by one of the moderators describing exactly what I needed.

So, I downloaded the Textpattern plug-in template (see Anatomy of a Textpattern Plug-in for more details on Textpattern plug-in development), and merged the moderator’s code (basically a one-liner) with that of the implementation of the built-in article_id in taghandlers.php (another one-liner), and—Voilà!—my first Textpattern plug-in.

Of course, I discovered that there’s now an <article_url_title /> tag as of Textpattern 4.0.5, but I’m still running 4.0.3. So, my plug-in was depricated before it was released, but the mention of article_url_title only appeared on December 1st, right in the middle of when I was first working on getting “URL titles”, so I guess it’s excusable.

Regardless, you can download mta_article_id from the development section if you like.

Update: It turns out I had overestimated which version Textpattern is currently at. It’s currently only at version 4.0.4, so although version 4.0.5 will include the article_url_title tag my plug-in is still needed in the meantime.

Note: This cookbook is based on building MRTG 2.14.7 on Mac OS X 10.4.8 (Tiger) client as of October 31st, 2006. It should work for Tiger Server as well, but you’ll want to check to see if libpng is pre-installed or not.

Disclaimer

This cookbook is intended for those that are atleast slightly familiar with building and configuring unix applications on Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. No support is offered and the author is not responsible for any lost data due to following these steps or mistakes made while attempting to follow these steps.

With that in mind, these steps did work for the author and will provide a quick copy & paste solution for those that don’t want to waste ten minutes figuring out that the --without-fontconfig flag needs to be set when running configure for gd.

Reference

• http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/
• http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/doc/mrtg-unix-guide.en.html
• http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
• http://www.boutell.com/gd/
• http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/2001-11-13.01.html

Setting Up the Build Environment

cd ~/Desktop/
mkdir build-mrtg2
cd build-mrtg2

Building & Installing libpng

curl -O http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/libpng/libpng-1.2.12.tar.bz2
md5 libng-1.2.12.tar.bz2
tar -xjf libpng-1.2.12.tar.bz2
pushd libpng-1.2.12
./configure
make check
sudo make install
popd

Building & Installing gd

curl -O http://www.boutell.com/gd/http/gd-2.0.33.tar.gz
tar -xzf gd-2.0.33.tar.gz
pushd gd-2.0.33
./configure --without-freetype --without-jpeg --without-fontconfig
make check
sudo make install
popd

Building & Installing MRTG:

curl -O http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/pub/mrtg-2.14.7.tar.gz
md5 mrtg-2.14.7.tar.gz
tar -xzf mrtg-2.14.7.tar.gz
pushd mrtg-2.14.7
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mrtg-2
make
sudo make install
popd

Closing:

That’s it, you’re done. You can delete the ~/Desktop/build-mrtg2/ directory once you’re confident that MRTG is working as intended and you won’t have to rebuild any part of it.

Download This Cookbook as Text:

Cookbook – MRTG 2.14 on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).txt – 2006-10-31

I apologize for the mess in article headers over the last couple days. I’ve been restyling them, but only have a few hours in the mornings to do so and have been taking my sweet time to finish them up.

Update: This has been cleaned up. Thanks for your patience.