Living with fresh installations of MS Word of different versions for a while, you can face strange problems. E.g., "File not found" window from VBA while creating default document in Office 2013, or loosing some panels from, e.g., ORFO, in Office 2003. One action will help you figure it out. Close Word, go to c:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft and rename Templates dir to something else. When starting Word once again, it will recreate the default Templates folder, this should fix a wast majority of "strange" problems.
Tuesday 12 November 2013
Friday 8 November 2013
Precise time in Windows batch
The well-known time /T prints only HH:MM. But we actually have microseconds in win-batches. To have them printed, use this: echo %time%. Use this variable any way you want.
Thursday 7 November 2013
UTF-8 locales in FreeBSD, Linux and Windows
1. FreeBSD
We use FreeBSD 8.3 and gcc 4.6.4, work with the OS terminal in putty.
In your home directory, edit .login_conf:
me:\
:charset=UTF-8:\
:lang=ru_RU.UTF-8:\
:setenv=LC_COLLATE=C:
Restart all putty instances.
In putty, set Change settings... → Translation → Remote character set = UTF-8.
Check locale in terminal, it should be:
$ locale
LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_TIME="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
In your C++ program, use UTF-8 natively, as char*, putting it to std::cout. You can convert utf8 strings to utf16 and print them to wcout, actually you'll get the same output for utf8 strings as with cout. You don't need to call setlocale (LC_ALL, ""); from <clocale>.
Note: for those who don't like Russian UI-s, like me. You can set en_EN.UTF-8 instead of ru_RU.UTF-8 in .login_conf to have native messages in English. The effect to output correctness will be just the same.
2. Windows
There is a bulk of approaches to overcome the lack of UTF-8 support in Windows console. I have the following "lazy" approach successful, also it's easily portable to Unix-systems. With this approach, you can have everything inside your soft in UTF-8, and convert strings from UTF-8 to UTF-16 by the portable utf8cpp library only to output them to console.
It's pretty straightforward. In the very start of your program, add:
setlocale (LC_ALL, "Russian");
Use wcin and wcout, convert UTF-8 strings to UTF-16 with utf8::utf8to16 when outputting.
No need to make chcp in console!
It's portable to FreeBSD by the following mean. In FreeBSD, which is tuned like described earlier, you can get the same output with UTF-16's wcout as with UTF-8's cout. Just try it, but don't forget to add setlocale (LC_ALL, "") or setlocale (LC_ALL, "ru_RU.UTF-8"), for wcout-printing it's important in FreeBSD.
3. Linux
You can perform exactly like in FreeBSD. I did the check on fresh Ubuntu Server 13.04 with gcc 4.7.3 on board, and there was a need to install Russian locale. Firstly, check what locales you do already have, with locale -a. Don't let the "utf8" name part confuse you, using "UTF-8" everywhere is just right. It holds through all Unix-based systems. Secondly, if you don't have Russian locales, here is how to to add them:
sudo locale-gen ru_RU
sudo locale-gen ru_RU.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
sudo update-locale
In comparison to the FreeBSD experience, bear in mind one very important thing: avoid mixing together fprintf/wprintf, cout/wcout, etc. E.g., after setting your locale, if you use cout, and then wcout, the latter would print you junk. Remove all cout uses, and wcout starts to work properly. Actually, one should always avoid mixing w and not-w versions of output together, it's a good rule of thumb. Nevertheless, this bad pattern passes okay (or doesn't reveal any errors) in Windows and FreeBSD consoles, but not in Linux console, which is undoubtedly right behavior in general.
Note: in VMWare window, the localized output is crappy: some symbols are ok, while others look like ◊. I don't know how to deal with this, for now I have to attach to my VM through putty. As an advantage, I have mouse and Russian keyboard inputs working.
4. Combining across OS-es
In general, LC_ALL is not a good practice, yet it works :)
There are two ways to deal with it.
Using setlocale in Unix-OS, easily Windows-portable
1) Call setlocale (LC_ALL, "Russian") at the start of the program in Windows, setlocale (LC_ALL, "ru_RU.UTF-8") in FreeBSD/Linux
2) Write to console with wcout, with converting output from utf8 with utf8::utf8to16
3) Don't use cout at all
Without setlocale in Unix-OS, not-so-easily Windows-portable
1) Use cout in Unix-based systems, wcout in Windows
2) Convert utf8 to utf16 with utf8::utf8to16 only in Windows
2) Call setlocale (LC_ALL, "Russian") at the start only in Windows
The same is with printing to streams (file stream, piping output, stderr).
One can overcome the disadvantage of LC_ALL with such function:
void attach_to_rus_locale (std::ios_base& stream)
{
std::locale loc ("ru_RU.utf8");
stream.imbue (loc);
}
and pass there std::wcout, file streams and so on. Unfortunately, utf8::utf8to16 is somehow affected by the locale also. Someone should figure out how to deal with that.
We use FreeBSD 8.3 and gcc 4.6.4, work with the OS terminal in putty.
In your home directory, edit .login_conf:
me:\
:charset=UTF-8:\
:lang=ru_RU.UTF-8:\
:setenv=LC_COLLATE=C:
Restart all putty instances.
In putty, set Change settings... → Translation → Remote character set = UTF-8.
Check locale in terminal, it should be:
$ locale
LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_TIME="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
Note: for those who don't like Russian UI-s, like me. You can set en_EN.UTF-8 instead of ru_RU.UTF-8 in .login_conf to have native messages in English. The effect to output correctness will be just the same.
2. Windows
There is a bulk of approaches to overcome the lack of UTF-8 support in Windows console. I have the following "lazy" approach successful, also it's easily portable to Unix-systems. With this approach, you can have everything inside your soft in UTF-8, and convert strings from UTF-8 to UTF-16 by the portable utf8cpp library only to output them to console.
It's pretty straightforward. In the very start of your program, add:
setlocale (LC_ALL, "Russian");
Use wcin and wcout, convert UTF-8 strings to UTF-16 with utf8::utf8to16 when outputting.
No need to make chcp in console!
It's portable to FreeBSD by the following mean. In FreeBSD, which is tuned like described earlier, you can get the same output with UTF-16's wcout as with UTF-8's cout. Just try it, but don't forget to add setlocale (LC_ALL, "") or setlocale (LC_ALL, "ru_RU.UTF-8"), for wcout-printing it's important in FreeBSD.
3. Linux
You can perform exactly like in FreeBSD. I did the check on fresh Ubuntu Server 13.04 with gcc 4.7.3 on board, and there was a need to install Russian locale. Firstly, check what locales you do already have, with locale -a. Don't let the "utf8" name part confuse you, using "UTF-8" everywhere is just right. It holds through all Unix-based systems. Secondly, if you don't have Russian locales, here is how to to add them:
sudo locale-gen ru_RU
sudo locale-gen ru_RU.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
sudo update-locale
In comparison to the FreeBSD experience, bear in mind one very important thing: avoid mixing together fprintf/wprintf, cout/wcout, etc. E.g., after setting your locale, if you use cout, and then wcout, the latter would print you junk. Remove all cout uses, and wcout starts to work properly. Actually, one should always avoid mixing w and not-w versions of output together, it's a good rule of thumb. Nevertheless, this bad pattern passes okay (or doesn't reveal any errors) in Windows and FreeBSD consoles, but not in Linux console, which is undoubtedly right behavior in general.
Note: in VMWare window, the localized output is crappy: some symbols are ok, while others look like ◊. I don't know how to deal with this, for now I have to attach to my VM through putty. As an advantage, I have mouse and Russian keyboard inputs working.
4. Combining across OS-es
In general, LC_ALL is not a good practice, yet it works :)
There are two ways to deal with it.
Using setlocale in Unix-OS, easily Windows-portable
1) Call setlocale (LC_ALL, "Russian") at the start of the program in Windows, setlocale (LC_ALL, "ru_RU.UTF-8") in FreeBSD/Linux
2) Write to console with wcout, with converting output from utf8 with utf8::utf8to16
3) Don't use cout at all
Without setlocale in Unix-OS, not-so-easily Windows-portable
1) Use cout in Unix-based systems, wcout in Windows
2) Convert utf8 to utf16 with utf8::utf8to16 only in Windows
2) Call setlocale (LC_ALL, "Russian") at the start only in Windows
The same is with printing to streams (file stream, piping output, stderr).
One can overcome the disadvantage of LC_ALL with such function:
void attach_to_rus_locale (std::ios_base& stream)
{
std::locale loc ("ru_RU.utf8");
stream.imbue (loc);
}
and pass there std::wcout, file streams and so on. Unfortunately, utf8::utf8to16 is somehow affected by the locale also. Someone should figure out how to deal with that.
Wednesday 6 November 2013
SVN E000022
svn: E000022: Can't convert string from 'UTF-8' to native encoding
Cure it with this:
Linux → setenv LC_CTYPE en_US.UTF-8
FreeBSD → export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
Cure it with this:
Linux → setenv LC_CTYPE en_US.UTF-8
FreeBSD → export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
Monday 4 November 2013
Unix terminal font for Visual Studio
For me, default fonts for Visual Studio have always been looking too thin.
1. Courier New, 11
2. Consolas, 10
3. Anonymous Pro, 12 (my favorite one with ClearType)
But I think I've found the solution – Text Sharp + Classic Console 15 pt:
Just do this:
And here you go with crisp, thick, compact and classic Unix-terminal font in the most modern environments. And, yes, it has Cyrillic chars inside. It gives you precisely the same look and feel as in Linux terminal:
Also you can choose Fixedsys Excelior, 12
But it's not so Unix-style, more of Windows-style. Looks heavier than Classic Console, but actually has the same height. Though, details of Classic Console are much nicer to me, they bring me back to the mellow days of coding in 80x25 QuickBasic 4.5 at my 12 :)
P.S. Kind regards for SZÉLL Csaba, the author of Classic Console. He has kindly fixed some minor problems with his font that I had noticed, and now it's good not only for cmd window, but for VS also.
1. Courier New, 11
2. Consolas, 10
3. Anonymous Pro, 12 (my favorite one with ClearType)
But I think I've found the solution – Text Sharp + Classic Console 15 pt:
Just do this:
And here you go with crisp, thick, compact and classic Unix-terminal font in the most modern environments. And, yes, it has Cyrillic chars inside. It gives you precisely the same look and feel as in Linux terminal:
Also you can choose Fixedsys Excelior, 12
But it's not so Unix-style, more of Windows-style. Looks heavier than Classic Console, but actually has the same height. Though, details of Classic Console are much nicer to me, they bring me back to the mellow days of coding in 80x25 QuickBasic 4.5 at my 12 :)
P.S. Kind regards for SZÉLL Csaba, the author of Classic Console. He has kindly fixed some minor problems with his font that I had noticed, and now it's good not only for cmd window, but for VS also.
Friday 1 November 2013
Ubuntu Server in VMWare
Tune the screen resolution
In /etc/default/grub change:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash vga=792"
or you can choose from vga=786, 789, 792, 795, 799
then delete
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
and do
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot
Install GCC
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -f
sudo apt-get install gcc
sudo apt-get install g++
sudo apt-get install make
Set SSH access from host
Under sudo, my user is notroot, vmware image from thoughtpolice.
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
/etc/init.d/ssh restart
ifconfig #watch IP-address
usermod -U notroot
In /etc/default/grub change:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash vga=792"
or you can choose from vga=786, 789, 792, 795, 799
then delete
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
and do
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot
Install GCC
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -f
sudo apt-get install gcc
sudo apt-get install g++
sudo apt-get install make
Set SSH access from host
Under sudo, my user is notroot, vmware image from thoughtpolice.
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
/etc/init.d/ssh restart
ifconfig #watch IP-address
usermod -U notroot
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