• Py-MailListStat 1.0
• example output for the amavis-user list

Um das bisherige Verhalten wiederherzustellen lässt sich unter about:config die Option browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent auf false stellen.

It also reminds me that I still have not watched the movie of ‘A Scanner Darkly’. :-/

Unsere Wohnung wurde damit gleich leerer, so ohne Katzenklo und Kratzbaum, und lebloser, so ohne dass einem der Tiger beim Heimkommen entgegenkommt und beim Arbeiten auf den Schreibtisch springt. Dafür dürfen jetzt wieder alle Türen geschlossen und Zeug in der Küche stehengelassen werden. :)

Und weil’s ausnahmsweise zum Eintrag passt poste ich hier einmal Katzenbilder, nein schlimmer noch, – ein Katzenvideo (via The Park Bench):

Ich sah Elite zum ersten Mal auf dem C64, aber leider blieb es dort eines der wenigen Spiele die ich (mangels Anleitung) nicht verstand. Die Begeisterung für das Spiel kam daher erst später mit den Nachfolgern “Frontier: Elite II” und “Frontier: First Encounters”.

Wer das Spiel garnicht kennt oder zuviel Zeit hat sollte sich ruhig mal Oolite ansehen: eine schöne und freie Nach­programmierung des Klassikers.

When I implemented this I could not find documentation about this, so I wrote a small how-to.

First create a template file (I use OpenOffice) with filler text. Include all images, fields, tables, paragraph styles, etc. you want to use later. Save the file in ODT format.

A .odt file is a zip file containing all document components as XML files (as well all embedded files like pictures). Use unzip to extract the content into a subfolder.

[mschuett@dagny] ~> mkdir newdoc && unzip -d newdoc Untitled\ 1.odt
Archive:  Untitled 1.odt
 extracting: newdoc/mimetype
   creating: newdoc/Configurations2/statusbar/
  inflating: newdoc/Configurations2/accelerator/current.xml
   creating: newdoc/Configurations2/floater/
   creating: newdoc/Configurations2/popupmenu/
   creating: newdoc/Configurations2/progressbar/
   creating: newdoc/Configurations2/menubar/
   creating: newdoc/Configurations2/toolbar/
   creating: newdoc/Configurations2/images/Bitmaps/
 extracting: newdoc/Pictures/1000000000000181000000AD6DC45DA5.png
  inflating: newdoc/content.xml
  inflating: newdoc/styles.xml
 extracting: newdoc/meta.xml
  inflating: newdoc/Thumbnails/thumbnail.png
  inflating: newdoc/settings.xml
  inflating: newdoc/META-INF/manifest.xml

The subdirectories Configurations2 and Thumbnails as well as the file settings.xml are not required and can be deleted. The file META-INF/manifest.xml contains a list of all files, so the corresponding entries should be removed from this list.

That leaves us with three significant files: meta.xml for document metadata, styles.xml for styles and page elements (headers, footers), and content.xml for the main text. Use xmllint --format (part of libxml) to make the XML somewhat readable and then open it in an editor to take a look at the general structure and to locate your filler texts. More information about the files can be found in the free book “OASIS OpenDocument Essentials”.

After a modification the files can be zipped again to verify the resulting ODF can be opened:

[mschuett@dagny] ~> cd newdoc && zip -r ../newdoc.odt * && cd ..

Now it’s up to you to write your application data into all the right places. I simply use str_replace() to substitute a number of variables, thus I have a PHP string with the text of content.xml and place holders like this:

 <text:p text:style-name="P2">%(FirstName) %(LastName)</text:p>
 <text:p text:style-name="P1">%(AddrComplement)</text:p>
 <text:p text:style-name="P1">%(Street)</text:p>
 <text:p text:style-name="P1">%(ZIP) %(City)</text:p>
 <text:p text:style-name="P1">%(Country)</text:p>

The replacement uses two arrays — one with all place holders and one with all strings to replace them with. (Note: Because the database is still in Latin-1 but the XML files declare a UTF-8 encoding, all strings have to be converted. The call to utf8() is just shorthand for a call to mb_convert_encoding().)

$replace_from = array(
    "%(FirstName)",
    "%(LastName)",
    // etc.
);
$replace_to = array(
    utf8($dbentry['firstname']),
    utf8($dbentry['lastname']),
    // etc.
);
$content_xml = str_replace($replace_from, $replace_to, $ODT['content_xml']);

When the document’s content is thus prepared, the files have to be zipped and sent to the user. In this example I change only the file content.xml and decide to zip all other files beforehand. (Because my files contain pictures I assume this is more efficient than creating everything on the fly.)

[mschuett@dagny] ~> cd newdoc && zip -r ../template.zip * --exclude content.xml && cd ..

Finally this is the output function at the end of the PHP file:

// headers for download and correct MIME type
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename="letter.odt"');
header('Content-Type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text');
 
// this is slightly magic
File_Archive::extract(
    File_Archive::readMulti(    // read sources
        array(
            // a) an existing archive
            File_Archive::read("template.zip/"),
            // b) our memory buffers to be named
            File_Archive::readMemory($content_xml, "content.xml"),
        )
    ),
    File_Archive::toArchive(  // combine sources into one output
        'letter.odt',
        File_Archive::toOutput(false),  // send to stdout = browser
        $type = 'zip'
    )
);

First the HTTP headers are sent, so the browser knows it will receive a file in OpenDocument format (it should then ask the user whether to save the file or open it immediately in a word processor). The PEAR package File_Archive is used for all zipfile actions: first the prepared zipfile is read, then the string $content_xml is added with file name "content.xml", at last the new zipfile is sent to the user. And that’s it.

If necessary the other files can be customized in the same way. If the ODT files are not only used for printing but are archived or send to an end-user then you probably want to set a correct document creation date, generator, author information, etc. in meta.xml.

If you are looking for PHP library support of OpenDocument files then take a look at the PEAR OpenDocument class. Just like all other projects I have found it is in early alpha status, but now that Christian Weiske took over maintainership recently it seems to be the only one under active development.

Last but not least: you can use the ODF Validator to validate your documents against the ODF Specification (without having to rely on the “it is correct if OOo can open it” approach).

Wer bis dahin (oder danach) noch Zeit zu lesen hat, dem sei das Buch „Angriff auf die Freiheit“ von Ilija Trojanow und Juli Zeh empfohlen. Das recht dünne Buch ist sehr gut geschrieben und gibt einen Überblick über den aktuellen Stand des Abbaus von Bürger- und Freiheitsrechten. Fast noch besser fand ich zudem das Interview mit Juli und Ilija beim Chaosradio Express.

Zum Schluß noch ein Auszug aus Simson Garfinkels “Database Nation” — ein Buch das exemplarisch zeigt dass Bürgerrechte nicht nur von ‚rechten‘ Regierungen oder von staatlicher Seite aus bedroht sind, sondern dass gerade die Wirtschaft die alltägliche Überwachung vorantreibt.

To understand privacy in the next century, we need to rethink what privacy really means today:

• It’s not about the man who wants to watch pornography in complete anonymity over the Internet. It’s about the woman who’s afraid to use the Internet to organize her community against a proposed toxic dump — afraid because the dump’s investors are sure to dig through her past if she becomes too much of a nuisance.
• It’s not about people speeding on the nation’s highways who get automatically genarated tickets mailed to them thanks to a computerized speed trap. It’s about lovers who will take less joy in walking around city streets or visiting stores because they know they’re being photographed by surveillance cameras everywhere they step.
• It’s not about special prosecutors who leave no stone unturned in their search for corruption or political misdeed. It’s about good, upstanding citizens who are now refusing to enter public service because they don’t want a bloodthirsty press rummaging through their old school reports, computerized medical records, and email.
• It’s not about the searches, metal detectors, and inquisitions that have become a routine part of our daily lives at airports, schools, and federal buildings. It’s about a society that views law-abiding citizens as potential terrorists, yet does little to effectively protect its citizens from the real threats to their safety.

As a demonstration you can now access this site with https. The only drawback: Internet Explorer on WindowsXP and KDE’s Konqueror do not support the TLS extension but show a certificate error.

Another small but nice feature is the new piped log syntax to launch a process without invoking the shell. On a shared server with about twenty VHosts and all of them logging slightly differently to pipes and syslog this saves a few unnecessary processes.
Update to give an example: My httpd.conf now contains these lines for logging

CustomLog "||/usr/bin/logger -p local2.info -t apache" complete
ErrorLog "||/usr/bin/logger -p local3.info -t apache"

Just one note about updating: OpenSSL (and its FreeBSD port) does not use the TLS extension by default. — One has to configure it with option enable-tlsext (for the port: change the Makefile so it contains the line “EXTRACONFIGURE+= enable-camellia enable-tlsext”).