Desktop

Using knotes

KDE has an excellent helper tool – knotes. It a small application that allows one to create notes similar to yellow Post-it that are so familiar to everyone. With knotes it is possible to create notes in all fonts, colors, and sizes as well as set alarms on those notes, display them over all desktops, above or below all windows, etc.

I knew about this application for a long time now, but never got used to using it until recently. After thinking a bit about what kept me away from it, I realized that these were the shortcuts. Particularly, there are two shortcuts which can make all the difference – “New Note” and “New Note From Clipboard”. By default, some weird keys (Alt+Shift+N and Alt+Shift+C) are assigned to these actions. Very inconvenient and non-ituitive.

Using knotes’ configuration dialogue I reconfigured the shortcuts to be F12 for an empty new note and Ctrl+F12 for a new note with clipboard content. That feels way better now. Try it and you’ll be surprised…

P.S.: Now I wisht that knotes could have transparent window background…

Fonts saga continued

I mentioned recently that I’ve installed a whole lot of fonts on my office workstation. I was never actually concerned about fonts and was very satisfied with the default few that I had on box. But I surprised myself. The view of the world looked so different and it appeared so nice that I decided to do the same procedure at home. I am way too addicted to the good looks of the Internet to view it in Helvetica 24×7.

If you are like I was, never caring about installing fonts, then I suggest you try it. You’ll be amazed as to how different the real thing is.

P.S.: One of the side effects was also my blogging fever. After I installed all these fonts I started to browse the web more, and WordPress’ administration interface looked so good, that I couldn’t stay away.

Watching over logs in KDE

I know of a lot of people who enjoy having a terminal window with scrolling logs on their desktop. Setting one up was never a challange, but there are some nice KDE options that one could use that not so many people know about. At least I didn’t know until today.

Continue reading Watching over logs in KDE

Changing the world view with fonts

Somehow I ended up at KDE Look website today. I’ve got a bunch of stuff installed from there, but most noticably lots and lots of fonts. If you are not in the mood for searching, here is the link to Microsoft core True Type fonts and here is the link to the package with 6,760 True Type fonts. You will never need another font in your life. And there’ll be plenty left for your kids and grandkids.

After I installed all these fonts, the world looks and feels different. I’ll have to get used to it. At least in the browser.

Partial quoting with KMail

KMail has a nice feature which is mentioned in the FAQ but surely deserves a bit more publicity – partial quoting of the message. If one wishes to quote only a part of the message, than selecting the appropriate part before hitting the Reply will do the trick. This feature can save a lot of time spent deleting unnecessary quoted text.