Matt Croydon::Postneo

Day: October 27, 2003

  • CamelCase Parser Updated

    I didn’t realize it until this evening, but when Radio rendered my code, it was munching some characters.  I have updated my CamelCase Parser post.  What was incorrectly (S*?) is now (\S*?) and should behave properly.  My apologies to anyone who was led astray by the incorrect version.  The source has been correct the whole time, so if you were working from that, you’re good to go.

  • khtml2png: Create Thumbnails of Webpages Under Linux

    khtml2png is an excellent little program for Linux that allows you to create a thumbnail image from a specified website.  The program itself is pretty lightweight, but requires X, Qt, and kdelibs.  It needs both the libraries and the headers, which required me to install qt3-dev, kdebase-dev, and their various dependencies under SuSE 9.

    It’s quite easy to use once you do the ./configure && make && make install dance.  Here is the command that produced the thumbnail on the right:

    ./khtml2png --width 800 --height 1000 --scaled-width 160 --scaled-height 200 http://postneo.com postneoss_tn.png

    You could easily call out to khtml2png from inside your scripting environment, but it is probably not very well suited for a server environment.  In addition to requiring the desktop libraries, it needs to connect to an X server.  The workaround discussed in the README is to use Xvnc.  I think you’re best off running khtml2png on a desktop machine and then moving the thumbs to a server via your transport protocol of choice.

    There is a similar program out there called html2jpg which uses Opera, Perl, and ImageMagick to do its work.

    This is a fantastic hack with a GPL licence.  Rock on, Simon.

  • Mono BOF at the PDC

    If you are at the PDC, check out the Mono BOF:

    The first in a series of undercover Mono BOFs at the PDC will take place tonight at 7pm on the Academy meeting, in room 411. Come join us to plot the evolution.

  • Dial-A-Song

    Leo Laporte is putting together a Linux box for a next-gen TMBG Dial-A-Song.  Read all about it: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.