Cool Tools

This page summarises some cool tools available on the departmental UNIX machines (some of them may only be available on the Linux boxes). Note that these tools are not supported.

I heavily use emacs in everyday life and maintain a separate page of cool emacs packages.

Index:

GHCi (Interpreter for Haskell98)
Opera (Web browser)
Emacs/W3 (Emacs-based web browser)
GNU CLISP (Interpreter for Common Lisp)
Emacs (A way of life)
Sylpheed (A mail and news reader)
Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG) (Electronic signatures etc)
Seahorse (Public key manager)

Useful, but not properly documented, yet:

Bibtex2html (see my PCC reading list for an example)
Dillo

Potentially useful, but unchaecked:

pandoc, for converting between markup languages

Name: GHCi
Description: An interpreter for Haskell98.
Short Summary: GHCi is the Glasgow Haskell Compiler's (GHC) interactive environment, in which Haskell expressions can be interactively evaluated and programs can be interpreted.
Platform: all departmental linux boxes
Version: 6.12.3
Invocation: ghci
Installation: -
Requirements: gcc and friends (all available)
Location: /usr/bin/ghci
Documentation: Web pages:
- On-line manual
- GHC Home Page
- Haskell Home Page
- Haskell Wiki (with tuorials, books etc)
Comments: Overall, GHCi has the look and feel of the Hugs interpreter for Haskell. Additionally, it can mix compiled and interpreted code. Being a different setup of GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler) it is much bigger than Hugs, though.

Name: Opera
Description: Web browser
Short Summary: The producer calls it "the fastest browser on earth!". It's "only" a browser, without built-in mail/news reader, HTML editor, and therefore much smaller than complete bundles.
Platform: all departmental linux boxes
Version: 11.11
Invocation: opera
Installation: none (automatically scans Firefox etc preferences when launched for the first time)
Requirements: latest GTK (installed)
Location: /usr/bin/opera
Documentation:
- Opera Home Page
Comments: The main advantage of Opera over Firefox and the like is that it is faster, better in dealing with slow network connections, and is overall highly-customisable.

The information below is out-of-date. The links to web pages might still be useful.

Name: Emacs/W3
Description: Web browsed embedded in Emacs.
Short Summary: Emacs/W3 is a full-featured web browser, written entirely in Emacs-Lisp
Invocation: M-x w3 in Emacs.

Installation: Put the following into your .emacs file (this has been tested with Emacs 21.1 and Emacs 20.7)

       ;;; Emacs/W3 Configuration
       (setq load-path (cons "/net/azdak/dsg/local/share/emacs/site-lisp" load-path))
       ;; HWL HACK this load seems to be needed for w3 v4.0.47 in emacs-21
       (load-library "images")
       (condition-case () (require 'w3-auto "w3-auto") (error nil))

Requirements: emacs (no additional packages needed)
Location: /net/azdak/dsg/local/i386-unknown-linux/bin/emacs
Documentation: Either the info page in Emacs (C-h i in emacs) or on the web
- Emacs/W3 Home Page
- Online Documentation
Comments: Emacs/W3 is handy for quick lookups of web pages that are not too graphics heavy. I use it mainly for checking bibliographic or web references without having to leave the editor where I'm typing the text.

Name: GNU CLISP (Common Lisp)
Description: Common Lisp is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. GNU CLISP is a Common Lisp implementation by Bruno Haible of Karlsruhe University and Michael Stoll of Munich University, both in Germany. It mostly supports the Lisp described in the ANSI Common Lisp standard.
Short Summary: Interpreter and compiler for Common Lisp.
Invocation: clisp
Installation: -
Requirements: -
Location: /net/azdak/dsg/local/i386-unknown-linux/bin/clisp
Documentation:
- Home Page
- Common Lisp the Language, Guy L. Steele (on-line version of a standard textbook on Common Lisp)
- LISP tutorial (part of CLISP docu)
- ANSI Common LISP Definition (local)
Comments: Also available on Suns from /depot/dsg/local/sparc-sun-solaris2/bin/clisp.

Name: emacs
Description: Emacs is the extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor.
Short Summary: A way of life.
Invocation: emacs
Installation: -
Requirements: -
Location: /net/azdak/dsg/local/i386-unknown-linux/bin/emacs If for some weird reason you don't want to use the latest and greatest version of emacs you can still call the old version as emacs-20.7 (same directory).
Documentation: C-h i or C-h t from within emacs; Online manual (local copy)
Comments: This is the latest version (21.1) of emacs (20/10/01) and a new major release.

Name: Sylpheed (version 0.7.5claws)
Description: A Mail (and news) reader
Short Summary:
Sylpheed is an e-mail client (and news reader) based on GTK+, running on X Window System, and aiming for
- Quick response
- Graceful, and sophisticated interface
- Easy configuration,
- intuitive operation
- Abundant features
The appearance and interface are similar to some popular e-mail clients for Windows, such as Outlook Express, Becky!, and Datula. The interface is also designed to emulate the mailers on Emacsen, and almost all commands are accessible with the keyboard.
The messages are managed by MH format, and you'll be able to use it together with another mailer based on MH format (like Mew). You can also utilize fetchmail and/or procmail, and external programs on receiving (like inc or imget).
Invocation: sylpheed
Installation: -
Requirements: GTK+ 1.2.6, GnuPG 1.0.4f, nmh-1.0.4-6.
Location: /net/azdak/dsg/local/i386-unknown-linux/bin/sylpheed
Documentation (URL):
- Local: file://localhost/net/azdak/dsg/local/i386-unknown-linux/share/sylpheed/manual/en/sylpheed.html
- Home page: http://sylpheed.good-day.net/ and http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net/
Comments: I alternatively use sylpheed, mh-e (from within emacs), and plain mh for reading email. All three packages use the mh commands for handling mailboxes, folders etc, so I can easily switch for example using plain mh on a slow dial-up link. Of these three systems, sylpheed has the nicest interface, using the GTK library (Gnome-style interface). The latest version of sylpheed comes with support for GPG-based encryption and electronic signatures, as well as address book, a simple news reader and many more features.








   Name: Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG)
  
 Description:
       GnuPG is a complete and free replacement for PGP,
       and implements both public key and symmetric encryption, as
       well as authentication.
  
 Short Summary:
       Use gpg -c file to encrypt; gpg file to decrypt; gpg --verify file to verify a signed message
  
 Invocation: gpg
  
 Installation: -
  
 Requirements: -
  
 Location:   /net/azdak/dsg/local/i386-unknown-linux/bin/gpg
  
 Documentation:
       
	  GnuPG Home Page/
	 
 Gnu Privacy Handbook
	 
 FAQ (local)
       
  
 Comments:
       A good mail reader for handling GPG-signed mails is sylpheed.
       A graphical front-end for public-key management is seahorse.







   Name: Seahorse
  
 Description: Management tool for a public key infrastructure
  
 Short Summary:
        Seahorse is a GNOME front-end for GnuGP. It can be used for sign,
encript, verify and decrypt text and files. The text can be taken from the
clipboard, or written directly in the little editor it has. Seahorse is
also a keymanager, which can be used to edit almost all the properties of
the keys stored in your keyrings.
  
 Invocation: seahorse
  
 Installation: -
  
 Requirements: gpgme, gpg, gnome, bonobo
  
 Location: /net/azdak/dsg/local/i386-unknown-linux/bin/seahorse      
  
 Documentation: Seahorse Home Page, OpenPGP Keyserver
  
 Comments: 






  Hans-Wolfgang Loidl


Last modified: Tue Jun 21 17:21:06 2011