Jie Zhang’s Blog

在Ubuntu里安装scim January 24, 2006

scim是我在Linux上使用的中文输入法。不久前在某次升级完整个系统之后，scim不会自动启动了。但是不记得上次是怎么搞定的。再次找到下面这个链接花了一些时间，所以记在这里： Installation of scim on Ubuntu/Kubuntu

里面最主要的是这些：

Create a file called 75custom-scim_init in /etc/X11/Xsession.d

Paste the following into it:

export XMODIFIERS=”@im=SCIM”
export GTK_IM_MODULE=”scim”
export XIM_PROGRAM=”scim -d”

Both Firefox 1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5 suck January 21, 2006

Mozilla Firefox is always my favorite web browser. And Mozilla Thunderbird is one of my two favorite email clients (the other one is Evolution). I have been using them since their very early days. Before that, I was using Mozilla. Befor that, MS IE. Befor that, Netscape Navigator. I was very glad to see that they were becoming better and better in the past several years. But the new 1.5 versions of both really suck. Firefox 1.5 has a broken download manager. Downloads window shows nothing when it’s downloading someting. The worse is it crashes often. The experience of using it is a disaster. Several days ago Thunderbird 1.5 was released. I upgraded my Ubuntu notebook to use it. It even cannot successfully fetch emails from my Gmail account. Maybe Mozilla Foundation spent too much time on the promotion. They have no time for the stability, which is one of their key features people most like. Finally I have to stick both of them to 1.0.7 version, until 2.0 out. 😦

Here is my apt preference file:

Package: firefox
Pin: release a=breezy
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: mozilla-firefox
Pin: release a=breezy
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: firefox-gnome-support
Pin: release a=breezy
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: mozilla-thunderbird
Pin: release a=breezy
Pin-Priority: 1001

[After reading osstips’s comment, I tried Firefox 1.5 again. The latest version from Ubuntu Dapper seems has the download manager issue fixed. Actually, the Firefox I previously used were 1.4.99, not 1.5. And Thunderbird 1.5 works very well at office. So it’s very possible that it’s an issue of my home FTTB. And I heard this morning from one of my friends that the FTTB service provider of the area where I’m living is upgrading their system.]

A workaround for “deleting” thousands of emails in Gmail January 20, 2006

Since all the labelled emails in my Gmail have been archived, deleting the label will have almost same effect of deleting all the emails only have this label. “Almost” means them are actually deleted and you can still find them in “All Mail”. But this is just what I want.

Mark read all emails with a specific label can be achieved by first remove the label, then add it again. The label will be removed from all the emails previously marked with the label. After add it again, only new coming emails will be labelled. This is also what I want. I just want to have a clean start, so I can easily notice new emails.

Why Microsoft Outlook should not be used to send email to a mailing list January 16, 2006

I’m very supprised to get learned that Microsoft Outlook doesn’t respect RFC2822 about the using of “Message-ID:”, “In-Reply-To:” and “References:”.

3.6.4. Identification fields Though optional, every message SHOULD have a “Message-ID:” field. Furthermore, reply messages SHOULD have “In-Reply-To:” and “References:” fields as appropriate, as described below.

Most of the archivers for mailing list use these fields to show emails in threads, such that you can follow a thread easily. However, outlook does not use “In-Reply-To:” nor “References:” when you reply an email. So the email sent by outlook always start a new thread, even it’s a reply to a previous email in the mailing list.

So please, please don’t use outlook to send an email to a mailing list. Several better alternatives exist for you to choose: Mozilla Thunderbird, Evolution, and Gmail.

How can I mark read or delete thounsands of mails in one shot in Gmail? January 10, 2006

Gmail’s label is much more power than topic folder in ordinary mail client. However, Gmail is lack of a feature useful for me and maybe others, which can be found in ordinary mail clients.

When using ordinary mail clients, it’s very easy to mark read all mails in one folder, or delete all of them. However, it’s hard to mark read all mails with one specific label or delete them. The quickest method I found is to do it one hundred mails in a batch. When mark read/delete about 10 thoundsands mails, it’s a big pain.

I have submitted a feature request to Gmail and see what will happen.

Hello world! January 4, 2006

Finally I start blogging!