LaoBlog

New website! - Nuovo sito

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 19:40:54 +0100

My new website with all the content of this old one (and of course, the new posts) is now at the following link:

https://blog.libero.it/wp/laoblog/

Please update your bookmark, the old blog will be deleted one day.

WP all Import unrecognized date format

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:34:55 +0100

I recently used the Wordpress plugin WP all import to import my articles from Drupal to Wordpress in csv format. To export the content from drupal I installed the module Entity Export CSV.

It was important to me to keep the creation date. The above module allows that, but unfortunately WP all import on the new Wordpress website throws:

WARNING: unrecognized date format `*********`, assigning current date

Well, the above module of Drupal allows to export a date in many different formats, but after many tries, I found out only one was recognized by WP all import:

For the Export format, use Label, timestamp property, and for timestam value select

Format HTML (this looks like for ex:Sun Jan 08 2023 23:53:04 GMT+0000)

Thanks to https://toolset.com/forums/topic/wp-all-import-date-format-for-date-field/ for the hint

Dual monitor in Compiz

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:17:06 +0100

I'm Running KDE Plasma ver. 5.something. As window manager I use Compiz instead of Kwin. I want to run 2 monitors, different make, same resolution, as if there were separated monitors. In other word, every monitor with its own windows, widgets, desktop background etc.

First try to achive this, in KDE's system settings, under Screen's configurations, none of them can be replicated into the other, and in the upper frame of the configuration windows, where you can see the make and model, the 2 screens must share a whole common side line (vertical or horizontal), to form a unique rectangular.

If you only set this, you're set if you just want to use Kwin. But if you run Compiz, you'll basically mess your screen and won't be able to click on buttons, move windows as desired, with the desktop background image spanning between the 2 screens

The right configuration, you'll find it under Compiz settings manager

Go to General-> General Options ->Visualization setting (the 2nd tab)

I flagged "detect output", while previously I only had in the line below the values "1920x1080+0+0", that's my monitors' resolution.

In this way it works.

In case the secondary screen begins to blink, just reload the Compiz through the menu voice in the Fusion Icon (if you don't have the Fusion Icon, install it via your package manager)

Set the size of windows' scrollbar in XFCE

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 10:42:14 +0100

Often I had to deal with small size scrollbars in the windows under XFCE. The following can by applied to all the DEs which use gtk 3.

Under your home folder create the file .config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and add the following lines:

scrollbar, scrollbar button, scrollbar slider {

min-width: 15px;

min-height: 15px;

}

Save the file, logout and login again fot the modification to take effect.

This should provide a decent size for the scrollbar. Obviously you can adjust the size following your need, just change the value "15" as you wish.

Open Letter to the European Commission

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 19:40:23 +0100

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European Commission’s Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NLnet’s calls). This year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.

NGI programmes have shown their strength and importance to supporting the European software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure.
Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.

Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 million euros to:

“Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe” ;
“A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life” ;
“A structured ecosystem of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons”.

In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organisations managing these European funding consortia.

NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem, as most of its budget is allocated to fund third parties by the means of open calls, to structure commons that cover the whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research and innovation in Europe.

Moreover, NGI allows exchanges and collaborations across all the Euro zone countries as well as “widening countries” ^[1], currently both a success and an ongoing progress, likewise the Erasmus programme before us. NGI also contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project funding does. It encourages implementing projects funded as pilots, backing collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects, interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding schemes.

While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer data, the EU can’t afford this renunciation.
Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an international collaboration.

This is all the more essential in the current geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central, and free software allows to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty in the digital world as a whole.