Paul Sutton

November 24, 2020

Vokoscreen

VokoScreen

Vokoscreen is a small application in Debian that allows users to make video recordings of screen operations. I have been using this to produce videos for the LibreOffice how_to resources for example.

You can install with:

apt install vokoscreen

Upon running, you are presented with the main recording screen.

VokoScreen

From here, you can set various options. I am mostly using region as this can be:

resized
record specific areas of the screen or application

record area

Once you have selected the area to record press the start button to begin then the stop button to stop recording, recordings will be saved in /home/user/Videos.

If you want to record a larger area, then the application can get in the way, in which case, it can be minimised and the short cuts used instead.

CTRL-SHIFT-F10 to start
CTRL-SHIFT-F11 to stop
CTRL-SHFT-F12 to pause

You can also record audio on top of your video

audio

Video settings, allows you to fine tune your video further

video

The next tab

tools

Allows you to set where recordings will be saved, where the preview application is (I am using vlc here)

Camera

camera

Allows you to set up your usb webcam so you can have video in video. Which may be useful for teaching.

The final tab, as details of the developer team.

credits

This application is really easy to use, and very useful for producing all sorts of mixed media (video + sound).

November 23, 2020

Tables

How to add tables to LibreOffice Writer 7.x

Assets folder

https://salsa.debian.org/zleap-guest/screenshots/-/tree/master/libreoffice7/writer/Tables

A table is used to present information.
Tables are made up of
- Horizontal Rows
- Vertical Columns
- Cells that form the Rows / Columns
Can be simple, single colour or more complex with more than one colour

There are several ways to insert a table

Icon

Clicking this leads to :-

Quick Table

Where you can drag to create the required table size, clicking more options leads to the Table options box below.

Or Click

Table menu —> Insert table which leads to:-

Table Options box

Insert Table dialogue

Select the options you would like, then click insert.

Your table will then appear on the page.

Selecting a cell will also display the icon menu at the bottom of your document, this gives quicker access to options.

Table Icon Bar

Once you have added a table you will find all the rows, columns are a uniform size.

You may want to split cells up, to do this you can right click and select split cells

split

Cells can be split Horizontally or vertically

In a similar way we can right click and merge two or more cells together.

If we didn't set any style options from the Insert table dialogue, this can be done with right click —> style

style

We can do the change the size with right click —> size

size

Where you can change row height / width.

Add another single row or column, before or after the selected row or column.

Multi

or add more than one

You can add more rows or columns with the right click menu

By selecting rows / columns from the right click menu

columns

rows

All these options are also available on the icon bar at the bottom of your document

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

With most Linux systems you boot in to a Graphical desktop. However, there are times when you want to perhaps use a pure console. While you can switch to a console with CTRL-ALT-Fn keys. If you want to set your system so that it boots directly to the console then I have found the instructions here.

#linux,#booting,#console

November 23, 2020

Emacs Conference 2020

Less than 1 week till EmacsConf 2020

Emacs logo

EmacsConf2020 takes place on the weekend of 28th and 29th November 2020. 2pm-10pm UTC,

EmacsConf is the conference about the joy of Emacs, Emacs Lisp, and memorizing key sequences.

Just as with the 2019 There will be talks, workshops and discussions. As you would expect free software is used extensively to put the conference together, this includes several IRC channels as well as video streaming.

Below is a flyer, please feel free to download and share, to help spread the word.

EmacsConf

Can also be downloaded from here

Further Reading

November 22, 2020

Contribute

The LibreOffice documentation team are always looking for help and contributions.

Editing the keyboard graphic

I am working on adding a graphical representation of keyboard shortcuts. As found on the Keyboard Shortcuts page

If you would like to help with editing the keyboard graphic to include different key shortcut, the following video may be useful.

This can be found on my Peertube account on Diode.zone under GNU Image Manipulation Program GIMP

Keyboard graphics uploaded to Debian Salsa

Original graphic can be found on OpenClipart here

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

November 22, 2020

Keyboard Shortcuts

Exit LibreOffice

CTRL+Q

Quit

New Text Document

CTRL+N

New Document

Open Document

CTRL-O

Open Document

Save Document

CTRL+S

Save

SaveAs

CTRL+SHFT+S

SaveAs

PRINT PREVIEW

CTRL+SHIFT+O

Print Preview

PRINT

CTRL+P

Print Document

CUT / COPY / PASTE CTRL+X CTRL+C CTRL+V

CutCopyPaste

Graphics Modified by Paul Sutton

Original graphic here

Origkeyboard Graphic Source: Open Clipart Created by: rockraikar

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

November 22, 2020

A Look at the ATMegaZero Microcontroller

Another video from blitzcitydiy

Hosted on diode zone which is an instance of peertube video sharing.

#computing,#hardware,#hacking, #ATMegaZero,#MicroController,#electronics

November 21, 2020

Image captions

It is usually a good idea, or essential, when inserting an image to have some sort of description as to what the image is. This is useful as in a report you may want to include a list of figures at the end of the document.

Once you have inserted an image, you right click and go to insert caption.

Insert caption

Enter the caption in the box, press Ok and you should see something like this:

Inserted caption

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

November 21, 2020

Spacing

There are several ways to space text out on the page.

Line spacing can set, for example, to single (1), 1.5 and double (2) This is useful if you want to make text easier to read or perhaps add space for notes etc.

Sometimes this is a requirement for assignments, reports or documents.

linespacing

On a related note you can also add spaces between paragraphs.

paragraph spacing

It is a good idea to have this because it makes the document look nicer, plus using this tool, you retain the setting.

Finally, paragraphs can be indented, this is useful to add space on the left hand side of the document. The indent is inline with the tabs, which are set at the top of the document.

indent