Life’s but a walking shadow…

Since I do a lot of referring to Trac ticket numbers in email messages, most visibly on the xmlroff-list mailing list, I wrote an Emacs function that finds the Trac ticket references in the current buffer and inserts a sorted list of the ticket references and their URLs at the end of the buffer.

The code (if WordPress hasn’t done too much damage to it) is:

(defvar trac-base "http://xmlroff.org"
  "Base to use when inserting links to trac tickets in email.")

(defun trac-base-xmlroff ()
  (interactive)
  (setq trac-base "http://xmlroff.org")
  (message trac-base))

(defun insert-trac-links ()
  "Insert links for Trac links."
  (interactive)
  (let ((ticket-alist)
         (changeset-alist '()))
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (while
        (re-search-forward
         "#([0-9]+)" nil t)
      (setq ticket-alist
              (add-to-list 'ticket-alist
 		 (string-to-number
 		  (buffer-substring-no-properties
 		   (match-beginning 1)
 		   (match-end 1))))))
    (goto-char (point-max))
    (insert "\n")
    (dolist (ticket (sort ticket-alist '<))
      (insert (format
        "#%s %s/ticket/%s\n"
        ticket trac-base ticket)))))

I have a separate `trac-base-xxx' function for setting `trac-base' for each Trac that I regularly use, and I use GNUS customizations to call the appropriate `trac-base-xxx' function when I enter specific email folders.

xmlroff 0.5.4 is at http://xmlroff.org/download/xmlroff-0.5.4.tar.gz.

This release fixes some table bugs and adds linefeed-treatment and white-space-collapse properties (actually added in 0.5.3, but that release was only announced on the xmlroff-list).

I received a politely worded letter from Eircom telling me how happy they are to spam me with “special offers, price reductions and new products and services”. In fact, they’re so happy to do it that they’re going to do it even if I stop using Eircom.

Since I want to contribute to Eircom’s bottom line on my terms, not their’s, I’m sending back the opt-out form to the curiously named “Customer Suppressions Department”.

What, then, do they call the people who do the spamming? The “Customer Oppressions Department”?

Building xmlroff on Ubuntu 7.10 is straightforward once you install some build tools and the required ‘-dev’ packages.

Starting with a clean installed system, install the following packages (and their dependencies):

• libtool
• autoconf
• automake1.9
• libglib2.0-dev
• libxslt1-dev
• libcairo2-dev and/or libgnomeprint2.2-dev
• libpango1.0-dev
• libgtk2.0-dev (not libgdk-pixbuf-dev)

This is the second time that I’ve picked up a Tom Keneally book at Sydney Airport for the long flight out of Australia. The other was The Great Shame, and the great shame there is that I didn’t get around to reading it until several years later. By that time I was living in Ireland, so at least I could then better understand the Irish aspects of that account.

The Commonwealth of Thieves covers the period just before to just after the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay. I enjoyed it, and I look forward to the likely future editions covering the next stages in Australia’s history.