Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 July 20

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Excellent. This reference desk should provide useful henceforth. --Proficient 11:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a "how to ask a question" and "how to answer" section first? schyler 12:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

There is now ;-) -- AJR | Talk 13:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Should we make a section for commonly asked questions (What is the best programing language?)Jon513 18:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

A little premature on the first day? We don't know what questions are commonly asked yet. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 18:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

So far the most "common" questions seem to be coming from Ubuntu users. But as time passes, we'll probably find some more Windows users. --Optichan 20:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

WLAN USB-Stick and Linux

Which USB-WLAN adapter works with Linux? I dont't want to have to recompile the kernel, edit too many configfiles, and things like That. Would it be better then, to use a PIC card? Thank You! --192.94.73.30 12:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

If you are willing to install ndiswrapper, you can use just about any Windows driver and, therefore, just about any USB:WLAN adapter. That's how I got mine working. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll try that. Thank You! --192.94.73.30 13:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Sound stopped working in Ubuntu

All of a sudden, for no reason that i can think of some sounds are no longer being produced. For example movies on My Tube now play without any sound. Tuxpaint doesn't produce sounds any more. However my alarm clock still plays ACDC at 6.00 am just fine and Gnometris bleeps away merrily. Any ideas? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 15:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Does your soundcard do hardware mixing? That is, if you kill esound, can two programs still play audio at the same time? —Keenan Pepper 15:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

OK I better explain - please treat me as a complete and utter idiot. Spell everything out as you would a child (my knowledge of linux is very limited) I don't know what hardwear mixing is :-( Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 16:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, the basic problem is that you want different programs to play sounds and have them come out the speakers at the same time. There are two solutions. The best one is to have a sound card that mixes the sounds together in hardware, so each program can act as though it has the sound card all to itself, and the software doesn't have to do anything. Only expensive sound cards do that, though. The other solution is to have a program running all the time (in your case, the Enlightened Sound Daemon, aka "esound" or "esd") that mixes the sounds together in software. Esound is the only program that directly accesses the sound card, and all the other programs have to go through esound.

Do you know what model of sound card you have? —Keenan Pepper 17:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not 100% certain as I can't find the documention but I'm pretty sure it's onboard sound. The computer was a cheap one. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 18:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I remember reading something on the Ubuntu forums or wiki about forcing all your programs to use esound. I'll try to find it. --Optichan 20:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, then it probably doesn't do hardware mixing, so you'll have to use esound. I just found out what a big hairy mess flash+esound is (mostly Macromedia's fault), but you can try these instructions. Open up a terminal (I think it's in "accessories"), type sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libesd.so.0 /usr/lib/libesd.so.1, and hit enter. You'll have to enter your password. Do the same for the other two lines beginning with "sudo". Generally you should be careful with "sudo" commands, but these three are quite safe. —Keenan Pepper 20:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Ctrl+Shift+Enter to send message in Thunderbird

I was typing a message in Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 on Ubuntu Dapper 6.06. I went to hit Ctrl+Enter to send the e-mail, but hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter by accident.

Where did my e-mail go??

--Silvaran 17:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Got it! It went to Local Folders->Unsent. I just do Edit As New, and then Send. Hope this helps somebody else :). --Silvaran 17:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

There is a list of keyboard shortcuts here, although it only said that ctrl+shift+enter means "send later", it didn't actually say where it went. --LarryMac 17:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the same kind of thing happens with trash and "sent items". Different mail programs seem to have different places to put deleted messages and copies of sent messages (though some, like Thunderbird, are configurable). Part of my confusion stemmed from the fact that these "send later" messages were saved in the "Local Folders" section rather than the currently active account (in my case, an IMAP account). Thanks for the link BTW.--Silvaran 03:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

What is a parm file?

I would like someoone to explain to me what a parm file is.

It's a badly abbreviated name for a parameter file. Unfortunately, it's very hard to be more specific than that, as many different programs and systems have parameter files, and there is no standard. Generally a program will read the contents of a parameter file when it first starts up, using the information in the file to set certain values that will be used as the program runs. However a program might read the contents of the parm file at any time. The Windows Registry could be considered a giant parm file -- it contains hundreds if not thousands of pieces of that tell Windows things like what image to use as the desktop background, what color to use as a windows border, and which font to use to label icons. A parm file for my super-duper weather reporting program might have entries to tell it whether to use degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius, and how fast a wind gust should be to trigger an alarm. --LarryMac 19:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The Parameter article gives examples and types. A lot of the software that I use, requires that the parameters be in a particular sequence, and be of a certain length, because the software that processes the parm file might not define things the same way as the one that feeds it the info. User:AlMac|^(talk) 20:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Listboxes in Visual Basic 6

I'm using a timer event to update a listbox every second. Each time it is updated, it automatically scrolls to the top. However, the most recent entries are at the bottom and I'm wondering if I can stop this scrolling action, or use a command to make it scroll down. Robmods 21:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Do the items have to be added to the bottom of the list? You could just add them to the top. Alternately, you could set the focus to the last item in the list on each update, I believe. 128.197.81.223 23:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

You can make the box scroll to the bottom like this:

' add a random number to the list
ListBox1.AddItem Int(10 * Rnd) + 1
' set the selected item to be the final one
' the list starts at 0, so the final item is the total minus one
ListBox1.ListIndex = ListBox1.ListCount - 1

Enjoy! Icey 12:55, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - I've managed to fix my program by changing focus. Robmods 17:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)