The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[rotting bones]

Which makes me wonder: how does everyone else manage this? Are all other people, perhaps, by now, using smartphone apps that somehow present pdf files on smartphones in reasonably readable ways, about which I only haven't heard anything yet because I'm so out of touch?

Have you tried ReadEra? It's pretty much the equivalent of the VLC app for ebooks. I've been using it on 3 generations of phones by now.

On the top left menu, if you choose Books & Documents, it scans the phone for ebooks. Books that were opened at least once are shown under Reading Now. It remembers your last read location. When a document is open, you can tap the document to open the bottom bar. There, you can choose a fixed orientation.

[Raphael]

Have you tried ReadEra? It's pretty much the equivalent of the VLC app for ebooks. I've been using it on 3 generations of phones by now.

On the top left menu, if you choose Books & Documents, it scans the phone for ebooks. Books that were opened at least once are shown under Reading Now. It remembers your last read location. When a document is open, you can tap the document to open the bottom bar. There, you can choose a fixed orientation.

Thank you! I've used it for epubs for a while now, but I haven't used it for pdfs yet. Perhaps I should.

[rotting bones]

I'd say the problem with html is that it requires most graphics and illustrations to be in their own separate files, which makes transporting an illustrated document as a whole more complicated than necessary.

DJVU was superior to PDF in every way.

[Torco]

I like readera. i didn't know it was popular.

choosing pdf over open file formats was the canonical event. it was all downhill from there,

[Raphael]

Is there an easy way to replace double line breaks

with single line breaks
in txt files?

I sometimes pre-write texts as txt files and then transfer them to more word-processor-friendly formats, like odt, for final polishing. In txt format, it makes sense to have the paragraph breaks as double line breaks, so that there's space between the paragraphs. In odt format, at least IMO, it's better to have just one paragraph break and let the paragraph style provide the space between paragraphs. But I don't really like the idea of turning dozens of double line breaks into single line breaks by hand.

[Raphael]

Is there an easy way to replace double line breaks

with single line breaks
in txt files?

I sometimes pre-write texts as txt files and then transfer them to more word-processor-friendly formats, like odt, for final polishing. In txt format, it makes sense to have the paragraph breaks as double line breaks, so that there's space between the paragraphs. In odt format, at least IMO, it's better to have just one paragraph break and let the paragraph style provide the space between paragraphs. But I don't really like the idea of turning dozens of double line breaks into single line breaks by hand.

OK, never mind, in Libreoffice you can apparently do it this way: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/find-and- ... uous/44515

[MacAnDàil]

Talking of LibreOffice, I am currently creating the index for my thesis and I have no idea why it keeps transforming my entries into keywords every time I open and close the file, adding more colons each time. Also impenetrable is the unremovable colour and the text going out of the margins despite the intends and spacing being positive.

[MacAnDàil]

PS The index settings keep changing when I open and close the file also.

[MacAnDàil]

Writing here made me realise what to search for on the LibreOffice website and I found that changing to odt from docx removed the colour and index problems but the text outside the margin still seems to be there.

[Raphael]

This weekend, I had a pretty weird computer sound related experience, and I still don't know how to explain it.

Late yesterday afternoon, while I was watching stuff on a fairly niche commercial streaming service, the audio suddenly turned weird. I was listening through earbuds, because I don't have external speakers, and my main desktop computer doesn't have inbuilt speakers.

The weird thing is, part of the audio was still fine, but other parts - in the same stream - were completely inaudible. And when I checked other audio sources, like my music, the audio there was fine. So common sense told me that the problem had to be with the streaming service.

Except that it wasn't. When I returned to that streaming service today, the audio was still partly messed up, and all my other audio still worked fine. Until I unplugged my earbuds and plugged them in again. Then, the audio turned back to normal.

How could a problem with my earbuds have the effect that part, but only part, of the audio from one, and only one specific source was messed up? All I know about audio technology tells me that that simply shouldn't be possible.

[Travis B.]

This weekend, I had a pretty weird computer sound related experience, and I still don't know how to explain it.

Late yesterday afternoon, while I was watching stuff on a fairly niche commercial streaming service, the audio suddenly turned weird. I was listening through earbuds, because I don't have external speakers, and my main desktop computer doesn't have inbuilt speakers.

The weird thing is, part of the audio was still fine, but other parts - in the same stream - were completely inaudible. And when I checked other audio sources, like my music, the audio there was fine. So common sense told me that the problem had to be with the streaming service.

Except that it wasn't. When I returned to that streaming service today, the audio was still partly messed up, and all my other audio still worked fine. Until I unplugged my earbuds and plugged them in again. Then, the audio turned back to normal.

How could a problem with my earbuds have the effect that part, but only part, of the audio from one, and only one specific source was messed up? All I know about audio technology tells me that that simply shouldn't be possible.

Something was borked with your streaming service, and and disabling and then reenabling audio jogged it so as to fix it, basically.

[Raphael]

Something was borked with your streaming service, and and disabling and then reenabling audio jogged it so as to fix it, basically.

I don't think I can follow this. My streaming service was borked, and unplugging my earbuds and plugging them back in un-borked it?

[Travis B.]

Something was borked with your streaming service, and and disabling and then reenabling audio jogged it so as to fix it, basically.

I don't think I can follow this. My streaming service was borked, and unplugging my earbuds and plugging them back in un-borked it?

Yes, exactly. Something was borked about its sound processing, and unplugging your earbuds and then plugging them back in reset it.

[Raphael]

Something was borked with your streaming service, and and disabling and then reenabling audio jogged it so as to fix it, basically.

I don't think I can follow this. My streaming service was borked, and unplugging my earbuds and plugging them back in un-borked it?

Yes, exactly. Something was borked about its sound processing, and unplugging your earbuds and then plugging them back in reset it.

But I have old-fashioned, analogue earbuds.

[Travis B.]

I don't think I can follow this. My streaming service was borked, and unplugging my earbuds and plugging them back in un-borked it?

Yes, exactly. Something was borked about its sound processing, and unplugging your earbuds and then plugging them back in reset it.

But I have old-fashioned, analogue earbuds.

On modern systems the system can detect whether you have something plugged into the analog audio out jack or not.

[Raphael]

On modern systems the system can detect whether you have something plugged into the analog audio out jack or not.

Ah. Now it makes sense!

At least kind of.

[Travis B.]

On modern systems the system can detect whether you have something plugged into the analog audio out jack or not.

Ah. Now it makes sense!

At least kind of.

Remember that on systems with internal speakers they will often automatically switch between internal speakers and audio out when you plug something into or unplug something from audio out.

[Raphael]

Remember that on systems with internal speakers they will often automatically switch between internal speakers and audio out when you plug something into or unplug something from audio out.

Thank you! I'm still somewhat confused, though. For instance, parts of what I watched was sports-related, and in some cases, I could hear all the regular sounds from a stadium - the noise of the crowd, balls being hit, etc. - but I couldn't hear what the commentary team was saying. Stuff like that was what initially made me so sure that the problem was with the service. Still confused about how such a specific form of audio borking could happen, and only affect one computer.

[Travis B.]

Remember that on systems with internal speakers they will often automatically switch between internal speakers and audio out when you plug something into or unplug something from audio out.

Thank you! I'm still somewhat confused, though. For instance, parts of what I watched was sports-related, and in some cases, I could hear all the regular sounds from a stadium - the noise of the crowd, balls being hit, etc. - but I couldn't hear what the commentary team was saying. Stuff like that was what initially made me so sure that the problem was with the service. Still confused about how such a specific form of audio borking could happen, and only affect one computer.

There was probably two audio streams internally, one for the stadium sounds and one for the commentary, and something just got borked with just one of the streams on your streaming client on just your one machine due to some bug or glitch that we will probably never know the details of. This reminds me of when I play Leben Heißt Leben by Laibach on web Spotify on my work machine it always suddenly stops and switches to the next song at a certain point mid-song, whereas it never does that when I play the same song on the desktop Spotify client on my own Linux box.

[Raphael]

This reminds me of when I play Leben Heißt Leben by Laibach on web Spotify on my work machine it always suddenly stops and switches to the next song at a certain point mid-song, whereas it never does that when I play the same song on the desktop Spotify client on my own Linux box.

I've long had a lot of sympathy for the Skeptic Movement, but stuff like this makes me wonder if there might actually be nefarious supernatural forces at work in the world.