- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a></div>
- <div class="date">24th March 2013</div>
- <div class="body"><p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
-<a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
-about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
-the 1968 short story Kodémus by
-<a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
-came up. The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
-easily available for current and future generations. Some of the
-people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
-reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
-short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
-Commons</a> license. The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
-were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
-
-<p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
-provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
-Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
-<a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
-generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story. The tools to
-transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
-distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
-all I had to do was to use the
-<a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
-<a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
-and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
-conversion. After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
-xsltproc/fop (aka
-<a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
-to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
-nicer <variablelist> typesetting, but that is just a minor
-technical detail.</p>
-
-<p>There were a few challenges, of course. We want to typeset the
-short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
-control over the layout. The original short story have three
-parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
-the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
-that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
-
-<p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
-single star in it, ie <para>*</para>, but it made sure a
-placeholder indicated where the scene shifted. This did not look too
-good without the centring. The next approach was to create a new
-preprocessor directive <?newscene?>, mapping to "<hr/>"
-for HTML and "<fo:block text-align="center"><fo:leader
-leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/></fo:block>"
-for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
-switched at this time). The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-<?xml version='1.0'?>
-<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'>
- <xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')">
- <hr/>
- </xsl:template>
-</xsl:stylesheet>
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-<?xml version='1.0'?>
-<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'>
- <xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')">
- <fo:block text-align="center">
- <fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/>
- </fo:block>
- </xsl:template>
-</xsl:stylesheet>
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>Finally, I came across the <bridgehead> tag, which seem to be
-a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced <?newscene?>
-with <bridgehead>*</bridgehead>. It isn't centred, but we
-can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
-enough.</p>
-
-<p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
-linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
-directive <?linebreak?>, mapping to <br/> in HTML, and
-<fo:block/> in FO/PDF. I suspect there are better ways to do
-this, and welcome ideas and patches on github. The HTML XSL file now
-look like this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-<?xml version='1.0'?>
-<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'>
- <xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)">
- <br/>
- </xsl:template>
-</xsl:stylesheet>
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-<?xml version='1.0'?>
-<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
- xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
- <xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)">
- <fo:block/>
- </xsl:template>
-</xsl:stylesheet>
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
-per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
-structure in the DocBook source. No idea how to do this, so we ended
-up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
-page.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
-<a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
-github</a>
-(<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
-repository</a>). We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
-days.</p>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a></div>
+ <div class="date"> 5th July 2013</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
+for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
+time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
+will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
+ended up picking a
+<a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
+with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
+a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
+second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
+on that below.</p>
+
+<p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
+important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
+listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
+feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
+allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
+requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
+to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
+disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
+get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
+
+<p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
+X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
+significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
+hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
+good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
+I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
+needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
+
+<p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
+visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
+lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
+with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
+I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
+reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
+default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
+reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
+report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
+Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
+kernel developers as
+<a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
+report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
+(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
+Lenovo forums, both for
+<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
+2012-11-10</a> and for
+<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
+03-20-2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
+reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
+on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
+problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
+There is even a
+<a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
+available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
+minutes by writing to a file.</p>
+
+<p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
+contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
+requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
+firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
+Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
+hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
+fixed. :)</p>
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