Free away from software for linux

wxSand is a Falling Sand Game is a particle toy - you can play with different elements, explore how they interact, and, in some reimplementations, make your own elements.

It is great fun to make interactive structures, ecosystems, and toys in a Falling Sand Game.

First of all, mad props go out to the original creator of this game. Great idea. I only wish I could read Japanese... Heres a link to the original, or at least as close to the original as I can find (Again, without knowing how to read Japanese.)
http://ishi.blog2.fc2.com/blog-entry-158.html

Having wasted hours of productivity on the Java verison of the Falling Sand Game, I began to think of improvements that could be made from the original. No source was available for the original, and Java isnt my choice programming language, that I decided to start de novo with C/C++ and the cross-platform wxWidgets.

(I leave it to you Java fans out there to make your own improved Falling Sand Game.)

I tend to feel that The Falling Sand Game should be more of a Zen experience than anything else. I also belive that the game should be as cyclic as possible, so that environments can run and evolve for long periods of time. Finally, I realized the close connection of The Sand Game with the game of Life: Whereby, with a few very simple rules, and some starting conditions, you can create a very unpredictable outcome.
Of course, the original is pretty sweet. So Ive make a version with my own rules, and one with the original rules, and then one with the original rules plus some neat extra items. I have implemented many, many more interactions and elements than the original version. Discover them as you play.

Version 2 has no fire (Versions 3 & 4 do, though.) I dont like how easy it is to destroy everything. It also doesnt have any free-moving characters. I feel they distract attention from the evolution of the field.

Originally, I didnt want to make this Open Source. I think it takes away from the mysticism of the game. Those of you that are so inclined should be able to see the simple algorithm. Note the close connection with the game of Life. Also note the impossible situations, like unequalized water levels. These arent shortcomings of the game, but instead interesting artifacts of the rules of this alternate reality!

Call this script from the Autostart folder, and it will update Kopetes away message for each interval (requires Kopete 0.12 or higher). The away messages are by default defined in ~/.kopete-away-msgs. Each line can contain either:
- a comment (starting with a #)
- flags message
The flags define some properties to each away message. Flags are defined only at the start of the line, beginning and ending with a %. The following flags are supported.
[0-9]*[smhd] Determines how long this message should be shown before a new one is chosen. This is the sleep(1) syntax.
a Only show this message when youre away.
c This line is a command, use its output as away message.
i Show the contents of a file, line by line. The message should contain the path to the file. Do not use ~ but use /home/$USER instead. Empty lines in the included file are skipped.
n Use the next message in the file for the next iteration.
o Only show this message when youre online.
x Dont use this message when looking for a random message. This means this line is only accessible when the former line contains the n flag.
- Show the message less than normal times
-- Show the message even more less
--- Show the message sometimes
To determine your online status, you need to have the Web Presence plugin enabled. By default, it reads the file ~/.webstatus.xml. Adapt the variable below if you store the file somewhere else. The script wont do anything when youre offline or partially away (that is, some protocols are Away, some protocols are Online).
Because the web status plugin is used, the process of retrieving the current webstatus is not really reliable. It may happen that you turn back to online when you set the status on Away in a short time. If this doesnt happen in about 10 seconds after the status change, you may consider the status change as successful.
Example ~/.kopete-away-msgs file:
========================================================================
# Sometimes, show uptime for one minute
%1mc--% uptime
# Fortune rocks, but dont pick too long messages (the length of away
# messages is limited.
%2mc% fortune -s -n 120
# just show Hello world for the default interval
Hello world
# Show a away message for 60 seconds.
%a60% Im away now.
# Ask people to say something when youre online
%o% Please message me!
# Show all contents of the Linux README line by line. Show each line for
# 3 seconds.
%3i% /usr/src/linux/README
# Tell a little story when Im away. These lines must emerge in the
# right order, so mind the n and x flags! The x flags make sure we dont
# start in the middle of the story. And, show each line for about 5
# seconds.
%na5% Goodbye, all you people,
%nax5% Theres nothing you can say
%nax5% To make me change my mind.
%ax5% Goodbye.
==================================================================
Enhancements:
- Ability to query the online/away status directly from Kopete (DCOP). This requires a patched Kopete, see the description for more details on how to proceed.
- Fortune mode: Pick a random line from a given text file.
- First check the online/away status to prevent unnecessary command calls.
- Various bugfixes

Konvi-Kopete Away Sync is a small script that helps sync Kopete and Konversation away status via DCOP.

Copy the file to either ~/.kde/share/apps/konversation/scripts for local install or $KDEDIR/share/apps/konversation/scripts for system wide install. Then bind /exec dblAway.sh away and /exec dblAway.sh back to whatever commands you want (Settings->Configure Konversation->Behavior->Command Aliases)

Tested on Konversation 1.0.1 with Kopete 0.12.5 on KDE 3.5.7 on Archlinux Duke.

Post which Kopete versions and Konvi versions it works on!

zlcatalog project is a C library that can be used to organize information in a non-hierarchical way.
The zlcatalog system attempts to break away from the common hierarchical paradigm found in many applications today. The tree structure of folders and items is a natural extension of an operating systems structure used to store files.
But is this the best way of organizing things? What if I want something to belong to more than one group? What if I want to view my groups in a different way? Do I really need to know how my files are stored on the disk? The zl_catalog system attempts to address these issues.
Main features:
- XML file structure
- elements can belong to multiple groups
- groups can be sorted by name, date, modification or access
- API provides easy methods of bulding groups from directories, adding/removing groups, adding/removing elements, etc.
Enhancements:
- elements now track when they are accessed, which can be used for sorting
- moved filesystem related functionality to zl_catalog_fs.c
- added the ability to bound a group to a range
- added the ability to shuffle groups
- various bug fixes

BakaSub is a GTK+/Gnome video subtitling program. It supports Super Station Alpha File formats for titles. BakaSub is written entirely in ANSI C++ (using the -pedantic flag of EGCS) so it should be portable too. I aim for full Gnome compliance in BakaSub, as well as some Gnomey features (like graphics dragndrop, concurrent events, etc). Currently there are no Gnome specific features or support other than using GTK+, but it is basically a matter of turning on a flag in the Makefile. More options will be done on that later.
BakaSub was being designed directly from Kotus popular and god-like Sub Station Alpha program for Windows. Although the two programs share no actual code (they are written in very different languages, in very different environments!) I aim to have full Sub Station Alpha compatability. What does this mean for you, the user? It means that any script you create with BakaSub, you can trade with your friends who have SSA. It also means that any SSA script you receive will work perfectly out of the box (minus a few font differences) and any SSA script you edit will retain 100% of its previous data (no loss of data after going through BakaSub).
In modern versions of BakaSub (about the last two) I have made a decision to break away from SSAs user interface, however, because I think that it limits the user in some ways that are understandable for SSAs implementation, but which I have the opportunity to do away with because of the speed of C++. For example, SSA (at least as of version 3.x) displays a single subtitle for you to look at in the preview window, while BakaSub actually shows a scale-model preview with all concurrent subtitles and graphics.
Enhancements:
- Frame slider is now more functional. I figured out the proper hack to reconfigure a slider at runtime (grr!). Some more work is needed here though.
- SSA 3.x save support is now in, in its basic form. Some stuff probably doesnt work right. Dont bet the farm on this just yet =). To use it use Save As.... Save doesnt do anything yet.
- During SSA 3.x loads, styles that exist in the local style library (e.g., *Default vs Default) are no longer loaded. I dont know if this is the proper behavior but for now thats how it works.
- The very beginnings of Sconv integration are in there.
- bttv_ttf has been reworked to be a full multithreaded application. This means that there are now two threads during its execution: the frame engine, which is producing frames ahead of time, and the display engine, which is doing exquisite timing and data capture, and letting the frame engine know when to make another frame. The display engine has POSIX realtime priorities set if youre root, and the frame engine has normal priorities. This works
- much better on my uniprocessor system, and on dual or greater, it will be even better.
- The plug-in architecture is now in place (at least an early version). This will probably undergo some more changes before I leave it to start turning various things into plug-ins and normalizing the plug-in interfaces. There are also two brand new plug-ins, derived from the old statically linked ones, the SSA loader and the external rendering playback device.
- A new debug level has been added, DBG_ERROR. This is for fatal errors that cause a routine to fail and return, as opposed to DBG_WARNING, which means that the results will probably be invalid.

BlueProximity project helps you add a little more security to your desktop. It does so by detecting one of your bluetooth devices, most likely your mobile phone, and keeping track of its distance. If you move away from your computer and the distance is above a certain level (no measurement in meters is possible) for a given time, it automatically locks your desktop (or starts any other shell command you want).

Once away your computer awaits its master back - if you are nearer than a given level for a set time your computer unlocks magically without any interaction (or starts any other shell command you want).

TAC project is a pure Tcl version of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).
The TAC client began its life as a small add-on program distributed with TiK, the Tcl/Tk client.
TAC has only a few of the features found in native Windows and Macintosh clients.
It is easy for users to add features to TAC using Tcl. TAC is meant to give users with only console access the ability to use AOL Instant Messenger.
Enhancements:
- Small bug fixed with away package that allows numbers in away messages
- Mobile phone package added
- New Away command: /awayfile or a:f sets the away message to the contents of the filename supplied as an argument
- Bugs fixed with shell escape function