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| Date: | Thursday, November 13, 2003 |
| Time: | 7:00 - 9:00 PM |
| Location: | 100 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
Room 1op104 |
Agenda:
| 7:00 - 7:30 PM: | Town Hall Meeting on "Linux in the Community" |
| 7:30 - 8:30 PM: | Keynote presentation by Akbar S. Ahmed on "Understanding Texinfo - Next Generation Man Pages" |
| 8:30 - 9:00 PM: | App of the Month Club discussion: "Emacs and Xemacs" |
| 9:00 PM: | Adjourn to a local restaurant (TBD) for social & food time |
Town Hall Meeting on "Linux in the Community"
Budget shortfalls have had a huge impact on the ability of schools and
community agencies to purchase computers and expensive Microsoft
licenses. Linux offers a cheaper alternative because it runs just
fine on older, slower hardware and there is no cost for the operating
system. We need to help schools and other organizations understand
how Linux can be easy and effective for them to adopt, and how it can
benefit them to be using open source tools to set the foundations for
tomorrow's software developers.
Keynote presentation by Akbar S. Ahmed on "Understanding Texinfo - Next Generation Man Pages"
Texinfo and the Info viewer comprise the official documentation format
of the GNU project. Info offers a next generation upgrade to the tried
and true man pages, however it is often underutilized or not used at all.
An overview of Info will be provided including a brief history, a quick
start guide including commands and concepts, and a real life example of
the Info/Texinfo based documentation used at Delixus, Inc. Experiences
will be shared as to the limits of Info and how it stacks up against the
competition, including docbook and tex. A list of info viewers will be
provided including pseudo-graphical viewers for both Linux and Windows.
Texinfo, the language used to create info files, will be explained in
detail including @-commands, general syntax, document structure, and
outputting of texinfo files into other formats, such as text and html.
An explanation of how to use texinfo mode in Emacs to author texinfo
files along with an overview of how to view info files using the
built-in Emacs viewer.
Akbar S. Ahmed is the President and COO of Delixus, Inc. a software
development and services company with offices in the U.S. and India.
Delixus develops interoperability software for Linux and Windows, has
created a customized Linux distro (Delixus Linux), and is currently
developing a grid computing platform using Linux. Delixus offers
consulting, software development, BPO, and animation services in North
America and Asia. Akbar splits his time between the United States and
India, where he leads the development of Delixus' product
offerings. He is an advocate of Linux usage in small to medium-sized
businesses and is fascinated by inter-networking of Linux and
Windows. He holds an MBA in Information Sciences and a BA in
Economics. In India, Delixus and the Indian Government have
co-sponsored a rural I.T. mobile labs program whereby state-of-the-art
vans provide mobile I.T. labs to schools too poor to have either
computers or the power necessary to run the labs.
App of the Month: "Emacs and Xemacs"
Last month we did vi and vim, so we decided it was only fair to give
Emacs a turn. Come share your favorite Emacs tips and tricks. But
let's not get into an argument about which editor is better, just how
to make the most of Emacs or Xemacs.
-- BillWard - 12 Nov 2003
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