Hard word wrapping in gedit

gedit is a handy option for dealing ‘.txt. files.

Unfortunately, gedit does not contain any hard word wrapping plugin.

1. Open gedit
2. Navigate to Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins
3. Enable “External Tools”and press “close”
4. Now, go to “Tools” -> “Manage External Tools”
5. Press “New” (press ‘+’ sign) and enter “Line Break at Col 80″ (or any name you like)
6. Paste the following script in the “command(s)” text area (you can choose to leave out the #comments, these are only here as a reminder in case you want to modify it to fit your needs):

#!/bin/sh
BREAK=80
# fmt [-WIDTH][OPTION]… [FILE]…
# –uniform-spacing — one space between words, two after sentences
# –split-only — split long lines, but do not refill
# –width=WIDTH — maximum line width (default of 75 columns)
# when FILE is -, read standard input
fmt –uniform-spacing –split-only –width $BREAK –

7. Choose “Current selection” as Input
8. Choose “Replace current selection” as Output
9. At this point, you can choose to create a shortcut key such as “ctrl+m” for easy access.
10. Close “External Tools Manager” by pressing the “Close” button
11. Now this script is executable under the “Tools” menu. Alternatively, you can use your shortcut key for quick access.

My gedit version: 3.4.1, OS: Ubuntu 12.04 (64-bit)

Mex Error in Matlab

While using mex compiler in Matlab 2010+ versions, error occurs due to the conflict between tha shared libaries used by Matlab and the OS (mine is Ubuntu 11.10).

One of the solutions is to remove the Matlab shared libraries and use show the system shared libraries to Matlab.

This can be done by

cd $MATLAB
cd sys/os/glnx86
mkdir old
mv libstdc++.* libg2c.* libgcc_s* old

Then, update the library path

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib32:/usr/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
source: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/8079-how-to-get-working-matlab-coder-in-linux

Speeding Up Matlab

The performance of the linear algebra operations in any machine ultimately depend on the efficient BLAS implementation available on the machine and Matlab is not an exception!

By default, Matlab uses a version of Intel MKL which they upgrade with every release.

But usually the default option will not be optimal for the particular machine.

Luckily, Linux version of Intel MKL is free for non-commercial use.

We may download and install it to improve the performance.

I could install it on  my machine today. But linking Intel MKL with Matlab is not completed yet.

I’ll update it once I complete the job.

Adding New Application Launcher to Unity in Ubuntu

To add New Application Launcher (here we are using Matlab as example)  to Unity in Ubuntu 11.10, copy the following into a file with an extension ‘.desktop’ and save it in /usr/share/applications/.

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Matlab2010b
Comment=Matlab2010b
Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2010b/bin/matlab -desktop
Icon=/usr/local/MATLAB/Matlab_Logo.png
Terminal=false

You may replace Matlab with any other application of your choice, but don’t forget to update the other relevant information.

Enhancing Bash

Use the following e lines in Bash init. (/etc/bash.bashrc in Ubuntu 11.10!)

export HISTCONTROL=erasedups 
export HISTSIZE=10000 
shopt -s histappend

The first line removes the duplicate commands saved in history (when a command is entered).
Second line sets history size to 1000 lines.
The third line makes sure that when you exit a bash shell, the history from that session is appended to ~/.bash_history. (By default this may not happen always especially when you are working on multiple shells!)

Searching History in Bash

Often we require to repeat a command already typed earlier in bash.

To search for a previous command used in bash, use CTRL+R and start typing the previous command.

Use CTRL+R  again (while searching), and it will jump back further in history and search with the same text.

ENTER will execute command.(You may also use CTRL+O as well for the same.)

The command can be modified using the arrow keys before pressing ENTER.

CTRL+C cancels the search.

Latex Symbols in Matlab figure on Ubuntu

By default, Matlab figure inUbuntu (I’ve faced this problem in 10.04, 10.10, 11.04, and 11.10) is unable to interpret the latex symbols.

Matlab figure also shows problems with fonts installed.

We can correct it by installing packages using the command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi

Spellcheck with Kile

We often need to run spell-check in Kile. Unfortunately, current version of Kile (2.1.0) does not ignore all latex commands and it is a pain to do spell-check with Kile.

An easy way to do this is to use ‘aspell’. Run the following in command line (terminal)

aspell -c yourFile.tex