Should OpenOffice.org (OOo) writer (the text editor unit of the OpenSource office suite) have the horizontal ruler, on the top of the page, visible by default, or should it be hidden by default? This is the argument that it should be hidden by default. If you become a registered user of the OOo web site, you can actually vote on this. Let me know how that goes.

Xfce 4.6 is released (yesterday). Xfce is a gnome-ish desktop for Linux that uses very few resources (and has very few bells and whistles). “Xfce 4.6 features a new configuration backend, a new settings manager, a brand new sound mixer, and several huge improvements to the session manager and the rest of Xfce’s core components.” Details here. Personally, I’m thinking about setting up an install that uses emacs as the ‘desktop.’ I’ve got an old laptop that I might try that with. I would have the simplest possible windows manager to run a web browser and do everything else in emacs. This would be for writing in coffee shops and similar locals. That would be cool. I would name the computer “Ivan.”

But even with emacs running the interface, one might want to use vim now and then. and since everything is running on the command line one would want to use regular expressions all the time. So I’ll be wanting to read about Using regular expressions in Vim

According to reports, OpenOffice 3.1 is blindingly fast, and it has some interesting new features and important bug fixes. It won’t ever be as good as my fantasy emacs system, but for a gui-office it is pretty impressive. Here’s and early look.

Qimo is Linux for kids.