Here are some charts that show the results:

好，鬧完，既然俾咗錢，唯有自救，用 XCode + Applescript + shell script 寫咗個 application 俾 Mac OS 10.5 嘅 user 用（唔知 10.4 得唔得，得嘅話通知聲），可以聽得番 archive，呢度 download。Download 完記得睇 README 點樣用！為咗獲得最佳效果，請同時下載 Real Player & Flip4Mac，得閒可以順手裝埋 Perian。

更新 2/7/2008 6:25pm: 如果你安裝咗 Flip4Mac，你要先響 System Preferences 度打開 Flip4Mac，make sure “Use Filp4Mac WMV Browser Plug-in” 選項無被揀中。

延伸閱讀：
Slashdot 報導：http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/25/2150226
一篇對 Darusau 的回應：http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/101017/index.html
來看看 OOXML 有多難看：http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/disharmony-of-ooxml.html

This bug is serious, but very difficult to manifest itself. Under rare conditions, a form post will be sent to the web server twice without your notice. Say, if you’re shopping in an online e-shop, and you’re so “lucky” that you encountered this bug, you would be buying the same goods twice, or if you’re making a payment, you would be paying the amount double.

Thanks Alfred Peng for confirming the bug so that Firefox developers began taking a look at the bug. From the perspective of open source development, identifying and testing thoroughly for the existence of the bug and filing a detail bug report with reproducible steps is the task I should do. The fix for the bug is just less than 10 lines long (the test case is much longer), but it may take me days if I have to come up with a patch. Filing a bug report is something anyone who speaks English can do, so if you find a bug in Firefox, please go to their bug tracking system and submit a problem report. The more people contribute to it, the better the software will become, and by doing so, we, in turn, are helping ourselves to create a more pleasant web experience.

Doing so in Firefox is easy thanks to the little yet handy plugin called SwitchProxy, but for Safari or other applications which use the global system settings of Mac OS, one has to go through many steps in System Preferences to set them, and then go through the exact steps again to unset them. Too repetitive. I wish there is a way to set and unset proxies easily, but I cannot find one. I bit the bullet and use AppleScript (yuck) to do that, here’s the complete script (beware, this is my first AppleScript program):

set proxyServer to "localhost"
set proxyPort to "30000"

tell application "System Preferences"
  activate
  set the current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.network"
  get the name of every anchor of pane id "com.apple.preference.network"
  reveal anchor "Proxies" of pane id "com.apple.preference.network"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
  tell process "System Preferences"
    tell window "Network"
      tell sheet 1
        tell tab group 1
          tell group 1
            repeat with n from 1 to 3
              tell scroll area 1
                tell table 1
                  select row n
                  tell row n
                    click checkbox 1
                    set turnOnProxy to value of checkbox 1
                  end tell
                end tell
              end tell
              if turnOnProxy is 1 then
                tell group 1
                  set focused of text field 1 to true
                  set value of text field 1 to proxyPort
                  set focused of text field 2 to true
                  set value of text field 2 to proxyServer
                end tell
              end if
            end repeat
          end tell
        end tell
        click button "OK"
      end tell
      click button "Apply"
    end tell
  end tell
end tell

ignoring application responses
  tell application "System Preferences" to quit
end ignoring

if turnOnProxy is 1 then
  say "Proxies are set"
else
  say "Proxies are unset"
end if

I hate to use AppleScript as it simply plays back what a human does, and so the speed is slow, which takes about 5 seconds to finish. I tried to do that by shell script but I couldn’t find the right way to do so, having looked at the defaults command but seems it is not capable at what I want. Anybody knows?

I found this great website that explains how to use LaTeX and the CJK package on OS X. The good news is that the author of the page provides a shell script for installing any Unicode truetype fonts for TexLive so that you can use the truetype fonts in your LaTeX documents. The bad news is… it doesn’t work on my system. I tried it on both Arphic Big5 and GB2312 Kai fonts, and when I ran my LaTeX document through the latex command (or in TeXShop, for that matters), I came to this error:

! Package inputenc Error: Keyboard character used is undefined
(inputenc)                in inputencoding `utf8'.

See the inputenc package documentation for explanation.
Type  H   for immediate help.
 ...                                              

l.194 ^^[
         ndinput

Trying the shell script on the STKaiti font (/Library/Fonts/华文楷体.ttf) shipped with OS X, is even worse, because ttf2tfm gives a "Bus error" (or segfault on Linux) when parsing the truetype font, looks like a bug in ttf2tfm:

$ ttf2tfm stkaiti.ttf -P 0 -E 3 -w "stkaitiu@Unicode@"
This is ttf2tfm version 1.5

stkaitiu00:

Glyph  Code   Glyph Name                Width  llx    lly      urx    ury
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bus error

At the end, I resort to extracting the necessary files from Debian packages (hurray Debian) and put them into ~/Library/texmf, and that works!

The Debian packages I use are latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-bkai00mp and latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-gkai00mp. Since Debian packages are just ar archives, they can be extracted by the ar x command. After the deb package has been extracted, extract the data.tar.gz file, and then look for the folders called fonts and tex, move them to ~/Library/texmf, which you have to create. Now you should have a directory structure like this:

After the font files have been put in place, run these two commands (for the Big5 Kai truetype font):

$ sudo texhash
$ sudo updmap --enable Map bkaiu.map

For the GB2312 one, use:

$ sudo texhash
$ sudo updmap --enable Map gkaiu.map

It's that easy!

• http://www.teresi.us/html/writing/handwriting.html: “Handwriting Recognition, Using a Neural Network Character Classifier”, have a description of Newton Messagepad’s handwriting recognition engine
• http://www.byte.com/art/9609/sec17/art7.htm: overview of companies that work on Chinese handwriting recognition

Now Google Calendar users in China can finally enjoy the same SMS alert service as in other countries. Although they mentions China Unicom as the only mobile provider to be supported, I have no problem in registering the service and receiving alerts even I’m a China Mobile subscriber. This alert service is very handy to everyone, as Google Calendar will send you SMS to your mobile phone whenever an event is going to begin.

An interesting tidbit is, they sent the verification code to my mobile phone via HUTCHISON_HK, where HUTCHISON is one of the mobile service providers in Hong Kong. It seems that Google choose neither China Mobile nor China Unicom, the two major mobile providers in China, as their partners.

Usually this doesn’t pose any problems as Google China serves China maps (and only China maps) at Google 地图, which provides all the functionalities of the global Google Maps website, sans satellite images. This is annoying nevertheless, it’d be the best if users can see maps of China seamlessly when they’re viewing maps.google.com, without jumping out from maps.google.com and then type in another URL just to view some data that’s still backwardly regarded by the Chinese authority as confidential and sensitive.

“Hybrid” mode for China maps is another feature that would be handy to Chinese users. Satellites images are already available but just not being shown on ditu.google.com. Since hybrid mode requires a special layer of map tiles, specially they have a transparent background so that the satellite images can show through underneath the maps, without post-processing map data provided by Mapabc this is not achievable. By Google’s terms of usage of the map data, processing the maps and then re-distribute is not legal. We can only use some freely redistributable map data such as from www.openstreetmap.org.

Hooking up maps.google.com with maps from Google China is not difficult, actually that’s much easier than I thought because Google Maps API already have the mechanism to add a new map type for showing custom map data. My proof-of-concept is shown below, press the “Ditu” button at the top right hand corner and you’ll see maps delivered from ditu.google.com.

Ideally, this “mashup” should best be implemented using the new Google Mapplets, this will give users the best user experience as they only need to add a mapplet and then Google China maps will be embedded to the map window automatically, users are not required to go to this page. But since Google Mapplets doesn’t support adding new map types due to security concerns, this currently is not an option. Frankly, I don’t see there’s any security concerns by supporting new map types.

Don’t be surprised if you notice that the satellite images do not align with the Google China maps, because Google China intentionally shifted the latter to please the Chinese authority. Did it say that the maps are regarded as national security?