Author: pesala

Vivaldi Browser

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Software

A Great Tool for Research I spend half the day online, and use Vivaldi when I am working on my books or website in Serif PagePlus™ or WebPlus™. I have the entire Buddhist Canon on my local drive in HTML format for reference to the texts. I use a Pali English dictionary to help with translation. By tiling tabs to a grid, I can refer to the Pali text, its Commentary, and the Pali-English Dictionary […]

Questions on Buddhism

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Buddhism

How did the religion begin?Buddhism began about 2,600 years ago when an Indian prince saw four signs that made him think deeply about the meaning and purpose of life. He saw an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a monk. When he saw an old man he thought, “Although I am young now, definitely I will become old one day, so I am no different to that old man.” When he saw […]

Tesla is Defining the Future

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Current Affairs

Ignore the FUD • Gigafactories • Performance • Police Cars • TSLA to Mars • FSD Beta • Model S Plaid • Extreme Journey • Tesla Conquers Ford • Tesla Energy • Semi-truck • Cybertruck • Model 3 Highland Never mind the outstanding acceleration, low running costs, and quiet ride, there are other stronger reasons why Teslas are a game-changer in the market-place. Watch this video on Someone Killed My Model 3 – but we’re […]

The Next Emperor

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Buddhism

As the Emperor was getting old, and had no children, he called together the children of all his courtiers and gave them each a seed. He told them, “Whoever grows the best flower will be the next Emperor.” The children all took their seeds home, planted them, and watched over them carefully. The son of the chief gardener thought he had a good chance of winning, as he knew just what to do, but the […]

Time to Go Dark Green

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Current Affairs

The Buddha advised us not to regard the faults of others, the things done and not done by others, but to regard one’s own faults, the things done and not done by oneself. (Dhammapada v 50). Ordinary people feel helpless to bring about changes by voting, demonstrating, and campaigning. In my view, such efforts are not very effective. Two years on from the Grenfell Tower Tragedy, many homes still have unsafe cladding and after many […]

OpenType Kerning in FontCreator 11.5

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Typography

OpenType Kerning Older versions of FontCreator and older applications only support a kern table. However, modern fonts and modern applications use the more powerful OpenType GPOS (Glyph Positioning) kerning feature. Recent versions of FontCreator will allow you to export fonts with this legacy kern table to support older applications. Adding an OpenType Kerning Feature Open the OpenType Designer (Ctrl+F8). If a font has no OpenType features yet, or if you clear the existing features, the […]

FastStone Capture

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Software

Printscreen on Steroids I capture screen shots dozens of time a day to illustrate replies to support questions on forums. I frequently want to annotate the screen shot to point to particular parts of the User Interface, or highlight a problem area. FastStone Capture 9.0 is Shareware, but it is only $19.95 for a lifetime license, so there is no good reason not to register it. If you just want to try before you buy, […]

MainType Font Manager

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Software / Typography

Keeping Your Fonts Organised If you publish anything, whether in print media, as PDF files, or as HTML web pages, you need to use different fonts. Most users have hundreds or thousands installed with their software that they seldom, if ever use. Windows also comes with a lot of default fonts. If you take a little time to organise your fonts, and uninstall unused fonts, the process of selecting fonts in applications will become much […]

Arranged and Forced Marriages

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Buddhism / Current Affairs

Arranged Marriages It is part of the Buddhist tradition for parents to find a suitable wife for their sons. This is given as one of the duties of Parents to their sons in the Siṅgāla Sutta. “In five ways, householder’s son, the parents ministered to as the east by a son show him compassion. They restrain him from evil, they exhort him to do good, they train him to acquire skills, they seek a suitable […]

What Are OpenType Features?

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Typography

Not Just Small Capitals penType fonts can include Decorative Capitals, which may be implemented as Stylistic Alternates, or Contextual Alternates. In my fonts, the coloured capitals are implemented as Stylistic Alternates. This Test Page shows them in use on a web page. Note that you can select the coloured glyphs in the heading. They are text, not graphics. Although browsers support OpenType Stylistic Alternates, WebPlus X8 does not, so on my test page they are […]