Harsh J

Yes, really.

Ok so you have started with Django, the Python web-framework and are finding yourself wasting a lot of precious little seconds on their regularly updated documentation online?

(The docs folder in your downloaded django tarball is just not so up to date!)

Well then this is the guide for you. It will explain in neat little steps on how to go about obtaining the freshest of all django documentation online (From their code repository) and build it for use on your local machine or web-server.

First off, here are the requirements you will need installed before you begin:

1. SVN (Subversion)
2. Sphinx (Python)
3. make, etc… build tools

For example, on a Debian/Ubuntu system you would run:

harsh@work:~$ sudo apt-get install subversion python-sphinx make

Fetch the documentation

Once you have got them all installed, lets start the process by fetching the documentation files from Django’s SVN repository:

harsh@work:~$ mkdir django && cd django

harsh@work:~/django$ svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/docs

After the above command finishes downloading the documentation files (It’s checking-out source code from the repository), you should have a folder named docs under the current working folder (~/django in my example’s case).

Build the HTML documentation

Our next task is to build these reStructuredText (reST) files into HTML using Sphinx. We issue the following command to do so:

harsh@work:~/django$ cd docs

harsh@work:~/django/docs$ make html

Very simple! All the built files would go to the ~/django/docs/_build folder if you’re following my example. This folder would contain two folders named doctree and html. The html one is our sweet nectar of immortality!

Note: There are other make [options] that you could probably use, such as pickle, latex, etc. Also, the file conf.py under the documentation root might be of interest to people who would like to customize things a little more.

Done!

Now that we have our files ready, we can move it to a preferred place. For me it was /var/www (My local web-server root). So all I then had to do was:

harsh@home-desktop:~/django/docs$ mv _build/html /var/www/django-doc

That’s it. Now you can just browse to this folder either directly (Files) or by putting it on your local development server. Enjoy!

P.s. With some more configuration, you can automate this process and even make it update weekly or so for you. So add all the salt you would like for taste, and happy hacking!

Saw this movie at the theaters today. A very nice concept packed into a slightly-bad movie with a good star cast.

The moment of the movie when the Earth actually stands still, was the best part among all other. Honestly I got interested in this movie only cause it had Keanu Reeves in its star-list. And he was pretty good as the visiting extraterrestrial. It’s kinda weird to say that, since it was only his body in use.

The movie should have had one scene of an actual speech. The people should have known why they were being hit by those forces. Instead, it ends abruptly leaving no cliffhanger. The visitor and his assistance, all just go away. The original 1951 movie had a better plot, with more details on the violence and harm humans caused. This was pretty fine otherwise, including humor just when it begins to get boring.

P.s. So the universe does have the cyclops, I suspected so for long!

ThinkDigit.com, the online presence of one of the best selling Technology magazines Digit, has quite recently upgraded the website and its features and have added quite a lot to it. Previously, they only had a forum and a few additional magazine related links. Now, they’ve extended it with new sections like:

• Product Reviews, where the team posts various new product reviews and test results.
• Blog Watch, where you can find links to some of the best blogs online related to various topics of technology.
• Tech Q&A, a more interactive version of the discussion forums which helps solving all technical questions and answers.

And also a few others, and enough content to launch them smoothly into the new age of the Internet media.

The discussion forum is one of the most active in India and has a lot of great members who are ready to answer and troubleshoot any technical queries or problems a member might have. Apart from this, they also have a great off-topic and debate sections that have posts definitely worth reading in them. All this supported and moderated by a great team of administrators and moderators.

About something new in this re-invention of their web-presence, the free classified ads section is surely something very much welcomed by the community they have gathered online. It allows people to post free classified ads related to buying/selling of technology products, services and even jobs.

Along with this free service there does exist a paid option too; using which a company can publish to a 125×125 pixels banner that will appear in the Classifieds section of the ThinkDigit website. This costs 5,000/- INR and an additional 3,000/- INR could get you this and a 6×9 cm block in the digit magazine under the same classifieds or the web watch sections (Which is for online businesses). This is pretty low cost for a very good coverage of the Indian technology community.

This new site is a good start to expanding the Digit magazine’s online presence.

Of what post comes next, its only a review done for Create Online Buzz, and is a paid post.

But for real, the Digit Forum is pretty good to argue at. So much that you start thinking about the third side of a coin!