Semi-Automated Mail Merge in OpenOffice

I released a new version of my MailMerger application (http://rubyforge.org/projects/mailmergehelper/) . The application now uses java and ruby to automate the collection and processing of csv data to be merged. It uses a java class that can transform csv to ods (OpenOffice Calc document) and viceversa and html to ods. The Writer mail merge template must use a datasource that links to an ods spreadsheet. It works with OpenOffice 2.3. The program has helped me alot at work, where we use it to automatically take the html data produced by RenWeb's create-a-report and convert it to ods so that OO Writer can use it for mail merge. The program also allows for custom ruby scripts to process the data before is sent to Writer. I also found that the best way of doing labels in OpenOffice is to download the Microsoft Word templates from the Avery website and then convert them into odt.

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Power Automate: SFTP action "Test connection failed"

When I added an SFTP create file action to my Power Automate flow ( https://flow.microsoft.com ) , I got the following error in the action step, within the designer: "Test connection failed" To troubleshoot the Power Automate connection, I had to: go the Power Automate portal then "Data"->"Connections" the sftp connection was there, I clicked on the ellipsis, and entered the connection info It turns out, that screen provides more details about the connection error. In my case, it was complaining that "SSH host key finger-print xxx format is not supported. It must be in 'MD5' format". I had provided the sha fingerprint that WinScp shows. Instead, I needed to use the MD5 version of the fingerprint. To get that, I had to run in command line (I was in a folder that had openssh in it): ssh -o FingerprintHash=md5 mysftpsite.com To get the fingerprint in MD5 format. I took the string (without the "MD5:" part of the string) and put ...

How to create online multiplayer HTML5 games in Contruct2

Construct2 can use websockets to send and receive messages between games. By using socket-io , we can use a Node.js script as the server and my modification to the socket-io plugin for Construct2 to allow the games to synchronize data between them in real-time. There are two parts to this design: the Node.js server and the Construct2 clients (the games playing). The main part of building an online multiplayer HTML5 game is to plan: how the clients will communicate how often and what to communicate how much of the logic will go into the server and how much to the client. In my sample game, I chose to have each client own a player and have the server just relay messages: Use string messages in the form TypeOfMessage, Parameter1, Paremeter2, Parater3, etc to communicate. Have the clients send their player position about 16 times a second. Whenever their player shoots, the client needs to send a message immediately. Almost all of the game logic will...

How to use Windows SSO with OpenXava

One of the nice things about the .NET web environment is the dead easy way to implement Single Sign On in your web apps through Active Directory authentication. In the Java world there are multiple alternatives to use Windows’ Single Sign On with Java based web apps. One of those alternatives is Waffle . Waffle allows your Java web app to authenticate against Active Directory groups (and users). The only caveat is that your web server needs to be running in Windows, which kind of makes sense. In this article, you will learn the steps required to have your OpenXava web application use Waffle to authenticate your Windows users. The first step is to download Waffle from their site and then copy the JAR files outlined in https://github.com/dblock/waffle/blob/master/Docs/tomcat/TomcatSingleSignOnValve.md to the OpenXava’s tomcat server. In your OpenXava project, create servlets.xml in the Web-inf, containing the following: <!-- the role name (the domain gorup) must be e...

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