Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie is no more.

We have lost two outstanding personalities within the space of 3 weeks.

Mr. Steve Job of Apple Mac is one of them.

The other one is Mr.Dennis Ritchie.

He coauthored with Mr. Kernighan “The C Programming Language” (popularly known as “K. & R.).

That was the beginning of modern computing.

He (Mathematician) was the principal designer of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system, working closely with Mr. Ken Thompson (Electrical Engineer), his longtime Bell Labs collaborator.

His father, Alistair, was an engineer at Bell Labs.

He was recruited by the Sandia National Laboratories, which conducted weapons research and testing.
in fact making A Bomb.

He left Sandia National Laboratories and Joined Bell Labs and remained there till 2007.

Thank god he left lab testing weapons of mass destruction.

Linux we use today originated form UNIX he pioneered.

It is strange coincidence that when cloud computing is on the horizon and tablet becoming  a universal utility both of them passed away without seeing their dream products.

 

There are two others that matter.

They are Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds.

These two will oversee that these products are within the reach of every human being with Amazon bringing the price of Kindle down.

There going to be a sea change.

We have to turn back and reflect on these gentlemen's achievements.

 It was all collective responsibility.

Xournal

Why I am writing about Xournal?

Xournal is a GTK+ application for notetaking, sketching and keeping a journal using a stylus. 

It can also be used to add annotations to PDF files.

It is because when tablets come small utilities become very useful and they will be the mainstay.

• Repository: Debian Main
• Download size: 259,69 KB
• Installed size: 892,00 KB
• Package filename: xournal_0.4.5-2_i386.deb
• Source package: xournal

ROBIN says this.

It’s a kid-friendly pdf annotator that will make your pdf forms look snappy and professional!

Here is a really fun, kid-friendly application that is not only great for taking notes in class, but it’s also an easy pdf annotator for filling out those fancy forms (college or employment applications) that expect you to fill in tiny little spaces with legible writing. Now when the teacher draws a diagram on the chalkboard and you need to copy it down, you can do it on your laptop or netbook instead of a piece of paper that can blow away when you drop your books (I’m clumsy and lose alot of stuff that way, lol) or get lost among all the other stuff you have to carry around in your backpack.

The default is Sans 12, but in this example I selected size 9 for this college application with the teensy weensie boxes they want filled out LEGIBLY. Ha, not with my big loopy handwriting! That’s another way that Xournal is so helpful! Now just place the cursor in the space and type away. Cursor placement is a little tricky at first, but once you get it in your mind that the letters go on top of an imaginary baseline determined by where you click the cursor, it’s effortless. Just think vertically instead of horizontally and put the cursor where an underline would go: “I want the letters on this line. Now you’re ready to start filling out the form.

And you can sign the form using the pencil option. You can choose the thickness! Ball-point pen thin or Sharpie-like thick, and in whatever color you like. For this you need a stylus (or a closed inkpen on a laptop touchpad). But just for fun you can even do it with a mouse!

 

 

 Danny Stieben says this (posted on April 14, 2011) 

Xournal, simply put, is a note-taking Linux application. However, instead of getting a blank box to enter information into, you get a blank piece of “paper” every time you open it up. And that’s all it does, aside from giving you all the tools you could possibly need to pour your heart out on that virtual piece of paper.

And surprisingly, Xournal is a lightweight application, even with the large range of options. 

With a barely marked page open, Xournal takes less than 5MB from your RAM!

Tablet owners will have even more pleasure while using Xournal. 

With the right hardware, it can literally become your virtual paper that you can write on without any issues. Xournal even goes down to subpixels instead of just pixels to create the cleanest, smoothest, and most accurate lines that, when using a tablet, will make up your legible handwriting.

 

Thanks you, young guys, keep us informed, the old guys like me with your discoveries.