Computing desk
< November 23	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 25 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 24

Jpegs refusing to save as lower quality

They're scanned images - I had them scanned at high resolution, which I regret now, because I can't do much with them; but when I try to Save As a lower quality file, the file remembers all the other changes I've made, but not that one. What gives?

Thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 05:26, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The what remembers all other changes? Program? Which? mogrify -resize 800 *jpg inside a duplicate directory would resize them all to 800 pixels wide. ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:09, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

SOrry - it's a programme called Preview, in a friend's Mac. Adambrowne666 (talk) 06:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In JPEG encoding, the word "quality" usually refers to the selection of a quantization matrix, which results in a lesser or greater degree of lossiness. Low quality will mean a smaller file and more visible compression artifacts (the basic tradeoff of lossy compression), but will have no effect on the resolution (width and height). 67.162.90.113 (talk) 09:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What makes you think it isn't remembering that change? --Mr.98 (talk) 12:37, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't remembering, cos when I opened the file after closing it, the other changes remained, but not that. But never mind, everyone; I opened them instead in another programme, and was able to change the quality - thanks for the note about lossiness, too, 67.162; was interesting. Adambrowne666 (talk) 01:15, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly suspect the quality setting only controls how the currently loaded image is saved into JPEG format, but there's no actual quality value that is stored in the JPEG file. When you re-open the file and look at the quality setting again, Preview might show a default value every time. The other program you're using might just be showing the last quality setting you used. --Bavi H (talk) 03:01, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest way to see that it is in fact saving the quality is that the file size will correlate with the quality setting. Preview tells you what the resultant file size is with a given quality; if that's the file size of the file, then the quality has been downgraded appropriately. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:36, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The JPEG format does have a "quality" value listed in its header, in the range from 1 to 100, although values above 95 are not considered useful, as they increase the file size without improving fidelity to the original. Looie496 (talk) 16:50, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apache OpenOffice.org website

Will Apache Software Foundation post its OpenOffice.org releases to www.openoffice.org? Or to another website? 171.226.92.170 (talk) 11:23, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to this page the main Open Office pages will migrate to http://ooo-site.apache.org/ You can already download Open Office from there. If you have more questions about open office, it would be more sensible to ask in the OO forums[1]. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:29, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.libreoffice.org/ ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:33, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To make sense of Reisio's offered link... Many of the top guys involved in OpenOffice formed a group called The Document Foundation. The goal appeared to be to flip the roles between Oracle and OpenOffice. Instead of OpenOffice being under Oracle, they wanted Oracle to be just a contributor to The Document Foundation, which would own OpenOffice. Oracle refused the offer and told the guys to leave OpenOffice. They left and started LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice. The end result is that many people call LibreOffice the latest version of OpenOffice. It is actually a fork of OpenOffice. -- kainaw ™ 17:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with Word 2003

I don't know when or how it happened, but opening a new blank document gives something essentially unusable. Rather than line breaks defining distinct paragraphs, so that for example the main heading can be bold/underlined/centred, each section heading can be left-justified/underlined and basic text just left-justified, any change in formatting applies to the whole document. Selecting specific text, e.g. the main heading to restore it to centred, causes the whole document to be treated in the same way. I can't describe everything which can occur as I now don't do things this way - I have a document from the past which works OK, so that has been trimmed to almost nothing and used as a blank. But I'd like to be able to use the new document which opens within Word - can anyone suggest what needs to be done so that the nice simple default comes back?→109.151.180.61 (talk) 12:04, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is probably in the default template called "normal.dot". If you happen to have a backup of this, you could try restoring a previous version (preferably renaming the current version first, just in case). It is also possible to save your "good" blank document as a template to overwrite "normal.dot". The existing file is likely to be in either C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033 or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11 or C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. I'm still using Word 2000 which uses the template slightly differently, so I can't check fully for you. Dbfirs 13:04, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. The file was in the third location, and all is now well after it was replaced by the known good one.→109.151.180.61 (talk) 14:23, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can actually just delete (or rename to be extra safe) the normal.dot file and word automatically recreates it next time it runs. Vespine (talk) 00:17, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I considered mentioning that fact, but the disadvantage is that you lose any modifications that you might have made to toolbars etc. I'm still using a normal.dot that was copied from many years and several computers ago. Dbfirs 11:10, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GIMP: After entering manual parameters, then what?

I'm talking about over in the bottom portion of the tool window for most of the tools, for example, the rectangle select, I want to select a rectangle exactly with the upper left corner at (57, 63) and to have dimensions of (39x44) (just to pick some random examples). Obviously, it's easier in a case like this to type in the values than to try to do it with my hand on the mouse. But when I type in those values and try hitting the return key while the cursor is in any of those boxes, nothing happens. And there's no 'do it' button. How do I make (any) tool do what they do after setting parameters in the tool window? I'm using the Windows version of GIMP 2.6.11. And I don't want to sidestep the particular example I gave by creating guide lines and snapping to them because I'd still have to rely on my hand to get the guide bars in the right spot, make the box, and then get rid of the guides that I don't need any more, just for one box. 69.243.220.115 (talk) 12:30, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, I figured it out myself. I just create any box so there is a box on the screen and then enter my values so that box becomes the one I want. It always happens that I find the answer right after asking something. 69.243.220.115 (talk) 12:36, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. It makes sense if you work on more than one image at a time. There is only one toolbox. You must select the tool, then click on the image, then you can work with it. With one image, it is kind of obvious which one you are using. With more than one image open, it isn't obvious which one you are working with at the moment. -- kainaw ™ 17:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

After wlan mal-function...

I get the following messages from dmesg:

[ 122.400319] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.1 to 64 [ 122.400775] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20060119 on minor 1 [ 157.689304] NET: Registered protocol family 17 [ 264.413157] eth1: no IPv6 routers present [ 361.252423] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 378.155320] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 456.797599] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 354.891677] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 226.260692] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 649.037067] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 650.112046] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 650.129128] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 328.284400] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 534.841781] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 534.864297] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 331.711532] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 723.806547] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 364.678884] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 373.857744] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 390.905024] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart. [ 393.233920] ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart.

......

eth1 and ipw2100 and my wireless...

Can something be done to repair it or is it the hardware broken? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.205.105 (talk) 17:25, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We need a LOT more context. Ipw2100 is a common driver for a lot of intel chipset wireless drivers. The timing on your dmesg is intermittent as well. I assume you're trying to get a wireless connection on your laptop, and it's not working. Could you describe what processes you're using upt o that point? Indeed the dmesg seems to indicate some issues, but we need more info before it's clear that it's a hardware issue. Shadowjams (talk) 14:52, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]