Slick Help

I have added more features to the markdown parser I wrote the other day. I added tables, and the ability to set column widths. So it isn't really a standard Markdown. The tables feature ended up working better than I thought it was going to.

I added the ability to link to other topics within the help system. This task was actually pretty tricky. Every time a help system is compiled the topics get new GUIDs, so I couldn't rely on those - and even if I could, how would the author know what the GUIDs are? I decided to add an alias property to the topics in the DB. This property can be used to link to other topics - and - display a 'back' link if a second alias is in the markdown. It worked smoothly.

Next I tackled images. I created two types of image definitions, one that uses a relative path to an Images directory, and the other a full URL. It is limited, but the idea of Markdown is to quickly define a readable document, formatting syntax should be fairly unobtrusive. I may allow for centered or text wrapped images though. It would be good to at least allow that much formatting.

I'm surprised at how fun and powerful this help engine is, now that I added markdown ability to the authoring of topics!

Neon Arches of Chaos

What a roller coaster ride. I decided to try an Arch Linux install again, in a VirtualBox instance. I got close, but it still wasn't booting correctly. I think my Grub installation wasn't done correctly. But this got me wanting to update my laptop OS. It has been a while. I decided to run Mint with a KDE desktop installed.

I installed it but wasn't able to get to the Grub menu so my laptop kept freezing. I needed to do the Nvidia fix and it wouldn't let me so I was stuck.

On MSI machines (Maybe all machines, I'm not sure) the Shift key, held down after the logo, brings up the Grub menu. This wasn't working on my machine - I don't know why. I was able to hit F11 to get to the boot device selection list. I hit enter to launch my Mint system and immediately hit 'E' a bunch of times. It worked! It brought up the Grub editor. I made my changes and all was copacetic.

Until it wasn't.

I couldn't get the KDE desktop to install, and really wanted a clean start. So I decided to rebuild and just get used to XFCE. But I couldn't get into the Grub editor, not even with my F11 trick.

I decided to edit it via the live image. This was educational! I learned you have to mount certain system drives etc, install Grub and edit the .cfg. However I was doing something wrong, it never worked.

I decided to try KaOS. I grabbed an image and 'dd'd it onto my USB. Nope. It failed to install. I later read that its installer is somewhat unstable.

I did some more searching and came upon KDE neon. I decided to give it a try. It apparently is more up to date than Kubuntu. I downloaded it and installed it. To my surprise it ran without any issues! No need to do the NVDIA fix. I think I have a new favorite distro! So far I've had ZERO issues with it.