To configure Urdu in Ubuntu follow the below link
http://ubuntu.sabza.org/2007/05/16/enabling-urdu-support-in-ubuntu/

In my last two blog entries I mentioned Microsoft Visio’s Open Source Alternatives softwares and its features, Now time to come to write about my favorite IDE Netbeans. With its bundle of features it also provides the feature for UML modeling with in an IDE great.

NetBeans And UML
To enable UML Module in IDE click on menu Tools—>Plug-in. The below pop-up will appear. Search UML in search textbook,click UML and push install button. The UML Module will install and ready for use after reboot your IDE.

NetBean’s UML Module offer the functionality of creating activity diagram,class diagram,sequence diagram,state diagram and use case diagram in a platform and language independent way. It also provides the forward engineering and reverse engineering option for Oops diagrams in a very user friendly way.

I found few images which I would like share with you to give some feel of NetBean’s UML Module.

Following are images.

NetBeans And ERD
The module, I am missing in these days which is ERD Module of Netbeans which was available before 6.x version but not yet available for current NB 6.7 release, as their commitment it will be available with netbeans 6.8.

In short we have lot of open source options to work on different diagrams we already talked about Argouml ,DB designer ,DIA and other different options . I love Netbeans way, reason it provides every thing with in one umbrella.

Refrences

Complete tutorial for UML Diagrams in Netbeans
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/uml/

Below video illustrate reverse rngineering feature NB’s UML Module

DB Designer

Db Designer is a visual database design system that integrates database design, modeling, creation and maintenance into a single, seamless environment.It combines professional features and a clear and simple user interface to offer the most efficient way to handle your databases.I simply call it “Too rich in all database related modeling”.

DBDesigner also comparable with products like Oracle’s Designer©, IBM’s Rational Rose©, Computer Associates’s ERwin© and theKompany’s DataArchitec

Some of the listed features are

• Available on Linux / MS Windows
  
• User Interfaced based on industry standard layouting software(Canvas navigation similar to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop,Palettes (docked / floating) including “Bird Eyes view”,Available objects include tables, realtions, labels, regions, images,Extensive Drag’n'drop support,Extensive Popup-Menu support,Advanced Editors,UNLIMITED Undo-/Redo- functions,Copy-/Cut-/Paste clipboard functions (XML, DDL),Align functions etc).
  
• Design Mode / Query Mode
  
• Reverse engineering MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL and any ODBC databases
  
• Userdefined schema-generation
  
• Model-To-Database syncronisation
  
• Index support
  
• Automatic foreign key placement
  
• Weak entity support
  
• Standard Inserts storing and sync
  
• Full documentation capabilities
  
• Advanced model printing
  
• Output as image
  
• All MySQL datatypes with all options
  
• User defined datatypes
  
• Database storage, ability to save model within database
  
• Network-/Multiuser access through database storage
  
• Version control
  
• SQL Query Builder
  
• SQL Command History
  
• SQL Command storage within model
  
• Plugin interface

DIA

Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

I like its one really cool feature which calls creates new shapes .It is perfect free alternative of Visio which available for widows and linux but one con ,not for me, it is not a very much user friendly like Microsoft Visio.

To see DIA complete documentation click here

Conclusion:
ArgoUML ,DBDesigner and DIA are providing the perfect open source free alternative for Microsoft Visio.I am professionally using these softwares for designing artifacts ,modeling softwares diagrams and other flow diagrams, Some other alternatives are also available which I haven’t experienced other softwares and complete list of Microsoft Visio alternative available at below link

http://alternativeto.net/desktop/microsoft-visio/?platform=windows

Most of the peoples are too much use to with Microsoft Visio.In today’s blog entry I will discuss some open source alternatives of Microsoft Visio and we will see how rich these tools are in terms of their features and functionalities and I personally prefer these tools over Microsoft Visio .Not just only these tools are free/open source but also due to these tools are more user friendly and rich in their functionalities.

I am going to discuss just few tools which I explored personally which are

1. Argo UML (Targeted for all UML Diagrams)
2. DB Designer(Targeted to only ERD Diagram)
3. DIA (Too rich tool all type modeling diagram including UML,ERD,Network diagram etc)
4. Netbeans Plugins (I like too much because I can build artifact under one umbrella

Open Office Drawing ,StarUML and many other options are which available I have no experience how they are.

Today I will just discribe ArgoUML features and in next two blogs I will describe other remaining tools ArgoUML
ArgoUML is a powerful yet easy-to-use interactive, graphical software design environment that supports the design, development and documentation of object-oriented software applications. Like many other UML tools of this caliber ArgoUML provides code generation. The following programming languages are support for code generation: Java, C++, C# and PHP. The Java support is best since it can be used for round-trip engineering using the reverse engineering feature. ArgoUML also has partial support for user models such as decision model, goals model, etc. Finally diagrams can be exported in many graphical formats, primarily GIF, PNG, PS and SVG.

Main features:

• Open standards: UML ,XMI, SVG and PGML

• 100% Platform independent thanks to the exclusive use of Java

• Open Source, which allows extending or customizing.

• Cognitive features like: reflection-in-action, opportunistic design, comprehension and problem solving

• It is able to create and save most of the nine standard UML diagrams.

• Ease of use and User friendliness

• Reverse Engineering and Code generation

How to install ArgoUML?
http://argouml-stats.tigris.org/documentation/quick-guide-0.28/ch02.html

How to Use ArgoUML?
http://argouml-stats.tigris.org/documentation/manual-0.28/

We can do voice with Google talk on Ubuntu using Empathy Messenger. Empathy Messenger consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets. It uses Telepathy and Nokia’s Mission Control, and reuses Gossip’s UI. To Setup Empathy and Google talk click here

Open office (OO)3.1 is available for download(since May 2009) with great improvements and many new rich features. I agree Microsoft is leader as far as office products is concern but what point I am willing to discuss here, what normal users requires and what features most of the peoples are using. All features provide us to open office with great user friendly way, I am not geek office user but what I need I got from open office.
Peoples ask to me, Is Open Office is compatible with Ms office 2007 ,then I ask to those people Is Ms Office 2007 compatible with Open Office .You can easily open Ms office 2007 file (docx,pptx) on Open Office and can edit and save it on 2003 doc formate but Ms office 2007 not provides this functionality in inverse.

I gather few of users experiences from Internet and feature of Open Office what it provides free of cost which I `would like to share with you .

Features

1. Free Of Cost
2. Easy to Use
3. Multi-Platform
4. Multi-lingual
5. Compatible with all office suit including Ms Office 2003/2007 (Ms Office is not compatible)
6. Power full extensions/plug-ins
7. Almost provides all features of Ms office in a user friendly way
8. Periodically updates and new releases
9. etc

Open office 3.1 new feature list available at http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/

Below are some user experiences

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2009/06/openofficeorg-31-outline-level-feature-.html

Conclusion :
Use free office suit OO ,it provides all functionality which we required (Ubuntu built in installs OO as Office productivity tool)and make piracy free Pakistan

http://luiscosio.com/how-to-adobe-photoshop-cs2-on-ubuntu-10-steps
http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobePhotoshop

see below link
http://cwiki.apache.org/SHIRO/index.html