Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 07, 2026

• N Recursions ☛ N Recursions: How to search for words in multiple PDF files easily

  While I initially wanted to create a Python program for searching multiple PDF files, I came across a much simpler commandline solution that outputs nice colour coded string matches when searching PDF files. Linux really is wonderful in this respect. MacOS also supports pdfgrep.

• Jack Baty ☛ Trying a new Emacs config

  I'm typing this in Emacs using a completely new config and it's so weird. I've been running Emacs v31 everywhere and thought I'd try leaning on more of the built-in completion behavior, and it spiraled out of control.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • Sharon Rosner ☛ Beyond ORMs

    I’ve always been interested in the design of ORMs - I wanted to know how they work, what the different approaches are, and how they can be used. I tried a bunch of different ones, I even created one. But in the last few years I’ve been slowly gravitating toward working more directly with databases - issuing queries using plain SQL, processing raw data coming from the database, or building custom low-level abstractions for working with relational databases. This evolution in the way my code talks to databases is the reason I created Extralite, a Ruby gem for working with SQLite databases.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Document Foundation ☛ LibreOffice talks at the Open Source Conference Luxembourg 2026

    We’re gearing up for the LibreOffice Conference 2026 next week in Pordenone, northern Italy – but there are more events in the pipeline too.

• Education

  • Perl ☛ The videos of the German Perl Workshop 2026 are online

    Much of the credit for the video production goes to Lee Johnson for recording all of them during the event. The postproduction happened thanks to ffmpeg.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Coyote ☛ The Lazybones Guide to Webmentions

    On the visitor’s end, they’ll be able to submit the web address of a post or page that links to your site.

    On your end, you’ll be able to see the submitted links collected on your dashboard at the third-party service.

    This way you can get pinged or notified by people even if you don’t share any social platforms in common with them, without anyone having to resort to email, either.