These Linux programs are recommended for running under the Ubuntu (Gnome) platform in any language.
Where necessary, file system input/output is fully UTF-8-compliant, i.e. folder/file names can be read or
created according to international standards.

When non-English typing is required on the part of the operator, any given application is either fully compliant
internationally, in which case the following indicator is shown:-

Are you choking on spam? Then SpamGobbler could be just the program you need.

If you are in the situation where you receive much more spam than valid e-mails, life can become tiresome. In
your e-mail program (e.g. Evolution or Thunderbird) the trouble is that you need to continuously maintain a
"blacklist" of spam sources so that the program can separate them from your valid e-mails, and new sources of
spam appear every day! Well, SpamGobbler changes all that! Instead of a "blacklist" you keep a "whitelist" or
"keeplist", and anything else is automatically defined as spam and can be deleted before downloading into your
e-mail program.

This first version of SpamGobbler is for Ubuntu Linux, but it can also be run in Kubuntu with a tiny limitation. For
the possibility of using SpamGobbler in other versions of Linux, please see the release notes.

If you have a collection of pictures (e.g. photos) that you would like to present attractively to your family, friends
or colleagues, under either manual or automatic control, then all you have to do is copy the program to the
folder where the pictures are, double-click on it to execute, and away you go! It is not necessary to do any kind
of installation. If some of the pictures are turned on their side rather than being the right way up, don't worry,
the program can quickly help you to put this right.

If you want to quickly produce a webpage for the purpose of presentation, using text only, then this is the
program you need.

Your English or Portuguese text can be in any mixture of fonts, sizes or colours, and you can position it on the
page wherever you need. And if you want to make it more attractive with a background wallpaper image, this is
also possible.

A simple and very practical little program.

Typing in Portuguese can be done using the usual ABNT2 keyboard, a US International keyboard (with dead keys),
or a US keyboard using a designated "compose" key.
To type in Portuguese using a US keyboard and designated compose key, please look HERE.

The beginner in a foreign language sometimes (or often) needs to study alone without the aid of a teacher to give an
accurate model of pronunciation. If this is provided by electronic means, then all well and good. But if you collect
written data over the Internet for example, and it has no model of pronunciation at all, you (the beginner) can easily
get into bad habits of mispronunciation by simply reading the text in your imagination.

The Howsoft language Learning Assistant for Linux helps you to overcome this problem. You can collect data from
any number of languages and insert it into the program. You can then use Ubuntu's built-in speech synthesizer
("eSpeak") to pronounce the text with pauses between sentences or between individual words. You can also adjust
the rendering speed if necessary.

A great amount of repetition and memorisation by heart is fundamental to the success of initial (or even later) language
learning, and LLA is a perfect tool for this purpose, even if you have a teacher. As with all speech synthesizers, the
speech is not 100% natural, but the Linux eSpeak synthesizer is really not bad at all, and is far better than a vacuum!

This is an English/Portuguese course for the eSpeak synthesizer that can be loaded directly into the Language Learning
Assistant program above. Culturally, the course is oriented towards Portuguese-speaking Brazilians who are travelling
in England, but linguistically, it is reversible. Thus, those who want to practise their Portuguese in similar situations are
now free to do so with this version of the course (the original version, written for Windows, is not linguistically reversible).

Additionally, for those who wish to use the Language Learning Assistant with other languages or their own data, the
Traveller's Companion course serves as an example of various technical aspects of contolling the eSpeak synthesizer,
e.g. how to silence portions of written text, how to render individual vowels as they are pronounced in the alphabet, and
so on.

Disk Tree enables you to capture the subfolder and file names from any master folder attached to your
computer, such as one residing on the internal HD, external HD, DVD, CD, pendrive, etc. and to store this
name data in a data base. You are then able to search the data base for items much in the same way
as you would use an Internet search engine. Once found, you can retrieve the items physically by returning
to the identified sources.