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GNOME Summary for January 18-26, 2000Jan 27, 2000, 04:02 (0 Talkback[s])(Other stories by Havoc Pennington) Date: 26 Jan 2000 22:40:57 -0500 This is the GNOME Summary for January 18-26, 2000. Table of Contents 1) Status of GNOME Post 1) Status of GNOME Post Miguel sent out a nice email detailing the state of GNOME and some of the directions we are moving in. It inspired quite a few comments on Gnotices. http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/948567152/index_html 2) Some-Spring-Month GNOME Enters Freeze gnome-core and gnome-applets have been frozen, in preparation for a GNOME release fairly soon. This next release will include bugfix-only versions of some components (such as gnome-libs and control-center), but will include new versions of the applets and panel and some new goodies like bug-buddy, gnome-hint and gnome-splash. After some deliberation (in response to confusion created by The motivation for this release is to let people start using the new gnome-core features immediately, even though the new file manager won't be ready for a while. As Miguel hints in his "status of GNOME" post, this is likely to be a new policy; in order to ensure regular releases of "GNOME" as a whole, GNOME releases will be snapshots of the latest stable versions of all packages. Not all packages will get new features in every release. This way users get to use new features as soon as they are stable, without waiting for unstable components. Each component can be on its own optimal schedule instead of having to synchronize them. 3) Nautilus Screenshots Some random screenshots I made, since Nautilus is really hard to compile right now (BTW tons of people are asking us how to compile it - please don't, it is not yet useful or worth testing, if you can't figure out the dependencies yourself from configure.in then you aren't going to be able to hack on it, and hacking on it is the only real reason to compile it right now). Anyway screenshot showing the gradient-background feature and my lack of color coordination (Dr Mike says I need the Martha Stewart plugin): http://www106.pair.com/rhp/nautilus.jpg The icon list is screwed up in this shot so all the icons are in one column, it isn't supposed to be like that. And ignore the Sawmill tooltip that got in there somehow. And a shot showing the embedded web browsing: http://www106.pair.com/rhp/nautilus-slashdot.jpg This shot uses the lightweight GtkHTML widget, for full-blown browsing a Mozilla component will be available eventually we hope. Notice the History tab on the left, there are a number of plugins that can go there, such as a Search tab or a Tree View tab. There's also a list view mode for the file browsing component. 4) Defs files for language bindings I started a thread on gtk-devel-list about creating some new more comprehensive "defs" files for autogenerating language bindings. The thread is fairly long. If you've working on language bindings you might want to find the end of it with my latest proposed defs file format and comment. http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-January/0069.shtml I'll do a script to generate defs in this format as soon as things seem to have settled down. 5) Sketch in CVS The Sketch vector graphics app has arrived on GNOME CVS, and the port to GTK seems to be going well. The basic functionality is all in place, and the GTK version can load the example drawings that come with the program. http://sketch.sourceforge.net/ 6) Guppi release After quite some time, there is a new Guppi release; this new version is written entirely in C. It seems to be pretty impressive; compile it and try importing some of the included sample datasets, then try making a plot from those. There are downloads and screenshots on the home page: 7) New Labs web site After letting our Red Hat Labs web site languish for a long time, we have a replacement thanks to resident documentation hacker and hip guy Dave Mason. Check it out: 8) Evolution update Weekly status updates from the Helix Code hackers. BTW they have some sort of web site that may be of interest: http://www.helixcode.com/evolution/ Federico reports that he has the Tlacuache personal calendar server working, and is hacking on the client side of things now. Also, he made a new gdk-pixbuf release. Michael Zucchi made the long voyage from Australia to Boston, and is now at the Helix offices in Cambridge. He got some hacking done too; some gnome-terminal bugfixes, and gnome-print enhancements. He says the next item on the agenda is incoming mail filters (like procmail) for Evolution. Ettore says that he has selection support done in GtkHTML, and he's starting to put together an HTML-editing widget. He also says he could use some help with the layout code, if anyone's interested in hacking on that. Chris has a couple screenshots for the contact editor: http://primates.helixcode.com/~clahey/contact-editor-test.png He's also starting on printing for contacts, and yes someone will be replacing the icons in those dialogs. :-) 9) Project of the Week The "project of the week" is a weekly feature, suggesting some small project(s) that would be both a valuable contribution to GNOME and a good way to get started with GNOME hacking. PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER THREE Help finish up the gnome-applets module for release. Contact Jacob the gnome-core co-maintainer-dude (jacob@helixcode.com) if you're interested. This involves making sure all the applets properly adjust to all the panel sizes, and that sort of thing; a good way to learn how applets and the panel work. PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER FOUR This one is a good way to get started learning about the Gnumeric source code. Jody says that they need a zoom item in the toolbar; a menu where users can select the zoom ratio. You would have to investigate how zooming works in Gnumeric (there's a zoom dialog, so the infrastructure is there), and do some GUI work to create the zoom-selector widget, put it in the toolbar, and wire it up to the Gnumeric internals. For bonus points, wire Ctrl+mousewheel to zoom as well. UNOFFICIAL PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER FOUR POINT FIVE I have the world's cheapest digital camera, the Agfa ePhoto Smile. But gPhoto doesn't like it. The project is to either figure out its serial protocol and send me the info so I can do the driver, or just write the driver. :-) I'm trying the send-Agfa-letters approach but am not optimistic. If we can get a driver I can take pictures of Paris at the GNOME Users and Developers Conference in March. 10) Hacking Activity Module Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per module, since the last summary) 86 nautilus User Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per user, since the last summary) 85 ettore 11) New and Updated Software Tons of stuff this week. PowerShell - another GNOME-based terminal emulator See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more information about any of these packages. Until next week - Havoc
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