GNOME Summary April 13-25, 2000

Date: 26 Apr 2000 00:11:11 -0400
From: Havoc Pennington hp@redhat.com
To: gnome-announce-list@gnome.org, gnome-list@gnome.org
Subject: GNOME Summary April 13-25 (freedesktop.org, gnome-utils,
gtk–, Sawmill name change, mini icons, Eazel funding, GTK news,
Nautilus news, software releases)

This is the GNOME Summary for April 13-25, 2000.

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Table of Contents

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1) freedesktop.org
2) gnome-utils release
3) gtk– 1.2 released
4) Sawmill changes name
5) More releases
6) Articles and interviews
7) Eazel funding
8) mini icons
9) All systems stabilized
10) GTK+ news
11) Nautilus Update
12) Hacking Activity
13) New and Updated Software

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1) freedesktop.org

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I started up a small project to work on desktop cooperation, that
may be of interest to GTK and GNOME developers: http://www.freedesktop.org/

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2) gnome-utils release

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Some intrepid hackers are trying to bring the gnome-utils package
back from the dead; it became a bit obsolete at some point.

The latest snapshot release updates some translations and docs;
adds gfloppy and gdict; breaks the spec file (don’t try rpm -ta);
and is available here:

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/unstable/sources/gnome-utils/gnome-utils-1.1.0.tar.gz

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3) gtk– 1.2 released

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gtk– now has a stable release, synchronized with GTK+ 1.2; check
out the announcement here:

http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/2000-April/0025.shtml

gtk– is a C++ library for writing GTK+ applications. It offers
a typesafe signal/slot system, widget derivation, C++ syntax and
namespaces, and all that fun stuff. If the lack of C++ support has
been scaring you away from GTK+, check out gtk–.

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4) Sawmill changes name

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It happens every day; some free software name turns out to be a
trademark. Sigh. Now it’s called “Sawfish.”

http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/956312032/index_html

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5) More releases

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Balsa:

http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/956170481/index_html

EOG:

http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/956257225/index_html

gnome-core/gnome-applets:

http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/956273342/index_html

(Find the bugs! This one is getting near the final stable
version.)

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6) Articles and interviews

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Tutorial on glib:

http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/glib.html

Interview with Ettore:

http://www.linuxpapers.org/show_article.html?INTERVIEW_ETTORE

GNOME and Palm Pilot:

http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/956611538/index_html

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7) Eazel funding

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Eazel announced substantial venture capital funding:

http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/956051807/index_html

This can only be good for GNOME, since they can afford more
hackers. 😉

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8) mini icons

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We have mini-icon support for the task list; it interoperates
nicely with KDE applications even. Have a look here:

http://www.gnome.org/~jberkman/tasklist-icons.png

To add support to your apps, see the docs for new libgnomeui
API:

http://primates.helixcode.com/~jacob/gnomeui-gnome-window-icon.html

Note that ISVs and such should NOT use this API for a while yet,
because no current Linux distribution ships with it. The next
generation of distribution versions will have it.

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9) All systems stabilized

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We’ve had all kinds of adventures with flaky mailing lists and bug
tracking systems; let’s just say that they involved ancient
versions of Linux running ancient versions of qmail and smartlist,
and that now things have gone to Mailman/Postfix nirvana. i.e. it’s
all working again.

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10) GTK+ news

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Owen spent all yesterday trying to get a snapshot of the new
GTK-with-Pango up for your previewing enjoyment; the snapshots even
come in RPMs that won’t conflict with your existing GTK install!
Woo-hoo!

This will let you edit bidirectional text in the new text widget
and in GtkEntry, flip your UI back and forth dynamically to match
your right-to-left language, and that kind of crazy stuff. You’ll
probably have to install some Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese fonts to
get the full experience (hint: ‘xset fp rehash’ after you
install
them). There’s also a little international keyboard applet that
comes with the panel, which you can use to make your keyboard
output foreign characters.

There’s a new Pango status report:

http://www.pango.org/status-000425

And the Pango downloads page is supposed to have the snapshot
tarballs and RPMs by the time you read this:

http://www.pango.org/download.shtml

Jonathan continues to hack the tree widget, it’s even in CVS now
under module ‘gtree’; send comments and patches or forever hold
your peace, because if this gets in GTK+ it’s the last one ever.
(Third time is the charm, I hope.)

And as always, I’ll plug the TODO list (we’ve had a number of
patches coming in on gtk-devel-list, which is promising):

http://developer.gnome.org/status/

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11) Nautilus Update

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For those who don’t know yet, Nautilus is a graphical shell/file
manager planned for GNOME 2.0. Here are some of the new features
that were added since the last nautilus update.

* Special pseudo home directory for `Novice’ user level.
(Andy)

* Convert Nautilus from GOAD to OAF. This will eventually enable
nautilus to support a much wider range of view components.
(Maciej)

* Mozilla component for Nautilus; very preliminary and requires
Mozilla source to build right now (this was mentioned in the last
Nautilus summary but now it’s actually checked in). (Ramiro, Chris
Blizzard)

* Improved preferences, including new preferences like click
policy and using GConf instead of gnome_config (Ramiro)

* Files appear in new location when moved or copied with Drag
and Drop (Pavel)

* Greatly improved icon layout (Darin)

* Installer prototype (Shane)

* Initial support for URI links (both gmc-style and a newer
kind) (Andy)

* Rename files in-place (Gene)

* More icons for common file types. (Andy [stolen from gmc])

* Numerous bug fixes (everyone)

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12) Hacking Activity

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Module Score-O-Matic:
(number of CVS commits per module, since the last summary)

147 evolution
110 nautilus
87 gnome-utils
72 gnome-core
71 gnome-applets
65 gnome-games
59 gimp
54 balsa
51 gnumeric
46 gedit
38 gnome-db
32 gnome-media
30 gtkhtml
29 gfloppy
29 desktop-docs
20 gnome-libs
20 bonobo
16 mc
16 gnome-vfs
15 sodipodi
15 gtk–
15 gnome-pim

User Score-O-Matic:
(number of CVS commits per user, since the last summary)

135 pablo
67 kabalak
50 ahyden
43 danw
38 darin
35 itp
35 barreiro
33 frob
32 ettore
30 rodrigo
30 jirka
29 martin
26 dcm
24 neo
24 dmueth
23 zucchi
23 alves
21 peterw
20 jody
19 kmaraas
19 jfleck
19 acscherp

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13) New and Updated Software

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Software since the last summary. Jonathan kindly contributed this
section again this week.

ZClock – Replacement for the default clock applet.
Everybuddy – Universal Instant Messaging client for linux.
MonitorSensors – Displays sensor data provided by the lm_sensors
package.
gvn – Graphical virtual unix network.
Gnome Character Map – Program to select and use high ASCII
characters.
KRunning – Database client that managea running events.
Etherape – Network monitor with ethernet, ip and tcp modes.
gts – A task scheduler (interface to at and cron).
grio_applet – Manages files on the Rio PMP300 portable MP3
player.
gmessage+ – Clone of xmessage.
Grecord – Simple program for recording and playing sound files.
gnome-core – GNOME panel and applets, and other essential GNOME
utilities.
gnome-applets – Collection of applets for the panel.
Gnome UPS Monitor – Network UPS Tools package.
bug-buddy – Graphical bug reporting utility for GNOME.
MemoPanel – Memo applet for the GNOME panel.
Balsa – Email client for GNOME.
GtkExText – An alternative widget to the old GtkText widget.
hOpla – link XML files to database.
ToutDoux – ToutDoux aims to be the GNU “project”.
GtkExtra – A useful widget set complementary to GTK+.
gedit – Lightweight text editor.
rCalc – Fast and light symbolic calculator.
Pybliographer – Tool for manipulating bibliographic databases.
Industrializer – Generates a wide variety of percussion
samples.
gIPSC – IP subnet calculator.
gno3dtet – 3D Tetris-like game.
CodeCommander – Functional all-purpose editor.
Gnome Toaster – cd creation suite using cdrecord, cdda2wav,
mkisofs.
GProc-applet – Displays the process list from the panel.
gcrontab – A crontab editor for the cron system.
Glitter – A newsreader for extracting binaries from newsgroups.
teatime – A tea-drawingtime-observer-applet for the panel.
X-Chat – A fully featured IRC client.
gob – A preprocessor for making GTK+ objects easily.
Sketch – A vector drawing program written almost completely in
Python.
GnoSPaM – Slackware package manager for Gnome using
libslaktool.
gtyping – A typing program.
Sarah – a new file manager.
Pan – A usenet newsreader.
Sodipodi – A vector drawing program.
Seahorse – A front end for GnuPG.
Jungle Monkey – A distributed file sharing program.
gnome-yahoo – A Yahoo! Pager clone for Gnome.
GnomePM – Simple portfolio management tool.
Gnome WebAds – Helps maintain banner ads on websites.

See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more
information about any of these packages.

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Until next week –

Havoc