Date: 13 Apr 2000 14:47:31 -0400
From: Havoc Pennington hp@redhat.com
To: gnome-announce-list@gnome.org, gnome-list@gnome.org
Subject: GNOME Summary, April 4-13 (Mozilla embedding, gdk-pixbuf,
gnome-core, two interviews with Miguel, Evolution screenshots, GTK
update, Nautilus update, Projects of the Week)
This is the GNOME Summary for April 4-13, 2000.
Table of Contents
1) Mozilla embeds in Nautilus
2) New gdk-pixbuf
3) New gnome-core
4) Assorted interviews
5) Evolution screenshots
6) glib/GTK+ Update
7) Nautilus Update: The Return
8) Projects of the Week
9) Hacking Activity
10) New and Updated Software
1) Mozilla embeds in Nautilus
With Chris Blizzard at RHAD Labs and Ramiro Estrugo at Eazel, you
knew it was only a matter of time before GNOME/Mozilla integration
got off the ground. Check out Chris’s diary mentioning it:
http://www.advogato.org/person/blizzard/
We’ve had GtkMozilla and even some attempts at BonoZilla before,
but the moving Mozilla and Bonobo code bases kept hosing things up;
this time, it should be more practical to take embedded Mozilla
into production.
It’s worth mentioning that this means Nautilus is a web browser
that has Mozilla’s ability to handle full-blown modern web pages,
but also has native widgets and look and feel.
2) New gdk-pixbuf
We realized at the last minute that gdk-pixbuf was going out with
GNOME 1.2 (April GNOME), that we wanted to merge gdk-pixbuf into
GTK+ 1.4, and that we would have to break source compat in order to
merge into GTK+. So we went ahead and broke source compat _before_
releasing gdk-pixbuf; if you were using the unstable gdk-pixbuf
library, you got what you deserved for using unreleased stuff. 😉
In any case, there’s a new tarball to try out; the changes are
not major or bug-generating, just made some structs opaque and did
some renaming/rearranging.
http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/955589946/index_html
This breakage should mean that users of the stable pixbuf
release won’t feel too much pain when gdk-pixbuf is released as
part of GTK 1.4.
3) New gnome-core
Getting very close to release for April GNOME. With luck, April
GNOME will even be in April. (woo hoo!)
http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/954892907/index_html
4) Assorted interviews
Miguel in Brazil:
http://www.olinux.com.br/interviews/11/en/
Miguel on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/04/03/2344211.shtml
5) Evolution screenshots
I think these are a few weeks old, but I missed them, so maybe some
other people did:
http://www.helixcode.com/apps/evolution.php3
6) glib/GTK+ Update
The final push to complete new features for GTK+ 1.4 is on – you
know those times you’ve thought “GTK should really do this” or
“this
feature should really be in GTK” – you have a couple months at most
to come up with the patches to make your dreams a reality! 😉 If
you miss this glib/GTK+ release, it will be at least a year before
you can get a new feature into a production release. GTK+ is the
fundamental infrastructure of Gimp, GNOME, and many other projects;
making it better has ripple effects that improve all the software
out there.
Owen and Tim are very overloaded doing core architecture stuff
(Pango and object/type system), so they can use a lot of help with
some of the smaller TODO list items. Check here for the TODO
lists:
http://developer.gnome.org/status/
If you have patches or TODO list additions, send them to
gtk-devel-list@redhat.com.
There were a number of interesting developments in GTK-land this
week.
Sebastian posted some TODO items and plans for glib, mostly
related to threading:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0038.shtml
David Santiago chewed into the TODO with gusto, fixing some menu
behavior:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0019.shtml
then he did the work to integrate the new color selector:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0039.shtml
and now he’s up to yet more stuff:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0041.shtml
There were some suggestions about how to make insensitive
widgets more insensitive-looking, with no firm resolution:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0028.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0036.shtml
Marc Flerackers mailed in asking for help writing OLE2
drag-and-drop for the win32 port, he needs more docs:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0013.shtml
Kim McCall is assaulting the submenu navigation problem with
bazooka-like thoroughness; for details see this URL:
http://www.kimmccall.com/navigation/index.html
Jonathan (jrb@redhat.com) has been hacking on a new list/tree
widget, to replace GtkList/GtkTree/GtkCList/GtkCTree with something
more flexible; not much to see yet, but things are moving
forward.
Owen is currently Pango-izing GtkTextView, and has some stuff
displaying on screen, but it’s still in a pretty broken state.
However he expects to have the text widget working fairly well
within a week or so.
Tim continues to hack on the exciting new object/type system,
which should make life easier for language bindings, and allow
non-GUI applications to use a GtkObject-style abstraction.
7) Nautilus Update: The Return
>From Eazel hacker Maciej Stachowiak:
It’s been a while since a Nautilus update, so this one only
covers some of the more interesting changes since April 1st, not
everything since the last update. You can keep track of the tasks
currently on our plan at bugzilla.eazel.com.
* Drag and drop move and copy are implemented (but you still
don’t get proper feedback in the window).
* Better file type display – english phrases instead of real
mime types.
* Menu icons for bookmarks and history.
* RPM view.
* Icons have emblems to represent various user-settable
properties.
* Keyboard navigation in list view now uses the same keys and
has the same behavior as in icon view.
* Icon titles are underlined when the icon is pre-lit.
* A start on client access for Eazel services.
* The selection is now preserved when switching between icon and
list views.
* Improved preferences handling.
* Background image can be set with drag and drop.
* Files can be renamed from the “set properties” dialog.
8) Projects of the Week
Several suggestions:
– Any of the glib or GTK+ TODO items on: http://developer.gnome.org/status/
(coordinate with gtk-devel-list@redhat.com)
– The .desktop files describing the various screensavers in the
screensavers capplet have fallen behind the screensavers that
actually exist in xscreensaver. Fill in the missing ones. Contact
jrb@redhat.com.
– Miguel posted to gnome-list a while back asking for .desktop
files and icons for apps that don’t ship with GNOME – things like
StarOffice, etc. Remember that you can’t include trademarked logos
or images in the icons. If you create any icons, mail them to
Matthias Warkus (mawa@iname.com), for .desktop files
gnome-devel-list@gnome.org is probably a good destination.
– If anyone wants to play with GtkTextView/GtkTextBuffer and
give API feedback, this new widget would be ideal for writing a
small WordPad sort of application (maybe read/write RTF format).
DON’T write another text editor. 😉 If you’re thinking “plugins”
or “syntax highlighting” this project is not for you. 😉
The task is to make a small, simple, clean, end-user-oriented
application, that lets you write a trivial letter or something like
that with bold/italic text, and maybe an embedded image. Nothing
else. It should just use the text widget – otherwise you’re
entering AbiWord territory, and there’s no point in that either.
What’s needed here is _simple_.
Note that the canonical text widget location has moved from
tktext-port to a branch in the gtk+ module, where Owen is busy
breaking it. However the tktext-port version is probably easier for
getting started.
– Jonathan suggests UI work on the Sawmill capplets and
configuration panels. Make the layout fit in a nice grid, with nice
spacing, etc., and add nice UI features such as drag-and-drop and
tooltips where appropriate. Also, many things are now explained in
words that could be nicely illustrated with appropriate pictures
and icons; the old e-conf that ships with Red Hat 6.x has some
examples, as does the WindowMaker config thing.
9) Hacking Activity
cvs-commits-list was hosed for part of the week, so the numbers are
maybe 60% of what they should be. Sorry about that.
Module Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per module, since
the last summary)
47 evolution
45 nautilus
33 gtkhtml
25 gnumeric
18 gedit
17 guppi3
17 gimp
16 balsa
14 gnome-core
12 sodipodi
11 gnome-vfs
11 gnome-libs
9 pybliographer
9 gtk+
9 gnome-games
9 ORBit
8 gnome-utils
8 gnome-guile
8 gnome-db
8 gegl
User Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per user, since the
last summary)
28 kmaraas
27 darin
19 pablo
19 ettore
17 trow
12 miguel
12 jody
11 rodo
11 andy
10 owen
10 jleach
10 jesusb
9 peterw
9 kabalak
9 fredgo
9 danw
8 rasta
8 lewing
8 film
8 dmueth
7 sullivan
7 rodrigo
7 mortenw
7 lauris
7 itp
10) New and Updated Software
Software since the last summary. Jonathan kindly contributed this
section again this week.
CodeCommander – functional all-purpose editor.
GNet – Network library built onto of GLib.
grecord – Simple program for recording and playing wav files.
ZClock – Replacement for the GNOME Clock applet.
Gnome ReadNews – Extensible NNTP-client with tin in mind.
MemoPanel – Applet for memos on the GNOME panel.
GnomeTV – Video4linux tuner applet with a TV & a Teletext
screen.
chbg – Manager of desktop background.
Glade– – Extension to glade to create C++ sources .
GOX – Tic Tac Toe program.
gvoc – Vocabulary trainer.
Industrializer – Generates percussion samples for tracking techno
pieces.
gRustibus – Gnome M.A.M.E. frontend.
TEG (Tenes Empanadas Graciela) – Game similar to risk.
TeleGNOME – Small program for viewing Teletekst pages
(Netherlands).
genSQL – Generic SQL database UI.
GtkExtra – Library full of useful widgets complementary to
GTK+.
sawmill – Lisp-extensible, GNOME-complient window manager.
Etherape – Network monitor with ethernet, ip and tcp modes.
gLife – Cellular automata simulator.
MMC – Simple Mail Client.
GnoZip – WinZip(tm) clone.
seti_applet – Shows status of any seti@home client.
IceWM – GNOME-complient window manager.
Pybliographer – Tool for manipulating bibliographic databases.
GHex – Binary file editor.
genigma – An emulation of the famous Enigma.
CvsRpmBuilder – CVS to RPM builder.
Divider applet – Adds dividers to the panel. Very cool.
Sound Monitor applet – An applet that shows a vu meter.
GQview – Simple image viewer.
Gnome Mp3 Database – Paper mp3 database creator.
gnome-core – GNOME panel and applets, and other essential GNOME
utilities
gnome-applets – Collection of applets for the panel.
GNU Midnight Commander – The GNOME file manager.
gnome-libs – Main set of libraries for GNOME.
See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more
information about any of these packages.
Until next week –
Havoc