Date: 29 Feb 2000 18:22:17 -0500
From: Havoc Pennington hp@redhat.com
To: gnome-announce-list@gnome.org, gnome-list@gnome.org
Subject: GNOME Summary Feb 21-29 (Development roadmap, TurboLinux,
Perl/GTK mailing list, Gnomba, Dia, Project of the Week, Nautilus
Update)
This is the GNOME Summary for February 21-29, 2000.
Table of Contents
1) Development Roadmap
2) TurboLinux ships GNOME as default
3) Perl/GTK+ Mailing List
4) Gnomba release
5) Dia release
6) Project of the Week
7) Nautilus Update
8) Hacking Activity
9) New and Updated Software
1) Development Roadmap
We have a plan for development over the next year or so – but its
success depends on the GNOME developers, translators, and
documentation authors. If you’re involved in GNOME development,
take a moment to read the roadmap and create a micro-roadmap for
your package that fits in to the Master Plan.
Check it out here:
http://developer.gnome.org/status/roadmap.html
2) TurboLinux ships GNOME as default
I guess this has been out for a while, but I just found out about
it. TurboLinux 6.0 Workstation now has GNOME as its default
desktop, replacing their old AfterStep-based desktop.
http://www.turbolinux.com/product/workstation.html
3) Perl/GTK+ Mailing List
For a long time, Perl/GTK questions have been a significant
percentage of postings on gtk-list; now there’s a dedicated list
for discussion of the Perl bindings for GTK+, and programming
questions for users of Perl/GTK+. Read the announce here:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/2000-February/0039.shtml
There are quite a few GTK+ and GNOME applications now written in
various scripting languages. For most GUIs, a scripting language is
absolutely the best choice.
4) Gnomba release
GNOME Samba share browser:
http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/951594942/index_html
5) Dia release
New release of the Dia diagram editor:
http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/951793818/index_html
6) Project of the Week
Miguel wrote in with a nice project idea: modify gnome-print to
have a PDF backend in addition to the PostScript backend. Then all
GNOME apps will automatically be able to export to PDF format.
Sounds like a pretty nice project, and it shouldn’t be too hard to
implement, just a matter of getting a reference to the PDF format,
then copying the PostScript backend using PDF instead of
PostScript. Basically you just have to implement a virtual table
with functions like draw_line(), etc. If you’re interested, check
‘gnome-print’ out of CVS and have a look.
Miguel says that someone already has a direct-to-PCL backend
going; I think I was supposed to post that as the Project of the
Week last week, but it got lost somewhere in my mail folders…
anyway, it’s nice to be able to use printers without having to pipe
PostScript to GhostScript for translation into
native-printer-bitmap.
We’ll also be able to support antialiasing and alpha
transparency by bypassing PostScript. Of course PostScript will
continue to be supported so don’t send any of that “but PostScript
is the standard blah blah blah” email we always get. 😉
7) Nautilus Update
by Maciej Stachowiak
screenshots by Richard Hesitlow
Everyone’s probably heard some of the publicity about Eazel by
now. Us Eazel folks and the rest of the Nautilus team have been
undistracted by the press flurry and are hacking harder than ever.
We’re hoping to be able to do a nice demo at GUADEC. In the
meantime, here are some of the changes since the last summary, and
of course, screenshots.
* Revised the index tab UI – changed shape and color, and made
them pre-light.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/newtab.jpg
* Revised the notes UI a bit – made the text box bigger, and
light yellow.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/notes.jpg
* Added a delete item to the right-click menu, and soon after a
confirm dialog after a unfortunate filesystem accident.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/delete-dlg.jpg
* Improved error messages when files can’t be displayed.
* Added View a Text as an option for HTML pages. But html
viewing is kind of broken in general right now, so we can’t
screenshot this.
* If you install EOG, nautilus can now view nearly any kind of
image file in place. Right now the behavior with respect to scaling
is a bit off; we’re working on that.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/eog.jpg
* Implemented the Nautilus::ViewWindow Bonobo object and defined
but did not yet implement Nautilus::Application. These will be
useful later for remote control or scripting of Nautilus.
* When you have multiple items selected, the right-click menu
will now apply to all the items and will, for instance, say “Open
in (n) new windows” where (n) is the number of items, and will open
the appropriate number of windows.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/selections.jpg
* Added icon themability. Now you can choose from the Eazel icon
theme, done by Susan Kare, or classic gnome-style icons.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/eazel.jpg
* The start of a text file is now shown inside the icon at
higher zoom levels. This only works with the Eazel icon theme for
now.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/text.jpg
* Added gnome-look icons at many different sizes, thanks to
Kenneth Christiansen who did a beautiful job on them. The icons
look much nicer now at higher zoom levels.
http://nautilus.eazel.com/screenshots/feb-28-2000/zoom.jpg
* Building should not require munging with gnome.m4 any
more.
* Improved the status string shown when items are selected –
Nautilus now shows the number of selected directories, with a count
of the items the directories contain, and the number of other items
selected, with total size of these items.
* As usual, numerous internal reorganizations and bug fixes.
8) Hacking Activity
Module Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per module, since the
last summary)
100 gnome-core
92 gnome-applets
74 gnome-db
69 evolution
60 guppi3
56 gnumeric
56 gimp
49 nautilus
41 gtkhtml
40 libgtop
37 gnome-libs
34 pybliographer
29 gtk+
29 glade–
27 gnome-pilot
25 tktext-port
22 gnome-utils
20 gnome-guile
19 gb
18 gtk–
18 gnome-vfs
17 control-center
User Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per user, since the
last summary)
101 martin
62 rodrigo
60 trow
48 ettore
42 jirka
38 fredgo
35 hp
30 mmeeks
30 jberkman
29 christof
28 neo
27 sopwith
26 arios
25 cgabriel
22 eskil
22 danw
21 jrb
20 peterh
18 miguel
17 kmaraas
17 jamesh
17 ahyden
16 zucchi
16 tonyt
15 mitch
15 federico
15 dcm
9) New and Updated Software
Glade– – C++ output for Glade
gnome-db – database library for GNOME
Atomix – mind game
dia – tool for creating diagrams
Wsnitch – http proxy
MemoPanel – applet for keeping notes
seti_applet – monitor SETI@Home clients
BBsol – French BBS client
GNet – simple glib-style network library
PMail – email client written in Python
Guppi – data visualization, statistics, plots
Gnucash – Personal finances
gob – GtkObject creation language
gcrontab – crontab editor
GCO – GNOME Comics Organizer
CodeCommander – code editor
grecord – sound recorder
gFTP – ftp client
gdu – show disk usage
Bluefish – HTML editor
GNOME Toaster – CD creation suite
gRhythm – teach EKG strips
gno3dtet – 3D tetris game
galway – web editor
Gnomba – GUI Samba browser
gsysinfo – system monitor for GNOME panel
GtkExText – enhanced text widget
irssi – IRC client
Emma – money management
gnetview – network management environment
pasmon – passive network monitor
bloksi – sliding pieces puzzle
zapping – video4linux TV viewer
bug-buddy – graphical bug report wizard
GnomePM – portfolio manager
Floyd – VRML browser, OpenGL scene graph library
groach – like xroach
GNOME Chinese Checkers – chinese checkers game
Pan – Usenet newsreader for GNOME
Oregano – SPICE circuit simulator frontend
Electric Ears – sound player/editor
gb – VB implementation
gtraffic – car game
Gaspell – frontend to aspell spell checker
FMaps – Remote sensing app
GDVD – DVD player
Gnofract 4D – fractals
See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more
information about any of these packages.
Until next week –
Havoc