Date: 26 Jan 2000 22:40:57 -0500
From: Havoc Pennington hp@redhat.com
To: gnome-announce-list@gnome.org, gnome-list@gnome.org
This is the GNOME Summary for January 18-26, 2000.
Table of Contents
1) Status of GNOME Post
2) Some-Spring-Month GNOME Enters Freeze
3) Nautilus Screenshots
4) Defs files for language bindings
5) Sketch in CVS
6) Guppi release
7) New Labs web site
8) Evolution update
9) Project of the Week
10) Hacking Activity
11) New and Updated Software
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
Slashdot), we decided to make this a full GNOME release. That means
that it will include a complete snapshot of the desktop environment
packages. However, again, some of the packages will not be
materially different from October GNOME.
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
http://primates.helixcode.com/~clahey/contact-editor-test-details.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
85 gtkhtml
79 guppi3
66 gimp
48 gnome-db
44 evolution
42 gnumeric
39 gnome-core
36 dr-genius
32 gtk–
29 gnome-applets
24 gnomeweb-wml
22 gnome-libs
21 libgtop
21 gtk+
19 bonobo
18 prcs2
18 dia
17 gconf
16 gphoto
User Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per user, since the
last summary)
85 ettore
79 trow
44 rasta
43 rodrigo
43 darin
41 unammx
41 jirka
35 martin
29 kenelson
28 sopwith
23 hp
22 owen
22 neo
22 jmacd
20 hilaire
19 kmaraas
17 sullivan
16 jberkman
15 jody
15 iholmes
11) New and Updated Software
Tons of stuff this week.
PowerShell – another GNOME-based terminal emulator
seti_applet – monitor your SETI@home client
gEdit – text editor
cd changer applet – CD jukebox controller
Pan – Usenet news client
GNOME Toaster – CD burner suite
GNet – simple networking library
GNOME IconEdit – icon editor
gMGAClock – Matrox G400 overclocking tool
PopApp – mail checker applet
Python-GNOME-Skel – Skeleton PyGNOME application (bootstrap your
PyGNOME app)
Xwhois – whois frontend
gob – GTK+ object builder
gnofin – personal finance application
g3DGMV – 3D graphical map viewer
gnome-applets – the official collection of panel applets
gnome-chess – chess frontend
bug-buddy – graphical bug reporting wizard
Eye of GNOME – image viewer
libglade – load Glade resource files from disk and create a GUI
dynamically (recommended way to use Glade)
libgtop – cross-platform library for reading system information
gnome-pim – GNOME personal information manager (addressbook and
calendar)
Go – word processor
gnome-ppp – PPP GUI
gnome-games – GNOME games collection
gnome-core – panel, applets, help browser, session manager
gtop – graphical version of top
gdm – GNOME-ified xdm
Electric Eyes – image viewer
gnome-libs – GNOME libraries
Seahorse – GPG frontend
GNOME Transcript – SQL database client
Cloned Xunzip – graphical Unzip tool
GProc-applet – process list applet
Guppi – statistics/data-analysis/plot program
DDUP Applet – manage your dyndns.org freedns account
YAMT – MP3 organizer tool
Sensor Sweep Applet – lm_sensors applet
GNOME Disk Catalog – organize your disks
Trinity – video editing application
gnlogin – frontend to Netware login
gVidChanger – quickly change X video resolution
sawmill – simple window manager with GNOME support
lua-gnome – bindings for the LUA programming language
GMatH – math environment
See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more
information about any of these packages.
Until next week –
Havoc