Contributed by Havoc
Pennington
This is the GNOME Summary for July 18-25.
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Table of Contents
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- gnome-core and gnome-pim
- Gnomba
- GnomeHack release
- GConf
- GTK+/Gnome Application Development goes to press
- If you have a cvs.gnome.org account, read this
- Dax Kelson RPM updates
- WM Spec churning along
- Report from IBM conference
- Hacking Activity
- New and Updated Software
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1) gnome-core and gnome-pim
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New releases of gnome-core and gnome-pim, updating your
calendar, panel, and so on. Here’s the announce, describing where
to get them and what the changes are:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/1999-July/0035.shtml
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2) Gnomba
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A GNOME Samba browser appeared:
http://www.pobox.com/~gandalf/proj/gnomba
Looks nice, check it out. I think these guys have delinquently
failed to update the software map, however. 😉 Nudge, nudge,
guys.
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3) GnomeHack release
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If you haven’t tried GnomeHack, try it out. It works pretty
well. I’ve played several games without seeing bugs. (Of course, I
suck and die pretty fast. 🙂
http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/erik/gnomehack/gnomehack.html
It’s definitely nicer than moving a little @ character
around.
Oooh, I just noticed that Erik is *also* a software map
delinquent. Bad Erik. 😉
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4) GConf
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I’m playing around with a new configuration system (a
replacement for libgnome/gnome-config.h). This is like the Windows
“registry,” only without the bad parts. 🙂
If you’re curious, look at gconf/doc/thoughts.txt in CVS; you
might also be interested in
http://www.debian.org/~wakkerma/config6/
Not too much code yet. It will be Gnome-independent, thus the
name “GConf” instead of “GnomeConf”.
Oh, the initial thread about this starts here:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-devel-list/1999-July/0121.shtml
thoughts.txt in CVS is a revision of my mailing list post.
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5) GTK+/Gnome Application Development goes to press
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Several people have asked when my book is coming out; the pages
were finalized and sent to the printer on Friday. So, it will take
about a month to print and ship to stores. That is, expect the book
in late August, or thereabouts. The final page count was over 500
pages, a good bit more than the planned 350; so this is a weighty
tome on Gnome. I promise it’s only 50% filler. 🙂 (just
kidding)
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6) If you have a cvs.gnome.org account, read this
————————————————————–
A post from Elliot about using this machine:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-devel-list/1999-July/0120.shtml
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7) Dax Kelson RPM updates
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Bleeding-edge RPMs, read the announce here:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-July/0594.shtml
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8) WM Spec churning along
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Work seems to be progressing on the Gnome/KDE/etc. window
manager extension spec; at least, major players are talking without
any flames so far. You can read the archives here:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/wm-spec-list/1999-July/
Please stick to lurking unless you’re very sure you should post,
we want to keep the list on-track and undistracted.
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9) Report from IBM conference
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The following report was written by Peter Teichman
<pat4@acpub.duke.edu>, who just returned from the GNOME booth
at the IBM Solutions ’99 conference:
I have just returned from a week in Las Vegas, where IBM’s
Solutions ’99 conference was being held. Nat Friedman was there
from Sunday until Thursday, and Miguel de Icaza was there for
Wednesday and Thursday.
Solutions ’99 was a conference for developers. The feel was
definitely one of supporting strong technologies, rather than
marketing. IBM had given a booth to the Free Software Foundation
and the GNOME project, and we went out to man the booth. The FSF
was represented by Tim Ney, who some of you may have met at other
conferences recently.
It was very interesting to see IBM’s stance toward Free Software
and GNU/Linux – it looks as if they are actually doing things
right. They are working on native ports of all their major
applications, and appear to be genuinely trying to release the
source to anything they can. Moreover, they are trying *not* to
crowd the market. I was initially skeptical about IBM’s involvement
in the community, but talking in depth with several of their
employees leads me to believe that they have the right ideas about
how to be involved in the community.
The main focus of our booth was giving GNOME demos and educating
people about the technologies involved in the project. Since this
was a conference for developers, most people were very interested
in the work that has gone into our infrastructure.
The biggest hits appeared to be Bonobo, the Canvas, and our
reliance on XML tools. The XML people from IBM (and their
AlphaWorks projects) were there in full force, and they seemed
impressed that we have standardized all our file formats on XML.
Another big hit was found in Gill, our rendering program for the
World Wide Web Consortium’s Scalable Vector Graphics. We ended up
showing Gill off quite a bit.
Overall, I think we interested many people in the GNOME project.
I think it was good to get the word out at a major industry
conference like this one, especially one where the conference
attendees were looking toward possible GNU/Linux ports of their
software. Everyone we talked to who was in that position now
understands the strengths of the GNOME framework for developing
applications.
On Tuesday, Nat and I made the rounds through the conference
floor. We ended up evangelizing Free Software to the other software
vendors. To my surprise, no one there blew us off. Some companies
had already been considering the model, and some seemed interested
once we described it a bit. I don’t think that we changed any
minds, but we certainly made headway. And these were some of the
largest software vendors around:
http://www.solutions99.ibm.com/html_docs/exhibitors.html
Wednesday afternoon there was a Linux BOF, which Nat and I
attended. I put in a plug for the Free Software Foundation’s booth
afterward, and many people picked up our literature. I was hoping
that some people would come by the next day and see a GNOME demo,
at very least. Several groups sounded like they were interested in
opening the source to their products, and I also wanted them to
come by for discussion.
We did end up having increased traffic the next day, and showed
off much of GNOME, like we had done the days before. It was nice
for us that this was a developers conference, as they were more
interested in the technical parts of GNOME that we consider so
important. We were able to talk more about our framework for
building applications, rather than just demo the Panel and existing
apps.
Miguel gave a talk later on Thursday, where he described the
major structural parts of GNOME. He complained afterward that the
talk wasn’t as funny as he would have liked, but I thought it was
the best technical introduction to the GNOME framework that I had
heard.
The overall feel of the conference was that GNU/Linux and the
GNOME environment are finally making their way into larger markets.
IBM looks to have the right idea about their work in the area, and
I think it is good for them to be an ally.
Peter Teichman
pat4@acpub.duke.edu
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10) Hacking Activity
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Module Score-O-Matic:
31 ggdb 25 gimp 24 gnumeric 23 gnome-libs 15 mc 15 gtk-- 15 gtk+ 15 gnome-ddruid 15 gnome-applets 13 gill 13 gconf 12 web-devel-2 12 gnomeicu 11 nethack 11 goose 10 gxsnmp 10 gnome-debug 10 gnome-core 10 gmf 9 gnome-filer 9 bonobo 8 dryad
User Score-O-Matic:
53 martin 25 spapadim 20 mmeeks 18 msw 18 hp 16 sopwith 15 kenelson 14 hvr 13 sipan 12 vinc 12 karsten 12 hestgray
Notice the gnome-ddruid module, which is a spiffy disk partition
editor msw is working on. It’s quite nice.
There’s still a bunch of work on assorted IDE/debugger thingies,
I still haven’t tried them. They must be nearing usability, I’d
think.
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11) New and Updated Software
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- Mosquito
- gvsy
- GSnes9x
- gaspell
- Gnomba
- GNOME Weather
- GnomeTranscript
- vsa
- GnoMail
- GnomeHack
- gsrnd
- gx10
- teleGNOME
- gproc
- GnomePM
- Glacier
- GPeriodic
- GFlash
- Trinity
- gquest
- GIntMon
- irssi
- gnofin
- atilo
- gaddr
- ghost-edit
- gdiary
- gphoto
- screem
- gchbkgrd
Smart-ass comment: a couple authors have entries in the software
map with no web page, no tarball, no author’s email address, no
version number, indeed, no information whatsoever. 🙂 You know who
you are. The map entries aren’t very useful if they don’t point to
any software. 🙂
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Until next week –
Havoc