GNOME Summary, October 5-12

This is the GNOME Summary for October 5-12.

Table of Contents

1. “October GNOME” Released Today
2. IGS hiring 7 developers for GNOME groupware
3. Loki Installer uses libglade and libxml
4. Gnumeric trashes StarOffice and Applix in Excel Importing
5. GNOME Hackers at ALS
6. Developer Release of Gtk–
7. Homer Applet
8. Hacking Activity
9. New and Updated Software

1) “October GNOME” Released Today

We’ve been continuously releasing new versions of all the GNOME
components in the 1.0.x series, but haven’t assembled a complete,
tested-as-a-group set of packages since the original 1.0
release.

This version has some nice new features, and hundreds of bug
fixes since GNOME 1.0. An upgrade is strongly recommended.

Announce here:

http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/1999-October/0020.shtml

2) IGS hiring 7 developers for GNOME groupware

Nat Friedman wrote to gnome-list to describe Internation GNOME
Support’s groupware plans. This involves integrating the Evolution
email client, GNOME Calendar, GNOME Card, etc. using our
CORBA/Bonobo framework.

http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-October/0356.shtml

I am excited about this. 🙂

3) Loki Installer uses libglade and libxml

Loki’s new GPL Setup 1.0 installer uses libglade and libxml for
its user interface. libglade loads an XML file generated by the
Glade GUI builder at runtime, giving you the ability to tweak your
widget layout in Glade without recompiling your application.

Setup 1.0 uses XML to describe the application to be installed,
as well as for the GUI. Have a look:

http://www.lokigames.com/development/setup.php3

libglade and libxml are some of the most exciting features of
the GNOME development environment, so it’s sweet to see them in
production use.

4) Gnumeric trashes StarOffice and Applix in Excel Importing

Joe Barr has a review of StarOffice here:

http://linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-10/lw-10-vcontrol_1.html

Start reading Joe’s article just under Figure 3, it’s pretty
fun. 🙂

The Gnumeric team deserves kudos. Gnumeric has become a thriving
free software project with 4 or 5 really serious developers hacking
on it continuously; note its standing in the Module Score-O-Matic
below. They have a huge directory of sample Excel spreadsheets, and
Gnumeric can load them all. They’ve implemented zillions of
spreadsheet functions and have a fast, clean spreadsheet engine.
The only thing that’s really missing is graphs/charts, and that
problem is definitely on the agenda.

5) GNOME Hackers at ALS

Lots of us will be at Atlanta Linux Showcase; look for Nat and
Miguel, they are the easiest to find because they are everywhere at
once, moving really quickly. 🙂 I’ll be at the Red Hat booth
Friday morning and Saturday afternoon. Also, there’s some kind of
GTK+/Gnome Application Development book event at the New Riders
booth Friday from 5 to 6 (tentatively).

Nat and Miguel are giving talks early Friday afternoon. Nat’s
talk on Bonobo will be of special interest to developers.

6) Developer Release of Gtk–

The first release of the current developer version of Gtk– is
available; see the Gtk– home page here:

http://lazy.ton.tut.fi/terop/iki/gtk/gtk–.html

This is the first release to incorporate Karl Nelson’s
libsigc++:

http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~kenelson/libsigc++/

Gtk– has changed quite a bit since the stable version. It’s
worth having a look.

7) Homer Applet

The Homer Applet has been written; we’ve arrived as a desktop.
Homer complements Wanda the GNOME Fish, resulting in new
productivity records (record lows, that is).

Homer is here:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Cable/4608/homer

You’ll probably have to download it separately for the
forseeable future since we can’t put copyrighted images on CVS. 🙁
But it’s worth it!

8) Hacking Activity

Module Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per module, during
this week)

66 gnumeric
56 gnome-core
42 gnomeweb
34 gnome-libs
26 gimp
24 gtk+
19 gphoto
19 dia
19 desktop-docs
17 gnome-chess
16 gtk–
15 gnome-games
15 gnome-debug
14 gnome-vfs
14 gnome-applets
12 gnome-db
10 gnome-print
10 gnome-pim

User Score-O-Matic:
(number of CVS commits per user, during this week)

37 mwimer
33 unammx
30 jesusb
30 imain
29 jody
27 mmeeks
24 jpr
23 cgabriel
22 jberkman
21 martijn
19 jirka
19 ettore
18 sopwith
15 sipan
15 campd
15 cactus
15 bpaauwe
14 hp
13 wlashell
12 rodrigo
12 kenelson
12 atena
10 eskil

9) New and Updated Software

Electric Ears – like Electric Eyes, but for sound! 😉
Gip – GNOME Install Project
Homer Applet – enough said
Gfax – Fax application
DDUP Applet – Dynamic DNS manager applet
Gseq – Sequencing application
sawmill – Nice, minimal GNOME-compliant window manager
PyORBit – ORBit bindings for Python
gsetit – work progress tracker
Eucalyptus – Email client
gBackGround – changes root window background (applet)
Gnomba – Samba browser
GnomeTREK – Star Trek Encyclopedia browser
Atomix – A mind game
gmchat – Chat application
gisdnload – ISDN load meter
XSitecopy – synchronizes ftp/web sites
gnome-pilot – Pilot synchronization daemon
Bluefish – HTML editor
gimon – ISDN monitor
RadioActive – interface to radio tuner cards
gtkdiff – diff frontend
GMail – mail client
GSEdit – text editor
Sound Monitor applet – monitors sound

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

Of course there are also all the components of the October GNOME
release, the above list is just the stuff from the software
map.

Until next week –
Havoc