This is the GNOME Summary for September 7 – September 21.
Table of Contents
1) Perl bindings for ORBit
2) Lots of gushing about Glade
3) Haskell-GTK release
4) New calendar, address book
5) First GConf release
6) Printing in Dia
7) Fonts on UNIX
8) MagicDev
9) Test release of gnome-libs
10) rp3 module
11) new Desktop::Editor interface
12) 1.0.50 winding down
13) Hacking Activity
14) New and Updated Software
1) Perl bindings for ORBit
Owen wrote the Perl bindings for ORBit, based on his experience
writing the Perl bindings for MICO. There’s also a libgnorba
module.
So you can use Perl to query all the running GNOME CORBA
interfaces
and manipulate them.
2) Lots of gushing about Glade
Glade + libglade = REALLY EXCELLENT RAPID APPLICATION
DEVELOPMENT TOOL!
Check these out if you haven’t. Glade is a nice GUI builder, it
has
lots of features and it’s reasonably stable at version 0.5.
Glade
saves files in XML format; at runtime, your application can load
them
up using libglade. Basically this at least halves the number of
lines
of code involved for simple applications. It’s very nice. We wrote
a
floppy formatter interface in 15 minutes just now.
New Glade announced:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/1999-September/0025.shtml
New libglade announced:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/1999-September/0029.shtml
Note that the James Henstridge, the libglade author, is also
the
author of PyGNOME. He has Python bindings for libglade too. So
you
can combine Python with the GUI builder and create GNOME
applications
very, very quickly.
3) Haskell-GTK release
There was a new release of the Haskell bindings for GTK+;
they’re
pretty incomplete, but sufficient to write some simple UIs. There
are
bindings for GtkGLArea, so if you’re doing OpenGL stuff you could
use
Haskell for it.
Haskell is fun, it’s a language not many people have tried out;
see:
I wrote a program in it last night, which triggered a bug in the
Hugs
interpreter and segfaulted. 🙂 But they already responded to
the
report and fixed it, and I enjoyed the programming experience.
4) New calendar, address book
Look here:
the address book in particular has major enhancements.
5) First GConf release
GConf is a “registry” system, for storing application
configuration.
It has lots of nifty features; this is an alpha release, API
will
probably change, but I’m soliciting testing and suggestions:
GConf addresses this problem, among others:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-September/0000.shtml
I’m hoping for lots of input from sysadmins who have some
coding
experience. Have a look at the gconf.sgml documentation and
header
files and let me know what you think.
6) Printing in Dia
James coded up printing for the Dia diagram editor, which is
quite
a nice application for flow charts, network diagrams, and the
like.
He’s also added the ability to define new shapes in a subset of
SVG.
7) Fonts on UNIX
Speaking of printing (lame segue alert!) here is a thread about
fonts on
UNIX. We’re trying to address this problem with the gnome-print
library.
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-September/0426.shtml
8) MagicDev
MagicDev is an auto-mounter auto-run-programs
auto-everything-imaginable feature for your desktop. Basically
it
detects removable media, creates desktop icons, and has an
“autorun”
feature if a CD has a magic autorun file on it. It also
autoplays
audio CDs via gtcd (well, this last feature requires a patch
that
hasn’t been merged to CVS yet). MagicDev is in CVS under
‘magicdev’.
9) Test release of gnome-libs
See this announce:
this is a test release to be sure the release isn’t broken, so
don’t install
it if brokenness bothers you. 🙂
10) rp3 module
rp3 is “Red Hat PPP,” a nice PPP GUI that for now only works on
Lorax
because the underlying Linux PPP infrastructure had to be
modified
quite a bit to enable user feedback, non-blockingness, dynamic
changes, etc. However lots of code is going upstream to the
WvDial
people and the GUI could be pretty much re-used with a more
portable
underpinning, were someone to write said portable underpinning.
It’s a
fairly huge undertaking though or we would have undertaken it at
the
Labs.
11) new Desktop::Editor interface
Martijn van Beers announced new IDL for a Desktop::Editor
interface:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-devel-list/1999-September/0301.shtml
Should be useful to anyone writing an app that needs to talk to an
editor.
12) 1.0.50 winding down
We’re currently assembling packages for the 1.0.50 release, look
for
announcements asking for help testing them out, then look for
release
announcements. 🙂
13) Hacking Activity
1,379 commits in the last two weeks.
Module Score-O-Matic:
141 gnome-core
115 gnumeric
92 gimp
91 gnome-libs
65 dr-genius
61 gtk–
49 mc
47 gnome-applets
46 gnome-pim
42 gnome-debug
29 gtk+
27 libgtop
25 control-center
24 web-devel-2
24 gedit
22 bonobo
21 gnome-utils
20 gnome-filer
18 magicdev
18 gnome-vfs
18 dia
16 rp3
16 gnome-chess
User Score-O-Matic:
115 unammx
102 kmaraas
73 martin
61 pablo
56 jirka
54 sopwith
47 jberkman
36 andersca
35 mmeeks
34 ke
33 kenelson
28 owen
25 ettore
24 pcg
24 jody
22 zucchi
21 tonyt
21 hilaire
20 chyla
19 hp
19 campd
18 mortenw
17 glaurent
17 gedit
16 eskil
16 bertrand
15 yosh
15 vinc
Note that gnome-vfs (the new virtual file system for the new file
manager)
is moving along nicely. Also about a zillion bug-fixes went in,
and
ongoing Bonobo work. Looking nice.
14) New and Updated Software
Screen-Shooter: screenshots!
Eucalyptus: mail user agent
elknews: Simple Usenet newsreader
sawmill: Very nice, GNOME-integrated window manager. Makes your
GNOME fast and snappy.
GProc: process list
glms: lm_sensors applet, shows CPU temp. etc.
RadioActive: interface for radio tuner cards
libptb: library for user-customizable toolbars
Gnome Transcript: SQL database client
screem: web site/page editor
gMessagingSystem: message stream handler
galway: web editor
gMoonClock: shows phase of the moon
Scwm: Scheme Constraints Window Manager, the Emacs of window
managers
Atomix: A mind game about atoms and molecules
Pybliographer: bibliography database editor
Midnight: MIDI player
Gnerudite: Scrabble clone
GNU Talk: frontend for “talk” program
URL Collector: stores URLs
scd: network time client, sychronize your system clock
mosquito: Small window manager designed for GNOME
irssi: IRC client
DPS-FTP: FTP client
GCO: Track your comic book collection
GnomeTREK: Search the Star Trek Encyclopedia
GFile: file manager
LinPopUp: port of Winpopup
GTransferManager: file transfer
Gpg shell: frontend for GPG
gIPSC: IP subnet calculator
gnome-filer: rapid application development framework
Giram: 3D modeller
rCalc: calculator
WaveForge: sound editor
Loci: distributed data processing
libglade: Loads UI descriptions stored in XML files created by
Glade GUI builder
Pan: Newsreader
SixtyFourBits: counts to a really big number in binary
gnome-print: Printing library for GNOME
Gnumeric: GNOME spreadsheet program
gxsnmp: Network monitoring
PovFront: povray frontend
gVN: manages a small network
See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more
information about any of these packages.
===========================================================================
Until next week –
Havoc