Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 03:29:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Havoc Pennington <rhp@zirx.pair.com> To: gnome-announce-list@gnome.org, gnome-list@gnome.org Subject: GNOME Summary, May 31-June 7 This is the informal, unofficial GNOME Summary for the week May 31 to June 7. Thanks to everyone who sent appreciative email and suggestions regarding last week's summary. If you follow up to the summary, please mail only gnome-list, not gnome-announce-list. New gnome-core, gnome-libs === New bugfix releases of gnome-core and gnome-libs came out this week. Numerous bugs were fixed; upgrading is strongly encouraged. GVoice === Erik Walthinsen released several versions of GVoice, which adds voice control support to Gtk. He's using IBM's ViaVoice SDK - it sounds like this is pretty cool, though I don't have a microphone and haven't downloaded the giant ViaVoice thing so I can't say. :-) http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~omega/gnome/gvoice/gvoice-docs/book1.html has some documentation (docs for a week-old API - Erik is a maniac!). You can download the code at: ftp://anakin.cse.ogi.edu/pub/omega/gvoice/gvoice-0.0.3.tar.gz Now all we need is a free replacement for ViaVoice; any voice recognition experts out there? libxml 1.1 === Daniel Veillard released a new version of gnome-xml - it has lots of bugfixes, and a complete SAX API so applications can load streaming XML (without building a parse tree). This release should be backward-compatible with previous releases; no applications will break if you upgrade. As a tar file at ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libxml/libxml-1.1.0.tar.gz RPMs: ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/contrib/rpms/i386/ SRPMS: ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/contrib/rpms/SRPMS/libxml-1.1.0-SNAP.src.rpm Updated documentation is on-line at: http://rpmfind.net/XML/libxml.html Dax Kelson's updated RPMs === Dax is building new RPMs on a regular basis, and making them available on his FTP site. These are for Red Hat 6.0, and are available at: ftp://ftp.inconnect.com/pub/unix/linux/redhat-6.0/contrib-updates/ Window Manager Spec Extensions === Should more stuff be added to the window manager specification to improve Gnome's communication with the window manager? The topic came up on the mailing lists this week. There's talk of adding a CORBA interface requirement to the spec; there's fear that window manager authors will refuse to accept patches implementing this, however. We'll probably end up with "compliance levels" or something. Some people argue that Gnome should just pick a "standard" window manager and be done with it. My opinion (hehe, I get to shamelessly insert my opinion) is that we want to keep things modular. Window managers should manage windows. Session managers should manage the session. The panel should be a panel. The only way to achieve this is to write and publish interface specifications, and adhere to them. Modular software gives users the most choice, and the most functionality. A big part of the Gnome project should be the creation of standards for interoperation and communication between various pieces of free software. This is an essential aspect of improving free-Unix-clone usability. (prime other example: PPP frontends and pppd.) Gnome already has bunches of non-Gnome-specific spinoffs, including esound, libxml, and ORBit. Let's keep it up. OK, I'll stop now. A post on this topic is here: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-June/0105.shtml XFCE === Another desktop-like project was mentioned on gnome-list; see the post here: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-June/0250.shtml The XFCE home page is: http://www.xfce.org Continuing my little commentary from the previous item: the XFCE panel, which looks interesting, should be able to plug right in to a Gnome desktop or talk to a "Gnome" window manager. I say "Gnome" in quotes because the Gnome window manager spec is not really Gnome-specific. XFCE comes with a hacked FVWM2 to get their pager to work; this is madness! Let's get the cooperation going, people. User choice, user choice, user choice. Interoperation, interoperation, interoperation. These are the mantras of free software, and big goals of Gnome - let's keep it up. Write Free Manuals and Earn $$$ === Jumping in on the free documentation thread, Richard Stallman had this to say: The FSF would gladly pay someone $20k for the rights to a well-written and comprehensive GNOME programming manual. We would then publish as free documentation--free as in freedom, of course. We would sell copies in bookstores, just as these companies do, just we do for our existing manuals. We also pay people to write manuals; we are paying two people now for this, and we have the money to pay another--provided we find someone with a proven ability to do the job, of course. $20k is at least equal and maybe closer to double what a proprietary book publisher will pay you for a book. Food for thought. As mentioned last week, Tim O'Reilly also indicates willingness to publish free books. MacMillan has indicated likewise. Gnomify AbiWord, dangit === Despite my prodding last week, no one has Gnomified AbiWord yet. You guys are so freakin' lame. libsigc++ === Karl Nelson has been hacking on a signal-callback framework called libsigc++ for months; a release has finally appeared. Check it out: http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~kenelson/libsigc++/ This was originally written for Gtk--, but is also useful in other applications. It's a type-safe runtime signal-callback connection mechanism; it works with standard C++, no funky stuff required. Hacking Ideas === Miguel posted some ideas for small hacking tasks people might want to work on. See the email here: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-June/0061.shtml As always, more substantial tasks are in the gnome-status module in CVS. And patches for your favorite not-quite-right rough edge are always appreciated. Hacking Activity === Miguel did bunches of work on printing support for Gnumeric; this is in the GNUMERIC_PRINT branch of the gnumeric module. The web team is hard at work on the new developer's web site; tons of commits went by about that. Elliot is rewriting orbit-idl (the IDL compiler); this should fix a bunch of bugs and add nice features like C/C++/ObjC keyword detection. Gnome support for Glade continues to churn along, thanks to James and Damon. Tim Janik is hard at work on BEAST, which is some sort of sound application; not yet announced. He's committed some stuff to the GLE GUI builder/editor as well. Kjartan Maraas translated about a million things into Norwegian. Bonobo development continues, Gnome GhostView (ggv) is looking nicer, resizable panel is moving along, bug fixes went in to many modules, gnorpm got several enhancements, and a whole bunch of other stuff too. Special mention goes to all the work on IDEs and debugger frontends and so on. Modules that appear to be in this category: glade, libglade, gle, gnome-filer, dryad, photon, gdb-guile... I think most of this stuff interoperates, so it will be interesting to see what comes of it. If I didn't mention you don't take it personally, there were 474 CVS commits in my commits folder this week. :-) Oops, make that 475: Peter Teichman is in under the wire with Think patches. New and Updated Software === As mentioned earlier, GVoice, libxml, gnome-core and gnome-libs were updated. Also on the software map this week, we have new releases of: irssi Giram Xwhois Molasses GMyNews Electric Ears Screem Jtk cpanel gVN gnome-games Gnome patch for Blackbox GSokoban Cloned XUnzip Perl/Gtk Guppi Gnome Portfolio Manager OK, I can't think of anything else. By the way, if you have an item you think should go in next week's summary, just send me mail by Sunday night: hp@pobox.com. Havoc