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Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 03:04:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> To: gnome-announce-list@gnome.org, gnome-list@gnome.org Subject: GNOME Summary, Sept 7 - Sept 21 This is the GNOME Summary for September 7 - September 21. HTML version: http://developer.gnome.org/news/summary/1999_September7-September21.html ============================================================= 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. http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/937786319/index_html ============================================================== 2) Lots of gushing about Glade -------------------------------------------------------------- Glade + libglade = <b>REALLY EXCELLENT RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TOOL!</b> 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. http://www.score.is.tsukuba.ac.jp/~chak/haskell/gtk/ Haskell is fun, it's a language not many people have tried out; see: http://www.haskell.org I wrote a program in it last night, which triggered a bug in the Hugs interpreter and segfaulted. :-) But the maintainers already responded to the report and fixed it, and I enjoyed the programming experience. ============================================================== 4) New calendar, address book -------------------------------------------------------------- Look here: http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/937595610/index_html 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: http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/937788811/index_html 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. http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/937220635/index_html ============================================================== 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: http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/937861983/index_html 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