To: gnome-list@gnome.org, gnome-announce-list@gnome.org Subject: GNOME Summary January 12-18: Project of the Week, Loki job op, web site authors needed, vector graphics, BEAST release, Guppi, Evolution update From: Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> Date: 18 Jan 2000 18:56:36 -0500 This is the GNOME Summary for January 12-18, 2000. ============================================================= Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Projects of the Week 2) Loki job opportunity 3) Web site content authors needed 4) Vector illustrators galore 5) BEAST/BSE release 6) Guppi reviving; testers needed 7) Evolution update 8) Hacking Activity 9) New and Updated Software ============================================================== 1) Projects of the Week -------------------------------------------------------------- In a major ripoff of an AbiSource invention: http://www.abisource.com/pow.phtml I've decided to do a "Project of the Week." This is a small project, maybe something that would take a day or a weekend, that it would be cool to have someone working on. Sort of suggestions for hacking or documenting. I'll do this every week except weeks when I can't think of anything; if you think of good POWs then send them in for inclusion. I think we should have prizes for doing a POW but I can't think of any, so we'll mention you in the summary or something. ;-) If you want to work on a POW, just go for it, and when you have something working mail gnome-devel-list and let everyone know! So, two initial projects. PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER ONE ========= Sawmill uses Lisp function names to display actions to the user, in the key/mouse binding editor and in the tooltips. The project is to display nice friendly function names instead. For example instead of "popup-window-menu" show "Window operations menu" or something. I figure John Harper could do this in about 5 minutes but for anyone else it would probably take a while getting familiar with the Sawmill code. If you're interested in Sawmill hacking maybe it's a nice way to get started. I didn't ask John about this but I assume he'd take the patch. PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER TWO ======= Submitted by Jonathan at the Labs, this one is a much bigger job, for documentation writers: GNOME System Administrator Guide This could start out pretty small with just a few pages, and grow over time. But someone really needs to get the initial DocBook and some content in CVS. The idea is to document the administration of a GNOME installation, such as in a computer lab. How do you set up the panel, gdm, etc.? Where are the various config files (MIME types, etc.)? How do you do TCP wrappers for ORBit? Someone with experience doing this would obviously be the best author of course. ============================================================== 2) Loki job opportunity -------------------------------------------------------------- Loki (they port Linux games, such as Quake 3, as you surely know) typically uses GTK and Glade to port level editors and other Windows GUI stuff. They're looking to hire a GTK hacker; sounds like a pretty cool job. Have a look at this announce: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/2000-January/0129.shtml If you're interested mail Michael Vance as it says in the announce. ============================================================== 3) Web site content authors needed -------------------------------------------------------------- We have a new web site framework in CVS, thanks to Joakim Ziegler at Simplemente (www.simplemente.net). This will hopefully finally kill the existing www.gnome.org pages. However, the framework needs content written and/or "ported" from the old website. If you're interested, check 'gnomeweb-wml' out from CVS, look at the navigation tree, and prepare some content to go at one of the nodes. You'll need WML to build the site, read the README. ============================================================== 4) Vector illustrators galore -------------------------------------------------------------- A while back I mentioned Sketch, the vector graphics program written in Python/Tkinter and now being ported to GTK. There's also Sodipodi now, which uses the antialised GnomeCanvas and looks pretty nice; check out these screenshots: http://www.ariman.ee/linux/sodipodi/screenshots.html So there are at least two promising entries in this field (there's also Gill, but it is on a much longer timescale). Of course we have Dia too for higher-level diagrams rather than illustration. ============================================================== 5) BEAST/BSE release -------------------------------------------------------------- Tim put out a new version of BEAST and BSE; look here: http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/947866363/index_html This is a synthesizer application. ============================================================== 6) Guppi reviving; testers needed -------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Trowbridge has brought Guppi back from the dead in the new C++-free 'guppi3' CVS module and is looking at making an alpha release soon. He's looking for people to test the code out before the release, especially on non-x86 platforms. If you check guppi3 out of CVS and find problems, mail trow@emccta.com. The Guppi website is newly-up-to-date: http://www.gnome.org/guppi/ If you gave up on Guppi back when I was working on it, have another look; I think Jon's moving it along quite a bit faster than I was and the results are pretty cool. Also the project has a better motto than before. ============================================================== 7) Evolution update -------------------------------------------------------------- The Helix hackers wrote in with some status updates on Evolution. Ettore has been working on GtkHTML; the internal structure of the widget has been rearranged to make it easier to implement user HTML editing and reduce memory usage. Also, GtkHTML finally accepts data _before_ the widget is realized, a useful feature. Some simple editing works already, you can get a cursor and type in text. Miguel reports that the "shell" written in Python that coordinates all the Evolution components has been started, but doesn't do so much yet. Bertrand is almost done with the mbox backend, and will be moving on to a MIME parser. Chris is doing some Glade work for the contact editor; of course Helix is taking advantage of GNOME's Glade technology. Nat is working on Wombat, the contact manager server. Wombat "is a fully asynchronous corba-based API which can support loading contacts off the local disk or a remote server." The infrastructure is done and Nat is in debugging mode. Federico writes in to say: "I am writing the personal calendar server (PCS), codenamed Tlacuache. It is similar to Nat Friedman's personal addressbook server (PAS), codenamed Wombat." I complained on #gnome that "Tlacuache" is the most unpronounceable, unspellable thing ever and Miguel says: "Guajolote seems better." "Guajolote" doesn't seem that much better to me. :-) Anyway this is not a user-visible name. The calendar/addressbook servers will be pretty cool; I assume they are similar to "gconfd", per-user daemons that manage your personal information. Here's Federico's description of Tlacuache: <blockquote> 1. It provides storage for calendars, internally using gnome-vfs and possibly other backends in the future. 2. It provides the standard mutation functions for a calendar on a by-object basis: add an event, delete an event, update an existing event. 3. It provides semantic query functions: give me all the events that occur in a specified range of time, including instances of recurrences. 4. It provides a notification interface so that multiple clients can access a calendar at the same time: an object was added, an object was removed, an object has changed. Everything is a Bonobo object with a CORBA interface. When this is finished, likely tomorrow, I will modify Gnomecal to use it as its main storage and event generation engine. Thus Tlacuache will act as a data model and recurrence/alarm engine, and Gnomecal will act as a simple view/controller. </blockquote> Between Evolution, gconfd, OAF, etc. it looks like GNOME is rapidly becoming a giant swarm of CORBA servers (which I think was the original GNOME plan, over 2 years ago; we didn't know how much infrastructure we needed!). ============================================================== 8) Hacking Activity -------------------------------------------------------------- Module Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per module, since the last summary) 85 gnumeric 68 gimp 47 guppi3 45 libgtop 42 gnome-libs 35 gnomeicu 28 nautilus 27 evolution 27 beast 19 galway 18 gnome-core 16 gnome-guile 16 gb 15 gnome-db 15 gconf 14 gtkhtml 14 gnome-pilot 13 gtk-- 11 gnomeweb-wml 10 gnome-vfs User Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per user, since the last summary) 56 martin 47 trow 45 arios 27 timj 26 jwise 26 hp 25 unammx 23 jirka 20 rasta 20 jpekka 18 jody 18 darin 17 mortenw 16 campd 15 rodrigo 15 cactus 14 ettore 13 sopwith 13 monniaux 11 utx 11 neo 11 kmaraas 11 jfell 11 eskil 11 ahyden ============================================================== 9) New and Updated Software -------------------------------------------------------------- GId3toHtml - generate HTML listing your MP3's Oregano - cool circuit designer/simulator Sodipodi - Vector illustration program solfege - ear training irssi - IRC client Seahorse - GPG frontend seti_applet - monitor your SETI@Home client lua-gnome - bindings for the lua programming language GtkExText - replacement text widget for GTK+ CD Changer Applet - applet to deal with CD eject/mount/etc. gdxr2 - frontend for dvdplay Pygmy - mail client written in Python Gnetutil - GUI for ping, traceroute, etc. CSCMail - another mail client, in Perl VDKBuilder - C++ RAD tool VDK - C++ wrapper for GTK+/GNOME GNet - simple networking library in glib style Finder - Mac-style finder bar gnome-ttt-[3D] - tic tac toe, 3D and non-3D versions gmt - module management GUI Cloned Xunzip - file decompressor gatO- interface to the "at" command GnomeICU - ICQ client See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more information about any of these packages. =========================================================================== Until next week - Havoc