To: gnome-announce-list@gnome.org, gnome-list@gnome.org Subject: GNOME Summary, April 4-13 (Mozilla embedding, gdk-pixbuf, gnome-core, two interviews with Miguel, Evolution screenshots, GTK update, Nautilus update, Projects of the Week) From: Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> Date: 13 Apr 2000 14:47:31 -0400 This is the GNOME Summary for April 4-13, 2000. ============================================================= Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Mozilla embeds in Nautilus 2) New gdk-pixbuf 3) New gnome-core 4) Assorted interviews 5) Evolution screenshots 6) glib/GTK+ Update 7) Nautilus Update: The Return 8) Projects of the Week 9) Hacking Activity 10) New and Updated Software ============================================================== 1) Mozilla embeds in Nautilus -------------------------------------------------------------- With Chris Blizzard at RHAD Labs and Ramiro Estrugo at Eazel, you knew it was only a matter of time before GNOME/Mozilla integration got off the ground. Check out Chris's diary mentioning it: http://www.advogato.org/person/blizzard/ We've had GtkMozilla and even some attempts at BonoZilla before, but the moving Mozilla and Bonobo code bases kept hosing things up; this time, it should be more practical to take embedded Mozilla into production. It's worth mentioning that this means Nautilus is a web browser that has Mozilla's ability to handle full-blown modern web pages, but also has native widgets and look and feel. ============================================================== 2) New gdk-pixbuf -------------------------------------------------------------- We realized at the last minute that gdk-pixbuf was going out with GNOME 1.2 (April GNOME), that we wanted to merge gdk-pixbuf into GTK+ 1.4, and that we would have to break source compat in order to merge into GTK+. So we went ahead and broke source compat _before_ releasing gdk-pixbuf; if you were using the unstable gdk-pixbuf library, you got what you deserved for using unreleased stuff. ;-) In any case, there's a new tarball to try out; the changes are not major or bug-generating, just made some structs opaque and did some renaming/rearranging. http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/955589946/index_html This breakage should mean that users of the stable pixbuf release won't feel too much pain when gdk-pixbuf is released as part of GTK 1.4. ============================================================== 3) New gnome-core -------------------------------------------------------------- Getting very close to release for April GNOME. With luck, April GNOME will even be in April. (woo hoo!) http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/954892907/index_html ============================================================== 4) Assorted interviews -------------------------------------------------------------- Miguel in Brazil: http://www.olinux.com.br/interviews/11/en/ Miguel on Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/04/03/2344211.shtml ============================================================== 5) Evolution screenshots -------------------------------------------------------------- I think these are a few weeks old, but I missed them, so maybe some other people did: http://www.helixcode.com/apps/evolution.php3 ============================================================== 6) glib/GTK+ Update -------------------------------------------------------------- The final push to complete new features for GTK+ 1.4 is on - you know those times you've thought "GTK should really do this" or "this feature should really be in GTK" - you have a couple months at most to come up with the patches to make your dreams a reality! ;-) If you miss this glib/GTK+ release, it will be at least a year before you can get a new feature into a production release. GTK+ is the fundamental infrastructure of Gimp, GNOME, and many other projects; making it better has ripple effects that improve all the software out there. Owen and Tim are very overloaded doing core architecture stuff (Pango and object/type system), so they can use a lot of help with some of the smaller TODO list items. Check here for the TODO lists: http://developer.gnome.org/status/ If you have patches or TODO list additions, send them to gtk-devel-list@redhat.com. There were a number of interesting developments in GTK-land this week. Sebastian posted some TODO items and plans for glib, mostly related to threading: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0038.shtml David Santiago chewed into the TODO with gusto, fixing some menu behavior: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0019.shtml then he did the work to integrate the new color selector: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0039.shtml and now he's up to yet more stuff: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0041.shtml There were some suggestions about how to make insensitive widgets more insensitive-looking, with no firm resolution: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0028.shtml http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0036.shtml Marc Flerackers mailed in asking for help writing OLE2 drag-and-drop for the win32 port, he needs more docs: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0013.shtml Kim McCall is assaulting the submenu navigation problem with bazooka-like thoroughness; for details see this URL: http://www.kimmccall.com/navigation/index.html Jonathan (jrb@redhat.com) has been hacking on a new list/tree widget, to replace GtkList/GtkTree/GtkCList/GtkCTree with something more flexible; not much to see yet, but things are moving forward. Owen is currently Pango-izing GtkTextView, and has some stuff displaying on screen, but it's still in a pretty broken state. However he expects to have the text widget working fairly well within a week or so. Tim continues to hack on the exciting new object/type system, which should make life easier for language bindings, and allow non-GUI applications to use a GtkObject-style abstraction. ============================================================== 7) Nautilus Update: The Return -------------------------------------------------------------- >From Eazel hacker Maciej Stachowiak: It's been a while since a Nautilus update, so this one only covers some of the more interesting changes since April 1st, not everything since the last update. You can keep track of the tasks currently on our plan at bugzilla.eazel.com. * Drag and drop move and copy are implemented (but you still don't get proper feedback in the window). * Better file type display - english phrases instead of real mime types. * Menu icons for bookmarks and history. * RPM view. * Icons have emblems to represent various user-settable properties. * Keyboard navigation in list view now uses the same keys and has the same behavior as in icon view. * Icon titles are underlined when the icon is pre-lit. * A start on client access for Eazel services. * The selection is now preserved when switching between icon and list views. * Improved preferences handling. * Background image can be set with drag and drop. * Files can be renamed from the "set properties" dialog. ============================================================== 8) Projects of the Week -------------------------------------------------------------- Several suggestions: - Any of the glib or GTK+ TODO items on: http://developer.gnome.org/status/ (coordinate with gtk-devel-list@redhat.com) - The .desktop files describing the various screensavers in the screensavers capplet have fallen behind the screensavers that actually exist in xscreensaver. Fill in the missing ones. Contact jrb@redhat.com. - Miguel posted to gnome-list a while back asking for .desktop files and icons for apps that don't ship with GNOME - things like StarOffice, etc. Remember that you can't include trademarked logos or images in the icons. If you create any icons, mail them to Matthias Warkus (mawa@iname.com), for .desktop files gnome-devel-list@gnome.org is probably a good destination. - If anyone wants to play with GtkTextView/GtkTextBuffer and give API feedback, this new widget would be ideal for writing a small WordPad sort of application (maybe read/write RTF format). DON'T write another text editor. ;-) If you're thinking "plugins" or "syntax highlighting" this project is not for you. ;-) The task is to make a small, simple, clean, end-user-oriented application, that lets you write a trivial letter or something like that with bold/italic text, and maybe an embedded image. Nothing else. It should just use the text widget - otherwise you're entering AbiWord territory, and there's no point in that either. What's needed here is _simple_. Note that the canonical text widget location has moved from tktext-port to a branch in the gtk+ module, where Owen is busy breaking it. However the tktext-port version is probably easier for getting started. - Jonathan suggests UI work on the Sawmill capplets and configuration panels. Make the layout fit in a nice grid, with nice spacing, etc., and add nice UI features such as drag-and-drop and tooltips where appropriate. Also, many things are now explained in words that could be nicely illustrated with appropriate pictures and icons; the old e-conf that ships with Red Hat 6.x has some examples, as does the WindowMaker config thing. ============================================================== 9) Hacking Activity -------------------------------------------------------------- cvs-commits-list was hosed for part of the week, so the numbers are maybe 60% of what they should be. Sorry about that. Module Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per module, since the last summary) 47 evolution 45 nautilus 33 gtkhtml 25 gnumeric 18 gedit 17 guppi3 17 gimp 16 balsa 14 gnome-core 12 sodipodi 11 gnome-vfs 11 gnome-libs 9 pybliographer 9 gtk+ 9 gnome-games 9 ORBit 8 gnome-utils 8 gnome-guile 8 gnome-db 8 gegl User Score-O-Matic: (number of CVS commits per user, since the last summary) 28 kmaraas 27 darin 19 pablo 19 ettore 17 trow 12 miguel 12 jody 11 rodo 11 andy 10 owen 10 jleach 10 jesusb 9 peterw 9 kabalak 9 fredgo 9 danw 8 rasta 8 lewing 8 film 8 dmueth 7 sullivan 7 rodrigo 7 mortenw 7 lauris 7 itp ============================================================== 10) New and Updated Software -------------------------------------------------------------- Software since the last summary. Jonathan kindly contributed this section again this week. CodeCommander - functional all-purpose editor. GNet - Network library built onto of GLib. grecord - Simple program for recording and playing wav files. ZClock - Replacement for the GNOME Clock applet. Gnome ReadNews - Extensible NNTP-client with tin in mind. MemoPanel - Applet for memos on the GNOME panel. GnomeTV - Video4linux tuner applet with a TV & a Teletext screen. chbg - Manager of desktop background. Glade-- - Extension to glade to create C++ sources . GOX - Tic Tac Toe program. gvoc - Vocabulary trainer. Industrializer - Generates percussion samples for tracking techno pieces. gRustibus - Gnome M.A.M.E. frontend. TEG (Tenes Empanadas Graciela) - Game similar to risk. TeleGNOME - Small program for viewing Teletekst pages (Netherlands). genSQL - Generic SQL database UI. GtkExtra - Library full of useful widgets complementary to GTK+. sawmill - Lisp-extensible, GNOME-complient window manager. Etherape - Network monitor with ethernet, ip and tcp modes. gLife - Cellular automata simulator. MMC - Simple Mail Client. GnoZip - WinZip(tm) clone. seti_applet - Shows status of any seti@home client. IceWM - GNOME-complient window manager. Pybliographer - Tool for manipulating bibliographic databases. GHex - Binary file editor. genigma - An emulation of the famous Enigma. CvsRpmBuilder - CVS to RPM builder. Divider applet - Adds dividers to the panel. Very cool. Sound Monitor applet - An applet that shows a vu meter. GQview - Simple image viewer. Gnome Mp3 Database - Paper mp3 database creator. gnome-core - GNOME panel and applets, and other essential GNOME utilities gnome-applets - Collection of applets for the panel. GNU Midnight Commander - The GNOME file manager. gnome-libs - Main set of libraries for GNOME. See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more information about any of these packages. =========================================================================== Until next week - Havoc