GNOME.org
 

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
[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]