GNOME.org
 

GNOME Summary July 21 - August 28, 2000

This is the GNOME Summary for July 21 - August 28, 2000.

=============================================================
  Table of Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------

 1)  GNOME Foundation Announcement
 2)  Mozilla goes GPL
 3)  GNOME 1.4 Release Coordination
 4)  Bug tracking
 5)  Sun hackers wandering around in need of guidance
 6)  Indic support for Pango 
 7)  BEAST webmaster sought
 8)  GConf mailing list
 9)  Key navigation
 10)  Guppi is cool
 11)  embedded equation component manifesto
 12)  Nautilus preview release
 13)  Evolution preview release
 14)  Keith Packard doing cool X extensions
 15)  iPAQ runs GTK+ apps
 16)  Havoc actually writes GNOME summary!
 17)  Hacking Activity
 18)  New and Updated Software

==============================================================

 1)  GNOME Foundation Announcement

--------------------------------------------------------------


In case you live under a rock, we announced lots of big news at
LinuxWorld. What this amounts to: we are creating a foundation to help
get GNOME organized; the foundation is simply all the GNOME
contributors getting together and electing a smaller group to be in
charge of keeping things semi-coherent. Lots of companies also
announced their support of GNOME; they'll join an "advisory board"
which is a part of the foundation but doesn't make decisions for
GNOME. Note to press: this is not an industry consortium, the
membership consists of individual contributors, not companies.

Press releases are here:

  http://www.gnome.org/pressreleases.html

An archive of the press conference audio webcast is available:
 
  http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/966444901/index_html

Miguel did a good job of emphasizing the community nature of the GNOME
project, and conveying the exciting nature of the announcement.

Sun posted an extensive feature about GNOME and this announcement on
the main page of http://www.sun.com; it's no longer on the main page,
but you can read it here:
 
  http://www.sun.com/2000-0815/

We got press coverage in just about every periodical imaginable,
starting with the New York Times who got the scoop in advance. 
A summary of some of the press is here:

 http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/966859256/index_html

As a bonus, that URL has a lengthy inane flamewar. ;-) See Slashdot
for a couple more uninformed flamewars.

We have a FAQ about the foundation in the works, watch for it on the
GNOME web site.

The real meaning of this announcement, in my mind, is that a complete,
100% open source office desktop is suddenly a much nearer-term
prospect. Volunteers still make up the majority of GNOME contributors,
but the influx of engineers and code from Sun will make a big
difference in the office suite area.

==============================================================

 2)  Mozilla goes GPL

--------------------------------------------------------------


Mozilla announced that they will be dual-licensing their code under
the GPL, which means, among other things, that we can now link GNOME
code to Mozilla. Nautilus already embeds Mozilla for full-featured web
browsing. For people who prefer super-small to full-featured, Nautilus also
offers a GtkHTML component.

There's an article about this here:

  http://www.linuxnews.com/stories.php?story=155

==============================================================

 3)  GNOME 1.4 Release Coordination

--------------------------------------------------------------


Maciej and Jacob are coordinating the GNOME 1.4 release. There's also
a mailing list for people who are involved (for example, if you're
maintaining a package that will be in the release).

See their announcement:

 http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/gnome-devel-list/2000-August/007471.html

==============================================================

 4)  Bug tracking

--------------------------------------------------------------


http://bugs.gnome.org has been a little bit flaky lately. But it's
back alive, we think. So keep sending those bugs. We have a plan to
move to Bugzilla soon, but need to keep limping on bugs.gnome.org for
a bit.

==============================================================

 5)  Sun hackers wandering around in need of guidance

--------------------------------------------------------------


There seem to be a number of Sun people on the mailing lists that need
people to give them tasks, or just need friendly guides around the
GNOME universe. Feel free to help them out. 

==============================================================

 6)  Indic support for Pango 

--------------------------------------------------------------


Robert Brady has done Pango support for Indic languages, and is
looking for native speakers to try it out:

  http://www.wholehog.fsnet.co.uk/robert/indic/

==============================================================

 7)  BEAST webmaster sought

--------------------------------------------------------------


Tim Janik is looking for someone to maintain http://beast.gtk.org -
send mail to timj@gtk.org if you're interested.

==============================================================

 8)  GConf mailing list

--------------------------------------------------------------


GConf has a mailing list now, since more hackers are getting involved
in development. See here:
 
  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gconf-list

I recently updated the TODO in CVS in response to some interesting
discussion on the list about future directions.

==============================================================

 9)  Key navigation

--------------------------------------------------------------


People have expressed interest in going through GNOME and enhancing
keyboard navigation. There are a number of ways we could help improve
key navigation:

 - Work on a document describing standard accelerators, possibly 
   for www.freedesktop.org in cooperation with other 
   desktop groups

 - Work on a document (or section of the GTK docs) that describes
   all the issues in keyboard support. This should include
   all aspects of key navigation, not just accelerators. For 
   example, I think it's currently undocumented how to save
   user customizations of accelerators, and currently undocumented
   how to underline a letter in the label accompanying a GtkEntry and 
   have Alt+letter move the focus to that entry. Other issues include
   setting the default dialog button, etc.

 - Make sure any needed enhancements to GTK+ itself get into 
   GTK+ as soon as possible; this makes the previous documentation 
   item extra-important

 - Write a small sample app that's fully keyboard-navigable

 - Actually go through and make changes in GNOME apps

I think the documentation is more important than making the code
changes.  The lack of key navigation is almost certainly because it
isn't properly documented, and therefore there aren't any examples to
follow. Hopefully someone can do this _soon_.

==============================================================

 10)  Guppi is cool

--------------------------------------------------------------


There's a new Guppi snapshot release, showing plot support slated for
inclusion in Gnumeric. Guppi is very impressive now - third rewrite
was the charm. ;-) It's also something like 40,000 lines of code, a
huge effort. There's a lot of meat to this, we aren't talking about a
screenshot generator.

  http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/guppi-list/2000-August/000408.html

==============================================================

 11)  embedded equation component manifesto

--------------------------------------------------------------


This post has a cool title (and is interesting, if you're into 
document embedding):

 http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/gnome-components-list/2000-August/001601.html

==============================================================

 12)  Nautilus preview release

--------------------------------------------------------------


Eazel put up a preview release of Nautilus:

  http://download.eazel.com/
 
==============================================================

 13)  Evolution preview release

--------------------------------------------------------------


And Helix has an Evolution preview:

  http://www.helixcode.com/apps/evolution-preview/index.php3

==============================================================

 14)  Keith Packard doing cool X extensions

--------------------------------------------------------------


If you haven't seen it yet, Keith is hacking XFree86 to support vector
graphics and translucent windows; check out some of his talks here:

  http://xfree86.org/~keithp/talks/

And a nifty shot of twm competing with Enlightenment:

 http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/translucent.png

So, sooner or later we'll have some pretty nice graphics on the X
desktop.

==============================================================

 15)  iPAQ runs GTK+ apps

--------------------------------------------------------------


At LinuxWorld, Jim Gettys had GTK+ up and running on the iPAQ
handheld; it was pretty neat. I can't find a screenshot link with GTK
apps (but it looks like a regular X desktop, only smaller...)

Plain X (no GTK) screenshots are here, you've probably seen them:
 
  http://www.handhelds.org/Compaq/iPAQH3600/Pictures/index.html

==============================================================

 16)  Havoc actually writes GNOME summary!

--------------------------------------------------------------


Owen suggested this item. ;-)

==============================================================

 17)  Hacking Activity

--------------------------------------------------------------


Module Score-O-Matic:
 (number of CVS commits per module, since the last summary)

 732 evolution
 590 nautilus
 219 gimp
 171 gnome-foundation
 152 pan
 147 gnome-i18n
 138 gnome-libs
 120 gtkhtml
 112 gnome-vfs
 112 balsa
 107 web-devel-2
  98 gimp-help
  98 bonobo
  97 gnome-db
  95 gnome-admin-tools
  92 gnumeric
  90 gnome-applets
  89 gtk+
  83 guppi3
  82 gnome-print
  81 gphoto2
  79 mc
  78 control-center
  67 gtranslator
  66 gnome-core
  63 dia
  62 medusa
  52 ammonite

User Score-O-Matic:
 (number of CVS commits per user, since the last summary)

 193 kmaraas
 189 frob
 153 kail
 144 kabalak
 132 rasta
 122 peterw
 121 clahey
 114 martin
 104 danw
  95 hansp
  94 charles
  89 rodrigo
  87 fejj
  86 sullivan
  85 egger
  84 jirka
  82 scottf
  82 minmax
  82 ettore
  77 pablo
  77 jody
  76 dmueth
  72 gzr
  72 chema
  68 bratislav
  68 andy
  67 mmeeks
  64 darin
  63 proskin
  62 neo
  61 rslomkow
  60 rodo
  60 federico
  60 bansz
  59 jpr
  58 mstachow
  57 tml
  56 ramiro
  53 trow
  52 hovinen
  48 rebecka
  48 mathieu
  47 sopwith
  46 mfleming

==============================================================

 18)  New and Updated Software

--------------------------------------------------------------


Software since the last summary.

[elided due to huge time since last summary :-) ]

See the software map on www.gnome.org (or Freshmeat) for more
information about any of these packages.

===========================================================================

Until next time - 

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