GNOME Summary, Jan 26-Feb 2: Documentation/Help System, Haskell and components, GNOME Sysadmin Guide, Applix using GTK+, Nautilus Status Report, GNOME Core beta, DeveloperWorks tutorial

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

This is the GNOME Summary for January 26-February 2, 2000.

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

 1)  Documentation and Help System News
 2)  Haskell meets Bonobo component architecture
 3)  GNOME Sysadmin Guide
 4)  Gnumeric Zooming
 5)  Applix Alpha Version based on GTK+ 
 6)  Nautilus Status Update
 7)  New GNOME Core beta release
 8)  IBM DeveloperWorks article
 9)  Hacking Activity
 10)  New and Updated Software

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

 1)  Documentation and Help System News

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


GNOME Documentation god Dave Mason wrote up some plans for the GNOME
2.0 online help system, developed by Dave, Elliot, and Jonathan at
RHAD Labs. Check it out:
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-doc-list/2000-January/0121.shtml

Also, Dan Mueth started a document about how to write GNOME documentation:
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-doc-list/2000-January/0109.shtml

gnome-doc-list is getting to be quite a community, quite a few people
are helping out in this area. GNOME 2.0 needs to have good online help
and manuals if it's going to be truly easy to use; lots more helpers
are still needed. No coding skills required.

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

 2)  Haskell meets Bonobo component architecture

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


Manuel Chakravarty's work on a Haskell binding for GNOME has attracted
funding from the Australian Research Council under the Small ARC Grant
scheme.  The one year project entitled "Functional Programming of
Component-based Software" is described here:
  
  http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/haskell/gnome/gnome-small/

This project is planned as an extension of an ongoing effort
developing a GTK+ binding for the high-level language Haskell:
 
  http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/haskell/gtk/

It is located at the School of Computer Science and Engineering
of the University of New South Wales, Sydney:

  http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au,
 
The project is of course completely open and helping hands are always
welcome.

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

 3)  GNOME Sysadmin Guide

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


The GNOME Sysadmin Guide was Project of the Week Number Two, and Paul
Cooper stepped up with a good start on the this document. He needs
contributions from all the GNOME sysadmins out there; if you manage a
large GNOME deployment, consider mailing in some additions to the
Guide.

Have a look at this news item:
  http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/948936343/index_html

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

 4)  Gnumeric Zooming

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


Another Project of the Week was nailed by Erdi Gergo, who added a zoom
feature to the Gnumeric toolbar. That's two projects down. :-)

Gnumeric now has a gnumeric/PROJECTS file in CVS with a number of
Project-of-the-Week type of projects, if you want to check it out. 
I may steal some of these for future GNOME Summary POW's too.

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

 5)  Applix Alpha Version based on GTK+ 

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


An alpha release of the Applixware 5.0 office suite came out this
week, and it is written with GTK+. Have a look:

 http://www.smartbeak.com/M1

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

 6)  Nautilus Status Update

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


Got the following update from the Nautilus team. They actually
encourage you to try to compile it, if you have what it takes. :-)
Here's the update:

  Nautilus is the Gnome 2.0 Graphical Shell and File Manager. Anyone
  interested in finding out more, or joining in development should check
  out the #nautilus channel on irc.gnome.org. There will also be a
  mailing list for discussion soon.

  Nautilus is being designed with an architecture that makes heavy use
  of the Bonobo component model, with Bonobo controls for even the basic
  file manager views. For an overview of the architecture, see
  docs/architecture.txt in the nautilus module on gnome-cvs.

  Compiling Nautilus yourself can be slightly hairy; you will need to
  build several modules from the HEAD in CVS and install them in a
  separate prefix to avoid conflicting with your existing GNOME
  install. Further, many of these modules are changing rapidly, and may
  not work or even compile together properly on any given day. But if
  you'd like to give it a try, look at `HACKING' in the nautilus module
  for instructions.

  Here are some of the new Nautilus features implemented since the last
  summary:

  * Items and backgrounds have right-click menus in the list and icon
    views; the only working options available so far are Zoom in, Zoom
    out and Select all.

  * The icon view can show images as their own icons. Scaling to
    thumbnails is still in progress, but icon-sized images already work
    well: 
     http://208.37.144.51/screenshots/icon-view-images.jpg

  * The list view can also show images as their own mini-icons:
     http://208.37.144.51/screenshots/list-view-images.jpg

  * The icon view now supports zooming. Icons can be viewed at a wide
    dynamic range of sizes, and the font size changes with zoom level as
    well. The current zooming support is only a rough cut. The icons are
    not scaled properly, and positioning inside the window when zooming
    does not work very well. Right now you can only zoom from the
    right-click menu; in time there will be zoom controls on the
    toolbar, using Bonobo menu/toobar merging support. Also, eventually
    more information about a file will be shown at higher zoom
    levels. http://208.37.144.51/screenshots/icon-view-zooming.jpg

  * The list view also supports zooming; right now it just scales the
    icons, but in the future it may also change the font size. Many of
    the same caveats apply as with the icon view.

  * The bookmarks menu and editor window now show icons:
     http://208.37.144.51/screenshots/bookmarks-menu.jpg


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

 7)  New GNOME Core beta release

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


Another GNOME Core, break it and report bugs:

  http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/949190343/index_html

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

 8)  IBM DeveloperWorks article

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


George posted another tutorial to IBM DeveloperWorks, this time on the
GNOME Canvas. Check it out to get started on canvas hacking:

  http://news.gnome.org:80/gnome-news/948861748/

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

 9)  Hacking Activity

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


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

  93 gimp
  61 nautilus
  52 gnumeric
  52 gnome-core
  51 gnome-applets
  50 guppi3
  37 gtk--
  34 gxsnmp
  30 gtkhtml
  29 gnome-docu
  28 dr-genius
  25 gnome-libs
  21 gphoto
  19 gtk+
  17 gnome-db
  16 dia
  14 gnome-pilot
  13 evolution

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

  50 trow
  42 jirka
  37 kenelson
  32 remlali
  30 neo
  28 ettore
  28 darin
  23 hp
  21 ole
  19 sopwith
  19 owen
  19 jberkman
  19 dmueth
  18 platin
  17 jody
  15 unammx
  15 mmeeks
  14 rodrigo
  14 martin
  13 timj
  13 mitch
  13 glaurent
  13 aaronl

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

 10)  New and Updated Software

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


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

Dr Genius - Math tool
RheinTurm - some sort of clock
graham - document organizer
Finder - mac-style finder bar
GNet - simple glib-style network library
Oregano - circuit designer
Atomix - mind game
VDKBuilder - RAD tool for GTK
Pygmy - mail client in Python
GNOME Transcript - database client
g3DGMV - map viewer
gbox_applet - new mail notifier
gRhythm - EKG cardiac rhythm training program
Emma - money management
Gaby - personal database manager 
gatO - "at" frontend
gcrontab - crontab editor
gmt - kernel module manipulator
sawmill - LISP-extensible window manager
gnuTaxes - tax preparation app
Sketch - vector drawing package
Elvis-GNOME - GNOME frontend for elvis vi clone
lua-gnome - bindings for lua programming language
genigma - simulates the Enigma machine
Sodipodi - vector drawing app
solfege - ear training program
Glitter - extract binary files from newsgroups (get your porno! :-)
Pan - Usenet news client
gerk - utility for one button mice
GMasqDialer - masqdialer client
glogo - ucblogo frontend

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

Until next week - 

Havoc