GNOME Summary for 2001-09-02 - 2001-09-08

[Christian Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

This is the GNOME Summary for 2001-09-02 - 2001-09-08
    
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Table of Contents
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1. Gnome 2.0 Test Case Exe/Record/Metric Bed
2. Gdkxft 1.1 released
3. Evolution Beta 3 released
4. Bonobo tutorial
5. Nautilus, eel, medusa and others on the move
6. Mono compiler starts compiling
7. libthumb 0.0.1 released
8. GNOME Foundation board minutes
9. Reaching for desktop Elysium
10. Hacker Activity
11. New and Updated Software

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1. Gnome 2.0 Test Case Exe/Record/Metric Bed
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The gnome_test_specs module has been added to GNOME CVS. This is a test
bed which enables the user to run tests, record the results, and
generate metrics from the results. Test suites includeded covers 
Nautilus/Evolution/Interoperability/Installation/Gnome Core 
Components...totalling around 2000 test cases. These are the test suites
used by Sun in their work to make sure GNOME works well on Solaris and
should be usefull for everyone bundling GNOME with the Unix or Linux
version and wanting to do a QA test on GNOME before the release. 


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2. Gdkxft 1.1 released
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Gdkxft, the tool for getting anti-aliased fonts under GTK+ 1.2 has been
updated to version 1.1. Improvements include more helpful documentation
and a slightly smarter installer. Many people have reported success in
getting this to work, but remember that it suffers the same problems
with non-western languages that has prevented anti-aliasing being added
to GTK+ 1.2 itself. For those wondering the reason why Gtk+ 2.0 don't
suffer this problem is because it uses the great Pango library for font
handling instead of the problematic X one. 

        http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~josh/gdkxft/

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3. Evolution Beta 3 released
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Ximian announced the Evolution beta 3 this week. Lots of bugfixes in,
including lots of IMAP support fixes and PGP improvements in the mail
client and improved documentation handling in regards to its use with
Scrollkeeper and Nautilus. Follow the link for the full announcement. 


http://www.ximian.com/devzone/release_notes/evolution/1.0_beta_3.html

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4. Bonobo tutorial
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Bonobo, the component object model of the GNOME project, is the topic of
a three part tutorial on IBM Developerworks. The tutorials are writen by
lead Bonobo developer Michael Meeks. Check out the link for the first
part of this tutorial series. Also of importance is that Michael asked
his girlfriend to marry him this week, and got a yes, so our warmest
congratulations go to 
Michael and Julia. 


http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/components/library/co-bnbo1.html

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5. Nautilus, eel, medusa and others on the move
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Darin Adler announced that Nautilus and related libraries like eel,
medusa and gnome-vfs moved from the Eazel bugzilla server to bugzilla at
gnome.org. This means that bugs for these packages should be submitted
at bugzilla.gnome.org from here on. Also of importance on the Nautilus;
Alex Larsson of Red Hat is working hard with Darin to get all the Red
Hat improvements on Nautilus integrated into the main Nautilus CVS tree.
Link provided to the bugzilla moving mail from Darin. 

        
http://lists.eazel.com/pipermail/nautilus-list/2001-September/005335.html

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6. Mono compiler starts compiling
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Great news from our sister project, Mono. Miguel de Icaza announced that
the Mono compiler now is able to compile its first Hello World
application. The compiler still needs lots of work but things are moving
ahead at top speed. Over 400 of the needed library classes are already
implemented and more are added almost daily. Links below to Miguel's
mail to the mono-list and the mono website. 

        
http://mail.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2001-September/001365.html
        http://www.go-mono.org

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7. libthumb 0.0.1 released
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Jens Finke announced the first release of his libthumb library. This
library implements the thumbnail standard he has been working on. This
library and specification could mean quite a lot of saved diskspace when
it is ready for wide deployment. Links to the announcement email and the
thumbnail specification homepage. 

        
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/gnome-vfs/2001-September/000690.html
        http://triq.net/~pearl/thumbnail-spec/thumbnail-spec/index.html

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8. GNOME Foundation board minutes
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Another set of minutes from the GNOME Foundation board is out. Their
work on getting some good free fonts for the GNOME desktop continues and
so does their work on getting the new account policies for gnome.org in
place. That and more in the latest GNOME Foundation minutes. 

        
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2001-September/msg00014.html

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9. Reaching for desktop Elysium
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Rodney Dawes is hard at work creating a compilation of tools called
Elysium. As part of this effort he is working on some great new tools
including the Elysium downloader, a very nice web downloader based on
gnome-vfs, EtherTerm his new multi-tabbed terminal application. Also
part of this is his continuing work on the Encompass webbrowser. People
interested in helping out on these projects should approach Rodney aka
Dobey on IRC. Dobey is usually found in #gnome and more on
irc.gnome.org. 

 http://dobey.free.fr/

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10. Hacker Activity
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Thanks for Paul Warren for these lists.

Most active modules:
 137 gnome-utils
 136 evolution
 85 galeon
 52 SashMo
 48 mc
 43 gtk+
 42 gtranslator
 41 libgnomeui
 36 guile-gobject
 34 libgnome
 33 gnomemeeting
 30 gnome-core
 28 libgda
 28 pan
 26 gnumeric
 24 web-devel-2
 23 gnome-applets
 19 guikachu
 19 gnome-vfs
 19 gdm2
[112 active modules omitted]

Most active hackers:
 120 linas
 81 jirka
 48 proskin
 48 martin
 40 kabalak
 38 rodrigo
 36 baddog
 33 menthos
 30 jbaayen
 28 lark
 27 ettore
 27 ajshankar
 25 andersca
 25 jcorwin
 24 pablo
 24 kmaraas
 23 stano
 23 mstachow
 22 fejj
 21 cgabriel
[116 active hackers omitted]


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11. New and Updated Software
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gThumb  - Image viewer and browser.
FileMenuApplet  - Applet which allows you to browse directories
gnocl  - Tcl extension which implements gtk and gnome widgets.
ghemical  - Molecular modelling software package
Pan  - Newsreader, loosely based on Agent and Gravity
gdkxft  - Anti-aliased fonts to the gnome desktop
gASQL  - Frontend to administer a database
GConf--  - C++ wrappers for GConf, particularly GConfClient
Metacity  - Window manager based on GTK+ 2.0
gmmusic  - Gnomified music collection database, based on PostgreSQL.
gnome-crystal  - A light model visualizer and Bonobo server for crystal 
structures.
Tenes Empanadas Graciela  - A pseudo-clone of Risk
Gnobb-cal  - A simple scheduling application
gdm  - This is the things that handles people logging in.
Terraform  - An open source interactive height field generation and 
manipulation program
GPicScan  - An Image Collector and CRC Scanner.

For more information on these packages visit the GNOME Software map: 
http://www.gnome.org/applist/listrecent.php3

On behalf of the GNOME community I would like to offer our sincerest 
condolences to the family and friends of the people lost in the
terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. 

Christian