GNOME Summary for 2003-0-16 - 2003-03-29

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

This is the GNOME Summary for 2003-0-16 - 2003-03-29
    
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Table of Contents
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1. GNOME 2 API docs online
2. Abiword strikes back
3. GNOME C++ development with gtkmm2
4. News from the OpenOffice.org world
5. Bonobo support for Vim
6. Improving GTK+ MS Windows integration
7. The mysterious world of Anjuta
8. Eye of GNOME looks into Nautilus
9. More SVG themes
10. GStreamer News
11. The GNOME XML collection
12. Update on Java and Gtk+ integration
13. Maintainerships and GNOME love
14. Translated GNOME summaries
15. Hacker Activity
16. Gnome Bug Hunting Activity
17. New and Updated Software

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1. GNOME 2 API docs online
--------------------------------------------------------------

In our continued effort to help developers improve their GNOME
applications we have now updated the online reference documentation
section on developer.gnome.org. Here you will find links and tarballs to
most of the important libraries used by GNOME today. 

        http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/

==============================================================
2. Abiword strikes back
--------------------------------------------------------------

The Abiword team did a 1.1.4 development release on their way towards
Abiword 2.0. This release is mostly feature complete, but of course some
bugfixing remains. Those that haven't tried out the GNOME 2 series of
Abiword yet really should. Another treat this week comes from Martin
Sevior who mailed the Nautilus mailing-list to say that Abiword can now
be embeded into Nautilus. A big kudos to all the hackers involved. 

        http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1020&mode=&order=0
       
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2003-March/msg00210.html
       
http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/nautilus-abiword.png
        http://www.linuxrising.com/files/abiword114.png

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3. GNOME C++ development with gtkmm2
--------------------------------------------------------------

DevChannel.org published an article this week on developing GNOME
applications using gtkmm2. The article was written by Billy O'Connor and
gives a nice introduction to this increaseingly popular set of bindings.
On a related note so does the March issue of Dr.Dobb's journal have an
article on libsigc++ under the title: Generalized Callbacks: C++ and C# 
       
http://tools.devchannel.org/devtools/03/03/21/1834244.shtml?tid=39

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4. News from the OpenOffice.org world
--------------------------------------------------------------

Lots of interesting stuff happening with OpenOffice these days. During
the OpenOffice.org developers conference in Berlin, Michael Meeks from
Ximian did a presentation on the work they have been doing on
integrating OpenOffice.org into GNOME 2. Michael put his slides online
and the slides contains nice screenshots of a much sweeter looking
application. OpenOffice.org also announced their 1.1 beta release with
lot of nice fixes and additions. 

        http://www.gnome.org/~michael/XimianOOo/img0.html
       
http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1023&mode=&order=0&thold=1

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5. Bonobo support for Vim
--------------------------------------------------------------

With GNOME 2.2 taking care of the basics, developers now turn to the
sugar coating. For instance Jason_Hildebrand announced a patch to make
gvim an embedable bonobo component. Check out Jason's gnome-vim page and
the nice screenshots. 

        http://www.opensky.ca/gnome-vim/
        http://www.opensky.ca/gnome-vim/vim-bonobo-nautilus.png

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6. Improving GTK+ MS Windows integration
--------------------------------------------------------------

Many GNOME applications like Dia, Gimp, Gaim and Sodipodi are ported to
Windows using the GTK+ windows port. It seems GTK+ is starting to
establish itself as a serious contender in the cross-plattform
development arena. Of course getting your GTK+ based apps to look
integrated under Windows is also important. GTK-Wimp is a theme-engine
that gives you that extra level of integration. If 
you sometimes are forced to use a lesser desktop plattform, like
Windows, this might help make it less ackward :) 
       
http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1005&mode=&order=0&thold=1

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7. The mysterious world of Anjuta
--------------------------------------------------------------

Biswapesh Chattopadhyay, after some questions by Mikael Hallendal,
mailed the gnome-devtools list this week with overview of the current
situation on the Anjuta front. It seems there are currently 3 parallel
development tracks being worked on. Anjuta for GNOME 1, Anjuta for GNOME
2 and Anjuta 2 for GNOME 2. Many of you probably remember the merging of
Anjuta and gIDE into Anjuta2 some time back, but it seems the merge
never actually happened. Be sure to check out the thread to get the
details. Anyway GNOME needs a good IDE so if you can you 
should join one of these two efforts. 
       
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devtools/2003-March/msg00021.html

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8. Eye of GNOME looks into Nautilus
--------------------------------------------------------------

Jens Finke have been working hard on improving the eog image viewer. A
2.3 release with tons of fixes and additions was recently made,
including a nice image collection view for Nautilus. 

        
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2003-March/msg00091.html
        http://www.gnome.org/~gman/eog.png

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9. More SVG themes
--------------------------------------------------------------

In gnome CVS there is a gnome-themes-extras module that contains SVG
based metathemes. It contains the Gorilla metatheme by Jacub 'Jimmac'
Steiner, the Nuvola and Lush metathemes by David Vignoni and myself. It
also contains parts of a BlueSphere metatheme by Vadim Plessky and
myself. Eventually it will also contain the Crystal metatheme by Torsten
Rahn. The first release of this metatheme package will occcur shortly
after Ximian Desktop 2 is available, but for those who cant wait, here
are some shots of some of the themes in action. 

        http://librsvg.sourceforge.net/images/lush-metatheme.png
        http://librsvg.sourceforge.net/images/nuvolanautilus.png
        http://librsvg.sourceforge.net/images/tigerandgorilla.png

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10. GStreamer News
--------------------------------------------------------------

Lots of little news from the GStreamer camp. Julien Moutte is keeping up
his great work on the Gst-player, adding support for the GStreamer
visualisation plugins. To test this out I starting mixing the
visualization plugins with the GStreamer realtime video effects plugins
and the result can be seen in the top link below. 

Ross Burton have been working on a nifty ripper application called Sound
Juicer, which you can find in GNOME CVS. According to the latest reports
it works, so hopefully Ross will make the first release soon. 

Thanks to the great work of Martin Schulze, known also for his work on
libsigc++, the GStreamer C++ bindings are now in a state where they can
be used for simple applications. Martins announcement is link number
three. 

And last but not least, the long awaited 0.6.1 release is now underway
with  patches getting merged over to the 0.6 branch in preparation for
the release as we speak. 
       
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-multimedia/2003-March/msg00006.html
        
http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=sound-juicer
        
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=1901591&forum_id=5947

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11. The GNOME XML collection
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After seeing Aleksey Sanin high on the activity chart for some weeks I
thought it was a good opportunity to give some spotlight to the great
collection of XML related libraries available to GNOME developers. There
is of course the library that started it all, libxml developed by Daniel
Veillard, probably the best library available anywhere for speedy and
efficient handling of XML. Also from Daniel is libxslt. XSLT is a
declarative language that allows you to translate 
your XML into arbitrary text output using a stylesheet. 

Then there is librsvg which is being maintained by Dominic Lachowicz,
which handles the rendering of SVG images, the XML format defining
vector graphics. 

Paolo Casarini is also still maintaining and developing gdome2, which 
implements level 2 Document Object Model from w3c. 

A recent addition to the family is libcroco, a CSS2 parsing library
developed by Dodji Seketeli and Gaël Chamoulaud. 

And last but not least is Aleksey Sanin's xmlsec which implements the
XML Signature Syntax and Processing and XML Encryption Syntax and
Processing standards. 

I hope I haven't left anyone out of this list that should have been here
:) I think the GNOME development platform shows a width and variety that
should satisfy most of your XML related development needs. A huge thanks
to all the developers involved in making this happen. 

        http://xmlsoft.org/
        http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/
        http://librsvg.sf.net
        http://gdome2.cs.unibo.it/
        http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/libcroco
        http://www.aleksey.com/xmlsec/

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12. Update on Java and Gtk+ integration
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In a previous summary I managed to claim that the support in Java/Swing
for GTK+ look and feel would arrive in Java 1.5. This turns out to be
factually wrong. Scott Violet from Sun mailed me to say that the GTK+
support will arrive already in Java 1.4.2. All I can say is YAY! 

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13. Maintainerships and GNOME love
--------------------------------------------------------------

Ross Burton sent of a request for a new GNOME Games maintainer recently.
Well the post did not go unfilled for long. Callum McKenzie stepped up
to the plate and will soon take over as the GNOME Games maintainer. A
big thanks goes to Ross for his work so far on GNOME games and to Callum
McKenzie for taking on the job. There are other modules in GNOME like
gnome-utils and control-center where new maintainers are being sought,
being a maintainer of one of these core modules is both a good learning
experience and great fun. I suggest that if you 
want to get into GNOME development then taking aim at one of these
modules is a good way to do so. I would also like to remind people of
the gnome-love mailing list, where many of the more experienced hackers
are standing by to help new people get started on hacking gnome. 
       
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/games-list/2003-March/msg00001.html
        http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-love

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14. Translated GNOME summaries
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We now have French, German, Hungarian, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish -
all the links below. 

        http://www.gynov.org/gnome-summary/gnome_summary.php4
        http://www.gnome-de.org/news
        http://cactus.rulez.org/projects/gnome/summary/
        http://developer.gnome.or.kr/news/
        http://debian-br.cipsga.org.br/resumo-gnome/
        http://es.gnome.org/actualidad/

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

Most active modules:
 158 gnome-applets
 110 evolution
 85 gimp
 70 xmlsec
 51 epiphany
 48 nautilus
 28 gnucash
 28 red-carpet
 28 pan
 24 gnome-themes-extras
 22 gnome-xml
 22 gtkhtml
 19 anjuta
 18 gtk+
 16 gnome-system-tools
 15 gtksourceview
 15 web-devel-2
 15 balsa
 14 gnome-pilot
 13 gthumb
[139 active modules omitted]

Most active hackers:
 148 mlei
 70 aleksey
 61 menthos
 54 neo
 34 rundll32
 33 mitch
 32 uraeus
 30 veillard
 26 cstim (gnucash)
 25 joeshaw
 24 dnloreto
 24 alexl
 21 pablodc
 21 fejj
 19 jpr
 18 danw
 18 charles
 16 zucchi
 16 toshok
 15 rodo
[135 active hackers omitted]


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16. Gnome Bug Hunting Activity
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This information is from http://bugzilla.gnome.org, which hosts bug and
feature reports for most of the Gnome modules. If you would like to join
the bug hunt, subscribe to the gnome-bugsquad mailing list.

Currently open: 8705 (In the last week: New: 581, Resolved: 501,
Difference: 
+80)

Modules with the most open bugs (excluding enhancement requests): 

  nautilus: 766 (In the last week: New: 31, Resolved: 25, Difference:
+6)
  gtk+: 587 (In the last week: New: 21, Resolved: 11, Difference: +10)
  galeon: 477 (In the last week: New: 92, Resolved: 55, Difference: +37)
  gnome-vfs: 253 (In the last week: New: 3, Resolved: 4, Difference: -1)
  gnome-panel: 236 (In the last week: New: 53, Resolved: 37, Difference:
+16)
  GIMP: 197 (In the last week: New: 25, Resolved: 18, Difference: +7)
  control-center: 164 (In the last week: New: 14, Resolved: 7,
Difference: +7)
  gnome-applets: 151 (In the last week: New: 11, Resolved: 7,
Difference: +4)
  GnuCash: 127 (In the last week: New: 5, Resolved: 5, Difference: 0)
  gnome-terminal: 110 (In the last week: New: 26, Resolved: 21,
Difference: +5)
  sawfish: 105 (In the last week: New: 1, Resolved: 1, Difference: 0)
  libzvt: 93 (In the last week: New: 1, Resolved: 0, Difference: +1)
  balsa: 92 (In the last week: New: 14, Resolved: 53, Difference: -39)
  medusa: 92 (In the last week: New: 0, Resolved: 0, Difference: 0)
  metacity: 91 (In the last week: New: 12, Resolved: 5, Difference: +7)
  
Gnome Bugzilla users who resolved or closed the most bugs: 
  
  newren math utah edu: 83 bugs closed.
  pawsa theochem kth se: 50 bugs closed.
  daniel veillard com: 50 bugs closed.
  yaneti declera com: 43 bugs closed.
  andrew sobala net: 25 bugs closed.
  dkennedy tinytoad com: 17 bugs closed.
  charles rebelbase com: 14 bugs closed.
  jpr ximian com: 12 bugs closed.
  bordoley msu edu: 12 bugs closed.
  sven gimp org: 11 bugs closed.
  damon gnome org: 11 bugs closed.
  jfleck inkstain net: 10 bugs closed.
  calum benson sun com: 8 bugs closed.
  mitch gimp org: 8 bugs closed.
  dave ximian com: 7 bugs closed.
  
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17. New and Updated Software
--------------------------------------------------------------

Themus  - Theme utilities
Grubconf  - GRUB Configuration Editor
galculator  - GTK2 based scientific calculator
Hardware Monitor  - Multi-purpose monitor applet
Core GNOME Themes  - GNOME desktop themes
Eye of Gnome  - Image viewer
gDeskCal  - desktop calendar
linphone  - A SIP phone
libpyvfsmodule  - Gnome VFS modules with Python
Meld  - Meld: a diff and merge tool.
XML Security Library  - Implementation of XML Security specs
Workrave  - Workrave RSI prevention
LinTalk  - A serverless instant messaging tool
Gnome Process Tree  - dynamic ps tree GUI
gnome-games  - Many games - same-gnome, gnothello, solitaire,
tetravex,tetris, 
others...
sawfish  - An uncluttered Lisp-extensible window manager for X11.
Thinkof it as 
a cross between the graphical prowess ofenlightenment and the scripting 
capabilities of scwm.sawfish is mostly GNOME-compliant; almost all 
configurationmay be made through a gr
gNumExp  - GNOME math program
tsemgr  - manager for the T68 mobile phone
Web Administrators  - Web Hackers
gnetmd  - Sony NetMD Tools.
screem  - Web Site / HTML Editor
gnetmd  - Sony NetMD Tools.
screem  - Web Site / HTML Editor
GChemPaint  - 2D chemical structures editor
gnome-python  - python bindings for gnome libraries
Whale  - iPod Application
glunarclock  - moon phase clock applet
pppcost  - calculate cost of the internet
gQueue  - Gnome frontend for cups queues
tsemgr  - manager for the T68 mobile phone
Inti  - Integrated Foundation Classes
XML Security Library  - Implementation of XML Security specs
File Roller  - Archive manager.
gThumb  - Image viewer and browser.
GNOME Commander  - file manager
hdate applet  - hebrew date applet
Straw  - Desktop news aggregator
gDeskCal  - desktop calendar
gucharmap  - Unicode Character Map
gtkglextmm  - C++ Wrapper for GtkGLExt
GtkGLExt  - OpenGL Extension to GTK
gpmudmon  - A battery monitor.
GTetrinet  - Tetrinet client for GNOME
GIrDA  - GNOME ir monitor.

For more information on these packages visit the GNOME Software map: 
http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/latest.php

Lots of cool developments these days, one thing that didn't get its own
story but do deserve mention is the huge amount of polishing that is
going into Nautilus these days. Latest release fixed the issues with
icons not being properly scaled in the list view which has been high on
my annoyance list for a long time. Thanks for fixing it! 

Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller 
gnome-summary gnome org 
Join the Friends of GNOME! http://www.gnome.org/friends