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GNOME Summary, April 4-13 (Mozilla embedding, gdk-pixbuf, gnome-core, two interviews with Miguel, Evolution screenshots, GTK update, Nautilus update, Projects of the Week)


This is the GNOME Summary for April 4-13, 2000.

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

 1)  Mozilla embeds in Nautilus
 2)  New gdk-pixbuf
 3)  New gnome-core
 4)  Assorted interviews
 5)  Evolution screenshots
 6)  glib/GTK+ Update
 7)  Nautilus Update: The Return
 8)  Projects of the Week
 9)  Hacking Activity
 10)  New and Updated Software

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

 1)  Mozilla embeds in Nautilus

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


With Chris Blizzard at RHAD Labs and Ramiro Estrugo at Eazel, you knew
it was only a matter of time before GNOME/Mozilla integration got off
the ground. Check out Chris's diary mentioning it:

  http://www.advogato.org/person/blizzard/

We've had GtkMozilla and even some attempts at BonoZilla before, but
the moving Mozilla and Bonobo code bases kept hosing things up; this
time, it should be more practical to take embedded Mozilla into
production.

It's worth mentioning that this means Nautilus is a web browser that
has Mozilla's ability to handle full-blown modern web pages, but also
has native widgets and look and feel.

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

 2)  New gdk-pixbuf

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


We realized at the last minute that gdk-pixbuf was going out with
GNOME 1.2 (April GNOME), that we wanted to merge gdk-pixbuf into GTK+
1.4, and that we would have to break source compat in order to merge
into GTK+. So we went ahead and broke source compat _before_ releasing
gdk-pixbuf; if you were using the unstable gdk-pixbuf library, you got
what you deserved for using unreleased stuff. ;-)

In any case, there's a new tarball to try out; the changes are not
major or bug-generating, just made some structs opaque and did some
renaming/rearranging.

  http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/955589946/index_html

This breakage should mean that users of the stable pixbuf release
won't feel too much pain when gdk-pixbuf is released as part of GTK
1.4.

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

 3)  New gnome-core

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


Getting very close to release for April GNOME. With luck, April GNOME
will even be in April. (woo hoo!)

  http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/954892907/index_html

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

 4)  Assorted interviews

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


Miguel in Brazil:
  http://www.olinux.com.br/interviews/11/en/

Miguel on Slashdot:
  http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/04/03/2344211.shtml

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

 5)  Evolution screenshots

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


I think these are a few weeks old, but I missed them, so maybe some 
other people did:

  http://www.helixcode.com/apps/evolution.php3

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

 6)  glib/GTK+ Update

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


The final push to complete new features for GTK+ 1.4 is on - you know
those times you've thought "GTK should really do this" or "this
feature should really be in GTK" - you have a couple months at most to
come up with the patches to make your dreams a reality! ;-) If you
miss this glib/GTK+ release, it will be at least a year before you can
get a new feature into a production release. GTK+ is the fundamental
infrastructure of Gimp, GNOME, and many other projects; making it
better has ripple effects that improve all the software out there.

Owen and Tim are very overloaded doing core architecture stuff (Pango
and object/type system), so they can use a lot of help with some of
the smaller TODO list items. Check here for the TODO lists:
  http://developer.gnome.org/status/

If you have patches or TODO list additions, send them to
gtk-devel-list@redhat.com.

There were a number of interesting developments in GTK-land this week.

Sebastian posted some TODO items and plans for glib, mostly related to 
threading:
 http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0038.shtml

David Santiago chewed into the TODO with gusto, fixing some menu behavior:
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0019.shtml

then he did the work to integrate the new color selector:
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0039.shtml

and now he's up to yet more stuff:
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0041.shtml

There were some suggestions about how to make insensitive widgets 
more insensitive-looking, with no firm resolution:
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0028.shtml
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0036.shtml

Marc Flerackers mailed in asking for help writing OLE2 drag-and-drop 
for the win32 port, he needs more docs:
  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-April/0013.shtml

Kim McCall is assaulting the submenu navigation problem with 
bazooka-like thoroughness; for details see this URL:

 http://www.kimmccall.com/navigation/index.html


Jonathan (jrb@redhat.com) has been hacking on a new list/tree widget,
to replace GtkList/GtkTree/GtkCList/GtkCTree with something more
flexible; not much to see yet, but things are moving forward.

Owen is currently Pango-izing GtkTextView, and has some stuff
displaying on screen, but it's still in a pretty broken state. However
he expects to have the text widget working fairly well within a week
or so.

Tim continues to hack on the exciting new object/type system, which
should make life easier for language bindings, and allow non-GUI
applications to use a GtkObject-style abstraction.

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

 7)  Nautilus Update: The Return

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


>From Eazel hacker Maciej Stachowiak:

It's been a while since a Nautilus update, so this one only covers
some of the more interesting changes since April 1st, not everything
since the last update. You can keep track of the tasks currently on
our plan at bugzilla.eazel.com.

* Drag and drop move and copy are implemented (but you still don't get
proper feedback in the window).

* Better file type display - english phrases instead of real mime
types.

* Menu icons for bookmarks and history.

* RPM view.

* Icons have emblems to represent various user-settable
properties.

* Keyboard navigation in list view now uses the same keys and has
the same behavior as in icon view.

* Icon titles are underlined when the icon is pre-lit.

* A start on client access for Eazel services.

* The selection is now preserved when switching between icon and list
views.

* Improved preferences handling.

* Background image can be set with drag and drop.

* Files can be renamed from the "set properties" dialog.


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

 8)  Projects of the Week

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


Several suggestions:

 - Any of the glib or GTK+ TODO items on:
     http://developer.gnome.org/status/
   (coordinate with gtk-devel-list@redhat.com)

 - The .desktop files describing the various screensavers in the 
   screensavers capplet have fallen behind the screensavers
   that actually exist in xscreensaver. Fill in the missing 
   ones. Contact jrb@redhat.com.

 - Miguel posted to gnome-list a while back asking for 
   .desktop files and icons for apps that don't ship with GNOME -
   things like StarOffice, etc. Remember that you can't include 
   trademarked logos or images in the icons. If you create
   any icons, mail them to Matthias Warkus (mawa@iname.com), 
   for .desktop files gnome-devel-list@gnome.org is probably a good 
   destination.

 - If anyone wants to play with GtkTextView/GtkTextBuffer and give API
   feedback, this new widget would be ideal for writing a small
   WordPad sort of application (maybe read/write RTF format). DON'T
   write another text editor. ;-) If you're thinking "plugins"
   or "syntax highlighting" this project is not for you. ;-)
  
   The task is to make a small, simple, clean, end-user-oriented
   application, that lets you write a trivial letter or something
   like that with bold/italic text, and maybe an embedded image.
   Nothing else. It should just use the text widget - otherwise 
   you're entering AbiWord territory, and there's no point in 
   that either. What's needed here is _simple_.

   Note that the canonical text widget location has moved from 
   tktext-port to a branch in the gtk+ module, where Owen 
   is busy breaking it. However the tktext-port version is probably 
   easier for getting started.

 - Jonathan suggests UI work on the Sawmill capplets and configuration 
   panels. Make the layout fit in a nice grid, with nice spacing, etc.,
   and add nice UI features such as drag-and-drop and tooltips where 
   appropriate. Also, many things are now explained in words that could
   be nicely illustrated with appropriate pictures and icons; the old
   e-conf that ships with Red Hat 6.x has some examples, as does the 
   WindowMaker config thing.

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

 9)  Hacking Activity

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


cvs-commits-list was hosed for part of the week, so the numbers
are maybe 60% of what they should be. Sorry about that.

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

  47 evolution
  45 nautilus
  33 gtkhtml
  25 gnumeric
  18 gedit
  17 guppi3
  17 gimp
  16 balsa
  14 gnome-core
  12 sodipodi
  11 gnome-vfs
  11 gnome-libs
   9 pybliographer
   9 gtk+
   9 gnome-games
   9 ORBit
   8 gnome-utils
   8 gnome-guile
   8 gnome-db
   8 gegl

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

  28 kmaraas
  27 darin
  19 pablo
  19 ettore
  17 trow
  12 miguel
  12 jody
  11 rodo
  11 andy
  10 owen
  10 jleach
  10 jesusb
   9 peterw
   9 kabalak
   9 fredgo
   9 danw
   8 rasta
   8 lewing
   8 film
   8 dmueth
   7 sullivan
   7 rodrigo
   7 mortenw
   7 lauris
   7 itp

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

 10)  New and Updated Software

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


Software since the last summary. Jonathan kindly contributed this 
section again this week.

CodeCommander - functional all-purpose editor.
GNet - Network library built onto of GLib.
grecord - Simple program for recording and playing wav files.
ZClock - Replacement for the GNOME Clock applet.
Gnome ReadNews - Extensible NNTP-client with tin in mind.
MemoPanel - Applet for memos on the GNOME panel.
GnomeTV - Video4linux tuner applet with a TV & a Teletext screen.
chbg - Manager of desktop background.
Glade-- - Extension to glade to create C++ sources .
GOX - Tic Tac Toe program.
gvoc - Vocabulary trainer.
Industrializer - Generates percussion samples for tracking techno pieces.
gRustibus - Gnome M.A.M.E. frontend.
TEG (Tenes Empanadas Graciela) - Game similar to risk.
TeleGNOME - Small program for viewing Teletekst pages (Netherlands).
genSQL - Generic SQL database UI.
GtkExtra - Library full of useful widgets complementary to GTK+.
sawmill - Lisp-extensible, GNOME-complient window manager.
Etherape - Network monitor with ethernet, ip and tcp modes.
gLife - Cellular automata simulator.
MMC - Simple Mail Client.
GnoZip - WinZip(tm) clone.
seti_applet - Shows status of any seti@home client.
IceWM - GNOME-complient window manager.
Pybliographer - Tool for manipulating bibliographic databases.
GHex - Binary file editor.
genigma - An emulation of the famous Enigma.
CvsRpmBuilder - CVS to RPM builder.
Divider applet - Adds dividers to the panel.  Very cool.
Sound Monitor applet - An applet that shows a vu meter.
GQview - Simple image viewer.
Gnome Mp3 Database - Paper mp3 database creator.
gnome-core - GNOME panel and applets, and other essential GNOME utilities
gnome-applets - Collection of applets for the panel.
GNU Midnight Commander - The GNOME file manager.
gnome-libs - Main set of libraries for GNOME.

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


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

Until next week - 

Havoc
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