GNOME Summary Jan 18-26: Status of GNOME, Freeze for release, Nautilus screenshots, defs file format, Sketch, Guppi, Evolution, Labs website, Project of the Week

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

This is the GNOME Summary for January 18-26, 2000.

=============================================================
  Table of Contents
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 1)  Status of GNOME Post
 2)  Some-Spring-Month GNOME Enters Freeze
 3)  Nautilus Screenshots
 4)  Defs files for language bindings
 5)  Sketch in CVS
 6)  Guppi release
 7)  New Labs web site
 8)  Evolution update
 9)  Project of the Week
 10)  Hacking Activity
 11)  New and Updated Software

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 1)  Status of GNOME Post

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Miguel sent out a nice email detailing the state of GNOME and some of
the directions we are moving in. It inspired quite a few comments on
Gnotices.

  http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/948567152/index_html

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

 2)  Some-Spring-Month GNOME Enters Freeze

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gnome-core and gnome-applets have been frozen, in preparation for a
GNOME release fairly soon. This next release will include bugfix-only
versions of some components (such as gnome-libs and control-center),
but will include new versions of the applets and panel and some new
goodies like bug-buddy, gnome-hint and gnome-splash.

After some deliberation (in response to confusion created by
Slashdot), we decided to make this a full GNOME release. That means
that it will include a complete snapshot of the desktop environment
packages. However, again, some of the packages will not be materially
different from October GNOME.

The motivation for this release is to let people start using the new
gnome-core features immediately, even though the new file manager
won't be ready for a while.

As Miguel hints in his "status of GNOME" post, this is likely to be a
new policy; in order to ensure regular releases of "GNOME" as a whole,
GNOME releases will be snapshots of the latest stable versions of all
packages. Not all packages will get new features in every
release. This way users get to use new features as soon as they are
stable, without waiting for unstable components. Each component can be
on its own optimal schedule instead of having to synchronize them.

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

 3)  Nautilus Screenshots

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Some random screenshots I made, since Nautilus is really hard to
compile right now (BTW tons of people are asking us how to compile it
- please don't, it is not yet useful or worth testing, if you can't
figure out the dependencies yourself from configure.in then you aren't
going to be able to hack on it, and hacking on it is the only real
reason to compile it right now).

Anyway screenshot showing the gradient-background feature and my lack
of color coordination (Dr Mike says I need the Martha Stewart plugin):

  http://www106.pair.com/rhp/nautilus.jpg

The icon list is screwed up in this shot so all the icons are in one
column, it isn't supposed to be like that. And ignore the Sawmill
tooltip that got in there somehow.

And a shot showing the embedded web browsing:

  http://www106.pair.com/rhp/nautilus-slashdot.jpg

This shot uses the lightweight GtkHTML widget, for full-blown browsing
a Mozilla component will be available eventually we hope.

Notice the History tab on the left, there are a number of plugins that
can go there, such as a Search tab or a Tree View tab. There's also a
list view mode for the file browsing component.

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 4)  Defs files for language bindings

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I started a thread on gtk-devel-list about creating some new more
comprehensive "defs" files for autogenerating language bindings. The
thread is fairly long. If you've working on language bindings you
might want to find the end of it with my latest proposed defs file
format and comment.

  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-January/0069.shtml

I'll do a script to generate defs in this format as soon as things
seem to have settled down.

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 5)  Sketch in CVS

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The Sketch vector graphics app has arrived on GNOME CVS, and the port
to GTK seems to be going well. The basic functionality is all in
place, and the GTK version can load the example drawings that come 
with the program.

  http://sketch.sourceforge.net/

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 6)  Guppi release

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After quite some time, there is a new Guppi release; this new version
is written entirely in C. It seems to be pretty impressive; compile it
and try importing some of the included sample datasets, then try
making a plot from those.

There are downloads and screenshots on the home page:

  http://www.gnome.org/guppi/

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 7)  New Labs web site

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After letting our Red Hat Labs web site languish for a long time, we
have a replacement thanks to resident documentation hacker and hip guy
Dave Mason. Check it out:

  http://www.labs.redhat.com

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 8)  Evolution update

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Weekly status updates from the Helix Code hackers. BTW they have some
sort of web site that may be of interest:

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

Federico reports that he has the Tlacuache personal calendar server
working, and is hacking on the client side of things now. Also,
he made a new gdk-pixbuf release.

Michael Zucchi made the long voyage from Australia to Boston, and is
now at the Helix offices in Cambridge. He got some hacking done too;
some gnome-terminal bugfixes, and gnome-print enhancements. He says
the next item on the agenda is incoming mail filters (like procmail)
for Evolution. 

Ettore says that he has selection support done in GtkHTML, and he's
starting to put together an HTML-editing widget. He also says he could
use some help with the layout code, if anyone's interested in hacking
on that.

Chris has a couple screenshots for the contact editor:

  http://primates.helixcode.com/~clahey/contact-editor-test.png
  http://primates.helixcode.com/~clahey/contact-editor-test-details.png

He's also starting on printing for contacts, and yes someone will be
replacing the icons in those dialogs. :-)

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 9)  Project of the Week

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The "project of the week" is a weekly feature, suggesting some small
project(s) that would be both a valuable contribution to GNOME and a
good way to get started with GNOME hacking.

 PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER THREE
 =========

Help finish up the gnome-applets module for release. Contact Jacob the
gnome-core co-maintainer-dude (jacob@helixcode.com) if you're
interested.  This involves making sure all the applets properly adjust
to all the panel sizes, and that sort of thing; a good way to learn
how applets and the panel work.

 PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER FOUR
 =========

This one is a good way to get started learning about the Gnumeric
source code. Jody says that they need a zoom item in the toolbar; a
menu where users can select the zoom ratio. You would have to
investigate how zooming works in Gnumeric (there's a zoom dialog, so
the infrastructure is there), and do some GUI work to create the
zoom-selector widget, put it in the toolbar, and wire it up to the
Gnumeric internals. For bonus points, wire Ctrl+mousewheel to zoom as
well.

 UNOFFICIAL PROJECT OF THE WEEK NUMBER FOUR POINT FIVE
 =========

I have the world's cheapest digital camera, the Agfa ePhoto Smile. But
gPhoto doesn't like it. The project is to either figure out its serial
protocol and send me the info so I can do the driver, or just write
the driver. :-) I'm trying the send-Agfa-letters approach but am not 
optimistic.

If we can get a driver I can take pictures of Paris at the GNOME Users
and Developers Conference in March.

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 10)  Hacking Activity

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

  86 nautilus
  85 gtkhtml
  79 guppi3
  66 gimp
  48 gnome-db
  44 evolution
  42 gnumeric
  39 gnome-core
  36 dr-genius
  32 gtk--
  29 gnome-applets
  24 gnomeweb-wml
  22 gnome-libs
  21 libgtop
  21 gtk+
  19 bonobo
  18 prcs2
  18 dia
  17 gconf
  16 gphoto

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

  85 ettore
  79 trow
  44 rasta
  43 rodrigo
  43 darin
  41 unammx
  41 jirka
  35 martin
  29 kenelson
  28 sopwith
  23 hp
  22 owen
  22 neo
  22 jmacd
  20 hilaire
  19 kmaraas
  17 sullivan
  16 jberkman
  15 jody
  15 iholmes

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 11)  New and Updated Software

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Tons of stuff this week.

PowerShell - another GNOME-based terminal emulator
seti_applet - monitor your SETI@home client
gEdit - text editor
cd changer applet - CD jukebox controller
Pan - Usenet news client
GNOME Toaster - CD burner suite
GNet - simple networking library
GNOME IconEdit - icon editor
gMGAClock - Matrox G400 overclocking tool
PopApp - mail checker applet
Python-GNOME-Skel - Skeleton PyGNOME application (bootstrap your PyGNOME app)
Xwhois - whois frontend
gob - GTK+ object builder
gnofin - personal finance application
g3DGMV - 3D graphical map viewer
gnome-applets - the official collection of panel applets
gnome-chess - chess frontend
bug-buddy - graphical bug reporting wizard
Eye of GNOME - image viewer
libglade - load Glade resource files from disk and create a GUI dynamically (recommended way to use Glade)
libgtop - cross-platform library for reading system information
gnome-pim - GNOME personal information manager (addressbook and calendar)
Go - word processor
gnome-ppp - PPP GUI
gnome-games - GNOME games collection
gnome-core - panel, applets, help browser, session manager
gtop - graphical version of top
gdm - GNOME-ified xdm
Electric Eyes - image viewer
gnome-libs - GNOME libraries
Seahorse - GPG frontend
GNOME Transcript - SQL database client
Cloned Xunzip - graphical Unzip tool
GProc-applet - process list applet
Guppi - statistics/data-analysis/plot program
DDUP Applet - manage your dyndns.org freedns account
YAMT - MP3 organizer tool
Sensor Sweep Applet - lm_sensors applet
GNOME Disk Catalog - organize your disks
Trinity - video editing application
gnlogin - frontend to Netware login
gVidChanger - quickly change X video resolution
sawmill - simple window manager with GNOME support
lua-gnome - bindings for the LUA programming language
GMatH - math environment

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

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Until next week - 

Havoc