GNOME Summary for Jun 03 - June 09, 2001

[Christian Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

This is the GNOME Summary for Jun 03 - June 09, 2001.

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  Table of Contents
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1)  Encompass 0.4.2 available
2)  Bridging Bonobo and Mozilla XPCOM 
3)  All good Free Software stories involve a Gnome 
4)  Mozilla 0.9.1 hits the streets 
5)  Soundservers galore 
6)  Bonobo-python enter GNOME CVS 
7)  More suggestions for small and easy GNOME hacks needed 
8)  GStreamer 0.2.0 is out
9)  New release of Pan news client 
10)  Gnome VFS extras released 
11)  Abiword Weekly news #46 and #47 out 
12)  Abiword and Kword developers unite to develop better Word filters 
13)  New bughunters mailing list 
14)  Friends of the tree 
15)  Project of the week 
16)  Hacking Activity
17)  New and Updated Software

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

1)  Encompass 0.4.2 available

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


Rodney Dawes released version 0.4.2 of Encompass this week. 
It is a small ideal for situations where speed and resource usage is
more important than support for the latest and greatest web
technologies. A good example here is using it to view the GNOME help
files. More information and download instructions on the Encompass
homepage:

http://encompass.sourceforge.net/



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

2)  Bridging Bonobo and Mozilla XPCOM 

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IBM DeveloperWorks has posted two articles by Uche Ogbuji on bridging
the Mozilla XPCOM and Bonobo object models. You need to register to
access the tutorials, but registration is free. More information to be
found here:
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/components-onlinecourse-bytitle/85AACA6C27A8EF0886256A42006109E0?OpenDocument
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/components-onlinecourse-bytitle/12CFA14A2B9575B086256A4200627CD6?OpenDocument

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

3)  All good Free Software stories involve a Gnome 

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A little on the side, but Daemonnews.org is running a cartoon strip
called Source Wars. And of course you can't tell a story about Free
Software without having a gnome as part of the story :). Check it out
at:

http://darby.daemonnews.org/

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4)  Mozilla 0.9.1 hits the streets 

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Our hardworking friends over at Mozilla.org has just made a new release.
This one features even more speed improvements, a new modern look and
bidi support. Galeon the GNOME & Mozilla based browser also made a new
release, 0.11, with Mozilla 0.9.1 support and of course more bugfixes.
For more info about these two browsers check out:
http://www.mozilla.org

http://galeon.sourceforge.net

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5)  Soundservers galore 

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


As GNOME 2.0 moves closer and closer the possibility of replacing the
aging Esound soundserver is being considered. Two projects
wanting to provide such a replacement made new releases this week. First
out was Stefan Westerfeld with a release 0.1.2 of GNOME-aRts, which is
GNOME support for the soundserver used in KDE. Then a little later
Lennart Poettering released version 0.2 of ASD, which is a project
aiming to create an improved drop-in replacement for Esound.  

For more information on the aRts release see:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2001-June/msg00054.html And
for

more info on the ASD release: 

http://asd.sourceforge.net/

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6)  Bonobo-python enter GNOME CVS 

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


Johan Dahlin has begun working on a new module in GNOME CVS called 
Bonobo-python which as you might haved guess is a
library which easily lets you create Bonono components using the python
scripting language. This will for instance enable you to fast and easy
add new functionality to Nautilus using python.

http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=bonobo-python

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7)  More suggestions for small and easy GNOME hacks needed 

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


Chema Celorio mailed gnome-hackers this week asking people to submit
more items into the gnome Todo system. The todo system provides a list
of tasks suiteable for new hackers just starting out working on GNOME.
For more information read the mail from Chema.

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2001-June/msg00077.html

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

8)  GStreamer 0.2.0 is out

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


The GStreamer project released their 0.2.0 release this week. GStreamer
aims at creating a full featured media framework for the Unix platform
It aims to enable developers to fast and easy create multimedia
applications.  While GStreamer main goal is providing a library some
sample applications are included, for instance using its command-line
tools you can convert your Avi files to mpeg files. Or due to its GNOME
VFS plugin you can play media files straight from the web using the
gstmediaplay GUI client. More information on the GStreamer 0.2.0 release
page:

http://www.gstreamer.net/releases/0.2.0/

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

9)  New release of Pan news client 

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


Charles Kerr released version 0.9.7 of the great newsgroup client Pan. 
The three beatiful words used to describe this release was faster,
smaller and fewer bugs. For more information check out the Pan website:

http://pan.rebelbase.com/

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10)  Gnome VFS extras released 

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Alex Larsson announced the first release of gnome-vfs-extras this week.
GNOME vfs extras will provide extra modules for GNOME vfs which cannot
be distributed with the core package due to being licensed under the GPL
(GNOME VFS is of course licensed under the LGPL.) There are currently 2
modules in there now. The first is 'smb' which lets you browse windows
network neighbourhood and shares from windows machines and samba
servers. The second module is 'icecast' which lets you stream icecast
data using GNOME VFS. You can download GNOME VFS extras at:

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/unstable/sources/gnome-vfs-extras/

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11)  Abiword Weekly news #46 and #47 out 

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The Abiword project have been making a weekly newsletter for quite some
time now with the latest development from the Abiword front. New
features discussed in the latest issues are clipart support, screen
'dirt' fixes and new release being prepared and of course bugfixing :)

http://www.abisource.com/dev/news/2001/awn46.phtml
http://www.abisource.com/dev/news/2001/awn47.phtml

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12)  Abiword and Kword developers unite to develop better Word filters 

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Dom Lachowicz recently sent a mail to the Kword developers asking if
they where interested in collaberation on improving MS Word .doc format
import. After some discussion back and forth an agreement was made and a
shared wvWare2 library will be developed in collaberation. You find
Dom's initial mail at the link below, and just follow the thread for the
full story.

http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice&m=99064710806555&w=2

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

13)  New bughunters mailing list 

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Telsa Gwynne informs of us the startup of the GNOME-bugsquad
mailinglist. This is for people trying to tidy bugzilla of old bugs and
get new bugs into the right place: people willing to verify that bugs
still exist and who have some spare hours each week are welcome. Expect
high-traffic :) 

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-bugsquad


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14)  Friends of the tree 

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Feeling that last weeks special mention of the great work done by 
Juan Pablo Mendoza was a good thing, we have borrowed an idea from our
Mozilla friends. So starting this week we will, like the Mozilla
newsletter, have a Friends of the tree section from time to time, where
we give special mention to someone we feel deserving. So if you know of
someone deserving a little extra attention please let us know. 

This week I would like to pull Paolo Casarini into the spotlight. Paolo
has for the last few months taken the Gdome package, which is a W3C DOM 
implementation for GNOME, and ressurected it from lingering unmaintained
to now fast becoming full featured. This has lead to for instance
GtkMathView widget starting to use it in its next release. Great work
Paolo! More info about Gdome can be gotten and found on the Gdome 
mailing list:

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gdome

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15)  Project of the week 

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Ok, a task which everyone can do is for this week.
In order to improve the quality of www.gnome.org we need to get rid of
broken links. So if someone would be willing to search through the gnome
website and report any broken links to webmaster gnome org that would be
great.


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16)  Hacking Activity

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Thanks the Paul Warren for these lists.

Most active modules 

97 galeon 
63 evolution 
62 gtk+ 
62 gnome-utils 
46 bonobo-python 
45 SashMo 
42 gnumeric 
39 mc 
37 libgnome 
35 ximian-setup-tools 
34 nautilus 
32 gtranslator 
30 web-devel-2 
23 gnome-i18n 
23 gail 
20 dia 
19 libgnomeui 
19 gnome-xml 
18 gtkhtml
17 gnome-core

[94 active modules omitted]

Most active developers

60 martin 
51 kabalak 
47 jirka 
46 zilch i
44 kmaraas 
38 hp 
30 proskin 
29 menthos
26 dietmar 
25 barreiro 
24 tambeti 
24 trow 
23 atevstef 
22 mpeseng 
22 seth 
21 veillard 
21 maubury 
21 pablo 
17 almer 
17 mmueller

[123 active developers omitted]

NB These statistics are largely meaningless - they count CVS commits,
which are only a very rough indicator of actual progress of a project.

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

17)  New and Updated Software

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Software updated this week

Gnome--  - A powerful C++ binding for the GNOME libraries - 1.1.21
galeon  - A GNOME web browser based on Gecko  - 0.11 
Pygmy   - A GNOME mail client written in Python - 0.5.9
ASD     - A full featured drop-in replacement for Esound - 0.2
GStreamer - A streaming media library and set of multimedia tools -
0.2.0
RadioDJ - A radio device controller with unlimited stations - 0.2.12
gtktalog - An application to create and easily browse a CDROM database -
0.99.0 
Pan     - A multithreaded Usenet newsreader for GTK and GNOME - 0.9.7 
Oroborus - Small, themeable, GNOME comliant window manager - 1.13.0
Rocket  - Webserver providing real-time monitoring - 0.1 
GNOME Wireless Applet -  A panel applet and management tool for wireless
network cards - 0.8 
linphone - A IP web-phone -0.3.0 
Encompass - A lightweight Web Browser for Gnome using GtkHTML - 0.4.2 
vlc - VideoLAN Client is aDVD and MPEG player for Gnome or Gtk+ - 0.2.80
gnome-db - Database access for Gnome applications - 0.2.9
gnoracity - A simple board strategy game - 1.1
PonG    - GNOME Properties is a library and a tool for building
configuration dialog boxes - 1.0.0
Gnome Toaster   - CD creation suite using
cdrecord,cdrdao,cdda2wav,mkisofs - 1.0Beta1
TEG - Tenes Emapandas Graciela (TEG) is a multiplayer turn-based
strategy game - 0.6.10
gramps  - A GNOME/Python based genealogy program - 0.2.0
think   - Think is an outliner. 0.2

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

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

Thanks,
Christian
gnome-summary gnome org