Network Manager 0.7
Over the weekend I spent some time hacking on Poky, integrating Network Manager. Because I'm hardcore I went for NM from trunk, instead of 0.6, as apparently its approaching stability and feature completeness. This afternoon I finally fixed enough stupid problems (/sbin/ip wasn't executable for instance, thanks install -s) that it connected to the office wireless and let me browse to Google.
Thanks to Dan Williams for answering my stupid questions about Network Manager.
Icon Madness
Last week I had to use Vicky's laptop briefly, which sadly runs Windows XP. I was greeted with this monstrosity:
The baby Jesus is beyond crying. For the curious, from left to right there is battery charge, wireless network status, InstallShield Update Manager, Java Updates, Windows Updates, Lastfm Scrobbler, Lenovo Client Security Password Manager, Bluetooth network connection (never used), Wired LAN network connection (never used), volume, ThinkVantage Access Connections wireless status, IBM Message Centre, Epson printer status, ThinkVantage Access Connections, Adobe Photo Downloader, GoogleTalk, Bluetooth status, QuickTime, Windows Security Alerts. After 30 minutes of removing software and disabling some more, I finally got this down to seven icons. I wish there was a way to disable Windows from showing the status of every network connection though.
NP: Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis
Devil's Pie "A Love Supreme" 0.21
Devil's Pie (someones favourite window manipulation tool) 0.21 is out. Now with even more actions!
- Add change_workspace action (#453464, thanks Adam Więckowski)
- Add decorate action (#449634, thanks Galkin Vasily)
- Add quit action (thanks Leon Zhang)
- Handle wnck_screen_get_active_workspace() failing (#343546)
Downloads are in the usual place.
Tasks 0.12
I'm pleased to announce that Tasks 0.12 is now available from the Pimlico Project. Hot new feature is undo/redo support, which lets you undo any change to the tasks. If an action is found which cannot be undone and then redone, please file a bug.
- Add undo/redo support (#312, #508, #510)
- Disable actions which require a selected task when no task is selected
- Port OpenMoko UI to the New World Order (Rob Bradford)
- Add a 24x24 icon (#475)
Postr 0.9
A quick release of Postr fixing a few little bugs.
- Fix handling of more EXIF tags
- Add 24x24 icon (thanks Michael Monreal)
- Add the version number to the UI (thanks Claudio Saavedra)
The tarball is here, and packages for Debian/Ubuntu are building now.
Stephen Fry Is My Hero (Even More Than Before)
Stephen Fry has long been a hero of mine for his acting and comedy, but I've just discovered that not only is he a geek, but he also gets it. From his blog regarding the iPhone:
Server side apps only. No, no, no, no, no. This is NOT good. It's one thing to want to keep the proprietary system closed, but to present a device sealed in digital Araldite is a Bad Idea. An Ubuntu flavoured Linux for mobiles is in the works, and you don't get more open source than that.
The full article is rather long but a very good read. Now I just want him to stop fawning over his iPhone and get back to making another series of QI, damnit!
NP: Digital Shades Volume 1, M83
Infinite Undo in Tasks
Yesterday I landed in Subversion a branch of Tasks I've been working on to remove all confirmation dialogs and replace them with infinite undo/redo. I'm really pleased with the end result, there are no more dialogs getting in the way and every action is undoable. To implement this I adapted MarlinUndoManager from Marlin by the most excellent Iain Holmes.
The basic design is that the application has a global undo context. When an operation which should be undoable occurs, you start the context, add as many undoables as required, and then end the context. Allowing a single undoable action to consist of multiple undoables lets the application reuse fine-grained logic to build coarse user-level actions (in Tasks this is used to build the Remove Completed action from multiple Delete Task actions). To make integrating this into applications even easier, I wrote a GtkAction which reflects the state of an undo context, so it is trivial to add redo/undo to the interface.
There is one remaining task left before this is ready to be released: undo support in the edit dialog entries. Once this is done, the next release of Tasks will be announced. I also plan to work with Iain on cleaning up this code and submitting it for inclusion into GTK+.
NP: Money Jungle, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Max Roach
Sound Juicer "The Best Blue Is Through The Trees" 2.20.0
Sound Juicer "The Best Blue Is Through The Trees" 2.20.0 is out. Tarballs are available on burtonini.com, or from the GNOME FTP servers.
- Remove a work around now that GStreamer is fixed, and update requirement (#472650, Jaap Haitsma)
Also thanks to the tireless translation team: Djihed Afifi (ar), Ihar Hrachyshka (be), Alexander Shopov (bg), Runa Bhattacharjee (bn_IN), Jordi Mallach (ca), Ask Hjorth Larsen (da), Hendrik Richter (de), Tshewang Norbu (dz), Kostas Papadimas (el), David Lodge (en_GB), Jorge González (es), Ivar Smolin (et), Iñaki Larrañaga Murgoitio (eu), Ilkka Tuohela (fi), Christophe Benz (fr), Ignacio Casal Quinteiro (gl), Ankit Patel (gu), Eyal Mamo (he), Gabor Kelemen (hu), Francesco Marletta (it), Takeshi AIHANA (ja), Young-Ho Cha (ko), Erdal Ronahi (ku), Žygimantas Beručka (lt), Raivis Dejus (lv), Arangel Angov (mk), Kjartan Maraas (nb), Wouter Bolsterlee (nl), Tomasz Dominikowski (pl), Og Maciel (pt_BR), Duarte Loreto (pt), Mugurel Tudor (ro), Nickolay V. Shmyrev (ru), Danishka Navin (si), Matic Žgur (sl), Elian Myftiu (sq), Милош Поповић (sr), Daniel Nylander (sv), Dr.T.Vasudevan (ta), Theppitak Karoonboonyanan (th), Baris Cicek (tr), Maxim Dziumanenko (uk), Clytie Siddall (vi), Funda Wang (zh_CN), Chao-Hsiung Liao (zh_HK, zh_TW).
Hildon Input Method Finally Opened
I knew having the GNOME wiki Recent Changes feed in Google Reader was a good idea... I just noticed a number of pages being created under the HildonInputMethod tree. Hooray, the Hildon Input Method is finally open source!
NP: We Made It For You, The Boats
