GNOME Summary for 28 October to 16 November

22

Author: JT Smith

“This is the GNOME Summary for 2001-10-28 – 2001-11-16.”

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Table of Contents
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1. GNOME Foundation
2. Abiword gets Gdict support
3. GNOME 2.0 API Freeze
4. Anjuta and gIDE join forces
5. GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform Alpha 2
6. GTK-Sharp gets a home
7. Accessibility Applications
8. Nautilus 2 emerges
9. New Guikachu and RadioActive Released
10. GNOME-print with True-Type support available
11. Compiling GNOME
12. Gnumeric 0.76 Released
13. Bonobo Components: Architecture and Application
14. Hacker Activity

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1. GNOME Foundation
--------------------------------------------------------------

The gnome foundation is there to further the goals of GNOME by
organising the project, determinining what gnome is and much more. It's
an overall leadership role which the Board of Directors bring into
focus. Membership of the foundation is made up of those who've
contributed to GNOME; this can be any number of fashions. There are
currently 410 members who elect the Directors once a year. Voting will
be from November 20th - 27th. The purpose of elections is to test the
candidates so put your questions forward. 

        http://foundation.gnome.org/organization.html
        http://foundation.gnome.org/ballot_summary.html
        
http://lists.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2001-November/thread.html

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2. Abiword gets Gdict support
--------------------------------------------------------------

The ever resourceful Dom Lachowicz has made a gdict plugin for Abiword.
This means that you can now access your favourite dictionary tool from
within Abiword. Hopefully this plugin will soon be joined by many others
as developers discovers the new plugin support in Abiword. Thanks also
goes to Jesper Skov for once again putting together an Abiword weekly
newsletter for us. 

       
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/01/November/0107.html
        http://www.abisource.com/information/news/2001/awn69.phtml

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3. GNOME 2.0 API Freeze
--------------------------------------------------------------

Maciej announced the API freeze for the 2.0 release. This isn't a hard
release, more slushy if you will, where any alterations have to be
approved by the release team. Lots of discussion has ensued with the
central problem that always afflicts hackers arising: the desire to get
it Right, versus the need to release often. Probably the largest
casualty of the API freeze are language bindings that are unlikely to be
shippable in time with the release. 

        
http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnome-2-0-list/2001-November/msg00113.html
        http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/schedule/

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4. Anjuta and gIDE join forces
--------------------------------------------------------------

The two premier integrated development environment efforts of GNOME,
namely Anjuta and gIDE announced that they are merging. The new joined
effort will be called Anjuta2. This will probably lead to a quicker
development on the GNOME IDE front giving us a top knotch full featured
system much faster. Thanks goes to the Anjuta and gIDE developers for
showing such spirit of cooperation. The full announcement posted by Naba
Kumar can be found below. 

        
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devtools/2001-November/msg00009.html

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5. GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform Alpha 2
--------------------------------------------------------------

Jeff Waugh announced the second alpha of the developer platform. This
release includes all the libraries and support packages necessary for
developers who want to port to GNOME 2.0. While there is sure to various
bits of breakage through the development period this is a great way for
application developers to start early. Importantly this release can be
installed along with an existing stable 1.4 release with no
side-effects. 

        
http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devel-list/2001-November/msg00029.html

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6. GTK-Sharp gets a home
--------------------------------------------------------------

The GTK+ bindings for C# has gotten their own homepage thanks to the
effort of GTK+ sharp lead developer Mike Kestner. Mike also did a
GTK-Sharp status report recently which you find in the second link
below. If C# takes of I guess there will be no place like GNOME ;) 

        http://gtk-sharp.sourceforge.net/
        
http://mail.ximian.com/archives/public/gtk-sharp-list/2001-November/000013.html

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7. Accessibility Applications
--------------------------------------------------------------

One of the big aims for GNOME 2.0 is to include an accessibility
framework. The hackers working on this project, predominantly working
for SUN, have put a lot of effort into the framework. It looks as if
these efforts are starting to flower in some applications. Bill Haneman
announced two projects respectively called GOK and Gnopernicus. GOK,
GNOME Online Keyboard is a visible keyboard that can provide a variety
of input. Gnopernicus is a full screen magnifier and reader - which
incidently continues the prjects outlandish naming scheme, how many gn*
words can be left! 

        http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/news.html

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8. Nautilus 2 emerges
--------------------------------------------------------------

As the GNOME2 development platform has entered an API freeze the GNOME 2
desktop is emerging. First to post a Nautilus2 screenshot is Michael
Meeks who gave us this little preview of Nautilus reborn as on GNOME
2.0. A lot of work is currently being done on getting the GNOME panel up
and running under GNOME 2 and Sawfish has been reported to also compile
using GTK+2.0 now so hopefully we can soon be able to run the first
alpha release of the GNOME 2.0 desktop soon. 

        http://primates.ximian.com/~michael/nautilus2.png

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9. New Guikachu and RadioActive Released
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Erdi Gergo has released the first 1.0 beta of Guikachu labeled 0.99.1.
Guikachu is a tool for creating user interfaces for Palm Pilot
applications. Guikachu GUI is modeled after Glade so if you are familiar
with Glade you should feel at home in Guikachu. Gergo wants to make a
1.0 release of Guikachu as soon as possible so all user feedback on this
release is highly appreciated. Not limiting himself to one application
he also released a new version of RadioActive which is a
Video4Linux-compatible radio tuner application. It also has a text
interface so that the application can detect whether it is being called
from within GNOME and give you the correct interface. Even if you don't
have a radio card it's worth checking out the project pages for one of
the cutest Linux penguins you are likely to see! 

        
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2001-November/msg00029.html
        http://cactus.rulez.org/projects/radioactive/

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10. GNOME-print with True-Type support available
--------------------------------------------------------------

The eagerly awaited release of GNOME-print which includes support for
printing TrueType fonts is now available. Chema Celorio and Lauris
Kaplinski wants feedback from people using this in order to make sure
that everything works well before it gets packaged by distributions etc.
So please give it a spin and report your results to the GNOME print
mailing-list listed below. 

        
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2001-November/msg00020.html
        http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/gnome-print

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11. Compiling GNOME
--------------------------------------------------------------

One of those Linux refrains is 'Use the source Luke', but how can you if
you can't get the darn thing to compile! GNOME isn't easy to build
yourself as it is a complicated pyramid of capability and libraries.
Karsten Reincke's GNOME Installation Guide is a great place to start. In
addition, Chema Celorio, announced an FAQ he's been working which also
has some great material 

        http://www.karubik.de/gig/
        http://www.gnome.org/~chema/gnome-love/compiling_faq.html

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12. Gnumeric 0.76 Released
--------------------------------------------------------------

Jody Goldberg put out a challenge for anyone to try and find a bug
starting from 0.75 which some people already have taken advantage of. He
bravely says: 'If you find a crash between now and the 1.0 release I'll
buy you a beverage of your choice.' So now you know what you need to do
to get a free drink! The team hopes to freeze the look of the
application soon 

        http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/gnumeric-0.76

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13. Bonobo Components: Architecture and Application
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dirk-Jan Binnema announced the release of a paper he recently gave to
the Dutch Unix User Group. It's a good introduction to the purpose of
Bonobo, it's architecture and some potential future developments.
Partnered with his other papers 'On Writing a Bonobo Control' and
'Writing Bonobo Components: the easy way' the topic area is nicely
covered. 

        http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/1005389385/index_html
        http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/projecten/bonobo_controls/
        http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/projecten/bonobo-gwizard/

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14. Hacker Activity
--------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for Paul Warren for these lists.

Most active modules:
 139 gnucash
 83 galeon
 81 gimp
 62 evolution
 46 gtk+
 39 SashComponents
 34 gtkmm-root
 32 gnumeric
 26 gnome-core
 24 guikachu
 24 glib
 23 gnome-utils
 23 web-devel-2
 21 gtkhtml
 20 gnomemeeting
 20 procman
 20 pan
 19 gcompris
 19 nautilus
 18 mc
[110 active modules omitted]

Most active hackers:
 60 rlb (gnucash)
 52 peticolas (gnucash)
 40 michael
 34 stano
 30 menthos
 30 mitch
 26 jbaayen
 26 ajshankar
 24 cactus
 24 gman
 22 yaneti
 22 murrayc
 21 carlos
 18 charles
 18 frob
 18 kevinv
 17 rmo
 17 wing
 17 timj
 16 owen
[132 active hackers omitted]


Appologise for the lack of summaries for the last weeks but time has not
been cooperative. As always we hope and work towards the goal of a
steady schedule from here on. 
If you have news that you think should be in the next GNOME Summary
please send it across. Christian and I are always happy to receive news,
comments or suggestions just email us at gnome-summary@gnome.org. 

Until next time, 
Christian and Steve 

Category:

  • Open Source