Firefox 3.5

By pcabido in ubuntu No Comments Tags: , ,

I’m posting using the recent version of firefox, 3.5! It’s a RC but it works well, very well! I was really impressed with the overall performance. So, for those who want to use firefox 3.5 on ubuntu (jaunty) you just have to do the following steps:

  1. Add the following repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list
    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

  2. sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE

  3. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5

  4. Firefox 3.5 is installed but we still have 3.0 (I maintained it in the system) and so we have to change the default symlink by opening a terminal and doing:
    cd /usr/bin
    rm firefox
    sudo ln -s firefox-3.5 firefox

There is a minor bug for those of you who use ATI proprietary driver, fglrx, a render problem with pngs. They render with the wrong colors. You have to change a setting on firefox. On the config page, about:config, change the setting gfx.color_management.mode from 2 to 0.

Google Summer of Code: Week 3

By pcabido in gnome, gsoc, python 1 Comment Tags: , , , , ,

On week three I accomplished an important part of the project, that was to have by the end of the week a “working prototype” of the plug-in engine. Its not complete but the difficult part and the part where I was (very) confused is done.
Plug-ins are loading and working. Briefly, the system is divided into three parts:

  • The Plugin Manager that handles the GUI for the plug-ins
  • The Plugin Engine that handles the load, initialization, activation, etc for the plug-ins
  • A third part that is the plug-in API (the methods that are allowed for a plug-in to use)

And for the screen shot lovers here are some images of what is done:

Plugin_GUI
Plugin_working

The first screen shot is obvious, it’s the Plug-in Manager GUI and the second screen shot is the features that the plug-ins are implementing. The plug-ins are copys of each other, the each add a menu to the Plug-in menu on the menu bar and by clicking that menu you can see the action on the gnome-terminal and the last two buttons on the ToolBar are also put there by the plug-ins (you can also see the output on the gnome-terminal that resulted by a click on a button). New screen shots or maybe a video next week!

For week 4 I have the intention to finish the plug-in engine, it will be a work in progress but I want to finish all the main parts, and start the geoclue-python module that I will later use with a plug-in in GTG!.

Besides this I will continue my university marathon, here in Portugal the professors seam to wait for each other and set the tasks we have to do all at the same time. I still have 3 exams and 4 assignments to submit during June.

Google Summer of Code: Week 1

By pcabido in gnome, gsoc No Comments Tags: , , , ,

soc2009-banner
Here’s what I have done after the first official summer of code week…

First of all I created a wiki page that concentrates all of the projects info and where you can follow my progress on the project (this page is a work in progress).

An important part of my project is Geoclue and integrating it on GTG!. I have dedicated some time to understand how Geoclue works and I made some examples of how Geoclue can be used with Python/D-Bus.
This led to the idea of creating a python-geoclue lib/module to facilitate the Geoclue integration on python projects.

The examples are available here.
I’m thinking on creating a git branch to upload all my soc work.

We (me and Lionel) decided that this integration is best made as a GTG! plug-in because there may be some users that don’t want to use such features and also GTG! will benefit from a plug-in system. So I’ll be implementing a plug-in system on GTG! and most of this weeks time was spent on research for the best way to implement a plug-in system, talking or trying to talk to developers who have implemented such systems.

For the next week/weeks the TODO list is:

  • Implement the plug-in system on GTG!
  • Build the python-geoclue lib/module
  • Finish the mockup

I also have to mention Bertrand Rousseau, the other GTG! developer, who as always been available and helping.

Like other students my final exams and assignments discussions for the university have started and until mid June I’ll be dividing my time with soc and the university.

Also, during the past week I received the debt card and already have the 505 dollars there. I’m now thinking on the best way to get them into my account (to Portugal in euros). If anyone has a good idea, please let me know.

O exemplo de uma semana perdida

By pcabido in real life No Comments Tags: ,

O exemplo de uma semana perdida é a semana da Queima das Fitas. O pessoal diverte-se muito, muitas jantaradas, muitos copos, muita festa.. mas muito muito pouco trabalho. É a melhor semana do calendário académico mas agora que estou de volta à “realidade” percebo que devia ter trabalhado a semana passada… volto aquela fase em que se precisam de dias com 48h!