Yesterday I spent most of my day hacking Getting Things Gnome. It was kind of a come back for me. I don’t remember the last time I made any contribution but I think it was about two years ago. A very long time. Shame on me!

I got current with GTG and corrected some bugs, some small ones and two “high” ones (lp:~pcabido/gtg/hackathon). Curious thing, they were all plugin related bugs. I also started getting up to date with the gtasks backend. I will be giving it some love over the next weeks.

It was the first GTG hackathon and it was fun. I hope to be participating in hackathones more often.

Another great thing I read about yesterday was a techradar article that elects Getting Things Gnome as app number 7 on the top 50 best Linux apps of 2011. It’s a motivational boost to keep hacking and making GTG better.

I’m addicted to gnome-shell!

A week has passed since I installed GNOME 3 on Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”, from the official GNOME 3 PPA.

I remember thinking something like “Looks nice, feels good but lots of things are missing… going back to classic GNOME…” but for some unexplained reason I didn’t make the purge and kept using GNOME 3 and the mighty gnome-shell.

Here’s my GNOME 3 sceeen shot:

This isn’t a GNOME 3 review, Ars Technica already made one that you can read here. It’s just my two cents about some things.

Problems, bugs, weird stuff and a whish list

• Ubuntu 11.04 doesn’t have official GNOME 3 support. You have to use the PPA. I almost went Fedora because of this. Still thinking about that…

• The window decorator couldn’t be more ugly, but I saw lots of screen shots around the web with a great looking interface. Why wasn’t mine good looking?! Seams that the problem was that the theme (Adwaita) wasn’t there. After a quick search, I found out that the theme was in a package called gnome-themes-standard that wasn’t in the GNOME 3 dependency list and that I couldn’t install because the package itself is broken. The solution was to extract the contents of the package and place the Awaita theme where it should be (/usr/share/themes) manually.

• I also remember thinking “where the *FWORD* are my desktop icons?!” and after taking after a deep breath I read all about the philosophy of GNOME 3/gnome-shell and it kind of made some sense, although I am/was too used to having stuff all around my desktop. This was only the first weird thing I had to adapt to.

• There are no applets in gnome-shell, the nice panel (top bar) isn’t customizable. I have a trillion passwords to memorize and I have been using revelation until now (GNOME 2) because of the nice applet that it has. I used it exhaustively because it allowed me to search within my passwords very quickly. I really miss that applet.

• The notifications changed. In a general way I like the new notification system, it’s cool and really doesn’t bother you when your’re working and it’s a complete WIN to be able to check the notifications some time after they occurred. Yet, another habit, I use pidgin as my default IM client and I want to be able to stick the icon somewhere visible (top bar) and see when the icon changes it’s status. I liked the way that worked out in GNOME 2. It’s just weired not to have it there now.

• Keyboard has lot’s of shortcuts. WIN! But hey some of us have razors, mx 5xx or some other mouse that has more buttons than we have fingers. There should be mouse shortcuts as well! With compiz I used two useful shortcuts within the desktop wall. I used the two buttons placed on the left side of my mouse to change to the previous and to the next workspace. This is another thing I really miss.

• Nautilus changed the shortcuts. Now I have to press two keys to delete a file. I liked it better when I only had to press del for that.

• Mutter breaks transparency in non-maximized windows, like gnome-terminal that I use allot. It’s a known bug but still no solution.

• As well as some other users, I haven’t figured out how to remove the unnecessary accessibility menu from the top bar.

• Another “philosophy” issue is that by default window controls only have the close button. No minimize or maximize. That’s because you can maximize windows with a double-click on the title bar and because you don’t have anything to see (besides your wallpaper) on your desktop, so you don’t need to minimize windows, only switch between them. That was weired at first and I added both missing controls, but sincerely after a week of using gnome-shell I don’t use them at all.

• Lack of customization. This is a problem. I like to tweak my desktop and so do other users. I think future success depends on this issue.

• Places should also have the option to be added as a Favorite. I have the sensation that  nautilus alone isn’t enough.

Things that keep me hooked in!

• The coolness factor! I don’t know why neither can I explain it… but it just feels right to use gnome-shell! Almost as if it was cool to use it and if you don’t.. you’re not just cool anymore.

• Gnome-shell. I’m still adapting but I like the changes.

• The application switcher.

• The workspace management is just awesome. The way they extend one after another or how they are removed when no longer necessary is just how they should always have worked.

• I use a laptop + a LCD screen at home. The second screen, the LCD, doesn’t change when I switch workspaces. When I switch workspaces only the laptop screen workspace changes. The LCD workspace is always the same. I don’t really know if this is the default behavior, but I love this. I can put my “always showing apps” in the LCD “always showing” workspace and move throe the laptop workspaces.

• I’m more focused on my work. Congratulations to  the GNOME 3 team because this is one of gnome-shell’s objectives and I really feel it.

• Gnome-shell extensions. They represent additional functionality for gnome-shell. There is a collection of extensions available at the GNOME GIT source code repository. I two articles: one about those extra extensions available at the GNOME GIT and another article with nice code examples and explanations. Adding to this while browsing the web for some kind of gnome-shell integration with pidgin I found this extension that integrates pidgin with gnome-shell the same way Empathy is integrated (thanks to Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail).

• There are lots of nice themes emerging (Smooth Inset and Elementary).  This Tron Legacy gnome-shell theme is for an older version of gnome-shell but you can get the idea.

I’ll keep posting my GNOME3 experience and who knows, some extensions of my own.

At this point of your life you should know about Getting Things Gnome! and how easy it makes your life!

A port of GTG for android is in my perspective far a way as there is no native python support, etc. So how can you have your GTG tasks on your android phone?

Easy!

1. Signup for a (free) Remember The Milk account
2. Activate GTG’s Remember The Milk plugin and sync your tasks with RTM
3. Install Astrid on your android phone (available on android market)
4. Sync Astrid with RTM

Signup for a (free) Remember The Milk account
Remember The Milk allows you to manage your tasks online. Just go to http://www.rememberthemilk.com and signup for a (free) account.

Activate GTG’s Remember The Milk plugin and sync your tasks with RTM
Thanks to Luca Invernizzi’s GTG plugin, Remember The Milk, it’s possible to sync GTG with Remember The Milk. The plugin is currently at version 0.3.

Plugin for synchronising Getting Things Gnome! with the web service Remember the milk  (http://www.rememberthemilk.com)
Please note that task descriptions are not synchronized in this version.
Legal note: This product uses the Remember The Milk API but
is not endorsed or certified by Remember, The Milk.

Luca’s RTM plugin is shipped with GTG so if you have the latest version you only need to activate the plugin.

Activate GTG's RTM plugin

After activating the plugin you only need to sync the tasks between GTG and RTM.

Sync tasks between GTG and RTM

Install Astrid on your android phone (available on android market)
This step is actually very easy. Just open the Android Market and search for Astrid and install it.

Sync Astrid with RTM
Open Astrid and in the Synchronization menu Activate the Remember The Milk service and also activate the Main Menu Shortcut.

Astrid's Sync menu

The Sync shortcut in the main menu comes up handy to sync Astrid with RTM with minimum effort. Then all you need is to hit the sync button.

Astrid & RTM Sync in action

That’s it. This is as simple as it can get. No more excuses for not being organized!

One more thing, by default Remember The Milk will send email notification of tasks on their deadline and it’s also a nice feature to have.

I’ll leave you guys with one more screen shot of the Astrid’s home widget that also comes in handy.

Astrid's home screen widget

Finally and for the just for those of you who are wondering, I’m using…

• … Getting Things Gnome! development version (latest trunk version)
• … CyanogenMod 4.2.14.1. I also suggest a look at http://www.openandroidteam.com for the latest android version (2.1_r2).

That’s it! Getting Things Gnome! 2.0, code name “Gorignak”, was released this week!

I won’t duplicate the release post, it’s a great post and you can read it here!

Today I just had to code. For days I’ve been studying for my last exams (I hope!). Kevin Mehall made me the suggestion to add a preferences button on the dialog manager in order to allow a user to set the preferences/configure a plugin. The idea is based on the Gedit system. I think I never gave credit to Gedit but I actually based allot of things on their plugin system.

It looks like this:

You can read about it and how to make your plugin configurable in the plugin howto along with all the other info.

As requested and discussed before I made a notification area plugin for GTG. This allows you to click on the notification area icon to “minimize” GTG. It also has a small context menu. Keep in mind that if you minimize GTG it will minimize normally (it will not “disappear”), this plugin does not change GTG’s UI or how it works.

Anyway You should read Lionel’s article on “There’s no tray icon in GNOME!“. It is a MUST READ!

The plugin is available in the current development branch.

I made some documentation for my work that I had not yet advertised, so here are the links:

• How to make a plugin for Getting Things Gnome! : Learn how to make a plugin here
• Geolocalized-tasks plugin for Getting Things Gnome! : See how to install and use the plugin
• python-geoclue : A python module that provides a nice api for Geoclue

For the past two/three days I’ve been fighting with video in linux to make a screencast. I found out that recordmydesktop didn’t work in any of my computers (it was always so slow!). I finally got it to work in a old laptop, a compaq evo n1020v and was able to record the plugin working.
After that I had another challenge, to edit the four small videos into the final video and finally to be able to use the html5 video tag I had to add the ogg mime types to apache’s config.
Well.. the result was this video (still a little sluggish, the next one will be better):

For those that don’t have a html5 compatible browser, here is the youtube link or the direct link to the ogg video.

There are still some glitches in the plugin but in a general way it works ok. More features are coming soon!

This week I worked with libchamplain and added it to the GTG! geolocalized-tasks plugin that I’m making. I have a working version as planned. It’s now possible to add a location to a task or view a task (that has a defined location) on the map. It will have some more features in a few days. Some images of libchamplain + geoclue + GTG! in action:

A quick explanation (each point corresponds to a image):

1. The button Set/View location is added to the task editor window;
2. Viewing the task’s location on the map. This task (as you can see on the first image) has three tags, two of them with location and on of the tags that has a location doesn’t have a color set so that gray is the default color;
3. A task with a tag named “CGE” with the color attribute defined to pink and with the location defined. Because the task has already a location defined, it only shows the location;
4. A task that doesn’t have tags (so no location). Using geoclue (pygeoclue) the markers position is set to the current location. It’s also possible to move the marker around to the desired position. There is a gtk.entry to define the tag’s name;
5. This task has tags but no location is defined. Again, using geoclue the markers position is set to the current location. Now it’s possible to create a new tag to associate with the location or to associate the location to a existing tag;

Some new features will be available in the next days along with a screencast.

Learning libchamplain was a challenge, I had some problems and spent allot of time figuring out how to solve them but the libchamplain team was wonderful and help me thru the problems, many thanks to Victor and Pierre-Luc!

So this week I:

• added libchamplain to geolocalized-tasks plugin in GTG!
  • learned how clutter/libchamplain works
  • tested and experimented with the python bindings (view, layers and markers mostly)
  • coded an example (demo in python) of how to change a marker’s position on the map. The demo is available here: http://paulocabido.com/soc/libchamplain/move_marker.py
• fixed several bugs in the plugin-engine

All the code (plugin + plugin-engine) is available at my plugin-engine branch: https://code.launchpad.net/~pcabido/gtg/plugin-engine