by carlos garcia campos

GNOME 2.12 Timeframe

GNOME 2.10 has been successfully released yet, so it’s time now to work on GNOME 2.12. I have some interesting bugs in CPUFreq Applet, lots of work in GNOME System Tools, and other features I’m really interested in.

CPUFreq Applet

  • #168356: A patch for adding FreeBSD support. I have to review it carefully because it’s a long patch.
  • #168550: I can’t reproduce this bug because I haven’t got a HT processor. I’ll try to fix it by using text files simulating two processors.
  • #160031: It’s a zioma bug in fact. He is going to convert the icons to SVG format. I know he is working on a new application icon too :-))
  • #170492: I disagree with this bug, anyway I would like to know other opinions
  • #164581: I think it’s very important to be able to select governors. However I still don’t know how I’m going to do it. The cpufreq-selector drop down menu could become too big with the frequencies and governors.

GNOME System Tools

There are good news here, the GST backends have been accepted in FreeDesktop!.

There is lots of work to do, because they are going to be important changes in the GST architecture.

Garnacho has started coding, but he hasn’t published anything yet, because he is waiting for the migration of the GST backends from the GNOME CVS to the FreeDesktop CVS. Then, he’ll do a special branch for these changes and I’ll be able to start coding too.

Other interesting features

by carlos garcia campos

Evince Sidebar Widget

I was working on evince again. This time I’ve improved the sidebar widget to be nicer, similar to the galeon or nautilus sidebar. It looks pretty good now, at least better than with the combobox

I already have another patch pending to be reviewed by Marco 🙂

Bryan has posted in his blog several bugs that can be fixed soon, some of them are really easy to fix, so if you are interested, take a look at them and enjoy!

Snow in Madrid

Snow in Madrid Snow in Madrid
by carlos garcia campos

Exams

I’ve just finished the exams. There have been the first exams in the URJC. Although I’ve been very busy studying in the last days, I’ve had a little time for hacking.

Evince

I love this app. I think it will be the definitive document viewer for GNOME. I’ve added support for DND files

Buoh

Buoh is a comics reader for GNOME Desktop. The project has been started by zioma and steve-o and they are also maintaining it. I’m very happy because the project is going on!.

Planeta Linups

Finally we have a planet in Linups!!. There are many “linupseros” who have a blog, and it’s very difficult to visit all of them. With the planet I’m sure I will be able to read them. Thanks to zioma and ice-boy, great work!!

GNOME World Wide

Based on the idea of the Debian developers location map, jdub has done the GNOME equivalent.

GNOME World Wide
GNOME developers location map
by carlos garcia campos

The future of GST

I was talking with garnacho about the future of GST. The problem of the unidirectional communication between backend and frontend is more and more annoying. Garnacho thinks that it’s the moment to modernize GST. I totally agree.

There are two main goals:

  • Use D-BUS for the communication backend – frontend
  • Make a GObject wrapper for a libgst library

Our first task will be to do the perl bindings for D-BUS, because it seems that there are no bindings yet. Then we’ll be able to start working on the backends for providing a D-BUS service.

We’ll be able to do many things that we can’t with the current architecture, like send notifications from the backend to the frontend (for example when a removable network card is detached).

More information: http://live.gnome.org/SystemToolsBackends

I’m desiring to begin! 🙂

by carlos garcia campos

I needed a free day

In the last weeks I’ve been very busy doing some uni exercises that we have to do before doing the exams. I already have work to do, but today I’ve decided to take me the day as a free (in fact, I took me only the afternoon, because in the morning I was in class). What better way to spend a free day than hacking? Hehe, here is the result of my small free day

CPUFreq Applet

The new icons proposed by zioma have been accepted!!. I’ve uploaded them to CVS.

GST: The disks Tool

Because of the little time that I have, the disks tool development is going slowly. But I haven’t abandoned it. I’ve fixed an important bug in the scsi bus scanning. The scsi devices in which lun was greater than 0, were not detected.

I’m very happy to see Davyd talks about the disks tool in his GNOME 2.10 article.

I will continue with the uni exercises tomorrow. 🙂

by carlos garcia campos

A new CPUFreq Applet

Yes, I’ve just rewritten the cpufreq applet. There were some things that I wanted for the applet and I hadn’t done yet because it was necessary to change the current code design.

Some of them are:

  • The applet should be independent of the data access method. The applet should behave as a simple viewer, and it shouldn’t know the data access details. My solution is a monitor that will do the data access work and will give these data to the applet
  • The current applet is updated every second, even when there aren’t changes. I think it’s an error because most of the time, the cpu keeps the same frequency. With the new monitor it’s not the applet who is running every second, but the monitor. The monitor will get the data every second and will emit a signal when there are changes. The applet only has to listen for the signal for doing the update

I think that the advantages are evident . . .

I thought that the best way to do these things, it was an object oriented design. The monitor is an abstract class (CPUFreqMonitor) that has a child class for every possible monitor (CPUFreqMonitorProcs, CPUFreqMonitorSysfs, . . .). The applet only knows the CPUFreqMonitor class, so the methods for getting the data are virtual methods, polymorphic entities. In this way, we can add new monitors in the future (based on libcpufreq, HAL or whatever) by only writing a new class and without changing any line of code in the applet. We can even decide which monitor will be used at run time.

CPUFreq Applet UML
CPUFreq Applet new code design in UML

We have now an applet more efficient and extensible.

While I rewrote the code I also migrated from gnome_about to gtk_about and I did some code cleanups.

I haven’t committed yet, because I want to test it a little more. I think I will commit with the new icons, since nobody has said anything bad of them.

by carlos garcia campos

Mortal Kombat II

I’ve never been an enthusiast of the computer games, but if there is a computer game of my childhood, it’s Mortal Kombat II. I’ve wasted many hours of my life playing it.

The first time I tried dosbox, MK2 was not supported, but when the other day steve-o talked to me about dosbox, I thought I had to take a look at the list of supported games again. God! MK2 is perfectly supported since dosbox 0.61!!

I was remembering my childhood playing for a while. I had forgotten all of the fatalities and the Shang Tsung morphs, so I was googling a bit.

Mortal Kombat II
Shang Tsung Wins!
by carlos garcia campos

DVD support in disks-admin

Since I have now a DVD player in my new laptop, I decided to add support for DVD in disks-admin. It’s integrated with totem, so when a DVD video is detected you will be able to play it and totem will be launched.

DVD support in disks-admin
DVD support in disks-admin

I hope I can start with the fdisk feature as soon as possible

University

I’m enjoyed a lot doing a networks exercise. It’s a reduced version of the TCP protocol: Simple TCP (STCP). For the moment I only have to do the Open and Close functions, for establishing and closing connections. The main problem is that I have to do it in ADA. I have to do a big effort for not thinking in C.

GNOME hackers meeting

The next week will be the second GNOME hackers meeting. I’m going to present the disks tool again

Basketball :: San Pancracio Team

We have tomorrow the thrid match of the league. We have lost the first two matches, so we need to win this third one. I hope that our new pet (steve-o evil) give us good luck.

San Pancracio's pet
San Pancracio’s pet (steve-o evil)