Diary of a CrazyFrench

tl;dr we need a Gnome computer.

This is not about choice, it is about freedom.

A hardware platform that would be libre, that would run a libre OS, based on Gnome, Linux and GNU.

A hardware platform whose software stack would be vertically integrated for a maximum user experience: working out of the box, as advertised.

And for those who think it is about choice, think again. Choice is dealing with a bazillion different hardware configuration, drivers, etc. Dealing with more poorly written drivers (usually from hardware vendors) or proprietary (hello GPU driver) or even buggy firmware.

Next will come the portable devices: tablet, phones, etc.

I just pushed out of the door Geglmm 0.1.6, the C++ bindings for GEGL. Nothing very special, they just needed an update.

.tar.bz

I don't know what the meme is about but:

I WRITE CODE

nuf said.

libpanelappletmm 2.26.0 has been pushed out of the door.

The main reason for that was the removal of libgnome* causing 2.22 to not build as is with GNOME 2.26.

It is available on the GNOME FTP

In my attempts to fight my own boredom, as an unemployed hacker^[1], I took on myself to do something: porting Tomboy to C++. It is actually not that hard, just a lot of work to do manually because there is over a dozen of thousands of lines of code. This show me that the door is open to reimplementing Gtk# software (or parts) in C++ with not too many problems, making it easy to have them available for C applications.

Nonetheless there are still some challenges:

1. Garbage collection: I replaced this with a combination of Gtkmm memory management, std::tr1::shared_ptr<> and stack allocated object. Seems to be working so far. I could also be using a garbage collector, but it seems to be unecessary.
2. String and file path utilities: Boost has string algorithms and Boost.Filesystem
3. XML: while XML parsing is not a big issue with the various libraries available, APIs have enough difference to make it non-trivial. I also had to write a convenient wrapper of xmlTextWriter to make my life easier.
4. Add-ins: I don't have the support for generic addins as found in Mono. No big deal, I implemented a factory in a few lines with a couple of macros. Some core features are actually implemented as add-ins, so I had to do it. Dynamic loading shouldn't be too hard.
5. regex: some of these core feature use regulars expression. Not a big deal if it wasn't for apparently different syntax.

To help all of this, I have implemented a small library (in the same tree) called "sharp" aimed at helping port from Gtk#. In addition to boost, I also make an extensive use of Gtkmm and libxml++.

Of course the code is available. I have set up a repository on gitorious. There is not tarball yet as I still need to iron a few major bugs. On over 13KLOC of code, there are to be some :-)

Over the last week I spent some time rewriting bits of the AbiWord Gtk+ code to build with GTK_DISABLE_DEPRECATED defined. It took longer than expected as I originally thought that it was no more than 4 dialogs, but I was wrong... It is like a can of worm. I also fixed a few bugs in the mean time.

Thanks to Owen, Niepce Digital source code repository has been moved to git.

See the cgit interface for the details.

Re-post since he is still not on Planet Gnome

teuf says:

Months go by, and it's once again time to start thinking about the upcoming FOSDEM. It will take place on the 7th and 8th February week-end in Brussels.

This year, we'll have a devroom, we'll be on our own on Saturday, but on Sunday we'll share it once again with KDE and, this is new this year, with XFCE for talks of crossdesktop interest. I just got the confirmation about the room, so organization on our side is just starting, but if you already know you are going to FOSDEM and want to give a talk, please contact me and tell me about it :)

Another good news is that we'll also have a booth (like last year). The not-so-good news is that there is noone dedicated to the organization of said booth yet, so we'd need a volunteer to coordinate everything as soon as possible :) Contact me!!!

See the original post

For the first time I'll be at the GNOME summit in Boston. See you there.

During my demo at GUADEC, I only showed JPEG images. But RAW support is supposed to be central to Niepce Digital. Here we go. Leveraging libopenraw and GEGL, I now have basic RAW demosaicizing working. It needs several adjustments, but it is there, much better than what I achieved before.

Screenshot:

GEGL needs to be build with the "workshop" (see configure). I already have updated my packages for openSUSE. The code will soon be pushed to SVN.

Just a quick note to let people know that I have put my slides online. They are linked from lgo (in OpenDocument).

I'll provide PDF and HTML versions soon.

I did a release of geglmm 0.0.17 (with the help of jonner for the upload) in order to help building Niepce Digital.

geglmm 0.0.17 is the C++ mm-style bindings for GEGL 0.0.18.

You can download it from the FTP:

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/geglmm/0.0/

A version 0.0.18 will follow soon to be in sync with gegl versioning.

I didn't really take notes. But things I saw:

• GeoClue is interesting in the idea. I don't know why I missed the talk last year.
• Blizzard doesn't like doing presentation but he is good. Chris, continue. Next question?
• Stormy is here as the new executive director for the foundation. Congrats!
• Lot of EEE PC, all using free software (the default firmware is not).
• GEGL in Gimp, that will rock.
• Disappointed by the OpenMoko talk. Not that it was bad, but I'd have preferred a presentation of the software stack.
• Clutter is more impressive than ever.

Picture count at 748, and still counting. And the pain in that? I won't tell there would be a huge rant.

I'm in Istanbul since yesterday. The weather is hot.

We have drunk beer on the sidewalk sitting on cushions and carpet: that's what the terraces are in Istanbul. Some North American countries really need some thinking about the alcohol taboo.

I have taken 346 pictures so far. That's a case where I wish I had a GPS to geotag them. I will need to do some sorting though, and that might involve writing code before hand.

More later...

Just because I won't be at LGM 2008 to show this in a corner, here is a teaser screenshot:

It is still pretty much a work in progress, and is not actually up to the point where I can use it. Some keywords: XMP, digital camera RAW, non-destructive, asset management, GNOME, C++