Johns Blog

Blog as Noticeboard

Summer of Code This has now finished, and I am really happy with how it went. I was able to complete a Python binding to libsyncml. This was done with the help of Pybindgen, which aside from a few quirks, performed admirably. Expect this to become the premier tool to automatically create python bindings to C/C++ libraries. The binding still contains too many bugs to be considered usable in Conduit trunk (read: crasher bugs) but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Alexandre Rosenfeld was also successful in his Conduit Summer of Code project. He contributed audio and video support for the iPod, and a comprehensive audio/video converter/trans-coder using python-gstreamer. The iPod support seems quite comprehensive, and the converter component is a necessary component of the Conduit architecture for our future plans.

Conduit While it may look like I have been dormant at Conduit hacking, work has been ongoing in a number of branches. Unfortunately I still cannot push these branches to bzr-playground.gnome.org because the SSH keys from GNOME have not been synced across in over two weeks, leaving me locked out.. The GIO port is now working (with the exception of gvfs bug #547133, which I would dearly like someone to commit the fix for).

One of the major tasks necessary for the GIO port was the isolation of the platform specific parts, such as GConf, and GnomeVFS. One thing that fell out of this work is that Conduit now works on Windows. With no (~10 lines) code changes. Amazing really. It should be noted that this is not actually using GIO on windows, it is using a pure Python File class implementation.

Conduit can haz Windows!

I am not really serious about maintaining this port, but it shows what is possible. If someone wants to hack on this I can point them to the necessary places. But basically you will need

• Python 2.5

• The Gtk+ Runtime for Windows

• PyCairo, PyGObject, PyGtk installers

• Goocanvas and PyGoocanvas installers

• The conduit-win32 branch (not accessible ATM, due to aforementioned bzr brokeness)

I have also moved over to using PyWebkitGtk for the Conduit Web browser. They just made a 1.0 release, and I would really like it if those responsible for packaging Conduit, could please also package PyWebkitGtk, and ensure that it gets the necessary exceptions so that it is accepted into the appropriate distributions. Words cannot express how happy I am to be rid of gtkmozembed. It is a shame that webkitgtk was not accepted as an external dependency for GNOME 2.24, as this now makes getting things like pywebkitgtk into distributions a royal PITA.

Openstreetmap GPS Widget Some time ago I mentioned the osm-gps-map widget that I have been working on, semi-related to my PhD. I just made the inaugural 0.1 release. This widget basically lets one easily write moving-map display widgets very easily, showing points of interest, and multiple gps paths atop of tiles fetched from openstreetmap, or other mapping providers. It started as a port of Tango GPS, and can now basically do everything that application did, but behind a simple GObject API. Python bindings are also provided

• Download

• Documentation (soon)

• Example Code

• Applications [1] [2] using this widget.

Miscellany

• Dear Ubuntu. Please make this your theme.

• RMS spoke at the University of Canterbury last week. It was quite good and well attended.

• I am off to France in 10 days for a two month PhD excursion/exchange to ENAC

• If you know a packager for a distribution, then poke them to package PyWebkitGtk

Frantic

Frantic would be how I described my last two weeks. I have had very little free time to work on Conduit. Everything seems to have come at once!

• I got accepted for summer of code - adding SyncML support to Conduit.

• Alexandre Inacio Rosenfeld also got accepted to SOC to work on Ipod and media support in Conduit.

• I got accepted to speak at GUADEC, which I will be attending, providing all finances work out.

• It looks likely that, as part of my PhD, I will be spending a few months at ENAC (home of the Paparazzi UAV).

Random

• I have been playing with barpanel, a very functional GNOME panel replacement.

• Grape is certainly an interesting UI/desktop mock up. If I had infinite spare time I migh have a hack on it, as an excuse to play with Clutter.

• Props to Jan Bodnar for his excellent Gtk+ and Cairo tutorials.

• My (bad) experiences with Ubuntu 8.04 can be best described by the following picture..

Openstreetmap GPS Mapping Widget

Somewhat tangentially related to my PhD, I have been hacking on a simple Openstreetmap GPS mapping/display widget. Basically because after investigating all the existing mapping programs on linux, none of them supported openstreetmap/openaerialmap and were able to be easily embedded.

It's basically a port of tangoGPS (by Marcus Bauer) to libsoup and considerable clean-up. The whole thing is now hidden behind a derived GtkDrawingArea with a nice simple 4 function api (other parameters such as zoom, lat, lon, are accessible as gobject properties)

1. set_map_center(double lat, double lon, int zoom)

2. add_gps_point(double lat, double lon)

3. add_roi(double lat, double lon, GdkPixbuf *pixbuf)

4. get_bouding_box()

Things like double click, map dragging, scroll to zoom, etc are all handled automatically as you would expect. It caches downloaded tiles and it's pretty much complete at this point. I hope to be able to post code soon.