Getting Started with Python

It's been a couple of weeks since I've started to work on a new project (which I wish I can talk about it soon). One of my tasks involves implementing a GTK+ based UI from scratch, but using Python. I agreed it was time to learn something different of C and C++, mainly because it is (almost) impossible to have RAD using these languages.

I thought it would be a bit more difficult to deal with Python at the first time, but I am really a lucky guy, as we have some python specialists here. These guys, specially osvaldo, have been helping me a lot since I started coding. One nice thing they pointed me was tepache. A really easy way to develop PyGTK applications with Glade.

Until now, my work basically has been design the UI in Glade and testing it inside the Maemo/scratchbox environment and also in the 770. One thing I really liked was the Python code being really platform independent. I created a few classes in the i386 target and just copied them directly to the 770 and the program just worked without any need of recompiling stuff.

I'm really enjoying this new adventure. I've also successfully built the bindings for gconf and gnomevfs as they're not available in the current python distributed with Maemo rootstraps. There's still some work to get the proper debian package built but I'll make them available as soon as they're working fine.

Canola has been released!

Yeah I know some other guys have already posted about this, but I was unable to do it as I was sleeping while people were working hard to ensure everything was working fine. They've found some issues in the installation process which were quickly solved. It works like a charm now.

Things about Canola I like a lot:

• Incredibly easy to use UI


• The wood theme


• Web configuration tool


• Canola Home Applet

So big congratulations (and sweet dreams) to the Canola Team (in no particular order): Marcelo, Gustavo, Chenca, Andrunko, Talita and Cidoca for this awesome software. Lets enjoy it!

Gstreamer Training

Last week Edward "Bilboed" Hervey from Fluendo was here in Recife to give us an advanced training in GStreamer.



We spend five intense days (about 8 hours per day) learning about everything of this fantastic framework, from how to use GStreamer in applications and writing simple plugins to its deep internals, like QoS, clocks, synchronization, segments and so on. We've also found some bugs while trying to implement reverse playback in dvdemux and dvdec. In the end it was a very productive week and on Friday we were exhausted, as you can see in the next picture, taken during the lunch we had celebrating the end of the training.



I ended the training with some ideas of an interesting application using GStreamer. I really hope I'll be able to start it really soon. :)

Spreading Maemo Platform (and INdT projects)

INdT crew is really working hard on spreading our commitment to the open source community by showing the projects we participate in various events that occured all around brazilian northearsten region. We gave talks related to our projects regarding Python, VoIP, Gstreamer and specially the Maemo platform. A small summary of some of the events we participated follows:

• V SEC: Marcio Macedo talked about Multimedia and Mobility in Free Software and my presentation was about the Maemo Platform. The audience (mostly students) was really impressed to see me switching the slides remotely using a Nokia 770 (which was running vncviewer).
  
  



• II EPSL: Marcio Macedo talked about Developing VoIP Applications, Osvaldo Santana presented the Maemo platform and Gustavo Barbieri talked about python language, his Eagle Library and some other examples in Maemo Platform.



• III FCSL: This time I gave two talks, the first one was the default Maemo platform presentation and the other was about my experience in porting some desktop applications to it. Eduardo Valentin from INdT Manaus office talked about the work he has done building ALSA support to Maemo. Daniel D'andrada, talked about Python in mobile devices such as cellphones and the Nokia 770 and also gave a mini course of python using the scratchbox environment and the Maemo platform. Ilias Biris, also from INdT Manaus gave a talk about testing the Linux Kernel in various platforms. Finally Edgard Lima talked about the gstreamer framework, which he is deeply involved.
  
  



• SEMANASOL: This time Osvaldo Santana gave two talks. The first one was the "default" Maemo Platform presentation and the second talking about Free Software Project Management.

It's kind of weird to talk about such an amazing development platform when we are not able to buy the only compatible device (770) here in Brazil. :(

Canola Release Date

It's been some days since Marcelo announced Canola release date, but I think it's never too late for it.

Canola will be available for download on november 29th

We just can't wait to get it released!

More action!

Marcelo has just uploaded another video to YouTube showing Canola in action, but this time accessing a huge shared playlist. You can also see my sharing there ;). The results are quite impressive. Great job guys!

Canola preview video

It's hosted on YouTube. Go for it.



Some discussion can be found in Marcelo's blog.

Nokia 770 as a portable media center?

We've been thinking a lot about turning the Nokia 770 device into a pocket-sized media center. What about enjoying all your music, videos and photos anywhere? Well, I can say this is really near to become true. A little bit of its taste can be found in Marcelo's blog. Check it out:

Rhythmbox is near

I'm almost done with Rhythmbox for Nokia 770. I expect to have something by the end of the next week or so. I'm facing some problems specially with mp3 streams over the internet at this moment but it is already usable. Music sharing via DAAP is supported as you can see in the following screenshots:

Yet another bug

This time the bug was in the xournal package. There was availability of "Annotate PDF" but it was not working at all. The problem is xournal uses /tmp to create a temporary directory where it stores a copy of the chosen pdf and calls pdftoppm to convert each page of the document before loading them as background. Taking a quick look at the device partition table:

Nokia770-26:~# df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mtdblock4            2.0M      2.0M         0 100% /mnt/initfs
none                    512.0k     28.0k    484.0k   5% /mnt/initfs/tmp
/dev/mtdblock4          123.5M     87.0M     36.5M  70% /
none                    512.0k     28.0k    484.0k   5% /tmp
none                      1.0M     44.0k    980.0k   4% /dev
/dev/mmcblk0p1           60.9M     32.1M     28.8M  53% /media/mmc1

So, I realised that 484 KB in /tmp were not enough for our needs. Just changed the directory to /home/user/.xournal/ and got another issue fixed. Please upgrade your xournal package by refreshing the package list and clicking on "Check for Updates" button in the application manager main window.

Gnumeric Excel Import Bug Fixed

I've finally managed to fix the annoying bug in Gnumeric Excel importer in Nokia 770. Actually I don't know if it was really a bug. Anyway, special thanks to Morten Wellinder for the precious tip.

Users, please try to refresh the package list and then click on "Check for updates" button in Application Manager main window. If this does not work, try uninstalling and installing gnumeric again.

One Bug Leads To Another

I was trying to figure out why Gnumeric excel importer is broken in Nokia 770 version, but then I discovered it is not possible to save in other formats than Gnumeric XML. With a couple of lines, now the save dialog includes a combo box to let user choose which file type he/she wants to save:



So, with this bug fixed, lets keep searching the reason for that former bug. I just whish it would be as easy to fix as the save dialog one.

LeafPad - A Simple Text Editor

I decided to follow the competence test Eero proposed in maemo-developers list, and here is the final result:





Want to try it? Add the following to your application entry catalog:

Web Address: http://www.maemo.org.br/platform/apt
Distribution: mistral
Components: user

Now I want to know if I passed the test :).

Time to have some fun

I spent some time helping my colleagues of INdT game team to port our games packages to Maemo 2.0. Now you can enjoy all these funny games:



Just add the following entry to your application catalog:

Web Address: http://marceloeduardo.com/apt
Distribution: mistral
Components: games

You will also need maemo.org repository:

Web Address: http://repository.maemo.org
Distribution: mistral
Components: free non-free

These packages substitute those ones Marcelo had annouced previously. Feedbacks are very welcome. Have fun!

Updated Evince package

I have just uploaded a new version of the Evince package fixing a crash people were complaining. So please refresh your package list and click on the "Check for updates" button in Application Manager main screen. The new version is 0.5.2-indt5. Many thanks to everybody who reported the bug.

Evince now with DJVU support

Some people asked me about adding DJVU support in Evince. Now it is done! Again, follow the instructions in my previous post if you do not have it installed yet. Otherwise, just refresh your package list and click on "Check for updates" button in application manager main screen.



Could somebody point me an interesting reading??

Reading Comic Books With Evince

I have just uploaded some new packages to my repository and now we can enjoy reading comic books with our 770! Just add the entries as described in my previous post. If you already have installed Evince, refresh the package list and click on the "Check for updates" button in the application manager main screen.

Evince package for IT2006

Yay! Just finished another port. It's Evince, the GNOME Document Viewer. This version only supports viewing PDF, TIFF and image files.

If you got interested, add the following entry to your application catalog:

Web Address: http://bgran.net/etrunko/apt
Distribution: mistral
Components: user

The package also needs libglade, which can be found in maemo oficial repository:

Web Address: http://repository.maemo.org
Distribution: mistral
Components: free non-free

Screenshots:




P.S.: I could not upload the packages to maemo.org.br repository. Maybe the service is down. I'll try to do it tomorrow.

Gnumeric Spreadsheet Packages Available

It is done! Hurry up and add the following repository to your application catalog:

Web Address: http://maemo.org.br/platform/apt
Distribution: mistral
Components: user

Alternatively, you can add following repository (this one will be deactivated soon):

Web Address: http://bgran.net/etrunko/apt
Distribution: mistral
Components: user

Mandatory Screenshot:

We're Almost there!

Pictures are worth more than 1000 words.