Older blog entries for alvaro (starting at number 36)

I am right now in very busy dates. Next year I will start teaching Inferno and Lingo in my University group, GSyC, in a cource with lots of students. I don't have any experience with this Operating System nor with the Lingo language. But I am progress well and Inferno has lots of concepts that I already studied in Java and .NET so no big deal, just some new concepts and lots of new details. You have to see the Inferno "Desktop". Ok, it is mainly for embedded systems so it is a very basic desktop.

This morning finally I catch the sencond problem in the Planner e-d-s backend and I think I have now a clear path to complete most of the features of the backend, but I need to review all the code because I started it using another backend, I use code from other backends so, I am not 100% sure that all the code is doing what I want. When I reach 0.1, I will upload it to the CVS and stop using snapshots.

Ismael want that I see some performance problems he has in Planner. He is very happy with Planner but he'll love Planner if we can solve some issues. I will try to find sometime to understand the problems. He can't give me the real Planner project because the Plan Project is confidential so I will change a little Planner save function so the task names aren't saved. I hope it will be enought.

Thank Jeff for adding the blog to Planet GNOME. I am very happy with it and also, with this rodrigo photo.

GNOME Hispano Association

Finally yesterday we signed the regulations of the GNOME Hispano Association so we hope that before the end of the year we have the Association legally created in Spain. Then, we only need to start doing things ;-)

XML-RPC in GNOME

In the trip to home from Pamplona we talked about GNOME System Tools and in some moment, we talk about communications between the frontend (GNOME client) and the backend (Perl backends). Currently the communications is very basic, using a pipe and sending XML data only in one way. garnacho is thinking for the future, not before GNOME 2.10, using XML-RPC. It seems there are interest in adding to libsoup, now in the GNOME platform as a Evolution dep, XML-RPC support.

Planner and Bugzilla

It will be great because in Planner, we try in the past to integrate Bugzilla and Planner but it was impossible because in Bugzilla, only a XML interface to take the data from a bug number was the only interface we had. New bugzilla versions seems to offer a XML-RPC interface, I need to talk wih fer about it, so the Planner integration could be done.

It seems Jeff is now using the same laptop as mine: Dell Latitude X300. Jeff, a great buy. I am in love with it.

Yesterday in the afternoon in the GNOME Meeting in Pamplona we work in adding a new entry to the nautilus context menú to share folder to the network using samba and nfs. It was a good exercice to show people a real example on how we usually try to develop things for GNOME, but the Bonobo component syntax made the example too complex for newcomers.

After that we present GNOME 2.8 using Ubuntu: we can see in action HAL, DBUS and gvm, vino, gnome system tools, evolution and things like the new printing dialog. The show goes well and things normally "just works".

Today we plan to sign the legal paper for the GNOME Hispano Assocation in Spain that we are pushing since last GUADEC Hispana in Extremadura, the famous LinEx distribution region.

Txema has show me a video that he created last night at 5 a.m. when we end the night. It is killer: a program that takes a music song and mix the photos using the song rhythmbox and some basic effects.. The results are wonderful but the application runs only in Windows. We need something like that in Linux.

Right now Rodrigo is trying to show jhbuild use and then, we will try to solve some easy fix bug to show people how things work.

We plan to start the return to home around 13:30 and lunch in the road.

We are now in the GNOME Meeting in Pamplona, about 24 people mainly developers.

Planner and Evolution integration

I have presented Planner and the integration with Evolution and it seems that we are going to have to integrate ideas but going in the right path.

GNOME System tools

Now Carlos Garnacho is talking about GNOME System Tools and it showing us the new tool for sharing contents in networks: a configurator for SAMBA and NFS. The tool is very near to be in beta testing stage and the main problem is that you need to enter the root password to use the tool, but Carlos is working in a tool similar to sudo but simplified in order the user enters the root password only one time, like consolehelper in Red Hat. He needs more time to finish the tool and show it to the world. The main problem are the securities issues.

Disks Tool

Carlos Garcia is goint to show now the Disk Admin tool, from GNOME System Tools, a tool that is getting better and better. It is hard to have it user friendly because the disks world concepts, but Carlos is doing a good work.

Fisterra

Txema from Igalia.com company is now showing us the Fisterra ERP product. He us showing us the work with distributed system to manage companies using CORBA, libgda and sync technologies for databases. They are working heavly in the libraries and other technologies in the platform. Then, they will create an example of use of the ERP.

Spanish GNOME Development book

Time to talk a little about the GNOME book that we are writing since 4 years ago. It is a no end project and I am not sure if we are going someday to finish it ;-) We need a leader for the project because I feel we have resources, but we need someone who really love the book.

Evolution

Rodrigo is showing us in big figures the Evolution architecture, that libcamel is going to be distributed alone from Evolution and how to help in the project, working in easy fix bugs.

Working groups

To close the morning, we have presented the working groups for this afternoon and tomorrow day. I hope we do some productive working together.

I will add more contents as the show go on :)

Today we are going to the GNOME meeting in Pamplona. Around 20 dudes will go to the meeting and I am sure it will be a great sucess. I hope we grow the team feelings so we can push our GNOME contributions and make them bigger. We will have a GNOME 2.8 presentation with party, and we plan to create hacking teams to work together in the Pamplona University. With rodrigo there, I am sure I will advance in the Planner backend a lot.

I have just received the email from GNOME Foundation with the renewal of my subscription for 2 years more, so I can vote in the next elections to the Foundation. I hope this year I don't have problems voting: last year not sure if I loose the email or other problem, but I finally can't vote :(

Ismael is playing a lot with Planner these days and he is starting to feedback me with things to improve. Time to look at it and maybe, fills some bugs in bugzilla.

After some more coding in the Planner backend for Evo, this morning I decide to create a test plan and do the test for the actual alpha4 release of the code.

You can consult the results and see in which point the backend is currently.

Not sure if I will use the plan in new versions as regression tests, I will need more time and don't have it, but have been very useful this time to see the next things to do.

The motivation to do it has been that next Weekend we have a GNOME developers meeting in Pamplona and I want to show the backend. Now I have a clear picture for all the work done and also the TODO for next days.

This morning I have tested a little GnoTime. I think it could be nice to have it integrated with Evolution and Planner, but for the moment, I will test it a little more. The Project and Tasks concepts aren't very clear in the UI and I need more time to understand how they are used. It has some nice features as an editor for blogging the project development. GnoTime is the best tool to control the real time invest in each Project but the person using it needs to be very disciplined and also, the data for the tool should be kept private for the worker, using the manager only final results.

About the project status, last release was in 22 May 2004 and it has being in SF for 2 years. The size of the project is:

Totals grouped by language (dominant language first):
ansic:        33244 (75.61%)
sh:            8229 (18.72%)
perl:          2050 (4.66%)
yacc:           184 (0.42%)
lisp:           139 (0.32%)
lex:            123 (0.28%)

I found GnoTime to be a little overfeatured and needs some polish in the UI and in the concepts in the tool ...

Today I have started to work in modification tasks in Evolution from a Planner project. Finally the Project Planner concept is in Evolution a Calendar. In the Calendar you will have all the tasks in the Project with the resources in them.

With the last work you can change tasks from evolution but for the moment, Evolution add a new task whe you modify other task in the task editor. I need to check why. The new task is added to Planner also and save in the Planner file/database.

I have some question to ask before translating all the concepts in Planner to Evolution and also, to close in my mind the full management process, but I feel that we will reach a good end. Things like drag and drop tasks between calendars and sending emails to the task resource when something changes start to show me the powerful of the integration. And also, you can send tasks (todo) as email attachment so for example, you can send the tasks for a week to a person using this system. Several things to think about the best solution to manage projects. It is clear that when you desing the general plan of the project, Planner is the right tool, and to following the progress, Evolution seems to be a good friend. Need to take a close look to GnoTime.

Next things will be to complete the ECalComponent to MrpTask conversion and complete the write support in Evolution. Then, I will check the GUI for adding new calendar sources from Evolution for Planner files.

As always, the link to the backup of the actual state of the backend.

Sweet news about Planner and Evolution integration. After 2 hours of working this morning the Planner Task to ECalComponent conversion has advanced a lot (curious to see that the two files are in 1.4 CVS version ;-)). Now you have in Evolution Task the start and end date, the name of the task, the description, the priority, the percent complete and, learning from the groupwise connector ECalComponent conversion, the atendee list for the task, that could be the resources for the task in Planner. This is a great advance because now I think that for the moment, the resource list for a task could be modeled in Evolution as an atendee list.

As always, the screenshot for the integration. The code is in a "tgz" file only for backup purposes. It isn't clear where this backend will be (e-d-s or planner), but first, we need the babe working completly;-)

The next target will be to change from evolution the data and save it in Planner ;-)

Today we have bought in the company a new Laser printer. We have selected the cheaper one (we were in a hurry) and in Media Markt this morning they have the Samsung ML 1510 for 107€. It comes with drivers for CUPS and the install program changes CUPS filters so that you can use the printer, but they don't backup the changed CUPS files and what they do is a sure problem when you update the CUPS system. First tests has been good. The driver that comes with the printer seems to be a closed one, so not ideal for free software community.