Older blog entries for cinamod (starting at number 22)

Blizzard:

I'd love to get word and character spacing into Pango proper before its next release. It's essential for handling SVG's text elements properly in librsvg, and I really would rather not duplicate any work that you're putting into Mozilla. If you have a plan of action, lemme know.

It is great the Caleb is working on adding filters to librsvg. Soon, we'll have nice support for all sorts of blurs, masks, and the like. I believe that this will lead to a significant improvement in the quality of SVG icon themes.

However, these will definitely not detract from RSVG's speed in cases where where these filters are *not* used. The way filters work is they take a base image (i.e. what you've already drawn using our lightning-fast rendering engine) and transform it according to a set of rules.

Granted, to start supporting some features (and make others work 100% correctly), RSVG will need some internal changes. But I imagine that these changes will make RSVG resemble XSVG's internally. Considering that XSVG is a fork of RSVG, I don't think that'll be *too* drastic of a change for us to re-merge.

I think that RSVG will be the full-featured renderer that you want. I think that it will be the fast renderer that you want. I do not think that replacing RSVG with KSVG is a good idea. I do not think that replacing RSVG with XSVG is a good idea.

And yes, application writers need to start using the new GdkPixbuf and GtkImage APIs that I've added in GTK 2.3. Too much scaling is happening after load-time, and as a result, our Scalable Vector Graphics aren't looking as nicely as they should. Bravo to Gnome-Games for getting this right!

Indeed, that would be a great idea. I can concretely point out a few things that are lacking or need improvement, though:

1) GtkSpell is dependant on Aspell/Pspell. It would be preferable if it instead used something like Enchant. Patch here.

2) Its language support is pretty basic right now. It'd probably be preferable if it would use a "lang" TextTag.

I guess I'll contact Evan Martin or the new maintainer and send him up a new patch that addresses these concerns.

Dom

I've been distracted away from any productive AbiWord hacking in so long... The good news is that some other projects got a bit of help along along their periphery.

Was able to write GIMP plug-in loaders for the JBIG and SWF formats. The SWF plugin lets you load any frame from a SWF movie, optionally scaled/otherwise resized. Why open Flash movies inside of GIMP? I dunno. Boredom, I suppose :)

Also thinking of writing a RSVG plugin for Moz. Its builtin SVG support shows promise, but (at present) leaves much to be desired. Yeah, RSVG needs a lot of work too. I'll see what I can get to, now that most of the Sodipodi Flags work properly.

We all loved you Chema. Words can't describe how much I'll miss you.

Matrix Revolutions. Wow. Darn good movie. No tribal sex scenes. No crappy CGI. Just lots of wholesome goodness. Yum.

So today, Ruth and I were passing King's bowling alley, whose motto - "Food is Love" - is posted on an obnoxiously huge billboard outside the club. Ruth pokes me in the head and says "I food you!" in the cutest voice imaginable. Melt.

I have to say that I've been amazed at the dedication and professionalism shown by gman and others. It's been nothing short of amazing thus far, and I'm deeply appreciative of their work. They've done so much with so little. Thank you.

But, unfortunately, it isn't all roses. In the efforts to make a better conference, some people got tread on.

I don't envy the choice you made. I'm not saying that I would've made a different decision if I was in your place. The trade-off was probably good for the majority, while it hurt a minority. But because you've set yourself up in a position of authority and deliberately made a choice that negatively impacts various people's lives, you're going to have to hear about it, whether you'd like to or not. You all make your own beds. Now you've got to lie in it.

I'm very much looking forward to Guadec, including the keynote by Alan Kay (not to mention my own 2 talks and the other 10-or-so ones I'll be at). Whether it's officially sanctioned or not, though, I'm still going to give up half of my SVG talk to Dobey. It's the right thing to do. I think that the conference is going to be a groundbreaking success and I hope to see many of you there. Look me up - I'll buy you a beer.

So Martin has been working on AbiWord being an embeddable Bonobo control, which is a pretty neat thing. IMO, *NIX is missing a lot of these sorts of pluggable components that so permeate the Win32 environment and make much VB-style programming so mind-numblingly easy to do. Obligatory screenshot here.

Unfortunately, I've caught a lot of flack for this in GnomeDesktop from an AC. It's too easy to hide behind an AC and flame away. This guy might have some really compelling arguments that the Nautilus folks would want to hear. I bet they'd be great arguments if the presentation was better. Until he unmasks himself and conducts himself appropriately in the correct forum, he'll be ignored by those who can help him.

Anonymity is as much a double-edged sword as it is not. It often lends a false sense of security, or (to paraphrase Def Leppard: Behind The Music) like when the short guy gets drunk - he gets a lot bigger in a hurry. I just wish they'd realize that. It'd make my life a whole lot more pleasant.

Job Job Job Job! Job Job Job Job!

Marklar. It embiggens me to work for such a cromulent company.