Advogato: Blog for hub

30 Apr 2004 (updated 30 Apr 2004 at 05:52 UTC) »

But I may change my mind with the recent licenses issues. I don't know what I'll install next. Perhaps a BSD ? I'll see.

ZeroConf

Played a little bit with ZeroConf on Linux. I installed tmdns on my laptop and it works well after a one-liner patch (sent to the author, of course). But it does not one my PowerComputing that still runs a 2.2 kernel. It fails on getifaddrs(). I need to investigate that.

$ ping atlan.local
PING atlan.local (172.18.0.240): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 172.18.0.240: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.678 ms
64 bytes from 172.18.0.240: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.54 ms
^C

miguel sent me a pointer to mdnsresponder in C# with Mono. While this looks interesting I don't see me installing a few dozen of megabytes of stuff just for that. Overhead will kill me (there is now a JIT for PowerPC).

There is a third one: Apple's own mDNSResponder in Darwin.

My concern is if the APIs are common. If a program supports ZeroConf to register a service (like an Apache module or a chat client), can they register it whatever the mDNSresponder implementation is ?

Abiword

Backported a few patches. Still hacking RTF, but it becomes more complex than expected.

28 Apr 2004 »

I have been using Evolution 1.5.7 from Debian experimental for a couple of days. Despite a few reproducable crashers, it is really useable. The GUI is nice, and finally I can display the headers I want in e-mails.

Mental note, unrelated: write the paper for GUADEC and plan for the travel.

Abiword

Did some backport to Abiword and committed some work in progress in the MacOS X tree. I have a dozen of bugzilla to handle in MacOS X tree.

RendezVous

I have been wondering about RendezVous (aka ZeroConf) implementation in Linux. I found that Mandrake had something. They seems to use tmdns. I'll try to set that up on my old PowerComputing desktop Mac clone (running Debian GNU/Linux) that act as web server and everything at home. That would be nice that ZeroConf came with Linux distro to integrate with MacOS X RendezVous. For those who don't know, RendezVous allos dynamic allocation of IPv4 addresses, along with name resolution, using a multicast DNS, peer-to-peer. It also allow advertising services over the network like printer, shared volumes, iChat, iTune, etc. You can even register Web servers and Apple has written an Apache module for that. There is an IETF working group. Definitely this is not Apple proprietary, unless you want to use the RendezVous trademark.

Side note. Years ago, while being a Windows developer for living, I had written 75% of a product called RendezVous. Nothing related, but that is funny. This company may have prior trademark. Better not meet Apple lawyers anyway.

Job

I went to the Canada embassy yesterday, and I have requested a temporary worker visa for Canada. I still miss a paper and I'll sort that out soon I hope. Then I'll have to apply for permanent immigration, this requires more time (and incidentally more money, but that is not the main issues). I'd love to have the visa within a month after I send that last paper, and start working for NITI in Montréal.

26 Apr 2004 (updated 26 Apr 2004 at 06:46 UTC) »

fxn: thanks a lot

Back from Libr'east conference. In fact it is not finished yet, but I did not attend on Sunday to spend a little time with my wife.

I did talk about Abiword. The room was not crowded, but I was happy to make this talk. It appears that OpenOffice.org beats us on fame as less people know us. Slides are available.

(Update) Hot news: We can now advertise Abiword "as seen on TV". Following a review on TechTV aired on April 20th there is now the video stream for people that don't get the channel. Enjoy. Thank you Sarah Lane. This is the reason why we got 100,000 hit more than the average 65,000 on 20th and 21st. They already talked about OpenOffice.org previously.

22 Apr 2004 (updated 22 Apr 2004 at 23:16 UTC) »

Abiword

Back from LUDEX where Abiword got invited to join the UKLinux.net sponsored .org village. It was really interesting. The first time we met users, and real users, not just geeks. I also met Tomas Frydrych, our BiDi expert, who was time-sharing the stand. I wish I could stay in London a little longer.

I have been hacking on the RTF importer, fixing some bugs and implementing new features. I should clear up all the RTF import bugs.

Abiword 2.1.2 has been tagged and released, thanks to uwog. I released MacOS X binaries in the mean time. Should be more stable and have dynamic menus working. Still a few major issues to sort out.

Tomorrow I'm heading Paris, near Disneyland Paris, for Libr'east where I'll give a talk about Abiword. I'll also go to Québec immigration service in Paris to give them the whole file for the temporary worker visa application as well as the required CAD (in cash). I wrote the slides for the talk on Wednesday morning in the hotel room after waking up at 5:00 AM. I could not find sleep any more.

19 Apr 2004 (updated 19 Apr 2004 at 15:43 UTC) »

I'm ready to go to LUDEX in London, because Abiword has been invited and we actually have a booth in the .org village. I'll be flying from Charleroi (Brussels south airport) to London Standsted. And believe me or not, it is MUCH cheaper that Eurostar for a last minute trip, event though if less conveniant. I need to get up at 3:00 AM.

Abiword

I haven't coded much this week-end due to real life stuff. I still have to fix MacOS X build for Abiword for 2.1.2 release and to fix bugs in our RTF importer.

14 Apr 2004 »

WOW. almost one week without blogging. Since I spent 4 days away from home for easter, without internet, it seems to not be so long.

Abiword

I committed my new generation RTF parser. Needs probably a lot of polish, but at least it works and, at first sight, doesn't seems to introduce regression. So I'll be able to work on fixing it, reducing bloat, and introducing new features. Abiword 2.1.x is now in feature freeze. No new feature will be added until 2.3 branching.

I also started to fix the option dialog. Fortunately the UNIX version got cleaned up, so several of the fixes will simply go away. It is now lighter.

Cleaning up

I cleaned up my INBOX a little bit. Looks like there are bloggers in YUL (a mail I received a couple of weeks ago).

8 Apr 2004 »

GUADEC

My paper has been accepted. I'll be talking about digital photography in GNOME. I'll have to go to norway, and travel planning seems to be more uncertain. Looks like my best option is to actually get a flight from Paris-CDG.

Libr'east

I'll be talking about Abiword at Libr'east, a conference near Paris. This is in a little bit more than 2 weeks. I need to write my talk.

Other than that, I did not code much. Just built some package to finish GNOME 2.6 migration. I went downtown and took some pictures. Long time I haven't shot anything. I'm feeling more inspired now. Looks like a burn some more rolls I have stored in the fridge before leaving. And I also need to scan all the remaining slides I have here...

7 Apr 2004 (updated 7 Apr 2004 at 22:14 UTC) »

blog du jour: Google power. Impressive.

I continued to upgrade to GNOME 2.6 as I had to build a few packages by hand, including CUPS because it made gnome-print crash (library conflict) and Nautilus (because it missed in PowerPC packages). Still missing gnome-panel and gnome-applets because evolution-data-server is still missing.

The CUPS problem has been plagging me as I wanted to print a letter and I could not. Off course I could have used Mac OS X for that (since Abiword now runs natively on Mac OS X an can print for almost a year now), but I really wanted to know. And that broke Gnumeric as well.

(Update): I just read this article (in French) about a law to be studied by senators tomorrow in France: LEN (Loi pour l'Economie Numérique ie Law for Digital Economy). It says that disclosing intentionally security breach of software send you to jail. In short, security consultant will no longer be allowed in our country. Nice. Smart people. Thank you.

5 Apr 2004 »

I partially installed GNOME 2.6 from Debian experimental distribution (PowerPC). Thanks to seb128 for the apt-get tip to fetche GNOME 2.6 automatically out of experimental. Nice Debian splash.

Abiword

Fixed a long-timer bug in the cross-platform framework: the lack of support for Shift modifiers in shortcuts. In the mean time I did make menus a little bit more HIG compliant, for both MacOS X and GNOME.

Abiword 2.0.6 has been released. Thanks to uwog for the release job.

This week-end has been busy with real life.

30 Mar 2004 »

XPLC : I don't think pphaneuf needs my help. XPLC compiles right out of the box on Mac OS X and make tests succeed.

Abiword

I need to rewrite clipboard code in our framwork. It currently sucks because it does not abstract at all. And MacOS X version suck even more because it is a half hacked UNIX version. While fixing a crash in it, I found that it was time to rewrite it. Perhaps should I stop diverting and return to my RTF rewrite first even though this would benefit to all the platforms (I'd fix GTK/GNOME build as well)

I also fixed a couple of UI bugs on the Mac. I should note that the Mac release had at least a good acceptance. I only received love later. No hate mail. Anyway, I'm still not satisfied with it and as I already stated, a lot of work to go.

Job

After 2 interview and a I have had a formal job offer from NITI in Montréal, Canada. I'll actually move there from France.

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