GNOME Scan idled
June 5, 2008
Hi,
I’m pretty busy with scouting and other stuff. Also vala seems not yet able to handle subnamespace and that break mixing C/GObject and vala (can’t call C/GObject code from Vala). This is pain.
All these issues leads me to idle GNOME Scan for this summer. I’m quite disappointed because i don’t have time but i’m actually willing to get GNOME Scan included. I’m leaving the university and thus i’m searching a job. Next year, i don’t want to move out of Paris, but i actually want to work on GNOME and especially GNOME Scan. I may do a call for a job later.
Regards,
Étienne.
Preliminary developments for 0.7
May 3, 2008
Hi,
I’m not good at following GNOME schedule. I do everything one or two month later :). I just started diving back in the development. I started by providing GEGL vala binding, without exactly knowing whether i will actually need it for GNOME Scan 0.8. Anyway, i activated vala in GNOME Scan build system. How long before automake support vala ?
I bumped version to 0.7.0 and will work on GNOME Scan. However, i have tons of things to do aside GNOME Scan : exams, scouting, drive permit, etc. I wish i’ll have the time to develop GNOME Scan before the freezes. Contributions are very welcome. However, GNOME Scan 0.8 needs some rework that can’t be done by a usual contributor. For sure, vala will speed up GNOME Scan development.
A good news, the windfarm_pm121 driver i wrote for iMac G5 iSight has been merged in Linus Torvald own tree 🙂 I’m now one of the thousands contributors to linux kernel ! Thanks Benjamin Herrenschmidt for allowing this to happen.
This and GNOME Scan tells me that developing free software is actually what i want to do. This is why i submitted my CV to o-hand for their job offer for junion kernel developer and junior GUI developer. I know i can’t move on London next year, but working with a senior developer on free software is actually what i want to do for my firsts years of work after the university.
Regards,
Étienne.
r500 : Settings saved in GConf
February 24, 2008
Hi,
Gnome Scan hit revision 500 with a brand new feature : automatic per app settings saving in GConf. To get this properly done, i had to hunt ref/unref bug (r499). This mean that gnome-scan is cleaner while having one more feature.
Options are stored as /apps/gnome-scan/%app%/%option% . I’m wondering which key would be better. If ever you have an idea, check out the discussion at desktop-devel-list and post your answer. I may write schemas to gconf, but that’s pretty useless. I could also use this feature to store window size and position, and add further behaviour that need to be disablable like a popup notifying user to remove their sheet back from the flatbed scanner, etc.
I hope to provide 0.5.92 tomorow along Gnome 2.21.92.
Regards,
Étienne.
The awakening
February 21, 2008
Hi everyone,
I promised you 0.6 for march. It’s going bad for that. 0.5.4 got few feedbacks. I have bug reports by private mail or as comment on the blog which really is noisy rather than useful. Since Fall 2007, i work on websites and Linux PPC hacking. This left Gnome Scan outside the tracks.
Once the website is up and running, i need to scan tons of photos to fill old albums. So, now i need to get Gnome Scan usable to mass scaning. Today, i updated Anjuta, GtkSourceView and Gegl, checked out latest Gnome Scan translation and fixed a couple of bugs. En vrac :
- Use 75. dpi as hardcoded preview resolution. Since most hardware can’t scan below. This is a temp solution before actually getting the least available resolution from the scanner (SANE doesn’t simplify things)
- Handle page-orientation, origin and paper size options in the right order. This lead to much more consistency between preview and result.
- Fixed a bug in Gegl due to new chanting API migration.
- Manual area also define page orientation. It’s actually a free selection.
- Show preview acquisition progress bar, again.
- Last, but not least : add a common “enhence color” processing step you can simply disable in “Processing” tab.
Sadly, there’s a bug so that colors are actually enhanced only in the preview window ! Here is the result, no enhancement at all :
The preview image is clearly enhanced, magically. Thanks to Gegl operation “stress”, available in the workshop. I wish to publish 0.5.6 soon with updated Gegl (including workshop ops).
Regards,
Étienne.
Delaying Gnome Scan Development
November 28, 2007
Hi,
That’s bad news, but i’m busy on other projects. I wrote cifrado, a french scouting software. Then i developped the website of my scouting group : suf1520.free.fr. Finally, i’m developping Linux PowerMac 12,1 windfarm driver. I own an iMac G5 rev C for two years and Linux still does not run smoothly on it. I should have finished this driver for chrismas.
Gnome Scan is not that far from 0.6. It needs some refactorization of area plugin in order to watch other options, then a better handling of orientation and then processing with rotation. Contribution are very welcome. I’m glad to leave PHP and redevelop in C for Linux, this will help dive into Gnome Scan development. I wish i could have written Gnome Scan using Vala. I promised i will use Vala for libgnocr.
Regards,
Étienne
Final Gnome Scan Weekly Report 2007/08/21
August 21, 2007
Hi everybody,
I was away the past week and did not work very much on Gnome Scan. I met with Lionel Dricot and Raphaël Slinkx at Louvain-la-Neuve. Funny 🙂 I’m just back to home and checking out mails, RSS, and such.
Weekly Report
The past two weeks were busy on various improvements in Gnome Scan, particularily printing (using GtkPrint). I added the codebase to handle multiple actions (mail to come soon). That’s not that easy since GtkPrint is not flawless for use in such special case : configure scan and print ; acquire and print. It’s more used for a workflow like configure>scan>configure>print.
Final Report
No doubt this Soc has been ful of new features and improvements for Gnome Scan, however, there is place for lot of development.
The bad
- I still didn’t reach the 0.6 stage (i.e. all feature from Gnome Scan 0.4.1 reimplemented).
- No real processing at all (rotation, deskew, gamma, etc.). I would like to use CPU only where hardware fail this is one reason why i didn’t implemented it yet.
- I need another project (temporarily named libgnocr) in order to provide a modular OCR API and UI (primarily on top of OCRopus). Contribution are welcome.
- Preview is not stable nor optimized.
- Page Orientation is not yet handle (Adding button is not enough for adding a feature :/).
- Memory leaks.
- Printing suck (yet).
- Documentation is incomplete (but we have screenshots).
- I didn’t attend at GUADEC 2007 🙁
The goods
- Far far far better SANE support.
- Far far far better scanner handling (no more hardcoded options, etc.).
- Multi threaded (no news about thread safe, comments welcome)
- Gegl based for effective huge image handling
- AbiScan : the power of Gnome Scan and OCRopus in Abiword
- Flegita Gimp : You can use Gegl in Gimp yet !
- Preliminary printing support
- Preview acquisition monitoring
- Modular preview area
- Module loading system, allow to install/uninstall backend (e.g. choosing twain/SANE; removing file, etc.)
I’m not satisfied with my amount of work during august. Well, i plan to work fulltime on Gnome Scan next week. Also, is should code a bit this week. 🙂 Gnome Scan is about 12000 lines of code (excluding headers).
The best thing was contact with other people. First with Vincent Untz, my mentor, which was very distant, except when i need him :). Then come all developers from external project like Gegl, OCRopus, AbiWord. The same for #gnome-hackers and various GIMPNet chan members. All that people must receive a hertlich thank from me. The same goes to user for their very important feeback (Merci Jean-François Fortin !) also you, dear reader and commenter.
Merci et à bientôt !
Étienne.
—
E Ultreïa !
New flegita-gimp for r400
August 7, 2007
Hi everyone,
I rewrote flegita-gimp on top of Gnome Scan 0.5.2. It’s in SVN for the 400th revision ! This was very easy to write this plugin, reusing code from the previous one. Once thing to notice, it’s the first ever use of Gegl inside the Gimp ! Keep in mind that Gegl is designed as the future of Gimp. In the future, Gnome Scan and Gimp should speek natively using GeglBuffer, but for Gimp 2.3, i had to translate GeglBuffer into the GimpPixelRgn.
Using GeglBuffer allow to manipulate unlimited sized image from high res scan (given there is no memleak). I wonder if that make sense to add advanced option such as layer opacity or layer mode. I already add a field entry allowing to name the field. This avoid to rename the field after scan. Feedback welcome.
I provide a screencast video using flegita-gimp 0.5.2 showing the two features provided by the plugin : scan as new image and scan as layer. flegita-gimp should receive improvments like better integration with undo/redo action.
If you want to test it, that’s easy (compared to AbiScan) :
- install Babl and Gegl from SVN
- install Gimp 2.3 or SVN
- install Gnome Scan SVN
- launch the Gimp and use /File->Acquisition->Scan or /File->Scan as Layer to trigger the plugin.
This is the second plugin on top of Gnome Scan. I’m quite happy with that. Gnome Scan is really cool to use. It really needs debugging and polishing, but the API actually rules.
Regards.
Half way in the summer of code
July 6, 2007
Hi,
Monday, i will take off for more than two weeks. I will serve about 41 boys for scouting from 10th to 27th. The last few weeks has seen terribily slow progress for Gnome Scan. Even if the TODO list is far from empty, i didn’t have the motivation to get things done. This results on about 3 month of hard working on Gnome Scan. It’s time to get a pause. Scouting is perfect for that. Playing with boys in the nature will make me forget gnome-scan for some times !
During those weeks of fun, i wish that gnome-scan related project such as OCRopus and tesseract or even Gegl will get some improvements. I wish to get back my motivation in late July. August will be a rush for gnome-scan, just for the final evaluation and 0.5.2 release. 0.6 will land for Christmas, just like 0.4. That may be enough to get it included in Gnome 2.22 !?
While Gnome Scan 0.4 was quite a “proof of concept”, Gnome Scan 0.5 is a solid base for future development. I intend to begin writing tutorial and – why not ? – a lightning talk for GUADEC 2008. 2.24 or even 2.22 may be an important step for scanning in Gnome. I’m really waiting for a desktop with rocking printing, burning and scanning dialogs in a lot of applications.
Anyway, i’ll be off during the following three weeks after 3 months of heavy development. The future is full of promises. I hope to find things changed after the scout camp in order to find back the Gnome Love 🙂
Photo of two friends at Chamechaude in the Alpes moutains in France during winter scout camp.
Étienne.
Arabic translation
January 8, 2007
Hi all,
Thanks to Djihed Afifi, gnome-scan now have arabic translation ! I produce a 0.4.0.2 release for that. Note that i prefer receiving .po by mail instead of waiting for translation team acknowledgment in rosetta …
Étienne.
Toward Gnome integration
September 11, 2006
Hello all,
GnomeScan is in the process toward Gnome integration. I submitted the request for a SVN repo and i wish to have it created as soon as Gnome switch entirely to SVN.
The most important point today is the creation of the bugzilla products for gnomescan containing libgnomescan, libgnomescanui and flegita components. Enter new bug at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=gnomescan .
Please hunt the bug !
Étienne.