Random stuff

Been hacking on the new dia canvas. The stuff is in the dia-newcanvas module. I am currently working on some of the DiaCanvas / DiaCanvasView interactions, which is interesting. Hopefully the canvas will be useful to other people doing multi view canvas stuff. It should also add minimal overhead to people doing single view stuff (do same sort of initialisation as for GnomeCanvas, but also create a view), and you get transparent print support. I got legOS to work with my lego. I should post the RPMs I made to the Red Hat contrib archive. Being able to write real programs for the RCX is a lot better than using the provided software. From the legOS docs, it says you can send any IR message to another RCX, including ones such as `erase firmware' :)

Been creating some RPMs for the stuff needed to compile programs for the Mindstorms RCX (that is, binutils and egcs compiled with h8300-hitachi-hms as a target and legOS). I just realised I don't have enough batteries to test things out, and it is a public holiday :(

The CDDB hash function has a high rate of collisions for single track CDs. Using the freedb.org database, the RH6.2 source cd comes up as In the corridor of uncertainty by Flacco and the Sandman. On the dia list, we have been discussing writing a new canvas for using in GTK/GNOME applications as a replacement of GnomeCanvas. It will take all the good points of the current Dia canvas (internal handling of multiple views, abstract rendering interface meaning only a single draw() routine is needed which can handle GDK, Libart, gnome-print, etc backends) with the benefits of the GnomeCanvas (based on GtkObject system, arbitrary transformations, etc). Depending on how things turn out, we may submit it for inclusion in GTK+. More info when we work out what we are going to do.

There is something weird about bug buddy or the gnome bug system. I am getting unrelated bugs from different people posted as followups for bug #3500. All the followups have been posted with bug-buddy 0.6 or 0.7. It is getting quite annoying (and yes I have reported the problen: #8144)Also got a message from someone wanting help installing libglade, because he can't install Unreal Tournament without it :) The GNOME mailing lists are really slow. There is almost three days between sending a message and it getting posted to the list. I checked in a correct distance function for the custom shape code. Now all the custom shapes in dia are actually shaped with respect to selection (before they were all rectangular as far as selection was concerned).

They have an ask slashdot story on slashdot at the moment that seems to be asking the question: There is some GPL'd code I really like and want to use in my proprietary application. I know that the GPL says that I should GPL my software if I want to use the code, but do I really have to? How about if I put it in a DLL? The comments range from incorrect opinions and suggestions about how to get round the GPL to sensible messages from people such as Bruce Perens. Slashdot is definitely not what it once was (both that a story like this would even be on the front page, and the comments people posted). I wonder how that peer press idea is comming along. It has the potential to provide a good news service and make sure crud like that doesn't get propagated.