The Gist

Way back when we imported the HIG into gnome-devel-docs, I had a hig-devel branch set up for Calum’s work on the next generation of the HIG.  Except branches in SVN aren’t really branches; they’re just separate directories we copy into.  And I very stupidly took advantage of this fact by making the hig-devel “branch” be just a mirror of the hig/C directory of gnome-devel-docs/trunk.

My fault completely.  I shouldn’t have done that.

Now I’m trying to find a way to fix this branch in git.  If I just merge master into hig-devel, it basically blows everything away.  Git has no way of knowing that it should apply changes from some completely unrelated files that don’t exist in master.

Worst case scenario, I suppose I just do the merge, copy the hig-devel versions of all the files in, and commit.  Anybody have any ideas on how to do this in a way that preserves some history?

I’ve got some exciting stuff brewing with Pulse, my pangalactic project tracker. But I’m stashing things away on for a short while. Phil Bull, Milo Casagrande, Paul Cutler, and I are attending Writing Open Source: The Conference in June. (More on that in a soonish blog post.)  What this means is that Mallard needs to be working in Yelp by June 11, so Pulse is getting momentarily shelved.

Summer of Code

Just because I’m shelving Pulse doesn’t mean it won’t be worked on.  Florian Ludwig has been accepted to work on Pulse for the Google Summer of Code.  Congratulations to Florian.  While I won’t be doing a lot of active Pulse hacking, I will do my best to be a good mentor.

Florian is going to work on integrating bug tracker support into Pulse.  The obvious bug tracker is bugzilla.gnome.org, but the goal in Pulse is to have a generalized framework.  Hopefully we’ll be able to build on his work to link Pulse up to other bug trackers.

Architecture

Recently, I split all of Pulse’s module-processing code up into small plugins.  I’m really happy with the result.  After the refactoring, I was able to add support for the Evolution Quick Reference Card with a 250-line plugin.  (Don’t be fooled by what you see on gnome.org.  Activity and translations do actually work.  I just don’t have all the data uploaded.)

This got me thinking of how I could do the same thing to the front end.  What I’ve been toying around with is splitting all the tabs of pages off into separate applications.  So there would be, for instance, an application that provides the fancy activity graph page for modules and documents and people and whatever else.

The way it exists in my head, applications will be able to interact in ways other than just adding tabs.  One thing I was thinking of was an application to add notes to any object.  Hopefully I can remember what I was doing when I come back to it in a couple months.

Zukunft

So where this is all heading is Pulse becoming a bit more active as a collaboration tool.  It still has a very strong emphasis on automatic tracking, and always will.  But I’m starting to think of ways it can be extended to meet different people’s needs.  I think I’ve stumbled into creating a really nice tool, and I’d like to see it grow.

We will be having a documentation team meeting this Sunday at 17:00 UTC.  We will discuss Mallard and the future of Gnome documentation.  If you’re interested in what the documentation team has planned for Gnome 3.0, please join us.

I thought it might be useful to write down my goals for the following year somewhere public. That way everybody can hold me accountable. Here’s what I hope to accomplish by this time next year:

• Complete Mallard, the system that will allow us to write better user help more effectively.
• Get Pulse running in a production setup to allow us to better track our documentation.
• Completely revamp the User Guide, Accessibility Guide, and System Administrator Guide.
• Systematically review and improve all of the API references in our Platform.
• Rewrite the Documentation Handbook and the Style Guide.
• Update the Platform Overview.
• Nag the appropriate people to get a new version of the HIG.
• Drive the development of a hands-on tutorial (roughly 200 pages) on programming with Gnome technologies.

Can it be done? I hope so. Because all that stuff combined would seriously rock.

Update: Added lots of links.

The years are slowly starting to catch up with me. For the first time in my life, I have glasses. My distance vision is still incredibly good, but the glasses help for reading, or for staring at the computer screen all day. Obligatory screenshot:

I just happened across this organization called Yorba.  It appears to be a non-profit organization making applications for Gnome.  Does anybody know anything about these folks?  I’m mighty curious where one gets funding for that sort of thing.

Paul Cutler sent an email to gnome-doc-list about the upcoming Writing Open Source: The Conference.  This would be a great opportunity to get some Gnome documentation people together.  We could all learn from the experiences of other open source documentation teams.  And, perhaps, they’d learn something from us.

They’ve set aside Sunday for “sprints”.  We could use that time to have a one-day Gnome docfest.  Anybody interested in going?

This is (finally) the final installment of my blog entries about our honeymoon. Go read parts Uno and Dois about our time in Buenos Aires and at the Iguaçu falls. For the last leg of our honeymoon, we spent four nights in Rio de Janeiro. We stayed at a hotel in Leme along the Copacabana. If we were to go again, I’d stay a bit farther down the Copacabana. There wasn’t much going on near our hotel, and the area was a bit seedy.

Silke’s friend Clô lives in Rio. She scheduled a private Samba de Gafieira (Wikipedia, YouTube) lesson for us at Carlinhos de Jesus. Thanks to everybody who gave recommendations when I asked last May. Samba de Gafieira is a terrific dance, and we still dance the bits we can back at home. I wish there were some place to learn more here.

We did the regular tourist stuff: walked along the Copacabana, went shopping in Ipanema, went up the Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain). As usual, we didn’t do any tours. We just like walking around the town together.

Clô took us out to a club where the locals were dancing Samba and Forró. It was a really friendly atmosphere, and even though we were probably the only tourists there, we felt welcome. We got on the floor and danced our few Samba moves we’d learned earlier. They would occasionally play a Salsa or a song we could dance West Coast Swing to, which allowed us to get a couple of dances in where we don’t look like complete n00bs. One of the guys there gave Silke a crash course in Forró.

All in all, it was a terrific end to a wonderful honeymoon. View the entire gallery for more pictures.

I’m determined to actually finish blogging about our wedding and honeymoon. Last time, I blogged about the first leg of our honeymoon in Buenos Aires. After Buenos Aires, we flew to Puerto Iguazú, the city on the Argentinian side of the Iguaçu falls. We took a shuttle over to the Brazilian side and stayed in the magnificant Hotel Das Cataratas inside the Iguaçu National Park. Here’s a shot of the hotel and the falls from the plane:

We stayed two nights at the falls, enjoying the breathtaking scenery. Silke got pretty sick the first night, but after that, we were able to get some relaxation between the more active legs of our trip. I swear, every picture you take there is a postcard. It’s just so beautiful.

On the second day, we took the Macuco tour. They take you in a trailer behind an electric jeep through the forest, stopping to give informational tidbits along the way. Then you get out of the trailer and walk for a bit on some trails down to the river past the base of the falls. The hike takes you through some marvelous scenery.

Then the fun begins. They put you in a small boat and head upstream toward the falls. They don’t avoid the rapids. In fact, I’m pretty sure they try their best to hit them. As you approach the falls, they stop and let you take some pictures from the bottom. Then they run you under the falls.

Seriously, under the falls. I had cold water pouring over my head. I was completely soaked. And after thoroughly drenching us, they slammed into the rapids on the way back downstream in a way that made a wall of water come over the boat. It was a blast. (We didn’t take our camera for the tour, opting to just live in the moment. So I have no pics. Sorry.)

This is where we had breakfast in the morning:

You can see the falls from the terrace of the hotel. The Iguaçu falls are just magnificent. Surely the most beautiful place on Earth I’ve ever seen. And the hotel is right up against them, surrounded by nature. I highly recommend staying there to anybody who’s planning a visit.

As always, check out the entire gallery for more pictures.

My dear first-generation Neuros is just not cutting it anymore for me, and I can’t wait any longer for the mythical N3.  So I’m turning to the lazy web for suggestions for a new portable music player.  Here’s what I want:

• Not a massive brick like the old Neuros.
• Plays Ogg Vorbis.
• Works today with Banshee (trunk is fine).
• Holds at least 40GB.  This, unfortunately, rules out flash-based players.

Notable non-requirements include video, pictures, PIM, and cell phone capabilities.  Suggestions?