So, the GUI Editor for XKB layouts is finally approved as GSoC project. I am sure, Simos will not screw it!
Walter Bender leaving OLPC – is a bad news itself. But it is a seriously bad news if it indicates that OLPC leaves true Open Source/Free Software way… That project has been a great promise – and it would be soo sad to see it dying…
For some while, I was being asked why layouts are organized on per country basis. Now, it is time to stop these discussions. I made a large commit to xkeyboard-config, putting loads of ISO (639-2/3166) codes into base.xml.in. So, when next release is out, layouts and variants can be selected by either country or language – whatever is best for the user. Now, I have a request to everyone reading this blog – could you please look at the resulting file and check whether your layouts/variants are listed with proper country/language (please keep in mind – the attributes of a variant are inherited from the enclosing layout, unless explicitly overridden).
The code in libxklavier to support this information is committed (though, some more functions are planned). The gnome-keyboard-properties capplet will benefit of it soon – the code is not in SVN yet, but at least you can look at the screenshot:
The size of the font reflects the number of layouts/variants available for the language.
First, a bit of advertising (unpaid, of course;)). Proporta makes really nice cases for mobile devices. I got this for my kid, that for me and that for my darling wife. The velvet(?) case Nokia provided for n800 is simply <censored>. They made it much better for n810 – but still, very far from perfect. So, if you like leather (like I do), my recommendations… The only issue I found so far – there is no space provided for storing the screen-wiping cloth…
I finally found time to organize music retrieval – from my home server into my tablet. The solution of course is rsync-based (now that we have nice grsync UI). On the server, I created a directory (“staging area”) which contains nothing but several symlinks to some directories in the media storage area of the server. rsync server allows read-only synchronization from this staging area (only for some particular IP, just in case…). So once I execute corresponding profile in grsync – all the music from symlinked directories is pulled or updated to the tablet.
A couple of minor things to care about. First, chrooting should be disabled for that rsync server entry (otherwise symlinks do not work). Second, I got funny issues rsyncing into FAT32-formatted microsd. It pulled all files every time – there is some problem with timestamps. Once I started using –size-only option, everything is working just perfect.
The rsync server configuration entry is as follows:
[lyava2] path = /mnt/array1/share/sync/lyava2 comment = Sync area for n810 hosts-allow = lyava2 read-only = true use chroot = no
The rsync command line is
rsync --recursive --copy-links --verbose --compress --size-only rsync://bill:10873:lyava2
(Non-standard port is used because built-in rsync in my Buffalo NAS has its config file rewritten every time I change sharing settings through the Web UI – so I have two instances of rsync).