December 27, 2009
g-a, gnome
11 Comments
Today, the applet code is dropped from gnome-applets. Since gnome-settings-daemon now includes the notification icon (automatically appearing/disappearing), the applet is no longer needed.
Back in 1999 (Nov 29) it was the gswitchit applet that was committed to SourceForge. After GUADEC in Dublin it got merged into GNOME, some bits and pieces went to gnome-control-center. The rest is history…
The technology goes on. The functionality stays and improves. The initial point, the applet is gone.
December 21, 2009
g-a, gnome, libgnomekbd
16 Comments
Since gnome panel and applets are about to go relatively soon, I feel obliged to do something about that. Here are some unchained thoughts related to it…
The gnome keyboard indicator applet is to become deprecated. What’s instead? The only viable option, no matter how I dislike it, is the notification area icon. Or, in terms of gtk+, GtkStatusIcon. What’s important is that it cannot be a Gtk widget (there are good reasons for that). So the widget gkbd-indicator that was used by the existing applet, is getting useless – I just can reuse some of its code.
But there is an issue with gnome-screensaver. The screensaver is using gkbd-indicator widget in the unlock dialog (and it has to stay there!). That means I’ll still have to support the widget (unless, hehe, gnome-screensaver would suddenly start implementing notification area conventions). As the result, libgnomekbd will have two “layout indicating UI elements”. Somewhat ugly, on my taste…
PS The GSwitchit Plugins will not be supported by the new GtkStatusIcon-based indicator.
PPS It is still a shame that one cannot easily produce GdkPixbuf using cairo. The way through GdkPixmap does not work correctly because the transparency is lost by gdk_pixbuf_get_from_drawable (“If the specified destination pixbuf is not NULL and it contains alpha information, then the filled pixels will be set to full opacity”). The only way is using some code snippets. Why cannot that be put into gtk?
gdk_pixbuf_get_from_drawable
March 26, 2008
g-a, xkeyboard-config
2 Comments
The latest release of GSwitchIt plugins is using libsoup 2.2. Because of the high demand, I am upgrading it to latest 2.4 (they broke the API slightly, bad boys!). New release is to be made RSN (actually, the code is already is in SVN).
In case if any student is interested in some fame in X Window universe (and bounty from Google or course), there is a couple of XKB-related projects on XOrg page (see Misc section). Feel free to contact me as mentor if you feel like doing it. A lot of fun (and some share of swear words – I’ll teach you some Russian ones, they are very rude) is guaranteed!
March 19, 2008
g-a
1 Comment
“GSwitchIt plugins” did not get much care from me last year. Now, another useful plugin is in the development – allowing user to specify any name for the layout labels in the keyboard indicator. So instead of “USA” and “Ger” you can setup “Bush” and “Merk”, if you like. The idea is inspired by this bug.
December 18, 2007
g-a, g-c-c, libgnomekbd
No Comments
Yesterday, there was a “tarballs due” date for 2.21.4. A day before I realized that wonderful layout printing code (kindly contributed by Ed Catmur, all my gratitude and respect) should be shared – it does not belong to g-c-c but should be generalized in libgnomekbd. So, yesterday night, an hour before the deadline, libgnomekbd 2.21.4.1 was released (there was libgnomekbd 2.21.4 a week ago) – with one new function in API. Now, both g-c-c and g-a in svn depend on libgnomekbd 2.21.4.1 (the last .1 is essential, hehe!). In return, they both offer layout printing functionality, isn’t it nice?