Desktop Whatever: Ghee Teo's thoughts on Desktop Whatever

I had submitted two abstracts in April to two conferences over the summer. The good news is both of them have been accepted!
o OpenSolaris Developer Conference, June 25-27, 2008 Prague, Czech Republic.
o GUADEC 2008, July 7-12, 2008, Istanbul, Turkey.

The schedule for both conferences have now been published OSDEVCON 2008 schedule and GUADEC 2008 schedule.

The OSDEVCON is also about Printing Tools, it is primarily concentrated on Presto on OpenSolaris Desktop. While I have been looking forwards going to Prague (never been there before) to talk about Presto and also meet face to face with many of the OpenSolaris developers. Despite all the good reasons to go, I could not make it due to unforeseen family circumstances. So to this end, Michal Pryc has kindly agreed to present the paper on my behalf. Thanks Migi!

The GUADEC session is a BOF on Printing Tools, so in order to make it to work well, I need input/involvement of the communities. So I really look forwards to see everyone who is interested in printing or your applications have printing elements in them to be there! I plan to provide you an update on the GSOC project that I am mentoring on Integrated Printer Management. So Rui, pressure is ON!

I have meant to write this up last week. I am mentoring for the first time ever for GSOC. His name is Rui Tiago Cação Matos, a final year of Computers and
Telematic Engineering at the University of Aveiro [1]. He will be working to improve the GUI for system-config-printer. The broad goal is to make it ready as a candidate for printers management to be blessed by the GNOME release team

Welcome Rui!! Looking forwards to work with you!

[1] It is in Portuguese, another little thing in life that I have to start learning .
Though I am glad Rui's English is actually very good.

Even since I expressed my interest in a BOF session to talk about tools for printers management in GAUDEC 2008, a number of things have happened since:

* I have volunteered myself to be a mentor to the GNOME GSOC 2008 for Integrated Printer Management
* I have also received a couple of direct inquiries from students who expressed interest to want to work on it. Both of them show great potential to make this project a success! I really hope that this project do get accepted, this is something really need to tackle head on, a GSOC project will help tremendously to make a head start!
* Google has extended the student submission deadline from 31st March to 07 April, 5:00 PM PDT /00:00 UTC April 8, 2008. That is less than 8 hours from now. Hurry Up if you are interested in this project.
* I have some very helpful comments from last BOF post. Thank you All! Keep it coming.

Still, I am looking to hear from You who are working in printer related tools! (Hints, hints, fedora folks, ubuntu folks, OpenSUSE folks, BSD folks, Debian folks ... and those I have not mentioned ).

As I will be on vocation for the next 3 days, so I thought it is best that I submit my BOF (bird of feathers) proposal early. So below is the abstract I have written up.

The GNOME community has not prioritized printing since the last gallant efforts by Alex Larson and John Palmieri back in 2006. With the gradual adoption of GTK+ printing, the GNOME desktop has finally got all its components to use GTK+ print dialog in 2.22.0. With the unified application print dialog at hand, it is about time to move on to the printing tools. Currently, various distros come up with each unique solutions. While the existing tools are usable and are making steady progress, there is no such printing tools endorsed by GNOME as such.

The author proposes the following area for discussion:
* printer management tool that support major print systems such as CUPS, Windows and LP (with pluggable modules)
* examine the existing tools to enumerate the major must have and separate into nice to have features. The possible tools for evaluation include, gnome-cups-manager, gnome-cups-add, system-config-printer, and ospm-pm [1].
* consolidate the (possible) GSOC work on integrated printer management if the project does go ahead.
* create opportunities for the interested parties to work together.

[1] Most people are familiar with gnome-cups-manager, gnome-cups-add and system-config-printer as these have been around for sometimes. ospm-pm is at an early stage and there are useful features worth sharing.

If you are interested in involving with this work, please drop me a line regardless of whether you are going to GUADEC or not, here or post me a comment THANKS!

I am rather disappointed that GSOC (Google Summer of Code) 2008 have not selected OpenSolaris as one of the Open Source community to participate the programme this year. Rahul is the bearer of the bad news. The complete list of Open Source communities that made GSOC 2008 is here. Rahul thinks OpenSolaris is too big a project to be there. He suggested next year we should choose "Indiana" or "DTrace" instead.

It's such a pity that OpenSolaris itself not making it, I am saddened that my printing related proposals are now left on the long list of things to be done . Also missing a opportunity to be part if the mentoring experience. Well, we can always try again next year.

GNOME 2.22 was released on schedule on 13th March 2008. The list of new features are here. The speed of announcement by the GNOME hacker, this blog entry literally is yesterday news. It is amazing how the community managed to pull it all together even when there was some doubts about the viability of the release back in December 2007. Well Done to All there!

GNOME 2.22 release on OpenSolaris is not official due until Nevada build 88 according to the current plan. The preview of that is actually in vermillion devel 86 if you know what I am talking about.

Update: Damien just sent out and email saying vermillion devel 86 is DOA . Workaround is on the way, but given many are on holidays over Paddy day and Easter. The wokaround is unlikely to be available until the holidays is over. So better off waiting for Vermillion 87.

Update 2: Good man, Damien has spent beyond his holidays and uploaded the HAL packages to make sure that vermillion devel 86 is working on download. Extra steps in the instruction is here. Kudos to Damien!

Two Flash movies to demonstrate the Printers Group concept in Print Manager

Robert asked me how hard it is to print to Windows from Solaris today. It couldn't be that hard from what I have been told, it is just that I have never done it. So reading up the FAQ from the OpenSolaris Printing page , I figured out I have to do the following things:

o Create a print queue on the Windows box connecting the printer to the network. I have a HP 2600N which I have already created queue connected through the USB. So I share it and use the Add Printer wizard and let it auto discovered on Windows side. From which I got the Server and Printer names (FERRARI/HPColorL, surprise, surprise).

o On the Solaris box (Nevada 76), I copied over the file /etc/sfw/smb.conf-example to /etc/sfw/smb.conf and replace the workground = WORKGROUP (as it is on Windows).

o svcadm enable samba

o lpadmin -v winprinter -v smb://FERRARI/HPColorL -m uri -n /usr/share/ppd/SFEfoo2zjs/foo2zjs/HP-Color_LaserJet_2600n.ppd.gz

o lp -p winprinter

That's it.

NOTE: I have though created the package SFEfoo2zjs so that it can print.
This reminds me that I probably upload the proper patch to what was given to me by Paul Cunningham to sourceforce.

If the title means anything to you, then it could be of two things:
o You are ancient in the computing age
o You are a vi user

Thanks to Brian Utterback, a simple fix as he said by simply updating a couple of terminfo file on Solaris. Now, when you vi in a gnome-terminal or xterm, the screen area where you vi drawn over is restored when you exit the editor. Though it is a little thing, but it is little thing in life that enriches the user experience and so is work more pleasurable.

Unfortunately, it also caused a regressive behaviour in another bug. Though I think this is probably the right behaviour for less(1) or more(1). Pity I don't have a Linux box to test how does it looks at the moment.

Well, let's see how thing go

19-09-2007. Today GNOME 2.20 is released. The GNOME community just amazing!! Since the release of GNOME 2.2 in a six monthly cycle, the community and the release team have consistently working to a very well-defined schedule and have not missed a single release date. Congratulations to the community and the release team!

Murray Cumming, Jorge Castro, Andreas Nilsson and others have also written the most extensive and beautiful release notes here. Whoever going to do the release note for GNOME 2.20 is going to face a BIG challenge!.

Laszlo Peter who is better known to be Laca has just announced 11th July 2007 to be Sun Patch Day in an effort to work with community members to upstream all these (skeletons in the corset) patches! Granted there are abut 500 patches, but lots of these are branding patches which means they are included for Sun's specific branding or features.

I personally am responsible for the following patches and I just jolt down some comments to help with community members and maintainers should they want any of these upstream and those should not upstream:

Upstreamable

gnome-vfs
# date:2006-10-20 type:bug bugster:6228176 owner:gheet
Patch7: gnome-vfs-07-audio-cd-show-icon.diff
# date:2005-04-13 type:bug bugster:6243507 owner:gheet
Patch8: gnome-vfs-08-trash-skip-copy.diff

GTK+
GTK+ Backend for PAPI (OpenPrinting Standard Printing API). Would like to see this upstream and some tidi`y -up is necessary.
# date:2006-09-17 bugster:6494571 bugzilla:382676 owner:gheet type:bug
Patch11: gtk+-11-printing-papi-backend.diff

gnomeprint
# owner:gheet date:2006-04-23 type:bug bugster:6418204,6194525
Patch1: libgnomeprint-01-papi-print-dialog.diff
# owner:gheet date:2006-08-10 type:bug bugster:6437235 bugzilla:345012
Patch2: libgnomeprint-02-evince-crash.diff
# owner:dcarbery date:2007-03-14 type:bug bugzilla:418595
Patch3: libgnomeprint-03-guchar-pointer.diff
# owner:gheet date:2006-04-23 type:bug bugster:6418204
Patch1: libgnomeprintui-01-papi-print-dialog.diff

GCONF
This is a patch I believe may be due to the different between the Solaris and Linux signals system.
I have reported this in http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143590 but have never seen this in Linux.
#owner:gheet date:2004-06-03 type:bug bugster:5052479
Patch2: GConf-02-daemon-hanged-solaris.diff

gnome-session
This is a patch used by Sun's legacy applications which may run a GNOME GUI should the property GNOME_SM_DESKTOP is set. A useful hack though was refused may be harmless to include.
owner:gheet date:2004-08-06 type:bug bugster:5025823 bugzilla:98481
Patch1: gnome-session-01-gnome-atom.diff

This patch simply changes the purge warning delay to 30 seconds as according to the man page of gnome-session(1).
#owner:gheet date:2005-01-14 type:bug bugster:4978659
Patch4: gnome-session-04-reduce-purge-warn-delay.diff

This is the Trusted JDS patch based Trusted Extensions Framework, this requires some more coordination and review for this patch to be upstreamed.
owner:gheet date:2006-11-03 type:feature bugster:6393728
Patch6: gnome-session-06-trusted-extensions.diff

Non-unstremable

gnome-vfs
Branding patches, none of these should be upstreamed.
# date:2006-11-23 type:branding owner:gheet
Patch1: gnome-vfs-01-default-url-handler.diff
# date:2005-04-26 type:branding owner:gheet
Patch2: gnome-vfs-02-mime-info-file-path.diff
# date:2005-01-31 type:branding bugster:4951431 owner:gheet
Patch6: gnome-vfs-06-socks-version.diff

window-manager
Sun's specific metacity Key binding
#owner:gheet date:2003-07-17 type:branding
Patch2: metacity-02-ctrl-esc-mod4-r.diff

Printing
These are patches that we created to deliver a Solaris print manager
# date:2007-02-06 type:branding owner:gheet
Patch1: printman-01-menu-entry.diff
# date:2007-02-06 type:branding owner:gheet
Patch2: printman-02-help-dir-changed.diff

Sun hipped a version of libgnomeprint-2 in GNOME 2.0 and we have to continue
shipping this set of libraries to maintain backwards compatibility.
# date:2007-02-06 type:brandisng owner:gheet
Patch3: printman-03-pkgconfig.diff

I will on the irc, irc://irc.gnome.org#sun-patches on 11th July 0900-1800 Beijing time.

The family has arrived in Hong Kong International Airport on Thursday, 28th June, 2007 at 16:45 local time. Despite the rush to get onto the connection from Dublin due to a delay of over an hour, BA 027 has been kind enough to wait for many of the (at least 20) passengers from Dublin, Bravo to British Airways in this aspect.

A little upset at baggage collection to have found that one piece of the baggage containing all my children clothing and even Grace's teddy bear clothes was delayed in transits which is understandable.
We were give a receipt and was told by the baggage handler (whose name I do not want to shame as yet), that once the baggage has arrived, they will call us and deliver it to the residence. I was happy with that given that the same thing has happened to me the year before.

However, after 2 days, 30th June, ten of phone calls later. I am now most frustrated and unhappy. The phone numbers I was given, it can never ring through. The baggage handler has never called back. I tried to call BA today, but well to late for that, their office is closed. I rang the flight information and managed to get through to an operator, she kindly given me a number to call. What is more annoying is that number is not on the list on my receipt. Finally, she offered to pass on a message to the lost and found department with my information. I don't mind being told the baggage is further delayed, but without any update, we have to go shopping everything for clean clothing for our 2 kids.

So what can I do now, apart from waiting or if I have some times before I travel to Beijing on Monday morning making a direct query or complaint. Wonder anyone has similar experience in the past and how that got sorted.

UPATE: So we managed to talk to the a real person at the HKIA lost luggage office before I boarded the plane to Beijing. His explanation went like this. We couldn't get through the numbers because there are some many enquries of lost luggage everyday, they have over 100 calls a day handled by one person. So phone always in engaged mode. Secondly, our lost baggage is black in colour which is the most popular colour and without further details, it is almost impossible to track if the tag label is lost. So we told him that there is a little gold coloured pad lock on the bag. I am preparing for the worst, Caleb's Chelsea's shirt may end up in a place similar to this, http://www.travellady.com/issues/issue70/70u-lost.htm

Norm Jacobs did a nice job in creating a flash demo on how the Presto project (Automatic Detection/Discovery Printers in OpenSolaris). Even though, the project is in its early stage of its full features, this flash demo clearly illustrates graphically what the project intends to achieve.

I once heard a Solaris senior director said (para-phrased to that effect), "If you (as developer) can endure the first 36 hours of using Solaris, you are hooked for the rest of development life". Indeed there are really cool technologies in Solaris and the building up of OpenSolaris community with the huge Java community, and the free tools that Sun gave away for free make Open development a practicality.

So what are these 36 hours of endurance that some developers complain about and wish it is easier. My guess there are four big things (after you got the Solaris Developer kits). Take these in chronological order, they would be:
1. Installation of the system
2. network/wireless drivers
3. graphics card setup
4. printer setup

2 and 3 are really part of the system installation. They are mandatory part of the process, so no matter how hard that part of the process is, it is generally took on by the user as part of life.

Setting up printer part is usually happened when the user has decided that he needs to read What's New on the train home or about to print his airline tickets, there is no printer to be found anywhere . So he starts hunting around wondering how he can hook up his free bubble jet printer to work. Wouldn't it be nice if he simply plugs in the printer and the system would simply set it up for him? Indeed that is the goals of the OpenSolaris project, Presto.

Presto aims to automatically (or as automatically as possible) discovering and configuring access to directly attached, network attached, and remotely served printers. The work here will be integrated into JDS so that the user's experience should be 'Just Works'. Details of the Presto project can be found here

The first prototype is now available for use, evaluation, feedback or whatever at can be found here. It works for USB printers for now. Try it out, play with it, do send us comment, either through the comment on this blog or at the forum, forum

It even has a dialog

The 7th GUADEC event was held between 24th and 30th June in Vilanova i la Geltrú, a mediterranean town situated 45km south of Barcelona and 45km north of Tarragona, and is only 20 minutes from Prat International Airport (Barcelona).

Now that the conference is over and after fixing up the urgent Real Work (TM) in the office, I thought it is nice to write down few things about this conference for the annul GNOME users and developers.

1. This is by far the biggest conference todate numerically. (Don't have the official number, but quite estimate it is very much 400+.

2. The Conference Corner Stone sponsor is Nokia, and they sure know how to make use of the conference to promote their presence in GNOME by sending the most number of attendees (about 20) and giving the most number of talks mainly via the works on maemo.org on the Nokia 770. I guess GNOME is the all encompassing umbrella for the Open Source technologies Nokia has adopted in the hand-held 770 embedded device while Maemo comunnity (www.maemo.org) is being built up.

3. Lots of passionate debates were involved in many of the sessions, including those of performances in GTK+, cleaning up of gnome-vfs, use of FUSE (http://fuse.sourceforge.net/), Printing support in GTK+.

4. Lot of talks surrounding Python bindings for GNOME. Although this is a interesting development, this also diversifies the development environment of GNOME potentially now into C, Python, Mono, and Java (when Sun open source it). These seem to be a lot of individuals in the conference would love to out their hands in Java, one really experience GNOME hacker even spoke to me who thinks Java is much better than Mono. Of course, he is to be remain anonymous

5. The communities are really warm to Sun's present comparing with 2 years ago when I was last there in the GUADEC conference in Kristiansand, Norway. Many technical disucssions were involved, many more social interactions involving drinking Spanish beers, Swapping of personal identity card were great crack!. The day usually starts from 9.30 a.m. and finishes around 1.00 -3.00 a.m., depending which conference buses can one catch at the end of the day.

So this is the best GUADEC conference I have attended thus far!

Next year, GUADEC will be in Birmingham, England.