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Today we are launching at Whatever (the company I work for) a marketing campaign for our upcoming product: Knowledge Plaza. Exciting times ahead!

I looked at git add --interactive because it had hunk-based commit, a pre-requisite for darcs record-style commit, but it has a terrible user interface, so i just copied the concept: running a git diff, filtering hunks, and then outputing the filtered diff through git apply --cached.

It supports binary diffs, file additions and removal. It also asks for new files to be added even if this is not exactly how darcs behave but I always forget to add new files, so I added it. It will probably break on some extreme corner cases I haven’t been confronted to, but I gladly accept any patches

Here’s a sample session of git-darcs-record script:

$ git-darcs-record
Add file:  newfile.txt
Shall I add this file? (1/1) [Ynda] : y

Binary file changed: document.pdf

Shall I record this change? (1/7) [Ynda] : y

foobar.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
 line1
 line2
+line3
 line4
+line5

Shall I record this change? (2/7) [Ynda] : y

git-darcs-record
@@ -1,17 +1,5 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env python

-# git-darcs-record, emulate "darcs record" interface on top of a git repository
-#
-# Usage:
-# git-darcs-record first asks for any new file (previously
-#    untracked) to be added to the index.
-# git-darcs-record then asks for each hunk to be recorded in
-#    the next commit. File deletion and binary blobs are supported
-# git-darcs-record finally asks for a small commit message and
-#    executes the 'git commit' command with the newly created
-#    changeset in the index
-
-
 # Copyright (C) 2007 Raphaël Slinckx
 #
 # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or

Shall I record this change? (3/7) [Ynda] : y

git-darcs-record
@@ -28,6 +16,19 @@
 # along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 # Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.

+# git-darcs-record, emulate "darcs record" interface on top of a git repository
+#
+# Usage:
+# git-darcs-record first asks for any new file (previously
+#    untracked) to be added to the index.
+# git-darcs-record then asks for each hunk to be recorded in
+#    the next commit. File deletion and binary blobs are supported
+# git-darcs-record finally asks for a small commit message and
+#    executes the 'git commit' command with the newly created
+#    changeset in the index
+
+
+
 import re, pprint, sys, os

 BINARY = re.compile("GIT binary patch")

Shall I record this change? (4/7) [Ynda] : n

git-darcs-record
@@ -151,16 +152,6 @@ def read_answer(question, allowed_responses=["Y", "n", "d", "a"]):
        return resp

-def setup_git_dir():
-       global GIT_DIR
-       GIT_DIR = os.getcwd()
-       while not os.path.exists(os.path.join(GIT_DIR, ".git")):
-               GIT_DIR = os.path.dirname(GIT_DIR)
-               if GIT_DIR == "/":
-                       return False
-       os.chdir(GIT_DIR)
-       return True
-
 def git_get_untracked_files():

Shall I record this change? (5/7) [Ynda] : y

# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD file..." to unstage)
#
#       modified:   document.pdf
#       modified:   foobar.txt
#       modified:   git-darcs-record
#       new file:   newfile.txt
#
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add file file..." to update what will be committed)
#
#       modified:   git-darcs-record
#
What is the patch name? Some cute patch name
Created commit a08f34e: Some cute patch name
 4 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 29 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 newfile.txt

Get the script here: git-darcs-record script and put in somewhere in your $PATH. Any comments or improvements is welcome !

While I’m at it, you can read more on telepathy and empathy in my GUADEC 2007 talk (also see my pictures on flickr).

Here’s what it looks like:

The right-hand panel contains a number of megaphone applet instances, one for each contact I often talk to. If I click on the avatar (or the generic contact icon) it creates a text chat. The beauty of Telepathy is that the text chat will be handled by my favorite text chatting application, in this case Empathy itself, but it could be konqueror or whatever other program capable of handling text chats.

The first time the applet is added, you can choose a contact to be displayed. The contact chooser re-uses the empathy contact list as found in libempathy-gtk. Simply find your contact in the list, click ok and you’re set.

The applet also offers an ‘Information’ dialog, taken again from libempathy-gtk that allows you to view and edit the contact vcard, and edit the groups to which it belongs.

And amazingly, the applet only has 570 lines of C code and that includes the gobject and applet boilerplate…

In completely unrelated and old news, we got our traditional gourmet restaurant with vincent, xavier and cédric at Birmingham. Delightful!

Vincent certainly seems to enjoy the moment !

I searched the internet for something existing but unfortunately couldn’t find anything except this little snippet of code for the Nokia 880 device. I took the code, embraced and extended it resulting in:

Photobooth Screenshot

Basically it uses gstreamer to grab frames from the webcam then it feeds a double pipeline, one displaying the image on screen on the gtk widget, and the other allowing to take a buffer when the user clicks the button and encode it to whatever image format is needed.

There is of course the little countdown from 3 to ‘Smile’ when clicking the button, and i plan to add the white screen thingy when the shot is made.. I think apple can sue me right away

The code will be released next week after the application has been proved in the field to be stable enough

Coming soon in your favorite distribution. Notes:

• In reality I’m handsome, the weird face is due to the camera’s angle
• The black square is actually the video preview frame where you see yourself (but it can’t be screenshotted)
• The meters aren’t working yet
• If no video is possible, then only the button+status and the meters are shown in the window
• All this is powered by Telepathy and the telepathy branch of Gossip
• I’m not alone on this stuff, many thanks to Xavier Claessens and Eitan Isaacson for maintaining the telepathy branch!
• This stuff is experimental, blabla, and also it’s not a final design, it’s open for discussion, etc
• Come and help/discuss on #telepathy on Freenode or #gossip on Gimpnet

Click to see a larger version.

You can get the code using darcs get http://www.gnome.org/~rslinckx/darcs/gossip-telepathy-voip

Merry Christmas and Hapy New Year !

How hard is it to parse the 1000′s of valid emails appearing in the source code file ?

Do a code search for < .*@.*\..*>
Then use this shell script (Stupid wordpress do some funky escaping stuff with my html..)

Rinse and Repeat with page 2 of 4150000..

Here is mine:

Note how the photographer interrupted the bug-fixer, forcing him to simulate a smile.

Also note the reference manual in case the man pages are missing.

What’s your bug hunting attitude ?

To make it short, here is a summary of the killer features in epiphany 2.14

• Easy RSS subscription, integration with gnome programs (liferea, blam, straw)
• “Tagged” Bookmarks management (very Web 2.0)
• Adblock extension working out of the box
• HIG and gnome integration everywhere
• Simple and easy to understand preferences
• Light and responsive
• Very few popups, unobtrusive error pages are used instead

…but he missed the deskbar integration, which i will fix now:

• Deskbar will index and allow to search through bookmarks
• Deskbar will index and allow to search through your browsing history
• Deskbar will allow you to quickly search using epiphany smart bookmarks

This is my epiphany toolbar, i have three smart bookmarks, one to search for gnome bug number, another one to search stock quotes by ticker symbol, and the last one is google.be search

This is the epiphany dropdown when i stype somehting in epiphany URL bar, allowing me to use one of my smart bookmark with the query. Here i’m searching for a random bug number

And finally, i can use deskbar, even if the browser isn’t running, a keyboard shortcut away, to use my smart bookmarks. Here i’m going to search for yahoo quotes for GOOG symbol. Also note how i have history pages, and bookmarks appearing too, allowing me to quickly open them.

There is also a way to associate a keyboard shortcut to search engines, and/or a ‘keyword’ in deskbar preferences:

In deskbar preferences, when you select ‘Web searches’, you can click the ‘More…’ button to get more smart bookmarks preferences.

As you can see, i have the ‘g’ letter for google, which means i can type in deskbar g test to search in google the term ‘test’.

Even better, i can directly use the shortcut to open the term in google without even selecting it in the list: I type ‘test’, then hit Alt-g, and it fires up a google search (this of course only works when you have a one-letter keyword)

This is also a feature we want to extend for every possible action in future versions of deskbar.

Now, use epiphany, and be happy !

One last thing…

And finally a quick tip: if you want to open a command-line program and see it’s output, type it’s name and instead of selecting it in the list, hit Alt-t, it will start the program and redirect it’s output in a text window using zenity, useful for example to see if the command executes successfully.

After launching a sitecopy command with alt-t, i receive the output of the command in a nice window, useful for quick commands like that.

Following up to my previous post, Bjørn Haagensen – a long time deskbar tester – has contributed a screencast of deskbar and beagle integration, this time in GIF (made with byzanz).

Warning: the screencast is eating all my RAM, so i can’t view it. I guess i can blame gecko for that.. YMMV

Call for volunteers

Someone recently asked in deskbar-applet-list if someone could help improve the mailman system they use at gnome.

I just recently joined the Gnome Moderator Team[1] which handles
moderation requests for all of the Gnome Projects mailing lists. As
most of you know, we use mailman to manage this, which is written in
python.

We have had a nagging issue for sometime now, where each list that
needs an e-mail approved or denied must be visited and handled
individually. Not a big deal until a spammer hits every gnome mailing
list with a message that must be binned, and we are forced to login to
the same page and click the same 3 buttons a hundred times.

A ‘unified moderation panel’ has long been a wish of ours [...]

You can find the full mail here. It’s a great way to get started in the gnome community, if you know python. GO !

Contact moderator gnome org is your contact to get started on this, specify the mail or something in the mail so they get what you are talking about. (And don’t forget to replace spaces with appropriate @ and .)

Nigel made an excellent comment and a screencast (flash) (mirror) showcasing some current deskbar capabilities.

I’m glad to see that the gnome community is loving it, and using it !

THANKS !