A look at new developer features

As the development window for GNOME 3.16 advances, I've been adding a few new developer features, selfishly, so I could use them in my own programs.

Connectivity support for applications

Picking up from where Dan Winship left off, we've merged support for application to detect the network availability, especially the "connected to a network but not to the Internet" case.

In glib/gio now, watch the value of the "connectivity" property in GNetworkMonitor.

Grilo automatic network awareness

This glib/gio feature allows us to show/hide Grilo sources from applications' view if they require Internet and LAN access to work. This should be landing very soon, once we've made the new feature optional based on the presence of the new GLib.

Totem

And finally, this means we'll soon be able to show a nice placeholder when no network connection is available, and there are no channels left.

Grilo Lua resources support

A long-standing request, GResources support has landed for Grilo Lua plugins. When a script is loaded, we'll look for a separate GResource file with ".gresource" as the suffix, and automatically load it. This means you can use a local icon for sources with the URL "resource:///org/gnome/grilo/foo.png". Your favourite Lua sources will soon have icons!

Grilo Opensubtitles plugin

The developers affected by this new feature may be a group of one, but if the group is ever to expand, it's the right place to do it. This new Grilo plugin will fetch the list of available text subtitles for specific videos, given their "hashes", which are now exported by Tracker.

GDK-Pixbuf enhancements

I can point you to the NEWS file for the latest version, but the main gains are that GIF animations won't eat all your memory, DPI metadata support in JPEG, PNG and TIFF formats, and, for image viewers, you can tell whether a TIFF file is multi-page to open it in a more capable viewer.

Batched inserts, and better filters in GOM

Does what it says on the tin. This is useful for populating the database quicker than through piecemeal inserts, it also means you don't need to chain inserts when inserting multiple items.

Mathieu also worked on fixing the priority of filters when building complex queries, as well as supporting more than 2 items in a filter ("foo OR bar OR baz" for example).

Travel preparations

I got myself a little Huawei E585 device, so that I can put in a data SIM card when travelling. My attempts at getting a 3G data subscription in the UK that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg when abroad completely failed, and I didn't fancy carrying a phone just to use as a modem when travelling (I use my usual handset through Bluetooth when in the UK).

Once in the Netherlands, I'll get a Pay-as-you-go 3G SIM card, top it up and subscribe to the cheapest data deal, and be done with it. Note that I needed to unlock the device for use with other carriers, using this dodgy looking website. But it worked as expected.

My attempts at finding the Linux code on the device failed (and this code doesn't seem to be it), so I also dropped a mail to Huawei's FOSS office.

See you online at GUADEC!

Pushing patches

AFC backend

A couple of hours ago, I committed the AFC backend to gvfs. This means you should now be able to access the storage on your iPhones and iPod Touches. Note that this does not include music syncing yet, as the feature would belong in libgpod.

This feature has also available in Fedora 12 repositories for a couple of weeks. Just make sure you install gvfs-afc.

Moblin work

After updating gupnp in rawhide a bit too quick, I was left with the task to port bickley to gupnp 0.13. Rygel is working nicely with this after a bit of back and forth with Zeeshan. The preferences still need a bit of love though.

I also ported network-manager-netbook to NetworkManager 0.8 with Dan's help.

Finally, dalston's volume control bits got updated cut'n'paste code from the latest gnome-media.

All the patches are sitting in the upstream bugzillas or repos, and are already in the Fedora 12 Moblin packages.

A little (geo)clue

Over the past week, I've been working a little on Geoclue stuff.

First up is a Geoclue plugin for gnome-bluetooth, which allows you to set up your Bluetooth GPS device.


This will work best with the patches in the Geoclue bugzilla, so that the selection is instant-apply.

The second piece of work is a Skyhook Geoclue provider. This code manages to put me within 20 yards of my house, though we should be getting NetworkManager's help to get the AP's MAC address.

Finally, my Geoclue Firefox patch should soon be getting reviewed. It's been long enough that I forgot how to build Mozilla (probably a good thing).

As an added bonus, I've sent a patch against NetworkManager to Dan with a gnome-bluetooth plugin, which should allow users to just tick a box to set up PANU Internet access.

Now, we just need somebody reviewing all those Geoclue patches. Maintainer, where are you at?

Plugins, here they come

We now have plugins in gnome-bluetooth. The purpose is to allow third-party applications to offer additional setup steps for the Bluetooth device you just configured.

The above screenshot shows an example plugin that NetworkManager could provide, and with the click of a button, you'd have PAN set up between your computer and your mobile phone.

If your phone supports SyncML, then Conduit could show a button to allow setting up syncing, or when setting a GPS, you could have a button to set it up as the default GPS device for GeoClue.

Those plugin-provided widgets will also be available in a device properties dialogue for the Bluetooth preferences, when I get to it.

PS: Diego has kindly agreed to help out with the FreeFA organisation.
PPS: The widget layout is pretty broken, feel free to send patches through bugzilla.

Bluetooth support in NetworkManager

Over the past week, with rock star Dan Williams, we've been working on Bluetooth support in NetworkManager. You can now access the Internet using your Bluetooth mobile phone as long as:

1. You want to use PAN, and not DUN
2. You're ready to use the console to set it up
3. and finally, you have the fixes lying on my hard-drive (or in Dan's e-mail inbox)

This should hopefully be working for Fedora 12.