Ubuntu Diaries

GSoC 2011 Jokosher porting to Gtk+3/PyGI - status quo

2011-07-11T16:36:00.006+03:00

Yeah, this year again I'm working on Jokosher during Google Summer Of Code. Last summer I tried to implement Telepathy calls, thus creating nice podcast tool. While I partly succeeded and anyone willing to test it can do it using this Jokosher branch of mine on Launchpad, it . I'm planning to return to it after my porting job this summer because I want to see that feature in master branch and official release.
This summer I have different, but yet still very interesting task - porting PyGTK stuff over PyGI. GI comes here as GObject Introspection. To get full details about GI read here, but in nutshell it is method to create mostly automated bindings, using special API scanners and creating Python counterparts of C methods and variable types. Therefore PyGI API follows very closely C API. This gives two very obvious advantages - there is no need of complex support of bindings, and they are always mostly up to date.
For Jokosher it means that I have to replace most of PyGTK syntax which differs from Gtk+3 C API syntax. Thankfully, pygobject hackers and other coders with their porting tasks have created nice bash script called pygi-convert.sh which will replace lot of the obvious stuff automatically (like 'import gtk' to 'from gi.repository import Gtk'). While it helps porting considerably, you must take into account that it is quite "dumb" and can create some nasty side effects, especially on such large app as Jokosher. So, I started with pygi-convert.sh and then ran Jokosher in Gtk+3 enviroment to get errors, fix them and repeat these steps as much as needed. Mostly it was when script had done something wrong, like inserted replacement strings nested twice, but mostly it went surprisingly smooth.
After that I had usual "trial and error" sessions. List of bugs I encountered doing this I have put online here - and actual code can be found here, in my project's Bazaar branch on Launchpad. Taking into account rather nasty exams I had this year I'm quite happy with what I have achieved so far. My little but effective knowledge about Gtk+ internals is helping me considerably - and again big thanks goes out to hackers at #gnome-hackers and #python channel at GimpNet. Biggest problem so far I faced with is waveform drawing. Jokosher doesn't issue an error or traceback, but it doesn't draw a thing neither. So it doesn't let me try out event manipulation either, so I could have to check out considerable size of Gtk code after fixing waveform.
So for second part of this project my major aim will be to fix this waveform drawing. I also have bunch of small errors (like Unicode problems) I have yet to figure out how to fix - or they just side nuances of using jhbuild enviroment. After this I want to try out moving to PyGI for Gstreamer. This probably will be very difficult but also fun, because no one have actually tried that at home yet.

In the end - final report of my GSoC

2010-08-17T14:18:00.007+03:00

Hi everyone!

It's have been great 12 weeks. While I failed to complete half of my plan (Telepathy Tubes support), I got working VoIP call recording - which was a reason why I get involved in this Google Summer of Code in first place. But before that I have little story how I got there. For just to see how it works, see this video I made during conversation with friend of mine (sorry for faulty cheap headset, which forced to cut middle section of conversation with Pitivi, as headset just died on me). You can see me running Jokosher, choosing contact, doing recording and pressing stop and getting waveform redrawn, and in the end doing playback of recorded conversation.

First of all, I got old Michael Sheldon's code in which he tried to get all accounts, connect them, and then you could choose contact and call him (or her). Code has been rotten for some time in Launchpad branch, and Telepathy has changed lot of things here and there. First of all, I run old branch and saw that nothing worked. Piece after piece I gathered information how to connect to network, how to get contact handles, etc. People at Telepathy IRC channel (#telepathy at Freenode) were very helpful. Also I have to give thumbs up for Telepathy spec documentation - if you start to understand concepts, it is mostly all you will need. Also Python bindings have excelent examples.

In fact, things change so fast in Telepathy world, that I had to build newer Ubuntu package for Python bindings, as Ubuntu Lucid one lacks Account Manager support. With a tip from Michael I made newer one using 'checkinstall' program, which allows fast and dirty Debian package building. If you plan to test my code in Lucid, download it from here and install it over your current version. If you want to build it yourself, get a git repository checkout, build it, execute 'checkinstall' in bindings directory, change settings (name of package, what does it provide, etc. - make sure they fit current naming/version scheme of python-telepathy package) and run it. It will build a package and install it. For other distros just be sure you have newest Telepathy and it's Python bindings installed. Additionally, for all distributions you will need Farsight Python bindings and Farsight/Telepathy glue library bindings too (named python-farsight and python-tpfarsight in Ubuntu).

After completing basic connection and retrieving information about accounts, I started to work on doing actual call. At first, I simply hooked autoaudiosrc and autoaudiosink as way to hear and record for call. It was first time I stuck, because implementing a call properly within Jokosher required to understand what actually happens there. In the end, it was very important to add watch for Gstreamer pipeline bus so Telepathy/Farsight would know what happens and could act on that. After that I could do calls, but there was no recording done.

For actually recording it, I had to join all Farsight pipeline stuff with Jokosher inner recording system. Jokosher records each instrument using separated bin, which are put together in one big pipeline (allowing to set states in masse). Not wanting to complicate things, I just extended current Farsight pipeline with two tees and split output and input so I could record and send my voice to remote participant in same time - and I could record and hear voice of from other side too. Recording is done by similar bins as for normal instruments, just tweaked for VoIP streams. This is where I stuck quite seriously. In the end, actual solution to my problem was quite logical - Farsight sink pad for sending voice to remote end and source pad for getting it from there - gets created only after whole pipeline is set to playing state. That means that those pads expects any other element to be set to playing before it gets linked to it. Thanks Tester from #farsight@Freenode for explaining it.

Before SoC deadline I tried to fix all small things which have popped up during implementing call support. I failed to link VoIP pipeline into main one (so it would have proper refresh and waveform redrawn regularly), but it requires too much changing of current state, so I hope to deal with that together with Michael post-SoC.

So, for now I got a call recording working, but it lacks waveform redrawing during conversation, and all is done separately from main pipeline, so it is not perfect yet. However, it gets job done (today I recorded conversation with my friend for 30 mins), so anyone can get cracking recording their podcasts and meetings. First, make sure you have all dependencies I mentioned above. Second, I would suggest to use Pulseaudio to get software mixing of audio streams so nothing would block playback. Third, pull a code from my branch (bzr branch lp:~pecisk-gmail/jokosher/telepathy-ng). Then go to telepathy-ng directory and launch Jokosher with 'Jokosher/Jokosher'. Add VoIP instrument (VoIP Local will be added automatically), Then change playback system to PulseAudio (Edit => Preferences). After that, choose your conversation partner using 'File => Instrument inputs...'. After that press Record button and wait. As I haven't find a way to bind pipelines yet, there is no "Waiting..." message. When your partner will accept call, event for each instrument will appear. Then conversation (and it's recording) will be started. After finishing call just press stop to put pipeline into null state and redraw waveform for each file.

Please, report all bugs and suggestions to me, pecisk at gmail dot com, as code will have long way to be officially included in Jokosher, so let's not bother Launchpad with bug reports yet. I hope to get call support in user friendly state till the end of August so we can try to include it in newest Jokosher release.

Very long Google SoC report #3

2010-07-12T12:42:00.005+03:00

Hi everyone!

I was skipping my blog as I was trying to get Telepathy calls working within Jokosher. I wanted to post something when it was working actually. Well, I haven't got to that point yet - as I still trying to connect Telepathy call stuff to Jokosher - but I feel obliged to tell you more how I got there, because it was quite interesting road so far.

First of all I tried to run Michael Sheldon's code and see what works and what doesn't. In overall, I tried to use newest Telepathy API spec, so first to get somewhere I needed to build python-telepathy package from newest GIT branch. I did it with checkinstall (found in Ubuntu universe repo, thanks to Michael about tip), which is quite nice tool for fast-and-dirty package building. In source directory just ./autogen.sh, build it with make, then launch sudo checkinstall. Just make sure to change version to something appropiate, like 0.16 and change Package name and Provides parameters to 'python-telepathy'. Then checkinstall will create deb package and will install it into your system, so get ready to get your system trashed a little bit (for python-telepathy it isn't such a trouble).

After that I submerged in world of VoIP. Thanks to guys at #telepathy at irc.freenode.net, I understood how telepathy python bindings works and got around implementing current code. Bigger problems raised when I tried to understand how Farsight kicks in during the call, but I got it too - I was lacking binding that would made Telepathy/Farsight listen to gstreamer bus messages and then act accordingly (in fact, I very good example how to make a call from python is in Telepathy Python bindings package, examples/call.py).

For last two weeks I have tried to bind TP/F pipeline with Jokosher recording system. As most of sinks and pads in TP/F conference/session is created on the fly, it is quite challenging. It works like this: I have created gobject signal for TelepathyContact to bind eveything with Jokosher pipelines in Project.RecordVoIP. When call is successfull, this method binds every piece to record it in instruments. I have two challenges here - I have to create another instrument besides voip to record local speaker (let's call it "voip-local") and have to find a way to sync Jokosher pipelines with call ones. Also I need to decide to I allow recording happen at once or wait for remote contact to respond.

This is midterm review week and while I have had some setbacks - family stuff like sister marrying (yay) and very hot last two weeks, which makes me feel exhausted - I think I will finish my primary goal this week and will start to work on pipes support. Current code in telepathy-ng branch at Jokosher LP isn't doing anything useful, due of me improving code every day, but you can check out and test it if you like.

Google SoC report #2 - Discovering MC5 and friends

2010-06-06T19:28:00.005+03:00

Hi everyone, this is my second report about my Google SoC project, which will bring initial Telepathy support for Jokosher. In previous week I was very busy with my qualification paper, which I finished and submitted this monday. After that I jumped in.

First of all, I joined IRC channel #jokosher at irc.freenode.net (or irc.ubuntu.com, if you like) to discuss with Michael Sheldon and Laszlo Pandy how to practically achieve my goals. As Telepathy stack have been developed rapidly last several years and things have changed since Michael's work on his telepathy branch, I had to rewrite method which gets accounts from Telepathy first. Previously it used gconf to store account information, but now you have to do it all using D-BUS magic. Of course, there are lot of things made easier with using python-telepathy bindings. Telepathy guys are slowly moving focus to gobject introspection and pygi way of doing things, but more or less I and my mentor agreed that I have to move forward with former. I also changed application's visual behavior so in a case if there is no accounts of supported type defined and user tries to add 'VoIP' instrument, it gives nice information message in error message area. I also doing patch outside my scope (which I plan to finish tomorrow) of the project for supporting GTK InfoBar, as currently Jokosher use custom class to form this area, to fix various theme bugs - like current one with dark fonts on dark background. I also plan to add button to open Empathy Accounts dialog, so users can add accounts straight from Jokosher.

For next week I plan to connect all dots to actually record conversation. This will be interesting challenge, as I never fully investigated gnonlin. Another problem I want to fix is to get Jokosher connecting to accounts when Empathy already is using them. Currently it requires Empathy to be closed as it tries to request new connection.

Of course, all code can be found in lp:~pecisk-gmail/jokosher/telepathy-ng. You can access code from Ubuntu using command 'bzr branch lp:~pecisk-gmail/jokosher/telepathy-ng'.

Google Summer of Code 2010 and long time no post

2010-05-14T12:59:00.007+03:00

Hi here!

I have several blogs on blogspot.com, but for very long time I was quite busy and had time for doing several posts only in Latvian ones (Mostly Ubuntu, free software and OpenStreetMap related). Now I finally have some time and what's important, reason to do more posting here, so I hope it will become more of regular habit. Reason of course it's quite thrilling - some time ago I was confirmed as participant of this year's Google's Summer of Code, which is very great, because I love this initiative and have always wanted to be part of it. So here I will try to detail my plans for my summer of code.

In nutshell, I will try to make Jokosher a podcast killer application. When Jono Bacon and friends initialized Jokosher, main aim was to make podcasts easy and without lot of technical wizardry. For now, Jokosher have nice basic recording capabilities, with lot of good LADSPA effects and of course with excellent user interface. In previous years, we have fought to have multichannel cards supported trough using ALSA Gstreamer elements and also having a basic stability so it wouldn't crash when something really bad happens.

For my work I will use Michael Sheldon's work on Telepathy VoIp support in Jokosher, so I have to create user interface, connect all dots and of course, test it in real life, doing real podcasts with friends :) Then I have two bigger challenges, first one I have to extend current code to use Telepathy tubes so I can do lot of cool things remotely within Jokosher-Jokosher session - and then I will use this tubes support to create high def sound sync - It will work like this. For communication I will use simple VoIP call. After call will be finished, Jokosher will sync actually recorded sound with Jokosher at the other end, so in the end, you can have very high quality mix for your podcast, while doing call using low bandwidth codec.

And yes, finally this is also my "hi" to Planet Gnome!

FYI: MyBooks Professional as Quicken replacement

2008-12-06T13:41:00.003+02:00

If you wanna migrate to Linux or mixed enviroment and looking for some serious replacement of Quicken or another personal or SMB finance management package, then check out MyBooks. Got this link to it from Slashdot disscussion about IBM offering Linux workstation business package. Site looks a little bit odd (Coming from 2001 or so), but it's not always indicate quality and/or usefulness of application. There is trial version available, so check it out.

Evolution which sounds like revolution

2008-11-28T13:58:00.005+02:00

There are several significant developments within Evolution community which interests me most:

1. First, Evolution team has promised to provide Windows binaries for each Evolution release. The last one they did is version 2.24.2 (which is quite recent). It is very important news, because so far Windows has been left in the cold, if we talk about quality of open source e-mail clients. Yes, there is Thunderbird, but it's still feels very immatured to me even after reaching 2.0. Sorry, but having to put signature in special .signature file doesn't cut the mustard1.

Anyway, availability of Evolution on Windows (and later on OS X, I hope) could change landscape of groupware offerings, because finally there would viable alternative to Outlook, which is still the king in Windows. My dream is to have CalDAV + Mail system (Postfix/Exim + Davecot) as easy replacement of Exchange system. Evolution have CalDAV support for Calendars for some time already, but there comes biggest news...

2. Thanks to Milan Crha, which was man who leaded my succesful attempts to provide first "official" patch to Evolution previously this year, have nailed and finally commited patches for supporting CalDAV VTODO (known as Tasks in Evo) and VNOTES (known as Memos) in Evolution. It gives me posibility to use DaviCAL server with Evolution and fully share my plans and tasks between work and home computers, and laptop too (I patched Evo in Hardy and Intrepid to do this). Yes, there are some rough edges, and stability sometimes suffers (without loss of information), but it is done - next stage is improvement of accounts (having one account to create in Evo and connect to all goodies of CalDAV). It's already improved my planning and scheduling so much that I really own Milan a bear (or whatever his favorite party trink is :)).

If we look back - when Novell went into some finansial troubles and formed strange partnership with Microsoft (which still bothers me time after time), I feared that it means end of Evolution as we know. Surprisingly, Novell not only countinue to provide superb support for Evolution, it also has worked with all contributors to change license to GPLv3 and also eased posibility for others to fix and improve Evo as they need (Milan works for Red Hat, for example). Yes, it has bugs, but I must say this - Evolution is a Firefox of open source groupwares. There are competition, but no one have came even close to deliver that much as it does.

Big thank you to you Evo guys, you really rock!

1 no hard feelings to Mozilla and Thunderbird teams. You still do your job and Thunderbird is still more popular than Evo. Keep improvements coming and maybe one day we will have nice competition between Thunderbird + Lighting and Evo.

How to fix broken gconf or how to deal with desktop which shows up borked

2007-10-14T14:32:00.000+03:00

It is easy to screw up your Debian/Ubuntu install with self made debs. Well, I did myself and paid a price. Everything started with GnuCash, which, with 2.2 version, has also Windows port, which I suggest all Windows users as personal finansial manager - yes, they lack some features, but if you are in Europe, it fits perfectly.
However, when I wanted to use file in Ubuntu Feisty version of GnuCash, it gave error. I found out that 2.0 and 2.2 has problems with format compatibilities. So I went and built deb package for 2.2.1 version. Unfortunately, it included lot of non-GnuCash files in package, so when I installed it, it overwrote bunch of libraries, including gconf ones.
As long this GnuCash version was on my computer, there where no problems. However, uninstalling it (I got 2.2.1 "official" version of GnuCash trough Feisty Backports) caused my desktop to be b0rked, because gconf has problems with it's libraries and it can't read xml configuration files.
So I rebooted computer, went to console with ALT+CTRL+F1, loged in and issued such command:
sudo apt-get --reinstall install gconf2 libgcon2-4 gconf2-common
And then rebooted computer with command:
reboot
After restart of computer everything should be all right. If you still have problems, that it's not caused by lack of libgconf libraries.

2006-08-30T13:07:00.000+03:00

Shame, shame, ohhh, what a shame...

It was very long time of no blogging, however it wasn't my intention, and if even no one reads this, it is just a little shame that I have almost no time for this journal, because when I created it I wanted it to matter.

Now, however, I am motivated to start from begining and so here we go....

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS aka Dapper is released almost two months and this crucial time have been spent without big worries. Only somehow important was xserver-xorg release screwup, but I beg to differ about it's impact - mostly impacted was those who update almost every day. Be sure, I am not one of them, and lot of common users either. :) Anyway, community leaders have learnt their lesson in this and they now investigate how to deal with such situations, t.i. mostly how to test updates for stable release before releasing them in wild.

Anyway, I use Dapper on work computer for now, and I'm very happy about it's perfromance and my "common user test" so far. Certainly there is lack of functionality here and there (most of them already aviable in Edgy updates), sometimes there is gripe about some problems with Microsoft Office documents, but in overall, I think Ubuntu is right on it's way to be Linux desktop king for common users.

I'm planning to post lot of posts from now and they will be about lot of different things around Ubuntu, Linux and free software. There will be also Peter Learns articles, about system tweakage or how to do something without breaking your stable Ubuntu. There will be also my multimedia hurdle, DVDs, Gstreamer, also Jokosher progress (Those guys continue to deliver what they promise, kudos to them), Jono also wrote good intro article about Gstreamer, Python and GTK combo or how make multimedia player in 100 lines of code.

There is lot of things to hype, to be sadden, to be happy, or to just have warm feeling inside about, so stay tuned.

And ohh, certainly Ubuntu Diaries will have Latvian version too.

ALSA worries countinues

2006-04-08T15:29:00.000+03:00

And I thought to myself, that it was too easy...

Yesterday, playing again with Jokosher, I run again in two errors on both computers I use to test gstreamer-alsa/Jokosher stuff with. First of all, I got error while try to address 'hw:0' as device from which you can record from. It was bugging me for a while and I thought that it is Ubuntu or ALSA bug.

So after consulting with j^ in private on IRC, I got that these are two seperate issues. First was on my work computer and it was more like this - any ALSA recording, using 'device=hw:0' was failure.

pecisk@ubuntu:~$ gst-launch-0.10 alsasrc device=hw:0 ! flacenc ! filesink location=device.flacSetting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is live and does not need PREROLL ...ERROR: from element /pipeline0/alsasrc0: Could not get/set settings from/on resource.
Additional debug info:
gstalsasrc.c(349): set_hwparams (): /pipeline0/alsasrc0:
Rate doesn't match (requested 44100Hz, get 0Hz)
ERROR: pipeline doesn't want to preroll.
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Setting pipeline to READY ...
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
FREEING pipeline ...
pecisk@ubuntu:~$

However, j^ suggested to check out the same recording with arecord, which gave me more clues about what causes failure:

pecisk@ubuntu:~$ arecord -D hw:0 -f cd test.wav
Recording WAVE 'test.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
Warning: rate is not accurate (requested = 44100Hz, got = 48000Hz)
please, try the plug plugin (-Dplug:hw:0)

So issue appeared to consist of two problems - my sound card has recording locked on 48000Hz - quite unusual for built-in sound card (could be card problem or ALSA driver bug) and alsasrc (and as far is known, alsasink too) don't probe cards for rate instead of that requesting it. If cards set rate doesn't mach with requested from alsasrc/alsasink, it fails. Solutions can be several - first, probing for rate of PCM in alsasrc/alsasink would be very good, because it would benefit for various encodings/players/recorders to convert their media before playing it. This, however, would require bug gstreamer guys _or_ start to take it upon myself. Another solution would be simply probe sound card PCM directly for rate and use it within pipeline - but it feels more like workaround, not long-living solution to problem:

gst-launch alsasrc device=hw:0 ! "audio/x-raw-int,channels=2,rate=48000,depth=16" ! audioconvert ! flacenc ! filesink location="test.flac"

So this is for my first problem. Second one, however, appeared to be more difficult one. I have two sound cards on my home computer:

pecisk@blackcatstudio:~$ cat /proc/asound/pcm
00-00: VIA 8235 : VIA 8235 : playback 4 : capture 1
00-01: VIA 8235 : VIA 8235 : playback 1 : capture 1
02-00: ICE1712 multi : ICE1712 multi : playback 1 : capture 1
02-01: ICE1712 consumer : ICE1712 consumer : playback 1 : capture 1
02-02: ICE1712 consumer (DS) : ICE1712 consumer (DS) : playback 6

Using System > Preferences > Sound, you can choose which card would be used then for playing sounds/movies/etc (I usually switch to my EWS88MT, which sounds just perfect for music/movies with gst-0.10, thanks to ALSA/Gstreamer guys). It changes order of soundcards (defining which card is default one) and creates .asoundrc and .asoundrc.asoundconf files within your home directory. This, however, screws up 'hw' definitions and it was no more possible to record anything using 'hw:0' even from arecord.

So on my todo list is to:
* Fill bug about Ubuntu/GNOME screwing sound card definitions in ALSA - should be easy to fix;
* Fill bug for Gstreamer about probing rate from PCMs and using them for play/recording;
* Take a look on ALSA, Gstreamer and GNOME with various cards in computer - how such scenarios could be improved;

Death of the bug and other musings

2006-04-07T17:19:00.000+03:00

Well, after little brainstorming, noise and brohaha, annoying gstreamer-alsa recording bug got fixed. Thanks to j^ and Sebastian of Ubuntu, bug fix was provided and new version rolled out yesterday. So now I can record with Jokosher and GNOME Sound Recorder on Ubuntu, using Gstreamer backend, without any problem.

Differently, nvidia binary driver got another bug fix release, which seems have to eliminate lot of lockups in my work computer. Will try Xgl later, which was unusable with such nvidia driver's behaviour, t.i. locked up after 5 mins.

Played with Jokosher - nice and easy for now, while not having any serious functionality (as it waits for it's 0.1 release). Slices and their split/join looks shiny and really gives promise of serious app. Ellio started to hack ALSA channel split (for multiple channel card owners like me :)) element for gstreamer, various bits and peaces gets added, visual bugs fixed. Ellio also works on using Gnonlin (Non-linear elements for Gstreamer, used in various video editors for now) for audio stuff.

Modern Ubuntu times

2006-04-02T22:27:00.000+03:00

There are moments in the life when I miss all that Linux desktop begining stuff, when you had to tweak your Linux distribution at maximum to get, for example, divx playing. For now, I just have to enable universe and metaverse and install gstreamer-ffmpeg and gstreamer-plugins-bad and gstreamer-plugins-ugly (for AC3 sound) to get it work. Few clicks and I can play my divx just fine, also Quicktime movies. However, Totem plugin for Firefox still has lot of raw edges, so there is room for improvement. But I am very happy to see that Gstreamer idea proves it's worthy.

Saying that, Ubuntu Dapper beta still has bugs to squeeze, and there comes today's story about several important ones. Bunch of funny and talented guys have created project Jokosher, which aims to provide easy to use and easy to configure multitrack recorder/sequencer, using newest technologies like Gstreamer 0.10, GTK+ 2.8, Python, and Cairo (more in Cakewalk/Cubase direction. In meantime, I would like to point out, that profesionally aclaimed Ardour as Protools replacement will get gtk+2 interface very soon too). They have big fun coding and improving their baby and I say more power to them.
While testing their work, I run into problem that newest gstreamer-0.10 in Dapper won't record anything from alsasrc, which is very pitty. Seems like recording stuff using gstreamer is all broken. However, Ubuntu guys are informed about this problem, also Gstreamer mob, so I hope for fast fix.
And yeah, these days is when Dapper flies sixth time. Grab it for testing/bug reporting pleasure there. And register on Launchpad to register bugs and comment them with your expierence if there is already one.

Food fight at GNOME Planet, part II

2006-02-07T14:00:00.000+02:00

It was quite easy to get know what is really going on here with all land shaking and screaming of lost lifes (ok, that was overblown). And after Jimmac posted his "why oh why" was so very easy to say that be such post some weeks previously, there won't be such flaming and calling in names for him and Dobey. So...it was just about cleaning up icon theme, using new, much better looking Tango icons and dropping names inside icons. When described, it makes all sense. However, it would be nice to find a different way visually easy to distinguish different file/connection types. It maybe means nothing for common user, but for advanced ones with their motoric skils it can save minutes from their work time.
One of proposals is to use emblems - and actually I would like that. However, count of emblems are somehow limited and you can't get emblem for each file type. Then I though about overlayered text over icon - you could turn it easily on/off.

Actually, at least on Ubuntu Drapper after few hours your forget that those icons where used to contain text, because new ones looks very clear and polished. Kudos to Jimmac and Dobey and all Tango team.

Got myself a little reading about Gstreamer, Glib, GObject and Gstreamer MIDI support. Wanna get dirty with all this stuff :) But let's start with C.

First time experience

2006-02-06T13:00:00.000+02:00

It is just my first post in this blog, for testing sake. I would write here about my bug hunting with GNOME/Ubuntu and Linux in general, my open source and free software experience in server field, and also about aviable free software tools in digital recording field.

For now, I'm just messing with Ubuntu Drakker, which has some positive and some negative strides, but in overall, Ubuntu gets better and better with each release. Have filled various bugs here and there (mostly multimedia related), get confused and saddened by legal straws and problems to get mp3 out of box support in distros (I prefer Ogg Vorbis, but I don't want left many users with lot of mp3 in the cold). Also there is a little food fight in p.g.o. about icons in buttons and texts in buttons. As it was expected, in theory taken steps sounds nice, but in reality you can't fit one glove for any hand. For example, I actually don't care about text in icons for graphical files, it would be better without them probably. However, I am just very against removing them from mount icons. And it is good that some kind of compromise starts to appear - for example, emblems a la Nautilus fame would be very nice.

In the evening I will write more.