Archive for August, 2010
Lightspark 0.4.4 released
Posted by Alessandro Pignotti in Lightspark on August 29, 2010
Lightspark 0.4.4 has been released today. Thanks a lot to all the people that made this release possible. Beside the usual amount of bug fixes several new features have been included
- Localization support (using gettext)
- ActionScript exception handling support
- More robust network handling
- Streams controls (Play/Pause/Stop)
It should be noted that, although now video streams controls are supported they’ll be not usable in most YouTube videos as mouse event dispatching to controls is still clobbered by missing masking support.
Lightspark now supports localized error messages, but we miss translations! So I’d like to invite any user (non developers included) willing to help Lightspark to contribute the translation for his/her native language.
I’d also like to give some insight what is being worked on for the next release (0.4.5). First of all the pluginized audio backend is now mature enough to be merged upstream, this is the first step toward support for multiple audio backends. That said anyway Lightspark will always focus on functionality and not on the amount of backends offered. We’ll work to offer a very small number of fully working backends.
In the mean time we’re also discussing a new faster and more powerful graphics architecture. My proposal is a mixed software/hardware rendering pipeline, somehow inspired by modern compositing window mangers. Static (defined in the SWF file) and dynamic (generated using ActionScript code) geometries will be rendered in software using cairo and exploiting the thread pool to be scalable on multi core architectures. The resulting surfaces and decoded video frames (if any) will be uploaded using Pixel Buffer Objects to offload the work to the video card (this usually involves a DMA transfer). OpenGL will then be used to blit the various rendered components on screen, while applying filters, effects and blending.
That’s all folks. As always testing from as many people as possible is critical for the success of the project, so please try out this release and report any crashes/weird issues and anything you don’t like. I’d like to put an emphasis about this: never assume a bug is already known. If you hit a crash take a look at launchpad bug tracker. If your issue is not already reported, please do it!
Lightspark 0.4.4 released
Posted by Alessandro Pignotti in Lightspark on August 29, 2010
Lightspark 0.4.4 has been released today. Thanks a lot to all the people that made this release possible. Beside the usual amount of bug fixes several new features have been included
- Localization support (using gettext)
- ActionScript exception handling support
- More robust network handling
- Streams controls (Play/Pause/Stop)
It should be noted that, although now video streams controls are supported they’ll be not usable in most YouTube videos as mouse event dispatching to controls is still clobbered by missing masking support.
Lightspark now supports localized error messages, but we miss translations! So I’d like to invite any user (non developers included) willing to help Lightspark to contribute the translation for his/her native language.
I’d also like to give some insight what is being worked on for the next release (0.4.5). First of all the pluginized audio backend is now mature enough to be merged upstream, this is the first step toward support for multiple audio backends. That said anyway Lightspark will always focus on functionality and not on the amount of backends offered. We’ll work to offer a very small number of fully working backends.
In the mean time we’re also discussing a new faster and more powerful graphics architecture. My proposal is a mixed software/hardware rendering pipeline, somehow inspired by modern compositing window mangers. Static (defined in the SWF file) and dynamic (generated using ActionScript code) geometries will be rendered in software using cairo and exploiting the thread pool to be scalable on multi core architectures. The resulting surfaces and decoded video frames (if any) will be uploaded using Pixel Buffer Objects to offload the work to the video card (this usually involves a DMA transfer). OpenGL will then be used to blit the various rendered components on screen, while applying filters, effects and blending.
That’s all folks. As always testing from as many people as possible is critical for the success of the project, so please try out this release and report any crashes/weird issues and anything you don’t like. I’d like to put an emphasis about this: never assume a bug is already known. If you hit a crash take a look at launchpad bug tracker. If your issue is not already reported, please do it!
Getting things GNOME and Remember the milk: call for testers!
Posted by Luca Invernizzi in Getting Thing GNOME! on August 25, 2010
Aloha planet,
as you may know, Getting Things GNOME is a todo-manager software that, among other things, can synchronize the things-you-really-should-be-doing-instead-of-reading-this-post with various sources.
One of its most popular features is the ability to synchronize with Remember the Milk.
For the next release of GTG, I’ve written a new version of that synchronization, with features a variety of nice things. Among those:
- background sync (set up once and forget about it)
- support for RTM recurrent tasks
- rollbacking of partial syncs
- on-the-fly sync from GTG to RTM
Before releasing that, however, I’d like to do have it well tested, to ensure that no harm is done to your precious todo items, so.. I’m looking for testers!
If you have the 5 minutes necessary and you’re interested in trying new stuff even before it hits a PPA, execute
tar czf gtg_backup.tgz .local/share/gtg/ #just in case, backup of your gtg install (if any) sudo aptitude install bzr bzr branch lp:~gtg-user/gtg/all_the_backends_merge_requests gtg_backends cd gtg_backends ./scripts/debug.sh -d #this lauches a debug version of GTG that doesn't touch your own GTG tasks
And go to Edit->Backends to start (your existing GTG tasks won’t be touched, so you’re safe).
You’re more than welcome to play with the other backends as well (and report bugs, as they should be ready for being released as well). Those are, at the moment:
- twitter
- identi.ca
- tomboy
- gnote (needs development version of gnote)
- launchpad
- local file
If you find a bug, please report it to https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/gtg (linking this post).
If you don’t fine any, leave a comment here, so we can know that we’re good (^_^).
Thanks!
Getting things GNOME and Remember the milk: call for testers!
Posted by Luca Invernizzi in Getting Thing GNOME! on August 25, 2010
Aloha planet,
as you may know, Getting Things GNOME is a todo-manager software that, among other things, can synchronize the things-you-really-should-be-doing-instead-of-reading-this-post with various sources.
One of its most popular features is the ability to synchronize with Remember the Milk.
For the next release of GTG, I’ve written a new version of that synchronization, with features a variety of nice things. Among those:
- background sync (set up once and forget about it)
- support for RTM recurrent tasks
- rollbacking of partial syncs
- on-the-fly sync from GTG to RTM
Before releasing that, however, I’d like to do have it well tested, to ensure that no harm is done to your precious todo items, so.. I’m looking for testers!
If you have the 5 minutes necessary and you’re interested in trying new stuff even before it hits a PPA, execute
tar czf gtg_backup.tgz .local/share/gtg/ #just in case, backup of your gtg install (if any) sudo aptitude install bzr bzr branch lp:~gtg-user/gtg/all_the_backends_merge_requests gtg_backends cd gtg_backends ./scripts/debug.sh -d #this lauches a debug version of GTG that doesn't touch your own GTG tasks
And go to Edit->Backends to start (your existing GTG tasks won’t be touched, so you’re safe).
You’re more than welcome to play with the other backends as well (and report bugs, as they should be ready for being released as well). Those are, at the moment:
- twitter
- identi.ca
- tomboy
- gnote (needs development version of gnote)
- launchpad
- local file
If you find a bug, please report it to https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/gtg (linking this post).
If you don’t fine any, leave a comment here, so we can know that we’re good (^_^).
Thanks!
Lightspark 0.4.3 final release
Posted by Alessandro Pignotti in Lightspark on August 10, 2010
I’m officially announcing Lightspark 0.4.3. A couple of interesting features as been added since the RC and a good amount of bug fixes thanks to user reports. The aggregate changelog since 0.4.2 is huge! Here it is:
- Liquid layout support
- Faster rendering of the input layer
- Reduced memory consumption
- Support for H263/MP3 videos
- Smoother playback of audio and video
- Fallback on Gnash for older clips
Many users asked why vimeo, hulu and many others video sharing sites don’t work while youtube does. The answer is, although flash based video players looks simple a lot of action script code is actually being executed under the hood. Support for youtube has been a priority given it’s huge popularity but I’d like to clarify that lightspark is not a youtube specific hack and that over time support will come for any site.
As a way to help new developer join my effort I’d like to launch a “site adopting” campaign. Developers that are willing to work on lightspark, but are scared by the complexity of the challenge can choose a site using flash that is important/useful for them and work to implement the needed features. To help them I’m most always online in the #lightspark IRC channel and available to tutor them.
As a closing news, after the last post a radeon user helped to shed some light over the ati related issues. radeon users are urged to upgrade at least the mesa 7.8.2 to try lightspark as the support for the needed GL features got definitely better. Keep reporting bugs if anything is not working even after the upgrade. Moreover, I’ve discovered today that firefox older than version 3.5.11 will not work as it misses a needed plugin interface, so keep your systems updated!
Lightspark 0.4.3 final release
Posted by Alessandro Pignotti in Lightspark on August 10, 2010
I’m officially announcing Lightspark 0.4.3. A couple of interesting features as been added since the RC and a good amount of bug fixes thanks to user reports. The aggregate changelog since 0.4.2 is huge! Here it is:
- Liquid layout support
- Faster rendering of the input layer
- Reduced memory consumption
- Support for H263/MP3 videos
- Smoother playback of audio and video
- Fallback on Gnash for older clips
Many users asked why vimeo, hulu and many others video sharing sites don’t work while youtube does. The answer is, although flash based video players looks simple a lot of action script code is actually being executed under the hood. Support for youtube has been a priority given it’s huge popularity but I’d like to clarify that lightspark is not a youtube specific hack and that over time support will come for any site.
As a way to help new developer join my effort I’d like to launch a “site adopting” campaign. Developers that are willing to work on lightspark, but are scared by the complexity of the challenge can choose a site using flash that is important/useful for them and work to implement the needed features. To help them I’m most always online in the #lightspark IRC channel and available to tutor them.
As a closing news, after the last post a radeon user helped to shed some light over the ati related issues. radeon users are urged to upgrade at least the mesa 7.8.2 to try lightspark as the support for the needed GL features got definitely better. Keep reporting bugs if anything is not working even after the upgrade. Moreover, I’ve discovered today that firefox older than version 3.5.11 will not work as it misses a needed plugin interface, so keep your systems updated!
Lightspark 0.4.3 RC1
Posted by Alessandro Pignotti in Lightspark on August 8, 2010
Today has been published the first release candidate of Lightspark 0.4.3. Source tarballs are available as usual from launchpad. Prebuild packages for Ubuntu Lucid and Maverick are available from the PPA as usual.
The new features in this release are
- Faster rendering
- Reduced memory consumption
- Support for H263/MP3 video (using FFmpeg)
- Smoother audio and video playback
Be sure to try this out and report bugs in launchpad and our irc channel (irc://irc.freenode.org/lightspark). Users of radeon cards (and the open source radeon driver) are especially invited to try lightspark. Many radeon users complained about crashes and weird renderings which are often caused by missing features in the drivers. It would be nice to gather as much information as possible on working/non working cards to open a unique bug report upstream.
Lightspark 0.4.3 RC1
Posted by Alessandro Pignotti in Lightspark on August 8, 2010
Today has been published the first release candidate of Lightspark 0.4.3. Source tarballs are available as usual from launchpad. Prebuild packages for Ubuntu Lucid and Maverick are available from the PPA as usual.
The new features in this release are
- Faster rendering
- Reduced memory consumption
- Support for H263/MP3 video (using FFmpeg)
- Smoother audio and video playback
Be sure to try this out and report bugs in launchpad and our irc channel (irc://irc.freenode.org/lightspark). Users of radeon cards (and the open source radeon driver) are especially invited to try lightspark. Many radeon users complained about crashes and weird renderings which are often caused by missing features in the drivers. It would be nice to gather as much information as possible on working/non working cards to open a unique bug report upstream.
Getting Things GNOME! — GSoC review (#11)
Posted by Luca Invernizzi in Uncategorized on August 6, 2010
Hello planet!
I’m back from GUADEC. It was my first conference about open source and it was great.
I’ve found particularly inspiring the talk by Guillaume Desmottes about Telepathy and Epiphany, which can be great to extend GTG possibilities in collaboration.
The talk by Jake Edge about promoting free software projects was also very interesting, in particular for the young Lightspark project (that went completely unnoticed for a few months before showing up on planet GNOME).
Thanks to the exciting talks and people at GUADEC, the GTG team (even the people who were not there!) has been working fervently on a nice rewrite of some parts of GTG core, along with a lot of unit-tests. Hopefully, a lot of bugs will be closed thanks to this, and GTG will be nicer to code.
As for my Google Summer of Code on Getting Things Gnome support for multiple backends, this week has seen:
- a port of my Evolution plugin as a backend (that was the last one planned)
- refactoring of the Twitter plugin to get authorization through Oauth (using the tweepy library, thanks Tante for the hint)
- docs, docs, docs
Next week, I’ll keep documenting and testing. I should also write a guide on how to write new backends. See you next week!
Getting Things GNOME! — GSoC review (#11)
Posted by Luca Invernizzi in Uncategorized on August 6, 2010
Hello planet!
I’m back from GUADEC. It was my first conference about open source and it was great.
I’ve found particularly inspiring the talk by Guillaume Desmottes about Telepathy and Epiphany, which can be great to extend GTG possibilities in collaboration.
The talk by Jake Edge about promoting free software projects was also very interesting, in particular for the young Lightspark project (that went completely unnoticed for a few months before showing up on planet GNOME).
Thanks to the exciting talks and people at GUADEC, the GTG team (even the people who were not there!) has been working fervently on a nice rewrite of some parts of GTG core, along with a lot of unit-tests. Hopefully, a lot of bugs will be closed thanks to this, and GTG will be nicer to code.
As for my Google Summer of Code on Getting Things Gnome support for multiple backends, this week has seen:
- a port of my Evolution plugin as a backend (that was the last one planned)
- refactoring of the Twitter plugin to get authorization through Oauth (using the tweepy library, thanks Tante for the hint)
- docs, docs, docs
Next week, I’ll keep documenting and testing. I should also write a guide on how to write new backends. See you next week!