Mandriva 2007.0, RTL, Lozere

Mandriva 2007.0 is out
I guess most people already know about it but Mandriva Linux 2007.0 is available for everybody now, and it is the first distribution to ship GNOME 2.16 (yay). Moreover, if you (or your friends) just want to test it without installing it first, you can now grab Live CD in both GNOME (yay) and KDE flavors, which can later be used to install the distribution on your system. And remember, if you don't like Ia Ora theme colors, there are always 3 other flavors (colors) available.

RTL
While fixing some Ia Ora bugs with vmware and gnomine, I tested it with RTL languages (such as arabic, hebrew and farsi). I knew I didn't had time to do those tests before 2007.0 but better later than never ;) Anyway, there were some bugs, which are now fixed and after discussing with Bedhad, I also changed light direction on theme when used in RTL, so light is now coming from the right side, inversing shadows and horizontal gradients. Result looks a little strange for non RTL readers but I think most RTL languages readers will be pleased. The only thing I didn't change is Metacity theme, since it doesn't support RTL and I didn't want to add 4 other metacity theme just for that (and I'm not sure other OS switch WM buttons positions).

And of course, screenshots (with help of TheWidgetFactory, click for full resolution) : LTR (as reference) and RTL

Lozere
I'm taking a two weeks vacations in my native soil. I'm usually not spending a lot of time there because I really enjoy Paris (which is now my home) and I can't do much things in country land (and after staying there for 18 years, I know there isn't much things to do) but I'm expecting something different this time. Aside upgrading my mom computer to latest Mandriva, I'll be visiting countryside as a tourist (something most people never do) and testing my new 400D at the same time. Let's hope I'll do nice photos ;)

Metro by night, 400D, Google Reader

Paris Metro by night



Two weeks ago, I was able to participate to a very special night, organised by RATP (Paris public transport company, in charge of bus and metro) and Ademas (association of fan of Paris metro) in Paris metro. For one night (from 23h30 to 5h30), we visited a lot of Paris metro stations, including some ghost stations (station which were never opened to the public, such as Haxo or Porte Molitor which doesn't have any stairs to exit station) or closed ones (which are no longer used like Croix-Rouge or Saint-Martin, or used for non public purpose like Porte des Lilas Cinema, used for movie or advertising shooting). The tour was extremely interesting, with a lot of informations on metro history and heritage. Moreover, the tour was done with a single train which was autorized to change from one line to another (something impossible in Paris metro). All my photos for this tour are available here.

Google Reader
As many other people, I've tested the new version of Google (feed) Reader. I tested first version when it was launched some months ago and it was unusable for me (and incredibly slow). For some years, I've been using Planet as my personal aggregator : it is easy to use if you have your own webserver but it is a little too much memory hungry and cpu intensive when refreshing feed and for me who is switching PC between work and home, I need to remember what was the latest entry I read before I switched PC. But I must confess I really enjoy the inverse chronological order associated with a merge all feed style. Moreover, I can fetch aggregated feed on my Palm for offline reading every morning easily. I tried Netvibes but their way of managing feeds doesn't really scale when reading a lot of feeds. So, I tried again Google Reader, not expected anything usable but I was wrong : sorting and merging is done just like I was doing with Planet, automatically mark as read when an article is scrolled is a very smart feature, allowing to star a article (for later reading) is also very useful. And it is not slow (and it works on my 770 too). I've been using it for three days now and I love it. I'll probably continue to use Planet at least for offline aggregation but I might have found the perfect online RSS reader (at least for now).

Canon 400D

After wondering for some weeks on camera and lenses, I offered myself for my birthday a Canon 400D this week, with both a Sigma 18-200 and Canon 50mm f1.8 lenses. Pascal did took the exact same decision on the camera and main lens one day after me (and both bought camera at from one net vendor and lens from another net vendor). And we discovered this coincidence only on monday when, on Mandriva internal irc channel, I said postman delivered my order at home :) Today, after rain decided to stop, I was able to test this brand new camera (and my first reflex) in Bois de Vincennes, around Lac Daumesnil where I do my running session. And I'm quite happy with the result, for my first contact with this camera. Sigma focal range is great (coming from 28-100 on my Powershot S60) for a decent price (even if it isn't stabilized). If you are curious, you can look at those photos here.

2.16, Mona

I guess everybody already know about it but if you were alone without internet connection for the past weeks, you must know it is there :



GNOME 2.16 is out. And guess what : it is available in Mandriva cooker.
Another good news :

Mandriva Linux 2007.0 Release Candidate 1 (codename Mona) is also available. It already contains GNOME 2.16.0 and a lot of improvements, such as parallel initscripts (allowing even faster booting than before), our new Ia Ora theme (I already talked about it before, and I want to thank everybody who gave us their input, it helped us a lot) and for people want want 3D effects on their desktop (I'm not a fan of this, but whatever ;), it is shipping with both Xgl and AIGLX with automatic configuration, based on your graphic cards.

Help us by testing the release and reporting bugs. And guess what : it is available as a GNOME installable live-CD (as well as a KDE one ).

Now, I just need to fix as many bug already reported to me as possible before final version is frozen :D

Update on Ia Ora

So, last thursday, I spend a lot of time with Helene, our graphist, reviewing various comments we got on initial version of Ia Ora (including those on my previous post, thanks to everybody who contributed) and checking all the small glitches we found ourselves. After more coding and a little fighting with gtkrc matching, I did version 1.0.6 on Friday on cooker, which will be available in Mandriva Linux 2007.0 RC, scheduled for next week.

A little summary of the comments we got and changes we did for 1.0.6 (compared to 1.0.3, last version I blog about) :

• we replaced cross with a check for checkbutton, since they are more common. But if you prefer cross, you can still get it, by setting use_cross=TRUE as parameter of ia_ora gtk2 engine


• I renamed Ia Ora Yellow to Ia Ora Orange. It was supposed to be called Ia Ora Orange but I forgot about it, remembering our earlier internal discussions, when I did the initial commit.


• metacity window border has been increased from 1 to 3 pixels : it is much easier to grab, without changing too much initial design. Border is now using two colors, giving slight blurry sense, which is, IMHO, nice (even if it wasn't part of the original design). Changing border size also fixed metacity issue when using Alt-Tab


• also on metacity part, we changed text color for unfocused windows (more gray) and text shadow for focused window (better readability)


• I workarounded GTK bug 346751 (which can only be seen on some locales) in Ia Ora, allowing correct colors in treeview


• sliders have been improved a lot : we didn't increase their size (it would clutter the design) BUT we improved mouseover/prelight (which was way too subtle, probably causing people to complain about bad usability about sliders)


• progressbar design has been improved too : trough background is now the same as widget background (I used the wrong color) and full part of progress bar is now longer using white scaling mark but colored one, fixing readibility for text displayed in progressbar


• for free, orange and gray themes, check and radiobuttons are now longer drawn in colors but in gray, for better readibility. Old behaviour is still here, using black_check=FALSE as a ia_ora engine parameter. Feel free to comment about this change, if you feel they are readable enough or not.


• spinbutton size has been reduced to use an even size (needed for correct arrow position) and arrow positions have been fixed


• colors used for points in handler are now correct (I used the wrong one)


• I workaround color usage for Evolution, since bg[ACTIVE] and base[ACTIVE] are used, which is causing odd rendering with default values


• text highlight has been fixed for Combobox for blue theme


• selected text color for the various themes has been changed for better readability


• radio and check button position has been fixed compared to text position

So, results are visible here (old version is visible here). Now, we are waiting for your comments !

Edit: after popular demands,here are some thumbnails of latest version of Ia Ora, click on them for full version :

Ia Ora follow-up

I must confess I quite happy getting comments and suggestions on our new theme. Funny is to see nobody gave me known issues (well, Reinouts did give me an almost complete list three days ago :). I'm going to list all of them with some explanations :

• thin border : initially, Helene (our graphist) wanted to drop completely window borders and uses instead shadows but since all those fancy (and often crashy) 3D effects provided by compiz/metacity-compositor won't be enabled on everybody's computer (and I know I don't want to replace metacity with something else), we did a 1 pixel border. Unfortunately, it had unwanted side effects : hard to resize window (you must grab the 1 pixel wide border) and hard to choose window when using Alt-Tab (metacity is using a black&white rectangle to highlight to be focused window, but since our border is 1 pixel, the rectangle is only white and hard to see)


• stripes on progress bar : currently, white stripes are draw on full part of progressbar, but it causes unreadable text, we will try to draw stripes in light blue


• slider : know issue. When I first saw its design, I had some doubts (also because I use trackballs which are less precise than mouse, which is good to test widget usability) and I discussed with Helene (our graphist) and we decided to go with it and wait for feedback. I'll see if we can wider it on both sides of 1 pixel (we don't want to clutter its design). We might also need to dark it a little bit when widget is insensitive (for instance, when totem is playing a unseekable stream). Slider center isn't very visible because we wanted it to be subtle, after all it isn't that important to detach it from the rest of the widget.


• color schemes other than dark blue too light : we knew about it, we will try to dark them a little more


• combobox popup text is black instead of white for the selected choice : I haven't the correct gtkrc class match to fix it yet (funnily, there is no problem with other widgets like optionmenu)


• gtk warning about unparsable color for treeview odd/even color background : gtk+ is having some issues with symbolic colors (yes, Mitch, I know you like my bugs about symbolic colors ;)


• wrong color on selected row and preferences dialog background when focus is lost (should be a light blue, not gray)


• missing line for panel separator : this one is wanted because it tends to clutter interface. But don't worry, when moving mouse cursor over the separator, there is a color hightlight on the entire widget, not only on the three points.


• about color selection : guess what, each color palette is supposed to be associated with one of our product (but all colors will be available for everybody) : light blue for Download (aka Free) version, yellow/orange for Discovery and One (liveCD), dark blue for Powerpack and Gray for PowerpackPlus (ie the professional oriented one). So, I guess we choose them correctly ;)


• disabled / unmovable scrollbar are drawn blue : this is a gtk issue/bug (I haven't fill a bug report yet), since scrollbar should appear disabled when it can't be moved (open a new gnome-terminal window and move your mouse over scrollbar, it will highlight but I think it shouldn't). I'll try to workaround it in Ia Ora engine (I don't want to break other themes by patching gtk without upstream approval) but I don't know if it is possible.


• about X in check box : both Alan and Thiago comments are very interesting but rewind a little. Using X in checkbox was already present in Galaxy and I never got any comments (bad or good) about it for three years it has been out in the wild. Moreover, for French people (and maybe other european dudes), when you fill a form, you always do a X (I only learn about the check mark when I saw some US made TV advertising broadcasted for France and at that time, the check mark was feeling not right for me). This is why we never noticed it. I did a fast review of various gtk themes available (as well as Apple and Microsoft UI guides) and only HighContrast is using a cross but for visual reasons (a blurry cross can still be recognize). Anyway, I'll discuss this point with Helene (and anyway, we also use a checkmark in menu, since a cross without any border would feel ackward there).

On a somehow related subject, I recently read (through #FF00AA) about an Office User Interface blog which is quite interesting (I haven't had time to read it entirely).

Ia Ora, GNOME, photography

Ia Ora:
During last month, I've been working with our graphist on a new theme for soon to be released Mandriva 2007.0, since our previous theme (Galaxy) needed to be refreshed a little (it was already 3 years old). So, we prevent Ia Ora (which means hi for french polynesians). And because different people have different tastes in colours, we will provide it in 4 colors : dark blue, light blue, yellow/orange and gray. GNOME/GTK 2 engine is already available in Mandriva 2007.0 beta2 (beta 3 should be available next week) and KDE engine will be available soon. And of course, mandatory screenshots are available here. Dark blue version is considered almost final, other colored versions will be tuned next week, they are not dark enough for controls.

GNOME:
As part of release team, I did RC1 release of GNOME 2.16 (2.15.92) last tuesday. I must confess it was quite painful, mainly because it was the first release I managed (even if I'm part of release team for quite some time) and getting a complete build to succeed and work from scratch using tarballs is not easy at all (we are using jhbuild for that, not GARNOME whose maintainers take care of the various caveats of building a entire stack). And doing that when you are working in parallel on fixing bugs for next beta release of your distribution is really stressing. Anyway, release is out, please test it and reports bugs as early as possible, so maintainers have enough time to fix them before 2.16.0. (Subliminal ad : 2.15.92 is already available in Mandriva cooker and will be available in 2007.0 beta 3 released next week ;)

Photography:
Since last GUADEC and my visit of Barcelona, I've been doing a lot of reading and research about my photography needs. Trigger was this photo and Kathy Siera keynote about passionate users. You can clearly see a nice but unwanted) distorsion which made me release I needed to learn a little more about photography basis and maybe change my camera (my Canon S60 is still nice but not as powerful as a digital reflex). So, I bought and read both "National Geographic Practical Photography Guide" (a small and good guide you can take even when travelling) and the excellent "New Manual of Photography" from J. Hedgecoe (a must, very complete and understandable). And I've been trying to apply some lessons learned from those readings since then in two walks in Paris. And now, I've almost convinced myself to buy a new camera. Initially, I thought about Canon 350D (aka Digital Xt) but with Canon 400D announce this week, I'll probably wait a little and buy this one. The though choice will be lenses one, since I mainly shoot landscapes and town building (in this case, often some details). If you have some hints (and please, don't tell me to buy only Canon EF L IS lenses, my budget is not infinite ;), feel free to comment. And to test this soon to be bought camera, I plan to visit my native neighbourhood (something I never did as a tourist) next October, ie la Lozère and probably Montpellier too, since I never went back there since I was a student.

GUADEC, Barcelona

So, I came back from Barcelona on Saturday evening, after a two days visit of Barcelona, following GUADEC.

GUADEC
It was awesome, for serious stuff (presentations, talks), for fun (Fluendo and Maemo parties) and for people (I can't name everybody, but sharing GUADEC with Damien, our beloved Ekiga hacker). Photos are available here. Feel free to add comments or notes on them. I think Kathy Sierra keynote was enlightening, not only for GNOME community, but also from a distribution POV. It would be great to have the slides from this talk (I couldn't find them on guadec website :( .

Barcelona
My three days visit became a two days visit since I stay most of Thrusday at GUADEC for various talks but I still found enough time to do a Gaudi visit of Barcelona, including Sagrada Familia, Casa Ballto and Casa Milà (Pedrera). Following my tourist guide book, I tried a great cremery called Viader to taste "mel i mato". All my Barcelona photos are visible on my Flickr Barcelona set.