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revision 1.6 by darktigrou, Sun Aug 28 18:41:47 2005 UTC revision 1.7 by darktigrou, Sun Aug 28 20:32:42 2005 UTC
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1  Google Summer of Code is over ! It's time for us to unveil all the GNOME goodies that came out of it. In this article, you'll learn about streaming and sharing some music with your GAIM buddys, hidding your personal data from others  by encrypting folders in one click from nautilus, using your webcam and your head as an input device and much more !  Google Summer of Code is over. It's time for us to unveil all the GNOME goodies that came out of it. In this article, you'll learn about streaming and sharing some music with your GAIM buddies, hiding your personal data from others  by encrypting folders in one click from nautilus, using your web cam and your head as an input device and much more !
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3  Google sponsored four hundred students to work on OpenSource projects like GNOME, Apache, PERL, and KDE during this summer. Students submitted applications to Google by the middle of June. Then mentors from the most active OpenSource related organizations (RedHat, The Perl Foundation, etc.) selected and mentored the ones that had the best potential. Of course, GNOME fans and mentors had a lot of ideas for students to work on.  Google sponsored four hundred students to work on OpenSource projects like GNOME, Apache, PERL, and KDE during this summer. Students submitted applications to Google by the middle of June. Then mentors from the most active Open Source related organizations (Red Hat, The Perl Foundation, etc.) selected and mentored the ones that had the best potential. Of course, GNOME fans and mentors had a lot of ideas for students to work on.
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5  The GNOME Foundation has mentored eleven students. They all worked on new features that, for the most part, have not been worked on before. By now, most of them have a working implementation of what was planned at the beginning of the summer. The projects' domains range from music sharing integrated to the desktop to live edition and versionning of developer documentation. There's even a firefox extension that will help you to share tips for mastering google searches.  The GNOME Foundation has mentored eleven students. They all worked on new features that, for the most part, have not been worked on before. By now, most of them have a working implementation of what was planned at the beginning of the summer. The projects' domains range from music sharing integrated to the desktop to live edition and version control of developer documentation. There's even a Firefox extension that will help you to share tips for mastering google searches.
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7  Be sure to read on to know all about the new GNOME bits offered by this summer of code.  Be sure to read on to know all about the new GNOME bits offered by this summer of code.
8    
9  On the music integration to the GNOME desktop side, two projects made their way through the Google application process : shared music spaces in gaim and playlists sharing with RythmBox.  On the music integration to the GNOME desktop side, two projects made their way through the Google application process : shared music spaces in Gaim and play lists sharing with RhythmBox.
   
 The first one was carried on by the very enthusiastic Raphael Slinckx. The initial plan was to allow people to stream music from and to their GAIM buddys in one click. As if it would not be enough to make it a must-have, "the project is a bit different from the submitted application proposal, especially concerning rhythmbox integration which was not planned initially.". As for now, "The application has reached a point where it works when the situation is perfect" You can see the result from his work in the following screenshots :  
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11    The first one was carried on by the very enthusiastic Raphael Slinckx. The initial plan was to allow people to stream music from and to their GAIM buddies in one click. As if it would not be enough to make it a must-have, "the project is a bit different from the submitted application proposal, especially concerning RhythmBox integration which was not planned initially.". As for now, "The application has reached a point where it works when the situation is perfect" You can see the result from his work in the following screenshots :
12  FIXME : screenshots  FIXME : screenshots
13    The project is not finished yet. Raphael "plans to move to a better streaming protocol when Gstreamer will be ready, and improving aspects such as firewall/nat bypassing.". Indeed, the feature will only work "if you have a PC directly connected to
14    Internet or a UPNP capable router, and no firewall.". He has been "astonished by the GNOME community", but found that "lacking, or even missing documentation", was one of the biggest problems he faced. Connect, push up the volume and share the music, it's as simple as it gets !
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16  The project is not finished yet. Raphael "plans to move to a better streaming protocol when gstreamer will be ready, and improving aspects such as firewall/nat byassing.". Indeed, the feature will only work "if you have a PC directly connected to  Charles Schmidt has been responsible for giving the love needed to the birth of the second music related project. As he says, "It's not just RhythmBox being able to share playlists with iTunes, but also RB sharing its music to other RB clients on the network". At first,  he "had suggested doing this using a DAAP module for GNOME VFS.  So that you could hand GnomeVFS a URI like "daap://Lyndsey's music" and it would return a directory full of music.". But quickly enough, he "was convinced by others that the DAAP code should live inside RhythmBox, not in a GnomeVFS module.".
17  internet or a upnp capable router, and no firewall.". He has been "astonished by the GNOME community", but found that "lacking, or even missing documentation", was one of the biggest problems he faced. Connect, push up the volume and share the music, it's as simple as it gets !  So far, it "has definitely paid off", and he was able to "push out a patch last night that other people were able to get working". Charles doesn't want to stop here, he "definitely see himself continuing to work with the RhythmBox community to improve DAAP" and he's "thinking to tackle equalizer support next". Even if he says that "Time management is a skill [he is] still lacking", great things should be coming from him in the next weeks. Congrats !
   
 Charles Schmidt has been responsible for giving the love needed to the birth of the second music related project. As he says, "It's not just RhythmBox being able to share playlists with iTunes, but also RB sharing its music to other RB clients on the network". At first,  he "had suggested doing this using a DAAP module for GnomeVFS.  So that you could hand GnomeVFS a URI like "daap://Lyndsey's music" and it would return a directory full of music.". But quickly enough, he "was convinced by others that the DAAP code should live inside Rhythmbox, not in a GnomeVFS module.".  
 So far, it "has definitely paid off", and he was able to "push out a patch last night that other people were able to get working". Charles doesn't want to stop here, he "definitely see himself continuing to work with the Rhythmbox community to improve DAAP" and he's "thinking to tackle equalizer support next". Even if he says that "Time management is a skill [he is] still lacking", great things should be coming from him in the next weeks. Congrats !  
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19  The core of the GNOME desktop has received a lot of attention too. Our students pushed it to places where it hasn't been before. Mentored by Christian Kellner, John Manning hacked the GNOME VFS layer to bring you encrypted folder support out of the box.  The core of the GNOME desktop has received a lot of attention too. Our students pushed it to places where it hasn't been before. Mentored by Christian Kellner, John Manning hacked the GNOME VFS layer to bring you encrypted folder support out of the box.
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21  FIXME  FIXME
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23  Every GNOME user uses applets. Travis Vachon and Havoc Pennington, well known for trying to put some simplicity into the GNOME desktop, worked on a easy way to setup and publish panel applets : the panel bundles.  Every GNOME user uses applets. Travis Vachon and Havoc Pennington, well known for trying to put some simplicity into the GNOME desktop, worked on a easy way to setup and publish panel applets : the panel bundles. "eliminating the need to build tools and package maintainers was one of the main goals behind this project", says Travis.  So, even if he had "originally thought of the extensions as written in either C or Python. The major problem [with C] is that this would make it necessary to have build tools installed". Luckily, "Python is a whole lot more fun to write, and allows a developer to really focus on the neat stuff", says Travis.
24    At first, Travis "had thought [he] would be creating a system to bundle up current panel applets for distribution.", however
25    "While many aspects of developing panel applets have carried over to the extension system, it is, indeed, a new system.". Nevertheless, "converting a current Python-coded applet to an extension is pretty simple, and will actually simplify the code".
26    Bundles can already be used without any addition to the GNOME desktop because they "are currently being implemented through a container applet". However, proper integration into the panel is, according to him, "a decent distance away".
27    Travis has been "particularly impressed by PyGTK, and all of the related GNOME Python bindings". On the opposite, he says that "it would be nice to see [the panel] improved". Indeed, "one original idea for the project was to be able to click on a link to a bundle on the web site and have it appear somewhere on the panel immediately.". When he tried to accomplish this, "it turned out this wouldn't be possible with the current implementation of the panel".
28    From now on, "there's a ton of work still to be done, from improving the panel_extension Python module to integrating things into the panel and translating things from Python to C to make them faster!".
29    In the meantime, if you want to know more about bundles, you can check out the tutorial Travis has wrote here : http://www.gnome.org/~tvachon/ .
30    
31  FIXME.  FIXME.
32    
33  And now for something completely different, the usual suspects strike again, sharing of google searches thanks to a firefox plugin.  And now for something completely different, the usual suspects strike again, sharing of google searches thanks to a Firefox plug-in.
34    
35  People often get stuck into unsuccessfull Google searches. Sanford is now able to offer a way to overcome this situation. His Search Party Firefox extension allows you to share search tips with people from all over the world. Type your search on the google web site, click on the "Join Search Party" toolbar button, and you are connected to an IRC-like server, being notified of other people's successfull attempts at searching similar information.  People often get stuck into unsuccessful Google searches. Sanford is now able to offer a way to overcome this situation. His Search Party Firefox extension allows you to share search tips with people from all over the world. Type your search on the Google web site, click on the "Join Search Party" toolbar button, and you are connected to an IRC-like server, being notified of other people's successful attempts at searching similar information.
36  The project takes the form of a firefox extension on the client side. On the server side, Sanford had "initially intended to write the Search Party Protocol directly over TCP, and have a Java server somewhere that took care of matching up users with the proper chat room, ". However, he changed his plans when Seth Nickell "pointed out early on that this might make the extension unusable for those behind various firewalls", and chose XML-RPC.  The project takes the form of a Firefox extension on the client side. On the server side, Sanford had "initially intended to write the Search Party Protocol directly over TCP, and have a Java server somewhere that took care of matching up users with the proper chat room, ". However, he changed his plans when Seth Nickell "pointed out early on that this might make the extension unusable for those behind various firewalls", and chose XML-RPC.
37  One of the main difficulty was to "teach the extension to speak XML-RPC", because "Firefox's included implementation is broken". As a consequence, he hasn't had "that much time to focus on the trickiest part of the project: deciding what exactly makes two search queries similar."  One of the main difficulty was to "teach the extension to speak XML-RPC", because "Firefox's included implementation is broken". As a consequence, he hasn't had "that much time to focus on the trickiest part of the project: deciding what exactly makes two search queries similar."
38  He plans to "continue working on it for quite awhile" and thinks that "the server will go through a lot of performance tuning and other refactoring" apart from "the work he would like to do on the query matching algorithms.".  He can't wait "for people to download it from the wiki, try it out, and tell [him] what they think!". So be sure to check it out, and give him your feedback !  He plans to "continue working on it for quite awhile" and thinks that "the server will go through a lot of performance tuning and other re-factoring" apart from "the work he would like to do on the query matching algorithms.".  He can't wait "for people to download it from the wiki, try it out, and tell [him] what they think!". So be sure to check it out, and give him your feedback !
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40  Finally, Adam McCullough and his mentor Johnathan Blanford, worked together to make GNOME more accessible. Their work is aimed at allowing any GNOME user to use a webcam and her facial motions as an input device.  Finally, Adam McCullough and his mentor Johnathan Blanford, worked together to make GNOME more accessible. Their work is aimed at allowing any GNOME user to use a web cam and her facial motions as an input device.
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42  FIXME.  FIXME.
43    
44  Overall, it seems that both students and mentors had a very good time hacking during this Google Summer of Code. As Raphael says, "every hacker would enjoy a summer of code !". The GNOME project has successfully managed to gather brillant students and mentors together to bring new features to the GNOME desktop. Once again, the GNOME project has proven highly reactive and, together with Google and the OpenSource community as a whole, made education, fun, and innovation into a perfect match. Congratulations to everybody that has been involved. It's now up to you to make good use from this effort.  Overall, it seems that both students and mentors had a very good time hacking during this Google Summer of Code. As Raphael says, "every hacker would enjoy a summer of code !". The GNOME project has successfully managed to gather brilliant students and mentors together to bring new features to the GNOME desktop. Once again, the GNOME project has proven highly reactive and, together with Google and the OpenSource community as a whole, made education, fun, and innovation into a perfect match. Congratulations to everybody that has been involved. "Everyone has been very helpful, friendly, and enthusiastic", says Travis. Congratulations to everyone that has helped in a way or the other during this summer.
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46    It's now up to you to make good use from this effort.
47    
48  Let Raphael have the final word. "Source code is your friend" and "GNOME rocks !".  Let Raphael have the final word. "Source code is your friend" and "GNOME rocks !".
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