Parcellite Moved to SourceForge

Over the weekend I moved the Parcellite project to SourceForge. The new website can be found at http://parcellite.sourceforge.net


The new checkout command is svn co https://parcellite.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/parcellite/trunk parcellite


My blog will also soon be moved :)

Time Travel

Each day is a battle against time, there isn't enough in my day. I have been able to trickle down some i18n support in Parcellite during the last few days. I've had some translations that some nice contributors sent me sitting around and I finally was able to commit them to svn (german and italian). I have french and spanish to commit and I'll be done.

Aside from that, I've been looking for an alternative host to Google Code for the project (and future projects). I don't really like its "issues" system and it just lacks in general. So far I'm thinking DevjaVu or Assembla. Comments? Suggestions?

Open Source Developers are Amazing

I started writing Parcellite when I was a full time student, with little responsibilities. I was able to dedicate a large amount of time to carefully writing, testing, and debugging my little program during the week. Now that I have a full time job, I realize just how much dedication and effort other open source developers have to write great applications in what little free time they have. I am finding that either new responsibilities (which came with living my myself) and other interests (gaming/girlfriend) have kept me from quickly progressing on my program.

I have come up with an idea though: I will attempt to code 1 hour a day, every day. Be it a variable name change, testing a new function, fix comments, anything. As long as I keep myself busy with it, I'll be able to reach the goals that I have for this project in a reasonable amount of time.

*work work work*

If you haven't noticed, I have been a little inactive lately. That's because I started working full time and I'm still getting use to managing the little amount of time I have after my commute. I've also been working out some kinks on my grad school submission and my new apartment.

I really need to sit down and finish v0.8 of Parcellite. Though technically it's ready for release, I just need to clean it up a bit and add my own Spanish translation to it (and others). Version 0.7 is now available in Debian and Ubuntu's official repositories though :)

*hack hack hack*

Sat down for a while to work on v0.8 of Parcellite and managed to commit some changes to the way actions are executed. I used to use a simple system() call, but in its single-threaded nature Parcellite would become unresponsive until it finished executing your action. I implemented a simple pthread for each action executed so that you may continue to use the clipboard manager as it executes your desired action, something I should have done from the start but oh well :)

Positive Feedback

Lately I've gotten alot of positive feedback on Parcellite. I'm glad fellow open source enthusiasts are able to find use of my little project. Unfortunately I haven't gotten the chance to sit down and work on it because of "real life." Hopefully soon I can sit down and hack away version 0.8 which will include some new features and improvements, most of which have been suggested by the users.

Twitter Client

I tried Twitux but I didn't like it. So instead, when I have the time, I'll write a PyGTK client using the python-twyt wrapper. Of course I'll probably do this after I work on Parcellite, which I've been neglecting lately.

Anyone know any twitter clients besides Twitux?

Edit: I designed a GUI in glade I am happy with and instead picked the python-twitter wrapper. After I finish Parcellite v0.8 I will work more on it. Also, I'm calling it Nitwit :)

Xcompmgr

I wanted to compile my own xcompmgr, so I fetched it from its git repo:

git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/app/xcompmgr

Compiled it and ran it using these options:

xcompmgr -cC -t-3 -l-5 -r5

And this was the result:



There's a problem though. Because of a security update to X.org, xcompmgr causes terrible slowdown with terminals (gnome-terminal, urxvt, etc) and there appears to be no workaround at the moment.

Parcellite v0.7

Finally released v0.7 which I had sitting on the subversion repository for a while because of school/work. Get it while it's hot.

ChangeLog

v0.7 Sunday, March 30 2008

New
+ Added man page.
+ Option to disable/enable saving history.

Changes
+ Removed startup option.
+ Performance improvements.
+ Runs at startup by default in GNOME (remove via GNOME's Sessions application).
+ Config now saves in ~/.config/parcellite following freedesktop.org specifications.
+ Data now saves in ~/.local/share/parcellite following freedesktop.org specifications.
+ Bugfix: Assertion error on first run.

Apt Installs Recommended Packages by Default

I only recently noticed that when I use apt-get install, it not only installs my desired package, but also every package that the package recommends. To halt this behaviour I had to add these lines to the /etc/apt/apt.conf file:

APT
{
Install-Recommends "false";
Install-Suggests "false";
};

Spring Break

Spring break started for us this week. I still have to go work tuesday and thursday but for the rest of the time I'll be able to catch up on some online courses, coding and get around to installing Arch.

I've been hacking away at Parcellite and I have what could be v0.7 in the subversion repository already. Soon after I browse through the code a few more times I'll be able to make a release.

Also got a chance to play some SSBB yesterday. Epic game is epic.

Translations, Coding and Brawl

Over the weekend the lead developer of BillReminder, Og Maciel, mailed me about his app needing an updated spanish translation. I helped Og with some spanish translations quite a while ago when I used BillReminder's source to teach myself PyGTK and I contacted to thank him for his app. So on saturday I entertained myself updating the translations and mailed it to him so he could commit it.

I hacked a bit of Parcellite afterwards and released v0.6.1 which had some bugfixes that were in the svn for weeks. I feel that it is stable enough now to include that i18n header file and translate it to various languages. Maybe Og could help with that.

At night, I went over to a friend's house who had a modded Wii to play some Super Smash Bros: Brawl. Right now I'm having a serious withdrawl, I need to play moar! Can't wait to get my hands on my own copy and practice for competitive play.

Gnome Tweaks

Some of these could already be in effect depending on your distribution. Launch the configuration editor from Applications->System Tools->Configuration Editor or by typing gconf-editor in a terminal. Go down the tree to the following:

/apps/gnome-session/options

Here you can disable the show_splash_screen option for a login boost. Now go to:

/apps/metacity/general

Enable the reduced_resources option for a significant speed increase. A little further down the tree at:

/apps/nautilus/preferences

You can disable show_desktop to stop Nautilus from controlling the desktop. Of course this means that you won't get icons or a right-click menu on the desktop. Then, travel down to:

/apps/panel/global

Disable enable_animations and highlight_launchers_on_mouseover. Finally, if you append the following line to your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file (create it if it doesn't exist) you remove GTK menu delays.

gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0

Malicious Commands Warning

I read this post on the Ubuntu forums today since it got Digged and found it interesting that there has been enough incidents of tricking newbies into using malicious commands that they had to make a warning post about it.

The post is a good read, for newbie educational purposes, but it might also give some jackasses ammunition for newbies to come.

Apt Pinning

Afer using Debian Lenny (testing) for a while and being pretty conservative with it in terms of package upgrading, I decided it was time my Lenny installation saw some updated packages, specifically Clearlooks and Epiphany (v2.14.3). In order to do this more effectively without completely upgrading to Debian Sid (unstable) I did apt pinning.

Apt pinning will allow me to install packages from the unstable branch, which are more up to date, while keeping my testing installation. In order to achive this, You have to create two new config files in your /etc/apt directory. First, make a file called /etc/apt/apt.conf and place the following line:

APT::Default-Release "testing";

Now create a file called /etc/apt/preferences and in it place the following:

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -1

The preferences file changes the repositories' priority so that testing's will be higher than unstable on package upgrades and installations. Now you can add Debian's unstable repository to your sources.list

# Debian Unstable
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

In order to upgrade a package to the version in unstable, you simply use the following:

sudo aptitude install package/unstable

That is all. Now I have a Debian testing system and I'm able to install unstable packages at will.

Parcellite v0.4

I released Parcellite v0.4 a little while ago after I finished hacking its new actions feature. Now that I finished implementing what I wanted in a clipboard manager, I find myself staring at the source thinking "what now?" I can probably add a few more things without bloating it, I just have to figure out what those things are going to be. I think maybe I'll translate it to various languages to kill time.