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the avatar of Thomas Thym
the avatar of Thomas Thym

GSoC idea 3: Store annotations within PDF

As I mentioned in my previous post I can't mentor GSoC students myself and therefore are looking for a developer to jump in for me.

GSoC idea 3: Store annotations in PDF file

Application/component: Okular/Poppler

Brief explanation:
It is possible to store annotations with Okular. They are saved in separat files. One of the most wanted bugs is 151614 (123 comments, 739 votes). It would be awsome to have that feature in our wonderful Okular.

Expected results:
  1. Store annotations in the PDF file.
  2. If that is not enough apped support to modify the PDF (insert, delete pages etc.)
In my next life I will become a developer and the I could mentor that project myself. Until this happens I am really hoping someone else steps up.

the avatar of Thomas Thym
the avatar of Thomas Thym

GSoC idea 2: Improved (more elegant) keygeneration in KMail/Kleopatra


As I mentioned in my previous post I can't mentor GSoC students myself and therefore are looking for a developer to jump in for me.

GSoC idea 2: Improved (more elegant) keygeneration in KMail/Kleopatra

Application/component: KDEPIM/KMail and Kleopatra

Brief explanation:
Signing and encrypting emails is very old, however only a minority is using it. One reason might be, that it is not easy enough for regular users to use it. The importance for private and business users is still high. Private companies started to sell proprietary, secure e-mail services (e.g. in Germany DE-Mail and e-brief). There are good key creation, signing and other key management functions present in KDE software. The goal of this proposal is to make it easy and fast to work with signed and encrypted emails.

Expected results:
  1. Analyze and optimize the key creation, signing etc processes, make it dumb easy to create and use a key/signature. One way could be to add a button “Generate Key” (next to “Change”) in the KMail – Identity settings – Cryptographie; start the key creation wizard from Kleopatra and take the name and email address from that identity (at the moment you have to enter them manually). The user just has to enter the passphrase and is done. Offer a button “Save private key and revoke key on usb” or something like this and “send public key to server” / “Make key public”. Add the key creation (or import possibilities) into the identity / account creation wizard of KMail. Add the possibility to create revoke keys within the gui (when sending the key to the server, there is an information message yet.) 
  2. Guide the user through the whole process of signing and encrypting/decrypting emails. Offer possibilities to learn about the topic in an easy and fast way (offline help, online help / wiki, videos, tutorials etc). Show how they use the keys, how they get their keys signed, how they sign other keys etc. 
  3. Integrate other free/open services like CAcert. 
These are just some ideas. If there is someone interested I could go more into details if necessary.

the avatar of Matthias Hopf
the avatar of Matthias Hopf

It's X.org election time!

As all members of X.org should have noted in the meantime, it's election time again! After some efforts we actually do have more candidates than seats for the board of directors .

Some community members have asked a (rather large) number of questions, I have consolidated the answers I received in this wiki page. So far only three candidates replied, so for me at least the top three candidates are clear - it's better to vote for persons that do have an opinion and voice it, than for persons who prefer to stay quiet .

So go to members.x.org and vote!

the avatar of Thomas Thym
the avatar of Thomas Thym

GSoC: Mentors wanted! - Elegant display settings for presentations

I recently mentored some students during the Google Code In project. Now the preparations for Google Summer of Code have begun. Unfortunately I am not a hacker, I am a promo guy and I can't mentor here. Nevertheless I have some ideas for GSoC and I hope to scratch somebodies itch so she or he will mentor that idea. 

Idea 1: (More elegant) Display settings for presentations 

Application/component: Plasma

Brief explanation: The handling of multiple screens has continuously improved during the last releases. The handling of a stationary setting of two screens seems to be rather good. When it comes to presentation-mode with a projector I would be delighted to see even more elegance (simplicity).

Expected results: When doing presentations there is in general only one question to decide. The presentation mode:
  1. The same picture of both screens or 
  2. The notes on the notebook, the presentation on the projector. 
To 1: Autodetect the smallest max. resolution of the two displays. Instead of scaling the picture to full screen it would be nicer to keep the ration and leave some space blank on the left and right notebook screen.

To 2: Autodetect the max. resolution of each of the two displays and set those different resolutions. The panel, all the widgets and all the open windows should stay on the notebook screen. The projector screen shows only the wallpaper. It does not matter if the projector “screen” is located above or on the right or wherever of the notebook screen.

It would be very useful to link that dialog to the keyboard shortcut (e.g. Fn+F7) or to start it automatically when a projector is attached. (At the moment I have to start krandrtray from krunner first or have the symbol in the taskbar all the time. I am not sure if a new users could work that out in a couple of seconds.)

Save the display/plasma settings (esp. widget positions etc.) to restore them when the projector is detached. (Perhaps that could be solved with activities.)

Extra points: It is possible to save the standard settings. In a second step different screen setting profiles could be saved and loaded (like in powerdevil). Presentation-mode 1 and 2 could be such profiles and a user could modify them (e.g. projector on top or right) if it is necessary.

So what do you think. Is that scratching your itch? Can you imagine how cool this would be to have? At least for me as a presenter that would really rock.

a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar

a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar

Streamline

Today I completed the application form for Streamline credit card processing.  I delivered the package to the post office and sent it back, so 2 weeks from Tomorrow I should have my credit card machine.  I just hope it arrives before the 6th of March.  Keep your fingers crossed.

a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar

Bolton Linux Hits 5 Sales

Bolton Linux has today sold 5 copies of openSUSE 11.3 since our Launch on 1st February 2011.

1 was sold at Sheffield Computer Market on the 6th February 2011, where a lot of Interest was generated.

1 was sold to my father which he has used to promote amongst his colleagues at work on Tuesday 8th February 2011.

You know its strange how both of his colleagues suffered computer failure at exactly the same time - coincidence or what without even testing openSUSE!!

2 were sold over the counter at Leeds Computer Market on Sunday 13th February 2011.

Today Tuesday 15th February 2011 we sold our first internet order via credit card payment, goods will be shipped out tomorrow and should be delivered to the customer on Thursday or Friday.
the avatar of Gabriel Burt
the avatar of Gabriel Burt

Banshee Supporting GNOME on Ubuntu

Background
The Banshee maintainers and community have been proud to support GNOME by sending 100% of our FOSS Amazon MP3 store's affiliate revenue to the Foundation. We're already on pace to contribute at the same level as a small company on the Advisory Board, $10,000 USD per year, and revenue is increasing every month.

Canonical's Proposals
After choosing Banshee as the next default player in Ubuntu, Canonical approached us, concerned with how our Amazon store would affect their Ubuntu One store. They proposed two options:

  1. Canonical disables the Amazon store by default (you could enable it in a few easy steps) but leaves the affiliate code alone (100% still to GNOME), or
  2. Canonical leaves the Amazon store enabled, but changes the affiliate code and takes a 75% cut.

Our Response
We are pleased that Canonical is willing to leave the affiliate code unaltered.

As maintainers of the Banshee project, we have opted unanimously to decline Canonical's revenue sharing proposal, so that our users who choose the Amazon store will continue supporting GNOME to the fullest extent. The GNOME Foundation's Board of Directors supports this decision.

The Banshee Maintainer Team
Aaron Bockover, Alexander Kojevnikov, Bertrand Lorentz, Gabriel Burt

the avatar of Andrew Wafaa
the avatar of Andrew Wafaa

Porting LibreOffice to Android - My New Crazy Project

Yes, you read that correct – I am going to try and port LibreOffice to Android! :-) Why? Simples, there are no ODF compatible products on Android for reading & writing. There is OpenOffice Document Reader which as the name suggests is just a reader, and also OOo is so 2009 ;-) Now if I was a half decent hacker, this may not have been such a big deal. Problem is I’m an absolutley crap hacker, with almost no experience or knowledge of Android or LibreOffice development.

the avatar of Thomas Thym
the avatar of Thomas Thym

Free/Open Content for promo

I am presenting and promoting open source software at various locations. It is much more impressive to show the power of KDE/Linux when you have some content with you; Amarok rocking the booth is much more attracting than a plain KDE Plasma Desktop (the plain Plasma Desktop is attracting anyway but it could be enriched :-) ). Interested people could play around by themselves if they find some data on the demo machine. You can't do much expect moving Dolphin windows with a blank system (unfortunately most live CDs don't provide content). We wanted to change that. So I submitted a couple of tasks during the Google Code in project.

Now
* we have cc music (which works with Amarok's Wikipedia, lyrics and CD cover downloads features,
* we have HQ blender videos (like sintel) to show multimedia power (moving pictures are always attracting),
* we have documents in ODF- and MS-formats to show the import/export capabilities,
* we have pictures for your favorite photo-management software (like digiKam or Gwenview).

The next step would be to create compressed archives to make it possible to download the whole packages but I haven't found a good place to put them.

You can download the content onto your promo machine (e.g. I put it into my demo-user home directory) or integrate the content onto live CDs (or more likely DVDs when talking about videos).
With Suse Studio you can create a live CD/DVD/USB-Stick within a couple of minutes. You can choose the applications you want to have included and you can upload all the demo content.

Perhaps the creators of live CDs find some space on their media to include at least parts of that demo content. IMHO it would significantly increase the experience for a our users / testers.