Its been quite a while since I last blogged about the project status, and now a good summer of coding has come to an end (according to the program timeline). I should thank Mr. Stephen Shaw "decriptor" (for being a "kewl" mentor, Mr. Pascal Bleser "yaloki" for mavenizing the code, among other things and Mr. Bryen Yunashko "suseROCKS" for getting my project selected and finding a mentor for me. (It was fun to have three openSUSE board members involved in the project)

I would like to report my works done till the "firm" pen (or pencil) down date - 17/08/2009. The code and other things can be accessed at http://code.google.com/p/vaani

As mentioned in the proposal, the softwar consists primarily of two parts-

*Part 1: The text NLP part - which analyzes text inputs and tries to find common desktop activities that the user might be trying to convey through it.

*Part 2: The speech analyzer part - which converts an audio input to text, and lets the first part complete the rest of the process.

Part 1 (mostly present in vaani.shabd package) is fairly complete, currently it has the following plugins -

1. Instant message plugin - analyzes purple buddy list information, and uses dbus to open new chat windows in Pidgin (an Empathy plugin can be extended easily).

2. Application plugin - which right now collects information from the .Desktop files, and tries to find the required application based on the text.

3. Search plugin - this performs searches using the beagle-query command (to be upgraded to use beagle-dbus soon).

The framework is fairly clean, and new plugins can be added easily.

About the 2nd part (vaani.swar package), the approach was to have a grammar for each plugin, and then the Recognizer would use all of these grammars to convert speech commands to text. Right now, grammars for the instant message and application plugin are ready, however the 2nd part isn't functional yet, owing to some problems with grammar compilation by the sphinx system. Effort is currently been put into making it work asap.

The 0.1 release can be downloaded from here, although checking out from svn would be a better option. Also, we need to package the code soon, currently the best way to hack it is by opening the project in an IDE (I wrote in Netbeans) Please try, suggestions/contributions/criticism are always welcome.

Contributors Łukasz Jernaś, Sandy Armstrong, Igor Vatavuk, Bertrand Lorentz Features

• Open in Viewer action that launches the default app (usually Evince)
• Remembers last folder a doc was opened from
• Remembers if the toolbar was hidden
• Remember accelerator customizations

Bugs Fixed

• Uses the XDG cache dir for storing tmp files
• Does a better job of cleaning up tmp files
• Fix bug with installing to custom prefix
• Fix some zoom inconsistencies
• Got rid of bundled binaries; Hyena is needed at build-time

See the website for links to tarballs, git, packages, the mailing list, irc, bugzilla, and more.

Now that I'm back from vacation (some breath-taking climbing in Italy), it's time to pamper penny-a-liner side of me and give some publicity to few fresh openSUSE 11.2 features. Here is one of them:

Back in the times of KDE3, I used to find the fact that I can search KCM modules by keywords (that is, in addition to module names, it looked for a match also in groups of tags, describing the function of the module in detail) rather handy. My colleague Pavol, the user of Most Awesome Computer OS X, seemingly appreciates that Apple's System Preferences (equivalent of YaST) can do the same, so he requested feature #305845. It was then a matter of one afternoon to teach Qt4 Control Centre to do the same.

Now let's have a look at some real example. I want to share my vacation photos with the others by exporting the folder, so that they can mount it (or alternatively, I want to mount somebody else's shared folder with photos). After typing 'share' keyword, I can see a selection of YaST modules which I can possibly use:



Now I can choose between samba and NFS server if I want to export my shared folder, or NFS client if I want to mount somebody else's one.

Contribution needed

To make the search effective (better, to make it find at least something ;)), it is necessary to assign sets of suitable keywords to as many YaST modules as possible and this is exactly the place where community contribution will be useful.
So - if you feel that certain YaST module does not match the keyword even though it should, please do one of the following:

• Use bugzilla to file an enhancement request and assign it to the mainteiner of that module
• For that particular YaST package, do a Factory submit request, extending its .desktop file with the keyword(s)

For the latter, use X-SuSE-YaST-Keywords .desktop file entry and add a comma-separated list of words. E.g it can look as follows:

X-SuSE-YaST-Keywords = disk, partition, LVM, RAID, NFS, mount,format, encrypt, fstab 

(guessing which module this could belong to is an exercise for the reader :) ) Anyway, any help will be appreciated ...

Marcus and me have been busy improving the USB experience. So here is how to use it:

download the live cd of your choice from http://download.opensuse.org/factory/iso/ and make sure you grab build218 or later. And then do something like I did:

linux-vgqb:~ # ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 13. Aug 10:04 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_II+_5B751D8C1994-0:0 -> ../../sdb

So I use /dev/sdb in my commands to shorten it, normally I would use /dev/disk/by-id/.. directly to avoid overwriting my hard disk image.

dd if=openSUSE-KDE4-LiveCD-x86_64-Build0219-Media.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M

linux-vgqb:~ # fdisk /dev/sdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 3935.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 4126 MB, 4126670848 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 3935 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x967113b7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 660 675840 83 Linux

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (661-3935, default 661):
Using default value 661
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (661-3935, default 3935):
Using default value 3935

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 4126 MB, 4126670848 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 3935 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x967113b7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 660 675840 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 661 3935 3353600 83 Linux

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

This is a 4G stick, so I have plenty of room to write, but the real content is put in a readonly partition. If you do not do the fdisk, your stick will behave like a live cd: poweroff and all data is gone. The /dev/sdb2 will be used to save your changes.

And now reboot – if you have a laptop like mine you need to press F9 during boot. If has some fun side effects as /livecd is still an ISO9660 file system, so it will appear as CDROM in various KDE dialogs.

I wonder though if we should let the user create an own user on suck a stick, putting all your private data in a password less linux account does not sound right.

KDE 4 is definitively my daily desktop environment, although it’s not yet mature like the 3.5.x branch i consider it enough stable and usable, but sometime the default settings and the few time available, don’t help us to appreciate it, so let’s resume some little tip for beginners that feel lost with everything new and don’t want waste their time.

(This article is also available for italian users)

• If you want Delete/Move items over the panel click the Plasma icon in the right edge: a second panel will help you to insert other plasmoids, resize the panel, align it, activate the auto-hide, and plus will be enabled the drag’n drop over any item for change their positions
• The Show Desktop icon is one of the most feature i use, unfortunately it’s hide between the other plasmoids and his place is taken from the Show Dashboard. If you need see quickly your desktop then right click over the panel and select Panel Settings > Add Object then select Windows and Tasks and drag Show Desktop plasmoid over the panel. Add a key shortuct is easy: right click over the icon submitted and select Show Desktop Settings then click over the button and insert it (if Win + D sound more familiar you can use it too)
• Link your software over the main Panel or the Desktop with few steps: just search it into the main menu (Alt + F1) and drag’n drop over the Panel/Desktop. If a folder is dragged from Dolphin/Konqueror over the Desktop you may create, through the popup menu, a Folder View, a Lancelot menu or just an icon that will start a dolphin’s session
• You don’t like the Plasma Desktop? Switch back to the old style just selecting the Folder View under Desktop Settings > Type
• Everyone has just installed KDE 4 want see the Cube and probabily this effect it’s already activated through KWin, then press CTRL + F11, switch the faces with the arrow keys and select your desktop pressing Return
• KSnapshot doesn’t popup with PrtScr? If you miss this feature, then fix it: launch systemsettings, select Input Actions and create a new global shortcut (Command/URL) into the tree list through the contextual menu, fill the multiline text field with a comment, set PrtScr as key, and insert the command ksnapshot, then save. With the same system you can associate your favorite software with a combo key (think on it if you want launch dolphin with Win + E or kfind with Win + F)
• The Grid View is something useful for watch and select any window opened in your desktop, try it with Ctrl + F9 or Ctrl + F10 if you want see the windows opened in every Desktop. This feature is also available for align the Desktops in the same view (Ctrl + F8)
• KDE 4 seem slow? Before say it try to disable some effect under systemsettings > Desktop. Usually i disable the effects related to the windows minimization (slow redesign) and move (transparence), but if your system is very old, before to leave KDE 4 disable them completely
• How to show/hide the invisible files? Both in Dolphin or Konqueror switch their visualization with Alt + .
• Klipper improve the clipboard’s system: use Ctrl + Alt + V for paste one of the last ten, twenty,… items already copied, it support also the actions (Ctrl + Alt + X for enable/disable) configurables through regular expressions, they allow to open the string selected with a particular program. Try this feature selecting this: http://www.opensuse.org
• Tired to navigate the main menu? Krunner can help you: call it with Alt + F2 and begin to write in the text box a part of the application’s name you would like start and it will search the string between the whole menu. Krunner can also open a folder, search between contacts or bookmarks, convert units or execute little math operations, look the official page on KDE.org for more details.
• Some plasmoid look very useful, not only gadgets for fill your Desktop: webmaster should love the Color Picker and keep it fix in the main panel; the Timer will help us to manage our time counting down a configurable interval; Notes is a post-it system; Quick Access is another way to reach our files and folder and navigate between them directly from the main panel.

That’s all for now, hope it help to enjoy a bit more this fantastic Desktop Environment, any new hint is welcome, just leave a comment below

I was buried with work in the last couple of days, so whats new on my GSoC-project:

• a lot of patches went into factory and some more are queued
• fixed issues with qemu
• most yast packages already building
• zypper builds, but requires some more bugfixing
• X11 builds
• cross-compilation stable, speed is good

Todo:

• create image (bootable to console)
• create image (bootable to x11 on beagleboard)
• evaluate switch in webfrontend for cross-feature
• project documentation/GSoC

To know more, see here

It’s scheduled to release Enlightenment-DR17 Desktop Shell as a Christmas gift and we glad to announce the update of SOAD to the version 3.2.0. It’s a current openSUSE-11.1 with all updates and Enlightenment set as a prime GUI.

We tried to cook a nice documentation. Please examine it before you consider to download the images:
General Documentation
USB-stick readme

The EFL is compiled from official 3-rd pre-release sources and pretty stable here.
Software is updated and several nice utilities added as well. We created some modest GUI customizations/presets and hope that you like them.

Our TODO list is to fix all errors with “Ecomorph” and provide it for LiveCD and USB systems.

We wish to say “HUGE THANKS!” to “cyberorg” (Jigish Gohil) and “schaefi” (Marcus Schaefer) for their help with this release.

Have fun!
Regards,
SOAD Team

P.S. active mirrors:
GWDG.DE
Yandex.ru

Some days ago, KDE 4.3.0 has been released by the KDE community and I myself as a loyal GNOME user was just curious about this new release of the KDE4 desktop environment. Thus I took a test-drive of both openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 and the Kubuntu Karmic Daily Build as of the 8th of August 2009 – both are shipping with KDE 4.3.0. Utilizing my Eee PC 901 I setup LiveUSB sticks of both distributions and I’d herewith like to share my findings with the openSUSE community. As you might have noticed, openSUSE Milestone releases provide the ability to deploy the LiveCD ISO image directly to USB flash media as of 11.2 Milestone 4, which is a great step ahead from my perspective. So, let’s get started:

1. openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 – (so far) non-persistent

Only one single step is needed here Couldn’t be easier!
# dd if=openSUSE-KDE4-LiveCD-Build0201-i686.iso of=/dev/"usbdrive" bs=4M
2. Kubuntu Karmic Daily Build as of the 8th of August 2009 – persistent

While this setup is a bit “harder” to complete it delivers (at least from my perspective) the smoother solution – so far!
Mount the ISO to /mnt/ and rsync the whole content to a FAT32 partition on the USB flash media (here labelled “ubuntu”)
# mount -o loop karmic-desktop-i386.iso /mnt/
# rsync -avh /mnt/ /media/ubuntu/
Now install GRUB (Syslinux should work as well, but I myself prefer GRUB here)
# grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/ubuntu/ /dev/"usbdrive"
Create a GRUB configuration file /media/ubuntu/boot/grub/menu.lst with the following content
default 0
timeout 3
hiddenmenu
###
title Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Daily Build 08-Aug-2009
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=/preseed/kubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent quiet splash
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
Last but not least, resize the FAT32 partition labelled “ubuntu” to its minimal extent and create an ext2/3 partition labelled “casper-rw” within the remaining free space.

Conclusion:

What I’m currently curious about and the major reason for posting this comparison actually: Could some fellow openSUSE community member extend my current solution to beat the Kubuntu setup not only in ease of creation but also in regard of usability? The major difference here is that the openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 4/5 LiveUSB setup isn’t persistent while the Kubuntu one is due to the casper-rw aufs overlay partition.

In the spirit of releasing early and often, here is PDF Mod 0.5, a quick three days after 0.4. Contributors Bertrand Lorentz, Michael McKinley Features

• Password-protected PDFs can be opened
• Page labels shown in tooltip, eg A-10, or iii
• Undo/redo have descriptions, eg "Undo Move 5 Pages"

Bugs Fixed

• Loading document doesn't block GUI thread
• Desktop file validates
• Process name set to pdfmod
• Parallel make (-jN) works
• make distcheck passes
• icon-theme-installer included in tarball

See the website for links to tarballs, git, packages, the mailing list, irc, bugzilla, and more.