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Development Release: Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.3

  • November 27, 2017
  • Sean Davis

Development on the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin has been moving along at a steady pace, and the latest release marks the completion of another great feature for the Sound Indicator replacement applet.

What’s New?

New Feature: Multimedia Key Support

Multimedia keyboard support has been hit and miss in the Linux space for as long as there’s been multimedia keyboards. Support for these keys has been entirely dependent on support baked into each individual application. The best current example of this is the Spotify Linux client. Users can control the media player with various panel plugins, but not with their keyboards.

With the new multimedia key support in Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.3, the recently added MPRIS2 integration has been complemented with key bindings for the Play/Pause, Previous, Next, and Stop keys. When these keys are pressed, any actively running player known to the plugin will be notified, enabling keyboard playback control.

You can check out the new feature in the video below, where I very excitedly inundate my media players with playback commands.

General Improvements

  • Simplified device menus: The bold section headers have been replaced in favor of a single menu per input and output device. If there’s only one option available, the menu is no longer displayed.
  • Improved volume scale increments: The old defaults were steps of 6% and a max of 153%. These seemed a bit unusual, and have been replaced with a more sensible 5% and 150%.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed builds with clang (Xfce #13889) (0.3.2)
  • Fixed panel icon size with high DPI (Xfce #13894) (0.3.2)
  • Show volume change notifications when changed with another application (Xfce #13677)
  • Change default device when changed with another application (Xfce #13908)
  • Fixed flag in g_bus_watch_name_on_connection() method (Xfce #13961)
  • Fix plugin size calculation with multiple rows (Xfce #13998)

Translation Updates

Chinese (China), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish, Ukrainian

Demo

Downloads

The latest version of Xfce PulseAudio Plugin can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.3.3 from the below link.

http://archive.xfce.org/src/panel-plugins/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin/0.3/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.3.3.tar.bz2

  • SHA-256: d6aae9409714c5ddea975c350b4d517e078a5550190165b17ca062d0eb69f9a6
  • SHA-1: 5921f7c17b96dda09f035e546e06945f40398dc9
  • MD5: d3d3e012369af6d2302d4b70a7720a17

Development Release: Exo 0.11.4

  • July 12, 2017
  • Sean Davis

After quite some time, the first release candidate for the Exo 0.12.x series is ready for some serious testing!

What’s New in Exo 0.11.4?

This release completes the GTK+ 3 port and can now be used for GTK+ 2 or 3 Xfce application development.

New Features

Bug Fixes

  • Removed --disable-debug flag from make distcheck (Xfce #11556)

Icons

  • Replaced non-standard gnome-* icons
  • Replaced non-existent “missing-image” icon

Deprecations

  • Dropped gdk_window_process_updates for GTK+ 3.22
  • Replaced gdk_pixbuf_new_from_inline usage
  • Replaced gdk_screen_* usage
  • Replaced gtk_style_context_get_background_color usage
  • Removed warnings for gtk_dialog_get_action_area and GioScheduler

Translation Updates

Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (China), Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Korean, Lithuanian, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish

Downloads

The latest version of Exo can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.11.4 from the below link.

http://archive.xfce.org/src/xfce/exo/0.11/exo-0.11.4.tar.bz2

  • SHA-256: 54fc6d26eff4ca0525aed8484af822ac561cd26adad4a2a13a282b2d9f349d84
  • SHA-1: 49e0fdf6899eea7aa1050055c7fe2dcddd0d1d7a
  • MD5: 7ad88a19ccb4599fd46b53b04325552c

Development Release: Xfce Settings 4.13.1

  • June 19, 2017
  • Sean Davis

The second release of the GTK+ 3 powered Xfce Settings is now ready for testing (and possibly general use).  Check it out!

What’s New?

This release now requires xfconf 4.13+.

New Features

  • Appearance Settings: New configuration option for default monospace font
  • Display Settings: Improved support for embedded DisplayPort connectors

Bug Fixes

  • Display Settings: Fixed drawing of displays, was hit and miss before, now its guaranteed
  • Display Settings: Fixed drag-n-drop functionality, the grab area occupied the space below the drawn displays
  • Display Settings (Minimal): The mini dialog now runs as a single instance, which should help with some display drivers (Xfce #11169)
  • Fixed linking to dbus-glib with xfconf 4.13+ (Xfce #13633)

Deprecations

  • Resolved gtk_menu_popup and gdk_error_trap_pop deprecations
  • Ignoring GdkScreen and GdkCairo deprecations for now. Xfce shares this code with GNOME and Mate, and they have not found a resolution yet.

Code Quality

  • Several indentation fixes
  • Dropped duplicate drawing code, elimination another deprecation in the process

Translation Updates

Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian

Downloads

The latest version of Xfce Settings can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 4.13.1 from the below link.

http://archive.xfce.org/src/xfce/xfce4-settings/4.13/xfce4-settings-4.13.1.tar.bz2

  • SHA-256: 01b9e9df6801564b28f3609afee1628228cc24c0939555f60399e9675d183f7e
  • SHA-1: 9ffdf3b7f6fad24f4efd1993781933a2a18a6922
  • MD5: 300d317dd2bcbb0deece1e1943cac368

Development Release: Xfce Settings 4.13.1

  • June 19, 2017
  • Sean Davis

The second release of the GTK+ 3 powered Xfce Settings is now ready for testing (and possibly general use).  Check it out!

What’s New?

This release now requires xfconf 4.13+.

New Features

  • Appearance Settings: New configuration option for default monospace font
  • Display Settings: Improved support for embedded DisplayPort connectors

Bug Fixes

  • Display Settings: Fixed drawing of displays, was hit and miss before, now its guaranteed
  • Display Settings: Fixed drag-n-drop functionality, the grab area occupied the space below the drawn displays
  • Display Settings (Minimal): The mini dialog now runs as a single instance, which should help with some display drivers (Xfce #11169)
  • Fixed linking to dbus-glib with xfconf 4.13+ (Xfce #13633)

Deprecations

  • Resolved gtk_menu_popup and gdk_error_trap_pop deprecations
  • Ignoring GdkScreen and GdkCairo deprecations for now. Xfce shares this code with GNOME and Mate, and they have not found a resolution yet.

Code Quality

  • Several indentation fixes
  • Dropped duplicate drawing code, elimination another deprecation in the process

Translation Updates

Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian

Downloads

The latest version of Xfce Settings can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 4.13.1 from the below link.

http://archive.xfce.org/src/xfce/xfce4-settings/4.13/xfce4-settings-4.13.1.tar.bz2

  • SHA-256: 01b9e9df6801564b28f3609afee1628228cc24c0939555f60399e9675d183f7e
  • SHA-1: 9ffdf3b7f6fad24f4efd1993781933a2a18a6922
  • MD5: 300d317dd2bcbb0deece1e1943cac368

Development Release: Exo 0.11.3

  • June 18, 2017
  • Sean Davis

Xfce 4.14 development has been picking up steam in the past few months.  With the release of Exo 0.11.3, things are only going to get steamier.  

What is Exo?

Exo is an Xfce library for application development. It was introduced years ago to aid the development of Xfce applications.  It’s not used quite as heavily these days, but you’ll still find Exo components in Thunar (the file manager) and Xfce Settings Manager.

Exo provides custom widgets and APIs that extend the functionality of GLib and GTK+ (both 2 and 3).  It also provides the mechanisms for defining preferred applications in Xfce.

What’s New in Exo 0.11.3?

New Features

  • exo-csource: Added a new --output flag to write the generated output to a file (Xfce #12901)
  • exo-helper: Added a new --query flag to determine the preferred application (Xfce #8579)

Build Changes

  • Build requirements were updated.  Exo now requires GTK+ 2.24, GTK 3.20, GLib 2.42, and libxfce4ui 4.12
  • Building GTK+ 3 libraries is no longer optional
  • Default debug setting is now “yes” instead of “full”. This means that builds will not fail if there are deprecated GTK+ symbols (and there are plenty).

Bug Fixes

  • Discard preferred application selection if dialog is canceled (Xfce #8802)
  • Do not ship generic category icons, these are standard (Xfce #9992)
  • Do not abort builds due to deprecated declarations (Xfce #11556)
  • Fix crash in Thunar on selection change after directory change (Xfce #13238)
  • Fix crash in exo-helper-1 from GTK 3 migration (Xfce #13374)
  • Fix ExoIconView being unable to decrease its size (Xfce #13402)

Documentation Updates

Available here

  • Add missing per-release API indices
  • Resolve undocumented symbols (100% symbol coverage)
  • Updated project documentation (HACKING, README, THANKS)

Translation Updates

Amharic, Asturian, Catalan, Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Galician, Greek, Indonesian, Kazakh,  Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Thai

Downloads

The latest version of Exo can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.11.3 from the below link.

http://archive.xfce.org/src/xfce/exo/0.11/exo-0.11.3.tar.bz2

  • SHA-256: 448d7f2b88074455d54a4c44aed08d977b482dc6063175f62a1abfcf0204420a
  • SHA-1: 758ced83d97650e0428563b42877aecfc9fc3c81
  • MD5: c1801052163cbd79490113f80431674a

Xfce 4010 – (release-schedule and versioning)

  • January 17, 2012
  • Stephan Arts

Hi all,

There has been a lengthy discussion about the xfce version-number.
Is it OK to call the next version of xfce 4.10?

Some package maintainers have a problem with 4.10 being a later version then 4.8, since they see 4.10 as 4.1 with an extra decimal for precision.

Since it could cause upgrade-problems for several distributions, we should find a way to solve that problem.

Why not go for 5.0?

If the ‘.’ is a decimal-separator, a 0.2 upgrade from 4.8 would end up at Xfce 5.0. But we already discussed that . We are not going for 5.0, it would only create confusion, and people start thinking we pulled a ‘gnome-3’ on them. So that one was out pretty quick.

But, the confusion remains. Olivier Fourdan argued that we could think of it as a hexadecimal value, so 0x4.8 would be followed by 0x4.A. Though this sounds funny, and it solves our problem for a few versions (0x4.C, 0x4.E) but we’d end up with 0x5.0 eventually… resulting in the same problem.

And nobody uses the hexadecimal system for version-numbers, that is silly.

So? Now what?

It took a while before we realized, that the ‘.’ could be seen as a separator for thousands (it’s used like this in most of Europe). So you’d have Xfce 4,008 and Xfce 4,010. This not only solves our problem for the next version. At the rate of one release every 2 years we stay away from the whole 5.0 discussion for another 990 years. (Unless another reason appears to introduce a 41xx series of 50xx series of Xfce somewhere this century).

So, here’s the conclusion:
The next version of Xfce will be Xfce 4010 (four-thousand-and-ten)!

But that’s ridiculous!?

Well, it used to be. But these days anything is possible with version-numbers really, except for going backwards.

Which is precisely what we are avoiding here.

Just look at Mozilla Firefox (moving from 4 to 9 at the same pace as they went from 0.7 to 1.0) or Google chrome (what version-number are they using anyway?), or the linux-kernel, going from 2.6.0 to 2.6.39 with entire subsystems being rewritten from scratch, and then moving from 2.6.39 to 3.0 without any radical change whatsoever.

Really, moving from 4.8 to 4010 is not really that big a deal, if it serves the right purpose.

That’s nice and all, but when will we get it?

Ah, more good good news :)

We have a new schedule. (it is not published to the wiki yet though)

Essentially, the development-phase is pro-longed until the weekend after FOSDEM, giving us time to do some hacking there and get it in master the week after.

Dates Phase/Deadline Everyone’s Tasks Release Team Tasks Maintainer Tasks
2011-Feb-13 – 2012-Feb-12 Development Phase Support Xfce Supervise development, remind people of deadlines Hacking
2012-Feb-12 – 2012-April-01 Release Phase Wait patiently Perform releases, remind people of deadlines Perform releases of own components if desired
2011-11-06
2012-Feb-12
 Xfce 4010pre1 (Feature Freeze) Prepare release announcements, release Xfce 4010pre1 Make sure the latest development release is in good shape and uploaded
2011-12-04
2012-March-11		 Xfce 4010pre2 (String Freeze) Prepare release announcements, release Xfce 4010pre2 Make sure that strings in the latest development release or in master are good
2012-01-08
2012-March-25		 Xfce 4010pre3 (Code Freeze) Prepare release announcements, release Xfce 4010pre3, create ELS branches Make sure the latest development release is in good shape, or that code is solid/finished in master
2012-01-15
2012-April-01		 Xfce 4010 (Final Release) Celebrate Prepare release announcements, release Xfce 4010, branch for stable release, merge ELS branches into master Make sure to upload a new release of own components before this deadline

We hope you are as happy as we are with the new release schedule.

Update: There was some confusion about the date notation, updated it to get rid of the month-numbers.

Update-2 [18-01-2012 13:37 CET]: For more background information about this decision, check this link

Ristretto 0.1.x — Getting rid of anoyances…

  • October 10, 2011
  • Stephan Arts

Over the past few years, the top 2 complaints about ristretto have been ‘it leaks memory!‘ and ‘it crashes in this <obscure> way when I press this button‘.
And you know… these people were right. During the past 6 months, my main focus was fixing these problems. After a lot of code-simplification and refactoring, I finally managed to fix all the reported crashes and memory-leaks. (Yes, I know this took  a while…)

In my opinion, this made ristretto 0.1.0 the most stable release so far.

But there are still quite some improvements to be made by removing nuisances in the user-experience. Some of these have already been addressed in 0.1.0, including:

  • Support for using arrow-keys to navigate through the images
  • Additional accelerator for the ‘f’ key for switching to full-screen-mode
  • Additional accelerator for the ‘q’ key for quitting ristretto
  • Modify scroll-zoom so the mouse-cursor stays above the same region of the image when zooming in or out
  • Re-introduce the file-properties dialog.

There are still some things that can be improved with regards to usability, I will work closely with the Xfce Design SIG to identify and improve problems with the ristretto UI. One of the things I will finally start on improving is the sorting-algorithm used for sorting the images on their filenames  (Bug #6866), so the images are sorted in a similar order as they are in Thunar.

The main focus during the 0.1.x release-cycles is getting existing functionality to work better, so expect a faster release-schedule featuring smaller changes for the coming months.