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Refresh the Xfce background

  • March 11, 2009
  • Mike Massonnet
In Xfce 4.4 there was a little hack that worked to refresh the background. I managed to get the same result for Xfce 4.6 with the following "hack":
#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "${DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS}" ] ; then
        . ${HOME}/.dbus/session-bus/`ls -rt ${HOME}/.dbus/session-bus/ | tail -1`
        export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
fi
PATH=/usr/local/bin:${PATH}
MONITOR=${1:-0}
PROPERTY="/backdrop/screen0/monitor${MONITOR}/image-path"
IMAGE_PATH=`xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p ${PROPERTY}`
xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p ${PROPERTY} -s ""
xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p ${PROPERTY} -s "${IMAGE_PATH}"
Now when will this be useful? Barely never. Still enjoy it :-)

Update: script snipped updated to run within a cronjob.

Vala Notes Plugin

  • March 11, 2009
  • Mike Massonnet
Or better, there is Vala in the Notes plugin. It's been a long time I thought about a hypertext view widget for the notes plugin, so it can highlight links and open them on click, and doing this in pure C/GObject is quite a PITA because there is a lot to take care about (more lines of code), and then you didn't start thinking about the whole functions of the object. Now this is retro with the presence of Vala. I played with Vala some time ago, doing some very rudimentary hello worlds, and I never had a chance to really write something in Vala, untill two days ago. I started to write a very dummy object on top of GtkTextView that implements the simple undo/redo feature I wrote inside notes.c and it was very fast and easy to backport from the C code to Vala, and this gave me a very good start with Vala (now that was one Vala too much, wasn't it? anyway...). Yesterday I added skel functions to support hyperlinks which I finished today. Finally I integrated the Vala object inside the notes plugin in a way that it compiles to C code when you are in MAINTAINER_MODE, which means for end-users they won't need Vala but only gcc.

Now for those interested into Vala, here is the file I played with: hypertext.vala. This source contains at the end of the HypertextView class, another class that contains a main function so it can be compiled to a binary. This proves how easy it is to test a class, and all you need to do is to run the following command: valac --pkg=gtk+-2.0 hypertextview.vala && ./hypertextview.
There are many samples available with the source of Vala and on Gnome Live. The tutorial covers important points, the FAQ too, but the documentation is a little less interesting if you already know GObject IMHO.
One important thing I learned about Vala was the difference between the out and ref arguments.

If you have a hard time at finding the right method definitions, look into /usr/share/vala/vapi/gtk+-2.0.vapi for instance for GTK+. There you can quickly find any function name you now from the C API, for instance if you want to have a look at gtk_text_view_get_iter_at_location search for get_iter_at_location. By scrolling up you will see that you are in the class Gtk.TextView. Vapis are very easy to read.

I am very interested into porting the objects of the Xfmpc project to Vala, and then start trying out the plugin sample (loading modules during runtime)... I hope my fellow will like that idea :-)

Now for the people interested to develop Vala classes with VIM I have some tips. First follow these instructions in order to get Vala syntax. Then I suggest you install the Tag List plugin, and to get it working with Vala you will need to add the following lines to your vimrc configuration:
" Work-around Tag List
let tlist_vala_settings='c#;d:macro;t:typedef;n:namespace;c:class;'.
  \ 'E:event;g:enum;s:struct;i:interface;'.
  \ 'p:properties;m:method'
If you don't know about folding then you miss a lot of VIM culture, in fact you can fold/unfold brackets by going over a bracket and typing zf% in command mode. And that's all folk, thanks for reading til here.

./shoutcast-radio

  • March 5, 2009
  • Mike Massonnet
Just like my older post about a "./jamendo-player", this time I am definitely more interested into good online radio stations. And SHOUTcast is the best that comes to my mind! It's been there for years, Winamp is the best music experience ever, and both have been promoting each other even though I don't know/remember what their relation are.

The good things about their widget is that it saves the recent radios and it also has a list of favorites but this one isn't working as-is with the code. It is possible to search for radios and to browse by genre. All of this stuff is saved under ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/<random>/ct.yourminis.com/.



So of course I couldn't resist but embed their available Flash widget inside a window :-) Again the code is very short, it's just about loading — well not a URL this time — an HTML string cause the Flash application all alone doesn't work out, it needs parameters passed outside. I didn't include the callbacks to handle "_blank" links, which means it is not possible to open any links, but this is useless as the widget is fully functionnal.

You can download the source code here.

Here are some installation instructions:
  1. Look into main.c
  2. The first line of main.c is a comment with a command to compile
  3. If you want a menu item in you desktop menu:
    1. Edit the Exec keys in shoutcast-radio.desktop
    2. Copy the desktop file to ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/applications
  4. If you don't have a gnome-radio icon, copy gnome-radio.png to ~/.icons/
By the way, I'm linking on the Xfce blog. Why? Cause there might be Xfce users interested into a simple to compile radio application. At least I hope some of you will enjoy it, more than the jamendo thingy :)

Update: The favorites actually do work, it just that the favorite button isn't always clickable.

Installing Xfce 4.6 on Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10

  • March 4, 2009
  • Jérôme

Packages for Xfce 4.6 are now available on my PPA, with some updates for the Goodies. Please report any bug you may find on the Xfce bugzilla.

Here are the lines you should add to your sources.list. For Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10):

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jerome-guelfucci/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

For Ubuntu Hardy (8.04):

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jerome-guelfucci/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

You can also add the OpenPGP key of the PPA by following those instructions:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 0E23917F5D9DCE6C

gpg --export --armor 0E23917F5D9DCE6C | sudo apt-key add -

Please note that I will not offer support and debugging in the comments. Please head to the Ubuntu forums or to IRC to get help. Of course, If anything is wrong with those packages, let me know.

I would like to thank the Debian Xfce group and Lionel Le Folgoc, without them those packages would not be available.

Xfce 4.6.0 Released

  • March 3, 2009
  • Brian Tarricone

I’m a bit late with this, but we finally got Xfce 4.6.0 out the door. Others have written much more about this than I have, so feel free to read about it on our blog aggregator.

Xfce 4.6.0 Released

  • March 3, 2009
  • Brian Tarricone

I’m a bit late with this, but we finally got Xfce 4.6.0 out the door. Others have written much more about this than I have, so feel free to read about it on our blog aggregator.

Xfce 4.6, what do they think about it?

  • February 28, 2009
  • Jérôme

Xfce 4.6 has been out only since yesterday but there are already a great number of reviews spawning all around the Web. I'll try to keep a list of the main ones here:

French:

Spanish:

Czech:

As usual, Béranger found something to complain about :) But as he is complaining about the transparency of desktop icons, I think we can still say that 4.6 is a good release!

Reading those reviews, I can see two main issues: the desktop right click menu and the menu editor. For the menu editor, our rocking Jannis Pohlmann is already on it and is making really good progress on libxfce4menu: it'll allow us to use Alacarte to edit menus in Xfce 4.8 or to develop our own menu editor, if someone volunteers for this. For the right click menu, just find a beautiful wallpaper and remove all those ugly non-transparent desktop icons that hide it and your old beloved menu will be back!

If you find any other interesting reviews, please share them!

Edit: I added some links from the comments.

Xfce 4.6 is out!

  • February 27, 2009
  • Jérôme

Xfce 4.6 was officially released this morning!

Most distributions will have packages available in the next few days. Meanwhile, you can take a look at the tour to see all nice new features!

I would like to thank the Xfce Development Team who did a really good job. A 4.6.1 maintainance release will be out in the next few weeks to improve the translations and fix bugs that may pop up.

The website has also been updated, go and get Xfce 4.6!

Xfce 4.6 is out!

  • February 27, 2009
  • Jannis Pohlmann

Hey everyone. As of today, Xfce 4.6 is available to everyone. Let me quote Stephan Arts, our release manager of the 4.6 cycle:

After more than two years of development, Xfce 4.6.0 has just been released.

Xfce 4.6 features a new configuration backend, a new settings manager, a brand new session manager and sound mixer as well as several huge improvements of its core components. A list of all the changes since the last release candidate can be found on this page.

A visual overview of Xfce 4.6 is available here:
http://www.xfce.org/about/tour

Download Xfce 4.6 from the Downloads section of the Xfce website:
http://www.xfce.org/download

Regards,
The Xfce development team.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release. Especially Stephan who did an amazing job. Thanks as well to Jerôme without whom the website update would not have been possible. It might not be the most clean and polished release ever and the release process was quite painful, but we can now look back at this and hopefully each learn our lessons.

I'm already looking forward on working on 4.8 with you guys, and thinking of some of the features to come gets me really excited.

News from the Goodies

  • February 25, 2009
  • Jérôme

Recently, there were a few releases in the Xfce Goodies project. I will try to summarize the main changes.

Xfce4 Power Manager 0.6.1 and 0.6.2

Those two bug fix releases fix various annoying problems: a tab was not working in the settings dialogs, there were some D-Bus related errors and the -r option is not needed anymore to start the application.

The author also added a brightness control plugin for the Xfce Panel to the Xfce SVN and discussions have started about merging the different battery panel plugins and the power manager. He also considers using DeviceKit. A lot of exciting stuff for the next release!

Midori 0.1.3

This new release of Midori, the fast Webkit based browser, brings a lot of interesting new features:

  • improved zoom preferences.
  • the interface can now be easily configured.
  • a new Mouse Gestures extension allows you to bind actions to particular mouse gestures.
  • Maemo integration for mobiles.
  • Find as you type feature for the search bar: results are proposed while you type a word in the search bar.

Gigolo 0.2.1

This bug fix release fixes a few bugs: Obex URIs are saved correctly now, some interface related problems have been fixed and one can now use the @ symbol in adresses.

Xfburn 0.4.1

And one more bug fix release ! It fixes drag and drop related issues, a crash when creating folders in a composition and burners detection has been improved. It is also advised to use libburn 0.5.6 or higher, which fixes a few annoying crashes.

Xfce4 Screenshooter 1.5.1

Yet another bug fix release... The mouse cursor is now displayed on the screenshots, a crash when the application did not detect any application to open images and one memory leak fixed...

Those little goodies should appetize you for Xfce 4.6 !