Foxybuntu
Very interesting mockup of a simplified user interface by Nigel Tao: check out the UI mockup.
It may not be directly obvious, but that sure looks like Xfce to me ;-)
Transparent future
Not being able to set my mind to doing anything useful, I played a little with rgba windows. For a future version of Xfce that can depend on cairo-based versions of Gtk, it should be possible to only make the panel background transparent, while keeping text and icons fully opaque.
Just changing the panel window and the base plugin classes, I got the following result:
Not too bad. All widgets that have their own X window, or that do some custome drawing are not transparent, but the others are. I had to choose a theme with white foreground text to make labels somewhat readable. That will require special attention to get right. Shadows or outlines maybe…
KDE memory usage
I might have to change editors now…
The biggest gripe I’ve had with emacs — alright, besides the finger-breaking key combo’s ;-) — is that it is just plain ugly. It just doesn’t fit with my beautiful gtk desktop with anti-aliased truetype fonts. Gvim got this right a long time ago.
But, no longer does this have to be true:
I already knew about the gtk interface, but I never heard of the xft support. I got the instructions from EmacsWiki:
$ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/cvsroot/emacs co -remacs-unicode-2 emacs
$ cd emacs
$ ./configure --with-gtk --enable-font-backend --with-xft
$ make bootstrap && make && sudo make install
$ emacs --enable-font-backend --font "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-10"
More 4.6 panel thoughts
In this blog entry Aaron Seigo talks about Plasma, the panel/desktop framework for KDE4. The ideas about data engines and data visualizations are really interesting.
I have been thinking about this for Xfce as well: it would be really cool if we could provide plugin writers with data sources and display widgets to easily write status monitors for the panel.
The idea I had is that the display widgets could be in-process, so it would be an internal plugin, but the data to display would be obtained and processed by an external process, through a DBUS protocol or whatever. This has the shared advantage of in-process widgets, which are a lot easier to handle (no more XEMBED, yay), and out-of-process data handling (no GUI blocking or crashing of the panel).
Of course we really should get Xfce 4.4 out before even considering the possibilities for 4.6…
Maybe something to look at for Xfce 4.6?
Here’s a post by Ryan Lortie, who has been working on a (possible) new API for GNOME applets. The work was done as part of the Google Summer of Code and it looks very interesting.
It would be kinda cool if we could support the same API for Xfce 4.6. Most of the GNOME dependencies seem to have been dropped… or maybe, by the time we release 4.6, we simply switch to using the GNOME panel, who knows?
Or maybe I should be nice to our plugin writers and not change the panel API every major release :-)
Xfce4 notes plugin
First release of the Xfce4 notes plugin for Xfce 4.4. Homepage is here:http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/panel-plugins/xfce4-notes-plugin
All the best,
Mike
QOTD
Here’s some trash talking from benny:
“…,but that should be a minor problem as long as people don’t try to use the trash as primary storage for their documents.”
;-)
One month without any message
I was busy. And I'm still busy.I'm coding a new xfce4-notes-plugin for the new panel (version 4.4). It is fun :) I already have access on the webpages and the svn (or I guess so, I'm working on a local subversion at the moment). Should be released at end of the week, actually when I will add the on_delete_page callback. It supports multiple notes and some options for the window aspect (always on top, stick, show in taskbar, show at startup).
Also, I was at RMLL2006, and there was a wet man searching the reception... it was p0llux! After one day I ran sick... because of the heat. I was lug around Vandoeuvre to get in a Pharmacy (thanks guys). I didn't assist any conference all the week :/
See you in the next post about the first release of xfce4-notes-plugin.
Theming is my actual pleasure
Xfwm4
I did some theming around the original theme of Xfce 4.4.All I wanted was the title bar to be a bit smaller. I managed to reduce it from 6 pixels. Then I simplified the buttons. The work was quite long with redundant actions, well it is what it is. Now I have my theme :)
I posted my modifications at Xfce-look.org.
ajaxMP
I also did a theme for ajaxMP a little time ago which is based on Xfce-dawn theme (which is my current theme moreover). ajaxMP is a web interface for Music Daemon Player. I already mentionned it in the post "My current apps".I am also working on a web design in black for a french rap production. They have very good instrumentals and I am sure the CD they are producting will kick ass. However I prefer good old Pink Floyd at this time.
Cheers.
