… good TrueType-fonts for asian languages (mainly japanese, chinese, korean etc.) I can use to test some pango/cairo rendering? Also some non-nonsense example unicode-text (I know that’s obvious) in those languages would be nice… preferably non-insulting and non-offensive.
EDIT: I found some usable sample text in the pango-distribution (I should have started looking there first).
Thanks in advance!
Just want to publicly state my surprise about seeing graff introduced. It seems to offer motion-blur even. That is seriously cool!!! I have not seen this being addressed in desktop-UIs yet anywhere. Well, when can I give it a test-drive on my N800 or on the desktop, Michael? What about more detailed information about implemented and planned features? Your list of stated capabilities is a bit general. I also like the seamless blending of motions going from one animation to the other a lot! I got to give motion-blur a try myself. Maybe with pigment and clutter this time.
BTW, pluggable rendering backends… does that mean at some point in the future we will see hardware-accelerated OpenGL on the Nx00? I’m drooling around in anticipation… and still hoping for the GL-driver-issue to be solved on the N800 
Please make posting updates regarding graffs status a regular thing, or let it have its own project-site, where one can read up about its progress.
Here are the recent results of my messing around with pigment and its Python-bindings…
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In the two screencasts I’m using the old/current version of pigment. There is currently a rewrite of pigment happening, which will allow to create more effects and do things in easier ways. Furthermore I started a new page on pigment’s wiki, where I listed new features I would like to see in future versions of pigment. On some of those I will work myself, others are already started (by the pigment’s developers at Fluendo), but will only be integrated after the rewrite is done.
But what about clutter a well-informed reader may ask. All recent stable and unstable versions I checked out from clutter’s svn run at 2 spf or worse (that the opposite of fps… seconds per frame) This is no joke, but sadly the truth. Most of the time I have the impression they don’t update more than once. I tried all supplied examples. All other OpenGL-based code on my i915 laptop runs just fine. This Vaio is the only machine I currently have access to. Since I have no idea what’s wrong and causing this behaviour, I did not file a bug yet against clutter. I don’t want to just write “It’s slow.” without at least providing hints what might be the cause of this. This really annoys me as I would really like to digg deeper into clutter. pigment and clutter are currently some very interesting projects in the OpenSource field, and I always like to stay fresh and sharp with these kind of things.
EDIT: Thanks to the hints (in the comments) from Matthew “mallum” Allum, who turns out to be the boss of Opened Hand, I can now also properly use clutter. So the weekdays belong to pigment and the weekends to clutter. I will now be able to get a solid idea of both projects.
That’s it from the bling-front for today. More will follow in a few days.
This is some super terrific crap to happen. My normal email-provider just shut off my account without any kind of notice. Bloody bastards at Aruba! Until further notice I won’t be reachable via my normal eMail-address: macslow at bangang dot de.
I know that there are free email-services, but all the @gmail.com, @gmx.net, @hotmail.com etc. are just not cutting it for appeal comparing it to the famous @bangang.de.
With the email-service also our martial-art-groups website www.bangang.de died. And yes, fees for the email/web-hosting services were payed in time.
I feel like hurting someone responsible in Italy now!!!
EDIT: For the time being you can now reach me via macslow at gmail dot com. This will be for the period until bangang.de and my normal email-address is active again at a new hoster.
Already the first week of my internship at Fluendo in Barcelona has passed. Time flies here currently… so much to learn and do. Fluendo and all the people working here are a really nice bunch of folks. I’m enjoying my time here!
The last few days I’ve been starting to learn Python and the pigment-API.
There’s some very nice stuff ahead for Elisa and pigment. It’s going to be a fun ride! Elisa has got a new website, check it out. Here’s a screencast of my first ever Python-program (also using pigment for the first time):
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While it is not meant to serve any real-world purpose, it is a mere vehicle of learning for me. Before I start with the real tasks (e.g. getting cairo/pango-utilization into pigment) this messing around is needed to understand features and limits of pigment.
For any questions either use the comments here, email me or join the channels #pigment and #elisa on Freenode.
Yesterday I went to the cinema with Thomas, Christian and David to see 300. A bloody movie… literally, but still good entertainment. Though they could have de-emphasize the decapitations-scenes… or the dismemberment some
The reason for me being very calm on my blog is due to a busy schedule in the recent weeks. There was my personal financial disaster that was CeBIT, where I did a talk on the state of things regarding multimedia on GNOME. Sorry, no slides for this, because it was 80% demonstrating applications (or at least pretending to be using them). On the side of end-user-ready applications there is still a lot to do, in order to provide well-integrated native multimedia-applications for GNOME. Folks, PiTiVi needs you, seriously… give Edward Hervey a hand!
Next was a small brainstorming weekend in Hamburg with a few core gtk+-developers from Imendio. We stayed at rambokid’s place and did talking and tossing around ideas for the most part. My take from that weekend is this… if gtk+ gets the resources (developers, designers, funding) the sky’s the limit. I was invited to that meeting by Imendio after some of the Imendio-bunch saw my talk “bling it up - make it sexy” at FOSDEM 2007. The role I had at the meeting could be best described as “API-user stating wishes for gtk+’s future”. I also showed a few examples of stuff I’ve written, that offers things currently not possible within gtk+ itself today.
Upcoming is my internship at Fluendo in Barcelona starting this friday… rock&roll! During that three month period I’ll also be at the LGM2 and UDS Sevilla. I’m equally thrilled and intimidated by this intense road ahead.
On the software-development side of things I’m trying my best with getting stuff done that’s on my mind/TODO. Currently this means some base-work I need for lowfat and a few other things. One could call it a side-effect of those projects. Since I’m not in the mood for writing a whole essay on the topic, here’s a glimpse of that in unnarrated screencast-form…
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