Gnome 2.22 Released

kie writes "The latest version of the Gnome Desktop is being released today. New features in 2.22 include Cheese (an application for webcam photos and videos), window compositing, PolicyKit integration and much more. The full details are in the Release Notes."

That explains it.

Gnome 2.22 Released

I was wondering where it [belfasttelegraph.co.uk] came from.

Evolution actually working?

BTW, does Gnome now allows switching the spelling language of an application during the use of it?

Like switching the spell checker of a chat session during the chat session? Or the assumption is still that everybody only ever uses one language at a time.

Seriously. I'm not flaming, I mean to ask the question. One of the reasons I stopped using Gnome, after many years using it, was that in order to use a Dutch spell checker in Gaim, I had to restart Gaim using a dutch locale environment (and be stuck with

Re:Evolution actually working?

Evolution can switch spelling on-the-fly, and even do multiple language spelling.

pidgin however still has the problems you describe, the FAQ/help has the following to say about that
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How do I change the language for the Highlight Misspelled words option?

Pidgin currently only supports spell checking in your locale language. This is because gtkspell 2 does not offer a good way for us to know which dictionaries are available or to switch between them. This functionality has long been promised for gtkspell version 3, which has been delayed somewhat indefinitely. See gtkspell.sf.net.

There is, however a simple plugin called switchspell that can change the spell check language on a per-buddy basis.
----
http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Pidgin [pidgin.im]

Re:

Another responder has posted the same response I was about to offer.

You can use a variety of methods, but often I just open a terminal, type "export LANG=en_US.UTF-8" or whatever locale you want to switch to and then run the program from there by typing the program's name.

If only there were a property to allow setting the locale in the shortcut/launcher thing...

I too find it annoying that only one language may be used at a time, but you know it's worse with Apple and MacOS X... I recently set up a Mac Mini

Re:Evolution actually working?

If only there were a property to allow setting the locale in the shortcut/launcher thing...

You should be able to do this with a tiny script. Not quite as simple as the launcher GUI, but not bad. Simply create in your home directory (or wherever you like):

#!/bin/sh

LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pidgin

And call it "pidgin-en_US". Make it executable and set the launcher to use that script to launch pidgin and you should be good to go.

Better still, if the launcher config lets you give arguments to the program you tell it to execute (I think you can), you can make just one script:

#!/bin/sh

LANG=$1 pidgin

Call it "pidgin-lang" and in the launcher, set it to execute "/home/foo/pidgin-lang en_US.UTF-8" or whatever other language you want.

Re:

Awesome. I didn't know you could do that from such a line. I have always thought in terms of one line, one command or function. The idea that it would move on to execute whatever came behind it would have never occurred to me. I went ahead to create a short launch script rather like your second example, but rather than set the LANG variable, I specified the locale and use $* as the argument so I can specify the program and parameters to run. Now I can just modify any and every launcher I wish to run in

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I personally realized that was possible when I saw the Gentoo example of 'USE="-esd" emerge gnome'. But still this is a hack to a larger problem. What is the point of having your local in a different language if you have to change it back to get the appropriate dictionaries?

Re:

Or you can set up a launcher that executes:

"env LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pidgin" ...and skip the ridiculous shell script entirely.

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Better still, can't you just have something like:

/bin/env LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pidgin

as the command to launch, and not use a shell script at all?

Re:Evolution actually working?

BTW, does Gnome now allows switching the spelling language of an application during the use of it?

I don't think spellchecking functionality is a desktop-wide feature by itself; I think it will depend on the application how exactly it is implemented. I do know that Gedit, the standard editor, does allow you to set the language on a per-document basis at runtime. No idea on Gaim.

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Pidgin (formerly known as Gaim) uses your locale language for spell checking.

There is, however, a third-party plugin called switchspell [guifications.org] that allows you to switch the spell checking language on a contact-by-contact basis.

Re:

I don't think spellchecking functionality is a desktop-wide feature by itself; I think it will depend on the application how exactly it is implemented.

That isn't right, is it? Please tell me that's not right. KDE has Kspell (KDE3) and Sonnet (KDE4) for implementing system-wide spellchecking in every app that cares to link it. OS X has system-wide spellchecking. I'm reasonably sure that Windows has system-wide spellchecking. Surely Gnome has also managed this, hasn't it?

Re:

Why would it need to when there are perfectly good, widely used, third party spell checkers available (aspell [aspell.net])? Tell me, exactly, what the point would be in integrating it with a desktop environment, where this functionality is clearly not specific to that environment (many console programs use spell checking as well), other than to bloat that environment.

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Tell me, exactly, what the point would be in integrating it with a desktop environment, where this functionality is clearly not specific to that environment (many console programs use spell checking as well), other than to bloat that environment.

The point would be to avoid bloat. Why should 20 programs have 20 different wrappers around aspell instead of having one common wrapper that each of the programs call? In OS X, a program installs itself as a service, and you can run that service on any highlighted text in any program on the system. Each program gets speech synthesis, language translation, formatting, and other goodies "for free" without any additional overhead or programming. In what way is that not a worthy ideal?

Re:

I'm not really sure what you mean by "wrapper" in this context. To use aspell, all an application needs to do is link to libaspell.so, which provides spell checking services and already is the one common wrapper that every application calls. Beyond that, I guess you could automatically spell check common GTK widgets (check out the gtk-spell package for that), but any custom built text interfaces will have to have some kind of custom wrapper around whatever library they use anyway.

Re:

Not trying to flame here, but Pidgin/GAIM is not a Gnome app, so the question you asked can't really be answered. In fact, Empathy [gnome.org] (based on the Telepathy framework [freedesktop.org]) was set to be the default chat client for 2.22, but it didn't make the final cut. It's still slated for 2.24. When that happens, we'll have well-integrated text, voice, and video chat. Yipee!!

Re:

Not trying to flame here, but Pidgin/GAIM is not a Gnome app, so the question you asked can't really be answered. In fact, Empathy [gnome.org] (based on the Telepathy framework [freedesktop.org]) was set to be the default chat client for 2.22, but it didn't make the final cut. It's still slated for 2.24. When that happens, we'll have well-integrated text, voice, and video chat. Yipee!!

And my question probably got marked "off-topic" by some Gnome zealot because of that.

I understand your point that Gaim/Pidgin is not a official Gnome app, but you should reckon that for years, what everyone (using Gnome) had for IM was Gaim/Pidgin. As you mention yourself, Empathy still doesn't exist (from the perspective of a user). I mean which IM client do I get if I install the most popular Gnome distribution (Ubuntu), I get Pidgin. Is there any major distribution, installing a IM client with Gnome,

Re:

On the topic of Evolution, does it have IMAP-IDLE push support yet? If it does, I'm moving to Hardy this instant, regardless of driver breakage

Re:

``BTW, does Gnome now allows switching the spelling language of an application during the use of it?''

WTF?! You mean that this has not been working? I'm amazed...

Re:

you could but with many protocols you can't use the same account from multiple clients at once and even with protocols where you can getting duplicates of every message would get annoying rather quickly.

Yeah, but...

does it run Linux? Oh, wait, ummmm, shit! I really suck at karma whoring....

Re:

you both suck at karma whoring... wait ... why am I karma whoring too?

Re:

Yes... and cakes.

Re:Yeah, but...

The cake was a lie you insensitive clod!

KISS

Fitting with GNOME's "keeping it simple" policy

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Re:

What you mean I cannot have a preview when selecting an image to attach?!)

You can, but it's up to the app to enable this. As a matter of fact, Epiphany 2.22 just gained an image preview in the file chooser.

Gnome 2 for 22

Also known as the Richie Benaud release

Huzzah!

Now to wait for Fedora 9 so I can more easily update :) I tried pointing Smart at the Development repos for the Gnome RC but there isn't a way to say "upgrade all Gnome" - no meta package or anything that I saw - so I didn't feel like doing it package by package.

I've yet to see the point of Cheese as a 'main Gnome' app, though.

Re:

``I tried pointing Smart at the Development repos for the Gnome RC but there isn't a way to say "upgrade all Gnome" - no meta package or anything that I saw - so I didn't feel like doing it package by package.''

Maybe you should file a feature request for that. On Debian, I have "gnome" and "gnome-desktop-environment". I suppose installing either one of those would give me a complete Gnome installation.

Re:

Yum has the option to do it by package group like that, so it is possible, just not from Smart. Unfortunately the Fedora team have set the dependencies up in such a way that you can't just get the new Gnome from Fedora 9 dev and install it on Fedora 8, it ends up updating a huge swathe of other stuff as well that effectively leaves you with a Fedora 9 install.

Growing to like it

In general, I agree with the camp that hates making GUI's too simple and limited. Yet I'm using Gnome now because it's the default in Ubuntu and because of I work with Mono which uses Gtk, and spending some time with Gnome made me gradually like it.

It could be because I was lucky enough to find the features I want in place so that I wasn't bitten by the "too much minimalism" problem. I don't have much need for sound, printing or the like and 90% of my time are spent in either firefox, monodevelop or a text editor.

Also, the Tomboy note taker rules. I wish something like it was in Windows. This must be a milestone where a user begins to dislike working on Windows and prefers Linux because of an application.

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I used to be a KDE fan but I too have really grown to like Gimp on Ubuntu.
It really is getting to the mythical Apple "Just works". So far the things that tick me off have all be legal and not technical. The stupid command line step that you have to do to get Decss working so you can watch DVDs is the big one.
I really like FSpot and hope that they get it to be a little more stable soon. I am thinking about adding a feature to it when I have some spare time.
The one application that keeps me going back to Win

Re:

I would love TurboCad or Solidworks for Linux as well as FSX.

Pro/E supports Linux [ptc.com]

Re:

That is great.
Hope they do well. Now if I could just get a version for under $200 for home use I would be all set :)

Re:

``I can honestly say that Ubuntu seems to be very usable for most people right now. The only issues are with stupid leagal foulup''

Perhaps there should be a "free world" edition of Ubuntu, aimed at parts of the world where the legal restrictions on the "existing, but not provided by default for legal reasons" pieces do not apply.

So that, say, people outside the USA can play MP3s out of the box.

Re:

I don't hate Gnome anymore. The beauty of unices is that you can choose the GUI that best suits you. It seems that more developers realize that, too, and don't require you to install large parts of Gnome just to run a simple GUI. I don't know if Gnome is still as much of a resource hog as it used to be, but I don't care anymore: my applications work without it, so I don't have to use it. It's there for those who want it, and those who don't want it can do without it. It doesn't get any better than that.

I al

New! Cheesier!

It's been a standard joke in my family to describe anything "new and improved" as "with extra cheese!"

Odd that it's actually appropriate in this case.

Nice job

I have to admit I like Gnome a lot. But even if I were a KDE user I would have to give Gnome credit for their release schedule and process. They come out with a good set of reasonably stable features every 6 months, reliably enough that Ubuntu (and Fedora?) base their distro releases on the Gnome schedule. They've guaranteed core ABI compatibility through the 2.x series, which has been out for 5+ years by my count. They're conservative in what they add and take away. And every release has a nice set of release notes which tells me exactly what to look for in terms of new features.

Software development ain't easy, especially not in the decentralized volunteer world of free software, but the Gnome guys seem to have it down pretty well. Kudos to them.

Re:Not faster...

GNOME (Or more accurately GTK+, glib, Cairo and X) has got faster steadily since the GNOME 2.12 days. GTK+s UI's are just as snappy for me as Qt equivalents. I noticed significant improvements after several video/X driver updates and updates to Cairo 1.4.x (from 1.2.x).

Re:

One down, now if only we can get the "vi versus emacs" folks to do the same.

Re:Gnome & KDE

Maybe we should shoot for more realistic goals. Like acceptance of Emacs' superiority.

Re:

Maybe we should shoot for more realistic goals. Like acceptance of Emacs' superiority.

Well, Emacs is a nice OS and all, but what it really needs is a good text editor.

Re:

I hear viper-mode's coming along nicely. Haven't checked recently since I don't dual-boot much.

Re:

Emacs is the only OS more systematically mis-used than Linux. I think if most VI users tried using Emacs properly, they'd be surprised; in VIM, you end up hitting ESC every time you'd hit Ctrl in Emacs.

Re:

Sure, I have a co-worker who does that. I still don't see how C-[ j i is easier than C-n, though.

Re:At least it's a real release! *cough* KDE4 *cou

Yes, we all know gnome 2.0 was a marvel of engineering.

Re:

At least it was feature complete.

Re:Window Compositing?

the traditional way to do a windowed gui was to limit each apps drawing area so that it could only draw within it's own window and force the app to redraw stuff when it's visibility changed. This system has the advantage of being light on ram and being low on CPU when windows aren't moving. However moving windows is a relatively expensive process both because of the need to ask apps to redraw and the need to actually move data arround in the screen buffer (this is why many older systems use a dotted box drawn with XOR to indicate window moving and only move the window when the user has chosen the final location). Also it is virtually impossible to support any kind of partial transparency or rotozooming under this system and even non rectangular windows are a pain.

3D games work in a totally different way. They work with a (large) set of textures and the scene is redrawn every frame building up from the back to the front and rotozooming everything into place. This makes transparency, drop shadows etc fairly easy and of course rotozooming is a fundamental requirement of a 3D game.

A compositing window system (afaict under X this requires support from both X itself and the window manager) draws each window into it's own buffer and then treats that as a texture. Then a frame for the screen is built up in much the same way a 3D game builds up a frame. This enables all sorts of effects from simple stuff like drop shadows and inverted colors to advanced stuff like a window selector that shows a thumbnail of each window or a desktop selector that puts the different desktops on the surface of a cube. Different window managers will obviously choose to use theese capabilities to different extents and in different ways.

Re:

There [ducea.com] you go. But as already mentioned, be warned. Working as root all day is a thing most distros prevent you from for a reason.

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``Will there finally be a way to give my user account admin privileges? I mean, like in Windows XP, so I don't have to type in the fucking password every time I do anything?''

You have to type your password every time? I use sudo, which asks for my password once, and then allows me to either get a root shell (with the -s option) or doesn't ask my password again for the next 5 minutes or so. But that's from the command line. Still, I would think Gnome would use that functionality, so that you get the same beh