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In this edition...

  1. Front Page
    • Harmattan, Maemo & MeeGo community
  2. Applications
    • CSSU may be able to support more profiles than General/Silent
    • Putting album art and current track on lock screen
  3. Development
    • Qt Creator 2.2 released
    • Branches for MeeGo 1.2 finalisation created
    • Security architecture for MeeGo won't be Harmattan's, but what will it be?
    • ...and 5 more
  4. Community
    • Graphics wanted for MeeGo Apps web catalogue
    • MeeGo Conference T-shirt competition winner announced
    • Second Call for Poposals for the MeeGo Conference San Francisco 2011
    • Attending the Intel AppUp MeeGo Conference warm-up events
  5. Devices
    • Adapting an N900 to charge via a PowerMat
  6. In the Wild
    • Digia is working "full steam ahead" with Qt Commercial
    • Future of Fedora's MeeGo "remix" (i.e. Netbook UX on Fedora)
  7. Announcements
    • Socially - a new Facebook client
    • Symbian "Anna" icon modifications
    • MonoDevelop - C# IDE on Maemo
    • ...and 3 more

Front Page

Applications »

Harmattan, Maemo & MeeGo community

Ville Vainio has asked where the natural home of the Harmattan community will be: So, what's the role of maemo community communication channels (these mailing lists, talk.maemo.org) and Harmattan? Will maemo community embrace Harmattan as "natural continuation" after maemo5? Or should these channels be relegated to maemo5 and older alone, moving Harmattan discussion elsewhere? With *.meego.com being pitched as a development, rather than end-/power-user friendly environment for specific devices and the outright hostility to Harmattan coming across on the meego-* mailing lists, it seems clear that the MeeGo project won't want to deal with the intricacies of Nokia's Qt Quick Components or Harmattan's Debian packaging when Intel's MeeGo UX Components and MeeGo's RPM formatting hold sway.

The general direction of the thread, including from Quim Gil was "let's see what happens when the device is launched" (or at least the SDK is). Hopefully there'll be enough lead time that open source software can be primed at whatever the end-user friendly download site is, whether it's maemo.org/downloads or meego.com/apps.

Read more (lists.maemo.org)
Applications »
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Applications

Development »« Front Page

CSSU may be able to support more profiles than General/Silent

Joerg Reisenweber and Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh were discussing how tweakr updates the current profile to adjust ring tone, which is obviously suboptimal. Mohammad looked into profiled, and apparently, the N900 can support more profiles, it pretty much had support for it from the start! Unfortunately, the UI team decided general and silent were enough, so you can't add profiles easily. I'll look more into this (it seems to be fully working, different ringtones for different profiles etc), but it needs a UI rewrite of both the status bar applet, AND the control panel applet. If you'd like to develop an open source replacement to the status bar and control panel applets for selecting and managing profiles, inspired by the Maemo 5 originals, get in touch with Mohammad.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

Putting album art and current track on lock screen

Another lock screen modification for everybody this week. This time Talk user "Obsidian" has hacked together a script to display the current track (and its album art) on the lock screen: Taking inspiration from Alfred's thread and converting generationally's script to bash, I fumbled together a script that takes the metadata and makes a new lockslider.png. It relies heavily on GreatGonzo's mafw-trackinfo and Graham Cobb's dbus-scripts. The part that checks if the media player is running is by qwerty12, the symlink to the current theme directory comes fromMohammadAG. The installation process is rather involved (and involves use of xterm), so the faint of heart should probably steer clear.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)
Development »« Front Page
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Development

Community »« Applications

Qt Creator 2.2 released

The latest version of Qt's IDE, Qt Creator, has been released. According to the announcement on the Qt Labs blog: Even if this release is following the previous release after not even ten weeks it contains a whole lot of new features as well as bug fixes and enhancements making an update worthwhile. The key point of interest is in its ability to now target MeeGo and maemo.org's open source autobuilder. Available as a download, it will be rolled into the Qt SDK as an update "in a few weeks".

Read more (labs.qt.nokia.com)

Read more (doc.qt.nokia.com)

Branches for MeeGo 1.2 finalisation created

Rolla Selbak has announced that the code freeze in effect whilst the MeeGo 1.2 branches were created has now been lifted: The MeeGo 1.2 Branch has been created successfully. Trunk and 1.2 are now re-open for development. Please carefully read the following short, informative wiki on the branching phase which covers: Branching phase; Trunk frozen during branching process; Which changes are accepted into Branch; How to submit a bug-fix into the Branch; Setting your home: and devel: OBS projects to build against Branch

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Security architecture for MeeGo won't be Harmattan's, but what will it be?

Alberto Mardegan took the opportunity of a thread on meego-dev to raise an architectural question about MeeGo's security framework: I think we all agree that a security framework is needed. What will it be, then? In your mail from March 7th, you announced that the long term focus for the MeeGo security would be end-user privacy. To me, that also means having the means for a process which "owns" some of the user data to establish the identity of another process which requests access to the said data. IMHO, this is something that MSSF is doing very well in Harmattan, so I hope that this possibility will also come to MeeGo. The response suggested that one of the many existing Linux security frameworks would be used (future tense). None of these have been used in mainstream mobile devices though, and often require complex administration. It may well be that Nokia's MSSF (originally called Aegis when part of Maemo 6) will be the most robust and tested solution by the time MeeGo selects one.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Working around Qt 4.7.2 bugs in the CSSU

Alberto Mardegan has found a workaround for the issues he was having with Oculo, his webpage content widget, written in Qt: Your hint was extremely precious! Indeed, adding this just at the beginning of main() does the trick: [...] Benoît HERVIER has also raised the issue of needing developers familiar with Qt to tackle the rendering issue present in the 4.7 upgrade contained in the Community SSU.

Read more (lists.maemo.org)

Read more (lists.maemo.org)

Which SDK for MeeGo 1.2 tablet & handset?

Cornelius Hald has asked a question which is very appropriate for those of us coming from a Maemo background: I've got a Qt/QML app that is working fine on Maemo5 and Symbian. Now I'd like to compile it for MeeGo 1.2. I need MeeGo 1.2 because of the Qt Mobility version included. Also I realize that MeeGo 1.2 is not final yet. What's the best/easiest way to install that SDK? So far he's had success with the May 3rd preview release for Linux. It would be interesting to document the leanest and most consistent SDK experience for targetting Maemo 5, Symbian and MeeGo; hopefully something made easier by the Qt Creator 2.2 release.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Locking screen orientation in MeeGo

Cornelius Hald has asked how to lock an application's screen orientation in MeeGo: in my C++/QML application I want to lock the screen orientation to portrait mode. How I can I do that? There was a thread about this a month ago but without clear answer. I've got working solutions for Maemo5 and Symbian and now I'm testing on MeeGo/Tablet 1.2 on ExoPC. The only current way of doing this is within MeeGo Touch Framework (MTF) applications, a toolkit which is deprecated in MeeGo 1.2 and may not even ship as part of MeeGo 1.3. More work needed here.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Blocker bug process for MeeGo 1.2

Rolla Selbak has reminded people of the process required to raise and triage bugs which might block the MeeGo 1.2 release: Only approved blockers targeting the Branch will be accepted into the Branch. The 'blocker' flag in bugs.meego.com exists a few weeks before branching. Anyone can set a feature or bug as a 'proposed' blocker through bugs.meego.com. Within the bug, state your case as to why you believe this bug should be a blocker for 1.2. Release Engineering gathers feedback from Program Management and Development teams as to which bugs should be accepted or rejected.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Qt Commercial licence and MeeGo Compliance

A question on meego-dev was simple: My apologies if this has been discussed in the past already but I'm struggling to get a definite answer to this question: - Can someone switch to the Qt Commercial license, and yet pass the MeeGo compliance test? The answer is "no": the main system Qt must be MeeGo's, which is obviously the open source one, with minor patches. An application or the system can provide a Qt alongside, which must only be used for specific applications, which would then possibly not be MeeGo Compliant.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Read more (lists.meego.com)
Community »« Applications
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Community

Devices »« Development

Graphics wanted for MeeGo Apps web catalogue

Ferenc Szekely has put out a call for new graphics for the MeeGo application categories for the MeeGo Apps web catalog. If you have some time and the necessary skill. Hit the mailing list or the bug and submit your proposal.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

MeeGo Conference T-shirt competition winner announced

The winning design for the San Francisco MeeGo Conference has been announced by Brian Warner: I'm pleased to announce, on behalf of the selection committee, that we have a T-shirt design for the upcoming conference! Congratulations to Mitul Bhat for submitting the winning design, Geared for Fun. Mitul's design will appear on the back of the conference T-shirt. Thank you to everyone who submitted a design this year. There were many good options and it was a difficult decision. The design appeals to your editor's taste for the abstract, and as long as the front (outside of Mitul's control) is a nice subtle MeeGo logo, this t-shirt could compete in your editor's affection with Tim Samoff's Maemo Summit 2009 as a personal favourite.

Read more (sf2011.meego.com)

Second Call for Poposals for the MeeGo Conference San Francisco 2011

The Program Committee has issued a second Call for Proposals for the upcoming MeeGo Conference San Francisco 2011. The Program Committee is happy to announce that we are opening the "Late Breaking News" part of the CfP. We are looking for proposals that are new (compared to the first CfP), relevant and interesting. These proposals can be for both full conference sessions (30 min presentation and 10 min Q&A) as well as for BoFs.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Attending the Intel AppUp MeeGo Conference warm-up events

If you are planning on attending Intel's AppUp event for developers during the MeeGo Conference warm-up weekend, register beforehand and be prepared for a significant practical element to the training - if you have a laptop with you, ensure that you have an SDK installed before you arrive. Anyone attending the Qt developer session on Saturday will already have fulfilled this requirement. You'll be asked to compile some sample code, and generate a package that you can upload to an application service. One assumes the SDK in question is the MeeGo SDK, rather than any SDK.

Read more (lists.meego.com)

Read more (appdeveloper.intel.com)
Devices »« Development
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Devices

In the Wild »« Community

Adapting an N900 to charge via a PowerMat

A user on Talk, "Wonko", has hacked together a PowerMat charging solution for his N900: I made some rather brutal modification to my N900 which allows me to charge it with the Powermat (TM) system. So far it basically works. Inductive charging was one of the more interesting features of the Palm Pre when it first launched. Now you too can have the same on your N900 (assuming you know how to use a dremel).

Read more (talk.maemo.org)
In the Wild »« Community
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In the Wild

Announcements »« Devices

Digia is working "full steam ahead" with Qt Commercial

Digia have recently acquired the Qt licensing busines from Nokia. In a blog post, the status and strategy was outlined by one of their senior vice presidents: The transfer of the Qt Commercial licensing business from Nokia to Digia was completed successfully a bit over one month ago. At Digia, we have been hard at work getting everything in place to ensure continuity for Qt commercial customers. We have invested in setting up our R&D team, in order to build new functionality and a verification system. Digia has hundreds of people who have Qt experience and this certainly will help us to ensure that we will provide high quality services for our Qt Commercial customers.

One area of great importance is to make sure that Digia´s development plans are well aligned with our customers’ needs. Based on earlier feedback from Qt Commercial customers we’ve heard, our customers have called for functionality that will support their applications on cross-platform desktop and embedded environments. Our customers have also said that added functionality can’t be included at the cost of stability and reliability. And, they’ve stated that the releases need to be supported longer to ensure business continuity.

Read more (blog.qt.nokia.com)

Future of Fedora's MeeGo "remix" (i.e. Netbook UX on Fedora)

Rodrigo Padula, a member of the Fedora Project, has bemoaned the status of Fedora's ability to run the MeeGo Netbook UX: Unfortunately Fedora will not support the Meego netbook remix (fedora based meego distribution) as Fedora upstream project anymore. I've tried to install Meego in Fedora since the last version(Fedora 14) and in the new Fedora 15 Beta and it's not working anymore.

Since Fedora will adopt GNOME3 by default and the GNOME Shell uses Mutter, there are a conflict between GNOME Mutter packages and Meego mutter packages (mutter-mbl needs to be parallel-installable with mutter but it's not possible by now). The Fedora project isnt interested to fix that or to stay distributing Fedora Meego Remix as a official internal project.

Read more (lists.meego.com)
Announcements »« Devices
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Announcements

« In the Wild

Socially - a new Facebook client

Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh (always looking for new ways to fill time, evidently), has announced a new Facebook client, Sociality: You can't have enough Facebook clients can you? I mainly started this project three days ago cause all other facebook clients are lacking some features in one way or another, and it was a good way to start looking web APIs. I plan to include all features (that I can include, I can't send messages using the API for some reason, so while the UI is coded, facebook doesn't allow it). Mohammad is looking for help with a set of new (and not copyright-violating) icons for the application, so feel free to help out if you have the talent.

Sociality is available from Extras-devel, so the usual disclaimers still apply.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

Symbian "Anna" icon modifications

Talk user "cloud596" has released the set of icons for Symbian Anna (effectively PR2 for Symbian^3) as a package for Maemo 5. If you're interested in trying them out, the package is available from Extras-devel (usual boilerplate, etc., etc.)

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

MonoDevelop - C# IDE on Maemo

Nikita Tsukanov ... I've managed to compile Mono 2.10.1 and MonoDevelop. I've resolved most issues with GUI patching GTK# bindings. For example, if some dialog doesn't fit the screen, scrollbars will be added automatically. But because of some differences between Maemo and a normal Debian system it still needs testing.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

ClipMan - alpha preview of Maemo clipboard manager

Michael Muth has begun work on a new clipboard manager for Maemo, ClipMan. He posted an overview of the new project last week: This application stores, if currently running, all text based clipboard content in a small database. You're able to scroll thru the list, see the history and you're anytime able to put something back to the clipboard to use it again. If you’re working on a bigger document, on the command line or if you’re dealing with some script or python sourcecode, you should keep running THIS Application in the backround. You have not to think about, if you still have something in the clipboard that could be useful in the future or not. If you finished your current project you're able to empty the Database and clear all collected Data to ensure a fast Clipboard Manager and to protect your own privacy. The alpha release is available from Extras-devel. If you're interested in helping test, I recommend the bluepill, if you're legitimately able to help test, the bluepill is probably still your best bet. The red one is really only for the insane.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

FourCircle - another FourSquare client

Ted van den Brink has started work on a new FourSquare client for Maemo, FourCircle. The new client is currently available on Extras-devel, so testers should probably be self-selecting for "willingness to make trouble for your device" and "enjoys technical challenges"

For those of you, like your editor, unfamiliar with the service, FourSquare is a social network that allows users to keep track of their friends (and notify them of their own location) by "checking-in" at venues as they go about their day (there are incentives in the form of "badges").

FourCircle is currently only available from Extras-devel, so please handle it with care.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

Updated BusyBox packages

BusyBox is a reimplementation of lots of standard UNIX commands as part of a lean, small application. It is therefore often used in embedded and mobile systems. This includes Maemo, where it is the glue which holds the system together. Dennis Groenen has taken the patches and configuration of the Maemo 5 BusyBox and updated it from the current vesion: The primary purpose of this package is to simply provide an updated BusyBox shell. This update should not break any existing scripts or fragment the shell use in scripts and therefore tries to be close to Nokia's configuration (with some exceptions like coloured ls). There is, however, an enhanced BusyBox binary available in the post below this one for those who do want additional features. There is also talk of shipping a BusyBox update as part of the Community SSU. This package is currently on a third party website and, in addition to the usual caveats about being careful with such sources, extra consideration should be given to the fact that a problem here may well require a reflash.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)
« In the Wild