Association Subscribers Manager and Open source stuffs

Kurabu (a.k.a Association Subscribers Manager) development progress

2011-02-26T11:53:00+01:00

Hi,

it seems that I do not communicate enough about Kurabu's progress, so I will gladly do more !

The current work is mainly concentrated on 2 points :

re-organize the code into libraries (libKurabuCore and libKurabuGui at the moment)
finish the 2 main interfaces (Addon and most importantly Storage)

Outside of those subjects, there is many aspects of the code that I try (hard !) to smash down, like all the legacy code that comes from previous versions (PerlQt or C++/Qt3) but the code clean might not be that easy to do (given the quantity of code to clean...). There is also a handful of addon I want to make : one for Alkimia and one for statistics at minimum.

You can see the main tasks advancement on Sourceforge's TaskFreak.

Have fun,

Arnaud Dupuis

Advice required: Kurabu/Assuma's StorageInterface

2011-02-02T07:58:00+01:00

Hi,

First of all, sorry for not giving life signs. Like Everyone I have a busy life and sometime it takes me more energy than I have to code after going home very late.

That said, the purpose of this blog post is to require our great community to share some of its might with me. In Kurabu (was Association Subscribers Manager) 3.3 I have redesigned the storage method to be able to add many storage capacities (Databases, cloud, Akonadi, etc.) but I am currently struggling with a design flaw/issue : Kurabu/Assuma is based on XML files (many XML files like : subscribers list, postal codes/city equivalence tables, fee details, etc.) and it looks very odd to put all those files in one big interface (and it is not that easy because of the wide variety of files AND because of some design errors I made early in the conception). So I am facing a dilemma : should I let the legacy code for current XML based files like that and use the new Kurabu::Core::StorageInterface only for new storage methods (and advice users to switch to SQLite for example) or should I put lots of effort in making my old and not-so-well-designed XML file based code fit my new abstraction ?

If you have an advice please let me know, you can contact me through comments, IRC (Arno[Slack]@Freenode), mail (a dot dupuis [the sign that embodies email] infinityperl dot org), Twitter (ArnaudDupuis) or Skype for those of you that already have my Skype user name.

Arnaud Dupuis

Kurabu (a.k.a Association Subscribers Manager) 3.3.0 recent progress

2011-01-03T07:31:00+01:00

Hi,

it's been a long time since I posted an update about Kurabu (Association Subscribers Manager or Assuma for short). So here is a digest of what recently changed and what will be include in the 3.3.0 release :

Association Subscribers Manager changes name to Kurabu (pronounce "kulabu" or "klabu", it's the Japanese pronunciation for "club"), it's a quicker and less taken name...
The storage mechanism have been completely rewrite now working on a data source plugin base. The 3.3.0 release will ship with the XML and database storage plugins.
The plugin architecture was greatly improved too and is now much more useful !
The user interface was reworked too and particularly the information panel.
AssumaEffect will no longer be used in favour of the QtAnimation framework.

There is more to come but if you know everything it's no fun ! As you see it will be a major update that will bring lots of new features and improvements. This version also mark the beginning of developments for KDE SC compatibility. This and the addon system are good basis to include the work of the KDE Finance Apps group on Alkimia.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Kurabu (a.k.a Association Subscribers Manager) new stuff : the script to create addon base code

2010-10-01T08:10:00+02:00

Hi,

with Kurabu 3.3 the add-on (or plug-in) system is finally complete. There is still work to do though but it is usable right now (even from the trunk). And since I hope to see many add-ons for Kurabu (and because I plan to write quite a lot myself) I just putted on the SVN a script to help developers to create a add-on.

Kurabu's add-ons can be ECMA script (a.k.a QtScript) or binary one, the init-kurabu-addon.pl script can create both of them. This little Perl script create for you the directory structure, the addon.xml file and all needed code files with sample code inside. What the current version lack is the ability to fine tune what the developer wants for binary add-ons (like if the add-on should have a menu entry, an entry in the previewer's add-on menu , both or none, etc.). The current Kurabu's add-on system do not allow script to have a menu entry but I'll correct that before the release (it is now on the TODO list ^^).

If you want to try this script, just update the SVN code and run it ! It is here /trunk/association_subscribers_manager/tools/init-kurabu-addon.pl. The embed documentation is sufficient for you to understand how to use this command line tool.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Kurabu (a.k.a Association Subscribers Manager) 3.3 and AndroBuzz progresses

2010-09-14T07:54:00+02:00

Hi,

just a quick post to keeps you informed : I'm working on Kurabu and AndroBuzz but I also have a huuuuge amount of work from my job, so if you add my family that I want to see when I come back from work I have not too much time to work on my FOSS projects. But I'm working on them, specifically I am polishing the plugin system in Kurabu (Association Subscribers Manager) and I will find this last dman bug in AndroBuzz sync provider !

The release of Kurabu (Association Subscribers Manager) 3.3 will also be the occasion for the new website to go live, so considering my skills when it comes to web... It might take some time

Arnaud Dupuis

How to build a cheap yet powerful media center

2010-08-01T11:06:00+02:00

Hi all,

this post will give you my recipe to build a cheap and powerful GNU/Linux based media center. I am perfectly aware of the fact that many tutorials and howto exists around the interweb and certainly explains things far better I will do. Anyway this one could be of any use to you, the g33k with many spare parts left over from your previous computer.

This post will be updated as time pass. Indeed I have not yet all needed parts to build my ultimate media center, and I will make this howto as comprehensive and complete as possible.

Some context

Context is useful for you to see if you can learn something for your own use from this post, so :

I have many of my old computers at home, some are used as servers, some are my sandboxes, etc. I have one specifically which is a file server (NFS+Samba). It is mainly used to store multimedia content (family pictures and videos, movies, music, etc.). At this point, my thoughts were : "and what if I connect it to our TV set ?". So be it ! After some test and researches on the web, I came with the idea of using XBMC as it is by far the most advanced and optimized one. I will develop the media center software choice later.

The computer I talk about is a pretty old one : AMD Athlon XP 3000+, ATI Radon HD 3650 (AGP), 1 GB RAM. You can tell that I can't play 1080p movies with this settings. That is not a problem since it just to validate the concept that I use this computer. I mention it because their is still things to learn from this one.

A word about interoperability and "user friendliness" : we have GNU/Linux and Mac OS X computers at home. So the file server shares directories with NFS (files) and Samba (files and printers). We also want to access multimedia content through our mobile devices (EeePC with Fedora 13, Android devices, iPhone and MacBook Air). Multimedia content is shared in DLNA through uShare.

To sum this up : we pretty much want a full feature all inclusive media box connected to our TV set and accessible from any devices on the home network.

1 - Choice of a media center software

This is the tricky part : you have to figure out you needs, and like all clients in the world you don't know what you really want

Let me help you with my list to that big old Santa. I want to :

play all my multimedia content (photo, movies, music) on my TV set (far bigger than my computer one) ;
be able to put and retrieve (multimedia) files on my file server ;
be able to watch my last Fairy Tail episode on my Nexus One from the bottom of my bed ;
allow my Apple fan girl of wife to enjoy all those features on her damn closed Apple's products ;
share the home printer/scanner ;
enjoy online content like YouTube or Shoutcast radio ;
read my RSS feeds on my TV set (geek inside) ;
read my email on my TV set (the geek always strike twice).

Moreover, I have to think that the computer I use to validate the usefulness of this media center is a old one. So I want a really optimized software to be able to enjoy at last 720p movies.

Important point : I don't care about watching TV. I have a HD optic fiber connected set top box from my ISP that do this job very well, I don't want to double or replace those features. I only want a single point of entry for all the medias that are stored across my home network.

With this list in mind what are the media center software that are available to fulfill my needs ? It is important to note that I want an all integrated solution : no customization of VLC or MPlayer, no KDE desktop (as beautiful it is) with shortcuts to media directories and media players. I want something that do all my required features in one place and I want to be able to boot on it directly.

Elisa / Moovida :

I tested Elisa some time ago and I liked the interface and features available, so I went and tested it again. The interface is quite nice and it does pretty much all what you want/need from a media center. Problem is : for GNU/Linux distribution their is no packages nor sources available for version 2.0 (only 1.0.9 available). Their is one more issue to me : it is absolutely impossible to use it on my "pre-prod" computer. It is super slow (maybe Python have something to do with that ^^) and I can't even play the standard DivX (no high resolution, only standard SD movie).

So it was a no go for this one.

GeexBox

GeexBox is a media center I discovered during my quest for the ultimate media center application. This one literally rocks ! It have unique features that makes it fit my needs almost perfectly : it is able to share its content through UPnP, it can play many multimedia content, it supports SHOUTcast and NFS, it also have a unique feature : bookstore. This one allows you to read on your TV set (or whatever monitor you plug to your media center box) online content like onemanga.com. Please note that GeexBox is a full distribution, to get the media center only you want to look at Enna.

I like the interface and the features so this one could do it. But there some issues : not being able to share content with anything else but FTP is a big missing feature in my use cases. GeexBox could also be really improved by adding a plugin system (at least, I am not aware of any plugin system in GeexBox).

A special mention goes to this media center since it provides many tools for others to works great (like libdlna, uShare, etc.).

XBMC

Now for XBMC. As you read before : this is the one I choose. It can do every single thing I wrote in my whish list ! It is a really feature rich media center, and thanks to its extension system it can be made even more feature complete ! It looks like the perfect software to me : easy to use and beautiful (my wife will like it !). It is also highly tunable and extensible (lil' geek inside already like it !!). Over all, XBMC have gorgeous themes that makes it a very nice choice for something that is in the middle of my lounge. Have a look to the Confluence default theme, to the Aeon theme or to the theme/skins gallery. XBMC also have a really useful feature in my context, it is called XBMC standalone. When you use this mode, XBMC acts as a window manager. Use this with auto-login and you will have something really user friendly (I start my media center as I would have start my Blu-Ray player).

On the performance side, even if the Aeon theme is not really usable on my pre-prod configuration (it is full HD 1080p so I never expected it to works anyway), the Confluence default theme runs just great. Even the last development version taken from the SVN runs smooth (I had to tweak the compilation process a little but I'll describe this later).

Freevo

It would not be fair not to mention Freevo. It looks like an excellent media center... but I have not test it. Why ? Because I might have do a little segregation against it : as soon as I saw "Python powered" it reminded me the Elisa/Moovida experience. So in fear of bad performances I did not test it. That said, from what I can see on the website it recommends only NVidia cards and I have an ATI/AMD one. There is few screenshots available (note to the Freevo team : you should really makes more screenshots your challengers are well recognized and provides there future users with many medias to tease them) and from what I can see it is much less appealing than XBMC or GeexBox (even if it is the GeexBox team that made the main theme for Freevo).

In the other hand it seems to be very feature rich, actually it is probably one of the most feature rich Open Sources media center. No wonder why it is widely used. With a nice interface like XBMC for example (OpenGL, etc.) it would be the killer choice (given the fact the performances are corrects). Do not restrain from trying it, it looks like it will do a lot of good for you. The documentation is a bit outdated (with OpenSUSE don't bother reading it if you have packman repository it is packaged).

Final choice

Like I said previously my choice goes to XBMC for both features and a very appealing UI. Moreover the HTTP remote control, Android remote and iPhone remote allows me to drop all mouses/keyboards.

2 - Installing XBMC

Now that the one have been chosen, we need to install it. On GNU/Linux based distributions you always have two options : the easy way and the hard one. Let's go through both of them.

The easy way: use your GNU/Linux distribution's package manager

So you are a sweet one, you want to go the easy way ? Ok let's see what you have to do. First you want to go to the page that is dedicated on Linux installation on XBMC wiki. But since, I am a nice guy let's see how to install it on OpenSUSE (10.3) and Fedora (13).

Let's start with Fedora (the easiest), simply type :

sudo yum -y install xbmc

That's it ! Off course you can do it with your favorite yum UI too. Last time I checked though, the HTTP remote control was not enable... Quite a bit of a problem to me and my Android remote...

For the OpenSUSE it's almost as simple, you just have to ensure that you enabled the packman repository. If not, go to Yast2 -> Manage repositories/sources (or whatever the real name is...) -> add a community repository -> select Packman in the list. By the way this is also here that you get some nice repositories like AMD and NVidia's proprietary drivers for your video card (that you need to run XBMC properly). Once this is done just type :

sudo zypper in xbmc

And you are good to go. Obviously, you can also stay in Yast2 and install XBMC from the UI. Who said Linux was complicated ?

The hard way : compile it yourself

Ok, you're a tough guy, ye' wanna go fer da hard way. You're damn right : bounty earned in suffering tastes better

Actually, XBMC is not that much of a problem to compile... Given the fact your CPU support SSE2 instructions... which is not the case of my old Athlon. Anyway, I prefer the SVN version over any sources because it's more unstable... Hu, I mean : because you got cutting edges developments. One of the things I wanted from the sources was VDPAU rendering (please note that official sources do it very well too, you are not forced to use SVN version). This allow us - NVidia accelerators owners - to use the specially optimized hardware acceleration in XBMC. It makes a huge difference with your typical SD DivX. So... without further ado, here is a step by step howto get and compile XBMC from sources.

The GNU/Linux distribution used is an OpenSUSE 11.3 installed from KDE Live CD. This precision is for the dependencies : you might not need to install them all. Anyway, you should read XBMC's official HOWTO compile XBMC it have many distributions specific howtos and it covers 64 bits compilation that I don't. The following guide is a super-quick super-condensed version. So, first things comes first : install the required dependencies :

zypper in make cmake autoconf automake gcc gcc-c++ boost-devel python-devel python-sqlite2 dbus-1-devel gperf gcc-fortran unzip zip unrar nasm libavahi-devel SDL-devel SDL_image-devel SDL_mixer-devel jpegint-devel audiofile-devel fontconfig-devel freetype2-devel fribidi-devel glibc-devel hal-devel libbz2-devel libstdc++-devel libexpat-devel glib2-devel libjasper-devel libjpeg-devel mad-devel libmikmod-devel libmms-devel libogg-devel nvidia-vdpau-devel libopenssl-devel sqlite3-devel libstdc++-devel libpng-devel libtre-devel e2fsprogs-devel libvorbis-devel lzo-devel pcre-devel libenca-devel libpulse-devel libfaac-devel ccache xorg-x11-devel Mesa-devel dbus-1-devel glew-devel alsa-devel libmysqlclient-devel libcurl-devel zlib-devel xmms-devel ftgl-devel libcdio-devel libtool libsamplerate-devel libfaad-devel flac-devel libsmbclient-devel libtiff-devel enca-devel libwavpack-devel libmpeg2-devel libmicrohttpd-devel libmodplug-devel libdvdcss-devel yasm yasm-devel libass-devel libtool gettext gettext-devel libmad0 libmad-devel

Of course, nvidia-vdpau-devel is only in the case you own a NVidia 3D accelerator.

From SVN trunk

Checkout XBMC sources from SVN (at the moment I write this post you can read the following sentence on XBMC's irc channel on Freenode: "Addons branch merged, stay <= r28276 for a while! You've been warned!") :

svn co https://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xbmc/trunk/ xbmc/

Once this is done, cd into the newly created xbmc/ directory and boostrap the sources :

./bootstrap

Then it's time for configure :

./configure --enable-mid --disable-debug --disable-pulse --prefix=/usr --enable-ffmpeg-libvorbis --disable-ccache --enable-vdpau

Again, VDPAU is for NVidia users only. Use this switch if you want XBMC to use the NVidia boards' hardware acceleration. Once configure is done, build the code :

make -j3

The -jX option ask make to run X concurrent jobs, usually you set the number of your processor core plus one (on my Core i7 with 4 hyperthreaded core, I will use -j9 for example). You are now ready to install XBMC :

su -c "make install"

And you are done ! The only thing that still remains is to configure your box to log in automatically on XBMC and to configure XBMC to your tastes.

A note for people with hardware that don't support SSE2 instructions (like my Athlon 3000+), you have to disable SSE2 support in libsquish the quick (and dirty) way is to comment the SSE2 instructions usage in the xbmc/lib/libsquish/Makefile.in file.

From SVN Dharma branch

Checkout the Dharma branch :

svn checkout https://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xbmc/branches/Dharma

And everything else is the same that for the trunk. At the moment, I strongly advise you to use this branch over the trunk !

3 - Some configuration / Hints

This part is not meant to be exhaustive, I will just give hints but I will not go through all XBMC's options and I will not explain how to do things on 350 GNU/Linux distributions (go to XBMC wiki for that ^^).

3.1 - File server / organization

In my case the media center is also a file server, I use Yast2 to configure Samba and NFS to do the job. I have a user (mediabox) which is dedicated to the media center purpose. In his home directory I have a Medias sub-directory which looks like that :

Some explanations might not be required but I'll give them anyway :

Images : main folder for all our pictures
Incoming : unsorted media files
Music : all the music we have
Users : a storage directory for home network users
Videos : quite obvious... this is were we put videos (DVD/BR rips, vacations movies, etc.)

This Medias directory is the one shared on our home network.

3.2 - XBMC

OpenSUSE allows me to specify a user to auto log-in, I choose my mediabox user and, that is a wonderful feature of XBMC, I choose xbmc-standalone as default session. Now I can boot my media box like I boot my bluray player (well my box is actually more quick to boot that my BR player...).

In XBMC you have to add location for your multimedia content, for example for videos I have a Movies folder, go to the video item, push right (on your keyboard or remote), choose "files" and browse to select the "Movies" folder (or whatever yours is). Then select a category (Film in my case) and a scrapper, don't forget to check the "auto scan" and "recursive scan" box. I tend to prefer IMdb of thetvdb for movies. This possibility is amazing because you can set a scrapper per folder. In my case I have standard English spoken movies and French movies. I use a different scrapper for French movies (Cine-passion) for better metadata. Do the same for all your multimedia content (if you watch animes, try the ANIdb.net scrapper ^^).

In case no metadata or episodes are found for your series, please remember that XBMC needs your series episodes torespect one of those naming conventions :

Serie Name - S<Season number>E<Episode number>.<extension>
Serie Name - <Season number>x<Episode number>.<extension>

For example, the Death Note episode 3 should be name either "Death Note - S01E03.mkv" or "Death Note - 1x03.mkv".

If your movies are not correctly detected, put them in a directory (the name doesn't really matter) that contains your movie and a file with the same name as your movie but with nfo extension and put the IMdb link to this movie in the nfo file. For example, I put beowulf.mkv into the beowulf folder together with the beowulf.nfo file that contains the correct link to IMdb... Because in this case a particularly sad misunderstanding could occur...

3.3 - Remote control

A word now on remote control, XBMC can be controlled by external programs. I personally use the official XBMC Android Remote, this one have many feature, is officially developed by XBMC developers (many thanks to them !) and even if it is still a beta it is really stable and efficient. On iPhone, there is no equivalent but there is some nice stuff too. For example the highest rated one (when you search for xbmc remote in the AppStore) is not free but is almost as good as the Android version (not quite though).

You can get the XBMC Android Remote on the market. Here is the QR-Code :

You can also remote control your XBMC by pointing your browser at your media center's address on the port you selected in XBMC settings (default: 8080).

4 - Building a cheap hardware base

Now that we have the software and since my pre-production install proved to me that the concept was worth the effort, it is time to build a decent box to use this and play all my multimedia content !

My main concerns for this box are :

cost efficiency (less than 350 € is a requirement)
performances (we want to be able to play HD content)
silence

Although I tried to make the box relatively small it was not in my main concerns list (I already have many computer at home so... one more, one less...).

One of my point was to re-use some of my existing (but not used anymore) parts (like the spare NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS2 I have or the two 2TB seagate barracuda that are in my desk). So far what I needed was : a case, a motherboard, a CPU, some RAM memory and a silent power supply. I already own the other parts (but don't worry I will give you some hints with the price of those parts if they were to buy).

My hardware supplier is the excellent webmerchant Materiel.net, if you are not in France or Belgium you cannot use them but the prices should not change that much. So here we go :

Motherboard + RAM + CPU : upgrade kit (Intel Pentium E5400 2,70 GHz, MSI P45T-C51,2xG.Skill 1 GO DDRII PC6400) => 182.99 €
Power supply : Cooler Master Silent Pro 500W => 72.49 €
Case : Fractal Design Define R2 => 92.49 €
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total : 347.97 € (Google says ~ 460 US $)

The case is a bit of a luxury item but silence being on my top 3 concerns it is worth the price. If you have to buy a HDD and a video card I will advice you to choose the WD Caviar Green 1TB (62.99 €) and the Asus EAH5450 Silent (74.99 €). Both of them are silent, powerful enough for a media center and power efficient (spare your power tab ^^). In this case the box is a little bit expensive (if silence is not much a requirement for you, you can save some money on the case and video card) but it is still less than a pre-made box of this type. Moreover this box will be a file server, other cannot be that easily transformed into a file server.

5 - Conclusion

While it took some time to write this post, it is not that long to have this kind of media center up and running. I cannot imagine go back without now that I have it, I digitalize all my content and watch everything from my anime to my baby picture on it. Moreover, if your box is makes enough silent, believe me the Women Acceptance Factor is quite strong (given the fact you wife/girlfriend like to watch multimedia content).

I will update this post with more hints if asked in comments and I will add a description of our real usage of this after a week or two using it.

I hope you will enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it !

Arnaud Dupuis

/back !

2010-07-04T23:37:00+02:00

Hi,
after what seems to be an entire year, I'm back online !! You can't imagine how long it is until you actually are unwired...
On my Open Source duties my first priority is to aggregate contributions to Association Subscribers Manager with my own code and then commit all those to the trunk.
My second priority is to get a working version of AndroBuzz to the Android Market. This project is not going fast enough and I will do my share to accelerate things here

On all this things, do not expect as much code as I use to produce : I now realyze that a baby is a hell of a project to contribute ! It takes so much time I sometime wonder if it's not an exclusive process !

Arnaud Dupuis

/away

2010-06-13T19:29:00+02:00

Hi,

I will be unavailable for some time since I just moved and have no internet access in my new flat yet.

Arnaud Dupuis

Back online !!

2010-05-23T13:22:00+02:00

Hi,

I've been away from my online life for some time now (let's say about one month and a half), there is a pretty good reason : my wife and I spawned a new child process ! That's great news, fun and all but... It takes time !! Lot's of time ! And since it's our first baby we kind of discovering things

Anyway I now can resume my online activities starting with AndroBuzz: Google made huge updates to the API and we have to keep up with that !

My second priority is Association Subscribers Manager: I have many things to do starting with database support and Akonadi integration. I also have to keep up with the KDE Finance Apps group's mailing list.

My red-top-ultra-number-one task will be to unstack my 8946 unread mails and answer most of them (sorry if I have not answered your mail by now).

On the bright side I now have Froyo up and running on my Nexus One :D

Arnaud Dupuis

KDE Finance Stack Spring Sprint meeting

2010-04-22T08:00:00+02:00

Hi folks !

First, sorry for my long silence after Association Subscribers Manager v3.2 release. I recently got a new job and it's tiring... A lot !

Anyway ! From friday to sunday is held the first sprint of the KDE Finance Stack community in Franckfurt, and I'll be there. We'll discuss many things and I'll keeps you informed during the whole thing. Make sure to watch Twitter for the really hot news

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager v3.2 is out !

2010-04-11T12:59:00+02:00

I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Association Subscribers Manager 3.2 codename "Frenchies" !

This one is a major bugfixe version and feature improvement of Association Subscribers Manager.

I want to thanks particularly all testers and bug reporters that helps me make this version, particularly : Sandra Spadaccini and Max Buttjer. They helped a lot by testing the Mac OS X and Windows versions. They reported many bugs and helped a lot to improve some critical features like the custom fields.

I also want to welcome a new contributor : Nicolas Lécureuil. He is taking care of the Mandriva package.

As everyone may see there is a lot of French peoples that helped for this release, so this 3.2 version have a codename and it's all to their glory ! You will find another proof of my gratitude when you will launch Association Subscribers Manager !

You can download packages and installer at :

https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

You can also visit the website for more information :

http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org

Twitter live feed is at:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23AssumaProject

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.2

- changes layout of the subscribers summary/subscribers edit zone

- made little update to the default theme styles

- modify the subscriber's tooltip behaviour : now when dues column are hidden, the tooltip do not show the warning about them anymore

- modify the search widget to make it more customizable by allowing the select and search into any fields (regular or custom)

- add Mac OS X support

- add support for compressed XML (for postal codes only at the moment)

- fix a bug with postal codes (application was asking to add postal code/city couples even if they were empty)

- add support for custom fields' in-place custom editor in the main view

- fix a bug in passive popup display (they were sometime bigger than the application)

- fix custom fields problems fix translations

Association Subscribers Manager is available as a source package (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD*, Windows, require a compiler), binary package for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager updates and next release

2010-03-28T12:42:00+02:00

Hi,

The next release of Association Subscribers Manager is on its way ! It was originally the 3.1.1 wich was planned but I received so much help, suggestions and feature request that, without implementing one of the initially planned features for 3.2, I just can't release a 3.1.1 version ! It is far from being just a patch release, this one will feature some major features enhancements :

Mac OS X support (at last !)
some UI changes
bugfixes (some unbelivably got through previous bug hunting and where quite huge !)
a completly reworked search widget
an global behaviour update

Quite some things that were asked by users directly since the 3.1 version was released. The 3.2 release is due for friday the 2nd of April. If you are using the shared Google calendar for Association Subscribers Manager's release you might already know, else you can visit http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org in the Roadmap section to view and subscribe to this calendar.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Helping a cousin project : lemonPOS (©Guillaume De Bure)

2010-03-24T06:54:00+01:00

Following other people from the KDE Finance Apps group (like Guillaume), I will help a great project to get some vision on the Web/KDE planet (when I finally got aggregated... or not...) : Lemon POS.

Lemon POS is the only Open Source Point Of Sale software I am aware of and it looks like something really interesting to me. I think that if you are running a small or medium business you should definetly try this out ! Lemon POS is KDE 4.x powered and thus looks very beautiful in addition to be useful and just this should makes you think twice about this... When I see how hugly POS software usually are... It almost makes your eyes bleed !

Anyway give it a try and visit the Lemon POS homepage !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager under Sourceforge's lights

2010-03-09T09:38:00+01:00

Hi,

A bit after the Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 release, I was contacted by Lee Schlesinger from Sourceforge.net for an interview about Association Subscribers Manager. The result of this interview is available here:

http://sourceforge.net/blog/along-comes-association-subscribers-manager/

You can learn some fresh things about the futur of Association Subscribers Manager. Speaking of that, I currently have a very interesting conversation with a French association (I'll put the link in the comment after asking for the permission) and the person I'm talking with have lots of good ideas that will be implemented in the next release (mostly because I should have had those ideas before the release).

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 is out !

2010-02-23T09:03:00+01:00

I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Association Subscribers Manager 3.1 !

This one is a major bugfixe version and feature improvement of Association Subscribers Manager.

I want to particularly thanks all testers for their feedback and welcome a new member in the team : Márcio Moraes.

You can download packages and installer at :

https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

You can also visit the website for more information :

http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.1

- add theme feature

- add custom fields feature

- add more compilation macros to help packagers

- huge settings system code rewrite to make it simplier

- GUI changes to reflect settings update

- fix a bug wich was refreshing the edit fields and the main list view many times, causing the keyboard cursor to be sent at the end of an edit line at each typed characters

- fix a character encoding problem in mail sending

- fix and improve the updater/download manager

Association Subscribers Manager is available as a source package (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD*, Windows, require a compiler), binary package for Linux and windows installer.

Enjoy !

NOTE: more packages are to come in the upcoming hours/days.

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 new release date

2010-02-09T07:24:00+01:00

Hi,

after a look at the auto-updater issue, I found out that the problem is deeper than I first thought. Mainly built on the QHttp class, this updater's architecture is old and poorly done. I will re-code it before releasing anything.

So the new (estimated) release date is the 22th of February. This date is a maximum and I could release it before if the work is finished and tested earlier.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 release delayed

2010-02-08T11:18:00+01:00

Hi,

Due to issues in the auto-updater, the release of Association Subscribers Manager is delayed at least until tomorrow. Stay tuned for more informations.

Arnaud Dupuis

New feature in 3.1: splitted user settings

2010-01-29T07:34:00+01:00

Hi,

Today I will continue to unveil Association Subscribers Manager new features. Actually it is not really a new feature, it is more an improvement.

Anyway, settings was sure a hard part in previous version of Association Subscribers Manager, until now ! Started with the 3.1 version, ladies and gentlemen, behold the new simplicity of the settings system ! Basically settings have been splitted in two : association settings and application ones. They are both accessible through the toolbar.

The idea is to make users life more simple by presenting only relevant informations. What I mean is : when you want to add a new activity with new fees, you do not really care about the locales of the application. So even if the amount of options have not decrease (actually, with custom fields, it increased) the settings system is more easy to use. Mainly because there is now only 3 or 4 tabs of settings instead of 8 !

That is certainly not the killing feature of the 3.1 version of Association Subscribers Manager but it sure will make life easier for many people. Here is some screenshots of the new settings organisation :

Application settings:

(please note that in those screenshots Association Subscribers Manager was not compiled with the updater support so the "Updates" tab is missing).

Association settings:

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 BETA1 released

2010-01-25T08:34:00+01:00

Hi,

The first beta version of Association Subscribers Manager version 3.1 have just been released ! Has usual, you can find files and bug tracker/feature requests tracker at :

You can download packages and installer at :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

This version features many changes and the most important are:

add theme feature
add custom fields feature
add more compilation macros to help packagers
huge settings system code rewrite to make it simpler
GUI changes to reflect settings update
many bugfixes

I would like to use this release announcement to welcome and thanks Márcio Moraes for his work on the Brazilian Portuguese translation. He is the new official maintainer of this translation. Welcome aboard matey !

For the moment only the source packages is available, windows and GNU/Linux installers will comes later. As usual, this beta version's translation and documentation are not up-to-date, they will be in the stable release 2 weeks from now.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis & the Association Subscribers Manager team.

New feature in 3.1: Custom fields

2010-01-24T14:00:00+01:00

Hi,

First of all, happy birthday blog ! This is the 100th post of this blog ! Woohoo ! Ok then if it's a birthday I have to come with something big and nice... Let's say custom fields in Association Subscribers Manager !

The first beta version of Association Subscribers Manager v3.1 will be out in few hours and will have a long requested feature : custom fields. The principle is that there is a bunch of pre-defined fields in Association Subscribers Manager and they cover a large scale of classical associations/clubs needs, but they certainly cannot covers for all the needs of every users. So for this users, it is now possible to add user defined fields and to use them like any other fields in Association Subscribers Manager.

Custom fields can be of many types:

"One line text" : create a one line input field (based on a QLineEdit)
"Multiple line text" : create a multiple line input field (based on a QTextEdit)
"Date selector" : create a date input field with popup calendar (based on a QDateEdit)
"Ok/Not ok combobox" : create a yes/no combo box with editable label (based on QComboBox)
"Multiple value selector" : create a free combo box with customizable items (also based on a QComboBox)
"Fee field" : create a fee input field, fee being a floating point number (based on a QDoubleSpinBox)

All those fields are 100% customizable and can be used (after an application restart) directly in the subscriber's edition part of Association Subscribers Manager. You can also follow everyday news through Twitter.

Check this video for an introduction:

Until the official release of Association Subscribers Manager, I will feed you with videos and screenshots of the new features of the 3.1 version.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager and KDE

2010-01-23T00:36:00+01:00

Hi,

I was ask today if I have plan to better integrate Association Subscribers Manager with KDE. Since the answer can be of interest for other people that the person who asked me, I will (also) answer here.

First, Association Subscribers Manager is designed and developed to be multi-platform (GNU/Linux, *BSD, MS windows and Apple's Mac OS X). On some of the supported platforms, KDE is not really widely installed. And amongst the target audience of Association Subscribers Manager there are people who are far from being geeks. Those are facts.

In the other hand, I am a firm supporter of KDE, I use it everyday both at home and at work and I would like to integrate Association Subscribers Manager a lot more into KDE.

So, to answer the question : I will do it and make it possible to enable at compile time. At least until I made a clear evaluation of KDE on windows and mac os X (since I have no windows nor mac boxes, I am not friendly with those platforms and the state of KDE on them).

But considering the road things are taking it is likely that Association Subscribers Manager will get a better KDE integration before it's 3.3 release...

Arnaud Dupuis

Happy new year and updates

2010-01-19T00:39:00+01:00

Hi,

First things comes first : happy new year ! I wish you all the best for this 2010 year (a bit late... as usual).

Then, after a quick come back to my Perl modules, I now am back to Association Subscribers Manager ! Things have changed a lot on this side. First, the settings' user interface was to complicated so it have been split in two : association's settings and application settings. During this part of the work Association Subscribers Manager got a highly requested feature : the custom fields.

Custom fields are user defined input fields. This feature, as well with the settings part are all implemented and I now only need to fix some remaining bugs before the release. This "release" thing leads me to another point : the initial release plan was out of scale. Current changes are already lots of changes and I would like to not confuse Association Subscribers Manager's users with to many changes. And, by the way, it took me so much time to get all those working that the next release will occur next year if I keep waiting for the perfect finished program ! So the 3.1 release will feature 2 main things/changes :

a complete re-organisation of the settings mechanism (under the hood as well as user interface)
the brand new custom fields mechanism

I will post again about this specific feature (custom fields) soon.

Arnaud Dupuis

Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps v0.4 is out !

2009-12-13T23:56:00+01:00

Hi,

After many months (years...) Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps have a new release ! The original company which paid me to develop this module have bankrupted so I resumed the work on this module on my free time. It took some time...

This version introduce the new Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps::Response object, fix for the user agent, documentation, a better test suite and many improvements. It also brings a major change in the API which will require you to update your scripts. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the changes since the 0.2 version (well... 0.3, 0.3.1 and 0.3.2 were kind of tests... and thanks to Slaven Rezic and RT it's now stable) :

Huge API change : geocode() now returns a Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps::Response ;
Documentation update ;
KML update (KML 2.2 with ExtendedData support)
many bug fixes.

I hope this will meet requirements and needs concerning geocoding with Perl.

Arnaud Dupuis

Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps got its own Google code

2009-12-09T23:34:00+01:00

Hi,

I am resuming the work I did more than one year ago on some of my Perl modules. I don't know why but I got tired of Perl coding (certainly because I did a lot of Perl in my professional life). But in holidays, before or after snowboarding, Perl looks fun again ! After updating my Games::CroqueMonsters module, I resumed the work on Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps.

I looked at the CPAN's RT, noted bugs and feature requests and start working again on this module. Then I though that it would be nice to have a code repository for this work. Being a Sourceforge fan I tough about it first, but the over long new project form convinced me that it was not the right choice. So I gave Google Code a chance, and fortunately it do the job pretty well ! So, the new place to find development code for the Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps Perl module is here :

http://code.google.com/p/geo-coder-googlemaps/

Do not hesitate to drop by and even do/request a code review !

Arnaud Dupuis

How to install Google Chrome on Slackware 13 GNU/Linux

2009-12-09T11:10:00+01:00

Hi,

The topic have been treated already on the internet but since the official build of Google Chrome only landed few hours ago, some extra informations and "re-post" cannot be bad.

So ! Google Chrome is not packaged for Slackware GNU/Linux distributions, well... That's not completely unexpected. And it is not packaged as a universal GNU/Linux binary either, which is more troublesome. Anyway here is my 2 ways to install Google Chrome on Slackware 13.

Important: I made everything on my EeePC (since I'm currently in holidays snowboarding in the French Alps) which runs a Slackware 13 x86, but everything should be exactly the same on Slackware64. I also have to warn you about my own install method : it's dirty and not especially quick

Method 1:

My own method, it's what I used to install Chrome as soon as I got the Google's email telling me the beta version of Chrome official Linux build was out in the wild ! So it's pretty dirty, and not the quickest way to do it. It's how I installed it even before thinking about looking at the web to see if something have been done by somebody else. You have been warned.

So first, download the Fedora RPM (32 or 64 bits), then run rpm2tgz :

su -c "rpm2tgz google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm"

Then install the resulting package. Do not waste your time to launch it, it will not start. For me the first reason is : I have not installed seamonkey and I miss the libnss3, so a quick sprint to slackbuilds.org and I had the mozilla-nss package installed (compiling and installing a package from a slackbuild script is very well documented on slackbuilds.org).

Almost, but it does not launch... The reason is, some poor links against libnss3. Well, at this point, I know I will not back off ! Let's shoot some ln shots !

ln -s /usr/lib/libnss3.so /usr/lib/libnss3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libnssutil3.so /usr/lib/libnssutil3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libsmime3.so /usr/lib/libsmime3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libssl3.so /usr/lib/libssl3.so.1d

ln -s /usr/lib/libplds4.so /usr/lib/libplds4.so.0d

ln -s /usr/lib/libplc4.so /usr/lib/libplc4.so.0d

ln -s /usr/lib/libnspr4.so /usr/lib/libnspr4.so.0d

If you are running a Slackware 64, just replace /usr/lib/ by /usr/lib64/ and if you are using this way to install Google Chrome, bookmark this post to be able to clean your system

If you are not very fond of the manual linking (you are a wise person), please follow the Method 2 !

Method 2:

Well, the result is the same : you will get a working Google Chrome. The path to this result is considerably easiest and quickest (given the fact you have libnss3 on your system) :

Go to slackbuilds.org and get the Google Chrome slackbuild, install it (please refer to Method 1 for the link to the howto use a slackbuild).

That's all !

As a conclusion I would say that there is the equivalent of Method 1 for the Debian 5 package, but the Slackbuild do it better than I care to explain

Enjoy Google Chrome and do not hesitate to give your feedback on it in the comments. So far for me, the difference in performance and CPU usage with Firefox on my EeePC is amazing ! I could barely run 4 tabs in Firefox, and look at the screenshot ! With 9 opened tabs it's still amazingly fast ! I will benchmark it against Fennec soon !

Arnaud Dupuis

New version for Games::CroqueMonster

2009-12-07T09:17:00+01:00

Hi,

this weekend I have put online a new version of my Perl module Games::CroqueMonster. This version is still for the 0.8.1 API (since there is no update of the API on the server side) but fixes some issues in the documentation. Mainly I fixed typos and examples.

The new version is installable via the cpan tool :

cpan Games::CroqueMonster

You can also download it on CPAN :

http://search.cpan.org/~dupuisarn/Games-CroqueMonster-0.8.1-2/

Arnaud Dupuis

Back from the deads

2009-11-20T23:59:00+01:00

Hi,
once again I gave no news for a while... My bad, but this time I have tons of good reasons !
First, my wife and me are awaiting an "happy event", this kept me busy.
Moreover, I work a lot (and I really mean a lot). I am currently in mission for Orange (European ISP, phone carrier, etc.) where I am technical project manager/coordinator (and developer) on their next set-top box. Believe me it is a lot of work.
The box is the next Intel's STB based on the Sodaville processor, my team and I are developping/integrating lots of cool stuff in this box like a full browser with Flash 10, a video game portal (from Transgaming), and a full bluray player. All those features are well presented in a brand new 3D GUI (thanks to Intel's plateform performances ! See around 1'45 of the video).

Well, all this kept me out of the web for a while but that do not means I have not coded anything ! So on Association Subscribers Manager's side, there was some changes too :

theme feature is fully functionnal and fully supported
flash plugin have been activated in the help browser and a new entry in the help menu allows you to directly the YouTube help channel in Association Subscribers Manager
lots of compilation options added like the possibility for packagers to not compile all code related to the updater
initial work on the custom fields editor

I will soon post a screen cast of all those new features to show you guys the reality behind the words ! You can of course test all this by compiling the code from the trunk.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Portuguese Brazilian translation update !

2009-09-18T00:25:00+02:00

Hi,

After Daniel's recent update on the Swedish translation, it is now the Portuguese Brazilian translation's turn to be updated.

This allow me to introduce a new contributor to Association Subscribers Manager: Márcio Moraes (marciopanto <atnospam> gmail <dotnospam> com). Márcio have updated Diego's initial work on the Portuguese Brazilian translation. And what update ! All the interface is now available localized for Brazilian users ! Thank you very much Márcio. Here are some screenshots:

I don't know if you all know how important those contributions are, but they really are and they really count for me and all users of Association Subscribers Manager.

Once again, thanks to all the contributors !

Arnaud Dupuis.

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0.1 is out !

2009-09-06T01:41:00+02:00

I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Association Subscribers Manager 3.0.1 !
This one is a major bugfixe version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks all testers for their feedback and particularly two of them : Fabrice Eyraud for all his bug reports and his French translation of the documentation and the French association Forme et Santé (from La Couture Boussey) for the feedback on live usage they did.

You can download packages and installer at :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

You can also visit the website for more information :
http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org

Here is a list of the main changes :
Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0.1
- integration of the patches from Sascha Manns and David Haller from OpenSUSE packaging team
- fix a bug in the re-translation of the UI's tooltips
- fix a bug in the passive message system (messages still visible after being hidden if the window is made biggest)
- fix a bug in the federation editor (see bug 2848046 on the tracker)
- fix a bug in the search feature
- fix a bug in the mail sending system
- add French documentation translated by Fabrice Eyraud
- made packagers life easier by adding an install target to the Makefile and possibility to configure the install destination (see README file).

Association Subscribers Manager is available as a source package (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD*, Windows, require a compiler), binary package for Linux and windows installer.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

New release in the pipe !

2009-09-05T13:37:00+02:00

Hi,

The current 3.0.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager have been found with some important bugs. I am working right now to provide as fast as possible (so far it will be later on today) a fix version of Association Subscribers Manager. This 3.0.1 release will include the following fixes :

integration of the patches from the OpenSUSE packagers (Sascha Manns and David Haller)
a fix for the tooltips re-translation bug
a fix for the bug in the passive message system (still visible after being closed)
a fix for the huge bug in the federation editor
a fix for the search features button's bug
and a fix for the email sending window

This is quite a huge update since it fixes many bugs. This is not the complete list of changes but this is the main thing you will get working (a lot) better after you get the upgrade.

Stay tuned !

Arnaud Dupuis

[Howto] Comment faire fonctionner le répondeur visuel de SFR sur n'importe quelle ROM d'Android ou n'importe quel smartphone.

2009-08-25T08:45:00+02:00

Hi,

This post will be in French since it only is relevant for French people using an Android smartphone with the French carrier SFR.

Bonjour à toi visiteur !

Si toi aussi tu es grand, beau, fort et intelligent, félicitation ! Tu as donc un smartphone sous Android. C'est bien mais... Je sens que tu me cache quelque chose... Ah ! Mais c'est bien sur ! Tu es chez SFR ! Ne t'en veux pas trop, nous sommes plusieurs à avoir fait ce choix, judicieux (haem...), pour pouvoir avoir un HTC Magic tout beau tout neuf.

Visiteur, si toi aussi tu as un magic avec une ROM qui n'est pas celle d'origine, ou que tu n'as pas de Magic mais que tu es chez SFR, et si tu veux utiliser le répondeur visuel quand même, lit la suite ! (Si tu veux la gloire, la fortune et l'honneur tu peux aussi lire la suite mais je ne garantit pas l'efficacité, d'autant que si tu es l'heureux possesseur d'un téléphone sous Android tu as déjà tous cela).

Donc voilà, SFR fait parfois (qui a dit "souvent" !?) des choix qui laisse rêveur. Par exemple, un jour, à une foire à tout / brocante dans le Gers, SFR a troqué tout ses designer (et ceux de 9telecom) contre 763 Kg de courgettes... Du coup maintenant, c'est le laveur de carreaux qui fait le design des applis SFR. Voilà pourquoi SFR ne sort que de très très laid "design" rouge et blanc tout carré.

Une autre fois, par mesquinerie pour se venger d'Orange qui avait sortit un smartphone sous Android en premier, SFR a réservé l'accès à son service de répondeur visuel aux seuls possesseur de HTC Magic ! Et malgrès des commentaires assassin sur le market, aucune mise à jour corrigeant ce trait de caractère pour le moins singulier d'une application qui, sinon, serait tout à fait honorable (exception faite du design) n'est disponible.

Heureusement, le tableau n'est pas si noir : une solution existe et celle-ci te permettra, cher visiteur, d'utiliser toi aussi cette application bien pratique.

Viennent maintenant les traditionnelles mises en garde : en suivant ce how-to, vous allez touchez à des fichiers système d'Android. Ceci est une opération périlleuse (d'aucun dirais "dangereuse") qui peut faire du mal à votre smartphone. Bref, si vous cassez votre Android, ce n'est pas de ma faute ! Je décline toute responsabilité en cas de pépin te forçant, cher visiteur, a réinstallé ton système voir pire.

Ceci dit en avant ! Ah au fait, il vous faut un smartphone rooté pour pouvoir mettre en place ce how-to.

Le contexte : j'ai récemment installé une ROM CyanogenMod 4.0.2 sur mon Magic. Problème, le numéro de modèle du téléphone est "T-Mobile mytouch 3G", et comme de juste, le répondeur visuel de SFR ne veut pas se lancer :

Premier constat, je suis sur un Magic, et l'appli ne le détecte pas. Donc le test doit être succin voir même simpliste. Et ça l'est. Il suffit de modifier le numéro de modèle dans le fichier /system/build.prop. Dans mon cas (CyanogenMod 4.0.2) il faut modifier le /system/build.sapphire.prop.

Note: dans la suite, les commandes à taper peuvent être suivit de mes commentaires (à ne pas taper) entre parenthèses.

Dans un premier temps, récupérer ledit fichier (visiteur, n'oublie pas de brancher ton smartphone à ton ordinateur préalablement à toute manipulation. Sans cela tu t'expose à un cuisant échec) :

adb pull /system/build.prop build.prop adb pull /system/build.sapphire.prop build.sapphire.prop (pour les utilisateurs de ROM CyanogenMod 4.0.2) cp build.prop build.prop.backup (car on est jamais trop prudent) cp build.sapphire.prop build.sapphire.prop.backup (même punition)

Une fois les fichiers sur votre ordinateur éditez les (avec un éditeur qui supporte les retours à la ligne UNIX pour les BillGatesiens). Les clés à changer/ajouter sont les suivantes (dans le fichier build.sapphire.prop pour les CyanogenMod-addict et dans le build.prop pour les autres) :

ro.product.model=HTC Magic ro.product.brand=generic ro.product.name=htc_sapphire ro.product.device=sapphire ro.product.board=sapphire ro.product.manufacturer=HTC ro.product.locale.language=fr ro.product.locale.region=FR ro.board.platform=msm7k ro.build.product=sapphire

Vous devriez en avoir un certain nombre déjà présentes. A mon humble avis, seul le ro.product.model est vraiment important. Maintenant il ne reste qu'a remettre le fichier en place :

adb remount adb push build.sapphire.prop /system/build.sapphire.prop (pour les utilisateurs d'une ROM CyanogenMod) adb push build.prop /system/build.prop (pour les autres) reboot

Et après le reboot, vous devriez, une larme à l'oeil, pouvoir utiliser SFR Répondeur visuel. Cool isn't it ?

Quelques remarques en vrac. Ce petit "truc" devrait pouvoir permettre aux utilisateurs de Hero et de Dream d'utiliser le répondeur visuel. Attention, modifier l'identité peut (va) certainement avoir des effets de bords sur le reste de votre téléphone (pour ne citer que ça : HTC fait peut être le même genre de test dans l'interface du Hero). Dans tous les cas, n'oubliez pas de faire un backup de votre build.prop ou build.sapphire.prop ! Mon petit truc n'a pas été testé sur d'autre smartphone ou ROM que le HTC Magic 32B avec une ROM CyanogenMod 4.0.2, tout autre configuration est donc à tester avec précautions. N'hésitez pas à laisser le résultat de vos tests dans les commentaires.

Les informations nécessaires à ce petit "truc" ont été récupéré un peut partout sur le net, mais particulièrement sur les forum dédiés à la ROM SPF.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

New video tutorial and new YouTube group !

2009-08-19T19:33:00+02:00

Hi !

Back from my holidays I resumed works on Association Subscribers Manager :

Here is the new (English) video tutorial which covers the presentation of the Federation Editor (watch on You Tube).

And here is the new You Tube group that I created to promote Association Subscribers Manager (See on You Tube).

About the code, I have made some patches to fix little issues in the 3.0 version (like a re-translation bug for example), I need to backport them and hunt for some more bugs and I'll release a bugfix version (3.0.1) of Association Subscribers Manager.
See you later !
Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager got its OpenSUSE 11.1 package

2009-07-31T11:25:00+02:00

Hi,

Thanks to Sascha Manns Association Subscribers manager is now packaged for OpenSUSE 11.1 ! The package is available here, the 1-Click install is here, and the repository is available here.

I am very grateful to Sascha and David Haller for their work and their patches. I will integrate their patches upstream and maintains them (if needed).

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 is out !

2009-07-27T08:28:00+02:00

Hi,

I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 !
This one is the first stable version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks all testers for their feedback and particularly two of them : Lucie Moore-Dupuis, my wife who was a great help with user interface tests and who successfully bears with my Open Source obsession ! The second one is Patrick Dupuis, my father who is the one who came with the original idea of Association Subscribers Manager (it was originally developed because his own association was in need of a software like this... it helps a lot when your son is actually a developer) and gave some very useful advices about the version 3.0.

You can download packages and installer at :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/files/

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

You can also have a look to the website to find more documentation, videos and screenshots :
http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org

Here is a list of the main changes :
Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0

Branch main changes from 2.1.2 are :
- software completely recoded from Perl/Qt3 to C++/Qt4
- more efficient database file format
- huge performance improvement
- brand new UI
- more powerfull addon system
- internationalization support

Releases main changes are :
* Translations:
Association Subscribers Manager now supports the following languages :
- Romanian (Lucian Lupescu - http://lucianlupescu.co.cc/)
- Swedish (Daniel Persson)
- Brazilian Portuguese (Diego Ferreira)
- French (Arnaud Dupuis)
- English (Arnaud Dupuis)

* Software changes (from 3.0rc1):
- fix many bugs (please see the bugtracker at Sourceforge for a complete list of corrected bugs)
- many UI fixes
- new federations files
- new first run wizard
- fix many real time data reload bugs
- new system for in-place edition
- performance improvement
- federations and license systems now works properly (with new and old database format, new format have been changed a little)
- brand new UI graphical effects
- new user documentation
- complete API documentation
- in-place edition system have been polished

Association Subscribers Manager is available as a source package (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD*, Windows, require a compiler), binary package for Linux and windows installer.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release postponed

2009-07-26T02:34:00+02:00

Hi,

I am falling asleep in front of my computer... Release 3.0 is ready but I have not enough remaining power to test all packages extensively tonight, so the release of Association Subscribers Manager is postponed until tomorrow.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager release day

2009-07-25T11:45:00+02:00

Hi,

Today is the Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release day, so the entire day is dedicated to integration, last translations, last bugfixes, last documentation efforts, packaging and testing !

Let's hope the release will occur without any problem, but I'm quite confident about bugs and software issues. All possible problems may comes from the other part of Association Subscribers Manager : uncomplete documentation, packaging issues, uncomplete translations but somehow, we will manage to deliver a nice piece of software !

Arnaud Dupuis.

New video and updates

2009-07-08T08:26:00+02:00

Hi !

I posted a new video about the AssumaEffect class super powers on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltABJbAW0Do.

This one show the use of 2 effects combined and control thanks to the signals and slots of this class. This will allow more eye candy in the futur but for the moment that will be all. Indeed I had a support request on Sourceforge's tracker wich pointed some bugs to fix. So since I still have to write user documentation, I will clearly focus on bug hunting in the next few days.

By the way, for you that read this blog and use Twitter there is a #Assuma hashtag for Association Subscribers Manager on Twitter !

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Update, progress and release date.

2009-06-28T19:09:00+02:00

Hi,

I have been quite lazy on blog update recently... Sorry for that. In the other hand I was not for the development of Association Subscribers Manager !

First, I fixed lots of the remaining problems and at the top of the list was the license system which gave me headaches ! It is now the past and it cost only a little change in the susbcribers database file format (.adb). Changes in the source code are heavy (of course...) but the good news is : it do not break backward compatibility with development releases !

Talking about release, the Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release will be on the 25th of july. It lets enough time for writting user documentation and to polish translations.

There is lots of changes I would like to talk about (the new possibility to print the database, the new first-run-wizard, etc.) but today is my first wedding birthday so I will give time to my wife instead of OSS for once

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

How to get the version number of your Slackware distro ?

2009-06-08T18:30:00+02:00

Hi,

This question seams to bother some peoples because it is one of the top queries which leads geeks from Google to my blog. So since, I don't want to let this question unanswered here is one answer :

In a terminal, type:

cat /etc/slackware-version

Although it is not very reliable if the Slackware is in sync with current or current64.

That's all for today, see you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

New Association Subscribers Manager's website !

2009-06-07T10:48:00+02:00

Hi,

After months of thinking, after months spent telling myself "you should do it", I did it ! (at last...)

Association Subscribers Manager now have its own website available at :
http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org/

On this website, you will find everything you need about Association Subscribers Manager like information on development, roadmap, download links, contributors list and contacts, announcements, and so on and so forth.

You will also find the user documentation on this website... as soon as it is done...

Well, give it a try and you'll see by yourself !

Arnaud Dupuis

Here it comes : AssumaEffect unleashed !

2009-06-02T00:25:00+02:00

Hi,

today I would like to introduce to you all a new class in Association Subscribers Manager API : AssumaEffect (err... the API doc might not be finished right now).

The point is : this class introduce fancy user interface effects in Association Subscribers Manager ! You doubt it ? Ok see by yourselves :

Note: if no youtube player appear, because of the stupid behavior of this blog engine (who wants to escape html in html code ???), just watch it on youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Jv3aRuZcI.

It is fancy, isn't it ? Not very usefull but as I always say : useless fancy things that looks great makes the user experience more comfortable !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0rc1 re-released

2009-05-23T23:24:00+02:00

Hi,

I made a mistake in the 3.0rc1 source package, preventing the compile process to succeed.

The mistake is now corrected and I released a new source package available on sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=211536&filename=AssociationSubscribersManager-3.0rc1-2.tar.gz&a=53006189

New package have been released under the name : AssociationSubscribersManager-3.0rc1-2.tar.gz

I am very sorry for the inconvenience caused by this mistake.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0rc1 released !

2009-05-20T07:40:00+02:00

Hi,

I am very pleased to annouce the immediate availability of the first Release Candidate
version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks translators for their work on this release. A special thanks to Lucian Lupescu who recently join the team and translate Association Subscribers Manager in Romanian.

You can download packages and installer at :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=211536&package_id=254244&release_id=683866

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0rc1

Releases main changes are :

* Translations:
Association Subscribers Manager now supports the following languages :
- Romanian (Lucian Lupescu - http://lucianlupescu.co.cc/) [new]
- Swedish (Daniel Persson)
- Brazilian Portuguese (Diego Ferreira)
- French
- English

* Software changes:
    - made a global UI redesign
    - add a federation editor/creator
    - add the possibility to configure the displayed currency
    - made all tables in the application easily editable
    - re-code from scratch all the in-place editing system
    - fix differents UI retranslation bugs
    - fix a bug concerning address handling
    - fix a bug in the update dialog (now display a message when no updates are available)
    - fix multiple bug affecting the dues calculation
    - Fix bugs 2792058 and 2793190

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager's new look and feel

2009-05-18T02:09:00+02:00

Hi,

I made tons of modifications in Association Subscribers Manager this week end, I will blog about them next time. For today, I just wanted to let a quick post to show you the most visible update : the look and feel.

This is how Association Subscribers Manager used to be (click to enlarge):

and this how Association Subscribers Manager now look like (click to enlarge):

From my point of view, it is a big improvement !

Arnaud Dupuis

Romanian translation for Association Subscribers Manager !

2009-05-13T06:33:00+02:00

Hi ! Another translation have been added to Association Subscribers Manager : Romanian !
This is all thanks to Lucian Lupescu (http://lucianlupescu.co.cc/).
The whole interface support Romanian since SVN revision 182.
And here is a little screenshot (click to enlarge) :

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0BETA1 released !

2009-05-04T18:04:00+02:00

Hi,

I am very pleased to annouce the immediate availability of the first Beta
version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks Daniel Persson and Diego Ferreira for their
amazing work on Association Subscribers Manager translations. Thanks to them
the software is now also available in Swedish and Brazilian Portuguese.

You can download packages and installer at :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=211536&package_id=254244&release_id=680291

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0BETA1

Releases main changes are :

* Translations:
Association Subscribers Manager now supports the following languages :
- Swedish (Daniel Persson)
- Brazilian Portuguese (Diego Ferreira)
- French
- English

* Software changes:
        - Add 8 countries' postal codes : Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Mexico, Netherlands, USA.
        - all code is now fully licensed under the GPLv3 license
        - multiple bugfixes in the XML handlers
        - update user interface layouts to make it fit in many screen types (from
netbooks to wide screens)
        - group all regionalisation related settings into a Locales tab in the
settings window
        - Code-rewrite for a better support of translations
        - Add country flag icons (borrowed from http://www.IconDrawer.com)
        - fix bug 2778971
        - suppress the (ugly) blinking effect on passive popups
        - fix code in the setting window to prevent user from unwillingly removing
emails, fees or activity
        - add new artworks : application icon and splashscreen
        - fix some of the error messages issued at application's first run
        - fix postal codes writing codes (now save postal codes only when it was
changed)
        - fix a bug in the UI allowing the edition of non existent members.
        - lots of UI behaviour modification (click on edit action now hide config
widget if shown, on edit mode, on settings activation edit mode is unchecked,
etc).

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Week end progess

2009-04-27T08:47:00+02:00

Hi,

There was tons of progress during this week end in Association Subscribers Manager. We are quickly heading to the 3.0BETA1 release and as time pass I think that it will go all smooth !

First things comes first, it is all thanks to all Association Subscribers Manager's translators ! A huge thanks to Daniel Persson who's doing a lot to help me by taking care alone of his SVN part. As a bonus Association Subscribers Manager may be translated in Romanian but I am still waiting for translations files so I'll keep you update.

Now for code updates, during this week end I have made the following fix/improvements in Association Subscribers Manager :

fix the bug 2778971
finish the addon system
add addon management interface to the settings window
suppress the blinking in the passive popup windows
change settings windows behavior to prevent users to remove items (email, fees, activities, etc.) by mistake. Now all those windows are disabled until users confirm or cancel the deletion
add a default account for the update server (oss_user, oss_user_password)
fix lots of errors issued at first run (mostly by setting better default values)
fix UI bug which was allowing the edition of unselected members (now you have to select a member for the edition features to activate)
fix a bug in the postal codes writing code (postal codes files were unconditionally written at application close, now it is done only if there was modifications)
and the most important of all : I made a new splashscreen !

(Click to enlarge)

All this works leads to 3 important points :

This week end was string freeze date, no new string will be added before the beta release (though I already spotted some error messages in need of modifications).
This week end was feature freeze date. Until the beta release there will only be bug fix modifications, no new features.
I officially call for artists and packagers. Association Subscribers Manager could really use its own icons theme (instead of borrowing Oxygen's ones), and I will need packagers for different GNU/Linux distributions and for Mac OS X.

See you later !

Arnaud Dupuis

Musical break

2009-04-21T08:12:00+02:00

Hi,

One short post to help you discover a French band I recently discovered on Jamendo : Shtrafilclux.

You can listen to their music through the little Jamendo widget on the side bar.

Good listenning !

Arnaud Dupuis

Howto translate Association Subscribers Manager.

2009-04-14T23:10:00+02:00

Update: I have updated this tutorial to include the testing part.

Hi !

My "Help wanted" call for translators on Sourceforge was quite a success. It is a success since I had answers, but not that much since I have no actual work done so far. That may be because of a lack of informations on how to do the translation job in Association Subscribers Manager.

So ! For all the peoples who wants to translate Association Subscribers Manager (or any other Qt4-based software) in their own language, here is my super quick howto.

Prepare to fight !

First thing comes first : be sure that your system have all required software installed. To work on the Association Subscribers Manager translation ou will need to access the code repository on Sourceforge. This is the place were all the files related to the project are stored (code, artwork, data, translations, etc.). This is publicly accessible for reading but I have to give you write access for you to be able to put your work on the repository.

The repository is a Subversion (shortened in SVN) on, and is accessible on Sourceforge.To be able to retrieve files from this SVN repository you have to install a subversion client on your system. On GNU/Linux based system their is high chances that you already have one, if it is not the case install it via your distribution package manager. On windows... well, obviously if you did not installed it before, you don't have a subversion client. You have to install one like TortoiseSVN. On Mac OS X I have no idea about the pre-installed SVN client, but I found a package from Martin Ott. So maybe you don't have any SVN client installed either.

Once the SVN client installed, please install the Qt 4 framework (if not already installed). On GNU/Linux it should be already installed (take care : we are talking about Qt 4 >= 4.4.0 not Qt 3 !). If it is not, for all plateforms, the quickest way to install Qt 4 and all the required tools is to install the brand new Qt 4.5 SDK. To do this, go on http://www.qtsoftware.com/downloads and choose the LGPL / Free downoad. Download the SDK (Software Development Kit) for your plateform. Once downloaded install it on you computer.

You are now ready to translate (or develop...) Association Subscribers Manager. If I summarize, you need :

a SVN client
the Qt 4 framework.

Retrieve files from the repository.

This is called "check out", you check the code out of the repository, easy to remember; isn't it ? You have various ways to do this, with tortoiseSVN it looks like you have to right clic in your file explorer and select "check out repository" (or something like that...), but the easiest way is to type in a console :

svn co https://assuma.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/assuma assuma

It will create a new directory called "assuma" (for ASsociation SUbscribers MAnager). This one contains all the code (and the translation files).

You are now ready to start translating !

Translate Association Subscribers Manager.

First, you have to be sure that your translation is supported by the project file. To do so, edit the association_subscribers_manager.pro file. This is a text file saved in the UTF8 encoding. Search for the line starting with the word TRANSLATIONS and check if the language you want to work on have a translation file (ending with .ts). Translation files are named after this template : assuma_<language code>.ts. For example for Italian : assuma_it.ts. All .ts file are stored in the i18n/ directory. If there is no file for your language, just add it at the end of the TRANSLATIONS line. For example for Italian, I just have to add at the end of the line : i18n/assuma_it.ts

Once this is done, just save the file to continue.

You will need to update the translations tokens. To do so, open a terminal, go in the assuma/ directory and type :

lupdate association_subscribers_manager.pro

This will create the new files and update existing one with new and deprecated translations tokens.

Now it is easy, all the translation is done with Qt Linguist, so start the (Qt) Linguist tool. On windows it is in Start -> Qt SDK by Nokia ... -> Tools -> Qt Linguist, on Linux it is wherever your distribution linked it but probably in the "Development" section of the Gnome or KDE menu, or wherever you installed the SDK. Mac users... please search by yourself, I don't have any Mac to test.

Load a translation file, they are in the assuma/i18n/ directory (where assuma is the SVN repository you checked out before). The .ts files are the one you are interested in (the .qm are the compiled versions). You now should have a list of tokens to translates. Please refer to the Qt Linguist manual for translators to learn how to use this tool efficiently.

Once you have finished the job or you have something else to do, please save your work and commit it to the repository. Commit your work is done by selecting the appropriate "commit" command on whatever graphical interface you use, or by typing this in a shell :

svn commit

You can also commit a specific file :

svn commit i18n/assuma_fr-FR.ts

Sometime the EDITOR environment variable is not set and the svn command complains about it. In this case just do :

EDITOR=vim svn commit

Off course you can use any text editor instead of vim.

Test the result of your work

Actually this should be done before committing anything...

To test your work, it is very easy. First you need to compile the .ts file into a .qm one (Qt 's own binary format for translation files). To do this, open a terminal, go to the assuma/ directory and type :

lrelease association_subscribers_manager.pro

This will create all the .qm files. Then you have to file the language list description. This is the data/langpack.lst file the format is :

Language name;Language icon;Translation file

for example for Italian:

Italiano;images/flags/it.png;i18n/assuma_it.qm

Then you just have to restart the Association Subscribers Manager binary and go to Settings -> Locales and you will see be able to change the language to your freshly created one.

Conclusion.

That was not that difficult no ? I hope it helped a little, please feel free to ask questions in the comments or by dropping me an email at: a dot dupuis at infinityperl dot org. You can also try to find me on skype (arnaud underscore dupuis).

I hope this post will generate new vocations !

Arnaud Dupuis.

Swedish translation for Association Subscribers Manager !

2009-04-07T20:58:00+02:00

Hi !

One more translation is on its way : the Swedish one. This is all thanks to Daniel Persson.

I thank him very much for all his efforts. Particularly I thank him for using the SVN directly ! This saves me lots of troubles

And here is the screenshot of the application in Swedish (click to enlarge) :

Arnaud Dupuis

Brazilian Portuguese translation for Association Subscribers Manager !

2009-04-01T00:26:00+02:00

Hi !

Thanks to Diego Ferreira, Association Subscribers Manager is now available in Brazilian Portuguese !

The whole interface support this new language from the SVN r146.

My great thanks to Diego for his excellent work on this translation. He told me that it is his first time helping an Open Source software so I welcome him in our great community ! Once again thank you very much Diego.

Here is a screenshot of the result (click to enlarge):

Arnaud Dupuis

/(bb|[^b]{2})/ 4 g33k....

2009-03-26T22:58:00+01:00

Hi,

A little post completly off topic... I took a geek quizz and damn, I am very geek... I was even laughting during the test... Anyway, here is the result :

96% Geek
And still I got married last year ! Nothing's impossible

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0-alpha1 released

2009-03-15T02:48:00+01:00

The first alpha version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager is finally out !

This release features a whole code rewritting, so no more Perl / PerlQt3, long live the C++/Qt4 couple ! This version have been successfully tested with various Qt version from 4.4.0 to 4.5.0.
Almost all features from the previous version have been recoded and are available in this test release. The remarkable exception is the plug-in system (still unavailable, will be included in the beta version).
There is limitations to this release :
- as said previously : no plug-in stystem
- only few cities/postal codes and only French
- only one federation (and a French one).

I am now waiting for reports, that can be submited on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/assuma/), on the Sourceforge's mailing list (see previous link) or here.

This release can be downloaded at Sourceforge's download page.

Please enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Blog new layout

2009-03-13T16:31:00+01:00

Hi !

Since debates about the french "Internet and Creation" law are stalled until the end of the month (it's not going very well even if the governement propaganda website was DDoS yesterday ^^), I hereby present to you all the new layout of this blog !

This is an little adaption of the Alto theme for DotClear 2. I hope you will like it !

Arnaud Dupuis

Edit: The propaganda website (jaimelesartistes.fr means : iloveartists.fr) build by the governement is down for the count (click on the image to enlarge)

Association Subscribers Manager's new artwork.

2009-03-09T00:40:00+01:00

Hi,

once again, the title of the post states something true : Association Subscribers manager have a brand new icon ! Here it is (click on image to enlarge) :

You may wonder why a new icon ? First, because the old one was ugly, then because the first alpha version is not far from being released.

The first alpha release will lack some features like the plugin system and some features may still not works correctly like the fee calculation system wich will be fully functionnal only after the federation's file parser. But as soon as the public API is fully documented and code is stabilized I will release the first alpha version of the 3.0 branch.

Expect the first 3.0-alpha version before the end of april.

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager is on Ohloh !

2009-03-08T14:41:00+01:00

Hi,

As the title states it Association subscribers Manager is on Ohloh and that's good :).

Unfortunatly there is some problems with Ohloh's automatic tools and Assuma is not well analyzed. For example, it is analyzed as mostly written in Ada... since I don't know a word of Ada it is highly improbable that this analyze is true... But maybe it have to do with the Qt code or the users' database being named .adb. Anyway, it is a good way to see what I do bad with this project, so I will do my best to fix those project. One of the first measure was to suppress the huge amount of test users' database from the test/ directory. Another measure will be to accept both of the .adb and .assumaml file extensions for users' database.

Still a lot to do

Arnaud Dupuis

Association Subscribers Manager is on the road of being fully documented.

2009-03-06T17:42:00+01:00

Hi,

in the development process one thing is very important : the documentation. And Assuma lakes one very important thing: documentation !

But fortunatly this problem is about to be solved ! Starting with the revision 119 I will change this and documents all public methods/slots of the Association Subscribers Manager API. At this point of the project, documentation is really importante since I plan on openning the source code to external contributions. Moreover the upcomming plugin system will also need an excellent documentation if I want people to develop plugins for Association Subscribers Manager ;-).

Arnaud Dupuis

PS: I am almost done with the super-ultra-absolute-comprehensive-howto-install-cutting-edge-Slackware-Linux-on-EeePC !

French web is black-out against our minister stupidity called HADOPI / Black-out du web Français contre la stupidité nommée HADOPI

2009-03-02T16:34:00+01:00

Hi,

For all the week (or until the debate turn in favor of freedom), I will support all other french website by turning my blog black. I am really sorry for all non french visitors who are not concerned by the stupidy of our ministers, but for all people from New Zealand, Eire, Great Britain, Canada and all other non free countries, you should all join the web black-out to contest those stupid laws !

Internet is not a place where you find only illegal content, porn and terrorist websites ! This is a great place to share everything starting with knowledge !

And for once I will translate this in French.

Pour toute la semaine (ou jusqu'à ce que les débats tournent en faveur de la libertés), je soutiendrais les autres sites Français en mettant mon blog en berne. Je suis vraiment navré pour tous mes visiteurs qui ne sont pas concernés par la stupidité de nos sinistres (la sinistre de l'inculture, Christine Albanel en tête), mais pour tous les gens qui viennent de Nouvelles Zelande, d'Irelande, d'Angleterre, du Canada et de tous les pays non libre (qui ne valent pas mieux que des dictatures), rejoignez le black-out du web pour protester contre ces lois stupides et liberticides.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Black-out in order to protest against the French "Internet & Creation" law

2009-02-27T11:26:00+01:00

Sorry to break the usual "no French" policy but exceptionally I am posting this image to protest against the French law project call "Internet & Creation" which is such a shame for a country used to be called "the country of all liberties".
This law is the pathetic try of old geezer, who don't event understand the internet, to control and spy information exchange on the internet. This could be laughable if it was not that important : they try to limit our fundamentals rights to communicate, express ourselves, learn and share our knowledge. For French ministers the internet is nothing less that the place where all terrorists and mafia gathers. For French ministers, the internet holds only bad things they have no considerations for Wikipedia, the Open Source and the billions of websites who share some knowledge. Most of the time, this is no usefull knowledge for everybody but it is usefull for somebody. Sharing knowledge is the basis of the internet, not pedophilia ! Are we trying to close all cars manufacturer facilities ? No ! But they manufactures car that can easily break the speed limit so we have to stop them because speed is directly reponsible for thousands of dead each year ! Cars manufacturer are participating to a mass genocid !! Ridiculous isn't it ? It's as ridiculous as the French law or the trial of The Pirate Bay (which turn to be an enjoyable joke where you can see everyday that majors lawiers and boss had 3 years to prepare this trial and turned to be completly and ridiculously unprepared !).

I will turn this blog black from this week-end to after the vote to protest against the "Internet & Creation" (a.k.a Hadopi) stupidity !

Arnaud Dupuis

I've got a new toy : an Asus Eee PC 1000h !!

2009-02-24T15:16:00+01:00

Hi all,
Indeed I have a new geek-toy : a brand new Asus Eee PC 1000h ! Woohoo !
Unfortunatly even if Asus is manufacturing this computer with Xandros Linux the stupid Asus France do not ship it in France... The only operating system available is ... sorry I can't write it here (but it is finishing by XP).
So I am now fighting with Asus France to get those licences reimbursed.

With all that said, it's a wonderfull little computer ! I installed (almost flawlessly) a Slackware 12.2 on it and it works just fine. I have a KDE 4.2 working very well with compositing and all the fancy things ! Really it is an amazing computer.
The only thing that was bothering me is the hotkeys... Only the one controlling screen brightness were working, so I wrote a new acpi handler to extends basic Slackware one. I made a Slackware package from this one and I will post it here (and/or I will create a Freashmeat project).

I will come back soon with a HOWTO to install Slackware 12.2 on Eee PC 1000h, it's nothing difficult since almost everything is supported out of the box by the kernel-huge-smp (actually very few things needs to be be compiled by hand). I would like to come with a super-optimized kernel config file for 2.6.28 Linux kernel.

See you soon,

Arnaud Dupuis

New mailing list for Association Subscribers Manager project

2009-02-14T11:38:00+01:00

Hi,

I created 2 new mailing list for Association Subscribers Manager on the Sourceforge's project page.
Those 2 lists' goals are to allow me to keep you all up-to-date with the upcomming releases, development, test phases, etc.
The lists are :

assuma-announcement: used by me to keep everybody informed about Association Subscribers Manager new releases. On this list we will announce releases of the core application, plugins, data files, translations, etc. Users can use this to react on releases but this is more an information list than a communication list.
assuma-contrib: This is the communication list ! On this list users can ask for new development, contribute by submitting plugins, translations, data files, participate by sending feedbacks, bug reports. They can also ask to be included in the tests phases (usually in 4 stages : pre-alpha, alpha, beta, Release Candidate).

I hope it will help users to be kept up-to-date with the development and release. I also hope to increase communication between development team and users/contributors community.

Arnaud

A little update (and more about Association Subscribers Manager's next release).

2009-02-12T07:23:00+01:00

Hi,

I've been busy recently so I forgot to update the blog. Actually, I worked a lot on Association Subscribers Manager and got most of the application working.
The last progress I made were in the updater. Here is some screenshots of it (windows version) :

As you can see it is perfectly functional ! The only major features that the current version lack are :

Support for federations (current state: 5 %)
Better comparison system for embed fees (current state: 80 %)
Support for plugins (current state: 0 %)

When the 2 first are finished to be coded, I will launch the first pre-alpha test phase (I think in a week or two).

Well, work is getting done slowly but surely

As you may have noticed I put slack-get in a stalled mode until I release the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager.

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

Winter break : the Snowboarding vacations !!

2009-01-22T20:00:00+01:00

Hi !
Like the title says, I left the Paris pollution and go to the French Alps for a little winter break.
Here is a freshly nice view from the "chalet" :

As you can see, we have a pretty good weather here even if the weather forecast for the week end is : lot's of snow !!!

I will post a longer post to expose the recent changes in Association Subscribers Manager.

Arnaud Supuis

Stop software patents !!!

2009-01-16T22:08:00+01:00

Do not forget to sign the "Stop Software Patents" petition !

Association Subscribers Manager: Iso-functionnality test surprises !

2009-01-06T12:10:00+01:00

Hi,

I am still very busy with the upcomming release of the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager, right now I am testing the iso-functionnality with the previous version (2.2).
While doing those test, I ran into something very funny... funny because it was quickly fixed, else it could have been a real drama for Association Subscribers Manager users !
The actual problem was that I forgot to include the "Address" field in the new version. While it look like something completly harmless it is the total opposite. In fact, the 3.0 version introduce a brand new subscribers database XML based file format named ADB. Obviously the old XML format is also supported and Association Subscribers Manager users can import their old file in the new version and Association Subscribers Manager will automatically convert the old file into the new format. All those are pretty well tested features and very bug resistant (since the original file is not modified no informations can be lost). This is where the critical point is : between an old file and a new one Association Subscribers Manager loose the address since it was not supported by the GUI...
Fortunatly, this awfull "bug" is now corrected in the SVN trunk and hopefully I will not run into such big mistakes again !

The final release of the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager is planned to be release by the end of april.

As already described, this software is completly FOSS and can be downloaded and installed from the SVN for free under the term of the GPL.
Additionnaly I will provide purchasable binary build of this software for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Arnaud Dupuis.

Season greetings

2009-01-01T16:17:00+01:00

Hi,
I wish you all a very happy new year full of discovering, coding and all the best !
Hopefully I will successfully release a new version of slack-get this year
My other project (Association Subscribers Manager) is comming close to alpha test release. I need to implements some missing functionnalities and finish the configuration panel and it will be ready for bug tracking.

Anyway, happy new year !

Arnaud Dupuis

Some updates.. at last

2008-12-02T17:54:00+01:00

Hi,
It's been a while since I last update the blog... Sorry for that, but in the other hand I worked a lot on Association Subscribers Manager.
I worked so much that I'm almost ready for a pre-alpha release. Some features are still not yet implemented but most of the hard work is already done. There is tons of new features in this new 3.0 version. I can list, from my deficient memory, the followings :

direct edition in the list view by double-clicking on a subscriber
the whole software has been recoded with C++/Qt4 which means that it is now available on microsoft windows and apple mac os x
new subscribers' database format which allow, for example, to embed fee settings
a brand new interface with fancy elements like sliding popup
a new user interface paradygm : popup limited to the minimum, most of the time all windows are embed in the main one
lots of performance improvements
compatibility with previous versions of Association Manager
and so on, and so forth...

All of these things are available right now on the SVN repository. For those who subscribed to the "Assuma Service Pack", the latest compiled version is available at http://download.infinityperl.org/association_manager/3.0-poc/.
Once again, I remind to all people who may read this, that Association Subscribers Manager is an Open Source software and the sources can be downloaded from Sourceforge's SVN. But, I am selling some services around this software, like trainning, packaging, automatic updates, etc.

I am planning a final release of the 3.0 version in the beginning of 2009 (maybe during february). Anyway I will keep you informed.
And concerning slack-get... Well... I have work a lot on Association Subscribers Manager

News and update, my recent development in Association Subscribers Manager

2008-10-21T07:02:00+02:00

Hi,
It's been a while since I last post here... Sorry, I have tons of super-bad excuses for that (working too much, not enough time, etc.).
The truth is that I am so busy coding that I forget to post on the blog !
Lately, I have coded a lot on one of my project out of slack-get. The project name is Association Subscribers Manager (short name is Assuma) and it is an associations subscribers manager !
The source code is available on Sourceforge's SVN as usual. This software is a little different than my other traditionnals Open Sources ones because I am selling the packages.
The source code is available for free but all services associated with it are not free. In time, when the 3.0 release will be fully ready, you will be able to buy working binaries for the main plateforms available on the market.
The source code is completly free (as "Free Software" and "as a beer"), only the services of compilations, auto-update, etc. will be costing you money.
The reason why I think this software can be better than another ? Because since the 0.1 version (we are now aiming at the 3.0) it has been developped in collaboration with French sports associations.
So I am pretty confident in the application fitting for small and middle sized associations. The application is daily tested with databases exceeding 1000 subscibers, so it can be used for pretty huge associations/clubs.
It is of course not limited to one kind of association/club, it has been developped with multi-usage in mind.
On the plateform support side, until the 2.0 version the only supported plateform was Linux (the application is developped in Perl and PerlQt3). The 3.0 release will bring Association Subscribers Manager to all plateforms with a code completly rewritten in C++/Qt4.

So as you can easily figured I have work a lot on this project and, unfortunatly, not really on slack-get ... Mainly because as all humans I have to sleep sometimes
Here are the SVN statistics for the last 7 days:

It has been a busy week

See you later !

Arnaud Dupuis

A little pause from slack-get : coding a Perl module for the croquemonster API.

2008-09-14T13:54:00+02:00

Hi,
After the huge code update I made on slack-get, I must say that I was a bit tired of thinking about the same problems every second.
Fortunatly my young wife is both a good writer and a super-geek, invite me to a new game-to-loose-lots-of-time named croquemonster.
It is unfortunatly only in French, but gues what... They have a XML api ! So, of course, I made a Perl module out of this API.
The Games::CroqueMonster module implements the whole 0.8.1 api specification. The module version is gave after the api version.

You can try this module by downloading it from here (attachement) or from my page on CPAN.

I will release some scripts using this module soon.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Another new feature in slack-get media system

2008-09-09T10:35:00+02:00

Hello,

There is one thing I hate a lot : answering stupid questions. It makes me loose my time and I certainly do not like that !
The problem is that slack-get is asking stupid questions ! Take the dependencies tracking for example :
Even if it find a package with the exact name you requested it propose to you all the matching results.
And one other thing I really don't like in slack-get (and maybe in other package manager) is that if it find the same package on more than one media it asks you to choose one.
I do not like that because it is typically something which can be decided by software itself. If I talk about slack-get, there is a simple way to prefer one media to another : you have to fill a <official-media> tag in the configuration file ! I mean, it is an obvious way to prefer this official media and not bother user asking him if he prefer to install amarok from Slackware's official servers or from linuxpackages.
But since, yuo can actually prefer this I added a new feature to the media system : a ranking system.
You can now add a <rank> tag in the medias.xml file (inside a <media></media> group), with an integer inside. Since it is a rank, the smaller the number is the highest priority the media get.
In a near futur (this week at most), I will implements the following new decision algorithm in the dependencies tracking and package installation/upgrade systems :
- if there is more than one result for a package check :
   - check if there is packages with their name exactly equal to the request select them
      - if their is more than one package like that (name == request) :
          - check if the medias use ranks
              - if yes, then select the package with the highest rank (the smaller number inside <rank></rank>)
              - if not, check if the official-media have the requested package
                   - if yes, select the package
                   - if not, ask user to choose a package
      - else if there is only one, select this package
      - else (there is no package where name == request), ask user to choose between the original search results.
- else (there is only one response) select the package.

I think this algorithm, will help to not stupidly bother users by asking unnecessary questions. And since I am fully aware that some users will not like this automated thing, I will also add a configuration key and a command line option to allow them to enable/disable this system.

That's all for today !

See ya' for the slack-get development diary #8.

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get feature highlights #3 : add FTP credentials to your medias.xml configuration file.

2008-09-07T11:32:00+02:00

Hi,
Today, I will highlights a brand new mechanism in slack-get : how to add your FTP credentials to the medias.xml confniguration file.
First let's remind how was the ftp authentification mechanism before.
In the old ages, you had to fill a section in the config.xml file. The section look like that :
<network-parameters>
     <ftp>
        <login><![CDATA[anonymous]]></login>
        <password><![CDATA[slack-get@infinityperl.org]]></password>
     </ftp>
</network-parameters>

This section (in the <common> configuration bloc) is (still) used by the sg_daemon to authenticate himself on FTP server (this is the global credentials).
But you may have to provide particular credentials for one ftp server, so I added the possibility to use the standard URL syntax in the medias.xml file.
So starting from the svn revision 198, you can use the ftp://<login>:<password>@<some ftp server> syntax in your medias.xml file.
The specific credentials, of course, prevails on the globals ones.

On a developper side now, this trick is done by the Slackware::Slackget::Network::Connection->parse_url() method. This is a specific case of the ftp so far but I can easily make it available for any protocols if there is a need to do so.
I plan on testing, in this parse_url() method, the availability of a __parse_url() method drivers' specific. This could help to develop specific drivers with specific url format.
I will think about that.

That's all for today ! Enjoy the end of the week end !

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get Perl api available (again)

2008-09-06T10:00:00+02:00

Hi,
The Slackware::Slackget api is available on CPAN, but the latest documenation is now available in the SVN tree (viewable on Sourceforge's viewsvn service) and on my own server.
The two last ones will be more up-to-date than the CPAN one.

I hope that it will helps contributors !

Arnaud Dupuis.

Another huge bug discovered and fixed in slack-get !!

2008-09-05T19:06:00+02:00

Hi,
Today I was going to improve (let's say "finish") the dependency tracking system, which is not good enough yet, and I ran into something very very bad...
Before doing anything with the package system, I all the time modify my medias.xml and add a local repository wich contains only one package and it's dependency tree.
Doing this I found a pretty importantly bad bug. This one is described on the slack-get bugtracking system on Sourceforge.
In one word the Slackware::Slackget::Connection's drivers system was completly bugged and had a very important namespace corruption wich was leading to a massive code malfunction.
So far, I strongly recommend to update your local SVN copy.

Fortunatly I fixed this in the latest SVN revision (198).
I hope that I will not found any other surprises like this one !

Arnaud Dupuis

Sourceforge SVN downtime : no slack-get commits for the next 24 hours

2008-09-04T02:00:00+02:00

Hi,
Sourceforce is migrating Subversion's data on to new storage hardware and conduct performance
testing today from 04:00 UTC and for approximatively 24hours.
As a consequence all write operations will fail, so there will not be any updates of the slack-get svn tree during this time.
Read operations are unaffected by this process.

Good day,

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #7

2008-09-03T20:00:00+02:00

Hi,
Here is the 7th opus of the slack-get development diary. There is a lot to say because I made lots of changes since the last diary.

1) The C++ API's first parts :
Since the last post where I was talking about this I added to the existing Slackget::Package and Slackget::PackageList 3 new classes : Slackget::Config, Slackget::Utils and Slackget::QSimpleUpdate.
Slackget::Config is used to represent slack-get's XML configuration file and Slackget::Utils contains some static utilitary methods.
Slackget::QSimpleUpdate is a Qt 4 widget. Its goal is to present a list of packages to users in the most simple way. It behave very simply by showing a list of items wich contains an image, a package name and its version. More informations about a package are available via the Qt's traditionnal tooltip system.

I plan in renaming Slackget::Utils to simply Slackget but I am not yet sure. I am not sure because I want to re-organize the C++ api's tree.
There is currently a trunk/src/ directory which contains QSimpleUpdate sources, and a trunk/lib/Cpp/ which contains the other classes.
More specifically, it contains the SlackgetCore module. I plan on modify this tree the following way :
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetCore/src/ -> contains all source files for the SlackgetCore modules (currently : Slackget::Package, Slackget::PackageList, Slackget::Config and Slackget::Utils)
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetCore/include/ -> contains all headers file for the SlackgetCore modules
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetGui/src/ -> contains all source files for the SlackgetGui modules (currently : Slackget::QSimpleUpdate)... This module actually do not exists at the time I am writting this article
trunk/lib/Cpp/SlackgetGui/include/ -> contains all headers file for the SlackgetCore modules
And of course I want to delete the trunk/src/ directory.
I am indeed a big fan of the Qt 4 modular architecture. Talking about Qt 4, all parts of the slack-get C++ api links against Qt 4. SlackgetCore links against QtCore (for all the super handy data types) and, of course, SlackgetGui will links against QtGui.

2) The Perl API and sg_daemon :
Well... It changed a lot so I made a new release of Slackware::Slackget on CPAN ... And again it changed so much since then that I could make another release !
The medias variables system is one of the good examples. But the huge bugs in sg_daemon which was not managing media's host efficiently is the main cause of changes in the Perl API.
This bug (or bugs) was preventing the sg_daemon to switch from a media's host to the next one. I corrected this issue and it is now working as it should do.
The main changes in the Slackware::Slackget Perl module are :
* I changed Slackware::Slackget::Network::Connection behavior by replacing the host's constructor parameter by a media one (see modules documentation). I also added a next_host() method to this module. The goal is to take care of operations needed by the Connection.pm module (like parsing the URL and loading drivers).
* I fixed a little bug in Slackware::Slackget::Network::Connection::HTTP.pm (the file was moved to its final destination before all tests).
* I fixed a bug in Slackware::Slackget::Base and Slackware::Slackget::MediaList. The bug was very simple : I forgot to tell XML::Simple's parser to force array on all <li> elements. This result in a bug when there was only one element in a list.
* I also spent some time cleanning lots of code (removed unneccessary comments, comments unnecessary code, etc.).
* All this things result in a massive documentation's update.
* I finally made all needed changes in the sg_daemon (which is not part of the Perl API...) which is now handling well dead hosts and host changing.

The next focus points in the development are :
     1 - Improve the C++ api (and particularly develop all classes needed to connect to a sg_daemon)
     2 - Port the plugin system to the new daemon.
     3 - Develop a real working GUI.
     4 - Start coding the multi-daemon cooperative work.

Still a lot to do !

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

New feature: slack-get medias' options

2008-09-02T23:07:00+02:00

Hi,
I just added a new feature to the slack-get media system. It is something I wanted to add for a long time now but I never had the time.
But since I am still stuck at home because of this stupid pneumonia, I now have the time...
What I wanted is a variables system in the medias.xml syntax. The direct benefit is that it is much more easier to modify the medias file after an upgrade of your Slackware box.
Indeed, if it is nice to be able to maintain multiple sources of packages, it is sometime a pain in the ass to update this file after an upgrade... When all URL of mirrors must be changed...
The Slackware version number is, indeed, the first "official" variable.
This system is very easy to use : you just have to declare an attribute in the <medialist> tag and it will be automatically converted to a variable by the Slackware::Slackget::MediaList and Slackware::Slackget::Media classes. You can use the variable in any tag content by using the special syntax ${<variable name>}.
Here is a simple example :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes"?>
<medialist slackware-version="12.1">
<media id="slackware-official">
<files>
<filelist>FILELIST.TXT</filelist>
<checksums>CHECKSUMS.md5</checksums>
<packages>PACKAGES.TXT</packages>
</files>
<download-signature>1</download-signature>
<update-repository>
<faster>http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-${slackware-version}/</faster>
<fast>
<li>http://ftp.bit.nl/mirror/slackware/slackware-${slackware-version}/</li>
<li>http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/slackware/slackware-${slackware-version}/</li>
</fast>
</update-repository>
<description>The official Slackware web site</description>
<web-link>http://www.slackware.com/</web-link>
</media>
</medialist>

As you can see it is both convinient and easy to implement. I am quite sure it will be very usefull when we will upgrade from Slackware 12.1 to 13.0

Arnaud Dupuis.

slack-get user interface: step 1, how I see the futur

2008-08-30T00:43:00+02:00

Hi,

as I already said I am currently developping the C++ API of slack-get. I also wrote that I am concentrating on usefull part of the API, skipping the generative parts that are not absolutly required at the moment. So in parallel to this development, I made some tests for the graphical user interface. I came up with the conclusion that there is 2 different way to use slack-get :

Keep a Slackware box up-to-date by installing security fixes and Slackware patches
Keep a box up-to-date, upgrade and install packages (but not patches)

So, considering that I decided to come with 2 different GUI : a dock application to tell users that there is patches available and the full graphical client (like the previous slack-get GUI).
I starts coding a little widget (Slackget::QSimpleUpdate). This one looks like that :

I am interested in any opinion/advice/suggestion concerning this. The code of this proof-of-concept is available on the SVN (in trunk/src/QSimpleUpdate/). I made it themable thanks to Qt4 support of CSS.
So far, I think it is a quite fine dock application. I wanted it to be simple to get working, and I also wanted that this widget is able to display enough informations.

That's all for today

Arnaud Dupuis

Release: Slackware::Slackget v0.17

2008-08-29T00:15:00+02:00

Hi,

A new version of the Slackware::Slackget module was released on CPAN.
This release features the followings changes :
- lots of fix in order to make all classes of the module SGNC Compliant
- Slackware::Slackget::GPG have had many methods implemented
- change the to_string() behavior of the Slackware::Slackget::PackageList, Slackware::Slackget::Package and Slackware::Slackget::List to make them able to generate a Slackware's PACKAGES.TXT (supporting, of course, the slapt-get/swaret format for dependencies).

This module was in a need of a new release since the documentation have been updated a lot (and I personally use CPAN as my API doc reference ^^).

Arnaud Dupuis

First parts of the C++ API

2008-08-27T00:29:00+02:00

Hi,

I uploaded on the SVN repository the first part of the slack-get C++ API.

I am coding this one to be as close as possible to the Perl one. So the first two classes uploaded are, of course, Slackget::Package and Slackget::PackageList. As you can see I am using the Slackget:: namespace in order to identify slack-get's classes.

As usual, the documentation and all doxygen needed files are already on the SVN too.

I am focusing on usability and stable features for this C++ API. This means that, in a first time, I will not translate all features. All classes that will fall in those exceptions will be adequatly documented.

My goal with this API is to start coding the graphical user interface as quickly as possible.

Arnaud Dupuis

Some updates on Infinity Perl domain

2008-08-21T10:44:00+02:00

Hi,

Like I announced previously on this blog, I'm changing the architecture of Infinity Perl domain.

So I rented a server to my registar (Gandi), and installed WebGUI 7. The current result is available at http://www2.infinityperl.org. It is still in early development stage but I have a good idea of what I want to do with this website.

To conclude this post, I wanted to keep you informed : work has been pretty slow (freeze is the right word) this week. This is because I have caught something quite bad and I have a bad lung infection. That makes me quite weak and it's a bit painfull to even stands up.

So the first parts of the C++ API will be a bit delayed. Sorry.

Arnaud Dupuis

slack-get development diary #6

2008-08-13T11:35:00+02:00

Back from a long silence period, here it is : the 6th opus of the "slack-get development diary" !
There is a lot of new things that I need to talk about !
First the bad news : I saw on CPAN reports that the "fix" I made for Slackware::Slackget to properly test on Solaris OS is not working.
That is a bad thing but... I don't really see the purpose on trying to fix an issue on an OS which is not a Slackware based one and not even a GNU/Linux OS ! The Slackware::Slackget module will never be usefull on this OS, so since I have no Solaris to test I will just forget about it (unless somebody provides me with a patch for this system.

Now for all the good news :

slack-get suite (sg_daemon + slack-get) is now able to install, upgrade and remove packages

That's the first point, and I think it's a pretty important one. I fixed all the daemon and the (cli) client to make them able to perform packages operations without any problems.
So from now on, you can start a daemon and do a

"slack-get install
flightgear"

for example
That's a very important point but it's nothing worth talking about without the dependencies tracking system.
Talking about that...

the dependencies tracking system is now fully functionnal

Woohooo ! This part was certainly one of the most painfull, but I finally manage to get it working the right way.
This part still need to be tested and there is no guarantees, so far, that it is working properly in all cases.
But so far my tests where very promisefull ! I add no problems and for the moment I have not yet discovered any bugs in this feature.
Again, that does not means that I will not uncover bugs later.

add support for automatic GPG key import

I added the possibility for the sg_daemon to download and import a GPG key. For the moment it only import Slackware Project's key and it is almost hardcoded but there is no reasons to extend this feature to all medias sooner or later.
This feature works well and is totally automatic : if sg_daemon do not find the Slackware Project's key in the user's GPG keyring, it download it and import it. Nice and easy.

add new feature to slack-get (cli client)

I added a new command to slack-get, it is called "info". You can use it the exact same way than the "search" command (this is the exact same code which is processing it).
The goal of this command is to provide more informations about a package. Here is an usage example :

$ ./slack-get info flightgear --media=slacky

Package: flightgear-1.0.0-i686-1as

Size (compressed): 3158 KB

Version: 1.0.0

Source: slacky

Description: The FlightGear flight simulator open-source project.The 
goal  of  the  FlightGear project is to create a

sophisticated flight simulator framework for  use  in 
research  or  academic environments,  for the development and
pursuit

of other interesting flight simulation ideas, and as an end-user
application

http://www.flightgear.org/ WWW.SLACKY.IT PackaGer Gohanz.

This little example, allow me to introduce the new command line option : --media. This one allow you to restrict the "search" or "info" commandes to the choosen media (in the previous example I wanted only results from the Slacky.it website).

Last about the slack-get cli client, I fixed lots of "non closing bugs". The non closing bugs are an annoying problem of slack-get cli client.
While the whole system became multitasks, it's becomming difficult to keep track of what the client asked by itself (particularly in a multi-administrators context), and after asking a sg_daemon to perform some tasks (and after the tasks are finished) the client does not end.
I corrected a lot of thoses problems.
A good example of this issue is with the "slack-get update" command. This one scheduled a tasks to upgrade all packages which have new ones in the patches/ subtree of the official-media (see config.xml). After the update, the client was not quitting. It is now corrected.

dynamic network backends negociation

Some of you may have noticed that sg_daemon should be able to dynamically negociate what network backends the client and it should use to understand each others. Until this morning it was not working, and it is now !
If sg_daemon supports XML and Base64 backends, and if the slack-get client supports XML and Gzip backends ; they will both agree on using the biggest common denominator (in this case they will use XML only).
I am very happy (and quite proud) of this mechanism. It allows tons of new development and many plugins to come !

lots of updates in the Slackware::Slackget Perl module

Last but not least I made tons of modifications in the Slackware::Slackget module. I added constants, generative methods to Slackware::Slackget::Media, add codes to Slackware::Slackget::GPG to support new import features, add method to Slackware::Slackget to check host's Slackware's version, and so on and so forth !

As a conclusion, I will just say that there is still some works to do but it's becomming to be a very usable tool. I'm using it every day now.
I hope all the work I made on slack-get will be of interets for you all !
As a bonus track I give you the new slack-get logo (that I made myself... so be kind )

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Back online and work resuming !

2008-07-27T12:27:00+02:00

Hi all !
I'm back from Japan and back online !!
I resumed the work on slack-get, and yet added an option to the slack-get client program.
A while ago I thought about some kind of mechanism to display more accurate search results.
Like everybody before myself, I came with a score system where result are evaluated by not-so-simple rules.
As a result each package (I mean Slackware::Slackget::Package) returned by the daemon (sg_daemon) contains a little more data and particularly have a "score" number.
This score wasn't use until today. It's now possible to limit the displayed search results.
For exemple :
slack-get --mid-score search lives
Will display only result with a score greater or equal to 10. Score values can be infinite but most of the time they are under 50.
From what I experienced they are going from 0 to 50. the lesser the score the lesser the probability for he result to be accurate.
By default, slack-get now skip all result with a score under 5.

Well that's not a big improvement, and I still need to write the code for dependencies tracking, but hey ! I'm back to work

Arnaud Dupuis

Honeymoon in Japan !!!

2008-07-11T12:59:00+02:00

Hi all !
I'm with my wife in Japan for my honeymoon ! We are now in Oosaka where we finally have the internet in our room.
We are resting in Dotonbori a really "genki" street !
We already stay in Kyoto, Himeji, Kobe and Nara... Japan is wonderful and I will provide you with some pictures when I'll be back in France.
Next in our trip is Tokyo where we stay in Shinjuku for the week end ! That's before climbing mount Fuji ... Still a lot to do.
See you in a while !

Arnaud.

News & updates

2008-05-07T14:38:00+02:00

Hi,

It's been a long time since I last posted. Well, I'm sorry... I greatly misjudge the time that my wedding planning would take !
If I didn't told you already, I'm marrying myself with my dear Fiancée on June 28th.
It's approaching at a freaking speed and nothing is ready !! **PANIC**

As you may imagine, I have not many time for all the Open Sources stuffs... As a consequence I will put all my project in "standby" mode until I'm back from my honeymoon (around July 20). To compensate this huge lack of informations, and me being out of business for a while (until July) I will provide you with pictures from my trip in Japan (yes my honeymoon is in Japan).

The other reason for my silence, is that I've been very busy with my work too. In addition to my normal job, I've written 4 (quite) big articles for a French development newspaper (called Programmez!), 1 about XML and 3 about Qt 4.x programing.

Now about slack-get, I wanted to make an announce but the code is not enough clean for a "development diary". In the other hand I would like you to know that the work is progressing quite while despite appearances ! So here I go :

    slack-get, and more particularly sg_daemon, 

    is finally able to install packages from 

    any supported media !

But it still need a lot of work ! You can install any package you want while there no dependencies (like there is in packages from linuxpackages or slacky). It means everything from official Slackware repositories. The slack-get update feature is also fully functional. I personnaly use it to keep my main computer up-to-date !
I know need to get this f****** dependency tracking mechanism working and it'll be almost ready for release (I think... but I have bad memory when it comes to the work I still need to do...).

Last but not least, when I'll come back I will change all the web architecture of Infinity Perl. Indeed the current one is not adapted at all. So I will rent a new server (outside my flat, 'cause my futur wife don't like fan sound... beats me...), and install on it a new website WebGUI based, and keep the blog for what it should be : a blog !
A new website will help me to present all my work on a single place. I will centralyze here all my projects from CPAN modules to slack-get, passing by PKanaEditor and Association Subscribers Manager (still in early development state).
For all this, I will need you to disable your adblock

I will try to update the blog and I'll do my maximum to commit some codes before my weddings, but I do not promise anything !

See you

Arnaud Dupuis

Hardware failure and slack-get delay

2008-03-20T13:21:00+01:00

Hi,
Like the title of this post can let you imagine, my main computer's hardware is all broken.
After a hard disk drive, replacement (87 EUR or 137 USD), a CPU replacement (190 EUR or 300 USD) I now need to replace my mainboard (225 EUR or 353 USD)...
All those thing leads to 2 things :

I've no more money (so please enjoy a click on a google add )
I spend a lot of time trying to go to the shop, and try to fix this damn computer.

The direct consequence is that the slack-get development diary is delayed until I fix my computer.
Why ? Just because there is an important pending SVN commit (waiting a data recovering) on one of my broken disk...

Sorry for the delay but hu...

By the way I strongly advice French preoples against the IT shops in Paris' "rue montgallet" unless they are willing to save 200 € on 1500 in order to cancel their hardware's garantuee.

Arnaud Dupuis

New english data file for PKanaEditor

2008-03-17T08:50:00+01:00

Hi,

I saw - thanks to users mails - that I only gave a french data file with PKanaEditor 0.2.
So I hereby correct this mistake by providing you (attach to this post) an english localized data file (PKanaEditor English localized data file).
I hope it will fit english speaker needs !

To use this file, you just have to download it, open PKanaEditor's settings, choose a "Custom..." data source and select the file you just download as the source.

In version 0.3 there will be an automatic OS language discovering. While I'm confessing about the next release I can also tell you that I'm rewritting the auto-completion engine. The current one is indeed... a bit buggy... It generally works not too bad but their is some important issues (for example when you hit the carriage return key, you have to also hit the space key or no completion is done...).
The new engine is way better because I put the code I wrote to the dustbin and I'm now using Qt's features... And wonder what ? It's A LOT better

Oh and by the way the slack-get development diary will be back this week (probably on wednesday), because I have one or two little thing to tell you.

Enjoy!

Arnaud Dupuis.

PKanaEditor - The "P" Kana Editor v0.2 - windows binaries

2008-03-08T07:32:00+01:00

Hi,
Since I'm currently working on a windows xp computer, I got the occasion to compile PKanaEditor on this platform.
So, attached to this post is the windows installer containing required Qt dll and PKanaEditor binary.

This version is provided for convenience without any guarantee it will work on your windows install

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Release: Slackware::Slackget - Main Perl library for the slack-get package manager - v0.16

2008-03-07T12:20:00+01:00

Hi,
The new version of the Slackware::Slackget Perl module have just been released on CPAN.
This 0.16 version add more unit tests to the test suite, should fix the incompatibility problems on Solaris, and fix some bugs in the API.
Particularly, in the Slackware::Slackget::File and in Slackware::Slackget::List classes.

Next changes in the API will be to add Java like iterators to the Slackware::Slackget::List class.

You can download this module on CPAN.

Arnaud Dupuis

PKanaEditor - The "P" Kana Editor v0.2 released

2008-03-03T00:21:00+01:00

Hi,
After some weeks of kind of hard work, here is the 0.2 version of the "P" Kana Editor.
It's now fully rewrote in C++/Qt 4.x and that's one of the smallest changes I made !
I also add a configuration window and the editor now features an intuitive "kana" completion and an help system on completion's proposal !
Moreover PKanaEditor is now multiplateform and can be used on Linux based system but also on windows systems (only XP tested) and Mac OS X (hum... it should be...) and most of the UNIX based system (*BSD, etc.).
You can download the sources from Qt-apps.org or from here. The archive is also attached to this post.

The one thing I couldn't do for this release is to find a meaning to the "P"

I hope you will enjoy it !

Arnaud Dupuis

Public test of the PKanaEditor main widgets (KanaEditor, KanaTextEdit and KanaListWidgetItem)

2008-02-26T11:55:00+01:00

Hi,

I finished to implements almost all features I wanted for PKanaEditor 0.2... in the editor widget. Well that left some works to have a complete application working smooth and fine. But since the editor widget is almost finished, I would like to have some feedback.
So I hereby release the first alpha version of this editor. Please note that this is not the complete application, it do not allow you to save your work and do nothing else but to translate what you write from romanji to kana.

I still would like some feedback about the choice I made in the implementation.
I am particularly interested in your opinion about the following points :

the way the kana are automatically presented to user (the completion through the "helper" popup)
the contextual help system (when you let your mouse above a kana a tooltip with a big version of the kana and it's meaning (for kanjis) is drawn)
your global feeling about this editor.

Please keep in mind that this is only the editor part of the software !
There is still time before the release of the whole program. So if some brave souls could test this editor and give me interesting feedback, I could make it better.

In order to use this editor you have to compile it. This means you need Qt4 (at least 4.2.0 but 4.3.0 or newer is recommended), g++ and make.
To compile the code for your plateform you just have to do the followings :

qmake PKanaEditor.pro

make

./PKanaEditor

I tested it on GNU/Linux (Slackware+KDE) and Windows XP and it should compile and run on Mac OS X and most of the common Unice (*BSD, etc.).
Here is a screenshot of the windows xp version :

I hope you will like it !

don't forget: feel free to send me your feelings about this... Did I mention that I wanted feedback ?

Arnaud Dupuis

PKanaEditor updates

2008-02-25T11:54:00+01:00

Hi,
After some thoughs I choose to change the way the helper is shown in the KanaEditor.
The tab-based widget was not easy to use in real usage conditions.
So I changed the thing and made a new helper based on a single QListWidget.
Here is the new result on Linux/KDE :

And on windows XP :

I think the Japanese font installed on the windows I use are just crappy.
Else, I can't explain the difference in quality between the windows version and the Linux one.
Next time, I will try to compile it on apple's Mac OS X.

Last but not least, I made a Qt Designer plugin of this KanaEditor widget. And thanks to the guy of irc://irc.freenode.net#qt I fixed a damn semi-colon at the end of the class definition which was "preventing" my code to compile...

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

PKanaEditor new version proof of concept

2008-02-20T14:40:00+01:00

Hi,
I never talk about my private life (or very few), but this time it had an influence on my Open Source work !
So here is the information : I will be married by june !
And my futur wife and I decided to spend our honeymoon in Japan... So make the link by yourself between this journey and PKanaEditor

So I have begin to code a proof of concept in C++/Qt4 and with some surprise it works pretty good ! Have a look at this screenshots :

Moreover, my new mission force me to code under microsoft windows xp, so I tried to recompile this PoC under windows and it works too ! Have a look :

Dudes from Trolltech made some incredible works ! I know it works since years but I didn't put my hands on a windows computer in more than 8 years, and at this time I wasn't programming at all... I was too young ;-).

I now lack the XML loading of the data file and this PoC will be a stable version

For those who are interested in Qt programming, I do the trick translating romanji to (hiraga|kataka)na|kanji by subclassing QListWidgetItem and adding a _romanji internal QString to this item. The actual displayed character is set as the item text. Pretty simple, like the major part of Qt programming !!

The only real problem is to find a new meaning to the "P" of PKanaEditor (because it originally means Perl Kana Editor)...

Arnaud Dupuis

compatibility of the Slackware::Slackget Perl module version 0.15_99

2008-02-15T07:20:00+01:00

Hi,
It looks like that the latest released version of the Slackware::Slackget Perl module is quite incompatible with the Solaris operating system.
I was expecting this kind of problem with this release because I added more tests to the test suite. And Slackware::Slackget, as its name said, is designed to run on Slackware GNU/Linux based distributions.
So before the 0.15 final release, in order to provide a very usefull test suite, I will add some more tests.
And unfortunately, I expect more issues... The more the test suite is accurate, the more it will point the problem with Slackware incompatible systems.

The problem with the Solaris systems is that the `file` command do not support the -b switch. I use the file command instead of a CPAN module to reduce the amount of dependencies of Slackware::Slackget but I will look at this and try to make the Slackware::Slackget::File class use a CPAN module if installed (like File::Type).

Arnaud Dupuis

Websites and (bothering) stuffs like that (bis repetita)

2008-02-04T14:17:00+01:00

Hi,
Err, I think it was quite a bad idea to automatically import all article from this blog to http://slackget.infinityperl.org... Since the massive amount of new articles may have made slackget.infinityperl looks like exactly the same than the blog... and Google do not like that at all...
I'm so bad with referencing and stuff like that

If someone have advice on this point, feel free to contact me at (suppress all underscores) a_[dot]_d_u_p_u_i_s_[at]_i_n_f_i_n_i_t_y_p_e_r_l_[dot]_o_r_g

Bye.

Arnaud Dupuis

Websites and (bothering) stuffs like that

2008-02-03T17:14:00+01:00

Hi,
As you could have figured I'm not really fond of website designing and stuffs like that...
But, in order to have some visibility on the Internet, this is my needed curse.
I intended to send http://slackget.infinityperl.org to oblivion but I realized that it was not really a good idea regarding google's stats.
So to fool the <insert your favorite search engine here>bot, I wrote a script (which is now running with cron), to automatically import all the post I do on this blog, and to do a static export in html from the blog to slackget.infinityperl.org.

I just wanted to keep you aware that you could read two times the same post

Just a little reminder about slack-get project websites :
Official web site : this blog
Old website : http://slackget.infinityperl.org
Web SVN interface : http://slack-get-10.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/slack-get-10/
Sourceforge page : https://sourceforge.net/projects/slack-get-10/
Freshmeat page : http://freshmeat.net/projects/ipslackget/

Arnaud Dupuis

Release: Slackware::Slackget v0.15_99 and SGNC documentation

2008-02-02T19:40:00+01:00

Hi,

A new version of the Slackware::Slackget module was released few hours ago on CPAN.
This release features the followings changes :
    - modify Slackware::Slackget::File->filename() behavior to allow it to set the filename
    - fix is_heavy_word() method in Slackware::Slackget::Package, wich now return the correct result
    - update Slackware::Slackget::Date to make it fill the month-name from the month-number
    - update Slackware::Slackget::Date by overloading '<=>' and 'cmp'
    - changed all classes of the Slackware::Slackget module to be compliant with the slack-get naming convention (SGNCC : Slack-Get Naming Convention Compliant) (http://www.infinityperl.org/post/2008/01/30/slack-get-API-review)
    - add more tests to the test suite for the followings classes :
        * Slackware::Slackget::File (SGNCC & backward compatible)
        * Slackware::Slackget::Media (SGNCC & backward compatible)
        * Slackware::Slackget::Date (SGNCC& backward compatible)
        * Slackware::Slackget::Package (SGNCC & backward compatible)

It is tagged as a developers' release for the moment since all the test for all modified (SGNCC) modules, the documentation is not yet up-to-date considering all the changes made, and I still need some time to test if their is absolutely no side effects due to the changes I made in the API.

Arnaud Dupuis

SGNCC - Slack-Get Naming Convention Compliant : the new slack-get's naming convention document

2008-02-02T17:35:00+01:00

Document purpose :

The purpose of this document is to "standardize" slack-get development by imposing a naming convention for both (but not only) : slack-get clients, sg_daemon, all Perl modules and the C++ library.
This include of course, all plug-in which can be released in the futur.

Vocabulary :

In the future, we will refers to the slack-get naming convention as :
SGNC: for Slack-Get Naming Convention.

Additionally, we will refers to SGNC compliant code as SGNCC (SGNC Compliant).

Scope of the SGNC :

All the code released under the "slack-get development team" label must be SGNC compliant (SGNCC).
More generally, all code released and packaged with slack-get must be (and will be) SGNCC.
The SGNC apply to all API visible method names. Every methods in a class or bundle must be SGNCC. By extension to this principle all methods in the sg_daemon, slack-get and the upcoming slack-get GUI have to be SGNCC.
All script released and packaged with slack-get should be SGNCC too. But in order to not slow down some developments it is acceptable to keep not SGNCC code in the branch/ SVN tree. If released with slack-get, this code will be optional at building and installation time. It will also be released in a different package.

Rules of SGNC :

We refer to functions and methods as the same generic term of "method".
The SGNC consist in the following 3 simple programing rules :

a method name consist of lower case, English words where space are replaced with underscores ;
if the method name is conflicting with Perl or C++ built-in function or language syntax, change the case of the first letter to upper case.
if a conflict was solved according to rule 2), and if the name conflicts with only one of the supported languages (Perl and C++), add a wrapper method around the renamed one, in order to comply with the rule 1).

The slack-get development team

slack-get API review

2008-01-30T08:39:00+01:00

Hi,

Back from holidays, I started to work again on slack-get by a huge code review and documentation updates of the API.
My current contract had an impact on this process since it consists in extending the NMIS tool. This tool is really great and useful like no other ones when it comes to network monitoring tasks.
But this tool also have an important flaw : its API is a real mess. It consist of a main script of 7000 code lines and few modules (around 10) totally undocumented !
My job is currently to run into this code, understand it (hopefully it's not too hard to guess) and find a way to add something like a plug-in system to it. Unfortunately, all NMIS modules exports all their functions in the calling script's namespace...
So I choose to have a different naming convention than the one in NMIS for plug-in's methods name... And their is no naming convention in NMIS...

And I sadly saw that it was exactly the same with slack-get Perl API... So starting today I will change that and tag along with the following naming convention :

a method name consist of English words where space are replaced with underscores ;
if the name is conflicting with Perl or C++ built-in function or language syntax, change the case of the first letter to upper case.
if a conflict was solved according to rule 2), and if the name do not conflict with the other language, add a wrapper method around the renamed one, in order to comply with the rule 1).

Boring work but I deserve to do it...

Arnaud Dupuis

Big day today : KDE 4.0.0 announcement and starting 10 days snowboarding

2008-01-11T07:49:00+01:00

Hi,
Well almost everything was said in the title... The main information for the planet is the official KDE 4.0.0 announcement (and the huge party in Mountain View) ! I tried to help the dream to become true, and I want to thanks all the KDE core developers : THANK YOU SO MUCH !

Thanks to Aaron, Anne-Marie, Jonathan, Adriaan and all the community the next generation desktop is now a reality and for the sake of the Open Source community's dynamism it's a great news. And for the sake of my desktop it's even a greater news !
I just can't wait for the images/video/blog entries of the release party ! I hope you will enjoy the same feeling I did the first time I got Plasma running.
Now for my little announcement : as soon as the C++ part of the slack-get library is written, I'll write a Plasmoid which will allow you to stay up-to-date by just looking at your (beautiful) desktop !

Last but not least, starting today I take a break from all coding activities (slack-get as well as KDE), and go 10 days in the Alps trying breaking one or two legs on my snowboard !
I'll try to provide some pictures
If the internet can't climb to Val d'Isère, or if I'm so badly hurt that i can't use my laptop, or if i'm just too lazy to write a blog entry : see you in 10 days ! More probably : see you in few days.

Arnaud Dupuis

Little question from a slack-get user

2008-01-10T09:52:00+01:00

Hello,
I recently received an email from Mark, a slack-get user, who asked me a very simple question : why have I called slack-get this way ?
Well, this is a tricky question. Let me answer this :

At first I wanted to call it get-slack, this is the name of the menu you have to click on Slackware's website. But it was to close from the website and I didn't want to take this initiative (at least not alone, I could have ask for the permission of Pat or the crew). So helped by a huge sense of originaluty and creation, I decided to switch syllable and/or letters.
I came with some nice thing like : gsletack or gstckael but I was afraid somebody else already took the name (and a bit afraid about the poor americans unable to pronounce that ... not talking about Japanese... and not talking about me !).
So I finally came with slack-get, a bit inspired (i must admit it) by an obscur soft called apt-get, and largelly because of the signification of slack-get's acronyme :

So, Mark, I hope that I answered your question Else feel free to send me another email (I like receving email from slack-get users, particularly when they are kind with me and slack-get !).

See you later,

Arnaud Dupuis