| § ¶ Introducing Mistelix 0.1
As part of my master degree in computer science, that I completed last February, I had to do a final year project. I wanted to do a project that could match the academic requirements of my university and could also be useful to others and published as free software. After considering a few ideas and work out a few issues with the university, I decided to write a DVD authoring tool for GNU/Linux.
I think that Linux is still missing a few important tools in the multimedia area which I consider key for end users. I could not find any tool that could match iDVD alike user friendly and easiness. I have not obviously been the only one noticing this. The target audience for the final year project were end-users that required an easy to use tool for authoring DVD or slideshows for personal use. My mantra when writing the project has been:
- It is easy to install and use
- Written in a modern platform (Mono and C#)
- Built on top of GStreamer multimedia framework which allow to extend its capabilities
- It is highly extensible with extensions and themes
This is how Mistelix was born. My intention is to continue to further develop it and I hope that users and developers will find it interesting and will use it and contribute to it.
Oh, for those that wonder were the name Mistelix comes from. Mistelix is the result of the combination of the Catalan word Mistela and the ix part of the name Unix. Mistela
is a traditional wine in Catalonia made by adding alcohol to
non-fermented or partially fermented must.
Mistelix screenshot. There are more available at the project site.
Project status
I started to work on Mistelix 10 months ago (see some ohloh statistics). From the NEWS file what version 0.1 offers is:
- Create slideshows from a set of images
- Include videos in your projects
- Create new slide transition effects using extensions
- Publish your projects into DVD or Theora videos
- Localizable to any language
- Save and load authoring projects
This version is able to produce DVDs and also slideshows for Theora. As a matter of fact that I produced already some DVD for my family, however version 0.1 is far from being feature complete or be ready for demanding end-users (no audio support for example yet).
The next steps are defined in the roadmap for version 0.2, mainly to rework the current Theme backend to empower users to do really cool projects easily, to add audio support and allow to do effects as extensions for the slides.
Download
You can download Mistelix from the download page, it is even already packaged for a few distributions. There is also a quick start use guide that shows briefly how to create a project.
The source code is available for now at Google Google Mistelix's project space. There are instructions on how to build it from sources.
Legal issues
If I had to define the current software patent system it will be something similar to the organized crime for which individuals, small companies, and free software projects are among the victims. The whole commercial audio and codec area is just a minefield. The MPEG-2 video compression format, required for DVD authoring, is protected by patents under United States law and international treaties. Most of the Linux distributions have currently no support for MPEG2.
Mistelix by default is packaged for several distributions. These packaged versions support only Theora slideshow authoring to make Mistelix compatible with the distribution of free software. However, installing a specially built gst-ffmpeg you can enable the DVD authoring functionality.
How to contribute
There are many ways of contributing to Mistelix. However, let me highlight three:
- Check ideas for contributing if you are a software developer.
- Help making Mistelix available to other languages (currently only available in Catalan and English). If you are fluent in other languages, with four hours of work approximately you can translate Mistelix and make it available to more users.
- Help to test and improve it. Mistelix is about users, give it a try and provide your feedback.
I want to thank Jordi Ceballos my tutor at the university for the final year project, Jordi Irazuzta (early feedback working on the first extensions), Siegfried-Angel Gevatter (Ubuntu packages and early feedback) and Universitat de Lleida and Softcatalà for the hosting of the project web.
Questions or comments?
If you have questions, you can contact visit Mistelix's project web site where I maintain an early FAQ. There is additionally the Mistelix Google Group forum.
This year's GUADEC is two hours by plane from home. I hope to be able to go and be able to get together with other people interested in contributing to the project.
| § ¶ gbrainy 1.1
Here we have gbrainy 1.1, six months after the previous version. gbrainy is a brain teaser game and trainer to have fun and to keep your brain trained. It provides the following types of games:
- Logic puzzles. Games designed to challenge your reasoning and thinking skills.
- Mental calculation. Games based on arithmetical operations designed to prove your mental calculation skills.
- Memory trainers. Games designed to challenge your short term memory.
What is new in version 1.1 from the NEWS file:
Version 1.1
* 4 new games
* Use Mono.Addins for extending gbrainy
* New translations
* Bug fixes
gbrainy 1.1 is available for download in source code from:
* http://gent.softcatala.org/jmas/gbrainy/gbrainy-1.1.tar.gz
(md5sum 2c2ec926ad461c6f1a6da391615824ca)
Additionally, gbrainy is available for all major Linux distributions.
On top of the already existant translations, in this version debut the Chinese Simplified translation by Gan Lu and Brazilian Portuguese translation by Flamarion Jorge and Jonh Wendell.
gbrainy virtual appliance
Jordi Massaguer has put together a virtual appliance for gbrainy 1.0 built with OpenSuse Studio. It boots into it, in fullscreen, and you can train your brain with multiple exercises.
gbrainy extensions
Starting with version 1.1 you can extend gbrainy easily with new games that you develop as independent extensions. These are external assembly files that gbrainy recognizes at runtime. The extensibility capabilities are provided by Mono.Addins framework. You do not need to recompile gbrainy. In gbrainy project's page you have more information on how to build extensions.
At gbrainy source code repository there is a directory called sample extensions that contain three sample extensions. Extensions are cool because empower any users to extend gbrainy with his own games. If you have questions building extensions, suggestions or you have a cool extension to share, let us know in the gbrainy public group.
Thanks to everyone that has given help or feedback to this version: Siegfried-Angel Gevatter, Sanjeev Nath, Jorge Gonzalez, Wolfgang Stöggl, Jaroslav Ryník, Núria Pedrola and Jordi Irazuzta. You guys rock.
| § ¶ gbrainy best of 2008 according to Softonic and other stats
As you probably now, gbrainy is a brain teaser game (that includes memory, calculation and logic puzzles) that I started to write on summer 2007 and that already reached version 1.0.
This week I was informed that gbrainy has been selected by Softonic as one of the best new programs during 2008 (thanks!). Softonic is a Spanish download site very popular in Spanish speaking countries. According to OJD, a company used by all the advertisement companies as a source of truth measuring popularity of newspapers and web sites, Softonic has 30 milions of unique users per month. gbrainy started to get popular in Softonic when it got a good editoral review early this year which give it visibility to its community. Since then, almost 60000 people has downloaded it and generated 117 comments. The feedback in these comments have been of great value to keep improving the game.
Obviously the fact that has been selected by Softonic is not very relevant at a global scale. For example, gbrainy in CNET Download lives still unnoticed (btw, any idea of other popular English download sites?), but it does highlight for me the fact that is one of the very few free games in its category and that users love it.
On top of this particular download site, gbrainy for Windows has any average of 210 downloads per day. On the Linux front, it is more difficult to get some aggregated statistics since it is distributed by many sources. According to Ubuntu popularity statistics gbrainy is installed in 8912 computers of 870627 that participate in the popularity contest, that is 1.02% of the users. Not bad compared to last summer (June 2008) when it was only 0.05%.
During this Xmas break I have been working on adding Mono.Addins support to gbrainy (to be released in version 1.1). Now, it is possible to extend gbrainy with new games using Mono.Addins. These extensions can be developed as independent components and you do not require to recompile gbrainy or even have its source code. It is even possible to set up a web site to distribute new games to already existant users of gbrainy.
BTW, happy new year!
| § ¶ Firefox party in Barcelona Thursday 26th of June
Tomorrow, it's a great day: Firefox 3.0 is released bringing the great job of the Mozilla community to millions of users.
In Barcelona, the people behind the Mozilla/Firefox Catalan localization is organizing a party in Barcelona on Thursday 26th at:
Centre Comarcal Lleidatà
Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 592
Barcelona
See Google Maps location (it is in front of Universitat square)
(starts at 19.00)
Join us to celebrate the launch of Firefox 3.0 in Barcelona! There are also parties in Amposta and València.
Stay tuned for more details about the party at http://festa.firefox.cat. We are still working on the agenda and the music band!
| § ¶ gbrainy 0.7
Here we have gbrainy 0.7, almost three months after the release of
version 0.6. gbrainy is a brain teaser game and trainer to have fun and
to keep your brain trained.
gbrainy 0.7 is available for download from:
* http://www.softcatala.org/~jmas/gbrainy/gbrainy-0.70.tar.gz
(md5sum 5eee76e379fc7db9ec05d2e577ecc10d)
Available also in other flavours at the project page.
What's new
These are the major new features in gbrainy 0.7:
- 8 new puzzles. 7 logic puzzles and one math one. More challenges specially in the logic front.
- License included in the about box. gbrainy is getting ported to many platforms and sometimes the license is not included in a visible location during the installation. I want to make sure that every user can read gbrainy licensing terms.
- The drawing area is now square and the application resizes better. Following the suggestion of Jordi Irazuzta (who uses the game in his classes) I finally switched to a 1:1 drawing area with equal width and length. The application resizes now much better.
- Better score feedback. When the user plays more than 10 games his performance is also measured from outstanding to disappointing. In the score summary screen there is a new graphic bar to show the game's results.
- Player's history. gbrainy can record your performance on the previous games and show your progress on the different kind of games. Using the preferences you can setup the minimum number of played games to store a game, the maximum number of stored games in the player's history and clean the player's history.
- Preferences persistence. Now gbrainy preferences are stored per user.
- When playing all games, a better selection less based on logic puzzles is done. Many users complained that after playing with gbrainy for a few hours the logic games start to repeat. A new algorithm for selecting games when playing gives more weight to calculation and memory games.
- Bug fixing. Fixed 12 minor bugs.
Users do matter
A got around dozen personal e-mails with comments and suggestions from
users. On top of that, there has been feedback in some software
directories, like Softonic, were gbrainy had 60 comments. The
main suggestions for improvement have been: the win32 build was too big (70Mb
size at the beginning, now 13Mb), after playing the game you start getting the
same puzzles again and that the application does not resize properly. I
fixed all of them during the 0.7 development cycle.
Beta testing gbrainy at Terra Roja secondary school
During mid April I did a public call to local high schools in Catalonia
area to find a school interested in participating on a group
session of gbrainy playing. The idea was to test gbrainy with a group
of 30 people to detect usability flaws and also get feedback on the
challenge that the games represent at different difficulty levels.
I got a few offers and I finally decided to go to Terra Roja secondary
school in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. This is one of the schools using the Catalan
Government Linux distribution Linkat, based on OpenSuse. Joan and Xavi,
my guests there, installed in the school's computers the latest version of gbrainy, built thanks to the Opensuse build service.
We organized a session of one hour and a half were I introduced gbrainy
to a group of 30 students aged from 14 to 15 years old. After playing
during 10 minutes in groups of three people to get them familiar with
the different kind of games, we did a game session of 30 minutes.
During the session I collected lots of feedback and when the game ended
I gave the students an evaluation form where they anonymously wrote
down their age, score and answered a dozen questions about the
application to structure better their feedback.
Most of the feedback that I have collected has been implemented in
version 0.7: some of the questions were a bit to cryptic, explain
always how to give an answer, adjust the difficulty level of some games,
allow people to type the answers using different mechanisms (like
fractions and decimal numbers), etc.
All this could not be possible without the help of Joan Devis and
Xavier Toledo that assist me me during all the process and negotiated
the authorization at their school. Thanks to them.
How can you help gbrainy?
This is a common question that I get. Let me point out some areas where you can help:
- Play the game and provide feedback about the application.
- Translation to different languages. Check the current status of gbrainy translations.
- Any development aid, including fixes or new Puzzles for the current system (see the development section).
- Ideas for new logic puzzles, memory or calculation trainers.
If you like gbrainy, blog about it and tell your friends!
What's next
I'm going to keep working on the stable version of 0.7 during the next
days. I'm also planing to release the next major version of gbrainy during September. I have updated the roadmap with a few
ideas that I'm considering doing.
That's all for now.
Thanks to everyone that has given help or feedback to this version:
Siegfried-Angel Gevatter, Sanjeev Nath, Jordi Irazuzta, Jorge Gonzalez, Torello Querci, Ignacio Casal Quinteiro and Wolfgang Stoeggl.
| § ¶ Publicada la versió 2.0 de la distribució GNU/Linux d'ensenyament Linkat
Ja es troba disponible la versió 2.0 de la distribució Linkat impulsada pel Departament d'Educació de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Està basada en la distribució Opensuse 10.2, s'adreça al sector d'ensenyament i es troba completament en català.
Algunes de les novetats més significatives en Linkat 2.0 són:
- Un nou escriptori amb efectes 3D, que amplia les possibilitats d'interacció amb l'usuari/ària.
- Més de 50 noves aplicacions, com ara l'iTalc, que permet compartir el treball entre els ordinadors d'una aula i gestionar-ne l'ús que en fa l'alumnat.
- Síntesi de veu en català, elaborada per la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
- Compatibilitat amb la major part del maquinari existent al mercat
- Millores en el disseny del model de servidor i client de centre, amb la possibilitat de sincronitzar altes i baixes d'usuaris amb llistats d'alumnes provinents d'altres fonts.
- Modalitat de treball amb terminals lleugers (LTSP) totalment integrada en el sistema.
Els que heu estat usuaris de la LinkAt 1.0 notareu un gran avanç. Inclou GNOME 2.12, OpenOffice.org 2.3, Firefox 2.0 i una versió del nucli que finalment dóna un bon soport per dispositius de maquinari moderns.
Actualment la LinkAt es troba en uns 20 centres pilots i hi ha plans de que estigui a uns 100 a finals d'any. La setmana passada vaig estar a l'IES Terra Roja a Santa Coloma on tenen LinkAt 2.0 en funcionament en varies desenes de màquines. Estaven força contents.
Teniu tota la informació a la web de la LinkAt on també tenen fòrums d'ajuda per aquells que tingueu dubtes. Per cert, fa temps que a Softcatalà ens fem mirall de la LinkAt.
| § ¶ Les fundacions GNOME i Mozilla uneixen esforços
Llegeixo al lloc web del GNOME que la Fundació Mozilla i la Fundació GNOME uneixen esforços. La col·laboració entre ambdós projectes se centra en tres àrees:- La Fundació Mozilla estarà present a la junta de la Fundació GNOME ajudant a definir la direcció del projecte.
- Mozilla continuarà el seu compromís d'integrar la plataforma GNOME amb les seves eines, incloent-hi el Mozilla Firefox
- La Fundació Mozilla dóna 10.000 dòlars per a millorar l'accessibilitat de la plataforma GNOME.
Personalment sempre m'he trobat molt còmode treballant amb el GNOME però penso que històricament li han mancat bones aplicacions. No ha sigut fins recentment que hem tingut aplicacions com l'F-Spot, el Tracker, el Tomboy o el GNOME-Baker. Aquest acord ajuda en un àrea on realment cal: disposar de millors aplicacions.
| § ¶ gbrainy 0.53 for Microsoft Windows
During the last weeks I have been trying to build a gbrainy's installer for Windows. I finally got some results. The installer packages gbrainy, its precompiled translations and a Mono 1.2.1 and GTK Sharp 2.8.3 stack. This is the Mono/GTK# version that worked better with gbrainy and is the same used by MonoDevelop on Windows too. The final package is 70Mb, that is far from more ideal but I really have no much time for rebuilding the Mono runtimes that I found that work well for gbrainy.I have created a page with all the information on how to compile and create an installer for gbrainy in Windows. I also have published a gbrainy 0.53 installer for Windows.
Once installed, gbrainy on Windows XP works pretty well. On Windows Vista there are a few problems but nothing that prevents from using the application. Obviously all this could not be possible with the great effort that the gnome, mono and cairo hackers made to make sure that these tools work well on Windows.
Remeber that is an experimental build.
| § ¶ El TERMCAT publica una eina lliure per a la creació de diccionaris terminològics
El Termcat ha publicat avui el GesTerm, una eina que facilita l'elaboració de diccionaris multilingües especialitzats i que es pot descarregar lliurement. Es tracta d'un gestor de terminologia que facilita les principals tasques associades al treball terminològic: creació i manteniment de fitxes terminològiques amb diversos camps com ara denominacions, definicions o equivalències, cerques avançades de la informació i generació de documents amb format de diccionari que es poden imprimir i compartir. L'aplicació és multiplataforma, de manera que es pot utilitzar en un entorn.L'eina està escrita en Java i la podeu descarregar el codi font directament del seu lloc web. D'acord amb la seva pàgina el programa ha estat alliberat amb una llicencia GPL versió 3.
Els he escrit per demanar-los dues coses: si poden incloure la llicència amb la distribució del codi font i si poden publicar instruccions de com construir el programari (no les he trobat, potser hi són).
Que les administracions publiquin els seus desenvolupaments sota llicències lliures hauria de ser el seu modus operandi normal, malauradament, estem lluny de que així sigui. Per aquest motiu, vull agrair especialment que el TERMCAT hagi publicat aquest recurs lliurement.
| § ¶ Microsoft obre els seus formats
Estic a un descans a la feina amb un cafè i penso vaig a veure que expliquen a l'Avui que l'actualitat està interessant aquests dies. Em trobo:Microsoft anuncia l'obertura dels codis dels seus programesSí que ha canviat el món aquesta tarda penso ;) Llegeixo l'article i efectivament no han entès un borrall. El que obren són les especificacions dels seus formats i protocols tal com explica Microsoft al seu lloc web i no pas el codi.
Sembla ser un pas endavant per part de Microsoft. Així ho entenem a la comunitat Abiword, la documentació servirà per millorar el wv, i així ho entenen també els desenvolupadors de Samba. Encara hi ha coses que fan certa pudor com que no perseguiran legalment als programadors de programari lliure no comercial. I els del programari lliure comercial? Sembla que volen seguir en la línia dels acords Novell/Microsoft. Mala cosa.
Cal dir que Microsoft va rebre una "petita empenta" per part de la Unió Europea el passat setembre per tal d'obrir les especificacions del seus formats. Totes les empentes ajuden perquè sinó molt probablement encara haurien trigat uns anys més. El moment de fer públic aquest anunci està probablement relacionat amb la decisió que s'ha de prendre molt aviat (25 al 29 de febrer) sobre la estandardització del seu format Open XML.
| § ¶ Openoffice.org 2.3.1 en català per a Windows
Els usuaris de Windows ens pregunten sovint on poden aconseguir una versió de l'OpenOffice.org 2.3 en català. Openoffice.org només produeix les versions d'aquelles llengües que tenen traduccions completes, com que a la catalana encara li manca la documentació no en produeixen. Durant tots aquests anys ho havíem fet des de Softcatalà però per manca de temps i recursos per la versió 2.3 no s'ha pogut fer.Mentre que en Jesús acaba de enllestir un sistema que ens permeti tornar a produir versions completes en català per a Windows he actualitzat la pàgina del projecte de localització d'OpenOffice.org amb informació de com instal·lar el paquet d'idioma de l'OpenOffice 2.3.1 sobre una versió en Windows i obtenir una versió així catalanitzada. Això queda lluny d'una versió completament en català ja que els diccionaris, la partició de mots o les plantilles no són en català.
Tornant a la documentació, durant desembre vaig acabar d'arreglar els centenars d'errors que hi havia a la part que tenim traduïda: etiquetes esborrades, cometes mal tancades, marques traduïdes, i altres horrors (OpenOffice.org no permet pujar fitxers amb errors als dipòsits oficials). Ara es troba tot el que tenim traduït al Pootle i al dipòsit Subversion d'OpenOffice.org. La traducció de la documentació es troba enllestida al 25%. Queden unes 313.323 paraules per traduir (:-
Aquesta setmana també he estat treballant en un recull de preguntes i respostes més freqüents sobre l'OpenOffice.org en català. Si us plau, esmeneu i afegiu tot allò que considereu oportú.
En els propers dies faré un apunt sobre el procés de traducció de l'OpenOffice 3.0 al català.
| § ¶ El TERMCAT actualitza la col·lecció Terminologia Oberta
El TERMCAT ha actualitzat en els darrers dies la seva col·lecció Terminologia Oberta. Fa un temps a Softcatalà vam publicar un article que parla d'aquesta iniciativa que porten desenvolupant des de fa ja uns anys i que té com a objectiu fer accessible a tothom els termes normalitzats. La col·leció està disponible en format XML, simplificant el seu processament per tot tipus d'eines, i es troba alliberada sota la llicència Reconeixement-CompartirIgual 2.5 de Creative Commons.El conjunt publicat aplega actualment gairebé 6.000 fitxes conceptuals, amb les denominacions en català, castellà, francès i anglès, pertanyents a àmbits de coneixements tan diversos com l’esport, les noves tecnologies, les ciències de la vida i la salut, la gastronomia, la comunicació o la gestió empresarial. Els termes han estat aprovats pel Consell Supervisor del TERMCAT, òrgan que estableix la denominació adequada dels neologismes científics i tècnics en llengua catalana.
Pels que treballem habitualment en traducció i tecnologia la llista de termes normalitzats en tots els àmbits i el recull de telecomunicacions són els dos recursos més utils. Per la traducció d'aplicacions informàtiques el Recull de Termes, és molt més addient, ja que conté moltes més formes del nostre àmbit.