There’s a new release of Roxen Application Launcher (come again?) for Linux.

Although the previous release, using GTK3, came quite recently this release has some new things.

GSettings

I dumped the “keyfile” solution for the application settings in favour to GSettings. So the settings is no longer stored in a file in the application directory but rather in the system’s application settings backend. GSettings is part of GIO – the GNOME networking library – and since RAL depends on GIO no new dependency is needed. The upside is that I could put a file of source code in the bin! Plus, it’s fun learning new stuff!

Editors and content types

Previously I have kept an editor – name and command line – for every content type. Anders at Roxen thought it’d be better if editors and content types were separated. I’ve thought about that before but never bothered to do anything about it.

But now, along with GTK3, there’s a new (I think) AppInfo class and the new AppChooserButton and AppChooserDialog widgets so I thought it’d be cool to use those. So selecting an editor for a new content type is way more simple now, and it also looks nicer. Plus we get the icon for the editor in the content type list under the “Applications” tab

Simple logging

I also implemented some simple logging which can be viewed under the new “Logging” tab. This will be worked upon and at the moment not very useful information is written to the log, but at least it’s a start.

Default icons

The icons in the notification popup – which only are three to the number – is now fetched from the user’s default icon theme. They we’re bundled before.

SOUP all the way

Previously I have used a little hack for saving downloaded files to disk. The problem was that the Vapi bindings for libsoup casted the data to a string which totally scrambled binary content like images and such. My solution was to write a simple C-function which took a SoupMessageBody struct as argument and then wrote that to diskt always keeping the uint8[] type of the content.

I bug reported this way back and it’s now fixed in Vala so I dumped my solution and am now using Vala all the way. Gone is one C and one Vapi file.

While at it I changed from using blocking functions in libsoup to the async ones. You never really noticed blocking calls was used before, but right is right. Right?

And that’s that for this time I think!

Roxen Application Launcher 1.2.1

Sources is available at the Roxen Application Launcher Github repository

The other day I wanted to put both an icon and text in the same GTK+ TreeViewColumn, and I had absolutely no idea how to do that. So I Google’d and Google’d but had trouble finding any examples. I even downloaded the source code of the Gnome System Monitor – where exactly what I wanted exist – but that was mostly written in C++ which I know very little of.

But I’m stubborn, and after a while I found and example in Python which I managed to interpret. Even though I know very little Python it’s not that hard to follow, and the example was short.

In short what’s needed is packing two CellRenderers in the same TreeViewColumn. Quite logical when you know about it. The example below is in Vala:

var tree_view = new TreeView ();

var col = new TreeViewColumn ();
col.title = title;
col.resizable = true;

var crp = new CellRendererPixbuf ();
col.pack_start (crp, false);
col.add_attribute (crp, "pixbuf", 0);

var crt = new CellRendererText ();
col.pack_start (crt, false);
col.add_attribute (crt, "text", 1);

tree_view.insert_column (col, -1);

I hacked up a simple application that shows all installed programs – that has a .desktop entry I guess – in a list (the screenshot above). The sources is available at my Github repository.

Happy coding!

There’s a new release of Roxen Application Launcher (come again?) for Linux.

I have updated the application launcher to use GTK3 so that it builds on Ubuntu 11.10 and any other Linux distribution using GTK3. This also made it possible to drop the dependency for libunique since Gtk.Application can handle single instance applications.

I also fixed a bug which made it impossible to use the appliction launcher on sites not running on port 80 or 443.

So there’s no new features in this release.

Roxen Application Launcher 1.1

Sources is available at the Roxen Application Launcher Github repository

No big news, but the GTK+ tree view of files is now sortable. The “minimize to tray” function is now actually invoked when the window is minimized rather than closed. A right click in the file list now also let you go the the file’s directory in the Sitebuilder.

Also fixed a bug where the locales didn’t get installed correctly and also fixed a bug which scrambled the configuration file a bit.

Roxen Application Launcher 1.0.10

Sources is available at the Roxen Application Launcher Github repository

The reason for this is that Ubuntu now utilise a “whitelist” for which applications can be displayed in the notification area. You can (maybe not that) easily add any application to the whitelist by invoking the command gsettings in the following way:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist ['app-1', 'app-2', 'app-3']

Now, this can be quite a difficult command to remember and since you will need to first grab the whitelist, alter it, and then put it back. Since I’m lame at Bash I thought it would be a nice misson to create a Bash script that makes this interference simpler, just to pick up some more Bash knowledge. So I did!

The script can be used like this:

# Add MyApplication to whitelist
systray-whitelist add MyApplication

# Remove MyApplication from whitelist
systray-whitelist remove MyApplication

# Show applications in whitelist
systray-whitelist show

And that’s that.

Download systray-whitelist

So I had a go at the Roxen Application Launcher (come again?) for Linux. I added a context menu – when you right click – to the file list. When you right click a file in the list you get the option to view that file in the Sitebuilder, edit it or remove it.

Other than that there’s nothing new. And since the application seems to be very stable I decided to bump the version number to 1.0.

The sources is available at Github.

Roxen Appliction Launcher 1.0

But I solved the libsoup issue so now the RAL handles redirects and secure connections. This is how I solved it:

The libsoup issue

When uploading a file back to the Roxen server I use IOChannel (g_io_channel in plain C) instead of Gio. So the upload works like this:

var sess = new Soup.SessionSync();
var mess = new Soup.Message("PUT", get_uri());
mess.request_headers.append("Cookie", get_cookie());
mess.request_headers.append("Translate", "f");

IOChannel ch = new IOChannel.file(local_file, "r");
ch.set_encoding(null); // Enables reading of binary data
string data;
size_t len;
ch.read_to_end(out data, out len);

mess.request_body.append(Soup.MemoryUse.COPY, data, len);
sess.send_message(mess);

And that seems to work like a charm!

When downloading data it’s a bit more tricky! Of course I tried using IOChannel in this case also but that made no difference. Downloaded images ended up 4 bytes long! But then I thought: You can make your own C bindings in Vala (remember the Vala compiler generates C code) through what is called Vapi files. So what I did was writing a C function that takes a SoupMessageBody object/struct passed from Vala and writes the data part to a file given as argument.

gboolean save_soup_data(SoupMessageBody *data, const char *file)
{
  FILE *fh;

  if ((fh = fopen(file, "w")) == NULL) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Unable to open file \"%s\" for writing!\n", file);
    return FALSE;
  }

  int wrote = fwrite(data->data, 1, data->length, fh);

  if (wrote != (int)data->length) {
    fprintf(stderr, "wrote (%d) != data->length (%d). Data may have been "
                    "truncated", wrote, (int)data->length);
  }

  fclose(fh);
  return TRUE;
}

And this was then made available to Vala by the following Vapi file:

[CCode (cprefix = "", lower_case_cprefix = "", cheader_filename = "")]
namespace Soppa // Soppa is Swedish for Soup 
{
  [CCode (cname = "save_soup_data")]
  public bool save_soup_data(Soup.MessageBody data, string file);
}

And this is how the actual Vala code downloading the files looks like:

var sess = new Soup.SessionSync();
var mess = new Soup.Message("GET", get_uri());
mess.request_headers.append("Cookie", get_cookie());
mess.request_headers.append("Translate", "f");
sess.send_message(mess);

if (mess.status_code == Soup.KnownStatusCode.OK) {
  // Here I call the C function made available through the Vapi file
  if (Soppa.save_soup_data(mess.response_body, local_file)) {
    message("The file was downloaded and written to disk OK");
  }
  else {
    message("Failed writing data to disk!");
  }
}

So that’s that on that!

The notification

I also – just for fun – implemented a notification mechanism through libnotify. Since I believe that can be rather annoying it’s not activated by default but can easily be activated by a checkbox in the user interface.

The packages

The Roxen Application Launcher for Linux can be downloaded at the download page at Github where also the work in progress sources is available or downloaded below!

Roxen Application Launcher 0.4.4

Stay black!

Since I’m on the quest of learning the programming language Vala I though why not making a Bit.ly desktop client for GNOME. So I did!

The desktop client

There’s really nothing extraordinary about it, in fact it’s quite simple. Put a long URL in the input field and hit “OK”. You’ll get the shortened URL back in the same input field.

NOTE! The screenshots is showing the Swedish translation but the interface is orginally in English.

Shortening a long URL

The shortened URL

To use the application you will of course need a Bit.ly account. The first time Bitlyfier is launched it will ask for your Bit.ly account settings. Just fill in your username and API key (it’s found on your account page at http://bit.ly/account).

Bitlyfier account settings

The command line interface

For the hacker you, Bitlyfier can also be used as a command line tool. These are the options:

Usage:
  bitlyfier [OPTION...] - Bitlyfier, URL shortener/expander

Help Options:
  -h, --help        Show help options

Application Options:
  -e, --expand      Expands the given URL
  -s, --shorten     Shortens the given URL
  -n, --no-gui      Sets the application in command line mode
  -g, --gconf       Invokes setting username and apikey

NOTE! You should quote the value of the ‘-s’ flag. If the URL to be shortened
contains a querystring with ampersands the URL will be truncated if it’s not
quoted.

So to shorten a long URL do like:

  user@machine:~$ bitlyfier -n -s "http://domain.com/long/url/to/shorten"

The Vala Bitly API classes

The Bitly API class I’ve written can of course be used standalone (it’s located in src/bitly.vala in the sources package downloadable below). Here’s an example of usage:

// main.vala
// Compile: valac --pkg gee-1.0 --pkg json-glib-1.0 --pkg libsoup-2.4 -o main

int main(string[] argv)
{
  Bitly.Api api = new Bitly.Api("username", "R_the_api_key");
  Bitly.Response response = api.shorten("http://domain.com/the/long/url");
  stdout.printf("Short URL: %s\n", response.get_string("shortUrl"));

  response = api.stats("A2ma2z");
  stdout.printf("Clicks: %d\n", response.get_integer("clicks"));

  return 0;
}

More about the Bit.ly API and what the API methods do can be read about at http://bit.ly/6HIqjS.

The sources

The development sources of this application is available at Bitlyfier at Github. The current stable release can be found at the Download page.

Font parsing

The first thing to do, and that I have done, is porting my font parser from PLib to C#. That was no major head ache. There are at least to different font classes available in C# Mono (`System.Drawing.Font` and `Pango.Font`) but they don’t give all information about the font that I want.

Worth mentioning is that I heavily used the Mono DataConverter class to unpack the binary strings in the fonts. The unpack() function in PHP is just tremendous and there doesn’t seem to be a native alike in C#. But thanks to Miguel de Icasa’s DataConverter it went quite alright.

Font preview

The next thing to do was figuring out how to create the font previews. And I figured it out First I though of using the console program gnome-thumbnail-font to create the previews but I had to throw that one into the bin since it doesn’t seem to handle multi line text. Since I’ve never used the graphics functions in C# before I came to the conclusion that I had to create the previews all by my self. It was quite easy finding good examples on the net of how to create text images with C#. A couple of hours later that problem was also solved (as you can see in the screen shot below). And man the graphics stuff in C# is fast. The preview images are generated instantly!

Next step

I have a lot left to do before this is a useful program but we’re heading there. One feature I’m planning on implementing is the ability to create your own font sets that you can activate/deactivate.

And I will probably come up with some more stuff to add, but that will be a later head ache!

Screen shot: Gnome Font Manager

BTW: For those of you not knowing what the heck Roxen’s Application Launcher (AL here after) is here’s a brief explanation: Files in Roxen CMS is stored in a CVS file system which means that you don’t deal with files the way you normally do. To manage files you use a web browser interface (which is a darn good one I might add) but sometimes you actually want to edit files in your standard desktop application. And it is here the AL comes to play. You can download a file through the browser interface so that the file is opened in the AL. AL will then open the file in the desktop application you have associated with the file’s content-type. When you make your changes and saves them the AL will directly upload the changes to the server. So in short I could have said: The Application Launcher is a means to edit files on a remote Roxen server with a preferred desktop application.

The obstacles

I must say I’ve learned a lot from this project!

First off: If you download a file for editing and the AL is already started you don’t want to start a new instance of AL (this is something I have never ever thought about before – in general terms, not just concerning AL) but when you do think about it you find that it’s not a piece of cake to solve. I solved it the way it is solved in the original AL. The first instance of AL that is started also starts a “socket server” that listens for incoming traffic on a given port on the local IP. When a new instance is started it first checks if it can connect to said port and if it can it sends the arguments through the socket to the first instance which then handles the request. The second instance is simply terminated when it has send the data though the socket.

So there I had to do some socket programming. Great fun

Secondly: Stuff happens in the background of AL – data send through the socket remember – which means that nothing happens when you try to update the Graphical User Interface. (NOTE! This is the first more advanced desktop application I’ve done.) After “Google-ing” around a bit I came to know that this was a real newbie problem The thing is that the GUI can only be updated through the same thread that started it so when using background threads – implicitly that’s what I’m doing although handled by the asynchronous callback infrastructure of C# – you need to make sure the GUI is updated through the main thread. This is the most simple way so solve it:

Gtk.Application.Invoke(delegate{
  CallFunctionToUpdateGUI();
});

That’s not too difficult when you know it

Thirdly: The AL is sending data back and forth through the HTTP protocol which means we have to use some sort of HTTP client. C# has a couple of ways to do this but unfortunately they came up short, or I couldn’t use them anyway. I didn’t manage to figure out exactly why I always caught an exception saying something like: A protocol violation occurred!. I’m far from the only one who have fought with this and it has something to do with the headers sent from the remote server. You can invoke “unsafe header parsing” but that was to much of a hassle so I created my own little HTTP client.

One big annoying thing with C# is that is seems almost impossible to turn data from streams into strings without having to use any one of the System.Text.Encoding.* classes/objects which in my case meant that images and files in binary form got seriously fucked up. I manged to solve this my never turning the data into a string but keeping it as a System.Text.Encoding.* all the way from request to response to saving to disk. It was rather irritating but at the same time nice when solved (and I learned a whole bunch about System.Text.Encoding.*, System.Text.Encoding.*, System.Text.Encoding.* and System.Text.Encoding.*.)

Finally: Of course I learned a great deal more about C# but this blog post is starting to get pretty excessive so I will round it off by saying that MonoDevelop is starting to become pretty darn good! I just upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu and that also meant that I got the latest MonoDevelop and I must say it’s more stable than ever (although it occasionally crashes) and a whole bunch of new features are in place. One I havn’t used before – although it might have existed before – is the “Deployment” stuff. It creates a package with configure and make files for optimal compilation. Really smooth!

Source and screens

I will finish off by adding the source files and a few screen shots:

Roxen Application Launcher

Screen shot 1: Just a standard view

Screen shot 2: The panel applet in action

Screen shot 3: The Application Launcher in Swedish

Screen shot 4: Adding support for a new content type