2012-08-14

[GNOME] GSOC, GNOME Documents/Tracker, and Tablets

GSOC "Pencils Down": GObject Serialization with GXml



Yesterday was pencil's down (joke with friends of yesterday: What's a pencil?  Is that like a stylus? O_O).  I pushed the changes I'd been working on.  It was a bit of a wrestling match with automake trying to get my devhelp pages to successfully generate via valadoc, but I prevailed in the end.  A hearty thanks goes to the Folks developers and Philip Withnall who have essentially been the template I followed.  In the end, the biggest obstacles seem silly in retrospect, though.  Sigh. I want to write up a quick guide for future people after my semester ends.  I want to do a lot of things.



Also, deserialisation handles multiple references to the same original object correctly now, hooray!  There is one issue with it in some cases, where there might be an ID collision on the serialised objects.  I have a few ideas for solutions, but for now, that's it.



I have work to push on automatically serialising collections, but it's a bit too buggy right now.  If I can't finish it this week, I'll put it in a branch and push that.



GNOME Documents and Tracker



Sam Thursfield the other day asked if I could try Tracker 0.14.2, after I noted that Tracker's subjective impact on interactivity was preventing me from using GNOME Documents.  I found a package in Fedora's koji for 0.14.2 (after vainly trying to install git to ~/.local/; I gave up on trying to get tracker to load from ~/.local/libexec/).  I'm not sure if it's any better?



It initially stalled twice.  (0.14.1 was stalling while mining the file system sometimes, according to tracker-control.)  The first time was just when it started, it got 2% of my file system done and just never progressed beyond that.  No CPU activity, though.  I restarted, and it made some more progress.  I then tried to preview a file it had indexed, and LibreOffice document, and then resulted in soffice consuming all my CPU for over 5 minutes before I killed it.  tracker-control indicated no further progress for a while, so I restarted again.   I don't feel I have enough reproducible information from either instance to file a bug, sadly.



It's been going for over an hour now.  Performance on my desktop is intermittently laggy while it runs while I'm trying to interact with it, sadly, but I think it's better than it used to be over a year ago?  It was slowing down my system for a while when I started using my browser and a terminal 15 minutes ago, but after about 5 minutes of sluggishness, it seems to have backed off, though still using a very small amount of CPU.  I hope it hasn't stalled again.  I will let it finish its initial indexing and then monitor its behaviour after that to see whether I can live with it turned on.  Heavy I/O and CPU use while I'm trying to interact will be a big no-no.



UPDATE: one of the issues seems to be large memory usage causing programs I'm interacting with (e.g. Firefox) to have to swap a lot.  I have 2GB RAM.  Hopefully when it's done it's initial indexing, that won't happen.



Can anyone else comment on Tracker 0.14.2 and up, and their experience with interactive performance while it's running?



GNOME on Tablets


"No auto-rotate, no swipe to scroll, no two-finger zoom or resize aren't
issues.

The real and only issue is that no part of GNOME is better on a tablet
than iOS or Android. So the issues you pointed out are really non-issues
since the product, by design, isn't a good one [for this form factor]."

This is a comment on my previous post about testing GNOME on my tablet.  I find it a bit weird.  Despite all the ways in which GNOME is not yet great for a tablet, there are several things I already prefer about it.  One is having a completely Free software stack operating my machine.  Another is familiar software and features.  Another is that by having a desktop-background, its applications have options and features available that aren't provided on other tablet systems and their apps that simplify UIs beyond what GNOME does even in 3.x; I don't have to compromise functionality.  I'm not sure, but do other tablets have things like user switching yet?  I also like having normal control of the system underneath, even if I have to use a terminal to access it: it makes running sshd and rsync a lot easier.



A nice thing about GNOME is its design can evolve and adapt.  GNOME 3 is much more touch-friendly than GNOME 2 was.  Having always used tablet PCs (the stylus variety) for laptops, I like having direct interaction with the screen, and look forward to many touch-enabled computers in the future.  A lot of the considerations that would go into making GNOME on a tablet a more enjoyable experience wouldn't subtract from using GNOME on a laptop, so I think the noted deficits are valid issues.



So, why should GNOME not be nicer to run on tablets?



Keine Kommentare:

Kommentar veröffentlichen

Blog Archive

Dieses Blog durchsuchen

Labels

#Technology #GNOME gnome gxml fedora bugs linux vala google #General firefox security gsoc GUADEC android bug xml fedora 18 javascript libxml2 programming web blogger encryption fedora 17 gdom git emacs libgdata memory mozilla open source serialisation upgrade web development API Spain containers design evolution fedora 16 fedora 20 fedora 22 fedup file systems friends future glib gnome shell internet luks music performance phone photos php podman preupgrade tablet testing typescript yum #Microblog Network Manager adb apache art automation bash brno catastrophe css data loss debian debugging deja-dup disaster docker emusic errors ext4 facebook fedora 19 gee gir gitlab gitorious gmail gobject google talk google+ gtk html libxml mail microsoft mtp mysql namespaces nautilus nextcloud owncloud picasaweb pitivi ptp python raspberry pi resizing rpm school selinux signal sms speech dispatcher systemd technology texting time management uoguelph usability video web design youtube #Tech Air Canada C Electron Element Empathy Europe GError GNOME 3 GNOME Files Go Google Play Music Grimes IRC Mac OS X Mario Kart Memento Nintendo Nintendo Switch PEAP Selenium Splatoon UI VPN Xiki accessibility advertising ai albums anaconda anonymity apple ask asus eee top automake autonomous automobiles b43 backup battery berlin bit rot broadcom browsers browsing canada canadian english cars chrome clarity comments communication compiler complaints computer computers configuration console constructive criticism cron cropping customisation dataloss dconf debug symbols design patterns desktop summit development discoverability distribution diy dnf documentation drm duplicity e-mail efficiency email english environment estate experimenting ext3 fedora 11 festival file formats firejail flac flatpak forgottotagit freedom friendship fuse galaxy nexus galton gay rights gdb german germany gimp gio gjs gnome software gnome-control-center google assistant google calendar google chrome google hangouts google reader gqe graphviz growth gtest gtg gvfs gvfs metadata hard drive hard drives hardware help hp humour ide identity instagram installation instant messaging integration intel interactivity introspection jabber java java 13 jobs kernel keyboard language language servers languages law learning lenovo letsencrypt libreoffice librpm life livecd liveusb login lsp macbook maintainership mariadb mario matrix memory leaks messaging mounting mouse netflix new zealand node nodelist numix obama oci ogg oggenc oh the humanity open open standards openoffice optimisation org-mode organisation package management packagekit paint shedding parallelism pdo perl pipelight privacy productivity progress progressive web apps pumpkin pwa pyright quality recursion redhat refactoring repairs report rhythmbox rust sandboxes scheduling screenshots self-navigating car shell sleep smartphones software software engineering speed sql ssd synergy tabs test tests themes thesis tracker travel triumf turtles tv tweak twist typing university update usb user experience valadoc video editing volunteering vpnc waf warm wayland weather web apps website wifi wiki wireless wishes work xinput xmpp xorg xpath
Powered by Blogger.