Unlike most students i’m not new to Haiku, i’ve already contributed around the Haiku community, maybe you can remember me for my work on Caya (msn plugin). Not by chance my gsoc project is somehow related to Caya (and every app that expose contacts).
The fundamental idea is to provide a core set of classes with the aim of contacts integration into the system. The basic idea around the entire project is fairly simple in theory : The api should be easily extendable.
During most of GSoC, I will be in Faro, Portugal, where I am finishing my Masters. However, I will travel to Santa Rosa, California to visit family for five weeks in June and July.
Time Zones: Mon 25 Apr - Thu 16 Jun: Western European Summer Time (UTC+1) Fri 17 Jun - Thu 21 Jul: Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) Fri 22 Jul - Fri 26 Aug: Western European Summer Time (UTC+1)
My project will expose the Haiku API to scripting languages. During GSoC, I will focus on enabling the creation of GUI apps; this will include large parts of the Interface Kit and some essential classes from the Application Kit. I will target Perl and Python as the scripting languages.
(After GSoC, I would like to support other languages as well, and increase the number of classes available from scripting languages.
When we last looked at application scripting in Haiku, we merely scratched the surface. Using the hey command and the basic concepts behind the Haiku scripting model, we were able manipulate running applications to do our bidding. Now we will delve into the C++ code which can do the same thing with much greater flexibility and even implement scripting support in our own GUI controls.
Programming with Haiku, Lesson 19
In recent times I have become much less of a BeOS/Haiku full time user and regularily use other systems such as Ubuntu, Windows 7, and sometimes even Mac OS X Leopard. After my very recent blog post on my impressions of the GNOME 3 Shell, I've narrowed down some ideas floating in my head about how Deskbar could be changed to improve it's usability. Let me list some things I like or hate in other desktops.
GNOME 3 is out and of course I was very curious to give it a spin. As the GNOME developers claim they care a lot about usability and have given the new desktop design a lot of thought, I was pretty excited, since I care about these things as well. Haiku still has a lot of usability issues that we need to sort out. Maybe we can learn a few things. So what are my impressions? To be honest, I have pretty mixed feelings.
After a long hiatus, Lesson #18 is available for your reading pleasure. The topic? Scripting Haiku applications, possibly one of the least understood aspects of the operating system. Learn about hey command, its uses, and even see some of the most English-like bash commands ever. Also see how to make almost any Haiku application answer your beck and call and tinker around the operating system with an updated version of the ScriptWorld demo application, Scripting Explorer.
Going through some backup files on my hard drive, I discovered a blog entry about my work on the Media Kit and MediaPlayer, which I for some reason never published. Even though it's about work which happened some time ago, I am going ahead and publish it anyway, perhaps it's still an interesting read for some. Here it goes:
While I was contracted to work on the port of WebKit to Haiku, and later on WebPositive, I've written regular enthusiastic blog entries to report on my progress. This time around, I haven't felt confident in the results of my work up until now. Getting the FFmpeg plugin to perform decently was quite a piece of often frustrating work.
One month has passed (too fast), so it’s time to summarize the developments
in the fields of package management for Haiku.
This lesson is one of several which delves into the art of control writing for Haiku – not just a quick-and-dirty hack on an existing one, but writing a new control which rivals existing ones in quality and features. Learn how controls handle drawing themselves and write a basic color display control.
Programming with Haiku, Lesson 17
