#63 Experiments and Prototypes

• Curated by Felix

Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from September 23 to September 30.

Circle Apps and Libraries

Sophie says

This week, Workbench joined GNOME Circle. Workbench lets you experiment with GNOME technologies, whether tinkering for the first time or building and testing a GTK user interface. Congratulations!

Workbench

A sandbox to learn and prototype with GNOME technologies.

sonnyp reports

Workbench 43 is out!

  • Display CSS errors inline
  • Blueprint 0.4.0
  • VTE 0.70.0
  • Use AdwAboutWindow
  • Fix responsiveness when working on large Blueprint files
  • Various bug and crash fixes
  • Use GNOME 43 platform/SDK

Make sure to check what’s new for developers in GNOME 43 and give it a try in Workbench 43.

NewsFlash feed reader

Follow your favorite blogs & news sites.

Jan Lukas reports

After the 2.0 release of NewsFlash last week followed a quick 2.0.1 to fix a nasty database migration issue. But now development of version 2.1 has started with more fixes and two new features already merged:

  1. Tags are now also displayed in the article list. So now you can directly see which article has which tags assigned.
  2. A simple share mechanism. Nothing fancy with logins etc. Just a auto-generated URL. But this means you can add your own share service easily.

Kooha

A simple screen recorder with a minimal interface. You can simply click the record button without having to configure a bunch of settings.

SeaDve announces

I am pleased to announce Kooha 2.2.0. This release introduces fresh new features and bug fixes from over a hundred commits. Here’s the summary of some of the most significant changes:

  • New area selection UI inspired from GNOME Shell
  • Added option to change the frame rate through the UI
  • Improved delay settings flexibility
  • Added preferences window for easier configuration
  • Added KOOHA_EXPERIMENTAL env var to show experimental (unsupported) encoders like VAAPI-VP8 and VAAPI-H264
  • Added the following experimental (unsupported) encoders: VP9, AV1, and VAAPI-VP9
  • Unavailable formats/encoders are now hidden from the UI
  • Fixed broken audio on long recordings

Gaphor

A simple UML and SysML modeling tool.

danyeaw says

Excited to announce Gaphor, the simple UML and SysML tool, version 2.12.0 is released!

  • GTK4 is now the default for Flatpak
  • Save folder is remembered across save actions
  • State machine functionality has been expanded, including support for regions
  • Resize of partition keeps actions in the same swimlane
  • Activities (behaviors) can be assigned to classifiers
  • Stereotypes can be inherited from other stereotypes
  • Many GTK4 fixes: rename, search, instant editors
  • Many translation updates

Third Party Projects

Nick reports

Tagger V2022.9.2 is finally here! This release mainly adds support for automatically downloading and applying tag metadata from MusicBrainz with support for retriving the album art, if avaliable, as well!

Here’s a full changelog:

  • Added support for downloading tag metadata from MusicBrainz
  • Fixed an issue where Tagger would not allow opening more than about 1024 files
  • Fixed an issue where the chromaprint fingerprint contained an extra alien unicode character
  • Rewrote the MusicFile model used by Tagger to be faster and better support a large music library
  • Various UX improvements (Tagger should feel much more snappier and responsive)

Komikku

A manga reader for GNOME.

Valéry Febvre (valos) reports

Pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.0 of Komikku, the manga reader (but not only).

After several months of efforts, the porting of Komikku on GTK4 and libadwaita is finished.

  • Refreshing of the UI to follow the GNOME HIG as much as possible
  • Library has now two display modes: Grid and Compact grid
  • Faster display of the chapters list, whether there are few or many chapters
  • Full rewriting of the Webtoon reading mode
  • Modern ‘About’ window
  • [Preferences] Reader: Add ‘Landscape Pages Zoom’ setting
  • [Preferences] Reader: Add ‘Maximum Width’ setting
  • [Servers] Add Grisebouille by @gee [FR]
  • [Servers] MangaNato (MangaNelo): Update
  • [Servers] Mangaowl: Update
  • [Servers] Read Comic Online: Update
  • [L10n] Update French, German, Spanish and Turkish translations

Fractal

Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust.

Julian Sparber reports

This week we tagged Fractal as 5.alpha1. This is our first release since Fractal has been rewritten to take advantage of GTK 4 and the Matrix Rust SDK. It is the result of eighteen months of work. Currently supported features are:

Currently supported features are:

  • Sending and receiving messages and files
  • Sending files via Drag-n-Drop and pasting in the message entry
  • Rendering of rich formatted (HTML) messages, as well as media
  • Displaying edited messages, redacting messages
  • Showing and adding reactions
  • Tab completion of user names
  • Sending and displaying replies
  • Sharing the current location
  • Exploring the room directory
  • Sorting the rooms by category
  • Joining rooms
  • Sending and accepting invitations
  • Logging into multiple accounts at once
  • Logging in with Single-Sign On
  • Sending and reading encrypted messages
  • Verifying user sessions using cross-signing
  • Exporting and importing encryption keys
  • Managing the connected devices
  • Changing the user profile details
  • Deactivating the account

Major missing features are:

  • Notifications
  • Read markers

As the name implies, this is still considered alpha stage and is not ready for general use just yet. If you want to give this development version a try, you can get it from the [GNOME Apps Nightly flatpak repository] (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Nightly). A list of known issues and missing features for a 5.0 release can be found in the Fractal v5 milestone on Gitlab.

We also published a blogpost about the security quick scan performed by Radically Open Security as part of the NLnet grant https://blogs.gnome.org/jsparber/2022/09/27/fractal-security-audit/

Documentation

Julian 🍃 says

I’ve published the final section of the Libadwaita chapter in GUI development with Rust and GTK 4. It has been reviewed by Ivan Molodetskikh and Alexander Mikhaylenko.

That’s all for this week!

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #thisweek:gnome.org with updates on your own projects!