GetDeb is an unofficial project with the mission to provide the latest open source and freeware applications for the current Ubuntu Linux release.

People from getdeb.net did it again! Now wiican 0.3.3 it’s packaged for Ubuntu 11.04 (codename natty narwhal) and downloadable via getdeb software portal.

Thanks Christoph Korn and the getdeb.net team!

Wiican running on Gnome3

A new cycle of wiican development has been finished, this time a minor release for getting better compatibility with Gnome3 and Unity desktops:

• Tray icon migrated to AppIndicator for better working on Unity desktop
• Merged all options into one single menu
• New fancy symbolic high-contrast icons
• ‘Show mapping manager on startup‘ option added
• i18n impulse! supporting chinese, asturiano, estonian …

Download the tarball here:

http://launchpad.net/wiican/0.3/0.3.3/+download/wiican-0.3.3.tar.gz

New symbolic icons set

Well, it was a long time since last release and a pity not dedicating so much time for wiican, even though there was a clear roadmap which had created some expectations. The point is, the new arrival of modern desktops as Gnome3/Gnome-shell and Unity requiered a wiican update:

• Gtk StatusIcon won’t work anymore on Unity: a replacement with appindicator was almost mandatory
• Single menu tray apps using symbolic icons is the standard practice nowadays

Fortunately Daniel Planas, Wiican’s icon designer, has done a good job with Wiican symbolic icons. Dani also designs for the Ayatana project so he knows about how to design symbolic icons, even Ubuntu’s BDFL congrats him on his windicator mockup work!

Traditional Chinese i18n

Another great surprise is the activity on Wiican’s launchpad site. Almost 1000 downloads of 0.3.2, and 3345 downloads counting every single version downloads.

It has been really funny for me to see that Wiican has been translated into Traditional Chinese too. Thanks to all translators!

Following the roadmap next steps will be focused on porting Wiican to pygi/gsettings and starting with a web repository of mappings. Stay tunned!

Mapping manager new look&feel

Let me introduce you, first, what wiican-0.3.2 offers:

• HAL replaced with udev, for detect wiimote connection state.
• New look&feel for the mapping manager.
• Drag’n'Drop for ordering mappings on mapping manager.
• Improved mapping editor via GTKSourceView: line numbers, better syntax highlighting, etc.
• New translations added, others updated.

Where can you download a source tarball:

http://launchpad.net/wiican/0.3/0.3.2/+download/wiican-0.3.2.tar.gz

And now my memory dump:

It has been a long time deciding to launch a release with the last changes. As I told in my previous post, the “halsectomy” was done, replacing with udev, and that scared me then: I did know almost nothing about programming with udev.

It’s a good thing I started udev-discover, an udev browser ‘ala’ gnome-device-manager was for HAL, with some nice features. Coding udev-discover (I hope to release a 0.1 soon) i’ve learned python-gudev enough for being sure the wiican “halsectomy” was done the right way.

For wiican, this means a step further for being more GNOME3 compliant.

When David Zeuthen himself, HAL developer, announced the aim for replace HAL with udev there where amounts of small talks about how to port every single application that relies on HAL. But things appears to go on rather well and, in the case of python apps, the python gudev bindings can do the work!

Here’s a simple prototype:

WIIMOTE = '"Nintendo Wiimote"'
 
def check_wiimote_connection(action, device):
    if device.get_property('NAME') == WIIMOTE:
        if action == 'add':
            print 'New wiimote connection detected at', device.get_sysfs_path()
        elif action == 'remove':
            print 'Wiimote disconnected', device.get_sysfs_path()
 
def on_uevent(client, action, device):
    check_wiimote_connection(action, device)
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    import gudev
    import glib
 
    client = gudev.Client(['input'])
 
    for device in client.query_by_subsystem('input'):
        check_wiimote_connection('add', device)
 
    client.connect("uevent", on_uevent)
    glib.MainLoop().run()

I’m taking care of Wiican ‘HALsectomy’ on a separated branch. I choosed to follow the Arista Transcoder project pretty implementation which hides all gudev logic under a gobject subclass, how smart!

Ubuntu User article

One moth ago since i had got a big surprise: Ubuntu User magazine published a two full-page article about 0.2.x series Wiican.

It was at 2010-6 issue, titled ”Issue 6: Expert Security“, and even Wiican appears at the editorial note:

“Wiican: The Wiimote can act as a mouse substitute or a presentation remote.”

Not bad but the wiican-team expects to take the project a bit further

I really thank the Ubuntu User magazine for being the first written press to talk about Wiican, and for being so nice to send me the printed number.

This is the first evidence of Wiican approximation to the Gnome community. With this change I hope to expand the number of users and developers by listening how to improve the software the Gnome way … maybe some day i’ll propose it as gnome official module.

By now, there’s a new mailing list open for users and developers, the Launchpad bugtrack will soon be migrated to bugzilla.gnome.org and the master code branch is now hosted at gnome.git.org.

I want to thank Juanje Ojeda, Alejandro Leiva and Joanmarie Diggs, the Gnome people who encouraged me to do the change: there’s a brand-gnome-newborn!

GetDeb is an unofficial project with the mission to provide the latest open source and freeware applications for the current Ubuntu Linux release.

People from getdeb.net did the work! Now wiican 0.3.0 it’s packaged for Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid lynx) and downloadable via getdeb software portal.

The first package 0.3.0-1~getdeb1 contained small bugs and some people report them on launchpad. It’s great the getdeb wiican packaging it’s followed by getdeb team as a launchpad bug too, so was easy for users to report the bugs themselves. Today a 0.3.0-1~getdeb2 version has been released.

Thanks Christoph Korn and the getdeb.net team!

This release it’s focused on making easy for users to build and share mappings across network and provide developers a way to explore and manage the wiimote connection status through a d-bus interface.

Download Wiican 0.3.0

The d-bus api isn’t documented yet but i think it’s easy enough to understand. Next steps will include to fully document it and write some specs about how to evolve it in something really useful for developers so maybe some of them will include wiimote support by default in their apps, by using wiican d-bus api.

Wiican mapping packages files are in the same situation. Althought the wiican mapping editor dialog provides a great way to develop mappings, with on-the-fly syntax error highlightning and mapping validator at runtime, there is a great feature you need to set by hand in the info.desktop file: the translations. A spec about info.desktop file and how to evolve it (i.e. lp:) will make easier for mapping workers to create and share new mappings.

I hope you enjoy Wiican 0.3.0. Please submit any bugs or feature requests at Launchpad wiican bugs site!

Changelog:

DBus API

• Wiican DBus service with an API to explore and manage wiimote connection status
• Rebuilded the wminput launching library with GObject

Mapping manager

• New mapping info file definition based on xdg DesktopFiles (translations supported)
• Mappings could be imported and exported as Wiican Mapping Package (.wii files)
• Mimetype for .wii wiican mapping package files: cute icon and mapping editor dialog launched if a package is opened
• Smart mapping editor dialog: syntax validation and on-the-fly mapping launching

General:

• Preferences stored in gconf
• A set of wii device/status icons provided for the gtk icon theme sets
  • A set of mappings provided for:
  • Using nunchuk as mouse
  • Wiimote + nunchuk as gamepad
  • Classic controller as gamepad
  • Frets of Fire with wii guitar

Mapping editor dialog

Two enhancements has been almost finished for Wiican 0.3: a mimetype for wiican mapping packages and a syntax validator.

With the goal of making easier to edit and share mappings Wiican will provide a mimetype that allows to edit and execute a mapping from the mapping package directly. As you can see, in the new mapping editor dialog, there’s a toggle button to execute/stop the current mapping.

Mapping package mimetype

Wiican mapping packages owns their own mimetype icon. The default behaviour opening mapping packages it’s to display the mapping editor dialog where you can modify, execute and even save changes.

The other mayor changes its the syntax validator. Recently i contacted with L. Donnie Smith, the cwiid guy, asking for a wminput syntax validator. L. Donnie tolds me to build it from the wminput lexer/parser (coded in lex – yacc). After some tests i decided to code it in pure python using python-ply, the lex/yacc a python implementation, using wminput grammar. I think the original wminput grammar wasn’t coded thinking in on-the-fly validation, and some errors are not recognized so well. It’s functional now but it needs to be evolved.

I dedicate this post to L. Donnie for his help that made the validator possible.

Guadalinex v7 Cover

I’m very happy to announce the first time Wiican has been included in a distro: Guadalinex v7. Guadalinex it’s a Ubuntu based distro developed in Andalousia by the regional government with citizens as target users.

The version choosed: Wiican 0.2.1. I know Guadalinex team has strong criteria for selecting apps to be included by default, so this is another clue for taking wiican 0.2.x series as mature. I discovered it by a branch in Launchpad for specific guadalinex packaging, and then i could see those packages in Guadalinex v7 repository. The even apps selection in Guadalinex v7 wiki mention wiican.

I hope to release wiican 0.3 soon. My goal it’s to provide users an easy way to share their own mappings and, perhaps, a community of mappers will appear. I’ll talk with my friends at Guadalinex team: i think this feature will be interesting for them.

From this humble devlog i want to thanks the Guadalinex people for getting wiican to be used by their big amount of users.