Projects on the Move

COMMUNITY Free Software Projects

An up-to-date look at free software and its makers PROJECTS ON THE MOVE

the search key, and you can double-click on a note to view the details. Graveley uses Mono as the developer environment for Tomboy, and it is defi- nitely worth going to the considerable trouble of installing the libraries for the Mono environment. Searchparty Our second Gnome-based project is Searchparty [4]. Searchparty’s inventor is Seth Nickell. Sanford Armstrong and Raphael Slinckx implemented Nickell’s idea in the course of Google’s Summer of Code. The name Searchparty gives a This month, we examine two Gnome programs: Tomboy gives users rough idea of the underlying principle. Users searching with Google for the Wiki-style notepad management, and Searchparty helps Google users same or similar keywords can join forces and exchange information. find people with similar interests. We’ll also report on WW2D and the Armstrong and Slinckx developed a plugin for the Firefox Epiphany brow- Debian-Private mailing list. sers. After installing the plugin, Search- party displays a Join Search Party button BY MAX WERNER AND MARTIN LOSCHWITZ in your browser when you search with Google. Clicking the button takes you to inus Torvalds recently sparked a chore of organizing notes on their desk- a chat window (Figure 1). flame war with his comments on tops, but Tomboy adopts a new ap- The chat room provides a meeting Lthe merits of a certain desktop en- proach. Each “note” is a Wiki-style page. place for users who have entered similar vironment [1]. Although this is just the To create a new note, a user just types a search keys. Users can then exchange opinion of one admittedly well-known heading and enters the body text in a links or discuss topics of interest. The user, it does put a whole new perspective simple text box. The tool supports sim- meetings are spontaneous and typically on the recent overtures of friendship be- ple formating with bold, italic, or strike- short-lived. tween the KDE and Gnome camps. This through typefaces. month we'll look at two young but ambi- The interesting thing about Tomboy is Client/ Server tious Gnome projects. that the text can contain links to other A server component handles user man- notes. If you select a word or a whole agement in Searchparty chat sessions. Tomboy sentence, and then click the Link button, Only one machine provides this service The first of these programs is by Gnome Tomboy automatically creates a new note, to date: searchpartyproject. com. The developer Alex Graveley, who recently using the selected text as the heading. server component manages search keys, became a member of the OSDL [2] team Tomboy also gives users the ability to displays user statistics for the various dedicated to improving cooperation be- enter URLs. When a user clicks a URL, chat rooms, and can even create new tween Gnome and KDE. The application, Tomboy pops up a browser window dis- chat rooms. titled Tomboy [3], provides a solution for playing the target page. The search tool The Searchparty project introduces a a familiar problem: note management. helps users handle larger numbers of note simple but groundbreaking approach to Of course there are hundreds of pro- windows. The integrated search tool dis- finding information. As Searchparty is at grams that aim to help users tackle the plays results from each note that contains an early stage of its development, and

94 ISSUE 64 MARCH 2006 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM Free Software Projects COMMUNITY

An up-to-date look at free software and its makers PROJECTS ON THE MOVE

Figure 1: The Searchparty project lets users join ad-hoc chat ses- Figure 2: WW2D is a free application that recently took the challenge sions for more effective searching. of competing with Windows programs such as Google Earth.

the developers are still working hard on ager) and select the required layers in In line with the openness policy, the the code, there are not many users right the dialog that then appears. The resolu- former Release Manager, Anthony Towns, now. Don’t be surprised if chat rooms tion in each layer increases with the has now suggested opening up some of are unoccupied most of the time. This zoom factor. If your mouse has a scroll the Debian-Private archives in a posting said, if the application continues to de- wheel, you can use the wheel to zoom to the Debian-Vote list [9]. Anthony velop as quickly as it has thus far in. WW2D then shows you the Boundar- Towns’ aim is to give “outsiders” a Gnome users can look forward to a very ies or Flags of the World layer. chance to follow the important discus- powerful new search tool. WW2D still can’t give you the kind of sions that have shaped Debian since the detail its Windows competitors have. founding of the project. These archives WW2D (There are no city maps at this time of contain the thoughts and opinions that When NASA released its NASA World writing.) But the program does have a led to fundamental project documents, Wind [5] program under an Open-Source number of interesting features: for exam- such as the Debian Free Software Guide- license in September 2004, it opened up ple, the RF button (Rapid Fire mode) lines and the Social Contract. globe-trotting to couch potatoes. World pops up a window where users can en- To implement these plans, Towns sug- Wind lets a user zoom in on an image of able options such as Dust & Smoke, gests founding a group within the proj- the Earth from satellite distance to a Storm, or Fire. If you enable Fire, for ex- ect to search the Debian archives for in- close up of any location on the planet. ample, WW2D displays icons to mark teresting tidbits. ■ Google recently created a similar tool the spots where major fires are blazing. called Google Earth [6], causing unprec- The program always uses live data INFO edented hype that has still not died from various free, Internet-based data- [1] Linus Torvalds on Gnome: http:// mail. down. But Linux users have not been bases. Add-ons [8] let users extend the gnome. org/ archives/ usability/ able to benefit from either development, data repository to show internal borders 2005-December/ msg00022. html as both World Wind and Google Earth within countries, or to add information [2] Open Source Development Labs: are restricted to Windows. from the Unesco World Heritage data- http:// www. osdl. org Vitaliy Pronkin set out to remedy this base. Let’s hope that more developers [3] Tomboy: http:// www. beatniksoftware. situation by developing WW2D, a Java- feel inspired to contribute to WW2D. com/ tomboy/ based, platform-independent solution. Taking a Peek at Debian- [4] Searchparty: WW2D runs on Windows, Mac OS X, http:// live. gnome. org/ SearchParty and Linux. Private [5] Nasa World Wind: Before launching the program, users In the past, the Debian-Private mailing http:// worldwind. arc. nasa. gov need to install a Java runtime environ- list, which is only accessible to Debian [6] Google Earth: http:// earth. google. com ment and Java OpenGL bindings (JOGL), developers, has been the subject of [7] WW2D: http:// ww2d. csoft. net but this is typically quite simple. After many myths and legends. Many conspir- downloading and unpacking the WW2D acy theories have described what hap- [8] WW2D add-ons: http:// ww2d. csoft. net/ index. php?title=Category:Add-ons tarball, users can enter java -jar WW2D. pens on the list. The truth is that the jar to launch the program, which comes only sensational thing about the list is its [9] Posting by Anthony Towns: http:// lists. debian. org/ debian-vote/ up with a 2D view of the globe (Figure 2). secrecy; this clearly goes against Debi- 2005/ 11/ msg00001. html WW2D uses a layering approach, al- an’s usual policy of openness, which lets [10] Tips and suggestions: lowing users to display or hide individ- users monitor the workings of the proj- projects@linux-magazine. com ual layers. Just click LM (Layer Man- ect’s internal affairs.