REVIEWS Gnome 2.18 Updates and Improvements in Gnome 2.18 NEW GNOME Martin Benavides, http://elmaya.pochorno.com Benavides, Martin Gnome 2.18 appears exactly six months after the last stable release. tion with key servers, signing and pub- lishing of keys, and the creation of key The developers have focused on stability, but you’ll also find some new and keyring backups. Seahorse also gives users the ability to create, config- and improved tools. BY CHRISTIAN MEYER ure, and manage SSH keys. This intuitive interface makes GPG espite much criticism, the GNU tiative will find their way back into the accessible to non-expert users. It looks project’s official desktop envi- main project. like the developers will be merging the Dronment is gaining fans. Home Gnome Keyring program and Seahorse in users, as well as corporations, are start- New Programs the near future, although it is unclear ing to back the combination of Gnome, Gnome 2.18 (Figure 2) is available as a when this will happen. Gtk+, and GStreamer. Nokia, for exam- Live CD [4] if you want to try it out be- ple, used Gnome along with Maemo [1] fore you install. The new release sees the Playtime on its N770 Internet Tablet. The N770’s introduction of some useful new tools. Version 2.18 marks the first time the de- successor, the N800 [2], sees a continua- Security-conscious users will appreciate velopers have included a chess program tion of this strategy. Seahorse (Figure 1), for example, which (Figure 3) with the Gnome Games meta- In April, a number of global IT play- hides the complexity of GNU Privacy package. The chess program not only ers, including Intel, Nokia, Canonical, Guard (GPG). Seahorse integrates seam- gives users a typical 2D view of the and Red Hat, joined forces to form the lessly with the desktop and is perfect for chessboard, but it also supports a 3D Gnome Mobile & Embedded (GMAE) ini- use with Nautilus or Gedit to help users view (assuming you have installed the tiative [3]. This marks the entry of the digitally sign files and documents. required libraries). Sudoku is another Gnome project into the mobile and em- Among other things, Seahorse sup- new addition. bedded market. As a positive side effect, ports simple administration of keys and The developers have also fixed bugs many improvements from the GMAE ini- keyrings, key and keyring synchroniza- in games such as Gnibbles, Iagno, and 40 ISSUE 81 AUGUST 2007 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM Gnome 2.18 REVIEWS CAN-U-GO, improving networking capa- bilities at the same time. For Developers Gnome 2.18 also includes some new tools for developers. The Devhelp pro- gram helps developers read documenta- tion. Devhelp has a convenient search function, which starts showing results for various functions while you are still entering the search key. Like other Gnome programs, Devhelp relies on the Gecko engine on the display side and uses Gtk-doc, the API reference frame- work, to extract documentation. In an approach similar to the Epiphany web browser, the program lets you display information in tabs. Also included is Glade-3, which in- cludes an updated GUI designer for cre- ating widgets (see Figure 4). The latest version replaces the legacy Glade-2 tool. Figure 2: A rich collection of tools resides within the menus of Gnome’s uncluttered desktop. Glade-3 comes with intuitive controls and a clear-cut GUI. Compared with released; the environment will give de- If you drag a Bugzilla URL or an email Glade-2, the elements are arranged in velopers all the components they need to from Evolution onto the note, you auto- a single window with clickable widgets create Gnome or Gtk+ programs directly matically create a new link to the object on the left. using core Gnome tools. in question. Clicking the link opens the The central panel gives you a preview application with the URL or message. of the user interface and is where con- Tomboy tainers and GUI elements are positioned. Tomboy, the note-taking program, was Baobab The right-hand panel is divided into two introduced to the desktop toolbox in The Baobab system program now gives sections, with a widget tree at the top Gnome 2.16. The latest version fixes users a ring diagram to show disk-space and the properties of the current selec- bugs and includes new features. The usage. This type of diagram turned out tion underneath. ability to create lists by means of simple to be more intuitive than the previous Glade-3 integrates Devhelp in many formats is one of the more attractive fea- view mode, which the tool continues to areas. Clicking the button with the red tures. In typical wiki style, the Tomboy offer as an option. book icon opens Devhelp with the key- program adds a new list entry if you word in the search bar. However, Glade- start the entry with an asterisk (*) or Evince 3 does mean more typing for developers minus sign (-). To define the indent The current version of Evince gives users because the program does not support depth, you can press the tabulator key. the ability to launch multiple instances, automatic source-code generation; in and its presentation mode can be very fact, the software will only create XML- useful. Just as in a web browser, you can based Glade files. jump back and forth within PDF docu- The Anjuta IDE is in early develop- ments. If you close the document and ment and will probably not be intro- then reopen it, Evince will automatically duced until the next Gnome version is take you to the page you viewed last. Eye of Gnome Eye of Gnome now parses the Exif infor- mation to automatically rotate images. At the same time, the developers have improved the print function; the pro- gram now relies on GtkPrint for the first time, as does Evince. The Epiphany web browser and the Evolution mail client both have seen minor code reworking, making them more stable and slightly Figure 1: The Seahorse GPG front end simpli- Figure 3: The Gnome Games metapackage faster. The GDM display manager now fies handling of GPG keys. now includes a chess program. supports D-Bus communication, sup- WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 81 AUGUST 2007 41 REVIEWS Gnome 2.18 this program, thus giving users the abil- ity to open and unpack archives on re- mote machines. One of the biggest changes will be happening to Gnome VFS. Up to now, an independent library has provided the required functionality. Alexander Larsson is currently work- ing on a version for integration with Glib, which means that resources will be available to non-Gnome programs if they rely on Glib [6]. The Ridley project has continued with its cleanup operation – the developers have now taken on the thankless task of removing, simplifying, and systemizing functions from Libgnome and other Figure 4: Glade-3 helps developers with GUI programming. libraries and collating them centrally. Gnome 2.18 tagged the following librar- ported by an underlying platform-inde- ruptions, you can just reset remote con- ies as obsolete: Orbit2, Audiofile, Es- pendent mechanism for system message nections in the message box. ound, Libart_lgpl, Libbonobo and Lib- exchanges. The Gnome Power Manager now gives bonoboui, Libgnome and Libgnomeui, users the ability to control the clock Libgnomecanvas, and LibIDL. Multimedia speed, if your hardware supports the The next version of Gnome will have Gnome also gives multimedia a higher feature. A slower clock speed typically even fewer dependencies, which in turn profile. In addition to the Ogg Vorbis means longer battery life, a feature that will mean lower memory consumption. codec are now MP3 and AAC codecs. road warriors will appreciate. The rest of the roadmap is available on This means that in the future, users will the project homepage [7]. be able to convert CDs to the format What the Future Holds Compared with the current version, they need, while removing the issue of Unfortunately, some programs haven’t Gnome 2.20 will be even more innova- incompatibility with, for example, the made the cut because they are not up to tive – a good reason to look forward to iPod. The volume control now also sup- production use or are just plain buggy. September 2007. ■ ports professional sound cards. One example of this is NetworkManager. Some distributions, such as Ubuntu, Christian Meyer has worked with Other Improvements have incorporated the tool anyway. The Linux for more than 10 years and Additionally, developers have continued NetworkManager program has a simple has been a Gnome power user for to remove barriers and adapted the GUI interface – it slots into the message field the past six. He chaired Gnome to support more languages. Asian char- and shows a list of all available wireless Deutschland from 2004 to 2006. You can mail Christian at acters, such as those used in Chinese or networks. This said, you are still able to THEAUTHOR chrisime@gnome. org. Japanese, can now be displayed verti- configure network cards manually. cally from the top down. The new scanning infrastructure, The integrated Orca screen reader which answers to the slightly unintuitive INFO module, magnifying glass, and diction- name of flegita, will not be available [1] Maemo: http:// www. maemo. org ary are available with the technologies until Gnome 2.20 or later. Flegita [5] was [2] Linux Magazine review of the Nokia that support barrier-free access. Finally, developed during the “Google Summer N800: http:// www. linux-magazine. the desktop now has a new speech syn- of Code 2006” and works for the most com/ issue/ 78/ Nokia_N800_Internet_ thesizer.