Changing the tool UI

As I said in the last post I’m going to continuing working on the tool providing I have free time. This last weeks I have being working on some changes of the tool user interface.

On the one hand I have remove the GDL library support. I have some talks through IRC with Ignacio Casal (former GTranslator maintainer) and we both agree that with a good UI design the use of dockable elements is unneeded and it requires to have dependencies with a quite buggy library.

On the other hand I have mixed the list of message with the message editor itself. You can watch how it looks in the following video. It still needs some adjustments but I think that the idea is clear.

Do you like the result?

PS: I’m going to attend next GUADEC-es in Madrid! If you have some ideas or opinions about the application just send an email and we can drink some beers (or your favorite beverage) while we discuss about the tool.

GSoC Final Report

Before I start I would like to thank Gnome for this incredible experience, spending the entire summer working on FLOSS has being awesome :D. I would like to thank Gnome for sponsoring my travel to GUADEC and giving me the opportunity of meeting so nice people. Last but not least, I’d like to thank Google for creating this great program.

I have spend this summer writing a new translation tool that should substitute GTranslator. When I started to develop the idea one of the things that people said was that I would not be able to finish the application when the summer ends. To be honest now I have to say that they were right. I had to face some totally new technologies that were not or really bad documented in most cases. So I have to say that the application is not finished and it’s not ready to use. I will continue working on it the followings months because I consider it as a personal project I want to see finished.

On the last report I tell you that I was going to be working on preferences panel, I have create a preferences dialog with two tabs and I have implement profiles. In a near future this dialog is going to have a couple of more tabs, one for extensions and another for general application preferences.

In this video I show you the current aspect of the application and how some features that I have implemented are working.

Po files, projects, navigation and other stuff I have been doing

Last weeks I have being trying push up my project in order to make it useful. It means to accept real files and not ad-hoc DemoFiles. I have being trying to implemented bindings for the gettext-po library and I get something that works but that eats memory as a hungry monster :-(. I have being trying to figure out what was wrong but I have fail so I decided to continue with other features.

During this time I have implement drag and drop tabs and I have implemented navigators that allow the user move around the translated/untranslated/fuzzy messages. In addition I have created implemented dialogs for opening files and projects (directories) and I have modify the implementation of the advanced search dialog to use response codes.

Other thing I have being trying to do is to maintain the same coding style for every file. I have try to leave a blank space between function names and function parameter list, a white space after each comma among other things.

I’m trying to complete every detail before starting to implement plugin engine so I’m working hard implementing the remaining details. My plannings for next weeks are implementing preferences window with gsettings and view menu. I probably will rewrite some part of the search and navigation mechanism to make it simpler.

PS: I have been helping Sindhu to write some sections of a really nice guide for beginners. Check it out!

GSoC application status report

This last weeks I have been polishing some details of the application but I have not added any major feature.

I attend a really nice talk about building Gtk applications during GUADEC and I have been including some aspects that I learn there. I have create a class application and I have substitute Window by ApplicationWindow. In addition I didn’t know the SearchBar widget so I replace my ad-hoc widget by the “standard” one.

I have a really nice talk with Ignacio Casal (thank you man!) through IRC and he gives me really nice advises that I have been implementing. I have added autotools support to the project, I have implemented the HeaderBar and Notebook inside the window template and not as part of different templates and I have remove some comments that I wrote when I started the project and that make the code dirtier.

In addition I have removed the StatusBar and I have included a progressbar on the HeaderBar title that shows the name and status of the current file. That last idea comes from a conversation with yoseforb through IRC (Great idea!).

The next video show the current aspect of the the tool. Due to some unknown reason the button icons aren’t being shown since the last JHBuild update I have made :(.

You can follow the project status and you can try (and even review) the code using the GitHub repository.

Moreover I’m still waiting for your opinion about the program name. The only person that has give his opinion was Daniel so “GNOME Translation Tool” is winning at the moment.

GUADEC 2013

I have just arrive Santiago de Compostela airport and I think that this marks the end of my second GUADEC.

However, this GUADEC was totally different that the first one. Last year in Coruña I was surrounded by people that I already met and I didn’t make any effort to meet new people. Although I don’t met new people, “that’s where I got infected”. I realize that I want to work in a FLOSS company and that I want to belong to this awesome community.

Gnome Hispano dinner at GUADEC
Photo taken by Ana Rey (@anaRB)

One year later I’m working on a GSoC project and I have faced GUADEC in a totally different way. I didn’t meet anybody who was going to attend the event.  In addition last year GUADEC talk were a little boring for me so I decide to volunteer in order to meet new people and practice my speaking English. I met a lot of great people and I have a really great time. In fact I’m thinking about attending GUADEC-ES that is going to take place next October in Madrid.

This year talks were awesome. I really enjoy Emily talk about FLOSS and Education, the talk by Juan Pablo Ugarte about Glade and CSS and Fabiana Simões (who I’ve got the pleasure to met) talk  about How to not report UX bugs among others. I also have the opportunity to give a lighting talk (thank you Ana for this and evert photo you have taken during the event) of about 3 minutes about my work in GSoC.

I want to thank Gnome Foundation to give me the opportunity of meeting such a great people and having a really great time with them.

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PS: The photo was taken the last day during a dinner with people from Gnome-Hispano. Thank you guys for the such a good time we’ve spend together 😉

Searching…

This last week I have been working on implementing search module on the new program. To do this I create iterators for messages inside files and for message marks inside messages. A message mark contains a reference to a substring on a message and it stores the information that it’s needed for highlight certain part of the message.

I have modify my code deleting my string filters that added Pango Markup and I change that for TextMarks that works better with a GtkTextView.

In the next video you can watch how a simple search looks in the new application.

If you have any suggestion about the video or the project in general please leave a comment, write me and email or contact me during GUADEC.

On the other hand this days I will be on GUADEC!! I’m really grateful to Gnome Foundation that sponsor my travel and accommodation for this really interesting conference and allows me to be here. If you want to see me and talk to me about this project or you want to see what I have make working you can find me on some of the talks where I’m volunteering as session chair.

PS: People from Gnome has asked me to change the name of the application because it should be Gnome branded. I need your opinion, what name do you like more, Gnome Translator or Gnome CAT?

ValaCAT application current status

During last weeks I have been working on the application interns and the user interface. I don’t publish anything last week because I was in a festival (Festival Internacional do Mundo Celta de Ortigueira) and I have no internet connection.

I have create a more Gnome-Shell like UI than the one I show you on the previous mockups and I think that it’s quite cool. I have also created modules to treat with languages, filters and more. You can view and critize the code on the GitHub Repository.

I have record a demo to show you the current status of the application. It’s recorded using gnome-shell tool and it has no audio but I try to highlight the most important parts of the application.

Please do not hesitate in comment anything about the application or the demo video. I need your feedback in order to be able to improve the program.

ValaCAT. Some design aspects (Part 2).

This is the second article I have write about some design aspects about ValaCAT application, the first one is here. I have started to write some code and you can see it in my GitHub repository.

These are some details I’m including into the new application. I’m really a newbie in most of this aspects so any kind of feedback is welcome.
Continúe lendo ValaCAT. Some design aspects (Part 2).

ValaCAT. Some design aspects

Continuing with my series of articles about my participation on Google Summer of Code this time I’ll talk a little about some design aspects of the new application so if you are interested you can criticizer me :D.

Firtly I wanna say that I have found a name for the new tool which I think is pretty cool and it sums up some aspects of the application: ValaCAT, where CAT stands for “Computer Assisted Translation” and Vala (obviously) is the name of the programming language.

I have been working on a design for this new application taking as reference the old Gtranslator design since the last week and here are some aspects that I would like to comment:

Continúe lendo ValaCAT. Some design aspects

Unha de terminais: ZSH e Terminator

Ata agora so empregara como terminal Gnome-Terminal e o bash de toda a vida. O outro día falando con Santi (@ssice) recomendoume zsh así nun momento no que non tiña nada máis (interesante) que facer animeime a probalo e quedei francamente satisfeito. E xa de paso tamén probei un sustitutivo de Gnome-Terminal con nome de película, Terminator.

ZHS

Zsh é un sustitutivo de bash que ten como maior vantaxe (na miña opinion) a súa maior personalización. Hai un monton de extensións para esta shell que permiten obter unha experiencia moito mais interesante que con bash.

Por exemplo podese destacar a posibilidade de que cando a carpeta na que estás sexa un repositorio Git, a shell amose a rama na que estas, e o estado desta rama. Estas cousas é máis pódense facer cos plugins que atopamos en oh-my-zsh. Esta extensión permite de forma sixela modificar o tema activo da shell e incorpora unha importante cantidade de plugins moi interesantes. Outra mellora do ZSH consiste nun mellor autocompletado que permite moverse máis rápido polos directorios.

zsh

Na imaxe anterior pode verse o tema que estou empregando de ZSH combinado co esquema de cores Solarized para Gnome Terminal. Pódese ver tamén como a dereita da ventá aparece a rama do repositorio git no que estaba nese intre. Se alguén lle interesa o meu tema podedelo atopar aquí.

Terminator

Terminator é un emulador de terminal que no meu caso substitue a Gnome-Terminal que ten como proncipal caracteristica a posibilidade de dividir a venta tanto vertical como horizontalmente en celas, cada unha coa sua sesión.

terminator

Podense asignar atallos de teclado tanto para moverse polas terminais como para dividir a terminal actual tanto vertical como horizontalmente.