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Archive for March 6th, 2009

Context Menus in YaST Partitioner

March 6th, 2009 by

We received some complains that the redesigned partitioner on openSUSE 11.1 is
tedious to use. To remedy these shortcomings I’m adding context menus to the
tables so that it is no longer required to select the correct view using the
navigation tree to perform some operation. Almost all operation should be
available via context menus in the main view listing all devices.

screenshot

As usual comments are welcome.

Posted in Systems Management, Usability, YaST | 11 Comments »

python-TurboGears2 alive and kickin’ on the build service

March 6th, 2009 by
Screenshot of TurboGears 2

Screenshot of TurboGears 2

It’s been quite a while since I last posted an update on the state of python-turbogears in the openSUSE build service. The TurboGears project currently has three branches open (which seems to cause more confusion that actually help people) – the 1.0 branch, the 1.1 branch and the 2.0 branch. Whereas newcomers are advised to install from the 1.0 branch and to develop web applications based on that branch, the truth is that most of the active development goes on in the 2.0 branch. TurboGears 2.0 is at beta7 stage right now – features are frozen and a release data is in sight for the big 2.0.

Without getting into the major differences between 1.0 and 2.0, many people on the TurboGears Google Group have expressed the opinion that the 2.0 branch, despite its beta suffix, is exceptionally stable and well suited to production deployment. One of the major obstacles facing people was how to actually install it. Because it requires some cutting edge packages which might not be standard fare for many distributions, it is recommended to install TurboGears2 (beta) in a virtual python environment using the virtualenv package. Once the new virtual environment is ready and activated, a simple easy_install will automatically install the TurboGears2 package and its requirements. This is well documented.

I got a bit fed up with the virtual environment setup – it worked fairly well, but I was constantly having to set up completely new virtual environments just to install another TurboGears web application. There is an option when using virtualenv, to make the entire virtual environment “mobile” (meaning that you can pack virtual environment plus web app off to another computer easily), but it wasn’t working for me.

Enter python-TurboGears2 on the openSUSE build service. It took me a couple of days to get all the dependencies in the correct versions and installing properly, but it looks as if it works now. As TurboGears2 will be in a more or less constant state of flux until the final 2.0 release, there will probably be quite a lot of work to do to keep the packages up to date, but it’s worth it for the simple zypper in python-TurboGears2 🙂 What I want to do now is to try creating a SUSE Studio based virtual appliance – that way practically any web app could be created and setup easily – and with a bit of elbow grease you could probably use apparmor etc to make it rock solid.

PS: it would be well cool if people would test the package

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Build Service, Packaging | Comments Off on python-TurboGears2 alive and kickin’ on the build service

Trying to bring Russian community together

March 6th, 2009 by

Tomorrow(07.03.09) we have scheduled meeting of Russian community.

Meeting will take place at 19:00 (GMT+3 (MSK)) on
#opensuse.ru channel (Freenode)

We are going to:

*Discuss some terms. And choose which translation of which term are more appropriate for translation.

*Fill up the glossary.

*Cleanup ru.opensuse.org wiki .

*Choose candidates for “Spokesperson program” from Russia.

*Discuss what’s wrong with wiki. Why peoples creating another suse portals. (like open-suse.ru, suseclub.ru,suseclub2.ru)

*Discuss what we can do to involve more users in community life.

I’m glad to see all interested Russian users on #opensuse.ru channel tomorrow.

Posted in Documentation, Localization, Wiki | Comments Off on Trying to bring Russian community together

YaST Qt UI with Context Menus

March 6th, 2009 by

Context menus are supported by almost all UI frameworks and most people got used to them. Therefore it’s high time to provide context menus in the YaST Qt UI as well. yast2-qt-2.18.6 offers this feature, packages are available in my build service repository.

contextmenu

In four simple steps YCP programmers can benefit from this new feature:

Step 1:
Create a widget and tell via `opt(`contextMenu) that a ContextMenuActivated Event should be emitted when the user right clicks the widget:

`SelectionBox( `id(`sport), `opt(`notify,`immediate, `contextMenu),
"Open a context menu:",
[
"Item1",
"Item2",
"Item3"
] );

Step 2:
Wait and analyze events:
event = UI::WaitForEvent( ... );
...
if ( event["EventReason"]:"" == "ContextMenuActivated" )
...

Step 3:
Open a context menu. The argument of OpenContextMenu() describes the menu structure:

UI::OpenContextMenu( `menu(
[ `item(`id(`folder), "&Folder"  ),
`menu( "&Document",
[ `item(`id(`text),
"&Text File" ),
`item(`id(`image),
"&Image"     ) ]) ]  ));
Step 4:
Analyze the returned `id and trigger an action. An example called ContextMenu.ycp is included in the package yast2-ycp-ui-bindings.

Usability
A Context menu provides shortcuts to actions for a certain widget or item. This features improves usability when it’s used properly. Application programmers should avoid making certain features only using context menus because users might not find them.
Please keep in mind that YaST ncurses doesn’t provide context menus. Each operation that is only available via a context menu is useless in YaST ncurses because the user cannot select it.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Usability, YaST | 4 Comments »