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Repository GNOME:Contrib is dead

June 29th, 2012 by

An announcement for GNOME users in openSUSE: the repository GNOME:Contrib is now dead. This used to be the development branch of GNOME packages living in Contrib. Packages previously in this repository have all been pushed to Factory. If this is in the list of your subscribed repositories, please remove it now (using zypper rr <reponame> or from YaST, etc.), because the repository itself will be deleted from the download.opensuse.org server shortly.

What’s cooking in openSUSE’s GNOME for 11.4

August 30th, 2010 by

The openSUSE GNOME team has launched itself full throttle into preparations for openSUSE 11.4, which will be released with GNOME 2.32 as one of the desktops. Along the way, we decided on our focus points for the upcoming release:-

  • New packages: More applications for a richer desktop experience
    While there are a large number of excellent GNOME/Gtk-based apps in openSUSE already, this looked like a great time to start getting more apps catering to a variety of requirements into the GNOME:Apps and GNOME:Factory build service projects. Since deciding on this, several new packages have already been worked on and are now available in the corresponding repositories. The status of new applications is tracked here. Many of these applications will, subject to review, reach Factory and a few might even become part of the default openSUSE GNOME desktop.
    You are welcome to request the packaging of applications you have found particularly useful or impressive, and if you are in earnest, why not join us at #opensuse-gnome and start packaging them for yourself? Requests for new applications may be made through comments here, on the mailing-list or at irc, but the best way to do this would be to open a feature request and tag it as “gnome-wishlist-packages”.
  • The GNOME Pet Peeves Project: Dealing with minor irritants on the desktop
    I bet there have been times when you have come across a little but pesky irritant or a usability issue that left you feeling “this could have been done so much better…” We decided to track down such issues and try to have them fixed before the next release. Thus the GNOME Pet Peeves Project, where we note and research such issues, their workarounds and solutions. As you can see, we have located a few of these already, and started working on them.
    We invite you to report your pet peeve with GNOME through comments here or otherwise. Of course, the good Samaritan is more than welcome to help with the process of solving such problems as well by providing fixes, pointing to existing upstream patches or even nudging upstream developers at bugzilla or irc, to ensure a more polished GNOME desktop on openSUSE.
  • There is much to celebrate about, in GNOME-land come March 2011… and we hope to join the party, as well, with an (unofficial) GNOME3 take on openSUSE 11.4 to be released on the GNOME3 release day!

That and more… indeed there is so much to look forward to, with the launch of 11.4, from the GNOME desktop user’s perspective. With your feedback and other contribution, you can help shape that perspective while also having a lot of fun.

Latex editors and rubber

August 8th, 2010 by

Whether you are a frequent latex user, and especially if you are just starting off with it, you must have encountered situations where compiling the document correctly gets downright painful. Or found it just irritating to google every time or look up a cheat-sheet [pdf] to insert a not-so-common symbol. Or you know about the excellent application kile but as a GNOME/LXDE/Xfce user you did not want a zillion kde libraries installed.

I have started maintaining three packages, namely Texmaker, TeXworks and Rubber, in the Publishing repository. These applications make working with and compiling latex documents user-friendly and painless.

Texmaker

This is a frontend for editing latex documents much like kile (which is distributed with openSUSE 11.3 and prior), with several useful features:

  • integrated pdf viewer
  • user-friendly interface based on qt
  • wizards to generate code
  • integrated error and warning viewer
  • an integrated LaTeX to html conversion tool
  • based on qt with no dependence on kde libraries, which means somebody using a non-kde desktop might install it without pulling in one big chunk of the kde base  (as a GNOME user, I find this to be a problem with kile), and so integrates well with a non-KDE desktop as well.

Install on openSUSE

openSUSE 11.2 (from my home project, this requires libqt4 >= 4.6.1)

1click-installer for Texmaker

openSUSE 11.3

1click-installer for Texmaker

Factory

1click-installer for Texmaker

TeXworks

Also based on the qt toolkit, TeXworks is a Latex frontend with an integrated viewer that supports source/preview synchronisation. This makes it possible for you to right-click on the embedded preview [pdf, ps, etc] and choose to go to the corresponding line/paragraph in the latex source. I think, but I am not sure, that TeXworks is the only Linux application which uses source/preview synchronisation at present.

Install on openSUSE

openSUSE 11.2

1click installer for texworks

openSUSE 11.3

1click installer for texworks

Factory

1click installer for texworks

Rubber

Rubber is a command line application that automates compilation of latex documents, in the sense that it takes care of getting cross-referencing, citations and so on just right with one run, while it takes the native texlive commands (latex/pdflatex) as many as four runs to do so. Rubber makes the process of compiling a source file into the final document completely automated including processing bibliographic references or indices, as well as compilation or conversion of figures and several post-processing work.

Install on openSUSE

openSUSE 11.2

1click installer for rubber

openSUSE 11.3

1click installer for rubber

Factory

1click installer for rubber

Here’s hoping latex users (esp. beginners) on openSUSE will find these applications useful.

Have a lot of fun.

Bye.

——-

Update: The command latexmk works similar to rubber (i.e. running latex/pdflatex as many times as necessary to get the cross-referencing right), while kile/okular can be configured for source/document synchronisation similar to texworks as pointed out in the comments.