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Last week we had the GTK+ Hackfest in the OLPC office in Cambridge.
My intentions for the hackfest were to finish the merge of GtkPlacesSidebar into the master master branch — it's a new public widget that will show up in GTK+ 3.10.
Over the past months I have worked on finishing the details of the sidebar: merging all the code from Nautilus, polishing the API with the help of the GTK+ team, writing reference documentation. During the hackfest I worked on some of the last user-visible details in the sidebar, particularly the way drag-and-drop feedback gets shown.
After I pushed the merge into GTK+, Cosimo gave me the green light for merging this into Nautilus, and so the thing is done now! It feels good to have shared code between Nautilus and GtkFileChooser at last.
Some things are pending:
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In the file chooser, when you click on the Trash item in the sidebar, you get an error message saying that "trash:/// is not a local file system". Even though files in the trash live in your normal Unix file system, GIO says that trash:/// is not native and doesn't have a local path associated to it. We have to see how to get GIO/GVFS to mount the trash into a FUSE mount automatically.
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There is still an ugly gtk_places_sidebar_set_show_desktop() API. I'll remove it and turn that into a GtkSetting, so that the sidebar can automatically adjust to the surrounding environment's policy about whether to show the Desktop folder or not (e.g. show it for XFCE, don't show it for Gnome).
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Add a GtkSetting for showing XDG directories (Music, Photos, etc.) or not. XDG doesn't want to show them by default, and prefers to let users bookmark those folders directly; Gnome does.
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Once GTK+ gets an API for notifications, the places sidebar should be able to notify you when a volume is being mounted (and is taking a long time to do so). Right now that code is disabled; it came from Nautilus, and it pretty much uses libnotify directly.
Meanwhile in Cambridge
For me going to the Boston area is a treat. It's a lovely city, with good public transportation, good restaurants, and with a manageable size.
I had a chance to meet Steve Branam, of the fantastic Close Grain blog — a fellow woodworker and software developer. Steve started a hand-tool woodworking school a while ago, so if you are in the Boston area and are interested in learning, shoot him an email.
Also, thanks to my friends Alán and Dori, for letting me crash at their house and keeping me well fed :)
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Dmitry Orlov summarizes Mats Alvesson and André Spicer's A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations. A good afternoon read with lots of food for thought.
Functional stupidity is organizationally-supported lack of reflexivity, substantive reasoning, and justification. It entails a refusal to use intellectual resources outside a narrow and “safe” terrain. It can provide a sense of certainty that allows organizations to function smoothly. This can save the organization and its members from the frictions provoked by doubt and reflection. Functional stupidity contributes to maintaining and strengthening organizational order. It can also motivate people, help them to cultivate their careers, and subordinate them to socially acceptable forms of management and leadership. Such positive outcomes can further reinforce functional stupidity.
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Have you donated to Yorba's crowdfunding campaign to develop Geary, a new, free software email client? I have.
As the Yorba people explained in their last keynote at GUADEC, they have been working on experimenting with funding models for free software. This crowdfunding campaign is the latest experiment, and I urge you to participate. Give them a little money. You just can't have people writing software full-time without them also having a way to make a living, and this crowdfunding campaign is the way they intend to make their living while they write the first versions of Geary.
Is this undermining Evolution? I don't think so. Evolution is relatively old software. It is really good, and also pretty bad at times — the results of lots of technical debt. Normally I would say, Yorba is crazy for writing an email client from scratch, and they should just give their love to Evolution. But they have proven themselves to be competent to write something like Shotwell, the photo manager I use every day, so this is good evidence that they can write Geary.
So, go to Yorba's crowdfunding campaign page and donate to Geary!