Marco Islas Blog

Image as background in a Gtk Application.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:16:02 PST

This time I'm going to talk about putting an image as the application background in Gtk. In Gtk we are used to leave the colors of the application to the theme, but sometimes we will need to use an image as background. I already wrote how to draw a pixbuf in a gtk.DrawingArea (Esp), we could use that, but we will "draw" directly on the widget window instead.

Yes, I said the widget's window instead the widget itself. You should know that every widget that has been packed in a container has a gtk.gdk.window object and is the responsible for containing your widget. Well, we can draw on that object.

What we need is to create a simple gtk.gdk.Pixbuf and call the gtk.gdk.window.draw_pixbuf method using your widget.window object on the expose-event.

The code should look like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import gtk

def draw_pixbuf(widget, event):

        path = '/home/markuz/wallpapers/WMwall1024x768.gif'

        pixbuf = gtk.gdk.pixbuf_new_from_file(path)

        widget.window.draw_pixbuf(widget.style.bg_gc[gtk.STATE_NORMAL], pixbuf, 0, 0, 0,0)

window = gtk.Window()

window.set_title('Drawing Test')

window.set_size_request(640,480)

window.connect('destroy',gtk.main_quit)

hbbox = gtk.HButtonBox()

window.add(hbbox)

hbbox.connect('expose-event', draw_pixbuf)

button = gtk.Button('Press Me!')

hbbox.pack_start(button, True, False, 10)

window.show_all()

gtk.main()

And the result should be like this:

It is just a window with an HBoxButton as container and a Button in the middle. The button draws normal, but the HButtonBox is drawing its gtk.gdk.window with a pixbuf.

Nokia Internet Stick CS-10 on Linux

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:05:20 PST

This time I'm going to write how to make the Nokia Internet Stick CS-10 work on Linux. Two years ago I wrote about the Franklin CDU-680 which was a very good way to get online, until 5 days ago when we stop paying 800 Mexican Pesos (about $59 USD) to Iusacell.

Anyway, in the office bought this pretty "Internet Stick", and with a small googling I found that it was possible to make it run on Linux. In some blogs I read that you just need to umount the device using "eject", This is because this stick identifies itself as a "CD-ROM" and when you use "eject" it changes its behaviour and start acting like a modem.

But I have one problem, when I insert this device in my computer's usb port dmesg shows errors while reading the device. Then, it never gets mounted (the first step for umounting it :-)) and then it can't change the way it worked.

Googling a bit more, I found that we can use udev to avoid this connect-wait_for_recognition-umount-dial procedure. You just need to create this rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/90-nokia-zerocd.rules

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0421", SYSFS{idProduct}=="060c", ACTION=="add", PROGRAM=="nokia-testcd %M %s{serial}", RUN+="/usr/bin/eject -s %k", OPTIONS+="last_rule"

 

As you can see, it depends on a program "nokia-testcd", it is just a simple bash script with this code:

#!/bin/sh

# Don't eject if flag in place

if [ -f /etc/udev/nokia-zerocd-noeject ]; then

   exit 1

fi

# Extract USB serial into major and minor numbers

minor=`echo $2 | sed 's/.[0-9]*\.//'`

major=`echo $2 | sed 's/\.[0-9]*$//'`

# Compare with current software version

if [ "$major" -gt "0" ] ||  [ "$minor" -gt "10" ]; then

   exit 1

fi

# Clean exit on match

exit 0

Just copy the code in /lib/udev/ and make it executable (chmod 0755 /lib/udev/nokia-testcd). Once you have written the udev rule, and "installed" the nokia-testcd script just restart udev (or reload it) and plug your Nokia CS-10.

Then you can use wvdialconf to configure your connection, This is my /etc/wvdial.conf

[Dialer Defaults]

Init1 = ATZ

Init2 = AT+CFUN=1

Init3 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0

Init4 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet.itelcel.com"

Password = webgprs2002

Phone = *99#

Modem Type = Analog Modem

Stupid mode = yes

Baud = 460800

New PPPD = yes

Modem = /dev/modem

ISDN = 0

Username = webgprs

Carrier Check = no

Auto Reconnect = yes

Now you can use wvdial to connect :-)

Christine running on MS Win32

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:29:06 PDT

Finally!!!, Christine, my beloved media player is running on Windows, this is something that I really wanted to do for the next release. I had spend the last nights trying to compile it, first I tried to compile GStreamer, then I realized that there are binaries in the GStreamer WinBuilds project, with a little less work, I tried to compile Christine using cygwin, but it didn't worked. Then using the Python's distutils I compiled the C modules and I created a binary with Py2exe

There it is, running. I still have a lot of work to do, because Christine is written for UNIX and several technologies like Dbus are not in win32, although it seems to be in progress.

I'm running it on a virtual machine and I haven't tested if it really plays something, I'll give a try tomorrow.

For tonight I'm happy :-)

Some shots:

Trying to compile christine on Windows

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:45:23 PDT

Trying to

Originally uploaded by markuz

Last night I was trying to compile christine on windows using cygwin, I didn't made it but I think I know why, I will try to make it work this tonight.

Christine playing videos

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:31:00 PDT

Christine playing videos

Originally uploaded by markuz

I was playing with gstreamer video sinks, I found that using cacasink and aasink you can play videos in ascii mode ;-) funny even when (for me) has no good use.

Christine without menu

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:27:06 PDT

Christine without menu

Originally uploaded by markuz

This is christine without the menubar and the side bar. It look pretty clean don't you think?

Christine small mode

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:22:52 PDT

Christine small mode

Originally uploaded by markuz

This is Christine in small mode (Ctrl+d).

Developing Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:49:48 PDT

Christine

Originally uploaded by markuz

Working on Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:47:48 PDT

Christine

Originally uploaded by markuz

Tonight I have been working on the display widget. That part of christine that displays the title and lenght of the song you are playing. I have set up a background to make it look less simple.
I also put the control buttons, the volume control and the search entry (which is hided in this screenshot) in a toolbar.
What do you think about this small changes?

apt reminder no. 1

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:59:28 PDT

Limit your download rate in apt.
As root,

alias apt-get="apt-get -o Acquire::http::Dl-Limit=80"