Dianara 0.7 is out!

Hi! This blog has become kind of Dianara-centric lately, but you know… The program is in very active development these days. I just released v0.7.

Current status

Main changes since v0.6:

• Messages tab, showing posts specifically directed to you.
• Activity tab, listing your own posts.
• Favorites tab, listing the posts you’ve liked.
• Show recipients of a post, the “To” and “CC” fields.
• New options in the formatting menu in the publisher:
  “preformatted block” and “insert image from web site”.
• Minor feed, a.k.a. “the meanwhile column”.
• Show “inserted images”, in addition to the image in Picture-type posts.
• Autorefresh of timelines will not interrupt while commenting. This was very annoying.
• Confirmation when canceling a message if there’s content in it.
• Show where links go when hovering them.
• Several other small fixes and optimizations. For a complete list, see the CHANGELOG file.

Note that SSL errors are ignored, for now. This is bad security-wise, but it only affects when downloading images, and well… the pump.io network is pretty trustworthy at this time anyway

I just changed the SSL error handling to ignore them because some Pump servers have self-signed certificates and that could cause annoyances. I’ll do something better for next version.

 

Get it

You can get the code from Qt-apps.org:
http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/Dianara?content=148103
, and hopefully we’ll see Dianara packaged for some GNU/linux distributions soon. For now, you can at least find it in Archlinux’s AUR, and there is a Gentoo Ebuild.

Debian users might need some components from the experimental branch at this time. Check the INSTALL file for details.

Feedback is appreciated!

Another week, another release… Dianara v0.6 is out!

Hello there!

I just released v0.6 of Dianara, my pump.io app.

I’m using it daily now, and I barely need the web interface.

Current status

In addition to what was possible in v0.5, this release adds:

- Option to show all comments in a post.

- Shows if the user has liked a post, and allows to ‘unlike’ it. The user can also see who liked a post, in a tooltip.

- The contact list now shows all the contacts, both ‘following’ and ‘followers’.

- Uploading images is now possible, although they still can’t have title and description.

- The user can select if a post goes to Public, Followers or both.

- Clicking on posted images shows them in full size, in an internal viewer.

- There is a link in every post to open it in the web browser.

- Autoupdates don’t interrupt the user while browsing the timeline.

And, of course, lots of other small bugfixes and minor cleanups.

There’s still some way to go before Dianara can be considered ready, but at this point, I find it quite usable for my daily use. Some parts of it are still rough, and there are some annoyances, but those will probably go away soon.

Get it

You can get the code from Qt-apps.org:
http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/Dianara?content=148103
, and hopefully we’ll see Dianara packaged for some GNU/linux distributions soon. For now, you can at least find it in Archlinux’s AUR. And I’ve been told that a Gentoo Ebuild is coming.

Debian users might need some components from the experimental branch at this time. Check the INSTALL file for details.

Feedback is appreciated!

Getting there! Dianara v0.5 release

Today I released Dianara v0.5, my pump.io desktop application.

The program is still far from being complete, but it can now be used for the basic tasks.

Current status

With this version you can configure your account, authorize Dianara to access it, browse the timeline (number of posts per page can be configured), post text-only messages (with some HTML formatting), interact with posts (like, comment, share, delete), see the list of people you follow, and follow new people.

There are also popup notifications when the timeline receives new posts, and there are some new tooltips in some places with additional information (try hovering the avatars and timestamps with your mouse).

Keep in mind that some of the buttons and other widgets are still placeholders with no real use at the moment (like the Messages tab).

Get it

You can get the code from Qt-apps.org:
http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/Dianara?content=148103
, and hopefully we’ll see Dianara packaged for some GNU/linux distributions soon. For now, you can at least find it in Archlinux’s AUR.

Debian users might need some components from the experimental branch at this time. Check the INSTALL file for details.

 

Feedback is appreciated! Cheers!

 

Dianara v0.4 is out!

I’ve just released Dianara v0.4, as the first pump.io-based version.

The program is far (very far) from being usable, but I wanted to put a non-development version out there. But still, consider it a demo version.

You can get the code from Qt-apps.org:
http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/Dianara?content=148103

Keep in mind that a lot of the buttons and other widgets are placeholders with no real use at the moment.

What you can do is configure your account, authorize the program to access your account, see the last 20 posts in your timeline, post text-only messages (with some HTML formatting), and see the list of people you follow.

Cheers!

Dianara as a pump.io client

Hello there!

So Dianara is being turned into a pump.io client. Current version in gitorious can now post (with some text formatting), see the last 20 posts in your timeline (with number of comments, likes and shares, but not the comments themselves), and list the people you follow (not your followers, yet).

First step is to configure the account. The process is still a little rough, but it should be pretty straightforward:

1. Enter your pump address (user@pumpserver.something), push the “Get Verifier” button.
2. Your web browser opens up with the right address for your pump server, asking for authorization (you might need to log in first).
3. After you authorize Dianara, you get a “token”, and a “Verification code“. Copy that verification code and paste it in Dianara’s account configuration window.
4. Click on “Authorize Application“. A text should appear indicating that Dianara is authorized to access your data.
5. Click “Save Details“.
6. Profit!

Now your timeline should appear and you should be able to post.

Hopefully Dianara will be a semi-capable client once identi.ca makes the switch to the pump.io system on June 1st.

Still alive!

Hello there! Since the blog looks a little dead, here’s a quick post!

I haven’t done much coding lately, so not much to blog about. The development versions of some of my programs have had some minor updates, but not enough for a release. I’ve also adapted some of them to be Qt5-compatible.

On a side note, sometimes I get visits from people looking for information on why Auralquiz doesn’t work for them. Well, all I can say for now is: use the Phonon-VLC backend. Phonon-Xine worked great with it, but was (and for the moment, still is) deprecated, and Phonon-Gstreamer has some problems with it, so… Phonon-VLC is the one that works for now. Sorry for the trouble.

Revised v0.1 is out!

A week ago I blogged about a new project, Revised, which will eventually be a simple visual editor for a visual novel game engine called Ren’Py.

Revised v0.1 featuring Eileen, from Ren’Py!

The project is going well, so I’ve released a 0.1 version as a preview.

Download the source code from Qt-Apps.org:
http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/Revised?content=152369
(sorry, I can’t provide binary packages for any distributions at this time, check the INSTALL file for compiling instructions).

There are still a million things missing, but there are already several things you can do with it:

• Create new projects, load them, and save them.
• Keep track of chapters and their “steps” in the chapter list.
• Manage character definitions to use in the game.
• Manage image definitions.
• Design scenes with 3 basic things: Set a background image, add other images, like characters or props and add dialog lines.

After some basic stuff has been added to the game, you can save it and run it in Ren’Py, straight from Revised’s menus.

This is Lucy, from Ren’Py, and she’s mad!

I hope you like it, and if you ever thought about creating novel-type games with Ren’Py, but found that writing scripts was confusing or tiring, maybe this program can help you. The goal is that you’ll need no programming experience to make your simple game.

You can check out the main Revised page on this blog for more information, and the Revised category to see all the posts about it.

Feedback is welcome!

Revised, a visual editor for Ren’Py

Time for a new project! This time it will be a simple visual editor, or GUI, for Ren’Py, the visual novel game engine.

Main window of Revised, a few days old

Game creation with Ren’Py is based on writing scripts with special Ren’Py syntax, and the possibilities are almost endless. But writing scripts is difficult for some people, so clicking menus and buttons in a graphical editor feels a lot easier. That’s the idea behind Revised: to offer a simple assistant to create simple games, or the skeleton of the game.
Revised generates .rpy files that Ren’Py will use, and those files can still be enhanced with a regular text editor, of course.

Character Manager and Image Manager

For now, there is basic project generation, image manager and character manager. There are no releases yet, but you can get the current code from Gitorious, here:

http://gitorious.org/revised

As usual, it’s based on Qt and targeted mainly at GNU/linux systems.

StressItOut v0.1 is out!

StressItOut v0.1 has been released.
You can download it from Qt-apps.

This overdue release fixes compilation with Qt version 4.8 and later, adds Ukrainian and Russian translations by Drool, an ALT Linux contributor, and has some basic lm_lensors support, along with other minor enhancements.

StressItOut packages are available on Archlinux’s AUR service, and on Alt Linux repositories.

You can get the latest development source from Git, here:

http://gitorious.org/stressitout

Thanks to all the packagers, translators, testers and bug reporters out there! \o/

Mini-update

Just a quick update to say two things:

1.- If you try Dianara, the Diaspora App, in its 0.2 version from nonGNU or Qt-apps, it won’t get any posts in the timeline. Some stuff has been changed in Diaspora, so you’ll need to test the development version of Dianara directly from Git.

2.- If you have problems running Auralquiz, my music guessing game (if it doesn’t play sound), check if you’re using Phonon-backend-gstreamer in your Phonon configuration. If so, try using Phonon-backend-vlc.

Auralquiz does not work right with the Gstreamer backend at this point, I don’t know yet if it’s some regression in the latest Phonon-gstreamer or a problem in the way Auralquiz handles things. Switching to the vlc-backend should help. Or the xine-backend, if you still can.

Cheers!