Enlightenment News

We made a release of Ewl last night. This is our yearly release (we really have to get these out quicker). Given its been a year there is a pretty big list of changes. The diff file was almost the same length as the code base itself. Below is the summary of changes.

• Obligatory yearly release
• Rewrite of autotools scripts
• Reorganization of default theme structure
• Fixed general build of embed test support files
• Updated doxygen theme
• Restructuring of test application
• Extensive addition of unit tests
• Addition of XCB, SDL, and Windows engines
• Refactoring header files for faster build times
• Simplification of debugging macros to reduce code duplication
• Improved box layout algorithm
• A variety of bug fixes and typo corrections
• Rewritten combo container based on MVC framework
• Expanded support for config value handling
• Revamped dialog layout and API
• Custom DND cursor support
• Generalizing of canvas terminology
• Abstracting engine support
• MVC based filelist container
• Expanded default view support
• Convert icon and mime type handling to Efreet
• Improved menu event handling
• Reduced number of required callbacks and expanded custom callbacks
• External main loop support
• Improved general MVC API and implementation
• Better layout algorithm for paned widget
• Popup sets better window management hints and follows parent
• API changes for radio button selection querying
• Range extended to handle unknown end values
• Improved doxygen image handling
• UTF8 fixes for the ewl_text widget
• Abstraction and cleanup of tree2 internals
• General widget handling performance improvements
• Removal of deprecated DND code
• Widget layer and stacking fixes
• Support for additional general window management hints

Give it a try. If you find any bugs they can be logged to Bugzilla.

A new project tracker for milestones, TODO lists and even bugs (for those that may hate bugzilla) is now up. trac.enlightenment.org/e is now available for putting up TODO lists and public milestones so peopl can see what we are doing and how its progressing.

This is in ADDITION to bugs.enlightenment.org, but isn't intended to compete. Some people like bugzilla, and it is indeed very powerful, but it doesn't work well for documenting project goals, timelines and "TODO" lists. So trac is now up too to do this. We hope to have more visibility of what we are doing, what is to be done, and how you then can help.

Work is continuing on DR17 and the supporting EFL. CVS has been a bit slow for the last few weeks due to other responsiblities of the developers but things are starting to pick back up again.

The TODO list for DR17 is getting slimmed down. A new theme is in the works. With two main items, and a pile of small ones and bugs, hopefully we'll find a tunnel to look for the light at the end of.

We've done a bit of a re-vamp of the website as well. We hope the new layout is easier to use and makes it simpler to find things. If something still seems confusing, out of place, missed or just plain wrong send me an email. I'm interested in any feedback. Yes, I now we need some icons and things. We're in the process of planning what will fit on the site.

There is a new bugzilla product available for the website. Feel free to report bugs, suggestings in there.

I'm just starting a news respository to help the enlightenment website to be finished as soon as possible. All feeds are eventualy good for things to come.

If you would like to support Enlightenment, please donate to help us raise funds for a new server.

This new server will provide website and CVS services, as well as allow us to automate and integrate the development process in ways our current hosting solution doesn't allow. Thank you to everyone who has already contributed!

After some hefty work on E17 of late to tie up loose ends and bring forward major positive changes to the code, sponsored by Terrasoft , Terrasoft have announced Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 for the PS3 including Enlightenment 0.17.0 pre-alpha code. We would like to thank Terrasoft for their support and hope to work with them in the future. Terrasoft's press releases is here

Contrary to how it may seem from the number of news updates on enlightenment.org, we are hard at work.

There has been a lot of work done on e17 to add new features, fixup numerous bugs and streamline the different features of the system. There are quite a number of new features available in e17. A quick list, being nowhere near exhaustive:

• We moved to .desktop files
• Lots of work on the file dialog
• Gradient backgrounds
• New icons
• We've overhaul'd the namespace of the theme (this is one more for themers then anything)

Outside e17 there's also been a lot of work done on the surrounding library universe. I'm not going to go into it all here, checkout the commits list and the mailing lists if you're really interested.

So, in summary, we aren't dead. We just suck at updating the website (which will hopefully be getting better soon).

Contrary to the amount of updates this page has seen recently, the Enlightenment developers have been very hard at work. E17 is coming along nicely and shaping up to be the clean, speedy and solid desktop shell that we've all been hoping for. The best way to track activity on the project is definitely via CVS commits. There are various options for tracking commits, namely the commit mailing list , the CIA page, also the edevelop.org feeds include CIA. Another good way to get a birds-eye view of the project is the TODO file, for e17 especially, this file is updated very frequently and contains lots of interesting tidbits, here's an overview of the significant TODO items:

• The integrated file-selector in e17 has seen recent work, in order to provide desktop file icons, it will probably be getting .desktop support.
• Drag-and-Drop improvements needed for iBar, desktop and the file selector. This will likely include an easy way to drag from a pool of available applications.
• Language packs: There needs to be a tool to load/setup language packs (and an optional font and a config file that specifies the locale and font).
• CPU Load and "taskbar" modules need to be added to the core e17 modules. A candidate for these have already been added to the e_modules CVS repository, they likely just need to be cleaned up, get theme updates, and be blessed by rasterman.
• Color classes for themes need to be easily configurable via Configuration dialogs. This allows a theme designed to support color classes have dynamically colored components!
• Finish off standards compliancy for ICCCM and NETWM.
• Finish creating configuration dialogs for configuration options.
• Various improvements for Border and Border Icon functionality.

In addition to these there are several bugs and "Nice to have" features that are also being worked on. Take a closer look at the TODO file if you're interested and as always we encourage anyone to contribute! Send any patches to the development mailing list in unified diff format (diff -u) as attachments and join us on IRC via irc.freenode.net in #e and #edevelop. We are excited about E17's progress and hope to reach "beta" state sometime soon. With any luck we'll be Duke Nuke'em out the door!

After a long time between updates because of broken doxygen on SourceForge, the API documentation has been updated. If you are interested in getting started with EWL, the updated docs are an excellent reference. The test application also includes a series of tutorials for some of the more commonly used widgets, and while the EWL book is a little outdated, the concepts are still solid.

We have a new CVS server! Both developer and anonymous CVS servers have changed now. The new anonymous server can be checked out from using:

    cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e checkout e17

And the developer one:

    cvs -z3 -d USERNAME@cvs.enlightenment.org:/cvs/e checkout e17

You know the rest. Have fun!