Installation

Gtksink war ursprünglich Teil der "bad" plugins, befindet sich aber seit der GStreamer-Version 1.14 in den "good" plugins, die im Normalfall bei der Installation von GStreamer mitinstalliert werden.

Eine Ausnahme bildet Ubuntu, wo das Plugin separat im Paket gstreamer1.0-gtk3 (universe) zur Verfügung steht.

Glade

Der Darstellungsbereich der Mediendatei wird durch das gtksink-eigene Widget bereitgestellt. Da dies nicht in Glade verfügbar ist, wird ein leeres Containerwidget (Gtk.Box) benötigt, in das das Widget platziert werden kann.

Python

self.sink = Gst.ElementFactory.make("gtksink")

video_widget = self.sink.get_property("widget")
builder.get_object("video_box").add(video_widget)

Weiterlesen

• Desktop Entry Specifications
• .desktop-Dateien (ubuntuusers-de-Wiki)
• Desktop files: putting your application in the desktop menus
• XDG Basedir Library

Speicherort

Der Speicherort von .desktop-Dateien richtet sich nach den Freedesktop-Spezifikationen. Desktop-Dateien befinden sich in $XDG_DATA_DIRS/appications, also normalerweise in den Verzeichnissen

~/.local/share/applications
/usr/local/share/applications
/usr/share/applications

und werden in dieser Reihenfolge durchsucht. Alle Dateien in diesen Verzeichnissen werden in der GNOME-Shell-Übersicht bzw. der Suche berücksichtigt.

Minimalkonfiguration

Ein funktionierender Desktopeintrag muss mindestens die drei folgenden Attribute enthalten:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Application name
Exec=python path/to/script.py
Type=Application

WM_CLASS

Die WM_CLASS-Eigenschaft wird von X-Windowmanager-Systemen zur Zuordnung zwischen Anwendung und Windowmanager verwendet.

Fehlt diese Zuordnung, wird der Programmname nicht in der Topbar dargestellt, in der Seitenleiste wird das Programm nicht als Instanz angesehen, wenn es als Favorit markiert ist sondern separat und die Anwendung kann nicht von der Übersicht aus als Favorit gespeichert werden.

$ xprop | grep WM_CLASS

Nützliche Attribute

Path

Arbeitsverzeichnis des Programms. So kann zum Beispiel die Exec-Zeile verkürzt bzw. übersichtlicher gestaltet werden:

# ohne Path
Exec=python /long/path/to/your/application/folder/run.py

# mit Path
Path=/long/path/to/your/application/folder
Exec=python run.py

Icon

Mit Icons verhält es sich ähnlich zu Desktop-Dateien, sie werden zunächst in``$XDG_DATA_DIRS/icons`` vermutet, können aber auch als absoluter Pfad angegeben werden.

Keywords

Da es mit der GNOME-Shell kein klassisches Anwendungsstartermenü mehr gibt, ist es hilfreich, wenn ein Programm unter verschiedenen Stichworten und nicht nur unter Name selbst in der Startersuche gefunden werden kann. Die Stichwörter werden als semikolonseparierte Strings angegeben.

Categories

Hier kann man Kategorien für die Einsortierung in Menüs angeben.

Zusätzliche Programmaktionen

Desktopeinträge können sogenannte Aktionen enthalten, die zusätzliche Wege enthalten, Anwendungen zu starten. Diese werden als Untermenüs in Form von "Quicklists" oder "Jumplists" dargestellt.

Im Desktopeintrag wird das Attribut Actions angelegt, diese Actions werden innerhalb der Datei darunter in "Desktop Action"-Abschnitten definiert:

[Desktop Entry]
...
Actions=option1;option2;

[Desktop Action option1]
Name=Start with Option 1
Exec=python run.py --option1

[Desktop Action option2]
Name=Start with Option 2
Exec=python run.py --option2

Zusätzliche Anwendungsstarter von GPT

Intro

When I first noticed, without much surprise, that there is no official GoPro desktop client for Linux, I wrote a bash script to automatically rename the files. Second step was converting this into a python script with a simple text based menu. In a weak moment of delusions of grandeur I decided to dive into GUI programming and use this application as my personal guinea pig.

Download

First things first: the result of my efforts can be downloaded from the Git repository:

• archive of the official v0.5 release "rubula infans"
• download or clone the repo from encarsia/gpt

We've come a long way, baby

$ # compact/list view
$ python run.py -c
$ python run.py --alt-gui-compact
$ # preview window
$ python run.py -e
$ python run.py --alt-gui-ext

$ python run.py --cli

Installation

Dependencies

That'll do on Archlinux and derivates:

$ sudo pacman -S python-gobject python-yaml python-setuptools python-lxml python-setproctitle mediainfo ffmpeg

And that on Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-gi python3-setuptools python3-lxml gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0 gstreamer1.0-gtk3 mediainfo ffmpeg

Setuptools

The application can be installed by using setuptools. After downloading or cloning the repository run

$ python setup.py install --user  # or
$ sudo python setup.py install

Desktop file

Setuptools will also install a desktop file so you can launch GPT from the GNOME shell or menu. All alternative interface options are available via desktop action so you can start these on right click from the activities overview or dash if GPT is running or added as favourite.

New feature: upload files to GitHub without deployment

There are two new toolbuttons to push or pull changes to or from GitHub without building or deploying the site. This imitates 'cloud' support so you can edit articles, drafts, listings etc. within the GitHub web interface and/or download/pull changed files on multiple locations.

Push files to the origin/src branch

This is a very basic implementation and you may have to manually resolve conflicts if you are editing in various places simultaneously.

Changelog

• show input file format in statusbar
• detect if separate metadata file exists and show info in statusbar, open file on right click
• use the webbrowser Python package instead of subprocess commands; the package also uses the subprocess module but the code just looks nicer
• the "New post" dialog is a GtkMessageDialog now
• FileChooserDialog has its OK/Cancel buttons back
• if the current working directory is bookmarked, the menu entry is labeled as "(active)" and deactivated
• gettext localization strings in the POT file are now complete
• German localization is complete
• some icons changed

Menu: open bookmark is deactivated

Information about file format and metafile in statusbar, open separate metafile on right click if it exists

Links

• Get it on GitHub!
• evolution of Ni:

• v0.5 release
• v0.4 release
• Konsoledierung
• Fortschritte
• Neues Projekt: Knights of Ni

Das Ende ist nah

Häufig wurde das Ende von Google+ herbeigeunkt. Nun, da es tatsächlich in etwa einem Jahr so weit ist, weicht Geschäftigkeit dem ersten Schock.

In weiser Vorraussicht beschäftigte ich mich bereits vor einer Weile damit, die Daten brauchbar zu konservieren und entschied mich für eine Lösung mit dem statischen Webseitengenerator Nikola: Verloren im Kaninchenbau von Google Takeout.

Resultat der Nikola-generierten Seite mit hyde-Thema

Vorbereitungen

$ nikola init gplus_dummy_site

Import ausführen

Import

Im gplus_dummy_site-Verzeichnis führt man nun den Import aus, dabei wird als Argument der Ordner des entpackten Takeout-Verzeichnisses übergeben:

$ nikola import_gplus_html takeout

Nikola initialisiert eine neue Seite namens "new_site", dort werden alle Posts, die dazugehörigen Metadaten und die Mediendateien gespeichert.

Statische Seite erstellen

THEME = "hyde"
GENERATE_RSS = False

$ nikola theme -i hyde

$ nikola theme -l   # installierbar
$ nikola theme --list-installed     # installiert

$ nikola build

$ nikola serve
[2018-10-18T09:57:02Z] INFO: serve: Serving on http://127.0.0.1:8000/ ...

Screenshots

Beitragsansicht (Postception!)

Archiv

Der Verteilungsstatus ist als Kategorie erfasst

Kategorieansicht

Links

• Hier: Verloren im Kaninchenbau von Google Takeout
• Hier: The Notwork - lasst G+ sterben
• Import-Plugin für Nikola: gplus_nikola_import
• Alternative mit G+-Import: net2o - reinvent the internet, Bernd Paysan auf G+

My GNOME Shell setup

The general desktop experience is given by the GNOME Shell itself but the everyday workflow is determinded by the use of extensions. In fact I state that nobody uses a plain GNOME Shell. So before tweaking the MATE desktop let's take a look at the customizations done to GNOME.

Tweaking MATE

Back in the days everybody™ loved GNOME 2. Starting the MATE desktop feels instant familiar.

It's great that the desktop has been completely ported to the GTK+ 3 framework. If you install the MATE packages in addition to GNOME there are hardly dependencies needed for installation. Also regular GNOME applications should fit nicely into the desktop.

Recommended packages and tools:

• Dconf-editor (dconf-editor)
• MATE Tweak (mate-tweak)

Getting things to work the GNOME Shell way

Top Panel

Easy one - it's already there and you can have as much panels as you like whereever you want (that includes all screens). Use the regular applets:

• Weather information is integrated into the clock applet.
• Battery applet exists but seems to be a little buggy.
• The TaskBar extension provides the functionality of the good old window list applet, just use the original.
• The number of workspaces is fixed, use the workspace switcher.

What's on the menu?

You can choose between different menu variations:

Menu Bar:

The classic GNOME 2-like applications menu split into "Applications", "Places" and "System" submenus.

Main Menu:

Condensed classic menu with only the distribution logo (provided by the theme) visible.

Brisk menu:

This menu originated in the Solus project provides an additional search bar. By default this menu is activated by pressing the [Super] key so this may be the choice of a GNOME Shell user.

The Brisk menu is not installed by default. Install the brisk-menu package. Use dconf-editor to change property settings under com.solus-project.brisk-menu. You can enable the dark theme mode or remove the label text.

The displayed icon is determined by the used theme. If you want to use a custom icon you have to copy the chosen icon into the theme's folder as start-here. This may be neccesary for different sizes:

/usr/share/icons/[theme]/places/[size]
~/.local/share/icons/[theme]/places/[size]

The icon for Brisk menu has to be copied as start-here-symbolic in

/usr/share/icons/[theme]/places/symbolic
~/.local/share/icons/[theme]/places/symbolic

You have to press [Esc] to return from the menu instead of hitting [Super] again.

No desktop icons

Who needs icons on the desktop if there are windows in the way anyway? You can disable desktop icons in MATE Tweak or by setting the org.gnome.desktop.background.show-desktop-icons property to "false".

Only show close button in windows

You can get rid of the minimize/maximize buttons by editing the org.mate.Marco.general.button-layout to 'menu:close'.

This solution does not affect applications using a Headerbar.

Dock

There are plenty of options to add application docks on linux desktops. There is also a specific applet for the MATE panel which can be installed by the mate-dock-applet.

My personal recommendation for now is Plank.

Keyboard application launcher

Using a keyboard launcher is one option to emulate the search bar.

With its unobtrusive look and plenty of search options Albert might be the choice of a dedicated GNOME Shell user.

Setting the shortcut to the [Super] key cannot be obtained in Albert's preferences. You will have to create a custom keybinding in dconf-editor:

1. Go to org.mate.Marco.global-keybindings and set a "run-command-xx" from 'diabled' to 'Super_L'. The "xx" is the number of the command.
2. Go to org.mate.Marco.keybinding-commands and set the corresponding "command-xx" to the value 'albert show'.

This will overwrite any other keybinding to the specific shortcut like Brisk menu.

Drop down terminal

I used Tilda on the GNOME 2 desktop so why not return to a long-serving application?

Even though the application is set to launch at session start in the preferences I had to add it to the startup applications manually.

Unrolled Tilda terminal on MATE, Plank dock

Multi-monitor setup

The wallpaper issue is the same as in GNOME Shell. You may want to use HydraPaper.

You can drag a panel on an extended screen only if it is not set to "extended" (uncheck in properties).

Marco issues (probably)

• Dragging a window to another screen might not always set this window in the foreground.
• Dragging maximized windows (e.g. webbrowser) to other screen may overlay panels.
• Plugging off and on extended monitors or logging into another session (like GNOME) may disarrange monitor settings and you have to drag the screens back into their positions in the preferences.

Screenshots

If you press [Print] you might be informed that "mate-screenshot" could not be found.

You can either install the mate-utils package which "mate-screenshot" is a part of or use the "gnome-screenshot" tool by editing the dconf entries org.mate.Marco.keybinding-commands.command-screenshot and org.mate.Marco.keybinding-commands.command-window-screenshot to the value gnome-screenshot.

Empty GNOME Shell

Beware of fraud! This is MATE.

What does not work

Hot corner

The Hot Corner probably is the most symptomatic feature of the GNOME 3 desktop. By moving the mouse to the top left corner or clicking on "Activities" or by pressing the [Super] key you activate the Activities Overview which shows open windows, the dash, workspaces and the application search/launch bar.

This functionality cannot be fully emulated on the MATE desktop.

Using the Brisk menu or a keyboard launcher (or both) to get the search bar function seems like a valid compromise. This is probably the common use case when pressing the [Super] key.

What's still missing is a good way of showing running application windows. I have the habit of kicking the mouse into the corner to get to the windows overview (I realize when doing that occasionally on other desktop systems) and the old [Alt]``+``[Tab] is not a replacement.

Activities Overview showing open windows

Dynamic workspaces

There is currently no way to get dynamic workspaces with the Marco window manager.

Does it work?

The MATE desktop is a great project. I'm glad that they managed to preserve the GNOME 2 spirit and upgrade it to a modern framework.

It is possible to integrate functionalities known from GNOME Shell into MATE turning it into a fast hybrid GTK+ desktop.

My MATE setup is a GNOME Shell copy. A good one but still. I have not decided yet if I want to live without the hot corner and I'd love to see Marco support headerbars and improved multi-monitor setups.

Versions'n'distros

$ sudo apt-get install gir1.2-webkit2-4.0 python3-pip

$ pip3 install Nikola[extras]

$ sudo pacman -S nikola python-yaml

This is new since last release

# install for current user
python setup.py install --user
# install system-wide
sudo python setup.py install

Optimized window space

I rearraged some elements to save some vertical space:

is now

Summary tab

The main window's notebook now has a new tab showing a HTML page with collected information about the current website:

• disk usage
• status (nikola status)
• broken internal links (nikola check -l)
• themes
• plugins and
• custom shortcodes

The CSS used is imitates GitHub style, credit goes to sindresorhus/github-markdown-css.

The summary is generated when initially indexing the site. Choose the menu item to generate a new report.

Summary tab

Create posts/pages in Markdown

The default input format of Nikola is reStructuredText but it supports various other formats. You can now create new posts or pages in Markdown. This option is only available if "markdown" is set in the conf.py's COMPILERS variable.

You must also configure the POSTS and PAGES dictionaries, NoN does not check for this and will not throw an error message if not set.

Markdown format checkbutton

Thing left do do

Download

• v0.5 release
• clone or download from GitHub

set_wm_class

Programmname in Panel und Dock anzeigen

Alt: Gtk.Window.set_wmclass(wmclass_name, wmclass_class)

Neu: GLib.set_prgname(wmclass_name) (in .desktop-Datei StartupWMClass=wmclass_name erforderlich)

widget.new_from_stock

Alt: Gtk.Button.new_from_stock(Gtk.STOCK_OK)

Neu: Gtk.Button.new_with_label("OK")

Labels bekommen nur noch eine Bezeichnung durch einen String.

Gilt auch für ToggleButton und Image (hier: image.new_from_icon_name() verwenden)

menuitem.new_with_label

Bei der Initialisierung von Labels enthaltene Widgets, z.B. Gtk.MenuItem

Alt: Gtk.MenuItem("label")

Neu: Gtk.MenuItem.new_with_label("label")

set_alignment

Alt: Gtk.Misc.set_alignment(x, y), z.B. bei Labels

Neu: Gtk.Widget-Alignment :halign und :valign verwenden

Vte-Terminal

FileChooserDialog

Alt:

dialog = Gtk.FileChooserDialog("Choose a folder",
                                app.obj("window"),
                                Gtk.FileChooserAction.SELECT_FOLDER,
                                (Gtk.STOCK_CANCEL, Gtk.ResponseType.CANCEL,
                                Gtk.STOCK_APPLY, Gtk.ResponseType.OK))

'

Neu: Argumente werden namentlich übergeben, Buttons separat hinzugefügt:

dialog = Gtk.FileChooserDialog(title="Choose a folder",
                               parent=app.obj("window"),
                               action=Gtk.FileChooserAction.SELECT_FOLDER,
                               )
dialog.add_buttons("Cancel", Gtk.ResponseType.CANCEL,
                   "OK", Gtk.ResponseType.OK)

Die raw-Directive

Diese Directive ermöglicht es, Inhalt ohne Verarbeitung an die Ausgabe weiterzureichen, siehe auch reStructuredText Directives documentation.

raw.txt (Source)

.. raw:: html

    <iframe src="https://mastodon.social/@kevingimbel/100745593232538751/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="600" height="333"</iframe>

Der raw-Shortcode

Dieser Shortcode ist standardmäßig verfügbar. Er funktioniert genau wie die Directive, der Inhalt muss nur zwischen Shortcode-Tags platziert werden.

raw.txt (Source)

{{% raw %}}
<iframe src="https://mastodon.social/@kevingimbel/100745593232538751/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="600" height="333"</iframe>
{{% /raw %}}

Mach dir deinen eigenen Shortcode

Mittels vorlagenbasierten Shortcodes kann man einfach individuelle Shortcodes erstellen. es>`_.

Dafür muss man eine Vorlage namens your_shortcode_name.tmpl erstellen und im shortcodes-Ordner der Nikola-Seite speichern. Wenn noch keine eigenen Shortcodes verwendet werden, muss der Ordner höchstwahrscheinlich noch angelegt werden.

Abhängig von der verwendeten Template-Engine, die das aktuell verwendete Theme nutzt muss der Shortcode in Jinja2 oder Mako geschrieben werden:

Der Shortcode kann nun wie ursprünglich genutzt werden, es muss ein Link zum Status angegeben werden, optional noch Höhe und/oder Breite des Elements.

raw.txt (Source)

{{% mastodon status=https://mastodon.social/@kevingimbel/100745593232538751 %}}
{{% mastodon status=https://mastodon.social/@kevingimbel/100745593232538751 width=300 height=600 %}}

Diese Lösungen funktionieren für mich. Falls nicht, wird die Nutzung der Shortcole-Role empfohlen (siehe Handbuch):

raw.txt (Source)

:sc:`{{% mastodon status=https://mastodon.social/@kevingimbel/100745593232538751 %}}`