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 (article in German)

• Fortschritte

• Neues Projekt: Knights of Ni

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

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)

The raw directive

This directive enables you to pass content to the output without being processed. See reStructuredText Directives documentation for details.

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>

The raw shortcode

This is part of the built-in shortcodes. It works like the directive, you only need to use shortcode tags.

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 %}}

Create your own shortcode

A separate shortcode can easily be realized with a template-based shortcode.

All you have to do is create a template and save it as your_shortcode_name.tmpl in the shortcodes folder of your Nikola site. If you do not use any custom shortcodes yet you will probably have to create the folder.

Depending on the template engine used by your theme you have to provide shortcode templates for Jinja2 or Mako:

The shortcode can be used as intended, pass a status and optionally width and height.

raw.txt (Source)

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

This is working for me but if the shortcode fails you should use the shortcode role to pass the text unaltered (consult the handbook for more information):

raw.txt (Source)

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

You can also embed Pixelfed posts.

Links

• example setup.py

• (stackoverflow) Install .desktop file with setup.py

• How To Add Custom Build Steps and Commands To setup.py

• (stackoverflow) How to get installation directory using setuptools and pkg_ressources

• Custom subcommand at setup.py

• Adding custom commands to setup.py

• setuptools documentation

• setup.py of my GTK+ application with custom install and uninstall commands

Dependencies

from setuptools import setup

REQUIRED = ["PyGObject", ...]

setup(
    ...
    install_requires=REQUIRED,
    ...
    )

Pass the PyPI package name, for GTK+ applications you will need at least the GObject Python bindings to successfully run the import gi command.

Non-code files

from setuptools import setup

PACKAGES = ["my_package"]
PACKAGE_DIR = {"my_package": "my_package_dir"}
PACKAGE_DATA = {"my_package": ["ui/*", "logging.yaml"]}

setup(
    ...
    packages=PACKAGES,
    package_dir=PACKAGE_DIR,
    package_data=PACKAGE_DATA,
    ...
    )

The package "my_package" will be built from the files in "my_package_dir" folder into the "my_package" folder.

Non-code files like Glade files are passed as a list to the package_data option. In the example all files of the subfolder "ui" and the file "logging.yaml" are integrated into the package.

Desktop files

The locations of .desktop files and icons are defined by the Freedesktop specifications. Desktop entries for example are located in

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

While running install the suitable prefix will be identified so only relative paths are required to be passed to the data_files option.

from setuptools import setup

rel_app_path = "share/applications"
rel_icon_path = "share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps"

DATAFILES = [
            (destination_dir, ["list", "of", "files"]),
            (rel_app_path, ["my_app.desktop"]),
            (rel_icon_path, ["my_appicon.svg"]),
            ]

setup(
    ...
    data_files=DATAFILES,
    ...
    )

This step only copies the files into the specific directories. The correct path declaration WITHIN the .desktop file has to be customized during the install command which will be accomplished by a custom function.

Customizing existing commands

The .desktop file includes information about the program to be executed as well as a corresponding icon, keywords etc. Because the target installation location may vary the file has to be adapted during the installation process.

To run own methods in existing commands you will have to create an instance of the specific command class (install, build, bdist etc.) and customize the "run" method.

In setuptools this information is passed to the cmd_class option.

from setuptools import setup
from setuptools.command.install import install

class CustomInstall(install):

    def run(self):
        self.my_function(args, go, here)
        install.run(self)

    def my_function(self, *args):
        try:
            do_some_shit()
        except:
            pass

setup(
    ...
    cmdclass={"install": CustomInstall}
    ...
    )

A list of available commands can be obtained by

$ python setup.py --help-commands

Creating new commands

Setuptools enables you to simply create your own commands. It may be useful to create an 'uninstall' command to get rid of all the files dumped to the system during installation to avoid to do that manually.

from setuptools import setup, Command

class UnInstall(Command):

    description = "description shown by setup.py --help-commands"
    user_options = [("myoption",
                     "m",
                     "myoption description shown by setup.py cmd --help")]

    def initialize_options(self):
        # method must exist
        # define all options with default value
        self.myoption = None

    def finalize_options(self):
        # method must exist
        pass

    def run(self):
        # method must exist
        # code to be executed goes here
        print("This is a custom command.")

setup(
    ...
    cmdclass={"uninstall": UnInstall}
    ...
    )

Neuigkeiten

1. Man kann NoN jetzt richtig (mit Hilfe von setuptools) installieren und deinstallieren.

2. Vom Programm generierte Dateien werden nun wie üblich im eigenen Verzeichnis im Homeverzeichnis gespeichert.

3. Der Programmablauf wurde beschleunigt und die Dateizugriffe massiv reduziert, indem die Posts-/Pages-Informationen für den wiederholten Abruf geparst und in einer JSON-Datei abgelegt werden.

Installation via setuptools

Bei der Installation via setuptools werden sowohl das Programm inklusive der UI als auch ein Desktopeintrag installiert. Nach der Installation lässt sich das Programm in GNOME also bequem über [super] + [n] (... [o] ... [n]) + [enter] starten.

Um dies alles auch wieder loszuwerden, gibt es ein zusätzliches uninstall-Kommando. Beide Kommandos sind mit der Option --user möglich:

# (De-/)Installation im lokalen Nutzerverzeichnis
$ python setup.py install --user
$ python setup.py uninstall --user

# systemweite (De-/)Installation
$ sudo python setup.py install
$ sudo python setup.py uninstall

Dateistruktur

Die Nutzerdaten liegen jetzt in ~/.non. Dort befinden sich

1. die Konfigurationsdatei config.yaml, in der der Pfad zur aktuellen/letzten Nikola-Seite und die Bookmarks gespeichert sind,

2. die Logdatei non.log sowie

3. die geparsten Daten der aufgerufenen Nikola-Seiten jeweils als JSON-Datei.

Speicherung von (Meta-)Daten

Für die Anzeige im TreeStore wurden die Daten bisher sowieso intern als Dictionary gespeichert. Das Ineffiziente daran war allerdings, dass die Daten bei jedem Refresh immer neu abgerufen wurden. Dies ist nicht notwendig und mit zunehmender Größe der Seite auch sehr zäh.

Die Lösung bestand also darin, die Daten des Dictionary zum einen für den späteren Gebrauch in einer Datei zu speichern und zum anderen es nur durch eine Update-Funktion auf aktualisierte Inhalte zu überprüfen.

Auf diese Weise werden beim ersten Aufruf einer Nikola-Konfiguration alle Posts/Pages, Tags und Kategorien oder bei erneutem Aufruf die Daten aus der entsprechenden JSON-Datei eingelesen. Die Aktualisierung erfolgt über den Abgleich der letzten Dateimodifikation. Die JSON-Datei wird beim Wechsel in eine andere Nikola-Seite (z.B. über ein Bookmark) oder bei Programmende gespeichert.

Links

• Knights of Ni-Repository

• Nikola

• Beiträge im Blog

  • Neues Projekt: Knights of Ni

  • NoN: Fortschritte

  • NoN: Konsoledierung

  • NoN: Fortschritte und Release

  • Der setuptools-Spicker

I get the 4, 20 and Google+

Takeout is Google's user data archive system for numerous products. My primary target me was to download an archive of my Google+ activities.

The approach is quite simple: choose the product in Takeout and wait until the archive(s) has/have been generated. The downloadable archive will be valid for a week but you can generate new archives at any time.

Lesson 1:

Choose zip as filetype if you use umlauts, there could be encoding issues in tgz files.

I remembered that there was an import plugin for Nikola and I imagined to throw in the archive and to get a usable local site in return. At this point of the article the reader may speculate that this didn't work in the slightest way.

Unpacking presents

The first inspection reveals:

1. All G+ posts are located in Google+ stream/Posts as HTML files. These files appear usable.

2. Image links just point to filenames. The path is missing so only images in the same directory are shown but

3. Images are scattered among different directories (in Posts and Photos and their subfolders). The majority of image files are stored in Photos of posts in date corresponding subfolders.

4. There are different date formats in peaceful co-existence:

Photos of posts/
 ├── 02.06.14
 ├── 02.06.16
 ├── 22. Juli 2013
 ├── 23.01.17
 ├── 2011-08-14
 └── 2012-03-13

5. There is a corresponding JSON file for every image but not for HTML files.

6. Strucure of HTML files:

Dumdidumdumdum...Inspektor Gadget

Lesson 2

You can open only single posts, there are a lot of deadlinks in image posts, but share and reaction information are displayed (public/private/collection/community post, +1, reshares and comments).

Your entry: Nikola

With low expectations I install the import plugin for Nikola and see what happens. Nothing. The posts once were provided as JSON files but not in recent days.

I brachiate through the files, importing HTML files first. The import plugin instantiates a new Nikola site, so I can just trial and error like hell. Then I care about deadlinks, then titles, it kepps getting better with every build.

The result is a static website of my Google+ stream including +1's and comments and a link to the original post.

Theming

In general the import is independent from any theme. I personally recommend hyde which even can be improved by the custom.css that is included in the archive.

Wishlist

• local search function

• filter posts by share status

Conclusion

As a long-term heavy Google+ user you are used to inconsistencies and improvementent constantly getting worse so a Takeout archive is no more than a sparring partner to train with. It is only a matter of time until my version of the import plugin will go the way of all those Google messengers before.

static Google+ Nikola site (hyde theme)

Update

The end of Google+ has been recently announced and the issue of backing up and presentation of the data has become more relevant.

You can download the plugin now from GitHub: encarsia/gplus_nikola_import.

The associated article to the plugin: Nikola-Import-Plugin für Google+ (currently only in German but there is a detailed README file in the repository on how to get the plugin work).