Unity support

And there it is, support for the shiny new Unity Launcher available in Ubuntu 11.04+. You can now quit emesene by using the quicklist, and you'll never miss a message again, because the launcher will alert you and show the number of messages you haven't read yet.

Have fun!

Sven

emesene 2.11.5

So, developers have worked hard this month, and here we come with the new and shiny release: emesene 2.11.5!

look ma' i'm running the latest emesene version!

If you already tried/used the previous emesene-2 version (2.11.4), here's a small and readable changelog between the .4 release and this that tries to cover the tons of git commits we had this month:


- Experimental Qt4 gui (disabled by default: if you want to try it, run emesene with the -e main:qt4_main flag, and make sure to have python-qt4 around)
- Better support for Adium themes, including emoticon themes!
- Better working group chat
- Drag and drop support in chat window
- Ctrl+Tab support for switching tabs
- MSN groups chats support when using Adium themes
- Updated translations
- Lots of other bug fixes (so much we forgot about them? we fixed more than 100 user-reported issues!)

Thanks to all developers, translators, casual contributors, users, spammers, haters.
We hope our effort will be useful and appreciated, and that this new release will raise the interest in order to make the emesene ecosystem and community more powerful and capable of making the best instant messaging client you can think of!

Downloads incoming, check the dowloads page!
Source package (extract and run): zipball or tarball


p.s. unfortunately we haven't been able to have some fixes to the python-papyon library committed upstream, we recommend to stick with the 0.5.5 version and upgrade as soon as the 0.5.6 version comes out (we don't know when, unfortunately).

emesene gets a Qt4 gui

Gabriele "Whisky" Visconti a while ago started writing a Qt4 gui extension for emesene (yes, through our nifty extensions it is actually possible to support multiple gui toolkits) and today i'm here to say that i put his great work into emesene/master so that all our git users can try it and maybe improve it/help him fix stuff!

Actually, launching emesene with the Qt4 gui is really easy:
- install pyqt (debian/ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python-qt4)
- get a copy of emesene from git (so you'll be updated enough)
- run emesene: emesene -e main:qt4_main

Beware! This code is still a draft far behind the GTK+ one but it's a great start if you like Qt..and emesene of course (hint: almost-native look in every plaform anyone?). It is not meant for everyday use (yet?), but hacking on it should be real fun.

What are you waiting for? Just pull and updated copy of emesene-git and start hacking!

emesene development continues (!)

me (c10ud) calling my friend (Homer) from my Ubuntu box

That's it, i got this (for those wondering: audio/video calls) sort of working. Of course this is not in emesene-2.11.4 for obvious reasons, but i enabled the thing in latest git HEAD (if you're using emesene from git, you know what i'm talking about).

Before you start crying and celebrating, here's some things you may need to know (quot.):


- only receiving is supported (so if you start a call, you'll only see (hear) the other party)

- tested only in local LAN with latest Windows XP's Live Messenger (so no strange network configurations or NATs or strange clients or whatever)

- will only work with papyon>=0.5.5, python-gstreamer and where X11 is available (due to the use of XIDs, not sure how to do this in other platforms)

- we (as emesene-team) are not interested in this feature, so we are not really pushing it, just showing users it's possible to do it. If you think you can complete/fix it, just do it and everyone will be happy (and we will integrate your fixes in emesene, of course!). Basic receiving seems to be working, efforts must be concentrated in the gstreamer part of sending audio/video and a nice gui around webcam/microphone configuration.

Everyone not interested, just have fun with the great 2.11.4 release! (HINT: Official stable PPA coming soon for non-natty users!)

I'll close this post with a quotation from the great book of emesene:

"..and then thee'll have audio/video calls,
  but thou shalt not annoy thy developers."
    -- c10ud, the book of emesene 2:11-5

Call for translators, again.

Hello,

some of you could know me since i'm the guy that spams a lot of commits in git and closes your tickets without even giving you a chance to reply -- however, since today our friend (Luis) Mariano gave me the ability to talk to you through his good ol' emesene-msn blog (is this still true by the way? Now emesene supports Facebook and GTalk too, wow m3n!) so i can sometime post status updates or requests/messages to users.

Now, let's stop the chit-chat and get back to emesene. If everything goes as planned, it will be released in the following days. I tought a small number of RCs were a good thing to do before releasing the new version, so you have a few days to quickly test the latest stuff we fixed and, more important, translate in your own language the parts of emesene that are still missing some i18n love.

Here's the launchpad page we are currently using for managing translations:

https://translations.launchpad.net/emesene

Hurry up, time's almost up if you want emesene localized in your own language!

Greets,

Riccardo aka c10ud

tl;dr: translate emesene please

Como generar archivos .exe e instaladores para una aplicación python (y pygtk)

Como generar archivos .exe e instaladores para una aplicación python

Este documento describe los pasos necesarios para crear un archivo ejecutable
de una aplicación python y como generar un instalador y una versión portable
para dicha instalación.

Este documento asume que la aplicación se basa en GTK pero debería funcionar
con menores cambios en otros toolkits.

porque un instalador

• se requiere instalar muchos componentes a mano por el usuario final para una sola aplicación
• muchos instaladores pequeños
• difíciles de encontrar
• difícil encontrar las versiones exactas que funcionan en conjunto
• requiere instalarlos en un orden definido
• rezar
• algunas veces incluso haciendo todo bien puede no funcionar
• fácil de automatizar y documentar para replicar con cada nueva versión
• liberar al usuario final de los problemas para poder usar la aplicación

componentes requeridos

• python
• todas las librerías utilizadas por la aplicación
• py2exe
• nsis
• tiempo y suerte

instaladores

aquí se listan los links a los instaladores de todos los componentes usados en el ejemplo.

• http://python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/python-2.6.6.msi
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/py2exe/files/py2exe/0.6.9/py2exe-0.6.9.win32-py2.6.exe/download
• http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pycairo/1.8/pycairo-1.8.6.win32-py2.6.exe
• http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygobject/2.20/pygobject-2.20.0.win32-py2.6.exe
• http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygtk/2.16/pygtk-2.16.0+glade.win32-py2.6.exe
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/pywin32/Build%20214/pywin32-214.win32-py2.6.exe/download
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-win/files/GTK%2B%20Runtime%20Environment/GTK%2B%202.22/gtk2-runtime-2.22.0-2010-10-01-ash.exe/download
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-win/files/GTK%2B%20Themes%20Package/2009-09-07/gtk2-themes-2009-09-07-ash.exe/download
• http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nsis/nsis-2.46-setup.exe?download

orden de instalación

algunos instaladores son independientes de otros, pero para evitar posibles problemas recomiendo la instalación en el siguiente orden.

• python
• gtk-runtime
• gtk2-themes
• nsis
• pygobject
• pycairo
• pygtk
• pywin32
• py2exe

tareas extra

• setear la variable de entorno PATH para agregar el path a la instalación de python
• probar la instalación con una pequeña aplicación gtk

>>> import gtk
>>> w = gtk.Window()
>>> l = gtk.Label("asd")
>>> w.add(l)
>>> w.show_all()
>>> gtk.main()

prueba con una aplicación de ejemplo

Cree un repositorio con una aplicación de ejemplo para probar los pasos, la aplicación esta disponible en github acá:

http://github.com/marianoguerra/PyGtkOnWindows

pasos

• descargarla
• descomprimirla
• ejecutar python setup.py py2exe
• copiar los directorios lib y share de la instalación del runtime de gtk (no de la instalación de pygtk) al directorio dist
• copiar todos los archivos del directorio dll al directorio dist
• borrar los locales y temas no usados de los directorios copiados a dist (yo solo dejo el theme MS-Windows)
• crear la siguiente estructura de directorios dentro de dist: etc/gtk-2.0
• dentro de ese directorio crear un archivo llamado gtkrc con una linea como la siguiente dentro:
  • gtk-theme-name = "MS-Windows"
  • podes cambiar el tema usado manteniendo otro theme dentro de share/themes y cambiando el nombre del theme en gtkrc
• right click en ejemplo.nsi y seleccionar "Compile NSIS Script"
• right click en ejemplo-portable.nsi y seleccionar "Compile NSIS Script"
• deberías tener el instalador y la versión portable disponibles
• para probar que funciona correctamente, correr el instalador y la versión portable en una instalación de windows sin los paquetes que instalaste anteriormente

probar con una aplicación real

ahora para sentirlo mas real, creemos un instalador y una versión portable de
un programa real, en este caso, un proyecto personal llamado emesene 2
(http://www.emesene.org/).

pasos

• descargarlo de http://github.com/emesene/emesene
• descomprimirlo
• copiar setup.py and ez_setup.py al directorio emesene
• cd emesene
• correr python setup.py py2exe
• cd ..
• copiar los directorios lib y share de la instalación del runtime de gtk (no de la instalación de pygtk) al directorio dist
• copiar todos los archivos del directorio dll al directorio dist
• borrar los locales y temas no usados de los directorios copiados a dist (yo solo dejo el theme MS-Windows)
• crear la siguiente estructura de directorios dentro de dist: etc/gtk-2.0
• dentro de ese directorio crear un archivo llamado gtkrc con una linea como la siguiente dentro:
  • gtk-theme-name = "MS-Windows"
  • podes cambiar el tema usado manteniendo otro theme dentro de share/themes y cambiando el nombre del theme en gtkrc
• right click en emesene.nsi y seleccionar "Compile NSIS Script"
• right click en emesene-portable.nsi y seleccionar "Compile NSIS Script"
• deberías tener el instalador y la versión portable disponibles
• para probar que funciona correctamente, correr el instalador y la versión portable en una instalación de windows sin los paquetes que instalaste anteriormente

notas

• obtengo algunos de los dlls requeridos de portable python (http://www.portablepython.com/) e inkscape (http://inkscape.org/)

How to generate .exe files and installers for a python (and pygtk) applications

How to generate .exe files and installers for a python applications

This document describes the steps required to create an executable file from a
python program and how to build an installer and portable file from that
application.

The document assumes that the application is based on GTK but it should work
with minor changes for other toolkits.

why an installer

• many components are required to install by hand by the end user for a simple application
• a lot of small installers
• hard to find
• hard to match the exact versions that work together
• install them in the required order
• pray
• sometimes even doing everything right it may not work
• easy to automate and document to replicate with each new version
• free the end user from problems to use the app

required components

• python
• all the libraries used by the application
• py2exe
• nsis
• time and luck ;)

installers

here are listed the links to the installers of all the components used in the example.

• http://python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/python-2.6.6.msi
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/py2exe/files/py2exe/0.6.9/py2exe-0.6.9.win32-py2.6.exe/download
• http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pycairo/1.8/pycairo-1.8.6.win32-py2.6.exe
• http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygobject/2.20/pygobject-2.20.0.win32-py2.6.exe
• http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygtk/2.16/pygtk-2.16.0+glade.win32-py2.6.exe
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/pywin32/Build%20214/pywin32-214.win32-py2.6.exe/download
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-win/files/GTK%2B%20Runtime%20Environment/GTK%2B%202.22/gtk2-runtime-2.22.0-2010-10-01-ash.exe/download
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-win/files/GTK%2B%20Themes%20Package/2009-09-07/gtk2-themes-2009-09-07-ash.exe/download
• http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nsis/nsis-2.46-setup.exe?download

installation order

some installers are independent from the others, but to avoid posible problems I recommend the installation in this order.

• python
• gtk-runtime
• gtk2-themes
• nsis
• pygobject
• pycairo
• pygtk
• pywin32
• py2exe

extra tasks

• set the PATH environment variable to add the path to the python installation
• test that the installation works with a simple gtk application

>>> import gtk

>>> w = gtk.Window()
>>> l = gtk.Label("asd")
>>> w.add(l)
>>> w.show_all()
>>> gtk.main()

test with a sample application

I created a repository with a sample application to test the steps, the application is available in github here:

http://github.com/marianoguerra/PyGtkOnWindows

steps

• download it
• unpack it
• run python setup.py py2exe
• copy the lib and share directory from the gtk runtime installation (not the pygtk installation) to the dist directory
• copy all the files from the dll directory to the dist directory
• remove unused locales and unused themes (I keep only ms theme)
• create the following dirs inside dist: etc/gtk-2.0
• inside that create a file called gtkrc with a line like this inside:
  • gtk-theme-name = "MS-Windows"
  • you can change the theme by keeping that theme inside share/themes and changing the name in gtkrc
• right click on ejemplo.nsi and select "Compile NSIS Script"
• right click on ejemplo-portable.nsi and select "Compile NSIS Script"
• you should have the installer and portable versions available
• to test that it works correctly, run the installer and portable versions in a windows installation without the packages you installed previously

test with a real application

now to make it feel more real let's create an installer and portable versions
for a real world program, in this case, a project of mine called emesene 2
(http://www.emesene.org/).

steps

• download it from http://github.com/emesene/emesene
• unpack it
• copy setup.py and ez_setup.py to the emesene directory
• cd to emesene
• run python setup.py py2exe
• cd ..
• copy the lib and share directory from the gtk runtime installation (not the pygtk installation) to the dist directory
• copy all the files from the dll directory to the dist directory
• remove unused locales and unused themes (I keep only ms theme)
• create the following dirs inside dist: etc/gtk-2.0
• inside that create a file called gtkrc with a line like this inside:
  • gtk-theme-name = "MS-Windows"
  • you can change the theme by keeping that theme inside share/themes and changing the name in gtkrc
• right click on emesene.nsi and select "Compile NSIS Script"
• right click on emesene-portable.nsi and select "Compile NSIS Script"
• you should have the installer and portable versions available
• to test that it works correctly, run the installer and portable versions in a windows installation without the packages you installed previously

notes

• I get some needed dlls from portable python (http://www.portablepython.com/) and inkscape (http://inkscape.org/)