Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 4 Summary

Last day of UADW! While we’re watching the final sessions, here’s what happened yesterday:

Creating an App Developer Website: developer.ubuntu.com

By John Oxton and David Planella

Creating the concept and implementing a site for app developers is no easy task. The Ubuntu App Developer site is meant to be a place for app authors to get started with development, to find the information they need and to be able to publish their apps in the Software Centre. John explained all the research and user testing that happened behind the scenes, highlighting the key findings, while David focused on the purpose of the site, where it fits in the overall developer strategy for Ubuntu and the plans for the future.

Check out the session log here.

Rapid App Development with Quickly

By Michael Terry

Fitting nicely topicwise with the questions about the default choice of tools for Ubuntu development on the previous session, Michael gave an overview of what Quickly is and how to use it. Going through the workflow of creating your first app with Quickly, he demonstrated all the key commands and explained in detail all the bits in between.

Check out the session log here.

Developing with Freeform Design Surfaces: GooCanvas and PyGame

By Rick Spencer

Rick started off the session explaining what GooCanvas and PyGame were good for: providing a 2D surface on which to construct interactive GUIs for users. Beginning with GooCanvas, he showed with a very simple example how to get started playing with 2D composing surfaces, adding images, text and doing other operations such as resizing and calculating coordinates to determine clicks. Next up was PyGame, for the same purpose, but better suited for apps with lots of animation updates without user input. He then wrapped up with three samples of simple games to study.

Check out the session log here.

Making your app appear in the Indicators

By Ted Gould

Ted Gould, the man who controls the upper right corner of our screen, talked all about indicators. The idea was to illustrate how to get the information that comes from applications and handle it to the indicators. First up was the messaging menu, a menu to handle human-to-human communication, next the application indicators, which alllow long-running apps to put statuses on the panel consistently, and finally the sound indicator, taking care of all related to sound. Each one of them explained with code examples. Nice!

Check out the session log here.

Will it Blend? Python Libraries for Desktop Integration

By Marcelo Hashimoto

Marcelo shared his experience acquired with Polly, a Twitter client he developed, on using Python and libraries to let apps provide better integration to the desktop. First explaining the concept of desktop integration, stressing the fact that it’s not only about visuals. The rest of the session was structured around 3 main areas: how to send notifications to the user, where to place files read or written by an app and what to use to store sensitive information. A very clear and solid session, also with example code for easy learning.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 4

Check out the first-class lineup for the last day of UADW:

16.00 UTC – Getting A Grip on Your Apps: Multitouch on GTK apps using Libgrip

Multitouch is everywhere these days, and now on your desktop as well -brought to you by developers such as Jussi Pakkanen, who’ll guide through using libgrip to add  touch support to your GTK+ apps. Learn how to use this cool new library in your own software!

17:00 UTC – Creating a Google Docs Lens

Lenses are ways of presenting data coming from different sources in Unity. Neil Patel knows Lenses inside out and will present a practical example of how to create a Google Docs one. Don’t miss this session on how to put two cool technologies together!

18:00 UTC – Practical Ubuntu One Files Integration

Yet again the Deja-dup rockstar and UADW regular Michael Terry will be sharing his deep knowledge on developing apps. This time it’s about adding cloud support to applications: integrating with the Ubuntu One files API.

19:00 UTC – Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The Business Side

Closing the series of sessions around publishing apps in the Software Centre, we’ll have the luxury of having John Pugh, from the team that brings you commercial apps into the Software Centre and who’ll be talking about the business side of things.

20:00 UTC – Writing an App with Go

Go is the coolest kid around in the world of programming languages. Gustavo Niemeyer is very excited about it and will be showing you how to write an app using this language from Google. Be warned, his enthusiasm is contagious!

20:00 UTC – Qt Quick At A Pace

A last minute and very welcome addition to the schedule. In his session Donald Carr will introduce you to Qt Quick to create applications with Qt Creator and QML, the new declarative language that brings together designers and developers.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 3 Summary

Time flies and we’re already halfway through UADW, but there is still much to come! Here’s yesterday report for your reading pleasure:

Unity Mail: Webmail Notification on Your Desktop

By Dmitry Shachnev

Starting off with a description of the features of Unity Mail, such as displaying webmail unread message count, notifications and mail subjects, we then learned more about how it was developed and the technologies that were used to create it. It’s written in Python, using GObject introspection (PyGI) and integrates with Ubuntu through the Unity, Notify and Indicate modules. After describing each one in more detail, Dmitry continued talking about how the app can be translated using Launchpad, and how he uses the Bazaar  source revision control system to work with code history. Wrapping up, he went through the plans for the future: more configuration options, marking all messages as read and the need for a new icon. Any takers?

Check out the session log here.

Launchpad Daily Builds and Rapid Feedback: Writing Recipe Builds

By Jelmer Vernooij

Assuming some previous knowledge on Debian packaging, in his session Jelmer walked the audience through a practical example of a basic recipe build for a small project: pydoctor. Drawing the cooking recipe analogy, package recipes are a description of the ingredients (source code branches) and how to put them together, ending up with a delicious Debian package for users to enjoy. Launchpad can build packages from recipes once or automatically on a daily basis provided the code has changed, conveniently placing the result in a PPA. In the last part of the session, he described in detail the contents of an existing recipe and added some notes on best practices when building from a recipe.

Check out the session log here.

Using the Ubuntu One APIs for Your Apps: An Overview

By Stuart Langridge

The idea bahind the Ubuntu One developer programme is to make it easy to add the cloud to your apps and make new apps for the cloud. With this opening line, Stuart delivered a talk about a high-level overview on the cool things you can do as an app developer adding Ubuntu One support. One aspect it data: for example building applications that work on the desktop, on mobile phones and on the web, securely sharing data among users. Another is music: streaming, streaming music and sharing playlists on the desktop, on mobile and from the web, all through a simple REST HTTP API. He also mentioned some examples of cloud enabled applications: Shutter and Deja-Dup, and many other interesting ways to use Ubuntu One to do exciting thigs with data. And you can get started already using the available documentation.

Check out the session log here.

Supercharging Your Apps with Unity Launcher Integration

By Jason Smith

In his talk, Jason first went through the terminology that covers the elements related to the Unity Launcher, and the bachground behind the Launcher API, implemented in the libunity library. Libunity can be used in many programming languages: Python, C, Vala and others supported by GObject Introspection. Going through what you can do with the Launcher (marking/unmarking apps as urgent, setting object counts, setting progress on objects and adding quicklist menu items to the object), he used Vala snippets to illustrate each feature with code.

Check out the session log here.

Hello Vala: An Introduction to the Vala Language

By Luca Bruno

Vala, a new programming language with C#-like syntax that compiles to C and targets the GObject type system: with a clear statement of what Vala is and what it can do, Luca, a contributor to the project introduced one by one the mostkey features of the language through his “Hello world” example: namespaces, types, classes, properties, keywords and more. As a highlight he mentioned Vala’s automatic memory management using reference counting, andits interoperability with other languages, most notably C, but it can also work with many others supported by GObject Introspection. Other cool featuresto note were also error handling on top of GError, support for async operations, closures and DBus client/server, on each of which he elaborated before finishing the session.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 3

Another day, another awesome set of sessions coming up:

16.00 UTC – Creating an App Developer Website: developer.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu 11.10 will not only bring new features to the OS itself. In time for the release we’ll be launching the new Ubuntu App Developer site, a place for developers to find all the infromation and the resources they need to get started creating, submitting and publishing their apps in Ubuntu. John Oxton, David Planella and many other people have worked to make the next developer.ubuntu.com possible and will tell you all about it.

17:00 UTC – Rapid App Development with Quickly

Quickly is a wrapper that pulls together all the recommended tools and technologies to bring apps from creation and through their whole life cycle in Ubuntu. With an easy set of commands that hide all the complexity for your, it effectively enables developers to follow rapid development principles and worry only about writing code. Michael Terry, from the Quickly development team will be looking forward to guide you through the first steps with this awesome tool.

18:00 UTC – Developing with Freeform Design Surfaces: GooCanvas and PyGame

Have you ever wondered what freeform design surfaces, or canvases are? You probably have now. Well, lucky you then, because Rick Spencer will be here to tell you what they’re good for and how to get started with them

19:00 UTC – Making your app appear in the Indicators

In another session on how to integrate with the platform, Ted Gould, the man who knows most about them, will describe how to add indicator features  to your apps, both in terms of panel indicators and messaging menu support.

20:00 UTC – Will it Blend? Python Libraries for Desktop Integration

You certainly will want your app to have that familiar look and feel at home in the OS it’s running on, but you’ll also want it to use all the backend technologies to integrate even deeper and provide a great user experience. Well, fear not, for Marcelo Hashimoto is here to tell you exactly how to do that!

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 2 Summary

Another app developer day is over and we’re nearly halfway through the week. Here’s what happened yesterday:

Making Your App Speak Languages with Launchpad Translations

By David Planella

In this session we learned how to link up an app that already has internationalization support to Launchpad Translations, so that it is exposed to Launchpad’s extensive community of translators who’ll effectively make your app speak almost any language. From setting up code hosting for a seamless integration, to setting up the translations settings to tips and tricks for best practices, the presentation should give developers a good grasp of how to start getting their apps translated and ready to reach a wider audience.

Check out the session log here.

The Making of Unity 2D

By Florian Boucault

An interactive and popular session, in which Florian started describing the main goal behind the Unity 2D project: to run on platforms that do not provide accelerated OpenGL. It essentially is an implementation of the main Unity user interface using the Qt toolkit and the QML declarative language, while reusing the backend technologies from Unity. From there he went on describing the Unity 2D architecture and the release policy, pointing out to the Unity 2D daily PPA, for those testers who want to be on the bleeding edge., and wrapped up answering the questions from the audience.

Check out the session log here.

Making App Development Easy: Gedit Developer Plugins

By Curtis Hovey

Starting off with a description of Gedit plugins, their purpose and how to install them, Curtis delved into the general-purpose plugins and the developer plugins (click to install) plugins, explaining how to set them up and his recommended choice of plugins to convert Gedit in the perfect programming editor. The highlights included the GDP Bazaar integration plug in, which allows working with the bzr source revision control system and others (Subversion, Mercurial, Git), as well as the Source Code Browser plugin, a class and function browser based on Exuberant Ctags.

Check out the session log here.

Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The MyApps Portal

By Anthony Lenton

In another session devoted to the app developer strategy, Anthony told us all about the MyApps webapp developers can use to submit their applications to the Software Center. Available on https://myapps.developer.ubuntu.com, it started off as the need to automate the submission of commercial apps to the Software Centre, expanding to a full-blown online portal that can now tackle any type of submission. He then walked the audience through the 5-step process to send an app for review, including all the necessary metadata and payment details. Once an app has been submitted, it needs to be packaged (if it wasn’t already) and reviewed before being published. Hinting to Jonathan Lange’s session on day 1, Anthony explained that they are looking at providing an automated process for packaging, with the intention of removing the last big remaining manual process.

Check out the session log here.

Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The App Review Board

By Stéphane Graber

Complementing the previous session, Stéphane explained how libre+gratis apps can get into the Software Centre and what the App Review Board’s (ARB) role is in that process. He focused on how the Board reviews applications and how other types are distributed in Ubuntu. The types of apps reviewed by the ARB are small, lightweight apps, usually of the type created by Quickly (check out the sessions on Quickly on Thursday!). The next upcoming changes in the way this applications are reviewed will most probably include them being submitted through the MyApps online portal and them being made more secure by wrapping them in a container based on AppArmor or Arkose (or a combination of them).

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 3

Check out today’s rocking lineup:

16.00 UTC – Unity Mail: Webmail Notification on Your Desktop

We’re starting to see more and more apps that integrate with Unity. Unity Mail is a cool app that allows you to stay up to date with your web mail directly from your desktop. It supports any IMAP server, but right now it works best with Gmail, along with notifications, message counts, quicklists and more. Dmitry Shachnev will tell us about its features and how he put the application together.

17:00 UTC – Launchpad Daily Builds and Rapid Feedback: Writing Recipe Builds

Launchpad has many awesome features. This time around Jelmer Vernooij will be explaininghow to set up recipe builds for your project in Launchpad, so that users can get  the latest updates easily packaged on a daily basis, so that they can install them at a click of a button and can test them and make the feedback loop as short as possible.

18:00 UTC – Using the Ubuntu One APIs for Your Apps: An Overview

Ubuntu One is starting to be everywhere, and it even has its own developer programme. The Ubuntu One website already provides lots of information to developers, and to make it even more clear, Stuart Langridge will walk you through the available Ubuntu One APIs you can use to make your application cloud-ready.

19:00 UTC – Supercharging Your Apps with Unity Launcher Integration

One of the easiest and more visual ways for your apps to blend in with Unity is for it to integrate with the Launcher. Counts, progress indication, quicklists… are an elegant and simple wayto provide feedback to users. Jason Smith knows all about Launcher integration, and he’s really looking forward to share it with us!

20:00 UTC – Hello Vala: An Introduction to the Vala Language

Vala is a powerful programming language that allows modern programming techniques to be used to write applications that run on the GNOME runtime libraries, particularly GLib and GObject. Luca Bruno is part of the team that develops Vala itself, and will be introducing us to the first steps to get started with Vala with the universal “Hello world” app becoming “Hello Vala!”.

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 1 Summary

The first day of Ubuntu App Developer Week is over and we’re ramping up to day 2! A great start and lots of interest in the audience. Here is a small summary from yesterday’s schedule.

Making Ubuntu a Target for App Developers

By Jonathan Lange

Jono, who has recently started working on the Ubuntu developer programme after having been developing and defining the strategy on Launchpad for the last 5 years, started off explaining that to cross the chasm and to get our OS from 20 million to 200 million users, we need more and better apps on Ubuntu. There are some key aspects to this goal, coinciding with areas of ongoing work:

• A place – making some place that app developers can go to in order to learn how to develop for Ubuntu (developer.ubuntu.com)
• A definition – defining a platform for developers to target
• A channel – a smooth, short, safe path from developers to their users and back again (the Ubuntu Software Centre and MyApps)

After expanding on the subjects of automatic packaging and security, the conclusion is that with all of these pieces in place -Software Centre, developer portal, a defined platform, automagic packaging, safe mechanisms for distributing new apps & paying developers- then Ubuntu becomes something that developers can seriously start to target

Check out the session log here.

Introducing Bazaar Explorer: Version Control for your Apps

By Jonathan Riddell

“Bazaar is the world’s finest revision control system” – an awesome quote to start an equally awesome session. With this, and with the idea that Bazaar needs to be available to anyone, not only to those already comfortable with the command line, Jonathan Riddell provided a tour of the most feature-rich GUI for Bazaar. Illustrating the most common commands for everyday use and with plenty of pictures, he provided an excellent overview of how this powerful, cross-platform, graphical interface for bzr can make life much easier to app developers.

Check out the session log here.

Your App & Launchpad best practices

By Jason DeRose

Jason’s session on how to make the best use of Launchpad, the online collaboration and hosting suite for your projects, was structured around 3 central points: 1. Why should you host your project in Launchpad? To which his answer was: because PPAs, daily builds and lots of users; 2. How to set up your app to use Launchpad, where he guided participants through the process of creating a Launchpad project and offering some insights on best practices. Finally, on 3. Using Launchpad to engage developers he wrapped up with a series of recommendations and tips to ease and foster contributions to your project. More on the session log

Check out the session log here.

Getting Started With Python: a Hello World App

By Alan Bell

As a grand finale to the day, Alan delivered a beginner-friendly session on the basics of the Python programming language. Assuming no prior knowledge, he walked participants through the classical “Hello world” example in Python, which universally greets programming novices on the terminal with a friendly welcome message. Along the way, he explained in detail all the extra bits to make this simple application run and be useful as a kickstart to becoming a full-blown Python programmer.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 2

More app development goodness for fun and profit: here’s today’s schedule.

16.00 UTC – Making Your App Speak Languages with Launchpad Translations

Did you know that along with code hosting, release management, bug tracking and support, you can also use Launchpad to get your app translated?. David Planella will explain you how to set up your app in Launchpad for translations and give you some advice on building a translator community around it.

17:00 UTC – The Making of Unity 2D

Unity needs to run on every type of desktop, from those with powerful 3D graphics processors to those only able to run in 2D. Unity 2D was born out of the need to provide a near identical experience as its 3D counterpart on systems which cannot rely on 3D graphical processing, such as ARM computers. Florian Boucault will talk about what Unity 2D is, how it was designed, and the technologies used to implement it.

18:00 UTC – Making App Development Easy: Gedit Developer Plugins

Gedit is Ubuntu’s lightweight yet powerful default text editor. Its flexible plugin architecture means that it can easily be extended to meet any need. Curtis Hovey will guide you through his Gedit Developer Plugins to help you convert a general-purpose editor into the perfect programming editor.

19:00 UTC – Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: the MyApps Portal

Canonical is taking app developers very seriously,and one of the important aspects of ensuring a smooth workflow for submitting and publishing applications into the Ubuntu Software Centre is providing the right set of tools. Anthony Lenton will tell you the story behind the MyApps tool and how app authors can use it to submit their apps.

20:00 UTC – Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The App Review Board

If you are an open source developer and want to publish your libre + gratis app into the Ubuntu Software Centre, the App Review Board (ARB) will take care of reviewing it, ensuring it is up to the Ubuntu standards and help you publishing it for all users to install. Stéphane Graber is a member of the ARB and will explain how the Board works and the steps to successfully submit an app for review.

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Kicking Off Ubuntu App Developer Week

The Ubuntu App Developer Week is starting today, so get ready for an awesome week full of exciting sessions and great speakers around the topic of application development in Ubuntu.

Here’s a taster of what’s in store today:

16:00 UTC  – Making Ubuntu a Target for App Developers

Jono Lange will open the week explaining the strategy for app development in Ubuntu, telling us more about the latest developments and what we’re going to see in the next future. Make sure you’ve got all your questions lined up, as it will be a really interesting subject and Jono will be more than happy to answer them!

17:00 UTC – Introducing Bazaar Explorer: Version Control for your Apps

Bazaar is a tool to track history of your code revisions and make it easy to distributed teams to collaborate developing code. But it’s not all about the command line. Jonathan Riddell will show you how to use the graphical tools to help you being more productive with Bazaar.

18:00 UTC – Your App & Launchpad best practices

If you’re using Launchpad, the suite of collaborative online tools to manage your project (and you should ) Jason DeRose will go through the best practices and all the tips and tricks to make sure you make the most of it for your project.

19:00 UTC – Getting Started With Python: a Hello World App

Do you want to write your first lines of code in Python and need some help? Then no worries, Alan Bell will be here to guide you through the easy journey of writing a simple “Hello world” application in this cool and powerful programming language.

Joining The Week

Getting involved is simple. You can connect using any IRC client or your browser. Simply go to:

• irc.freenode.net
• #ubuntu-classroom for the main session and #ubuntu-classroom-chat for the chatroom.

Ubuntu App Developer Week

I’m thrilled to announce the next edition of Ubuntu AppDeveloperWeek, from the 5th to 9th September 2011 at #ubuntu-classroom on IRC.

Ubuntu App Developer Week is a week of sessions aimed at enabling and inspiring developers to write applications that scratch their itches. Our goal is to give all attendees a taste of the wide variety of tools on the Ubuntu platform that can be used to create awesome applications, and to showcase some applications that have been created and explain how they were put together.

The Sessions

The whole week is packed with interesting subjects, aimed both at new and experienced developers. During the sessions you’ll get a solid overview on a broad range of the Free Software technologies that will enable you to create your applications in Ubuntu. At the same time, you’ll be able to chat and ask your questions directly to the true rockstars on those subjects.

Here are some of the highlights:

• The Ubuntu App Developer strategy
• Integrating applications with Ubuntu tech: Unity, AppIndicators, Ubuntu One…
• Enabling multitouch support in GTK applications
• Publishing your apps in the Ubuntu Software Center
• Getting started writing your first app with Python
• Rapid Application Development with Quickly
• Using the Bazaar revision control to track source code history
• Using Launchpad integration features to develop applications
• … Bazaar Explorer, Universal GRUB Recovery, Unity Lenses, Unity 2D, Gedit Developer Plugins, the App Review Board, developer.ubuntu.com, Unity Mail, Launchpad Daily Builds, Vala, GooCanvas and PyGame, Python Libraries for Desktop Integration, Internationalization… you name it. Learn more about the hottest topics and how to use the coolest technologies to write your applications, straight from the best experts in the Free Software world.
• Check out the complete schedule.

Joining The Week

Getting involved is simple. You can connect using any IRC client or your browser. Simply go to:

• irc.freenode.net
• #ubuntu-classroom for the main session and #ubuntu-classroom-chat for the chatroom.

Looking forward to seeing you all at App Developer Week!

Making Ubuntu a Choice for App Developers

We want to put Ubuntu on the app development map. We want to provide a top level experience through a platform that makes it easy for developers to create applications and distribute them to millions.

The Ubuntu Software Centre provided a solid foundation and a springboard to the proliferation of an ecosystem of resources and projects aligned to deliver this vision. Matthew Paul Thomas and Evan Dandrea already layed out the path at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando in 2010, and we’re seeing more and more news related to the work we’re doing while making this happen:

• Jono Lange moving from Launchpad to Developer Program Specialist. I’m particularly excited about this one, and looking forward to seeing Jono bring the same level of awesomeness delivered by Launchpad applied to making Ubuntu a rocking platform for app developers.
  
• The MyApps Portal being released. On this one I’d like to share an inspiring piece of feedback from Kiaran Ritchie at Big Fat Alien, the makers of BEEP, a game recently published in the Ubuntu Software Center:

Having gone through the process of distributing our game on the SC, I must say that Canonical has created a fantastic digital distribution toolset. BEEP was pushed through their web-based deployment toolset with no fuss at all. Deploying paid software in Ubuntu is now a no-brainer.

Next is developer.ubuntu.com, a place to present developers a clear journey that will guide them through the process of creating and publishing applications for Ubuntu. Along the way, they will find all the resources that will enable them to make the right design decisions and direct them to the information they need in a consistent manner. The site will also be the starting poing for building an app developer community.

You Can Help: Participate in The Ubuntu App Developer Survey

We’re at a point in the design of developer.ubuntu.com where we’d like to have some feedback to help us make and validate some of the decisions to provide the best user experience for developers. For this, we’ve prepared a short survey to get some input in the key areas we’re interested in.

So if you are intending to develop apps in the future, here’s your chance to contribute to making Ubuntu thrive in the world of apps: we’d really value your feedback by taking part in the Ubuntu App Developer Survey.

We would appreciate if you could complete the survey by Friday, 19th August 2011. Remember that this survey is not only aimed at existing or new Ubuntu developers, but also at people coming from other platforms, so it would be really helpful if you could share this link with anyone you know who might be developing in those other platforms.

Also feel free to get in touch if you’ve got any questions. Thanks!

This cycle I’m spending some of my time on a project outside the translations world: working with the awesome Web Design Team on a portal to attract and make it easy for developers to create and publish lightweight applications for Ubuntu.

As part of this work, we’ll be doing some user research on the 10th and 11th of  August at the Canonical office in London, and we are looking for app developers to interview there.

If you think you meet the following criteria or if you know of anyone who does, we’d like to hear from you! We’re looking for someone who:

• Must not be employed as an app developer, but may be employed in a technical role.
• Develops at night or on weekends – hobbyist, not professional
• Must be interested in developing apps.
• The platform does not matter.
• Must be familiar with the concept of open source development.

Other details:

• The participants will receive a cash incentive of £60 on the day of the session.
• Travel expenses will not be covered
• The research is to help validate our initial concept for one our current projects – developer.ubuntu.com.

If you know of anyone, please get in touch directly with Ellen Arnold, who coordinates the recruitment of testers for this project.

Thanks a lot!

After the first language packs have now been generated, I am pleased to announce that our current development release, Ubuntu Oneiric, is now open for translation:

• Translation schedule. Remember that according to the release schedule translatable messages might be subject to change until the User Interface Freeze on the week of the 25th of August.
• Language packs. During the development cycle, language packs containing translations will be released twice per week except for the freeze periods. This will allow users and translators to quickly see and test the results of translations.
• Test and report bugs. If you notice any issues (e.g. untranslated strings or applications), do check with the translation team for your language first. If you think it is a genuine bug, please report it.
• Learn More. Learn how to start translating Ubuntu and enable millions to use it in their language.

open 19 image by loop_oh – License: CC by-nd 2.0

So, new Ubuntu cycle and time for a fresh translations videocast!

Join me tomorrow at the Ustream Ubuntu Translations channel, where I’ll give you a summary about the great sessions we had around translations last week at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, where we discussed the plans for the next cycle: the Oneiric Ocelot. As usual, feel free to come along, ask your questions and have a chat around translating Ubuntu.

• WHAT: Videocast - UDS O Translations Highlights
• WHEN: Thursday, May. 19th, 15:00 UTC
• WHERE: Ustream Ubuntu Translations channel

Talk to you all tomorrow!

Note that if you wish to participate in the online chat, you’ll need to sign up for a ustream account (it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes), but I’ll also be answering your questions on the #ubuntu-translators IRC channel on Freenode.

What an awesome week for application developers. Ubuntu App Developer Week was a week of great speakers, great sessions, great participation, Multitouch, Unity, GObject, Introspection, PyGI, Qt, Qt Quick, QML, Internationalization, KDE, Phonon, Multimedia, Touchegg, Plasma Widgets, Python, Testing, Rapid Prototyping, Thunderbird, GStreamer, Zeitgeist, D-Bus, Ubuntu One, Bazaar, Lenses, Launcher API, Indicators, Launchpad, Translations, Application Review Process, Packaging, pkgme, the Sound Menu, and much much more.

Here’s a recap of the whole week:

• Day 1 Summary
• Day 2 Summary
• Day 3 Summary
• Day 4 Summary

If you happened to miss any of the sessions, simply head to the Ubuntu App Developer Week page where you’ll find the logs for all of them.

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 5 Summary

Here comes the last of the summaries for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Qt Quick: Extend with C++

By Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel

In this session Jürgen did another brief intro to Qt Quick: a declarative language to creat user interfaces on top of Qt C++. The subject was to extend it using the C++ language, and for this he introduced QtDeclarative, a UI runtime provided in a Qt module Qt Quick is based on. After this, he walked us through code examples: the first step – include QtDeclarative in the project in order to be able to use it in a C++ main.cpp file. Starting with basic tasks such as changing properties such as the colour of a rectangle from the C++ side, he went into more advanced ones, such as create a new qm element. Even more advanced tasks, such ad creating own elements, were left as a reading exercise with a pointer to the exhaustive Qt Quick documentation and tutorials.

Check out the session log here.

Phonon: Multimedia in Qt

By Harald Sitter

For the third time this week, Harald rocked the house with an entertaining and enlightening session: Phonon, a multimedia abstraction library. First, he showed how to get the environment set up and tools installed; next: an intro to Phonon – an abstraction layer between multimedia apps and a multimedia library backend in the form of a plugin. And next up some coding: the famous 3-line example to create a Phonon-based video player with C++. He showed us how to write a simple audio player, to which then video was progressively added. As a finale he pointed to a way to create a video player with no code at all!

Check out the session log here.

Integrating music applications with the Sound Menu

By Conor Curran

Conor started off explaining that sound menu integration in the next cycle will be made much easier through libunity, and talked a bit about the sound menu spec and the resources for contributors. He then explained that this cycle he concentrated on settling the architecture, making it easier for clients to provide integration. The only thing for a client to care about is to raise an MPRIS interface with a desktop entry, which will then allow it to be shown in the sound menu, and if available, any D-Bus menu items with it. He wrapped up with a description of some of the new features this cycle and an outlook on the next.

Check out the session log here.

pkgme: Automating The Packaging Of Your Project

By James Westby

On to packaging: James introduced pkgme, an almost magic tool to package your application to be distributed to users. Assuming your project uses a standard layout and pkgme has heard of it, it will use one of its backend to create the packaging structure tailored to your layout and toolset. New backends can be created upon request. As the finale, a recursive example: he showed us how to use pkgme to package pkgme itself!

Check out the session log here.

Unity Technical Q&A

By Jason Smith and Jorge Castro

Jason and Jorge started off this exciting session with an introduction to the cool things you can do in Unity: Lenses – bits of pluggable UI to mash up websites and applications in the dash, the Launcher API. After that questions started to kick in: What’s dee? Can you add multiple progress bars to the launcher? What’s the status of progress bars, badges and counters in the launcher? What search backend does the dash use? … if want to know the answer to these and more questions check out the session log

Check out the session log here.

Lightning Talks

By Stefano Palazzo, David Callé, Dustin Kirkland, MeanEye, Christian Muehlhaeuser, Nathan Handler

As the grand finale for a week packed with great sessions, even more concentraded content on a set of lightning talks to showcase cool projects created using the technologies available in Ubuntu: StackExchange App – a Unity Lens designed to work with Ask Ubuntu; Unity Book Lens – a Unity Lens to search through free online libraries; Bikeshed – a breeding ground for new/interesting/even-trivial-but-helpful scripts and programs; Sunflower FM – a twin-panel file GTK+ manager; Tomahawk – a social music player written in C++ and Qt; ClassBot – an IRC bot to help with running classroom sessions in #ubuntu-classroom

Check out the session log here.

Thanks!

I’d like to thank all session leaders for taking the time to prepare awesome content and deliver the sessions, and all participants for their attention and their interesting questions. You all made Ubuntu App Developer Week possible, and a success!

We’ll be back in 6 months time with a newer and cooler App Developer Week edition for you. See you then!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 4 Summary

Ramping up to the end of the week we had another full app development goodness day, and one where the session topics fitted together in a nice workflow as well: creating bling, creating apps with Rapid Prototyping, getting them into Ubuntu, adding indicator support and translating them. Here’s the report of yesterday’s app development journey:

Qt Quick: Elements/Animations/States

By Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel

The next Qt Quick session was all about creating attractive and usable user interfaces. Jürgen went through the QML tutorial documentation and code examples, showing us how to position elements with anchors, columns, rows and grids. Then onto states and transitions: describing the changes in an element’s properties and how to switch between them. To finalize, the most impressive stuff: QML animations, in which he teached us the different types of animations and how to use them.

Check out the session log here.

Qt Quick: Rapid Prototyping

By Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel

In Jürgen’s words, Qt Quick was designed to bridge the gap between designers and developers, letting both groups to work with the same technologies and code base. He explained how Qt Creator provides a design mode which allows easy dragging and dropping of UI elements, and separation between code and interface. All through a natural and agile prototyping workflow.

Check out the session log here.

Rapid App Development with Quickly

By Michael Terry

Michael started introducing what Quickly at the heart is: a robust yet simple system of templates with boilerplate code and commands. The available templates are ubuntu-application, ubuntu-cli, ubuntu-pygame and ubuntu-flash-game, and on the Natty version, Quickly will feature the ‘submitubuntu’ command to help getting applications into the Software Center. All that being set straight, he then showed how to use Quickly and what it can do: from creating the first example application, to modifying the UI with ‘quickly design’ and Glade, into debugging and finally packaging.

Check out the session log here.

Getting Your App in the Distro: the Application Review Process

By Allison Randal

Linking from the previous session on how to create an app, Allison explained in a very clear way how to get your applications into Ubuntu, so that they make their way into the OS in a matter of weeks instead of having to wait until the next release. The first step is to submit a ticket to the App Review Board, giving them the essential details for the proposal. They’ll then do the initial review, in which one of the reviewers will volunteer to walk you through the process and help you with suggestions or improvements, to bring the app to a state ready for the final review. There the board will vote in a meeting for the inclusion of the application. After the process description she answered the questions from the audience and wrapped up with some useful tips to application submitters.

Check out the session log here.

Adding Indicator Support to your Apps

By Ted Gould

Ted kicked off with an explanation of what indicators are and their intended use: they should not be used just because they are available – rather as a feature for long running applications, those that are more services to users, to expose that functionality. The next step was to describe how to create indicators through libappindicator, with any language supported by GObject Introspection, such as Python or Javascript, and how to add more features to a basic indicator: accessible labels and attention state. After that he described fallbacks, and how platforms not using Unity can nevertheless use indicators. The final minutes were dedicated to the future of indicators, that for now will focus on API cleanup and stabilization, and introspection improvements.

Check out the session log here.

Using Launchpad to get your application translated -

By Henning Eggers

As a follow up to the talk on how to add native language support to your applications on Monday, Henning described the next step: how to make them translatable in Launchpad and grow a translation community around them. In the first part he showed how to set up a demo project using Launchpad’s staging server, and shared some recommendations on how to make sure the application is correctly set up for translations, followed by an overview on some Gettext concepts Launchpad relies upon. From there, it was straight into business: setting up a translatable project in Launchpad, getting translatable templates imported and exposed to translators, creating a translation community for your project and the workflow for translation. A very detailed overview to get your application to talk any language.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 5

The last day and the quality and variety of the sessions is still going strong. Check out the great content we’ve prepared for you today:

16:00 UTC
Qt Quick: Extend with C++ – Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel
Sometimes you would like to extend Qt Quick with your own native extension. Jürgen will show you some ways how to do it.

17:00 UTC
Phonon: Multimedia in Qt - Harald Sitter
Harald, as the lead developer of the Qt/KDE multimedia library Phoon will tell you about the awesomeness that Phonon provides and how it achieves ultimate portability, so that it can even run on vending machines. He’ll also tell you hos to create a video player with 3 lines of code (or in 30 seconds without any code) and much more.

18:00 UTC
Integrating music applications with the Sound Menu - Conor Curran
So you’ve seen the slick sound menu in Ubuntu, and you’re developing a multimedia application, right? You’re then wondering how to seamlessly integrate it into Ubuntu and use all the nice features from the menu as well? Wonder no more, for Conor is the man behind the sound menu and he’ll be delighted to teach you how.

19:00 UTC
pkgme: Automating The Packaging Of Your Project - James Westby
Once you’ve developed a cool application you’ll want to package it and distribute it to users so that they can easily install it in their favourite platform. James will show you how this can be both easy and fun letting pkgme do all the work for you.

20:00 UTC
Unity Technical Q&A - Jason Smith and Jorge Castro
You’ve heard about Unity, the new UI concept which is going to improve several orders of magnitude how you interact with your computer in Ubuntu. You are probably using it already, and you’ll surely have questions and will want to learn more about the coolness it brings. Jason Smith, from the Unity development team, and Jorge Castro, from the Community team know all about Unity and they’ll be here to chat with you.

21:00 UTC
Lightning Talks - Nigel Babu
As the final treat to close the week, Nigel has organized a series of lightning talks to showcase a medley of cool applications: CLI Companion, Unity Book Lens, Bikeshed, circleoffriends, Algorithm School, Sunflower FM, Tomahawk Player, Classbot – your app could be in this list next time, do check them out!

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 3 Summary

Right into the middle of the week and still delivering the most diverse set of sessions from the most interesting technologies. QML, Cloud, D-Bus, Multitouch, Unity, Bazaar… Wednesday had a bit of everything. Most importantly, this sessions are for you all, so I was really glad to hear feedback on how people liked the content of App Developer Week! So here’s a new summary for all of those who couldn’t attend.

Qt Quick: QML the Language

By Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel

In his first session, Jürgen gave a short intro to Qt Quick’s QML language and how to use it. The first steps were to install Qt and Qt Creator, followed by a description of what Qt Quick is and how developers came up with a declarative way, similar to CSS or JSON to write in the language. All that clear, he then started with the Qt Quick tutorial and code examples that could be run with qmlviewer, the qml interpreter. Onto the second part, he focused on the QML languate, and going into the detail on how to create custom QML components. There were also lots of pointers to the excellent Qt documentation.

Check out the session log here.

Make your applications work in the cloud with Ubuntu One

By Stuart Langridge

Stuart gave a great overview on how to add the cloud to existing apps and how to make new apps for the cloud, letting Ubuntu One do all the hard work for you: from managing identities, password renewal to sharing data between applications. And all that on the web, the desktop, mobile… all your stuff everywhere! He then showed us some simple code to sync playlists on the cloud, ready for streaming. File sync is also an important Ubuntu One feature apps can make use of for sharing, and he also went through a couple of the many cool ways you can use it. The last mention was on API documentation, something Stuart is working on in this cycle.

Check out the session log here.

Take control of your desktop easily with DBus

By Alejandro J. Cura

In this session Alejandro showed us in a hands-on and easy to follow way different bits and pieces of D-Bus, and how applications in the desktop can communicate through it. He went through real life examples to show how to do simple tasks and explained how they can be achieved with D-Bus.

Check out the session log here.

Touchégg: Bringing Multitouch Gestures to your Desktop

In the second multitouch session of the week, app developer José Expósito started showcasing Touchégg, how it works and its features: recognizing multitouch gestures and getting the most of multitouch devices. He then went on describing which gestures it supports, such as tap, drag, pinch or tap & hold, and the different actions that can be associated to gestures, showing us a really cool video of Touchégg in action. The second part of the talk focused on describing the technologies used to develop Touchégg: uTouch-GEIS, through its simplified interface, and Qt.

By José Expósito

Check out the session log here.

Unity: Integrating with Launcher and Places

By Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen

Mikkel used the intro of the talk to set a couple of things straight: “Places” are going to be called “Lenses” in the next cycle, and libunity does not yet guarantee API or ABI stability. He then followed with the Unity Launcher integration, and how applications can use static quicklists, and more advanced features such as count, progress bar, window flashing and dynamic quicklists. The second part were Places: remote databases that provide data for Unity to render. Through a Python code example he showed us in detail all the aspects of creating a Unity Place.

Check out the session log here.

Tracking Source Code History with Bazaar

By Jelmer Vernooij

Jelmer, in his experience of seasoned Bazaar hacker started off introducing what bzr is: a modern distributed version control system. He then went on with the basics with a hands-on example, going through the creation of a branch, the first commit, and describing several of the most handy bzr commands. As a wrap-up, he showcased more advanced features such as source recipes: scripts that combine branches and build daily Debian packages from them.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 4

We’re featuring a Qt Quick Marathon today: 2 sessions in a row. Following that, how to do RAD with yet another framework: Quickly, how to get your applications in Ubuntu, and how to get them translated in Launchpad. Enjoy!

16:00 UTC
Qt Quick: Elements/Animations/States – Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel
Another day and more featured Qt content: this time Jürgen will take us through different elements/animations and states Qt Quick provides, and will show us through examples how to make use of them.

17:00 UTC
Qt Quick: Rapid Prototyping – Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel
If one session weren’t enough, here’s the continuation: more Qt goodness, this time a hands-on session to develop a small application from start to finish and experience the whole process from the front row.

18:00 UTC
Rapid App Development with Quickly – Michael Terry
Mike will show you how to write applications in no time with the power of Python and Quickly: bringing back the fun in programming.

19:00 UTC
Getting Your App in the Distro: the Application Review Process – Allison Randal
A while back we created an easy process defining how to get applications into Ubuntu, so in order to be able to add them in a matter of weeks, rather than waiting for the next release. Allison, in her Ubuntu Technical Architect and Application Review Board member hat, will walk you through the Application Review Process

20:00 UTC
Adding Indicator Support to your Apps – Ted Gould
Join the man who knows most about indicators in a session that will teach you how to integrate your application even more into Ubuntu. They’re slick, robust and consistent: bringing indicator support to your apps.

21:00 UTC
Using Launchpad to get your application translated – Henning Eggers
One of the coolest features of Launchpad is that it helps growing a translation community around your project. You can make your application translatable in Launchpad and be able to deliver it into almost any language. Henning will teach you how to do this, picking up where the previous session on translations left.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

We’ve prepared a Bug Day tomorrow to help report, triage and fix any bugs in translations for the upcoming Ubuntu Natty release.

Check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20110414 to see the tasks in which you can help, and join the bug squashing fest in the #ubuntu-bugs or #ubuntu-translators IRC channels on Freenode.

You’ll find more info below, from the original Bugsquad announcement:

Fellow Ubuntu Triagers!

This week's Bug Day targets are *drum roll please*  *Ubuntu Translations*!

  * 28 New bugs need a hug
  * 32 Incomplete bugs need a status check
  * 17 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!

  * 14 April 2011
  * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20110414

Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your
adorable Ubuntu Project?

Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?
This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day!
open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (FreeNode) the BugSquad will
be happy to help you to start contributing!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good
work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the
Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you
have one add it to the Planning page
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning

If you're new to all this, head tohttp://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

Join in and help us bringing an awesome Ubuntu experience in any language!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 2 Summary

Wow, what a great follow-up to the first day! The second Ubuntu App Developer Week brought lots of awesome: great speakers and sessions, great participation, improvisation, Python, GTK, KDE, Qt, PyGI, Zeitgeist, Gstreamer, Introspection, Thunderbird, Unity, API Integration, hacking, fun… all the buzzwords you can associate when developing in your favourite Free Software Platform.

PyGTK is dead, long live PyGI! Using gobject-introspection in Python

By Martin Pitt

Martin’s complementary session to the GObject Introspection (GI) one on Monday was very popular. He started off with a recap of what GI is and the importance of the availability of several programming language bindings in any modern development platform. He provided an overview on how GI works in practice, and then delved into how it actually works in Python through the use of Pygobject and the gi.repository module, with lots of coding examples and comparison with traditiona GTK+ C code. After that he described other API differences, in particular the caveats with contructoirs, passing arrays, output arguments, GDestroyNotify and what to do with non-introspectable functions or methods. The next topic where overrides: how to provide custom code to override the introspected library’s objects. The second part of the session focused on explaining in detail how to migrate old PyGtk code to GTK3 and PyGI, in a series of easy guidelines: renaming, checking and repeating, and packaging changes. He wrapped up with a series of pointers on how to learn more and a Q+A session with lots of interesting questions from the audience.

Check out the session log here.

Zeitgeist API & Zeitgeist Application Integration

By Manish Sinha (???? ??????) and Seif Lotfy

For this session we had the luxury of having two key members of the Zeitgeist project to explain us all the details on how to integrate it to your own projects.  Manish, one of the Zeitgest developers, kicked off with an introduction on what Zeitgeist is: an automatic event logger which logs the events that happen on your computer. He then went on through the details of the Zeitgest terminology (events, manifestations, actors, timestamps…), architecture, and its interaction with D-Bus, with an overview of the API interface and the existing bindings: Python, C/Vala and C#. The session went on with examples of how real world applications and data providers use Zeitgeist, such as EOG plugins or Tomboy. Seif then chipped in with an example of  how Zeitgeist support was integrated into a GEdit plugin. Throughout the session lots of interesting questions were raised by the audience.

Check out the session log here.

GStreamer+Python: Multimedia Swiss Army Machete

By Jason DeRose

A very intersesting session indeed. In it, Jason explained all the points why GStreamer is the multimedia framework due to its economy of scale and why Python is the perfect complement with its simplicity and language clarity. According to him, together they provide the ultimative multimedia development tool, and this was why he chose to use them in hos own project: Novacut, the distributed video editor. From this point on, it was “Learning by doing”, and he then walked thorugh the code examples he’d set up for the session, showcasing how simple it is to work with multimedia streams with his swiss army machete

Check out the session log here.

KDE Development Intro: Q+A

By Harald Sitter and Jonathan Riddell

I’d especially like to mention this session due to a change of schedule. The original speaker, KDE/Kubuntu ninja Joathan Thomas could not make if due to last-minute commitments. But no worries, KDE/Kubuntu friends are always there to lend a hand, and in no time Harald and Jonathan stepped up to fill the gap and do an impromptu KDE Development Intro and Q+A session. In there they gave an overview on the essentials every prospective KDE developer should know and answered in detail the questions in the audience. All in all a great insight on how to get started developing KDE apps.

Check out the session log here.

Thunderbird + Unity = Awesome, and how JSCtypes lets you get to the candy

By Mike Conley

Mike has been working over the last 3 months at Mozilla on ways in which Thunderbird can integrate nicely into Ubuntu, in particular with Unity. He started explaining the main points he’s been focusing on: the messaging menu, the Unity launcher adn Ubuntu One, and for the rest of the session he covered the first two. Going straight to the subject, the next topic was to explain what a Thunderbird extension is, and how they are written using a mixture of Javascript, the XUL mark-up language and CSS, all executed by the Gecko engine. He then introduced JS-CTypes, which allow developers to access C libraries directly from Chrome-level Javascript code. and how he used them to write a Unity launcher add-on. the resto of the session focused on this subject, with plenty of code examples.

Check out the session log here.

STORY: Unity, hacking on a real-world app

By Marco Trevisan

The last session of the day was one of my favourite ones: an inspiring personal story. Marco is a community contributor to Unity who told us about his journey since he found an application itch to scratch and until his own feature was landed. He started with a very easy to understand overview of the Unity architecture and how all the pieces fit together, following with the story on how he found something that needed improvement and how he went about fixing it: indicator-sound not being precise when setting the volume with the mouse wheel. Do read it, as it is going to be a great help to all of you who are looking on how to get started contributing to Ubuntu development.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 3

A quick look at today’s session lineup for your development pleasure:

16:00 UTC
Qt Quick: QML the Language – Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel
Here’s a special treat for anyone interested in Qt development: Jürgen Bocklage-Ryannel, from Nokia, the maker of Qt, will be introducing Qt Quick and QML as the language used in Qt Quick. He’ll be showing some elements of the UI and the general process, and tell you the right places to go to to get more information.

17:00 UTC
Make your applications work in the cloud with Ubuntu One – Stuart Langridge
Who else than the Ubuntu One mastermind himself could tell you better about supercharging your apps with cloud functionality? Join Stuart in this talk where he’ll be describing how to integrate Ubuntu One into your applications and bring your users to cloud 9

18:00 UTC
Take control of your desktop easily with DBus – Alejandro J. Cura
D-Bus, the cross-desktop message bus system, is becoming more and more ubiquitous in any Free Software distribution. You can bring your applications to a whole new level letting them talk to other ones in a desktop session, and Alejandro can tell you exactly how to do that.

19:00 UTC
Touchégg: Bringing Multitouch Gestures to your Desktop – José Expósito
It’s always great to see real-world examples of how the newest and coolest technologies are being used. José will be showcasing his multitouch-based application, Touchégg, introducing its features, describing how to add new multitouch gestures, the technologies used to develop it, and how it uses the uTouch-GEIS API. Check out the summary and the logs from the other Multitouch session on Monday to learn more.

20:00 UTC
Unity: Integrating with Launcher and Places – Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen
Do you want your application to seamlessly blend into the new Ubuntu user interface experience? Do you want it to provide all interaction capabilities that Unity provides? Then join Unity developer Mikkel Kamstrup in his walkthrough with examples on how to plug your app into the Launcher and Places API.

21:00 UTC
Tracking Source Code History with Bazaar – Jelmer Vernooij
Learn how to control the history of your source code with a distributed and modern revision control system. Bazaar is powerful, fast, and most importantly, easy and fun to use. Jelmer has had a lot to do in developing Bazaar, so he knows well what he’s talking about. Join him in this session where he’ll tell you the basics and more sophisticated uses of the revision control system used to develop Ubuntu and thousands of other projects in Launchpad.

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Ubuntu App Developer Week – Day 1 Summary

A great start for a great week. Looking at the lots of participation and questions during the first day shows that developing applications in Ubuntu is a hot topic. Here is a small summary from yesterday’s schedule.

Enabling Multitouch and Gestures Using uTouch

By Chase Douglas and Stephen Webb

Chase and Stephen delivered an overview on the whole stack of touch technologies focusing on two main aspects: gestures/uTouch and multitouch. On gestures, they showed us how there is a difference between general-purpose stroke gestures and defined gestures primitives, such as “drag”, “pinch/expand”, “rotate”, “tap”, and “touch”, which enable the possibility of defining a gesture language. A high-level overview of uTouch followed, with a description of the API and a couple of code examples showing how to integrate applications with it. To wrap up the session, they explained how Ubuntu will be the first distro to bring multitouch in 11.04 and how this was made possible, such as extending xorg’s XInput to version 2.1 to add multitouch support and. On the app developer side of multitouch, they announced a pre-release addition to the Qt framework that will support multitouch.

Check out the session log here.

GObject Introspection: The New Way For Developing GNOME Apps in Python, JavaScript and Others

By Tomeu Vizoso

On this session we saw the initial problem GNOME developers were facing in the past to provide and maintain bindings in multiple programming languages, and how introspection came to the rescue. The reason for having several bindings had always been to enable interaction with the GNOME platform using other languages than C. With introspection, there is no need for external bindings, as the C API itself contains all the required information. Not only that, but this information is also available at runtime without a considerable performance cost. He then went on to describe the workflow changes, the new typelibs and .gir files, and describing what annotations are. Following that, the changes required for library and, most especially application writers, sharing some tips on how to port applications to use GObject Introspection. He finished the session with a few pointers on where to go from here and to the resources to get more info about introspection.

Check out the session log here.

From English to any language: internationalizing your apps

By David Planella

The session started of with the description of some of the main players in the internationalization game: gettext, intltool, Launchpad, followed by a bit more insight on the gettext concepts and terminology. The idea was to deliver a hands-on session that could be nevertheless used generically to provide i18n support to any application in any programming language. The second part of the session focused on making a choice of a programming language and framework to showcase a practical example on how to internationalize an app. So Python and Quickly were used as an easy way to develop an internationalized application in a matter of minutes. From that example the session then focused on describing the main bits to provide native language support.

Check out the session log here.

Widgetcraft: The Art of Creating Plasma Widgets

By Harald Sitter

On this session packed with code examples, Harald started with the description of the technologies involved in developing widgets for Plasma, otherwise known as the KDE desktop or the KDE workspace, and how Plasma comes in several different flavours for different form factors. Next were Plasmoids, the name by which Plasma widgets go, which can be written in Javascript, C++ (both always available), Python,  and Ruby. He then moved on to hacking, creating an easy-to-follow, bare setup for a Plasmoid, mentioning how the plasmoidviewer tool can be used to test them prior to deployment. The next steps involved extending the Plasmoid, adding UI functionality such as buttons and other visual elements. All the code is available here.

Check out the session log here.

Rock solid Python development with unittest/doctest

By Barry Warsaw

Barry delivered a great overview to unit- and doc- testing Python applications, and how to hook these into Debian packages as well. After briefly pointing out to resources for background reading on testing, he then delved into the coding example he had set up to as an aid to the session. Starting with unittesting, he showed us the tests were set up in the code and how to run them, as well as what a failing test looks like. Next on the list were doctests, emphasizing that they are testable documentation, written in restructured text (.rst), and that they do not replace, but rather are a complement to unittests. Again, he showed us how they were written and run. He wrapped up explaining in detail how to integrate them all in setup.py and to a Debian package.

Check out the session log here.

The Day Ahead: Upcoming Sessions for Day 2

Well, you thought that was all? Lots of additional app developer goodness are waiting for you today. Let’s have a look at what’s in store for day 2:

16.00 UTC
PyGTK is dead, long live PyGI! Using gobject-introspection in Python – Martin Pitt
PyGTK might be dead, but only to be succeeded by the power of introspection. Join Martin to learn all you ever wanted to know about using the new cool stuff in the Python/GTK world: PyGI. He tells us about the focus of his talk: “[...] how to use the GI typelibs in Python, and how to port PyGTK2 applications to PyGI. For the most part these sessions are distribution neutral (we don’t have any special sauce for this in Debian/Ubuntu, it all happened right upstream ); only a very small fraction of it (where I explain package names, etc.) will be specific to Debian/Ubuntu, but shouldn’t be hard to apply to other distributions as well.“

17:00 UTC
Zeitgeist API & Zeitgeist Application Integration – Manish Sinha (???? ??????) and Seif Lotfy
The Zeitgeist Project is taking many important projects and distributions by storm. It’s all about seamlessly tracking user data and events in a way that is revolutionizing the way they interact with their desktop. Do you want to know more about Zeitgest? Or even better: do you want to use Zeitgeist features in your application? Project leader Seif Lotfy and developer Manish Sinha will tell you all about it and be willing to hear your questions

18:00 UTC
GStreamer+Python: Multimedia Swiss Army Machete – Jason DeRose
When you hear GStreamer and Python in the same sentence you know for sure that you’re up for something awesome. Join the power of Rapid Application Development with Python with the most popular multimedia framework in Free Software, and you’ll end up with a versatile tool to tackle all your multimedia needs. Jason knows well what he’s talking about

19:00 UTC
Creating a KDE app with KAppTemplate – Jonathan Thomas
Second day in and we get the luxury of having the second KDE/Kubuntu ninja delivering content straight from the source. Do you know how easy is to create full featured KDE applications with KAppTemplate? Put on your developer hat and join Jonathan on a hands-on session where you’ll learn to write beautiful KDE apps in a matter of minutes.

20:00 UTC
Thunderbird + Unity = Awesome, and how JSCtypes lets you get to the candy – Mike Conley
We’re seeing more and more major upstreams providing integration with the new way of interacting with computers: Unity. The story of integrating Thunderbird and Unity is full of awesome, and Mike will be on a quest to tell you all about it and hear your questions.

21:00 UTC
STORY: Unity, hacking on a real-world app – Marco Trevisan
Would you like to become the next Unity rockstar? How would you get started? In this session Marco will tell us his journey on how he got involved in hacking on Unity, from the day he found the itch to scratch until his branch fixing it was landed. I’m personally very much looking forward to this session, as I believe it will be inspiring not only to prospective Unity contributors, but for developers in general who want to know how to start hacking on a particular application.

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Ubuntu App Developer Week kicks off today with a rich set of interesting sessions to showcase and teach how to develop awesome applications on the Ubuntu Platform.

It’s going to be on the #ubuntu-classroom IRC channel on Freenode, during the whole week, so be sure to add it to your calendars. If you can’t make it to a session, don’t worry: there will be logs and session summaries available for you to read and learn on your own time.

16.00 UTC
Enabling Multitouch and Gestures Using uTouch – Chase Douglas and Stephen Webb
Join the future of computing and how humans interact with computers on a daily basis. Multi-touch technologies are the next step in this area, and in this talk Chase and Stephen will show you how your applications can make use of it

17:00 UTC
GObject Introspection: The New Way For Developing GNOME Apps in Python, JavaScript and Others – Tomeu Vizoso
Tomeu says: “The talk will be oriented to developers that use or want to use GNOME technologies and still haven’t fully grasped how GObject Introspection is changing the game. It won’t contain any distro specificities, so join without fear even if you don’t use Ubuntu, if it’s of your interest.  It should be of special interest to those willing to contribute to GNOME Shell or that plan to attend Martin Pitt’s talk about life after PyGTK this Tuesday at 16 UTC

18:00 UTC
From English to any language: internationalizing your apps – David Planella
You want your applications reach millions, to be usable by anyone regardless of their language or writing system, and for this to happen transparently. Good news for you then: this is already possible using stable and proven internationalization technologies. It’s Free Software and it’s easy to integrate in your application. Learn how to prepare your applications to go international with David.

19:00 UTC
Widgetcraft: The Art of Creating Plasma Widgets – Harald Sitter
Plasma is the shell of the KDE Software Collection and available for many different form factors; it is almost entirely built out of widgets. Harald will show you how to create such amazing widgets, with surprisingly little code, to enrich your desktop experience and maybe even share with others.

20:00 UTC
Rock solid Python development with unittest/doctest – Barry Warsaw
If you’re asking yourself how to make your Python applications more robust and how to make your development workflow much more effective, here’s your answer. In this session, Python legend Barry Warsaw will show you how to easily add tests using the most popular modules from the Python Standard Library: unittest and doctest

Looking forward to seeing you all there in a few hours!

Just a quick reminder that the next Ubuntu App Developer Week starts next Monday on the #ubuntu-classroom IRC channel on Freenode.

So get ready for a week packed with sessions on how to develop awesome applications in Ubuntu, straight from the best experts!

Here’s a sneak peek at the sessions the week is kicking off with:

• 16:00 UTC - Enabling Multitouch and Gestures Using uTouch with Chase Douglas and Stephen Webb
• 17:00 UTC - GObject Introspection: The New Way For Developing GNOME Apps in Python, JavaScript and Others with Tomeu Vizoso
• 18:00 UTC - From English to Any Language: Internationalizing Your Apps with David Planella
• 19:00 UTC - Widgetcraft: The Art of Creating Plasma Widgets with Harald Sitter
• 20:00 UTC - Rock solid Python development with unittest/doctest with Barry Warsaw
• But there is much more…

Looking forward to an awesome week. See you there!

Ubuntu App Developer Week

I’m thrilled to announce the next edition of Ubuntu AppDeveloperWeek, from the 11th to 15th April 2011 at #ubuntu-classroom on IRC.

Ubuntu App Developer Week is a week of sessions aimed at enabling and inspiring developers to write applications that scratch their itches. Our goal is to give all attendees a taste of the wide variety of tools on the Ubuntu platform that can be used to create awesome applications, and to showcase some applications that have been created and explain how they were put together.

The Sessions

The whole week is packed with interesting subjects, aimed both at new and experienced developers. During the sessions you’ll get a solid overview on a broad range of the Free Software technologies that will enable you to create your applications in Ubuntu. At the same time, you’ll be able to chat and ask your questions directly to the true rockstars on those subjects.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Integrating applications with Ubuntu tech: Unity, AppIndicators, Ubuntu One, the Sound Menu…
• Enabling multitouch support in applications
• Application development and testing with Python
• Rapid Application Development with Qt Quick and QML
• Rapid Application Development with Quickly
• Using the Bazaar revision control to track source code history
• Using Launchpad integration features to develop applications
• … GObject Introspection, PyGI, Plasma, Zeitgeist, GStreamer, Touchégg, KDE, Thunderbird, Internationalization, the Application Review Process, Pkgme, Phonon… you name it. Learn more about the hottest topics and how to use the coolest technologies to write your applications, straight from the best experts in the Free Software world.
• Check out the complete schedule.

Joining The Week

Getting involved is simple. You can connect using any IRC client or your browser. Simply go to:

• irc.freenode.net
• #ubuntu-classroom for the main session and #ubuntu-classroom-chat for the chatroom.

Looking forward to seeing you all at App Developer Week!

We’ve just uploaded fresh language packs in the maverick-proposed repository for testers to check  before they are released to all users. These should contain all updates and fixes in translations done since the last language pack update.

I’d like to ask for your help in testing them and in providing an indication that the test has been done. You can do this very easily by following the instructions here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/LanguagePackUpdatesQA

The deadline for the testing is the 25th of March (in a week’s time). After that, we’ll update the language packs we’ve received feedback for into maverick-updates, so that all users can benefit from the new translations and fixes.

Remember that you’ll have to enable the maverick-proposed repository to start testing. Here’s how:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed

Thanks!

Notes

Remember that now you can subscribe to the iCal feed to stay up to date with language pack updates and better coordinate your work if you are a translator:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/MaverickLanguagePackReleaseSchedule

Notice that as commented on the translators mailing list recently, we’ve experienced
bug 731298. This bug has now been fixed, but for those of you using the language packs PPA, please remember to follow Martin Pitt‘s advice to purge and reinstall the packages for a proper fix:

Note that I can’t automatically fix packages for people who already upgraded to the broken PPA version; they will need to purge the packages (-base as well) and reinstall them.

If you are not using the language packs PPA, you shouldn’t need to worry about this.