The shape of things to come?

Internet is one of the most used things nowadays. Even in Ubuntu it is fully integrated with the nm-applet (network manager applet). It takes care of everything, thought it hasn't a proper GUI (graphic user interface). Every time I have to look after my IP-adress, I ask myself if I have to click left or right for getting the menu 'connection information'. Also the current connection speed isn't showed at all.

So what do you do when you have time left? You make a mockup.
My idea: Every way to connect to the internet is another interface (wireless connection, vpn connection,...) and each interface has it's own box. The several interfaces show their common information in that box and you can get additional information by clicking the box. Also the main operation stands in the box (namely connect and disconnect). Every interface is grouped in his main category (VPN, Wireless, Modem...) and if the interface is connected, it is shown above the group categories.

Features:
- The profile manager is better integrated. You can switch by clicking the current profile name en selecting the new one. The profile manager stores if you shutdown a group (for example if you shutdown the wireless). It memmorize wich connection is the default one. It stores every vpn connection. And with a simple click you can export/import these information.
- Every interface has it own preference dialog where you can change/add/see the information.
- You can easily see wich connection are live and if there is transfer.
- ...

This is just a mockup that I want to share with you. If you have remarks/features you may always ask them, but I will not make this mockup reality. (Althoug I want to) This is because I have to little time. But I give everybody the permission to implement it (And I would be happy to see it in the next nm-applet)

Some trouble with samples from ogre that uses Cegui

Since two days I'm trying Ogre3d (an Open source graphics engine). I came across an error. I could run the normal samples provided by Ogre3d, but I couldn't run the samples that require Cegui. Every time I tried to compiled those I received the following error:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'CEGUI::FileIOException'

Now I don't have any problems with errors :-). I know how to google and useally I find some satisfying answer (read: the solution), but this time it took quite long and it was hard to find. That's why I'm creating this post. Just to make it easier for others getting the same error to get the solution ...

So it occurs if you're using Ogre 1.4.* and Cegui 0.5.0 together. It seems that TaharezLook.looknfeel (an xml file) can't get parsed right by Cegui (I thought it was Cegui). But the problem isn't Cegui itself. Cegui uses an external xml parser. By default it uses XercesParser and it is XercesParser that can't get that file parsed.

A workaround is really simple. Just use another XML parser to parse your xml files. So when you start building Cegui from source you have to specify you want another xml parser than the default one. And guess how easy that goes on linux :-D:

./configure --with-default-xml-parser=TinyXMLParser

Now you only have to make and install it (and recompile ogre, it will than automatically compile the cegui samples to).

Teaser: AWN + compiz fusion

After reading some bugs in launchpad about AWN I came across a bug report that suggested that it should be possible to remove gnome-panel when AWN starts. So that the bar under AWN isn't visible. So that AWN truly replaces gnome-panel, upon launch.

Now first time I read that, I thought it would never be possible. It isn't that easy. But I tried anyway and I could make a working (but very hacky) version of awn that could do that. I think I will let a lot of guys down to say that I just set an opacity of 0% on gnome-panel, but it works :-D and it is even beautifull :-).
(only working for compiz fusion using gconf)

Just to let show you what I'm talking about,
here a screencast:


I first need to sort some things out, before it is possible to get into awn itself. We don't want to have a hacky and instable awn ;-)
* only hide the bottom bar
* more stable
* remove the panel totally (now only opacity=0%)
* find a way to let awn set the opacity back even awn crash (don't want that anyone haves problems, because the gnome-panel isn't visible anymore)

If someone knows a way to remove panels from gnome-panel or some more information about gnome-panel that can help. Just comment :-D.

Edit

Like you probably already know, this will not get into AWN. It wasn't working that well, I was only a fool to think it would work good. But probably there will come a plugin that allows to do things like this. First I will wait till AWN has got a total rewrite from NJPatel.