Infolog version 2.2 released

I released Infolog version 2.2. Main change to preceding versions is that changes to title and description are stored whenever they change. Preceding versions stored changes when the focus on a particular sticky note was lost. Furthermore this version contain some bugfixes, e.g. when no notification area is available previous versions would crash.

I spend some time investigating if it is possible to create a more generic client using protocols offered by Egroupware (and other groupware suites). This approach however, proved to be a dead end. Two protocols can be used:

1. Carddav/Groupdav – Egroupware offers Infolog as a carddav webservice. However, only tasks are offered this way. Most calendar software (e.g. Thunderbird/Lightning) can subscribe to these resulting in no further improvement by using Infolog desktop client over such software. Note that I started the project specifically to gain desktop access to my notes.
2. Syncml – The only usable implementation I found was Funambols syncml. However, Egroupware does not play nice with Funambol. For insiders: the alert response is completely empty, even if you start a fresh sync. I filed a bug report (#3025) about this.

I realize that it is inconvenient to start a separate service and that configuration of the service is pretty hard, but I see no alternative.

Xfce fakes ghosting of conky characters

Since the introduction of Gnome 3 I switched to Xfce. I just couldn’t adjust to the new ways to interact with the desktop Gnome forces upon the user. Call me old-fashioned, but at least I tried! After a while I noticed however some ghosting of the characters displayed by conky.

I have been playing for hours to correct this. To no avail I have been trying many variations of settings of the ‘own_window_hints’. Until I noticed that running applications at the time of shutdown where restarted when Xfce was restarted. In the ‘Session and Startup’ of the Xfce settings manager, I had the option to save the session on logout deliberately disabled. Besides this, conky did not show up in the list of running applications in the ‘Session’ tab. Strange, but a ‘ps’ revealed multiple instances of conky. So no ghosting at all! Just 2 instances of conky running on top of each other.

Starting conky using the following bash snippet released me of this.

#!/bin/bash
sleep 10
conky=`ps -e | grep conky`
if [ "$conky" == '' ]; then
        conky &
fi

Mount real filesystem in Egroupware filemanager

This is a really cool feature of the Egroupware filemanager. When you are running Egroupware on a system where you want to access the files of a particular system user, you can mount the real filesystem in the Egroupware filemanager. On a command line type:

{path to Egroupware filemanager/cli.php} mount ‘filesystem://root_{username of Egroupware header manager}:{password of Egroupware header manager}@default{directory on real filesystem}?user={Egroupware username}’ {path in Egroupware filemanager}

E.g. on a Linux system with a Egroupware header manager named admin and a password set to adminpassword, a system user named raging and a Egroupware user named goblin, the following command will mount a (read-only) directory in the filesystem under /home/goblin/raging:

/srv/www/htdocs/egroupware/filemanager/cli.php mount ‘filesystem://root_admin:adminpassword@default/home/raging?user=goblin’ /home/raging/raging

See this thread for more info about it.

Infolog version 2.1 released

Recently I have been fooling around with the Google WindowBuilder Pro. This is the best GUI builder for Java I have used so far. My only complaint: it is quite unstable! For the rest, it is very easy to use, especially support for LayoutManagers is superb. I used it to create some configuration dialogs for the Infolog Desktop application and today I released Infolog version 2.1. Configuration of the look and feel and the synchronization is now much easier through these dialogs:

Python imap changes with python 3 (II)

Due to a new update my conky.rc broke (again). The script that shows the status of my email box (imap.py) now failed with the following message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./imap.py", line 37, in <module>
    server.login(username,password)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.1/imaplib.py", line 517, in login
    typ, dat = self._simple_command('LOGIN', user, self._quote(password))
  File "/usr/lib/python3.1/imaplib.py", line 1067, in _quote
    arg = arg.replace('\\', '\\\\')

This guy explains how to solve it. As a quick fix I added a new line to /usr/lib/python3.1/imaplib.py on position 1067.

arg = arg.decode("utf-8")

Though this solution will only work until the next update, for now it will do.

Systray not supported with OpenJDK and Compiz

Yesterday I stumbled upon a bug in the the OpenJDK. A system tray icon is not supported while using Compiz. I found out about this because I was playing around with the Google WindowBuilder. It kept freezing while using the Sun-JDK. With the OpenJDK it only freezes with opening a separate preview window. Then I noticed that my Infolog program wouldn’t start anymore. So when you are using the particular combination of Compiz and OpenJDK you won’t be able to use a system tray icon with Java. These options are open to you:

1. Install Sun-JDK and don’t use the Google WindowBuilder.
2. Install both JDK’s and use the Sun-JDK with programs that need a system tray icon, and the OpenJDK with Eclipse and the Google WindowBuilder.
3. Install the OpenJDK en don’t bother with a system tray Icon.
4. Stop using Compiz.
5. Install Sun-JDK and use Windho$e in a virtual box.

The last one is not a real option of course, I only mentioned it to be complete .

Infolog version 2.0 released

Yesterday I released Infolog version 2.0. With version 2.0 I took a different approach how to communicate with the server. Instead of updating items on the server directly and communicating this to all connected clients, a client is now completely independent. A client is capable of synchronizing with the server on regular intervals. By making the client completely independent of the server it is now much easier to run it as a standalone application when someone does not want to use it in conjunction with Egroupware.

Further enhancements include:
- Better readable README with explanation about using the application over ssh.
- Small improvements such as nicer icons to be used on the taskbar.
- Several bugfixes, e.g. using non-standard ports for Java RMI did not work in version 1.0.

Python imap changes with python 3

Recently I upgraded my Arch linux box and python switched to version 3 causing my conky.rc to break. Conky shows the status of my email box through the usage of a python script imap.py that failed with the following message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "imap.py", line 37, in 
    server.login(username,password)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.1/imaplib.py", line 512, in login
    typ, dat = self._simple_command('LOGIN', user, self._quote(password))
  File "/usr/lib/python3.1/imaplib.py", line 1072, in _quote
    arg = arg.replace(b'\\', b'\\\\')
TypeError: Can't convert 'bytes' object to str implicitly

Found this issue about it. Changing the script with the diff suggested solved the problem. I added the following line right before logging in:

password = bytes(password, "ASCII")

Infolog upload refreshed

Due to a bug the program was not able to handle empty properties. Therefore a new download is set on launchpad with dummy values for ip, username and password. To get the program running just make sure every key has a value e.g. password = a.

Infolog 1.0 released on launchpad

Today I registered my Infolog desktop application on launchpad and released version 1.0 ! For downloads of the project please visit: https://launchpad.net/infolog/.