Puppy 4.2 Deep Thought Development

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polymath · #201 Post by **polymath** » Fri 13 Feb 2009, 13:39

One quick question. I want to contribute to puppy, but i have no idea how (plus my hands are full with develpup right now). I'm a pretty good programmer, but have only done console applications using standard libs (no sys/linux.h for me yet) and haven't done much work with pretty much any third party library (the only non-stdlib project i have is my hobby OS, written from scratch in C++). I'm not fluent in any language except english, so i can't translate, and there isn't really much i know i can do.

I haven't worked with much of puppy's underlying mechanics, but i know some simple stuff. If someone could help me descern what to help with, that'd be great

#202 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:36

polymath wrote:One quick question. I want to contribute to puppy, but i have no idea how (plus my hands are full with develpup right now). I'm a pretty good programmer, but have only done console applications using standard libs (no sys/linux.h for me yet) and haven't done much work with pretty much any third party library (the only non-stdlib project i have is my hobby OS, written from scratch in C++). I'm not fluent in any language except english, so i can't translate, and there isn't really much i know i can do.

I haven't worked with much of puppy's underlying mechanics, but i know some simple stuff. If someone could help me descern what to help with, that'd be great

Can you write GUI or front ends to applications? If so you could take my VLC package and make a gtk or C front end to it, right now its around 7.8 MB pet and thats really small for VLC, but if someone would make a gtk gui for it, I could remove the wxgtk libs and it would be around 4MB maybe even a bit less, There is full documentation on running VLC via command line, So with that in mind it could be somewhat a simple but long task for anyone who is GUI savvy.
It wouldn't have to full featured, but some features.
Well its an idea, and if VLC was that small it could replace Gxine.
Thanks for reading
ttuuxxx

#203 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sat 14 Feb 2009, 05:21

I don't really have any suggestions, because when I think of something I need, I generally just do it myself.

I guess what you could do is start a thread explaining what you know, what you're willing to learn as you go, and requesting suggestions for things people need that fit those parameters. Show some examples of what you've already done, to help inspire people.

If you want to better understand Puppy, the first thing to do is learn about shell scripting with BASH. Shell scripts form the glue that holds Puppy together, and are extremely useful in the *nix world. Also useful is the how-puppy-works page, though it's slightly dated. The basic structure hasn't changed though.
http://www.puppylinux.com/development/h ... works.html

WhoDo · #204 Post by **WhoDo** » Sat 14 Feb 2009, 08:12

polymath wrote:One quick question. I want to contribute to puppy, but i have no idea how ...[snip]... If someone could help me descern what to help with, that'd be great

Extra hands are always welcome on the dev team. I second PG's suggestion; start with BASH.

I also second ttuuxxx's suggestion; when BASH bores you, play with tcl/tk, gnocl, puppybasic, glade, etc.

The really BIG thing we need right now (it will change of course) is anything that makes life easier for newbies and refugees. Recent classic examples include RoxRightClicks from Hairywill, Pwidgets from Zigbert/trio/01micko and company, gpicview with slideshow also from HairyWill, ttuuxxx's Icewm and Seamonkey rebuilds, etc. I'd better stop there or it will look like a complete list that leaves someone important out and I wouldn't want to do that.

Oh and keep enjoying Develpup, too!

#205 Post by **BÃ©Ã¨m** » Sat 14 Feb 2009, 08:21

WhoDo wrote:The really BIG thing we need right now (it will change of course) is anything that makes life easier for newbies and refugees. Recent classic examples include RoxRightClicks from Hairywill, Pwidgets from Zigbert/trio/01micko and company, gpicview with slideshow also from HairyWill, ttuuxxx's Icewm and Seamonkey rebuilds, etc. I'd better stop there or it will look like a complete list that leaves someone important out and I wouldn't want to do that.

I can really agree with this.
Trying to respond in beginners and users as much as I can I feel there is a lack of intuitive configurability for Puppy.

Hope to see some development in the near future for this aspect.

polymath · #206 Post by **polymath** » Mon 16 Feb 2009, 16:38

well... i've done some shell scripting before, hacked my createpuppy script for develpup (pretty simply), and i've also tweaked fixPuppyPin to use for my own purposes on PLDE. I still don't get sed, though.

As for programming skills i've only programed c++ for about a year but am progressing quickly. If anyone wants as an example i can post the code for my hobby OS kernel (though that doesn't seem nessecary on a linux forum), but most of the stuff i've done is helping people on the dreamincode.net forums and my puplet(s- if you count PLDE as a puplet in its own right).

I'd like to work with GUIs but haven't found a "goal" that seems like it matters... i only have experience in console apps right now. Puppybasic looks interesting, i'll have to look into that.

Basically: I'm not a real newbie, but i'm not a guru either. i'm somewhere stuck in that intermediate phase. if anyone wants me to do something for puppy, i'd be willing to do what i can

WhoDo · #207 Post by **WhoDo** » Mon 16 Feb 2009, 20:49

polymath wrote:if anyone wants me to do something for puppy, i'd be willing to do what i can

How about creating a Puppy Control Panel? Build the GUI (dvw86 started but didn't finish), make use of as many inbuilt features, scripts, wizards as possible and then add what's missing. The Wizard wizard is a good start but nowhere near complete. Now THERE'S a project for you, polymath!

droope · #208 Post by **droope** » Mon 16 Feb 2009, 22:24

HI there. Will localization be taken into account for adding to 4.12? No weight issues involved, since there a few extra kb (10, if that many) for every script.

Sorry to be so histerical, but that's who I am, can't help it.

Cheers,
droope

#209 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 04:35

Technically, I think the term you mean is internationalization (or i18n for short) - the process of making something localizable. Localization is the process of adjusting it to work with a given locale (adding the translations, for example).

I only bring this up because yesterday I thought I'd look up how to make my C/C++ programs internationalized, but was searching under the wrong term. It took quite a long while and much cursing to figure out why I couldn't find anything worth knowing. I was getting ready to just say forget it, drop all text from the program, and replace them with images, and maybe tool-tips with cartoonish text-less explanations.

Maybe I'll still do that in the end (superior method, IMHO, as works also for illiterates), but I need to learn i18n anyways.

#210 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 04:54

Pizzasgood wrote:Technically, I think the term you mean is internationalization (or i18n for short) - the process of making something localizable. Localization is the process of adjusting it to work with a given locale (adding the translations, for example).

I only bring this up because yesterday I thought I'd look up how to make my C/C++ programs internationalized, but was searching under the wrong term. It took quite a long while and much cursing to figure out why I couldn't find anything worth knowing. I was getting ready to just say forget it, drop all text from the program, and replace them with images, and maybe tool-tips with cartoonish text-less explanations.

Maybe I'll still do that in the end (superior method, IMHO, as works also for illiterates), but I need to learn i18n anyways.

yes that method works, probably the best learning method,, I learn better from examples than reading. But image sizes can be the downfall, plain flat, 8 colours or less without transparent backgrounds is usually the best rule of thumb. Thats why I fail at making such documents, I really like the flashy bling look.

Its almost getting to the point where we would almost have 2 types of puppy, strict English and Internationalised. All depends on the size I guess, but with the latest model being so close to the 100MB limit. We would almost need a separate department just for for it. Language support files in some programs are almost the size the program, Gimp is one, you removed the language files and save about 5MB compressed. Would i18n cover these files or do you need them also?
ttuuxxx

#211 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 05:44

The idea is to just set up everything in Puppy so that it looks for and will use the translations if they exist. The default ISO could still be shipped with just the English translations to save on size, but because it would be internationalized, people could download language packs for it, change their LANG variable, and then continue running their newly localized copy of Perrito Linux.

#212 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 06:09

Pizzasgood wrote:The idea is to just set up everything in Puppy so that it looks for and will use the translations if they exist. The default ISO could still be shipped with just the English translations to save on size, but because it would be internationalized, people could download language packs for it, change their LANG variable, and then continue running their newly localized copy of Perrito Linux.

How would that work?, Like when I compile a program I would have to make a locales folder and submit it to someone handling the 'internationalism' Shem <--She/him lol would then rip it apart add each locale file to their corresponding language folder then repackage it for release?
Plus probably the network manager should auto-open after boot with a flag screen where you select the flag on the list then it translates the networkmanger dialog to what ever language, the user sets up their account, then when its finished, If it used any other language other than English It would ask, Would you like to convert this Operating system to your locale language of '@@@@@@', if the user clicks yes, then it downloads which ever flag was chosen support, Then installs and restarts X--server.
what that be what your thinking??
ttuuxxx

#213 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 07:13

I'm not sure what the best way to do it for Puppy overall, as a system, would be. Being a native English speaker I've never had much reason to think about it. I suppose the thing to do would be to just go see how the other distros handle it, then see whether that model would be a good method for Puppy.

I'm not really thinking much about it now either. Not yet. A fully internationalized Puppy is on my list - next, in fact, right after seeing Puppy moved into a revision management deal, which is the current top item. (Will have more to say about that soon, maybe by the weekend). But for now I'm not really thinking about it much. I've been too swamped to operate on anything but a now-and-tomorrow basis.

At least I smell like solder again, for the first time in six months. And this time around I didn't make my fingers sizzle. (Not that doing so is a common thing for me or anything. It's just an occasional result of having been born with a severe defect that sometimes gets in my way: I have only two hands.)

#214 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 11:10

[quote="Pizzasgood"][/quote]
I was wonder as images goes there is a website called http://www.openclipart.org/
Basically all the images are free to the public eg. 'Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons'
most of the images aren't complex colours either and you can download a daily snapshot of all the images(which hasn't been updated since 2005, Slackers

in 1 very large tar.gz around 121MB which probably would be enough images to make any sort of how to.
here's one below and the latests 121MB tar.gz release of 6900 images
http://openclipart.org/downloads/0.18/o ... ull.tar.gz
ttuuxxx

droope · #215 Post by **droope** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 19:46

Pizzasgood wrote:Technically, I think the term you mean is internationalization (or i18n for short) - the process of making something localizable. Localization is the process of adjusting it to work with a given locale (adding the translations, for example).

I only bring this up because yesterday I thought I'd look up how to make my C/C++ programs internationalized, but was searching under the wrong term. It took quite a long while and much cursing to figure out why I couldn't find anything worth knowing. I was getting ready to just say forget it, drop all text from the program, and replace them with images, and maybe tool-tips with cartoonish text-less explanations.

Maybe I'll still do that in the end (superior method, IMHO, as works also for illiterates), but I need to learn i18n anyways.

Ah, I knew the word was wrong, but didn't know how wrong it was.

Will someone please tell me that te scripts will be placed inside 4.2? There has been a lot of teamwork done between esmorguit and me (mostly esmorguit, since i messed everything up) and i think it wouldn't be fair that the 4.2 launches without the scripts...

droope · #216 Post by **droope** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 19:50

ttuuxxx wrote:
Pizzasgood wrote:The idea is to just set up everything in Puppy so that it looks for and will use the translations if they exist. The default ISO could still be shipped with just the English translations to save on size, but because it would be internationalized, people could download language packs for it, change their LANG variable, and then continue running their newly localized copy of Perrito Linux.
How would that work?, Like when I compile a program I would have to make a locales folder and submit it to someone handling the 'internationalism' Shem <--She/him lol would then rip it apart add each locale file to their corresponding language folder then repackage it for release?
Plus probably the network manager should auto-open after boot with a flag screen where you select the flag on the list then it translates the networkmanger dialog to what ever language, the user sets up their account, then when its finished, If it used any other language other than English It would ask, Would you like to convert this Operating system to your locale language of '@@@@@@', if the user clicks yes, then it downloads which ever flag was chosen support, Then installs and restarts X--server.
what that be what your thinking??
ttuuxxx

It would be complicated, because if the network manager isn't run, the user wouldn't have a conection to download the packages

My idea would be to just have the english mo to save size for now. Step by step. If you would like, there is the possibility of letting the people know that translations exist.

Cheers
Droope

WhoDo · #217 Post by **WhoDo** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 20:40

droope wrote:Will someone please tell me that te scripts will be placed inside 4.2?

First question ... which scripts? Second question ... where are they?

I spend a lot of time ploughing through the relevant threads looking for things that need to be included, but inevitably I miss some things. Then there are the "mountains" of PM's offering updates, suggestions, questions, etc. I'm not retired like Barry and so I have far fewer hours in my Puppy day to attend to these things.

If you want anything included you'll need to ensure I know exactly what it is, where it is and what it does ... and that's not just for your contributions but ALL contributions.

amigo · #218 Post by **amigo** » Tue 17 Feb 2009, 20:55

It looks to me like you should include the localizations for the basic setup programs at least.

#219 Post by **BÃ©Ã¨m** » Fri 20 Feb 2009, 18:24

Is there another thread opened for this?

Aitch · #220 Post by **Aitch** » Fri 20 Feb 2009, 18:57

droope/anyone else interested

I found a i18n version/patch for Dillo

http://www.freshports.org/www/dillo-i18n/

HTH

Aitch

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