First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Thanks to Ivan Frade and Bruno Araujo, who helped getting SQLite support back into PyMaemo in the last week, all dependencies for gPodder on Fremantle are now fulfilled (the rest has either been removed, because Hildon gained functionality - e.g. hildon.PannableArea instead of mokoui.FingerScroll or because the dependency is not needed at the moment). I have also put feedparser into the Fremantle repositories, based on the Ubuntu source package (because it includes more fixes than the current version in Diablo and python-support is available in Fremantle).

It still has some rough edges, but now it should at least start up. Media Player integration is probably not working (because there is no Media Player in the SDK, I don't know how to interface with it) and there are some areas where we could make more use of the new Hildon UI (hildon.StackableWindow, ...).

If some nokia-closed components would be open-sourced, we should be able to get this working on Mer, too.

To all who have Fremantle running outside the SDK: Please test and report back any problems you encounter (no package link - you should be able to get gPodder 0.15.2-2+maemotest090523 from the extras-devel repository).

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Thanks!

According to the Application Manager: unable to install. Missing python-support 0.90.0 or bigger.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Please try again. I've updated both python-feedparser and gpodder to not make use of python-support (although it's a helpful thing for packaging and even porting python-support based libraries and applications from Debian/Ubuntu).

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Same thing with 0.15.2-2+maemotest090524 (man, you really know how to write long version names) ;)

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Could you please send me the output of:

and

(the first one works as normal user, the second one has to be run as root) after running this command (also as root):

Thanks

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

GPodder installs now in a Fremantle device!

I'll go through it in the following days.

First suggestion: what about offering a more generic collection of recommended podcasts? Now it's 100% Linux and free software.

This is something where you can get a lot of community help. What podcasts would you recommend to your friends?

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

First bugs coming in :)

Offer possibility to add a new podcast in first boot
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4682

Unnecessary Cancel button in first boot dialog
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4683

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Some quick comments on the UI as I go along (you are probably already aware of most of these):

- On the startup assistant, the two big buttons should ideally be finger- or thumb-buttons to get the proper themeing (HildonButtons with HILDON_SIZE_FINGER_HEIGHT flag).

- After pressing one of the buttons and getting the list, I cancelled the dialog by clicking outside. Now I got an empty window, and the menu doesn't open. I have to restart. Also, the title reads "gPodder - gPodder".

- "Do you really want to quit gpodder?" should be avoided if possible. It is much better to keep state between restarts if closing the window would otherwise be harmful.


In the "Find new podcasts" dialog:

- Notebooks should be avoided, of course the alternative is not obvious in this case. The most straight forward would be another view with three buttons. Perhaps this would work better with stackable windows, rather than a dialog. Or as a wizard with forward and back buttons (this would also allow to go back to the first page, which seems impossible right now).

- The entries should all be HildonEntries, and the buttons should be finger sized.

- The Top podcasts list is still using a scrolled window and not a proper Hildon style treeview.

- All treeviews should not have a header. The checkboxes should be removed in favour of using a hildon style listview in multi-selection mode.

- For the styling of the list view text items, I recommended DefaultSystemFont for the first row, and SmallSystemFont with SecondaryTextColor for the second row. No bold text. Implementing this can be tricky (and should be better documented), but it's a rough guideline.

- I'm not sure about this, but the Cancel button should probably the the lowest one.


"New episodes available" dialog:

- "New episodes available" text already appears in the dialog title, no need to repeat it (in big letters) in the dialog itself.

- "Select the episodes [..]" text may be superfluous, I would consider removing it in favour of more vertical space for the listview.

- Same comments about the list view as in "Find new podcasts" dialog.

- The "x episodes selected" text in the bottom right doesn't fit in the remaining space. The "select all" and "select none" buttons were probably meant to be moved to the right, as in the "Find new podcasts" dialog. On the other hand, that text doesn't seem very useful.


Main window:

- Treeview header should be removed.

- GtkPaned should not be used anymore, it would be better to split this up into two windows, one with a list of podcast directories and one actually listing all the podcasts (I expect people to rebel against this... but this is how the Fremantle UI should be used :)).

- No application menu? This is probably just a bug, as I can't see a way to add new podcasts now.

- The list of podcasts is lacking a highlight when pressed. Something is odd there.

- When I click on a podcast, I get an info screen with a textview that has dark text on dark background. This is probably a disabled textview? I will need to fix this, but a disabled textview is certainly not the best way to display this text. I would suggest a normal HildonTextView, with editable set to false. If you want a dark, borderless background, you can name the widget "hildon-readonly-textview". For a dark background with borders, you can name the widget "hildon-reversed-textview". Both of these probably won't work correctly in the SDK though.

- I cannot figure out how to actually play the podcast. It shows a yellow star in the list, but it's not obvious to me what this indicates.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Thanks for your review. Most of these have been fixed in 0.16.1-2fremantleui which is currently in the autobuilder and should be in extras-devel later today.

Done. Used THUMB_HEIGHT, as there are just two buttons on that window.

The title has been fixed. After cancelling the dialog, it pops up when selecting "Find new episodes" from the AppMenu.

Ok. gPodder is now asking only if there are downloads running. But even if downloads are running, they can be resumed from the current position on next startup, so it does remember state already.

I am also not sure how to do this. Ideally, this dialog and the "add new podcast via URL" dialog should probably be merged, too. Suggestions an mock-ups welcome :)

All fixed now, thanks for the detailed list :)

I am currently using Pango Markup to create the style. If you can tell me how to use that styling in Pango markup (or point me to the docs), that'd be helpful.

Cancel button gone, because the dialog can be closed by touching outside the dialog.

All fixed - have a look at the new dialog and tell me what you think.

Done.

I'll currently leave this as-is, but maybe the suggested splitting is a good idea for later. It would make too much navigation interaction in my opinion (go through three screens to read an episode description instead of two).

Yep, that's a bug. The AppMenu should be there already. Please send me the output of running in osso-xterm when trying to reproduce the bug (ideally, file a bug at bugs.maemo.org, Extras, gPodder.

Works for me here in the beta SDK. Please try to see if the new version has fixed this.

Ok, the problem was that the HildonTextView initially was in a GtkScrolledWindow which was then replaced by a HildonPannableArea. I'm now using the HildonPannableArea which gives the textview a white background.

The yellow star means "new". When you click on an episode, a new stackable window opens with the episode details. From that dialog, you can open the appmenu and the play button is there. Probably won't work at the moment, because there is no specification how to interact with the media player, and no media player in the SDK.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

The update fails to install: gpodder.postinst: line 9: maemo-select-menu-location: not found

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

I can't install gPodder 0.16.1-2fremantleui:

Also, this is not strictly a gPodder bug, but it's related.

fyi, I installed also the Pool game, but then it wouldn't allow me to uninstall gPodder. To reproduce:

1. Install gPodder.
2. Install Pool.
3. Uninstall gPodder.

Bug: gPodder is needed by Pool

4. Uninstall Pool - no problem.
5. Uninstall gPodder - no problem.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Thanks for the report. This has been fixed in 0.16.1-3fremantleui which is currently going through the autobuilder. Please re-test after that packages becomes available in extras-devel.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

You are probably experiencing the same bug as kanishou. Please try 0.16.1-3fremantleui, which should be available in extas-devel in the next minutes.

Looking at "apt-cache show pool" in the SDK, Pool depends on python2.5, python2.5-hildon and python2.5-gtk2. It does not directly depend on gpodder (gPodder depends on python, python-gtk2, python-hildon, python-feedparser, python-dbus). Maybe that's a but in the application manager? The output of "apt-get remove pool" in xterm would be more helpful, as it should say exactly what's going on (it would be nice if there was a "verbose" mode in application manager that showed problems just like apt-get).

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

I think I read somewhere that the command above isn't available in Fremantle, what should we use instead ?

Thanks !

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

You don't, AFAIK. :P

Fremantle does not have categories AFAIK. You can just check to see if maemo-menu-select-location exists:

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Taking the suggestion from http://maemo.org/community/council/m...issing_out_on/ and your suggestion into account, the "proper" way to do this for both Diablo and Fremantle would be something like the following:

Still, the question while installing is annoying (even when only shown on first-time installs), so I'm happy if that goes away and a better menu structure replaces the current menu.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

True, the full thing from my package which I had taken it from was:

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Horrible screen layouts. Huge buttons at the right and the unused space eat all the screen estate, while the actual readable columns are squeezed and cropped.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Which version have you tried? The latest one is 0.16.1-5fremantleui. The UI in the video is already old again ;)

The "new episodes available" dialog now looks like this:

http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...des_window.png
http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...es-appmenu.png

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Ok, so I fixed some other bugs and decided to put some screenshots here so you can see what has changed UI-wise since the video and screenshots have been published. You can find the current status and latest updates in the Wiki:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Stars/gPodder

The latest version is now 0.16.1-6fremantleui, and is available in Extras-Devel.

http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...ome_090616.png
http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...ory-090616.png
http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...tes_090616.png
http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...ces_090616.png
http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...ibe_090616.png

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Ah, good =) I am specifically referring to these dialogs though:

http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...ces_090616.png
http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...ory-090616.png

Especially in the second shot, it is easy to see that the empty space above the buttons in the right column can be much better utilized by expanding OPML address entry there. Also, the vacant space above the dialog is basically lost. Given that this dialog badly needs more vertical space, why not just make it full-screen and have a "close" button instead?

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

In fact, after some thinking, why not expand the list of podcasts to take the entire screen width (so that you can read the explanations) and move buttons to the bottom, making the dialog full-screen and adding a "close" button?

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Yep, that's probably a good idea. The dialog should probably converted to a StackableWindow like the "New episodes avaialbe" dialog as seen in post 19. This would allow more space and the buttons would not take any space, as they can be put in the AppMenu.

I've added this as an UI bug: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4690

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

There was a syntax error when I tried to install 0.16.1-5, in gui.py line 1970, just an extra ) at the end of the line.

After removing it gPodder launches, but I only get the main window. Application menu still doesn't work. Some comments based on this:

- The lists with the podcasts is quite slow. Is it doing any expensive operations while redrawing? Is it a direct child of the pannable area?

- The details page looks fine now, but I would put a big play button in the top right. The application menu is not discoverable enough. The option is also missing from my application menu, I only get "Do not download" or "Mark as new".

- The overshooting effect of the pannable with HildonTextView should be disabled, it doesn't look good with the way we draw the text view border (and that's not going to be fixed). There is a property for this.

- Still no highlight on the list when I tap, but the right item is selected when I go back.

- It also takes a pretty long time to get to the details after tapping on a podcast. If it needs to make a network connection, this would be a good time to enable the progress indicator while it's loading (hildon_gtk_window_set_progress_indicator()).


Regarding some earlier comments of you:

"I am currently using Pango Markup to create the style. If you can tell me how to use that styling in Pango markup (or point me to the docs), that'd be helpful."

That came up recently, but it's surprisingly involved right now for cell renderers. I'll try to get some example code.


"I'll currently leave this as-is, but maybe the suggested splitting is a good idea for later. It would make too much navigation interaction in my opinion (go through three screens to read an episode description instead of two)."

In practice, this is much less of a hassle than it sounds like. You trade one quick extra tap for much larger action buttons and clearer labels. If you absolutely want to stick with the two column layout, then it would still be preferable to remove the GtkPaned and just use a properly spaced HBox (like the HildonPicker with multiple columns).


"Yep, that's a bug. The AppMenu should be there already. Please send me the output of running
Code:

gpodder --maemo --verbose

in osso-xterm when trying to reproduce the bug"

Sadly, there's no output at all while tapping on the menu area. A lot of output before that. Without the --verbose flag, the most significant appear to be (shortened, can't copy and paste right now):

uibase.py:59: Unknown property: HildonPannableArea.window-placement

uibase.py:59: Unknown property: HildonPannableArea.shadow-type

gui.py:432: Cannot change the selection mode to anything other than GTK_SELECTION_NONE if hildon-ui-mode is GTK_HILDON_UI_MODE_NORMAL.

Although none of them seem to be critical.


There has just been another update while I'm writing this. This fixed the syntax error and the treeview scrolls faster now. Everything else is still the same though.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

The funny part is, it looks like due to the way Fremantle dialogs misuse screen estate, there is never a reason to use them for anything serious. Wondering if this should be filed as a bug for Fremantle...

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Or if you can live without "select all" and "select none", you could use an edit mode toolbar and place the "Add" button on the toolbar. Unfortunately I don't think you can have an application many at the same time. But you should not have a required action (like Add) which is only available from the application menu, so placing it on the edit mode toolbar would be a better fit.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Yep, the list is a direct child. The list itself is a GtkTreeView. It seems like it depends on how much text there is in the list.

That AppMenu problems you are having are quite strange, as it works here in the beta SDK. Are you the only one having this problem or are other testers also experiencing missing AppMenu items? Do you have the latest version of python-hildon installed? (see bug 4492)

Why is that not going to be fixed? It's the default in the UI, and if developers have to set that property every time they use this (adding a TextView into a PannableArea is something that is problably going to be done often). Also, it does not look so horrible in the theme of the SDK. Is it vovershoot-max that needs to be set to 0?

I need to know which list is affected, so I can reproduce and fix it here. The podcast list, the episode list or the downloads list?

Might be because the cover image is loaded/scaled. Does the loading time differ for different podcasts?

That'd be helpful, thanks! :)

Ok.

Might this be related to https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4492?

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Fremantle dialogs do not misuse screen estate. You get it all wrong:

See? Vertical space is more useful than horizontal space, therefore it's a good thing to... I mean, it's more useful to have ample space above buttons than to be able to read the full text... I mean... :eek:

( b f i
M e r n
a c o
y a m F
b u _ i
e s t n
_ e o l
i _ p a
t t _ n
' h t d
s e o .
_ y _ )
o _ b
n w o
l r t
y i t
_ t t
_ e o
_ _ m _ [Simply accept!]

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

I seem to have a version of python-hildon that should have the fix, so it's probably not that bug. But otherwise that would seem very likely.

Anyway, I am getting the startup dialog again, so some more comments based on that:

- On the Welcome to gPodder! screen, the buttons are thumb sized now, but not properly themed. I wonder what is up with that. Are those just standard buttons created with HILDON_SIZE_THUMB_HEIGHT, and you are not changing the widget name afterwards?

In the authentication dialog for my.gpodder:

- Entries should be HildonEntries and perhaps use placeholder text instead of labels. It works well here, because the entries are not filled by default. I'm not sure if password entries support placeholder text, but I think so. If you keep the labels, they should not be bold and perhaps use SecondaryTextColor.

- The descriptive text seems unnecessary, I would just keep the lock icon and the "login to my.gpodder.org" label, and not use bold text. If you keep two lines, a common way to format it would be to use standard font for the first line, standard font (or SmallSystemFont) with SecondaryTextColor for the second line.

- Some padding between the descriptive text and the entries would be nice though.

- The "New user button" should be above the OK button, instead of top aligned.

- The OK button has a mnemonic that isn't necessary (we should disable that of course, but it may not be a good idea to use stock IDs for now), and it would be more fitting to use a verb label, e.g. "Sign in".

- Entries still don't have the right size. Buttons don't get the right themeing hint. I'm starting to wonder if it might be a limitation of the SDK or Python bindings.


As for getting pango compatible strings for logical fonts and colors, this should help:

For colours, you should be able to get the GdkColor from a logical string with gtk_style_lookup_color() and then turn it into a pango compatible string with gdk_color_to_string().

For logical fonts, you can get the GtkStyle with gtk_rc_get_style_by_paths() (using the logical color name as widget_path), and pango_font_description_to_string() on the font-desc member of the style.

None of this is confirmed or tested, but hopefully it will help you out.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

The AppMenu problem is being discussed at https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4682 - please subscribe there to help.

No, they're defined in the GtkBuilder .ui file as HildonButton with the properties "label", "visible" and "size" set:

http://repo.or.cz/w/gpodder.git?a=bl.../fremantle#l62

Also, it looks fine in the SDK:

http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/images/...ome_090616.png

Having a different theme/engine in the SDK and in the device (with major differences in rendering buttons, etc...) is really bad. Developers can test how things look in the SDK, but it's hard to find out what is wrong when not being able to test directly with the real theme. At least the theme *engine* should be the same in the SDK, if you don't want to publish the "final" theme (engine + colors, graphics, styles) right now.

Filed as https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4709 - you can subscribe there to get notified when this has been fixed and is ready for a new review.

Filed a bug report at https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4710

I can't implement this, as the current theme on the devices seems to be different from the themes in the beta SDK, and I can't reproduce most of the UI/style/theme bugs you have here. Kind of an awkward situation :/

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Ok, I don't know anything about how it works with .ui files, something to look into.

Actually that's not quite fine. :) But it's difficult to see without knowing what to look for. Notice that the buttons are flat in the middle, that is because they have to scale to various sizes. If it would be using the correct graphics, the buttons would have a smooth gradient over the whole height. Of course there is no rush to get this just right already, I'm just mentioning these things now because they will be very common issues.


The engine is the same, but of course the theme and layout are still a work in progress, so details are changing all the time. The only way the product theme differs from the devel theme is in the template graphics.


Why can't you implement this? The logical colour and font definition should be available in the SDK theme too (they have been there almost from the very beginning). Of course, this is again not something to be overly concerned about at this stage. Details of the UI can still be tweaked after Fremantle is released, and developers can get a better idea of the common look and feel by then.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Ok, I played around and found out that it's really a bug in Hildon/GtkBuilder. I have created a bug report:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4718

And here is a screenshot which shows the different appearance (I hope that's what you were talking about):

https://bugs.maemo.org/attachment.cg...33&action=view

Ok, I got the logical font definition, which is quite easy actually after following your instructions and reading the PyGTK/GTK+ docs:

https://bugs.maemo.org/attachment.cgi?id=1232

Still no success with getting the logical font color. A more specific, minimalistic example in C or Python would be very helpful :) The "color" code snippet should probably be added to this bug as a comment:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4710

Thanks :)

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Because the AppMenu bug (app menu not showing since beta2) is easy to fix and will allow for more testing, I decided to quickly fix this and uploaded an updated package, so testing can move forward. gPodder 0.16.1-7fremantleui is the new package version and should be in extras-devel today (currently in the autobuilder).

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Thanks! Now I can play again with the gPodder UI.

Another bug, and it's too late to file it properly, sorry. You will understand it easily though. When starting the download of an item comes an error message:

OSM2Go had a similar problem with the route to download maps, but Master of Gizmo fixed it a while ago.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

On the new devices, will $HOME be the storage location user data (audio files, etc..)? Or where are the SD cards (if any) mounted?

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Yes, user-specific data of the applications should be stored in the $HOME folder.

Cheers Daniel

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Ok then. Version 0.16.1-8fremantleui should put downloads in "gPodder-Podcasts" just below $HOME.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Downloading works just fine now. Thanks!

Playing mp3 podcasts from GPodder works just fine, but I couldn't make any videos play as for yet. Perhaps I should try harder. YouTube videos would bump the Media Player but no video would show up.

Can someone recommend a vlog using a very conventional media format, only to test that the connection between GPodder and video player works?

Anyway, good work and definitely this is ready for extras-testing.

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Diggnation: http://revision3.com/diggnation

On the right side of the page that comes up there's a box that reads "Subscribe". Expand the "Episode RSS" portion of the box and you'll find the RSS feeds for the show. The good thing about this particular show is that they put it out in several different formats, so it would be a very good testbed for gPodder and any other Gstreamer program.

Formats: MP3 high quality, MP4 high quality, Quicktime Low Med and High quality, WMV normal and high quality, and XVID normal and high quality. Have at it!

Re: First test release of gPodder for Fremantle
 

Alternatively, use "mplayer" (is that in Fremantle already?) for video playback, as it provides support for lots of different video formats. For GStreamer-based media players, I recommend to install the packages "gstreamer0.10-plugins-{base,good,bad,ugly}". These exist in Debian, but I don't know if they will work fine in Maemo if just re-compiled.

That said, if audio playback works, video playback should too, as the same method is used to invoke the media player.

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad downloading and playback works now :)