GMTK Ported to GTK3

As part of the next release I wanted to be able to have gnome-mplayer be able to be compiled against GTK3. Since GMTK is the core of the next release, I needed to port it first. It only took about an hour to complete the work. gnome-mplayer will take more time to convert, but it should be something I should be able to do in a few hours.

GTMK running under GTK3

So I need to finalize 1.0.3 and then on to this work. It appears that GTK3 may not be able to be ported to Windows, because of the embedding in GTK3 being X specific.

Avant Window Navigator vs Gnome Shell Dock

The other day I wrote up how I liked the Gnome Shell Dock but it still left a little to be desired. Additionally, I was missing the weather app and some other functionality. So I installed the Avant Window Navigator and the AWN Extras package.

AWN with some minor customization

I found that this dock gives a little more flexibility. I particularly like the Simple Switcher and the Weather Applet. The Simple Switcher gives me the ability to flip between workspaces with just my mouse, something that I found missing in the Dock.

Gnome Shell Dock Extension

With Gnome Shell, I was feeling that I was going to the Activities menu quite a bit to switch tasks. The constant movement of the mouse from left to right was a little annoying.

I then found the Dock extension (RPM name is: gnome-shell-extensions-dock). And that actually seemed to make the shell much more enjoyable.

The dock is on the right of the screen

Clicking on the icons activated tasks that were active and I could start a new task by middle clicking on the icon, which is helpful for multiple terminals. I really recommend this extension.

Update: I have found that I prefer the Avant Window Navigator over the Dock Extension.. see this post 

Fedora 15 Bluetooth

After I upgraded from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 I found that Gnome was not showing my bluetooth devices and in fact it didn't detect any. However, lsusb found them with no problems.

I found bug #695588 at RedHat and it looked like systemctl may have not started it.

#systemctl status bluetooth.service
bluetooth.service - Bluetooth Manager
      Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service)
      Active: inactive (dead)
      CGroup: name=systemd:/system/bluetooth.service

#systemctl enable bluetooth.service
ln -s '/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service' '/etc/systemd/system/dbus-org.bluez.service'
ln -s '/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service' '/etc/systemd/system/bluetooth.target.wants/bluetooth.service'

#systemctl start bluetooth.service

After running those three commands, gnome now shows my devices.

Bluetooth devices

 

Gnome Mplayer 1.0 is out and whats next

Well now that gnome-mplayer 1.0 is out.. where to from here. I have a couple of ideas that I am working on and basically just lack for time to get them all done.

1. Conversion of gnome-mplayer to gtk3
2. Which means redoing the audio meter widget in Cairo
3. I also am converting the main mplayer control to a GTK Widget in libgmtk
4. Probably spawning libgmlib and libgmtk into their own SVN projects

Why do all this, I'm hoping that by making it a widget it will solve some of the weird GTK positioning side effects that I have to work around. So far I have a basic version of the widget working and it seems decent. I have a test harness working where I can use the media player widget and the tracker widget and have them working with each other.

So that is what I am working on...

Nautilus script to create mp3s from video files

Do you ever download a video off youtube and think "gee I wish I had an mp3 of that". Well here is a script for nautilus (the gnome file manager in linux) to help you create that mp3.

Create the file in $HOME/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts

I named it "Convert to MP3" and set the execute flags on the script (chmod a+x $HOME/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Convert\ to\ MP3)

#!/bin/bash

in_file="$1"
out_file=`echo "$in_file" | sed 's/\.\w*$/\.mp3/'`

ffmpeg -i "$in_file" -f mp3 -ab 128000 "$out_file"


This script requires ffmpeg to be installed for it to work. Once you install this script you should see a new menu item on the context menu of the files named Scripts if it was not already there, and then you should see your "Convert to MP3" option.

 

Select any video file, choose the "Convert to MP3" option and after a few seconds (depending on the size of the file) an mp3 file will be created with the same name as the original file. 

Hope you found this useful.