Older news

January 20th 2001 - released 1.9.98

It shouldn't cause too much hassle around the world and I won't comment if it ever does...

The only cause of problems might be the new way I use to deal with Python on system that does provide a static version but not a dynamic one. This was tested on a few system but I won't say it is 100% sure if will work everywhere.

OK. You are now free to download it.

January 14th 2001 - playing with gtk+ 1.3

I'll face 4 weeks of exams from tomorrow to early February so I'm back to usual things I do while in exams: I re-installed ZAngband, downloaded stuffs to play with, ... useful work.

One of the thing I did was to give a try to the beta of glib and gtk+ 2.0 and see how incompatible they are with current stable versions. Surprise: after I tweaked my configure script to detect the new libs everything went flawlessly (excepted a few non-critical glitches) and I had Gaby running. Great.

But the real idea was to test if this idea of framebuffer GTK+ was really working in the real world. So after I manually patched the kernel to get my old S3 running in framebuffer mode (the available patch was from kernels 2.2; I should put mine somewhere...) I recompiled GTK+ with linux-fb support, recompiled gaby and launched it. And it worked. Really great.

I can now go back to ZAn^H^H^Hbooks.

January 11th 2001 - new home

I'll first wish you an happy new year; wish delayed by NetPedia who screwed up badly with the website for the new millenium.

So I moved the website to SourceForge and that seems really great :)

December 29th 2000 - released 1.9.97

The last release of the millenium is still considered beta and you should try hard to break it so next year can bring us bug free softwares...

This is also the first release for which I provide binary packages on the downloads page.

December 23th 2000 - 1.9.97 next week, probably

I had a hard time at school those last two weeks mucking with Oracle Application Server (what a lousy way to create dynamic web sites), NT services (what a pain) and DCOM (oh the horror) but it's finally over and I plan to release the third beta of 2.0 next week.

It will mostly be bug fixes and documentation updates. No major problem expected (as usual (and as usual that doesn't mean anything...)).

December 11th 2000 - ISP dead, film at 11

It is dead about 1 day per week -- bouncing mails all around the world. They will be the second against the wall when the revolution comes (as would say Douglas Adams...).

I just created an account on a free ISP with the hope it will be better handled; you might want to join me at fpeters@tiscalinet.be.

UPThu, 17 Jan 2002 11:02:22: it is now running again; if you sent mail and got a response from the mailserver you should try again now.

December 10th 2000 - First fix, second beta release

I failed miserably on my configure.in test so I release this new one as a quick (and hopefully correct) fix.

December 9th 2000 - First beta release: 1.9.95

I'm so happy I can't think of proper words to describe this first beta of what should be Gaby 2.0 around the new millenium. Luckily it is such a big event that I thought about writing a press release for the Gnome News site so if you really want to know it is worth downloading the tarball you can read it.

Actually I would suggest you to download first because someone could post that to /. and kill all the bandwith...

November 26th 2000 - 'Crash me up' release next week

• I've been iterating over my TODO list items for the last few days;
• I've spent time compiling it with/without Gnome, Python, Imlib, gdk-pixbuf, ...;
• I've been checking the configure script and the Makefiles;
• I've fixed a few bugs;
• I've even worked a bit on the documentation !

It really looks like I want to release something :)

November 22nd 2000 - planning 2.0.0

I have great plans for Gaby but since I feel it is already fairly stable I might want to release an officially stable release before moving further.

Currently unapproved calendar says I might release 1.9.99 around December 9th, wait one or two weeks for comments and then proceed to rename it 2.0.0 before the new millenium.

If you want to know about the plans: the first one is to extend Gaby to be useful as a front-end for PostgreSQL, MySQL or whatever database you want (I don't think I'll work on that part again before 2.0) and the second one would be to write a tool much like glade to create forms (the code to deal with user defined forms is already there and working but needs intimate knowledge of Gaby). Other ideas will also popup...

As for now: documentation and bug squashing.

November 19th 2000 - released 1.9.25

This is not the new millenium release since I expect to be able to get another one out this year but it is a nice release and you shouldn't expect problems unless you want them and turn on PostgreSQL support...

Happy testing !

October 25th 2000 - silent

Real life has taken over. I hope to get back to real Gaby work in a few weeks. Enjoy the current release :)

September 27th 2000 - released 1.9.24

I release it now because I'll probably be unreachable next week and wanted a few days to get feedback on this release before.

As stated previously there are no major enhancements and I don't expect big scary monsters to eat you if you decide to use it. I think you're in a safe place now :)

September 25th 2000 - next release soon

It won't have really new stuffs (bug fixes and minor improvements) for the normal user but it will include the new possibility to use PostgreSQL as backend database (and some documentation on how to achieve that (this is the part holding the release...)). This is for people with too much time on their hand...

September 16th 2000 - not enough time but coding

Well... large client-server applications are overkill (...). That sentence still holds but that was not the sole reason that pushed me to create Gaby. And I acknowledge that those large SQL servers are less overkill in terms of computers resources now than two years ago but they are still overkill in terms of user resources...

So I just started adding the possibility to use PostgreSQL as a backend database. That will be interesting...

September 11th 2000 - dozens of things, unrelated

I have many projects right now (both Gaby, Debian and real life ones). And not many hours.

Not easy to keep up.

August 31st 2000 - 1.9.23: you may now party

I managed to release it before September. Great :)

[insert usual blah about how this release is the best one]. Seriously I really think so and the proof is that it compiles right out of the box. I tested that no more than 5 minutes ago both with Gnome/libglade/python/... and with GTK+ only. And they both worked.

August 26th 2000 - busy at work

No updates for nearly two weeks... What happened ? Simple: work. Nice work, GNU/Linux related but it really sucks my free time.

Anyway there are a few changes since the last update of this page: I finished a druid to help create new databases in the builder (that's the big change) and I sanitized lots of things that came back from the early days.

I'd like to find the time to release 1.9.23 soon but I guess it won't be before September 6th. (this would allow me to finish a few Python related ideas)

August 13th 2000 - coding again

Fredrik Eriksson discovered that real numbers are not the most reliable thing on earth and asked me if there was a solution. So I added a 'decimal' type that should save numbers with up to 2 decimals without any risk of loss.

August 9th 2000 - lost changes

The work I did on Gaby during Coniston was on the laptop of a friend and I forgot to upload them somewhere. And that friend already removed my home directory. Aaargh.

Update: I managed to find something on my Mac SE/30 but it has not every changes I made. But it's better than nothing.

August 7th 2000 - back home

Back home and reading mails...

August 4th 2000 - at Coniston (part 6)

See yesterday entry.

It looks like LBW will be over soon. :(

August 3rd 2000 - at Coniston (part 5)

Good job on the cluster, too much beer. See you tomorrow.

August 2nd 2000 - at Coniston (part 4)

Today was our beowulf day (well once it stopped raining that much that I feared leaving the camp site). About our cluster: 5 nodes (486, low-end pentium and one high end one). The idea was to use Red Hat (which "has" cluster support built-in) two days ago but that morning the idea became to switch to Debian (and accelerate the process (unrelated?)). The result is that by 10pm we managed to render an ugly penguin with a pvm enhanced version of povray.

No work on Gaby at all today...

August 1st 2000 - at Coniston (part 3)

Back to a laptop to edit this comment...

I'll start this comment by yesterday night weather: rain, wind, I thought I would never be able to sleep but it was already late (around 3am) (playing with the beowulf project) and I felf in sleep without less problems than expected.

About today: I worked on the beowulf in the morning then we moved for an hike the afternoon. Cool. (I think I also typed a few lines for Gaby but I can't remember for sure...)

July 31th 2000 - at Coniston (part 2)

As (now) usual, this is edited by hand; this time on my Macintosh SE/30.

It rained all the night and stopped around 11pm today. That means the hike planned for today was cancelled and I spent 2 hours coding on Gaby (nice idea isn't it ?).

The afternoon (and evening) is now being spent on building a wonderful beowulf cluster (named connie) made of old 486, Sparc stations and some newer computers. It's quite fun, we face a lot of problems on the clustering part has not even begun.

That's all for today.

July 30th 2000 - at Coniston (part 1)

This update is also edited by hand on a laptop (not the same as the last one but still not mine) because vi on my Macintosh SE/30 is not up to the task.

Anyway the first thing I have to write is completly unrelated: I experience lots of problems connecting to netpedia (are they upgrading their system?) during European daay hours and that's a real problem to update this site (waiting midnight seems to be the only solution)

If I write this it means we successfully arrived and everything's going well. (sure the moskitos are annoying but...)

On the Gaby side of the (oops my) world I got the idea to create a Gnome druid to assist in creating a new database. It would be launched on the builder startup on would help to create a new descfile in about 5 (small) dialog boxes. I'm not really able to code here but I'll code that once I'll be back home. That's currently the only new feature I decide to add during this week, expect more later (I hope).

July 28th 2000 - on the road to Coniston

This update is edited by hand on a laptop (not mine) and that means the box at the left is no longer up-to-date.

Currently there is not a lot of things to write down: I'm only in Brussels (100km from home) with a friend (eric) and a guy (casper) from Netherlands who will come with us.

We should get up early tomorrow morning, move to take the ferry boat and arrive in Dover two hours later. Then it will be 600km (no miles, sorry) to Coniston. Then I'll try to update this page.

July 27th 2000 - Away (LBW)

It finally arrived. I'm moving tonight to the LBW 2000. I'll be back around August 7th.

Nothing else to say. I got a big bag to put on my back (no word with more than three letters: wow...)

July 22th 2000 - Stuck in dozens of projects

I am enjoying what is called "holidays" and should have plenty of time to work on Gaby. The thing is that yes, I have plenty of time and no, that is not enough :( I began several projects (discussion site a la poor Slashdot for a friend), little app that can't be resumed in 5 word (network and ipchains related) for another friend, Gnome control center 'capplet' to configure network interfaces on Debian, ...) and that sucks my time :)

And there may be some days I'll work next week then it will be LBW 2000 to August 6th then some free days before two weeks of work (from August 17th to 31st).

Busy. Tired. (Famous last words)

July 12th 2000 - More about LSM

I promised that two days ago so here is (shortly) how things went in Bordeaux:

• 5/7: I arrive and Wichert has just started to give his talk (speech from the throne) for Debian. Basic stuffs we all knew. I spend the evening (and night?) with a Belgian friend in the city
• 6/7: I wake up (hardly) to watch the conference about the Hurd given by Neal (?) then it is Hurd by Richard M. Stallman. Restaurant in the evening with a lot of people. Back to the dorms where I discover some cool Debianers in a room with wine. Night.
• 7/7: I manage one more time to wake up early enough. Conference about Pingu (sp?) (school-oriented distrib based on Debian) (not fascinating) then talk by Anthony Towns about package pools (interesting). Afternoon: presentation by Christoph Lameter of its telemetry box (based on Debian) (really cool; I got one credit-card sized CD) then I missed Dale Scheetz talk about new maintainer because I was reading my mails and forgot to get back to the conference room. Evening in Bordeaux with linuxconf and libxml authors (and others). I think I managed to go to bed before 2am.
• 8/7: Yet another hard time waking up. Little time with Debianers to talk about what will be said in the synthesis then I reached RMS conf about 'Free Software' (its long-matured talk). I think I reached a bit after the time he explained why he created the FSF. (RMS gave its talk in French). Afternoon: synthesis for (nearly) every topic discussed. Then wine for everybody to end the first LSM (and I managed to speak to RMS). Evening in Bordeaux with Debianers and others. End of the night in a Debian room in the dorms.
• 9/7: Decided not to wake up for 9am (please, one more hour...). Day for 'coding parties'. I only added support for HTTO POST request to snarf. Midday in Bordeaux for the last time in a restaurant. Everybody leaves. Night where I can sleep before midnight.
• 10/7: Waking up around 10pm, cleaning the room then moving to Bordeaux to get the train (at 2pm). Back home 9 hours later.

Unrelated: before Bordeaux I bought a CD from Zita Swoon (I paint pictures on a wedding dress) and it is really cool.

July 10th 2000 - back from Bordeaux

I am back from Libre Software Meeting (in Bordeaux, France) for 15 minutes now and I'm too tired to write a long description about what happened there -- I'll try to do that tomorrow. (it was pretty cool)

July 3rd 2000 - 1.9.22 problems; away

I screwed a little 1.9.22: you should configure with --enable-gui to get a working GUI (I hope). Unrelated but I'll be out from wednesday to monday: keep your mails on hold.

July 1st 2000 - released 1.9.22; good.

I didn't anticipate this but I have a few days (until wednesday) without much to do and that means I had the time to fix a few things and build and 1.9.22 tarball..

This one features more bug fix than enhancements but should let me work quietly on documentation for several weeks...

June 26th 2000 - CSS, exams, next release

I had the "pleasure" to check this website in several browser this week-end and was very disappointed: it looked like crap both in Netscape 4 and IE5 (yes I had to touch one) so I tried to apply the new colors to the old layout; I'm not really happy about the situation but I don't want to force everybody to use Mozilla or Lynx.

Exams: last one tomorrow. No bet.

Regarding Gaby I really want to release that bug-fix release but I don't know when I'll be able to do that. I'll try to do all the real world quickly enough tomorrow (exam (huh) but I also have to go to the train station and to my bank) and upload it in the evening because if it's not done tomorrow I really have doubts about being able to do it before mid-July... We'll see...

June 16th 2000 - Birthday, exams and CSS

Useless news first: I turned 21 today and that means nothing since in Belgium everything is allowed at 18... Everything is fine: my exams will soon be finished (11 days), I got a student job where I'll teach wonderful things from Using the VI editor to Running ./configure (really cool job, thanks to Arafox), I'll go to the 0th Debian conference (at Libre Software Meeting, Bordeaux, France) then I'll code then I'll go to the LBW 2000 then... Pretty cool holidays.

About Gaby: I hope to release a bugfix release next week (wednesday?) that will only be bugfixes. It will work out of the box on HP-UX (as if anybody was interested :) ) and provides a few niceties.

About the website: I switched to the new layout; I hope it renders correctly for you. Please warn me about problems.

June 4th 2000 - Final exams and CSS

Since I decided in the previous newsitem that I shouldn't forget about my exams (and since I have something to write about them) here is my comment about my first two exams (since you're not interested I suggest you to directly skip to the second paragraph). Monday: OpenVMS (theory), nothing great to tell if you don't want to know about VMS deals with its virtual memory :) Wednesday: Programming Windows (lab), I had my FSF T-shirt and I sang the Free Software Song before attending so everything went smoothly (excepted Windows 2000 :) ) and I showed the teacher the app that should bring shame on me for at least eleven generations.

And voila the news about Gaby: I spent a few hours learning CSS and converted this web site so it can now uses stylesheets. I only tested it with Mozilla and Lynx so I won't switch now (I should at least test it with Netscape 4.0). If you want to know how it looks at home I added a screenshot featuring Mozilla and the new LaTeX print plug-in. If you want to see the new look in details I uploaded the "What is Gaby ?" page here. (don't forget to tell me about any problem you might discover there)

May 27th 2000 - Final exams and Gnome 1.2

I decided every news items will start with 'Final exams' to remind me I'd better spend my time studying than updating this page :) But it looks like those exams won't be as hard as I thought (note that I write this before the first one) and since I finished both important projects of this year (OpenVMS and C++) I'm fairly confident I'll manage to be alive at the end of June :)

Well... here is something about Gaby: since Gnome 1.2 is out and it uses gdk-pixbuf I will rewrite the image support to use gdk-pixbuf too. (this is not a problem for the GTK+ only version since gdk-pixbuf doesn't depend upon any gnome lib.)

As for my plans for July: I'll attend the first (actually it is the 0th) Debian conference then spend twoor three weeks coding on Gaby before moving to Coniston for the LBW2000 where I'll try to gather ideas about things to code in August :)

May 19th 2000 - Final exams and HP-UX

It looks like I'll have enough time to finish the VMS application I have to do for school before the exam but that kept me busy for the last week and will at least for a few days (then it will be exams <grrrrr>). This means I won't release anything before... WHAT? MY LAST EXAM IS ON JUNE 27TH? ARE THEY CRAZY ??? ...before a long time :(

Anyway Gaby now works on HP-UX and Mehdi Lavasani put a release (patched 1.9.21) on HPUX Archive. That's cool.

May 11th 2000 - Joe Linux User and .so files

Slashdot had an article about a Free Software survey made by Orbiten. It is very funny to see I wrote less than 40% of Gaby and that joe@linux.org (Joe Linux User) (the sample e-mail I used in a list box) wrote a tiny part of Gaby. Talk about statistics...

On the technical side, Mehdi Lavasani tried to compile Gaby on HP-UX and experienced a few problems; the bigger being that .so files don't have a .so extension ! (they're named .sl). I'll have a fix tomorrow.

May 10th 2000 - mail problems

It looks like my (harsh word) ISP has big trouble dealing with mails; if you sent something you'll have to wait for an answer... :(

UPThu, 17 Jan 2002 11:02:22: this now looks fixed. Cool.

May 7th 2000 - released 1.9.21

I didn't feel the fix was worth a release but since I don't want it to last for weeks (since I will be too busy to release anything during my exams) so, after the biggest patch ever here is the smallest patch ever :) (actually it is not the smallest one: I already made this kind of mistake and produced really small patches).

May 7th 2000 - little fix for 1.9.20

Looks like I forgot to test something; there is a problem that prevents 1.9.20 to build correctly. The way to fix it is available in the Download page.

May 6th 2000 - released 1.9.20

As if nobody knew that I'll say this release features a new print plug-in architecture based on libxml and Python; this provides really easy development of print plug-ins (so if you want a particular thing don't hesitate to ask) for the developer (either me or you (if you dare :) ) and a consistent interface for the user (a lot better than the previous one actually). The other news are improvements and little niceties for the new user (and the usual bug fixes).

I learned that week I'll have exams from May 29th to June 27th so I don't expect to release a new version before July (unless a critical flaw appears in this release (I think/hope it won't happen)).

On the musical side of my world I bought the new album of Dead Man Ray last week and it is excellent (as in 'really excellent').

May 4th 2000 - preparing 1.9.20

I should release 1.9.20 this week-end (Saturday (european) night ?); it will come with the new (über-cool) print plug-in arch but this move may cause some missing libraries warnings :( (Gaby now needs libxml and Python to print).

Regarding the VA Linux ad, it looks like this is a good idea: this provides me nice little graphs about people coming here (I never had a way to know how manny people come here).

May 1st 2000 - looking for T-shirts

I realized this week-end that I had been wearing the same FSF t-shirts for months (actually I have burgundy and white versions) and thought it would be a good idea to create a Support page that would talk about you supporting me (since the other way is already there) (no money but cool stuffs: books, cds, t-shirts, ... (think ThinkGeek). But I really don't have the time to create a nicely presented page talking about why you'd want to support me. Curiously I read in the SourceForge newsletter about the VA Linux banners (50% VA Linux, 50% misc free software projets) and decided to put one on this website. (the only problem I had is that a vertical banner was better suited here (to replace the fake Debian ad) but you can't have everything...)

As for Gaby I think I'll release 1.9.20 by the end of the week then forget about it to work on my exams (and that stinky VMS app).

April 26th 2000 - you'll kill trees !

The printing architecture is so nice you'll kill trees just to see it!; it is fortunately not true: you won't have to kill trees since you'll be happy watching your files with gv (or ghostview).

That was the obligatory comment about the new printing architecture (I really like it :) ) but the news is that I reversed the order of the screenshots: newer shots are now on the top. (what an important news item !!!; expect it on Slashdot in a few hours...)

April 25th 2000 - new printing arch

Things are going fine; I really love the new scheme and both HTML and LaTeX output are already done.

April 24th 2000 - no more thinking

It's kind of stupid: it's the last day of my Easter holidays and I only started coding like a perfect little penguin and as I know this state will last as long as the new print plug-in architecture won't be completed.

As a result of this state Gaby reached the 50000 lines of code barrier; but to be honest there are many commented zone that should be deleted and once the new print plug-ins will be there it should drop back to ~49000 (I guess) thanks to new plug-ins written in Python (where one line is worth 100 C line lines).

April 23th 2000 - thinking (again)

I wrote more than 200 lines about the new print plug-in architecture (I consider the changes in 1.9.19 a failed experiment); it looks nice (a minimum before it is implemented) and will rely on python (I can't work without that great language).

On the school side of my life I managed to do the whole c++ projet that week (I still have to draw some nice looking figs to please the teacher...) but VMS is really becoming a problem :(

Completely unrelated (but I don't mind) I will certainly be able to join Die Linuxbierwanderung 2000 (aka The Linux Beer Hike 2000) in England. It really looks interesting (linux, beer and hiking: the story of my life); I should normally not be alone (as in "I don't know anybody") and it will be great fun. More info here.

April 14th 2000 - still alive

Still alive and I even fixed some bugs :) I was busy those last four days with the Brussels Linux Forum (the least popular linux forum in the world - I'm nearly sure the guys from SuSE will never come back (and they're right!!!)). (Beside that I enjoyed being there) Before that forum I had time to fix some little annoying bug and add little useless features...

I reached the end of the week without working one single minute for school and that is not a brilliant move so I'll probably spend too much time on that stinking VMS project I have for school...

April 1st 2000 - released 1.9.19

This is serious news because I found my beloved fish dead this morning (and the murderer is George Lebl; author of the Gnome fish applet) and I'm really sad today... (it was so pretty...)

There are release notes in the tarball that I'd like to read (they asks for feedback about the gladeform plug-in and the new html print plug-in GUI).

I won't have much time next week but then there will be two weeks without school where I'll try to apply your advices.

March 26th 2000 - rewriting the html print plug-in

Now that the gladeform plug-in is functional enough for me to release it as is within the next release (and get tons of bug reports); I decided to break the html print plug-in. Actually I thought breaking was not a nice move so I started a new one to work on :) It is currently not functional and I really miss the ability to use Python to write it (quick poll: is forcing people to have python a good idea ?).

I was quite busy last week (and 'forgot' to go to school a few days :) ); I attended the Workshop on Free Software of the European Commission (see more on the related site).

March 17th 2000 - playing with libglade

I know I should be writing documentation (who said 'studying' ?) but since I downloaded several libraries from Gnome CVS to compile a few apps I decided to give libglade a second try (iirc the first one was with libglade 0.0.5 and not very succesful).

Anyway I started to play with libglade yesterday and this is really cool; the gladeform view plug-in is doing something useful now; there is support for basic record operations (adding, saving, moving) and everything's fine. I even added a screenshot to show it working...

Completely unrelated: I packaged etherape for Debian. You may want to give it a try.

March 14th 2000 - 1.9.18 considered bug free

Ten days since the release of 1.9.18 and no important bug reported so far; it is the first time it happens. Cool. This means I should now take time to write documentation (as usual) and break things...

The feature I'll break is the printing mechanism that need a complete rewrite (and new code means new bugs). And I should finally decide to work seriously on the gladeform view plug-in that will allow custom form layouts to be defined with Glade.

About the new print plug-ins: there will be HTML and LaTeX outputs (as usual), PostScript (if I decide to learn it) and something that uses the gnome-print library; this will allow print previews and (as soon as it is coded) PDF output.

March 4th 2000 - released 1.9.18

Not much to say here: it is the traditional 'bug-free until you report bugs' release.

I'd really like to add a second paragraph but there is really not enough things to say about this release...

February 29th 2000 - new release planned (without doc)

Here I am again: I have bug fixes and little improvements in CVS that I feel worth including in a release but I said several times I was working in documentation and wouldn't release 1.9.18 without documentation (both French and English).

How would you feel about setting the documentation dead-line later ? I think I don't have choice and won't give a version number that will include documentation. But I'm still commited to do it...

Everybody is ok ? So I will release 1.9.18 in a few days (Friday?).

February 23th 2000 - seeking fix to homework

I nearly went mad this afternoon drawing little mickeys (actually flowcharts) for school; not that it was not caused by xfig that is still my favorite tool to draw flowcharts (is there any flowchart oriented drawing app out there ?).

And the problem is not isolated; homeworks are flying those days and I can't do anything about that (I'd tell you a story about useless coworkers but that would be too long (hi Christophe).

This means several things: no guadec this week-end (but I should manage to go to BxLug copy party on Sunday; no time to code interesting things; not even time to think about documentation; ...

And not writing new code means nothing to compile. Which means downloading stuffs to compile. And voila: I downloaded gtkhtml - the new gtk html widget and I'm happy to see it working. I may even decide to write my own dream web browser with it, that could be considered as gtklynx ie a fast graphical browser with my favorite Lynx features (cookie fine-grained selection, excellent bookmark support, keyboard navigation, ...). If I had time...

February 19th 2000 - Future as I see it

This might be considered as my .plan for the weeks (and months) to come.

• Documentation - I already said that but I'm committed to good documentation and will do my best to achieve this goal
• Printing - I consider this the weakest part of Gaby and will restart that part from scratch. Outputs should be LaTeX and HTML (as it is today) and PostScript.
• Dialog box to select which descfile to use - It would need pretty little pictures; I should look for someone who'd like to draw them.

There are also minor things (switching from ImLib to gdkpixpuf and libart for example) that will have to be done in time.

The ultimate goal would be to freeze before my exams (June) and to release 2.0 in July. But that's the ultimate goal :)

And then I'll start advertising Gaby...

February 17th 2000 - Gaby 2000 canceled

I thought it would be funny to mark every Freshmeat with '2000' as version number and decided to do my part of the job but it won't be possible.

There are several reasons but the main one is that the major bug fixes in this release are not yet well tested and I put quality assurance above marketing (reason completely unrelated to that other '2000' software).

Anyway you can always use CVS to get recent changes (when I don't forget to update the repository).

February 16th 2000 - Gaby 2000 released tomorrow

In a blasting move Frederic Peters (well known author of Gaby) decided today to bring some pressure on a monopolistic firm from Redmond with the announce of the unexpected release of Gaby 2000.

I know I tell you that everytime but this one it is true said the author to the press about Gaby stability.

Analysts around the world say this release will provide new features like "a saving function that works", cuter error messages, totally missing documentation and more.

It was rumored this version would work on Mac SE/30 but Frederic had to calm down hundreds of techno talking babes with the announce of the lost of his Mac power cord back in October. But it run Linux !... slowly, had he to say when he saw those cute visage were in tears.

Debian current project leader, Wichert Akkerman, was unavailable but his secretarial assistant said We're not likely to ship Potato tomorrow .

February 14th 2000 - minor site updates

I felt on this ad on e.themes.org and decided it would be cool to put it here since Potato will be out soon (note that being 'Debian' was enough to be included, Potato is simply one more reason).

I'll confess I will use this pic to collect stats (my current stupid way was to download daily the Gaby appindex entry from FreshMeat (talk about stupid way). Before that I'll have to check that NetPedia still doesn't provide Python for the simple reason I don't like Perl.

February 6th 2000 - documentation

As I said earlier I decided to work exclusively on documentation and this is really hard to do (both writing doc and not coding). To be honest I currently only have four sheets of paper filled (this is about 200 lines) and started yesterday the part 'working in Gaby', things like talking about forms, lists, ... I'd like to finish something useful and translate it into English before I release 1.9.18.

As something completely unrelated I was not able to attend at Linux Expo in Paris thanks (<grin>) to school. This made those three days full of I had to be there comments. I missed rms !

January 26th 2000 - released 1.9.17

I'll write thousands "I'm stupid" lines as punishment for not checking if 1.9.16 compiled in a clean environment.

The worse is that I really was going to do that, realized that I wrote 'Jan 25th 1999' instead of 2000, fixed this little string and forgot everything (distracted by comp.lang.python ? >wink<)

And if you already downloaded 1.9.16 you should remember there are patches provided for incremental upgrades and this is much lighter.

January 25th 2000 - released 1.9.16

Delayed after my exams here is finally 1.9.16 with new (fixed) bugs. A nice release I think; shouldn't cause too much trouble.

Important: I'll try to spend most of my time on documentation issues for the next releases; that doesn't mean I won't add features or fix bugs but the area to work on is documentation and it deserves some days.. I decided to begin with French docs since I'm much more capable in this language then I'll translate... If you have advice regarding documentation, please let me know. Thanks.

btw I missed Kiss my Jazz perf this week-end due to a Python script. I hope they'll come back. (re-btw Venus will be back in Belgium for several dates -- don't miss them (actually they also have dates in France and ?)).

January 18th 2000 - intro blurb

I had an exam this afternoon and since it didn't not take too long I decided it was a good occasion to think about the 'introduction to Gaby' that every new user should read. This means I spent the rest of the afternoon in a cafe with a pen and sheets of paper (so I couldn't jump on my keyboard to do useless things like coding :) ).

And that worked. This is not yet polished but at least it is a beginning. You won't see it in 1.9.16 (unless you read the source) but it might appear in 1.9.17... who knows ?

January 14th 2000 - new screenshot (again)

I fixed several bugs and added some features those last days (sounds like it's exam time again :) ). And to show that I took a screenshot (as usual...).

I think I'll release 1.9.16 a few days after next week (where I'll be buzy studying (well... should be...)). Something like sunday 23th.

(Kizz My Jazz performs at the SoundStation (Liege, Belgium) saturday 22th. Should be cool.)

And a little update to my note about Debian packages: Jules Bean will have maintainership of Gaby package. (so I can code more...)

January 5th 2000 - new screenshot

This doesn't deserve a news item but there is a new screenshot available. But that's not all: there is also a new 'Not Gaby' page where I talk about _hum_ me.

Consider that useless.

January 4th 2000 - Debian packages

I should soon take over the gaby Debian package and become the official maintainer. This will allow a recent version to ship with potato and up-to-date packages once potato is released (and that will happen).

If you prefer RPM the best way is to build them yourself (using rpm -ta iirc).

December 31th 1999 - happy new year

I won't write a lot now; I'll just say 1999 was a great year since I decided to wipe the old code in January and worked on the new till this afternoon (and after if the apocalypse stays away). And it is amazing what it can now do :)

Voila. Happy new year and may free softwares rule the world in the next millenium (we still have one year to achieve that).

December 23th 1999 - 1.9.15, finally

It had to be done.

If I promised you for this release and you can't find it don't hesitate to mail me - your idea has certainly been lost with my hard drive. If I didn't promise you something you may start thinking about a feature you wish. It is Christmas time :)

I now have two weeks off (well... I should use them to study for my January exams) and I hope to have time to implement a few things... Stay tuned !

December 17th 1999 - back to my world

Voila. I'm back. It lasted more than one month. I think I never had such a long period without my computer since the beginning... (happily there is school and funky VT320 terminals :) ).

I have things to re-install, check if my changes for the non-GUI mode work when there is a GUI, do some work for Debian (I have to fix those release critical bugs) and then I'll upload a new Gaby. (and for if you're really despaired there is still CVS).

December 9th 1999 - no hard disk, no computer

I bought a new hard disk and (since I was in consumer-mode) I also bought 128 MB of RAM. The hard disk worked, not the RAM. And I discovered in an unpleasant move that my mother board doesn't accept new SDRAM (it looks like it accepts old SDRAM (diff between new and old ?)).

Therefore I had to go back into consumer-mode and buy a new mobo. Hence a new processor. Hence my computer is at the shop. And I have nothing to do :(

This should be fixed tomorrow. I hope. (I'm writing this on my old 486)

November 28th 1999 - still no hard disk (but working)

And what do you think I can do without X ? Simple. I write scripts. And since I felt gabyscript was not enough standard I converted the current Python plug-in in a functional Gaby module and it is really great. I just wrote a 74-lines-long CGI using it (it allows me to type my name and it returns my phone number (and it works with other people too :) )). It is nicely written and renders correctly in Lynx; if I had an hard disk I'd test it in Mozilla but you know the situation...

November 16th 1999 - still no hard disk

Hence no news :) I'm getting bored of the situation...

November 8th 1999 - HD down

This wonderful Sunday I moved to Brussels for a copy party with my hard disks (2Gb and 3Gb). Great. Fast connection (100Ko/sec!!!). Then I went home; tried to re-plug the HD and failed. I don't know why but they decided to leave me for a better world :) To be honest the 3Gb one is completely dead (no longer turns) while the 2Gb one still manages to show some kind of life - sometimes. Enough for me to copy my GnuPG key (I'm an idiot - I don't have it stocked on a highly protected floppy), a few config files, this web site and (oh so lucky) an almost complete (95%) copy of my current development version of Gaby (I think the CVS was current but who know...). But...

My /usr partition is lost and that means I no longer have Gnome libraries (not even GTK+ ones) and it is not easy to develop without them :) This also means you won't get 1.9.15 this week :(

If you want to know how I live now: I installed Debian 2.1 on an old (420Mb) HD. And that is outdated. And my mirror of potato is lost; and I don't want to download again 300Mb with my modem.

Seriously (?) I decided that Gaby slogan is now: Support Free Software, send me an hard disk :) (I'm not sure I'm joking). If you want to help me just send me a mail and I'll answer quickly :) (if you have a burned copy of potato you may also consider mailing me). (I'm a starving student but I'll manage to pay the transport).

November 5th 1999 - 12 days since 1.9.14

This means that if I want to keep with a decent cycle speed I have to release 1.9.15 soon. The good thing is that there are several fixes so it won't be an useless release :) Then 1.9.16 may take longer to release since I have a few new features to add...

October 29th 1999 - back to work

I was representing Debian for Brussels Linux Forum 99 on October 26th and 27th. I shared the booth with the Brussels Linux User Group and we had a very good time. No time to code on Gaby (well... 3 lines :) ) but I'm now back at home with several new ideas. Don't leave :)

October 23th 1999 - 1.9.14 released

Everytime I wrote about a release I dare ti even think it is bug-free I'm proved wrong. Badly.

And this applies to 1.9.13.

October 22th 1999 - 1.9.13 released

As now usual I won't say it is bug-free since I know there are certainly stinking ones that will appear in non-obvious conditions but I am pretty sure most of you won't find any bug. And I hope I am right :)

October 18th 1999 - 1.9.13 to be released soon

I should be at Linux Forum Brussels (in the Debian booth) next week; completely unrelated: I should release 1.9.13 soon (read: 'this week'); it will be a nice release :)

October 14th 1999 - Gaby featured in Linux Magazine (Japan)

It is on pages 146-147 (yes, two pages); it has screenshots, 6 columns of text, ... and it certainly says nice thing about Gaby (I have to find a Japanese-speaking friend). I'm not used to buy magazines (either Linux-related or not) so I can't compare with what we have here, in Europe, but I love the hardware they advertised (not i386-centric at all); it even has an article about Linux installation on a SPARCstation 20 (that is better than my IPX).

Here is magazine's URL.

October 9th 1999 - no news

With a title like that I really don't know what I could write :) But since I don't want to live one whole week without posting a news I'll have to tell you about things not related to Gaby...

I got the beta release of Corel Linux yesterday and installed it... well I tried but the CD is broken and it was unable to read it properly while installing. So I took an old Debian slink CD and installed the additional packages from Corel on top of it. Worked fine. Worked too much like Windows (and that's not only caused by KDE) but they're targeting that face of the world so they're certainly right. Anyway I'd tell anybody wanting to give Linux a try to use it because they're based on Debian and benefits from their wonderful packaging system.

October 3rd 1999 - Gnome book

You may already know about GTK+/Gnome Application Development and you may also know that it was released under the Open Publication Licence and was freely downloadable (module GGAD from Gnome CVS (URL anyone?)).

My major problem with that book was the layout of the HTML version: one huge files (906K) without table of content nor links. I had to fix this.

I first came with a script that created the table of contents from the html file then added links (<a> tags) to the huge file. I mailed that one to Havoc Pennington and he answered that a script to convert from the original XML files to DocBook would be even better.

Therefore I did it. And didn't write a single line of Gaby code this week-end.

September 30th 1999 - released 1.9.12

I won't tell you this is the most stable release ever since I use to be wrong on such prediction but (eh!) I'd really like to tell you it is. But I won't.

And since I won't you'll have to figure it yourself on the downloads page.

On the humorous side of the world I learned today at school how to write 10-line Makefiles. Interesting isn't it ? The irony is that the total number of lines for Gaby Makefiles is 15,521! (and that they are written thanks to automake/autoconf). Next week: 'how to use vi' ! (it isn't true: it was last week lesson)

September 29th 1999 - can you wait for tomorrow ?

Gaby is becoming less and less buggy; I hope you'll enjoy 1.9.12 I'll upload tomorrow more than 1.9.11 (that was a nice bug-reporting release).

September 26th 1999 - domain names

After a hard day of testing Gaby I dialed to my ISP and ran lynx with a single parameter : gaby. It tried to guess a valid URL, failing over www.gaby.com and www.gaby.edu but stopped on www.gaby.net.

You can look by yourself but it has nothing interesting; it is just yet another 'registered in case of' domain name. Then I tried whois gaby.net and here is the result:

Registrant:
Wallack & Godfrey (GABY3-DOM)
   30341 Via Reata
   Laguna Niguel, CA 92677
   US

   Domain Name: GABY.NET

   Administrative Contact:
      Wallack, Gabrielle  (GW3318)  gabarella@AOL.COM
      949-452-5463 (FAX) 949-495-0459
   Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
      Registrar, Internic  (RI52-ORG)
              internic-free@REGISTER.COM
      212-627-4988
Fax- 212-627-6477
   Billing Contact:
      Wallack, Gabrielle  (GW3318)  gabarella@AOL.COM
      949-452-5463 (FAX) 949-495-0459

   Record last updated on 13-Jun-98.
   Record created on 13-Jun-98.
   Database last updated on 25-Sep-99 05:01:33 EDT.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   DNS1.REGISTER.COM            209.67.50.220
   DNS2.REGISTER.COM            209.67.50.241

This record was created on June 13th 19998 and Gaby 0.0.1 was released on September 29th 1998 so they are unrelated but I consider that stupid.

Eh! I'm happy on Netpedia; you may continue paying for this useless site without bothering me :)

September 25th 1999 - not added a note about 1.9.11

I thought about adding a note about the 'stablest release ever' on the downloads page to tell that it is not really stable and it is certainly better to use 1.9.10 instead. But I didn't add it since I need debuggers :)

btw I hope to release a 'less buggy' (not hard) 1.9.12 next week.

September 23th 1999 - tests are useful

In order to avoid an other 'as buggy as a stable 1.9.11' release, I started to write a 'test suite' for Gaby. There are now (5) tests for adding and removing records and they helped me to track yet another bug in the new index mechanism. It is more an useful feature than a 'cool' one but 'what do you want today?'.

September 21th 1999 - a step to ultimate friendship

Used to keep tracks of your friends' addresses with Gaby ? Used to remove them from Gaby when you got fed up with them ? This won't appear anymore: with Gaby, you'll keep your friends forever because I was too dumb to test the remove function.

Shame on me.

I fixed that and since it is a critical issue the fix is available here.

September 20th 1999 - 1.9.11 released

I hadn't finished writing the previous news that voila! I release 1.9.11 before the date I gave. That never happened before !

The question is now: 'what caused that ?' and the answer is simple as 'deadline'; a deadline I put to provide thousands of Japanese a better release. They won't regret that :) (Gaby will be featured in October issue of the Japanese Linux Magazine, cool)

September 20th 1999 - 1.9.11 to appear rsn

Something really strange happened today; I tested Gaby in a clean environment (no ~/.gaby, no old binaries, ...) and ... it segfaulted :) Sounds like the Corba interface is the cause. Since it is useless right now I disabled it and it worked. Flawlessly.

If I'm not hit by a bus (or a bug) tomorrow I should be able to release 1.9.11 and it will be the stabled release ever.

September 16th 1999 - back to school

I went back to school yesterday and it looks like the teacher decided to ate our spare time; I'm opposed to this and will fight for my rights to develop Gaby :)

Starting this year we have a UNIX course and I love to hear talking about Linux by lots of students who were quite happy with Windows last year. This is sometimes funny to hear them but it's better than listening to them talking about Unreal.

We also have an OpenVMS course (I checked out FreeVMS but it is still in its early days) and will have (in a few month) a frightening (IMNSHO) 'Windows Programming with C++' one.

Well... as for Gaby I will release 1.9.11 in the next few days and it should be the stablest release ever. Check it out... I also added a page about Desc files, produced by 'yet another' Python script; this is also the place where I say that your descfiles are welcome (don't forget it).

September 10th 1999 - everything is going fine (on this side of the world)

1.9.10 was released without major bugs, Stephen Gava sent me a really nice mail, Yukihiro Naka started a Japanese translation, I got a 'as lovely as a Mac SE/30' SparcStation IPX (if you have a spare keyboard, mouse or screen for SparcStations, don't hesitate to mail me, I only have the box), ...

And I go back to school next week. Cool :)

September 9th 1999 - bug not caused by the date

There is a little (one letter) bug in 1.9.10, complete explanation on the download page.

September 8th 1999 - released 1.9.10

Not much to say about this release, read the previous news :)

September 5th 1999 - new e-mail address

My favorite e-mail address is now fpeters@win.be, the old one still works.

September 3rd 1999 - let's concentrate

I had been distrait those last days (with computer related reason : I played too much on new kernels (2.3.16 + devfs + S3 Virge framebuffer + misc bootlogo enhancements) and related issues (alsa and (not a log) ggi), as well as on installing my new computer, a lovely Mac SE/30 (3.81 BogoMips)) but I promise to concentrate as soon as I have nothing else to do :)

Note that I'll go back to school in two weeks and this will offer me a lot of time to work on Gaby ...

Btw I should release a new version in a few (<5) days).

August 29th 1999 - real numbers

Since I worked on the time spent on file loading the last few days, here are some (impressive) numbers :

My (2846 records long) zip code database :

• 1.898s in 1.9.8
• 0.133s now.

FreshMeat appindex file (4694 records, bzip2'ed) :

• 4.257s in Gaby,
• 4.680s in appindex,
• 3.216s for plain bunzip2'ing

August 26th 1999 - new screenshots

I added two new screenshots on the screenshots page, one taken one month ago, the second taken this evening.

August 24th 1999 - lots of changes

I haven't committed lots of changes to CVS these previous days 'cause I changed the API used by view plug-ins and broke everything. (that was intended). Everything should be running fine in a few days and I'll update the cvs.

By the way there is a 50% speed-up in file loading in the new code; you'll like that :)

August 17th 1999 - random remarks

There is a bug in 1.9.8 that cause coredumps if LANGUAGE is not set while LANG is. The quick fix is to set LANGUAGE :)

I am bored of people asking if Gaby supports SQL; the answer is no and it is a feature. (I'm not really bored, I just find that question useless)

I am also bored of people asking what are the file formats that Gaby supports. The answer is : anything that you're kind enough to give me a reference.

Bruno Majewsik didn't but since it was raining I added support for dBase (III and probably IV) file format thanks to Dbview, a little utility assembled by Martin Schulze.

This new file format allowed me to import an old database (that I had to search for on old defective disks). Anyway I got it and it has 2080 records (and 12 fields). Loaded it to do some tests. The result is that I'll certainly extend the search box in the extended list to use indexes. Currently it compares each record to the given string, result is 8 seconds to update the list on my computer.

August 15th 1999 - something weird happened: 1.9.8 released

It wasn't fast but here it is, available from the downloads page, 1.9.8 !

More than 80 ChangeLog entries, a patch over 300 Ko and the most stable release ever (I hope) are waiting for you :) And I even updated the documentation !

August 11th 1999 - Gaby doesn't need -fno-strict-aliasing

In a surprising move I managed to compile Gaby with gcc 2.95 (the surprise is that I reached the end of the compilation without burning my processor).

I just said that to thanks Debian; they have 2.95 in potato (aka unstable) since July 31th.

July 24th 1999 - 1.9.8 should be released soon (part 2)

My e-mail is almost back (but I have to read lots of messages) and I'm now waiting for Swedish and Norwegian translations of desc files.

The big improvement in 1.9.8 will be the Python interpreter that is now able to do something useful ! I still need to code a way to execute user scripts but since I know how I'll do it this will arrive quickly.

July 3rd 1999 - 1.9.8 should be released soon

In fact it is more than ready (there are already 35 new ChangeLog entries (more than 200 lines)) but I experience problems with the pop-3 server used for fpeters@multimania.com (they found a security hole and changed every passwords - I missed the mail with the new password and they're not very responsive ( this lasts for 10 days now)).

About 1.9.8 : no new great feature but lots of real improvements (and usual bug fixes). I have a lot of thing to commit to cvs so you'd better wait a few days if you intended to use it ...

June 24th 1999 - oops

I just ran on a bug I introduced in 1.9.7 that caused ~/.gaby to never be created. I believe this made 1.9.7 useless unless an older release was existing. I wrote a warning on the downloads page.

June 13th 1999 - code in CVS

The code should be available from the Gnome CVS repository. Importing the code was not a clear issue between Miguel and me but I hope everything is clear now (but still not totally sure).

Instructions on how to use CVS are available from Gnome.

June 12th 1999 - Released 1.9.7

A new 'not yet in CVS' version is out. Tarball, patch and news available on the usual pages.

June 2nd 1999 - New script to create the web site

I rewrote the (bash, sed, python) scripts I use to generate each files with the same layout to a single (python) script. You shouldn't see any differences but mail me if you experience broken links.

I saw an announce for Pre_Html on FreshMeat (a very simple HTML preprocessor written in Perl). I won't release my script but if you are interested I might include it in a future release.

May 28th 1999 - Released 1.9.6

The last 'not in CVS' version is out. Patch and news available on the usual pages.

May 27th 1999 - Mail from Miguel

I received a mail from Miguel de Icaza (for uneducated people he's the Gnome "boss") saying : " We would like to make your address book the default for GNOME. We want to extend it a bit to include CORBA support (so that the mail program can integrate with it, and the calendar program). ". I believe this is a Good Thing (you will even be able to download the latest bugs using CVS :) ) and mailed Ron (no answer yet).

Update : positive answer :)

May 21st 1999 - Released 1.9.5

News available here.

May 18th 1999 - Released 1.9.4

News available here.

May 14th 1999 - Released 1.9.3

News available here.

May 13th 1999 - Released 1.9.2

News available here.

May 11th 1999 - Released 1.9.1

News available here.

May 3rd 1999 - 1.9.0 is out !

The development version is proud to leave the alpha stage and reach the beta one. It is available from the Download page.

Everything was rewritten and Gaby is now a real personal databases manager unlike 1.0 that was more an hacked addressbook than something else. But you don't have to worry about simplicity since it is at least the same than before and might even be improved.

1.9.0 (codenamed 'The Ideal Crash') is designed around plug-ins to keep a light program while being able to fill almost every needs you could have for keeping your data. This also allows you, developer, to easily contribute (don't hesitate).