We have landed the two last significant changes for GNOME 45. The image loading via glycin is now fully sandboxed, including SVGs. And the print dialog got updated to a new design by Allan Day.
finally, focusing on list views is more accurate and reliable
tons of fixes for the accessibility support, with better name and description computation following the ARIA specification; improved handling of composite button widgets; and a whole accessibility overlay in the GTK inspector, showing missing names and descriptions in your UI
the Vulkan renderer has seen major improvements; Vulkan support is still marked as experimental, but it’s definitely less of a science project
multiple fixes in the GL renderer when it comes to mipmaps and texture filtering
Wayland, Windows, and macOS improvements and bug fixes
there are a few new deprecations, mainly related to GdkPixbuf
The GTK team is already hard at work on the next GTK 4.14 development cycle, so stay tuned!
Maps now has an experimental vector layer, using the new vector map support in libshumate. Currently it is using the OSM Liberty style. Longer-term the plan is to develop GNOME style style sheets supporting light and dark variant, using icons for the markers based on the GNOME Icon Library. At this time this showcases horizontally aligned labels (regardless of map rotation) and sharp rendering, also at fractional zoom levels. Some things that are not yet implemented includes being able to directly click on labels and markers, and localized names.
GNOME Contacts 45.beta is out, now powered by the GtkListView/GtkSectionModel APIs. This decreased memory usage of Contacts locally with about 20% and helps save some precious CPU cycles! It should also enable some nice-to-have behaviors like being able to select multiple contacts at once with shift-click.
GJS released a new version for GNOME 45 beta. There are several bug fixes and documentation improvements. Highlights of the release are performance improvements by Marco Trevisan, and the upgrade of the JS engine to SpiderMonkey 115 thanks to Xi Ruoyao.
New things that you will be able to use in your JS code in GNOME 45 are the new findLast(), findLastIndex(), with(), toReversed(), toSorted(), and toSpliced() array methods, and the ability to create an array from an async iterable with Array.fromAsync().
NewsFlash got a new application id on flathub. It moved from com.gitlab.newsflash to io.gitlab.news_flash.NewsFlash. The flatpak CLI and Gnome software should ask you if you want to migrate to the new id.
This was done to be able to verify the app on flathub and in preparation for a big feature update. So stay tuned.
Gaphor development is continuing at full pace. This week Dan Yeaw released Gaphor 2.20.0. Support for SysML modeling has been improved with new elements and the ability to assign types to model elements.
Phosh and phoc have been released a couple of days ago. Besides not downscaling screenshots any longer phosh switched to newer versions of libgnome-volume-control and gmobile. The later was updated to support more notches (those of the Fairphone 4 and Poco F1) which were added to the 0.0.2 release of gmobile (also tagged last week).
Phoc got updated to newer wlroots allowing us to add support for newer xdg-shell versions but most importantly it fixes a long standing issues with GTK4 popups and on screen keyboard interaction.
The screenshot shows phoc reneding the rounded corners and the bounding box of a notch while phosh uses the same information to move the clock out of the center.
Parabolic V2023.8.1 is here! This release is packed with new features, improvements, and bug fixes. Read about them below :)
Changelog:
Added the option to prevent suspend while using Parabolic
Added the ability to skip the password dialog when unlocking Keyring
Added the ability to reset the Keyring when locked
Improved bitrate used for audio-only downloads with the best quality
Parabolic will now prefer videos with the h264 codec when downloading in the mp4 format. If space is a concern, users are recommended to download in the webm format which uses the vp9/vp8/av1 codecs
If overwriting files is off and a download’s file name exists, a numbered suffix will be attached to the end of the file name to prevent error
Fixed an issue where downloads with specific timeframes would download incorrectly
Fixed an issue where opus downloads would sometimes fail
Fixed an issue where Parabolic would be unusable on systems without NetworkManager installed
Fixed an issue where Parabolic would say no active internet connection even though there was a connection established
Updated translations (Thanks everyone on Weblate!)
Last week, I announced Daikhan media player without mentioning any features of the app. Well, one of its features is that it remembers what selections the user has made (e.g. selected audio/subtitle languages, etc.) for each opened file and when the user opens any of those files again, it restores those selections.
This week, the “Remember Selections” feature received superpowers. Now, the player can recognize files by their content. So, it can restore selections made by the user even if files have been renamed, moved to a new location or both.
Additionally,
Hardware acceleration support was added to the flatpak
Screenshots were updated
Access to files is only granted when you open them. Previously, the app had full access to the filesystem.
NOTE: The app is still in early access. So, expect some bugs and beware that big changes (even backward-incompatible ones) might occur in the app’s interface and behavior.
Cavalier V2023.8.1 is here! Tired of existing 6 drawing modes? Well, now there are 11, because every mode except Splitter got Circle variant! We also fixed the issue that caused incorrect drawing with display scaling enabled, and added a cute easter egg 👀
Here’s the full changelog:
All drawing modes except Splitter now have Circle variants
Added an easter egg (run the program with —help to find how to activate it)
Fixed an issue where the app wasn’t drawing correctly with >100% display scaling
Added welcome screen that is shown on start until any sound gets detected
Added Cairo backend that can be used in case of problems with OpenGL. To activate, run the program with environment variable CAVALIER_RENDERER=cairo
CAVA was updated to 0.9.0
Pipewire is now used as default input method, you can still change back to Pulse Audio using environment variable CAVALIER_INPUT_METHOD=pulse
Updated translations (Thanks everyone on Weblate!)
August is traditionally a slow month for the Foundation, as staff tends to take a small break after another successful GUADEC. Somehow, this week was chock full of meetings jammed in between folks who just got back from holidays and those about to leave for the same. Of particular note were:
the first regular Board meeting of the new term — we covered a lot of topics and I am looking forward to working with this new group for the next year
code of conduct committee meeting — amongst other things, we are working on our processes and transparency reports
executive director search committee — interviews are ongoing and we met to touch base and make sure there aren’t any hiccups
In addition, I have been catching up on the bills that accumulated on my virtual desk during GUADEC, doing various HR tasks (including digging up paperwork to give references), finishing the filing of our 2022 tax forms, and making sure the staff get the support they need. I see travel committee requests starting to come in… that will be on my todo list next week!
