Software Freedom Day 2009 at BMS College Of Engineering, Bangalore

Full sized images can be accessed here

So, four of us – Jatin, Megha, Me and Siddharth were selected as Sun OSUM leaders for the college, and Software Freedom Day 2009 was the first experience for our team.
What an event it was! People were gathered outside the auditorium around 15 minutes before the scheduled program start. We were really excited by the turnout and equally nervous if we're going to meet their expectations. As planned, the library auditorium was opened at 9 AM and the registrations began. I had setup an online website for information about the event and online registrations. The participants who had registered online got an OpenSolaris CD and lots of people also registered on the spot.

 


Siddharth Agali, Megha B R, Shantanu Tushar, Jatin Bhasin Audience at the SFD


Overwhelmed by the reponse, I tried to calm down but the projector just didn't want that to happen, failing in every attempt. But, eventually it worked fine.
So, the hall was full, the stage set, and all the attendees were in high spirits. Megha gave the welcome note followed by Jatin with his session on Introduction to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Sun's role in it, which he really explained very well.
 

Jatin explaining about Open Source Jatin explaining definition of Open Source


We followed this by a video made by RedHat called “Truth Happens” which aims to showcase the fact that everytime something new is started, its ignored, ridiculed at first, but eventually it succeeds.
Then came my turn which was on the philosophy and definition of Free Software alongwith general information which was necessary for people to understand the spirit of Free Software.
 

Shantanu telling about the great things of GNU/Linux Shantanu explaining the four essential freedoms in Free Software


Following this was Megha who gave a talk on the various features of OpenOffice.org, the free and open productivity suite. She explained the advantages of the software and the reasons why one should use it instead of proprietary applications.
 

Megha telling people about OpenOffice.org Image Description


We really wanted the audience to both enjoy and learn at the same time, and so there was one thing which could not be left out – Big Buck Bunny which is an Open Movie (that is the movie development files are Open, so anyone can edit the original) and is made completly using FOSS tools. It is one of the the best examples of a powerful FOSS tool and also entertaining for people. People just couldn't stop laughing during the video.
Now it was time to show people something cool, something they had never seen or imagined, Compiz Fusion on Ubuntu. I showed almost all the effects – the ones which are just fun and ones which are very useful, and no doubt the audience was amazed. As I was giving the sessions on my notebook running the K Desktop Environment, I used all the features in the process so that people would notice them.
In between all this, Saket kept asking questions about Firefox and the right answers were rewarded by Firefox goodies like badges, wrist bands, stickers etc.
 

Saket asking questions about Firefox Distributing goodies and feedback forms


After this Sujith talked about the general stuff to get the people to better know about why Free Software exists and whats the importance. The audience was active and participated in the discussion.
 

Audience during Sujith's enlightening talk Change of speakers :P


But, unfortunately we were allocated very less time by the library auditorium authorities so we hurried down with the VirtualBox and OpenSolaris session showing how it can run multiple OSes at the same time. I showed the basic OpenSolaris desktop and how Windows could be running in another window under VirtualBox at the same time.
After this, Siddharth talked about the various features of NetBeans IDE and its history so that people would be comfortable with the workshop. We also told the people about our goup at Sun OSUM and the BMSLUG and gave them links to join. The response has been good with many people joining them.
 

Siddharth preparing people for Netbeans session with basics Clarifying a doubt regarding support


Everyone was feeling hungry at this point and so it was time for lunch. The lunch was served at the Multi Purpose Hall in association with the BMSET Hostels Mess. The food was good and people enjoyed it. Thanks to Jatin's hard work.

 

Participants having food prepared at BMSET Mess Having lunch at MPH, BMSCE


Now it was time for the workshop. We had installed NetBeans in only one part of the lab and due to time constraints (we had internals just 2 days back) we thought It'd be nice if we could allow the participants to install NetBeans themselves. But, opposed to what was notified by the network administrator, we got to know on the day that the LAN was not configured on any machine, and we just couldn't set it up in the timeframe. So, we decided to use the inner lab's computers and gave our laptops for the participants to work on. After all this, fun started and there was lots of learning. We gave the participants puzzles and challenges to solve which many of them solved successfully and some won small prizes.
 

Netbeans workshop Bring your ideas to life


So, on the whole it was a fantastic day and we had loads of fun. Thanks to all who volunteered and made the event a success.
Again with the same enthusiasm, looking forward to the next event..

QtScript Problems While Installing Qt Script Generator

If Amarok is to be built from source the Qt Script Generator at http://code.google.com/p/qtscriptgenerator/ is required. However after going through the compile steps in the package, the following errors are encountered

make[2]: Entering directory
`/users/user/downloads/software/qt/generator/svn.080725/qtbindings/qtscript_phonon'
make[2]: *** No rule to make target
`../../generated_cpp/com_trolltech_qt_phonon/main.cpp', needed by `debug/main.o'. Stop.
make[2]: Leaving directory
`/users/peter/downloads/software/qt/generator/svn.080725/qtbindings/qtscript_phonon'
make[1]: *** [debug] Error 2

The problem was reported on http://code.google.com/p/qtscriptgenerator/issues/detail?id=3 and a possible workaround is available at http://code.google.com/p/qtscriptgenerator/issues/detail?id=39 . Downloading the patch at this URL and applying it to the qtscriptgenerator source helps address the issue.
Hope this helps Smile

Drag and Drop in Qt 4.5

Recently I was working on a Qt app requiring Drag and Drop support. The documentation says that to use this on a QWidget, we need to set
dialog.setAcceptDrops(true);
I tried that but the cursor still showed the “not -allowed” symbol. This was bit confusing making me think that there's some internal problem. But actually the implementation of the following event handlers is mandatory to make it work-
 

void Dialog::dragEnterEvent(QDragEnterEvent *event)

{

event->acceptProposedAction();

}

 

void ChatDialog::dragMoveEvent(QDragMoveEvent *event)

{

event->acceptProposedAction();

}

 


This is provided so that app can accept only certain types of files. Hope this helps someone.

Stray ‘/’ in path when querying MIME url list in Qt Drag and Drop

In Qt, when an object is dropped onto a widget the following event handler is to be used to get the list of URLs of the dropped objects-
 

void Dialog::dropEvent(QDropEvent *event)

{

if (mimeData->hasUrls()) {

QList urlList = mimeData->urls();

qDebug() << urlList.at(0).path();

}

}


This code, according to the Drop Site example in Qt Demo (see below) should print the filename of the first file dropped.

dropSiteQtDemo

Following is the output-

1. On Linux
/home/user/Desktop/pic1.jpg

2. On Windows
/C:/Users/Abcd/Desktop/pic1.jpg

But this was not expected,
As you might have noticed, there is a stray '/' in the beginning of the path which makes the filename unusable. This makes the Drop Site example to misbehave when run in Windows.
A better alternative is to use urlList.at(0).toLocalFile() instead of urlList.at(0).path(); and the problem gets solved.

Run Sify Broadband Windows Client On GNU/Linux

I'm using a Sify broadband connection at home, and I was delighted to see that they had a linux version of the login client. I downloaded and installed it, but it appeared crippled. It crashes frequently, losing net access, and lacks several features present in the Windows client.

So, I decided to run it on WINE (WINE Is Not An Emulator). The following steps have to be performed for it to work-

 

snapshot11. Open Wine Configuration and goto Libraries.

2. In the “New override for library”, select msvcirt.dll and click Add. Now click Edit and Select “Native (Windows)” and click OK.

3. Repeat step 2 for mfc42.dll. Click OK and close the dialog.

4. Run the Sify Broadband Setup and continue as usual. Enjoy !!

If you get any problems, comment on the article and I'll try to recommend a solution.

Happy Browsing !!

Talk on Qt Creator at Mukthi 9.05 at MSRIT

Again, a post after a long time, maybe was concentrating more on writing code 😉 So, Mukthi 9.05 (Dunno why they used ubuntu naming conventions :P) was held on 1st and 2nd of May, and it was really fun and rewarding. Well, mostly because I got a chance to give a talk session on Qt Designer (which I later changed to Qt Creator).

Initially I was really not sure because I had my exams till 30th April. But then I changed my mind (basically I was made to change my mind, which I now really thank) and prepared for the session. The talk was going to be about Qt Designer, a GUI designer for the Qt Application framework, and I had decided to demonstrate a simple text editor built using that, because it turned out to be a success at the FOSSMeet at NITC last month. I made two changes the last moment, I decided to demonstrate using the recently launched cross platform IDE from Qt Software – Qt Creator, which had an embedded Qt Designer. I hoped it'd be more interesting to beginners, which really turned out to be correct. Second, I added another demo application featuring a Web Browser using Webkit support available. This too was successful, because there was lots of applause when the browser displayed Google !! On a whole, the talk was good, the only problem being, again, my low voice which I'd try to remove from next sessions.

My GSoC 2009 Experience

So, this is a post after a long time since I had applied for the Google Summer of Code 2009. Santosh and Madhusudan had participated in GSoC last year and their talk about it got me inspired to take part this year. So, I went through the ideas list this year and one project about PlasMate, which was supposed to be an editor and packager which would make the otherwise lengthy task of scripting a plasmoid and packaging it and sharing it with the community, easier and efficient. So, I saw the existing code and application to get a feel how it was in its current stage and how it can be improved. I wrote a proposal about whatever I could think of implementing and improving. I submitted my proposal after getting feedback from my kde friends and plasma developers. But unfortunately, it was not accepted. The good thing was I was not too disappointed by what happened, because it was due to some silly mistakes from my side –

  1. Everywhere people said thats its always an advantage that you submit the proposal early, so I did it, but here was my BIGGEST mistake, GSoC webapp had written in big font in blue colors “edit my proposal”, and even then I didn't notice it, always having some new ideas, but “unable” to add them to my proposal as I thought its not possible to edit the proposal after submission.
  2. I'm considerably new to KDE, and to developing real life software, so I didn't have such good ideas as the Guy Diego Casella who was selected for Plasmate.

I had a wonderful experience when writing the proposal, the support from everyone was encouraging, and best of all, GSoC accomplished its primary goal, atleast with me, it added another student to the Free Software community, and many more of those who wanted to write some good code but didn't know where to do it. The best thing about GSoC, you're given incentive for what you like the most, writing code, and that too for Plasma!, its beautiful, KDE rocks!! 🙂 But anyway, that doesn't change things too much, KDE will still receive bugfixes and contributions from me, its so much rewarding to fix some problem or add features. Again, KDE rocks!! (And by the way, I really don't like to make mistakes two times, so GSoC 2010, here I come 😛 )