What They Said : Charles Davis (obelix).

What is your favorite BASH command in BeOS?
Hard one, umm, I'd say anything starting with "w", although I don't much use whois or which.

How often do you check your email, and what do you use?
I use bemail.org and I use BeZilla or Net+ for that. I also use Dr. Zoidberg's Mail Daemon Replacement with freeshell account, but I really like cotito!'s scooby, although I don't use scooby.

SVG Tracker.. Good, bad, ugly? Care to comment on the future of openTracker?
Definately good. The future of openTracker resides in expanding the range of features to the users, and breaking through limitations. The ability to have tracker able to deal with SVG icons doesn't detract from any standard degree of functioning, plus, SVG is really SVGL based, so you can code edit, or you can "paint the icon", as normal.

App_Server Update.

DarkWyrm has his team have been busy bees, as always, so it's time for another update on the App/Interface Kit progress.

For your convenience, i'll quote the OpenBeOS site article:

• Having contacted Marti Maria, developer of the color management library Little CMS, DarkWyrm has secured use of their library under the MIT license. This will allow precise management of color values within the source code so that on-screen coloration can be made to match exactly with the output from the printer. Probably a feature reserved for R2, but a very useful one (and absolutely required by any kind of desktop publishing work).
  
  
• The beginnings of the font infrastructure for the app_server have been developed. The heart of the work involves creating a good font caching system. The font rendering itself will be handled by the FreeType library. DarkWyrm has been adapting this code for use by the app_server. Once this is complete, it will be possible to fully implement BFont. Ingo Weinhold has recently checked the FreeType2 code into the OpenBeOS CVS repository and has been making adjustments so that it will build with our jam setup.
  
  
• Prototype #7 on the way. Awhile back, DaryWyrm announced that P6 (prototype 6) would be the last one before work on the true app_server began. But he has decided to create one more prototype. P7 will implement some improvements to the decorator and display driver APIs and some fixes as well (e.g. much less on-screen "flicker"). But the main purpose of P7 will be to test the new font code.

Great job don't you agree? These guys rock.

Don't forget to stay tuned for Technix's report on BlenderCon.

BlenderCon : First Impressions

I arrived in Amsterdam around 2 in the afternoon, friday, October 11th, with no troubles at all, after taking the train from Rotterdam. Total travel time thus far: 1hour, and 10EU.

Finding "De Waag" was a minor walk from central station, about 20 minutes total, as I navigated my way through the famous "red light" district, to finally arrive at a very old, imposing building that overlooks a vast cobblestone courtyard.

A small sign proclaiming "Blender" was posted to one of the side doors, whereupon I rang the buzzer, stated "Blender" at the voicebox to the side, and was buzzed in. Walking up a short flight of stairs, which lead in a circular fashion against one of the outside walls, I told the receptionist for the event my name, and was admitted post haste.

All going according to plan thus far. Very nice. Everyone here has concise, informative namebadges indicating who they are, what they represent, and where they are from. Already I can see several traditionally clad "geeks" sporting t-shirts with the famous Tux logo, the long hair, and baggy clothing besides, but that's expected at such a prestigously geeky event. Geeks rule. ;-)

I thought it prudent to arrange for my overnight stay at a local, nearby hotel, so I left for a brief period, paid, and came back in time to listen to the presentation on a new game engine which will be using Blender created objects, in real time. I'll have more information on this system later, when I do more thorough research.

Time now: 4:31. I'm about to listen to another presentation, this time on "Verse", a real time communication system for 3D objects. It sounds cool, but I have no idea of the impact it will have in the computer world, just yet. More to come on that too, later. ;-)

Media Kit Receives Huge Update

WOW!! You're going to love this... This one comes from Bruno Albuquerque (BGA) (complete with his usual shameless plug), over at the OpenBeOS site.

Media Kit lead Marcus Overhagen just made public his progress with the Kit, and let me tell you, it rocks, BIG time! Here's the news bit:

Marcus Overhagen has been busy coding the OpenBeOS Media Kit since some time ago. Contrary to the [shameless plug]OpenBFS guys[/shameless plug] he prefers to do that without wanting everyone to know about the smallest change he does. ;) Well, his work resulted in a huge achievement and it is now possible to actually see it in action!

OpenBeOS Media Kit

The screenshot shows Cortex (a really cool program. Go get it!) displaying the inner workings of the Media Kit. In this case, it is not the original BeOS Media Kit, but the OpenBeOS Media Kit replacement, running on BeOS R5.

You can now activate Media Nodes, like the VideoWindowConsumer (the TV display) or the BT848 Input (The TV card), connect them, and run them. As you can see, data transfer between nodes works.

You can also see 2 Terminal windows opened that show debug output for the OpenBeOS media_server and for the OpenBeOS libmedia.so loaded by Cortex.

Congratulations to the Media Kit Team and, specially, to Marcus himself.

WOW right? W-O-W! Great work everyone, great work. Keep it up!

TBJ Celebrates Another Birthday!

It's true. We're one year old, on October 13th, and we just wanted to let people know. It's amazing how the time flies by SO fast, especially when the people around you are so great and supporting, such as is the BeOS Community.

We're proud to be a part of such a fine community, one that has helped shape our growth, brought about such great change to an OS we all love, and so much more. We therefore celebrate this past year with you, our friends. Now, before you start crying, blow out those candles! ;-)

What They Said : Andrew Gildehaus (Androo).

Do you think that openTracker should incorporate theming/skinning in the future?
I don't see it as being a high priority or even one that should be tackled in the near future. Skinning causes problems with the consistancy of a UI and that's why you see Apple and Microsoft controlling how their OS can be skinned (Apple having only a "graphite" alternative and Microsoft only having a few ugly alternatives to that equally ugly blue thing they call Luna). I believe whatever the next incarnation of BeOS is should follow suit and offer a wide variety of carefully designed "themes" that keep the consistancy of the UI. Nothing more, nothing less.

What is your favorite Deskbar Replicant, and why?
I would be very shocked if anyone were to not say "ProcessController" when asked this question. Out of all the Deskbar replicants I use and know, I can safely say that ProcessController is the most useful, most informative and ranks the highest on the "cool factor". Where else can you launch a new terminal window, turn on and off processors, change a team's priorities, kill a team, quit an application, view cpu and memory usage, all from within an easily accessed context menu? That's right: nowhere. I love that little deskbar replicant. It's free, too (free being icing on top of the cake, and it's damn good cake!).

How useful are saved Tracker Queries?
Recently I've taken to reorganizing my music and I've added a "rating" attribute to my mp3 files in which I rate tracks from 1 to 5. If I only want to hear my favorite songs, I simply double-click my "View Favorite Songs" saved query and voilla, a Tracker window pops up with all the songs I've rated as 5. This is a feature iTunes has (and Windows Media 9 beta has) ... but Tracker can do this with no extra programming and has had the capability for years. A database-like filesystem allows for these sort of things and has really infinite possibilities.

What They Said : Francois Revol

What kit is your favorite in BeOS?
Hard to tell, I like the simplicity of the Kernel kit (just check the ugly names of functions in pthreads :P), and writing drivers and the wonderful Kernel Debugging Land :) But I also appreciate the Media Kit, which I still have to learn parts of.

Which video card do you use in BeOS, and why?
ATI Expert@work (RAGE Pro), just because I had it when I bought my PC, and it works nice in BeOS, I have overlay to watch DivX, why ask for more ? :D

What is your next major goal in life?
I recently got graduated as engineer, now I'll go for a PhD. thesis hopefully. :-)

Team BeOS Needs Your CPU!

Ok, we all know by now that distributed.net has solved the rc5 challenge. What you may not realize is that Team BeOS has quite a number of OTHER challenges on the go!

The one I'm most interested in reporting about is the Distributed Folding Challenge, which is quietly propelling Team BeOS up through the ranks at breakneck speed. This is where you can help. By joining the team, and using your idle CPU cycles just like you did for Distributed.net, you can not only help BeOS get more recognition, but help deal with a pretty serious science experiment as well.

The outcome of the science experiment will go a long ways to helping many scientific fields, from the fight against cancer, to diabetes, to old age. Read all about the Science of Protein Folding to know more. So, do your fellow BeOS Community members a huge favor, have pride in knowing that you are helping humanity, and join today!

First, start by downloading the client. Next, read online on how to install and use the client properly. If all else fails, check in with other team members using BeShare or Ozone and ask for more detailed help.

Good luck!

What They Said : Dane Scott, BeOS Radio.

Given a chance, with no limit to funding, what radical feature could you dream of for BeOS?
I'm very single minded of purpose. I came to BeOS for the audio, I stay for the audio. All my hopes, wishes, and aspirations are for awesome audio on BeOS. Great applications, smooth operation. In terms of the OS itself, I would just be happy if the media kit was more friendly to applications, allowing more than one app to use the live input at the same, for instance. That's been a frustration since it really limits things. I would also like to see better support for user-selectivity of input and output channels in audio applications, as they have in Windows.
Nothing very radical about my dreams, I'm fairly utiltarian, I'm afraid.
Just want to be able to work, live and BREATH audio in BeOS.

If BeOS were an animal, what would be it's natural enemies?
Easy answer. Microsoft. It chased BeOS through the trees and cornered it against a rock. BeOS escaped and went into hiding, but when it comes back out, look out Windows!