Where am I?
Hi all,
Long time coming and I am still alive and well. In fact, Ive been so very busy. Right now Im studying a unit on Java programming and another on MySQL databases. Im really enjoying the Java one but despise the terminology for different java methods and inheritance. The MySQL thing is incredibly boring and I really dont like it at all. How can you possibly get excited and motivated about databases?! As for my progress with the course as a whole…
So far I have 2 high distinctions (highest mark possible) and with the 2 units Im doing right now Ive gotten 100%, 94% and 95% on my last 3 assignments. I even managed to learn MySQL databases, queries and ERD stuff in 1 week having no prior knowledge and manage a 94% 🙂 So Im doing alright. This is all while I have part time work… with full time study… and other commitments. Speaking of which!
Ive been busy the last 6 months developing and designing this webpage for my band, Sleepfreak. Ive coded all of it from my trusty ol’ gEdit and Chrome. Im pretty happy with it, but if you have any suggestions, Id freaking LOVE to hear them.
So all this has left me little time to tinker with E. Im planning on going part-time study for the next study period just for some time to breath and tackle my first C language unit. Id love to be great at that, rather than Java. And if all goes to plan, Ill be doing C programming as a noob and write some nifty EFL examples to help me practise it and contribute! Yay!
That’s all for now, and Im actually posting this from work. Im too busy at home to write stuff. 😦
Toma.
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Greetings!
I just finished my 1st University exam. It was so very easy. However, riding home on my motorbike, I realised I left out some table metadata. I forgot to add border=”1″ and cellpadding=”5″. 😦
Anyway.
So edje now has dynamic image sources thanks to cedric! What that means, is its now incredibly easy to use the right image for the right size. It was previously possible with some embryo scripting, but that adds extra hassles. This new method is super easy. Lets take a gander.
images {
image: "something.png" COMP;
image: "somethingelse.png" COMP;
set { name: "MrOneEye";
image {
image: "small.png" COMP;
size: 10 10 100 100;
}
image {
image: "medium.png" COMP;
size: 101 101 200 200;
}
image {
image: "large.png" COMP;
size: 201 201 300 300;
}
}
}
So as you can see, the image set is specified in the images {} section, which can basically be thrown anywhere in your edje code. Typically, its set at the start of the group {} section. Then when its needed, its called upon just like the regular images in the description {} section:
image.normal: "MrOneEye";
There you have it. Simple, easy to use image source selection. I can straight away think this would be ideal for icons, but also emoticons, and basically all images that have some detail when using the scale module.
Heres a tar ball of a working example. You need python-efl installed to run it!
That’s that for now. Im going to try to get this happening in E17, but for now, I have to finish coding/making this pill reminder project of mine.
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Memory and Time results.
Hi!
I present some interesting numbers regarding startup times and memory footprints. This started as a simple list but grew and expanded as raster pushed me along. I really only needed a little bit of data for my Uni assignment to put in a CSS table. It’s now a fairly comprehensive test. These results come from my system, with a slight bit of tweaking to make all the environments used to my liking, yet quite minimal. Results obviously vary from system to system and this is the raw results I found on my system. Your results may differ. (Now with shiny graphs!)
Toma.
Results:
Environment
Mem base: Used Mem – Used Buffers&Cache
Mem user: Same with Chrome + Xterm loaded
Time: Time from boot to loaded environment. +/- 0.2 secs
Mem Base Comp: Total memory usage – (X11 + Xterm) memory usage
Time Base Comp: Boot time – Base Boot Time
X11 + Xterm
Mem base: 438792 – 231104 = 207.688 mb
Time: 19.8 secs
E17
Mem base: 459368 – 245360 = 214.008 mb
Mem user: 627860 – 348424 = 279.436 mb
Time: 21.4 secs
Mem Base Comp: 6.32 mb
Time Base Comp: 1.6 secs
XFCE
Mem base: 556552 – 306304 = 250.248 mb
Mem user: 746440 – 435060 = 311.380 mb
Time: 26.4 secs
Mem Base Comp: 42.56 mb
Time Base Comp: 6.6 secs
Fluxbox
Mem base: 445740 – 232680 = 213.060 mb
Mem user: 611544 – 341940 = 269.604 mb
Time: 21.8 secs
Mem Base Comp: 5.372 mb
Time Base Comp: 2.0 secs
Gnome
Mem base: 652904 – 370628 = 282.276 mb
Mem user: 809520 – 470540 = 338.980 mb
Time: 32.1 secs
Mem Base Comp: 74.588 mb
Time Base Comp: 12.3 secs
KDE Software Compilation® 4.3.2
Mem base: 1032896 – 650124 = 382.772 mb
Mem user: 1197904 – 753468 = 444.436 mb
Time: 35.9 secs
Mem Base Comp: 175.084 mb
Time Base Comp: 16.1 secs
*** Each environment was slightly tweaked to make it
more user friendly and usable. They are all very close
to being a default setup. GDM auto-login was used.
64bit Ubuntu 9.10 system with KDE,Gnome,Flux all from
the default repos.***
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Greetings all,
Recently, theres been a bit of discussion on th B&W theme and its need to be fixed. Well, not fixed, more along the lines of a revamp for release. YES there is the faint glow of a finish line in sights! If you have the skills and knowledge, please look at:
http://trac.enlightenment.org/e/wiki/Theme_Revamp
…to see the direction us developers would like to see the theme take. Patches and changes can be sent to myself or the development mailing list. If you need assistance in any changes I will happily give anyone guidance on how to do so. I am going to be finding it VERY hard to do much of the things I love to do soon like messing around with edje and contributing to EFL due to….
Study! Yes study. Im studying to get a Bachelor of Technology in Computing Studies! This means Ill be able to do all sorts of programming and management stuff as I plan to do minor in Management. Ill be studying with Open University in Australia over a few years to get this. Since I havent had a lot of experience with many of the course elements, I suspect it will eat up a lot of my time. But, as I learn these new things I will be trying to contribute as a way of studying & practice.
That about sums it up for now. I dont start for another week or so, so Im hoping to get these theme revisions done before then.
So here I go into the wild blue yonder. 🙂
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Updates are on the way.
Hi all,
Ive recently been considering updating all my themes so they cover all the most recent E updates with widgets and such. Since there are so many of my themes, Im going to take some time to do so. Now is the time to request any changes and things you dont quite like in any of my themes on Exchange!
I will also be adding a paypal button to my links on exchange. Im doing this because I put an immense amount of time and effort into making these themes and I hope the community likes my work enough to throw me some beer money. In the long run, Id love to find a job working on edje stuff and design.
But for now, Im getting back into themeing and I hope you can all appreciate it.
If you’d like to donate now, Im tomhaste at gmail dot com on Paypal 🙂
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Ardy 1.0
Well! Im quite happy with it. Ardy 1.0 now sends AND receives serial data from the Arduino. This means you can control Edje animations via the Arduino, and you can control the Arduino from Edje. Team this news up with Editje or the more developed Edje_Editor, and you have a powerful platform for making simple physical interfaces. Im hoping this kind of work gets used in education. I am planning on using the Arduino code simplicity to get youth into coding and the youth centre I currently work in.
STILL, Ardy is in PROTO in the E SVN.
Enough for now! Time to get cracking on an Edje robot or something… Hehehe.
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Ardy – Arduino, EFL and Python.
Introducing… Ardy!
Ardy is a small set of programs that show how to link up EFL to python then to Arduino. This is a great learning tool for Edje and python-EFL… and Arduino! With the release of Editje, Im sure making something fun out of this will be a real no brainer.
The Arduino sketch is included and the schematic for the breadboard is in the README.txt, which is in trunk/PROTO/ardy in the main Enlightenment SVN.
So anyway, heres what it does. Dazzling, isnt it?
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Hi all!
Back again. This time, without any theme advice and tips, but instead I give you Keys! Its a python-efl based on screen keyboard. I really needed an on-screen keyboard for my Aspire One and illume is madness for a desktop/laptop type machine. Onboard is a great little app written in python and quite function all, but sadly, its ugly as sin. After about a week of learning python, I hacked together this little app! Its 80 lines of python mixed with 300 lines of edje, so you can tell that its VERY heavily based on edje and that means you can change a lot of things about it without any need to know python.
The gritty info about it, is that it waits for the edje to send a clicked signal with the keycode attached then fires that out. Simple. VERY simple. You will need to compile some of the python-efl modules though. These are python-evas, python-ecore, python-edje. Also required is the virtkey python module. The size of the whole package is a whopping 600kb, but that’s mainly due to the font. If you use a fixed sys font, I’m sure you could get it under 100kb.
To check it out,
svn co http://svn.enlightenment.org/svn/e/trunk/PROTO/keys
And some eye-candy…
2 copied of Keys running to show the Shift function and resize capabilities.
That’s it from me for now. I’m busy filling E17 with some icons. Very tedious work. Would much rather be hacking away at some crazy edje thing. Anyway…
Enjoy!
Toma.
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Blast!
Hey all,
Im up to my old tricks again, making some neat things for you to tinker with! This time Ive added to the Inspire wallpaper and added some stuff to make scaling easier. What that means to us artists, is that our work stays at the correct aspect when displayed on widescreen or standard displays. This is something that normal pixmap backgrounds obviously can not do, so we might as well use the tools we have!
Remember, this is only a demonstration of what can be done with these layers and parts. There are a multitude of things to play with in edje.
Lets get started! Firstly, fire up GIMP and create a new image at 800 x 600. (This resolution is only used for demo purposes) I created 4 layers. The base is the Blue galaxy swirl thing. This will layer be stretched to fill all the space. The next 2 are the corner graphics on their own separate layer. The last layer on top is the E logo, but you could swap this for anything, or scrap it entirely.
All the layers in Blast. These become edje parts later.
Next, save each layer as a separate image. This can be done by making the target layer the only visible one then saving and repeating the process. You might be able to Save Layer As… in GIMP 2.6, but I haven’t checked it out yet. Once you have all the layers separated, open them again and resize them to save some space. Things like E logo need to be in the dead centre of the image to centre correctly later.
Now comes the super fun code part! Heres the .edc from Blast. Its already commented so read on!
collections {
group { name: "e/desktop/background";
//
// Lets make a wallpaper that will SCALE well!!! Because not everyone
// has the same screen aspect these days. There are a couple ways to
// get this to work. In this exmaple it keeps the objects at all the
// same sizes so that no scaling happens.
//
// All min and max sizes are taken from their respective image properties
//
images { // Include all files from the XCF
image: "Scaled.png" COMP;
image: "LeftBit.png" COMP;
image: "RightBit.png" COMP;
image: "ELogo.png" COMP;
}
parts {
part { name: "Scaled";
description { state: "default" 0.0;
image.normal: "Scaled.png"; // Make it fill all the space
}
}
part { name: "LeftBit";
description { state: "default" 0.0;
align: 0.0 1.0; // Align left and at the bottom.
min: 334 314; // Set the min size and...
max: 334 314; // max size so it wont scale.
image.normal: "LeftBit.png";
}
}
part { name: "RightBit";
description { state: "default" 0.0;
align: 1.0 0.0; // Align Right and at the top.
min: 260 284; // Set the min size and...
max: 260 284; // max size so it wont scale.
image.normal: "RightBit.png";
}
}
part { name: "ELogo";
description { state: "default" 0.0;
min: 165 224; // The absence of an align: will
max: 165 224; // make the image centred.
image.normal: "ELogo.png";
}
}
}
}
}
Next you need to compile it up using ‘edje_cc blast.edc’ then import the picture from the Wallpaper selector. You should have a well scaled wallpaper that preserves your efforts for all screen sizes.
Here are some links to the wallpaper at a few different sizes for comparison.
480×640 (Embedded style display)
And here is the all important EDJ file for you to take home and study!
Enjoy!
Toma.
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A lesson in colours.
Hey folks,
Recently, Ive been reminded that there are a huge amount of people out there with colour blindness. There are also many types of colour blindness. So to cater for these people, designers must often stick to a restrictive palette and hinder the overall production of the theme.
I give you, “Grunge“.
Wait a sec… you already have Grunge? Well yes… Ive tweaked it so now you can recolour a lot of the “Bloodsplats” to be whatever you like. Be its an electric blue paint splat, a flouro green alien blood splat, a pink splotch, or leave it the way it is.
How’d I do that? With Edje!!! Woohoo! Specifically tho, here are some of the steps.
- Create a colour class for your images. [I chose “Grunge_active” and “Grunge_default” to highlight the 2 different states the images go to.]
- Use GIMP, Edje Editor, Inkscape or anything that can give you R G B A colour values. [eg. 255 255 255 255]
- Put your colour in the colour class.
- Set the images to use the colour class. Like this.
description { image { normal: “white.png” } color_class: “Blah”; }
- Ensure the image used is white and black. Colours in the image will get altered and look weird. (unless you want weird!)
- Save, compile, and run the theme.
- Run in a terminal “enlightenment_remote -color-class-color-set Blah 50 200 50 255” to set the colour class named “Blah” to a light green.
- Read the other -color-class options in enlightenment_remote to really get a hang of it.
Thats about it. When we grant more power to users in themes, we get to involve them in more in E. Thats nothing but a winning formula for but E and the users.
Enjoy!
Toma
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Tags: color_class, colours, Edje
Adventures in Edje 
