Avant Window Navigator (Awn) 0.4 Progress Report: June 2009

I've been a bit quiet about Awn in my blog. This is partially because I've been working on two major areas: libdesktop-agnostic and Vala/GObject Introspection (as explained in my previous post, On Bindings).

Since my work on libdesktop-agnostic is directly related to Awn, I'll address it here (even though it may be boring to most of you). I currently have abstractions for configuration, desktop entries, and virtual file systems (e.g., GIO). The area that needs the most work currently is the configuration support. What will ultimately happen is that there will be a class which lets you have per-instance configuration for a given app(let), regardless of the backend that is being used. What this means is that Awn users won't be shackled to using GConf if they want a stable dock. Plus, if a user wants to switch backends for some bizarre reason, they don't have to recompile Awn to do so. Obviously, they'd have to migrate the settings themselves, but that's the price one pays.

Anyway, on to Awn. Here's a screencast I took (CC-BY-SA 3.0 licenced!) of a development version of Awn in an Ubuntu Jaunty virtual machine (hooray for VirtualBox!):

(Direct link to YouTube video)

The bar colors are kind of ugly, mostly because I was testing some of the color-related code on that VM.

Obviously, the features shown in the video (orientation, panel style, and applet loading indicator) aren't the only new features in 0.4. I'll be showing off more shininess in successive videos.

Moonbeam has covered most of the current status of Awn 0.4, which I will repeat here, briefly, for those of you who are scared of clicking on links:

• Moonbeam is working on an API that allows applets to have text and graphics overlay the applet icon. Think Awn plugin support for applets.
• He is also rewriting Awn System Monitor so that one can monitor multiple things from the dock, among other things.
• Certain panel/task animations still need to be implemented.
• Plugin (not applet) support still needs to be implemented.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about the Awn plugin system, particularly to those who actually write the plugins. The D-Bus plugin API that was in 0.2.x and 0.3.x will be deprecated in the 0.4 series, and removed in the 0.6 series. There will be a new API in the 0.4 series.

With regards to what I'm working on - in addition to libdesktop-agnostic integration, I will most likely be working on implementing the D-Bus plugin API, once Moonbeam is done with the API mentioned above.

On the Awn Extras front, I have the Garbage applet waiting to be added. This is waiting on Vala support being re-activated (which is dependant upon adding GObject Introspection support to Awn), and porting the applet to the 0.4 API. There is also an rTorrent frontend and a social aggregator applet that I have on the backburner (both written in Vala), which may or may not make it into 0.4.0.

And finally, a note for Ubuntu users: we are not making available PPA builds of 0.4 until there are no feature regressions in the rewrite. This release is targeted for the official Karmic Koala repositories, just as 0.3.2 was targeted for the Jaunty Jackalope repositories. We anticipate building packages for Hardy and above.

Remember, the best way to keep track of new developments in Awn/Awn Extras is to subscribe to Planet Awn. Be with us next time for "Autohide and Seek", or "The Incredible Shrinking Dock"!