Open Source

searchQuick Apprise: TWO #GoogleSummerOfCode #FOSSASIA

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The intended “searchQuick” (sQuick) is an application to enable a user to search a set of books or texts, like an encyclopedia, or some other topical book collection offline built in the open source platform Pharo 4.0.

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After building various mock-ups for a user friendly graphical interface for the application, the rudimentary features which would be present in the first release were finalized.

The chief features would include :

  • Search for word(s)
  • Browse files in the current image
  • Help or Tutorial
  • About section
  • Feedback or Suggestion Aid
  • Explore the code ( Cardinally Open Source 😉 )

Main Screen (copy)

LATEST MOCK UP OF GUI FOR sQuick

At this moment, the most viable options available (apart from the use of GTSpotter, Rubric or Bloc suggested by developers on the forum and #pharo IRC) include:

  • The use of Spec to build the UI which provides a comparatively easier option to implement Button Click Actions, User Input Search String Retrieval etc. But the graphical interface designed by placing the widgets is not a very fancy one and dependent on the current theme of the image.
  • The Morphic GUI gives the application a very pretty look in comparison, however the user input search string retrieval method is not a straight-forward one and is under construction.

After considering various pros and cons, the suitable alternative is considered to be the one made with Morph as it gives a refreshing look to the application.

UPCOMING:

  • Completion of GUI development
  • Commencement of Index build

Stay tuned for more…
Post any queries , will be happy to help 🙂

Continue ReadingsearchQuick Apprise: TWO #GoogleSummerOfCode #FOSSASIA

Starting with Smalltalk, Pharo and Spec

It’s been a few weeks since I started with Smalltalk, Pharo and Spec. Under the guidance of Mr. Martin Bähr, Mr. Sean DeNigris and people from the #pharo community (@thierry, @kilon, @maxleske) I have been able to learn Pharo in a systematic way. I have implemented the knowledge gained by building a few simple desktop applications using the resources available online.

This post intends to clear all your doubt regarding the basic definitions of Smalltalk, Pharo and Spec.

GETTING THE BASICS CLEARED

Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist learning. The language was first generally released as Smalltalk-80.

A Smalltalk environment is its own little world, designed around a conception of a computer with a minimal operating system and populated with living objects. A Smalltalk implementation is composed of an image (binary code), a major source file and a ‘changes’ file. The image is called Virtual Image (VI) because is independent form the platform you use for running Smalltalk. Smalltalk systems store the entire program state (including both Class and non-Class objects) in an image file. The image can then be loaded by the Smalltalk virtual machine to restore a Smalltalk-like system to a prior state.

As Sean DeNigris wrote to me: “You may not realize it, but you have opened a portal to some of the greatest minds in the history of our industry. You have in your hands, not a programming language, but a live, dynamic, turtles-all-the-way-down environment designed to provide ‘support for the creative spirit in everyone’. More practically, Smalltalk is a programming tool that allows productivity unimaginable in most systems. And, if you put in enough time and effort to actually think in it, it will help you program better in any language you use.” ; Smalltalk is more dynamic and powerful than what one can think of.

Pharo is an open source implementation of the programming language and environment Smalltalk. Pharo is not Smalltalk. Pharo is Smalltalk-inspired.

Pharo offers strong live programming features such as immediate object manipulation, live update, and hot recompilation. Live programming environment is in the heart of the system. Pharo also supports advanced web development with frameworks such as Seaside and more recently Tide.

The official Pharo website defines it as: Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language and a powerful environment, focused on simplicity and immediate feedback (think IDE and OS rolled into one).

Pharo relies on a virtual machine that is written almost entirely in Smalltalk itself.

Spec is a simple framework for describing User Interface (UI) for Pharo Smalltalk. It takes a model and a layout description, runs it through an interpreter and a UI is produced as a result. All the widget implemented this can then immediately be reused as any other widget.

It also allows the separation of concerns between the different parts of the user interface as expressed in the MVP pattern. Spec emphasis the reuse of the widgets as well as their customization.

I hope now you have got the classifications of Smalltalk , Pharo , Spec all cleared up which remains a basic doubt in every beginners mind.

INSTALLATION GUIDE

Visit the official Pharo website’s download tab to get the desired version of Pharo for the corresponding OS.

For a step by step tutorial describing various ways to install Pharo in your system visit the ‘Installing Pharo in many flavors’ blog written in a very systematic manner by Guille Polito.

Follow the steps as given in Spec Documentation to install Spec in a Pharo Image.

RESOURCES

Visit http://pharo.org/documentationto to get more resources to study from.

INTERESTING READS

 

Continue ReadingStarting with Smalltalk, Pharo and Spec
Read more about the article How to join the FOSSASIA Community

How to join the FOSSASIA Community

We often get the question, how can I join the community. There is no official membership form to fill out in order to participate in the Open Tech Community. You simply start to contribute to our projects on GitHub and you are already a member. So, let’s work together to develop to develop social software for everyone!

The FOSSASIA team welcomes contributors and supporters to Free and Open Source Software. Become a developer, a documentation writer, packaging maintainer, tester, user supporter, blogger or organize events and meetups about our projects.

Women in IT discussion in the community

Here are some ideas how we can collaborate

Download our Open Source applications, install them and use them

The first step of joining a project is always to download the software and try it out. The best motivation to support a project is, if the project is useful for yourself. Check out our many projects on github.com/fossasia and our project social media Open Source search engine on github.com/loklak.

Show your support and ★star FOSSASIA projects

Help to motivate existing contributors and show your support of FOSSASIA projects on GitHub. Star projects and fork them. Doing something that people like and that helps people is a great motivation for many.

Learn about best practices

We have formulated best practices for contributing to Open Source to help new contributors to get started. Please read them carefully. Understanding our best practices will help you to collaborate with the community and ensure your code gets merged more quickly.

Subscribe to news

Subscribe to the FOSSASIA Newsletter to stay up to date on new software releases, events and coding programs here on the main page.

Read the blogs and support users on the mailing list

Learn from Open Tech articles on our blog that are written by developers, contributors, volunteers, and staff of companies supporting the FOSSASIA network. Sign up for the FOSSASIA Mailing List and keep reading our blog at blog.fossasia.org.

Follow us on Social Media

Show us you interest in FOSSASIA’s Open Technology and keep up to date on new developments by following us on Twitter and retweeting important updates: twitter.com/fossasia

And, become a member on social networks like Google+ and Facebook and connect with other contributors:
* Facebook www.facebook.com/fossasia/
* Google+ plus.google.com/108920596016838318216

Join and support the FOSSASIA network at community events

Set up a booth or a table about FOSSASIA at Open Source community events! There are many events of the open source community all over the world. The core team of FOSSASIA is simply not able to attend all events. You can support the cause by making the project visible. Register as a member of the FOSSASIA community at events, set up an info point and showcase Free and Open Source projects. Check out for example FOSSASIA event calendar calendar.fossasia.org or our meetup group in Singapore: meetup.com/FOSSASIA-Singapore-Open-Technology-Meetup

Translate our projects and their documentation

Do you speak more than one language? Most Open Tech projects are 100% volunteer translated, which means you can be part of a translation team translating software and documentation thousands of people will use. Start now and check out our GitHub repository.

Mini Debconf Participants in Saigon

Continue ReadingHow to join the FOSSASIA Community

Richard Stallman from the Free Software Foundation and Hong Phuc Dang at the 31c3 Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg

Richard Stallman FOSSASIA's Hong Phuc Dang, Free Software and Open SourceRichard Stallman (Free Software Foundation) and FOSSASIA‘s Hong Phuc Dang,

Richard Stallman and Hong Phuc Dang met at the 31c3 Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg. Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) is the founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation. Hong Phuc started the FOSSASIA community in 2009. The meeting during the “Congress” was a unique chance to discuss the progress of freedom and software in Asia.

“It is great to get Richard’s views on the development of software in Asia and learn about his ideas about Open Source and Free Software. I hope we will follow up soon about new projects and see more cooperation between the Free Software Foundation and the FOSSASIA community.”

A focus that is becoming more and more interesting is hardware and FashionTec development. One of the exciting projects taking place are knitting machines with a completely open design that are freely licensed. Richard advised to use the label “Free Hardware Design” modeled after “Free Software” for such projects.

Links:

Richard Stallman in the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

Personal Website: https://www.stallman.org

Blog on the FSF: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/

Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org

FashionTec: http://fashiontec.org

Continue ReadingRichard Stallman from the Free Software Foundation and Hong Phuc Dang at the 31c3 Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg

FOSSASIA joining Google Code-In Program for Students Age 13-17

We are proud to announce that FOSSASIA has been chosen as a mentor organization for Google Code-In 2015. FOSSASIA is one of twelve global organizations participating in the program for students from the 13-17 years old.

Google Code-In is a global, online contest for 13-17 year old pre-university students interested in learning more about Open Source development. Students work on bite-sized tasks for real-world open source projects in a variety of categories.

Students can register and take over tasks starting from December 1, 2014 and work on tasks until January 19. All tasks are listed on the website at http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2014

Contest Timeline

December 1, 2014, 9:00 AM Pacific Time / 17:00 UTC: Contest opens for entries by student participants

January 18, 2015, 9:00 AM Pacific Time/ 17:00 UTC: No more tasks can be claimed by students after this time

January 19, 2015, 9:00 AM Pacific Time / 17:00 UTC: All work stops, Contest ends

January 26, 2015: Mentoring Organizations submit their grand prize winner nominees to Google Open Source Programs Office

February 2, 2015: Google Open Source Programs Office announces the grand prize winners via blog post

June 2015: Grand Prize trip to Google and northern California

 

Links

* Google Code-In http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2014

* FOSSASIA at Google Code-In http://www.google-melange.com/gci/org/google/gci2014/fossasia

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA joining Google Code-In Program for Students Age 13-17

FOSSASIA 2010: Bridge to Asia

FOSSASIA 2010 took place at the Raffles College campus in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam from November 12th to 14th. This inaugural event brought together over 350 international and local developers and users in 62 presentations and panels. An amazing crowd of 90 enthusiastic volunteers supported participants. FOSSASIA attendees came from 30 countries including Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Germany, France, England, Australia, and the US.

The goal of FOSSASIA is to provide knowledge of free and open source software and to offer the community a place to meet and share ideas. The annual conference brings together members of the Asian FOSS community along with the international community, thus fostering cooperation across projects and across borders.

Special Tracks: Women in IT and Lightweight Computing

The 2010 event offered 5 tracks including the two special theme tracks “Women in IT” and “Lightweight Computing”.

Hong Phuc Dang from MBM Vietnam said of the Women in IT panel:

“It is fascinating to see so many girls participating. I am very happy that we have chosen ‘Women in IT’ as a theme as it attracted many students to join us.”

Other participants of the women panel were Lilly Nguyen (UCLA, US), Van Thi Bich Ty (PCWorld, Vietnam), Mary Agnes James (Seacem), Lita Cheng (Community Cambodia) and Kounila Keo (ICT4D Cambodia).

The heated debate during the panel definitely portrayed some of the issues and challenges young female developers face. I hope that it made many of the younger women more interested in participating in the community. I am excited to see more involvement of women in IT in Asia in the near future” said Lilly Nguyen from the US.

The “Lightweight Computing” track also generated a lot of interest. Lubuntu, the lightweight version of Ubuntu, attracted the attention of local developers. Additionally, mobile solutions such as Android and Xpad/Xpud were covered in several presentations by Ping-Hsun Chen (Taiwan), Pham Huu Ngon (Vietnam) and Tan Quang Sang (Vietnam).

OpenOffice.org Asia Meet Up

FOSSASIA was particularly happy to welcome the OpenOffice.org community who sponsored the event. As head of the Vietnamese OOo localization team, Vu Do Quynh from Hanoilug presented on the various ways that people could contribute to the OOo community while Yutaka Niibe and Yukiharu Yabuki presented on OOo’s use by the Japenese government in the Osaka Prefecture.

Mini-Debconf, Fedora Release Party and Mozilla

FOSSASIA 2010 was also an opportunity for the Debian community to organize a Mini-Debconf. Debian developers present included among others Jonas Smedegaard (Denmark), Paul Wise (Australia) and Thomas Goirand (France/China).

To celebrate the release of Fedora 14, Ambassador Anh Tuan Truong (Vietnam) and Pierros Papadeas (Greece) hosted the world’s largest release party. The even took place at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy. Pierros–an active Mozilla contributor—had  this to say about the release event:

“It was AWESOME. At first I thought most of them were there due to their teachers, but  when we started a Q&A session I realized I was so wrong… they were  asking about PAE kernels, broadcom drivers, dual boot and LVM etc! By the end of the party we gave out T-shirts, LiveCDs and stickers to everyone, all 134 people where there! I believe that sets a new fedora record! The local Vietnamese community was introduced and many people are already starting to send emails wanting to start translating.”

The FOSS Bridge to Asia

Projects also used the event as an opportunity to showcase new tools and devices like the Freedombox project of the Freifunk community and the latest version of the Crypto-Stick. Jan Suhr (Germany/Singapore) showed the device as a combination of both open hardware and open software.

In the web track, Colin Charles (Malaysia) presented the newest improvements of MariaDB. In addition, Michael Howden (New Zealand) conducted a workshop for Sahan Eden, a platform to provide support in the case of disasters. The workshop gave students a chance understand the information needs of disaster scenarios and they were able to contribute to the localization of the software.

Several web content management systems set-up information booths at the event. These included: TYPO3 with a booth organized by Dominik Stankowski from Web Essentials Cambodia and Drupal (Virak Hor, Cambodia and Quang Thong Tran, Vietnam). The event also introduced other tools such as Zabbix, a monitoring software (Walter Heck, Netherlands). One more hot topic was the enterprise p2p search engine YaCy.net of Michael Christen (Germany). A number of more established projects had the opportunity to share their news at the event including the desktop environments KDE with a presentation about Qt (Gregory Schlomoff, France), GNOME (Kien Truc Le, Vietnam), and LXDE (Duy Hung Tran, Vietnam).

Unconference

Taking a cue from previous barcamps and ‘unconferences,’ many attendees presented lightning talks. Preetam Rai, an Android App inventor, shared photos and tales about other barcamps throughout Southeast Asia. Mary Agnes James from Seacem spoke about todays chances to connect and share with e-media and social networks. Seacem also graciously sponsored this event.

Libre Graphics and Open Design

During the final day of the event, FOSSASIA held it’s first Libre Graphics Day. Arne Goetje (Germany/Taiwan) introduced his new approach for a pan-Asian fonts library. Jon Philips (US) from Status.net and Dave Crossland (UK) from the Google Fonts project conducted an Open Design Workshop. The workshops brought curious crowds and has ultimately seeded plans for the Open Design Weeks 2011.

See you in Vietnam

Thanks again to the amazing crowd at FOSSASIA – developers, translators, event organizers, bloggers, teachers, students, designers and lost but not least our enthusiastic volunteers! See you all in 2011!

* FOSSASIA 2011 will take place in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on November 11-12
* The Open Design Weeks 2011 will be celebrated from April 2-15 in Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho in the Mekong Delta.

Links:

* FOSSASIA http://fossasia.org
* Open Design Weeks Asia, http://opendesign.asia

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA 2010: Bridge to Asia