Gobby 0.4.90

Sunday, October 19. 2008

Look at this screenshot of the recently released Gobby 0.4.90. See that nice yellow arrow in the toolbar? Yes, this means we finally have Undo/Redo support. It was a really good feeling having closed bug #39

Gobby 0.4.90 is the first release in the 0.5 series, and 99% of the code have been rewritten from scratch. It is not yet 0.5.0 since it does not yet contain all the features that previous versions had (for example, it does not yet support self-hosting or password protection). However, removing the integrated chat was a design decision, since there are so many other possibilities for communication, including VoIP. As it supports removing documents, only use it with people you trust enough not to delete all your data.

Gobby 0.4.90 does no longer use obby or net6 as backend libraries doing the hard work, but libinfinity, implementing the Infinote protocol. libinfinity is not yet stable API and ABI wise, and probably will not be for still some time. libinfinity contains a dedicated server, called infinoted that Gobby 0.4.90 can connect to.

You can safely install the new version since it is parallel-installable to previous Gobby versions. But please consider everything as very experimental. Things may crash or otherwise behave badly. Report bugs if they do. We set up a playground server on dalaran.0x539.de if you want to test the new version without having to install server yourself.

Posted by Armin Burgmeier in Gobby at 02:49 | Comments (15) | Trackbacks (0)

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whoa, that app looks handy!

#1 ethana2 on 2008-10-19 04:39 (Reply)

No, integrated chat is useful

Having to switch to another app for IRC or IM is a pain.

#2 James on 2008-10-19 17:19 (Reply)

Could telepathy be used to implement communication in the app without much hassle?

#2.1 ulrik on 2008-10-19 18:37 (Reply)

Yes, I think so, although I didn't yet have a deeper look into the telepathy API. My current plan is to first restore functionality that we had in 0.4, but then let's see what comes next.

If somebody wants to try this, though, feel free to write to the obby-users mailing list (http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/wiki/ObbyMailingLists) or drop by in #0x539 on irc.blitzed.org.

#2.1.1 Armin Burgmeier (Homepage) on 2008-10-19 19:04 (Reply)

I certainly won't change anything if you don't have good arguments to do so. I don't see why using IRC or IM to chat is a pain, since I do it every day.

#2.2 Armin Burgmeier (Homepage) on 2008-10-19 19:07 (Reply)

Integrated chat was a very useful feature - it localises the chat to the context of the document(s) and keeps the chat to those who are part of the session. Normal IRC chats involve a wider range of people - sometimes that is unwanted. Setting up an IRC channel just for gobby is unnecessary hassle.
Also, removing files is something that I'd like to be able to disable completely in preferences before starting a new session. Anyone can create a file in gobby but file deletion just does not fit with how I want to use gobby - in a worksession with various other developers working on a variety of loosely related documents.
Without these two changes, I'd have to abandon use of gobby - a sad loss of a previously very useful tool.

#3 Neil Williams (Homepage) on 2008-10-19 19:27 (Reply)

Setting up an IRC channel just for gobby is as easy as "/join #something". Sorry, I don't get the point in that regard.

Preventing files from being deleted is in scope for the final 0.5.0. But I plan to implement this as a somewhat proper privileges system, not only being tied to deleting files.

#3.1 Armin Burgmeier (Homepage) on 2008-10-19 19:57 (Reply)

Not everyone uses IRC, or has a top-level window dedicated to it (I IRC inside my main screen). Having a chat in the same window means I can be sure if I type something there it'll be seen, whereas someone might forget to check the IRC channel since it's hidden in a different window.

#3.1.1 James on 2008-10-22 04:13 (Reply)

Congratulations on the switch to libinfinity! I know this has been a long time coming, and is a huge step for libinfinity as well as Gobby. Hopefully ill have a similar post myself, soon.

#4 Gregory Haynes (Homepage) on 2008-10-23 04:36 (Reply)

Hi Armin,

Is the source code of the so-called commit-bot on the screenshot publicly available?

Thanks,

Martin

#5 Martin on 2009-01-20 22:47 (Reply)

I added the code that I have locally to the infinoted server on dalaran.0x539.de, to which you can connect using Gobby 0.4.9.1.

I'm not sure this is the latest version of the code, but I'll check. I'll also provide a tarball then, if you want.

Either way, the commit-bot is unfinished and probably not usable without adding some more code. It was meant to be an IRC bot that gets notified by HTTP when a git commit was pushed into a repository, and posts the commit message into an IRC channel.

#5.1 Armin Burgmeier (Homepage) on 2009-01-20 23:37 (Reply)

Armin and all,

It would be very very useful if gobby integrates an IRC server. Each document creates it's own channel.

Using a separate IRC client, it's not guaranteed that for each document there is a specific discussion channel. I think that's what's important for collaborative editing.

It's either that or we chat inside the document itself

#6 Sleek on 2009-01-25 07:03 (Reply)

I'll probably integrate the chat again for Gobby 0.4.92. But it will not be an IRC chat, but one implemented using the infinote protocol instead. This allows using it via the same connection as the one over which the session is synchronized, and it can provide a backlog.

I'm not sure every document should have its own channel, because often multiple documents belong to the same project. I think there will only be a server-global chat first. Later, it could be possible to add additional chatrooms for subdirectories, or add special documents into the tree, subscribing to which joins a chat instead of opening a document for editing. But comments on this are of course welcome.

#6.1 Armin Burgmeier (Homepage) on 2009-01-25 13:08 (Reply)

One more thing, if Gobby has an X-Chat like plugin/scripting system, it could be easily extendable in functionalities.

e.g.

/svn commit : commits this document to the svn repository.

/html-validate : Attempt to validate this HTML document

#7 Sleek on 2009-01-25 07:34 (Reply)

Yeah, but this is something for post-0.5.

#7.1 Armin Burgmeier (Homepage) on 2009-01-25 13:02 (Reply)

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