As part of my work at Igalia browsers team, I am working on making WebKitGTK+ and Epiphany work on Wayland.

Just running non 3D websites on Wayland did not involve too much work. But running the OpenGL accelerated code in WebKit was a bit more complicated. Though, I’ve got a first working version.

Video: Epiphany on Wayland running WebGL and CSS-3D

On WebKitGTK+, we enable the use of hardware acceleration with OpenGL for:

• WebGL: web pages with a canvas using WebGL are run using the 3D hardware available.
• Accelerated composition of layers. With stuff like CSS-3D transformations, 3D hardware acceleration is handy to composite the layers of a webpage.

You can read more about accelerated compositing on these posts from Martin Robinson: WebKitGTK+ hackfest wrapup, and Accelerated compositing update.

On X11, we use XComposite, sharing a Window among the GTK+ widget (WebKitWebView) and the GL contexts for WebGL and accelerated composition. We have a tree of layers, each one rendering to a texture. Then these textures are composited rendering directly to the X11 window.

On Wayland, things are a bit different. Wayland protocol does not define a way to share a buffer among clients, nor a way to “insert” a window inside another window. My solution is just making the accelerated compositor render the layers to another texture. When the time comes for the WebKitWebView to be drawn (using Cairo), we render this texture too. If we build GTK+ for using EGL, then this process happens completely on GPU.

Next step will be adding support for accelerated composition in WebKit2GTK+. The main challenge here is that the WebKitWebView widget is on UI process and the WebGL contexts and layers rendering are in Web Process. So, if we want to avoid buffers going to/from GPU, we need to share them between the two processes. DRM authentication through EGL_mesa_drm extension could help here.

This is a review of the weekly meeting of the Maemo Community Council.

Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs)
Attending: Woody14619, Ivgalvez, NielDK, SD69

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):

• CC status
• Elections
• Bylaws updates and NFP status
• Council Mailbag (QT5 competition related)
• Misc topics

Topic 1 (CC Status)

• Elections for CC are finished, organizers are working on finalizing results.
• See the official wiki page for links and eventual official results.

Topic 2 (Elections)

• We have enough candidates to move forward, nominations end the 28th.

Topic 3 (Bylaws and NFP status)

• Updates from Woody and TMO are posted in TMO.
• We now have a tax-ID number.
• Woody has had no time to work on getting bank account setup.
• We need to chat with Nokia/Nemien to do further setup for transition.

Topic 4 (Council Mailbag)

• Laszlo Papp requests Council attempt to recall/redistribute awards from QT5 competition from earlier in 2012, as he feels recipients have not promoted QT5 as the award required.
• After consideration, this was a Nokia-run competition which Council was not involved in. Council feels it would be inappropriate to interject itself into the QT community (which is much larger than Maemo, Harmattan, and/or MeeGo).
• It is decided we will encourage Laszlo to take this matter up with the Community via TMO. If there is a consensus there, the next Council may revisit this topic.

Topic 5 (Misc/reminders)

• We continue to have infrastructure problems, hopefully resolvable by Hildon Foundation when we/if they get the keys.

Tablet usage is growing rapidly. Ars Technica wrote about an interesting study today:

IndustryPack drivers for Linux

In the past months we have been working at Igalia to give Linux support to IndustryPack devices.

IndustryPack modules are small boards (“mezzanine”) that are attached to a carrier board, which serves as a bridge between them and the host bus (PCI, VME, …). We wrote the drivers for the TEWS TPCI200 PCI carrier and the GE IP-OCTAL-232 module.

My mate Samuel was the lead developer of the kernel drivers. He published some details about this work in his blog some time ago.

The drivers are available in latest Linux release (3.6 as of this writing) but if you want the bleeding-edge version you can get it from here (make sure to use the staging-next branch).

IndustryPack emulation for QEMU

Along with Samuel’s work on the kernel driver, I have been working to add emulation of the aformentioned IndustryPack devices to QEMU.

The work consists on three parts:

• TPCI200, the bridge between PCI and IndustryPack.
• The IndustryPack bus.
• IPOCTAL-232, an IndustryPack module with eight RS-232 serial ports.

I decided to split the emulation like this to be as close as possible to how the hardware works and to make it easier to reuse the code to implement other IndustryPack devices.

The emulation is functional and can be used with the existing Linux driver. Just make sure to enable CONFIG_IPACK_BUS, CONFIG_BOARD_TPCI200 and CONFIG_SERIAL_IPOCTAL in the kernel configuration.

I submitted the code to QEMU, but it hasn’t been integrated yet, so if you want to test it you’ll need to patch it yourself: get the QEMU source code and apply the TPCI200 patch and the IP-Octal 232 patch. Those patches have been tested with QEMU 1.2.0.

And here’s how you run QEMU with support for these devices:

$ qemu -device tpci200 -device ipoctal

The IP-Octal board implements eight RS-232 serial ports. Each one of those can be redirected to a character device in the host using the functionality provided by QEMU. The ‘serial0‘ to ‘serial7‘ parameters can be used to specify each one of the redirections.

Example:

$ qemu -device tpci200 -device ipoctal,serial0=pty

With this, the first serial port of the IP-Octal board (‘/dev/ipoctal.0.0.0‘ on the guest) will be redirected to a newly-allocated pty on the host.

LinuxCon Europe

Having virtual hardware allows us to test and debug the Linux driver more easily.

In November I’ll be in Barcelona with the rest of the Igalia OS team for LinuxCon Europe and the KVM Forum. I will be talking about how to use QEMU to improve the robustness of device drivers and speed up their development..

Some other Igalians will also be there, including Juan Suárez who will be talking about the Grilo multimedia framework.

See you in Barcelona!

AdBlock, integrated

For a long time our adblock story was a bit underwhelming. We had an extension to do the job, but it was buggy and it would often either not block what it had to block or block just way too much (like, the entire page). So in the last cycle we pretty much rewrote the extension from scratch: it just works better, blocks what it has to block, and uses the adblock+ source filter files.

We just felt this was not enough though. Lots of people still found the wrong extension version, or were not aware there was an extension in the first place, so their experience was not as good as we hoped. So for 3.8 we are just going to bite the bullet, and integrate adblock into the browser itself. Last week we took the extension, merged it into Web, cleaned the the heck out of it, and added a simple entry point in our preferences to control it:

Of course there’s still some things that could be done, like a simple UI to edit the filter rules (for instance, to white-list a particular page where you do want to see ads), but for now we feel this is already a good improvement.

Boston Summit

In other news, I’m just a couple days away from jumping into a plane to attend this year’s Boston Summit. I’m looking forward to see old and new faces and continue the good discussions and work we started in GUADEC about the present and future of GNOME. On the selfish department, I hope to get hold of some lost designer to start fleshing out the 3.8 plans for Web, there’s so much to do.

Thanks to the GNOME Foundation for sponsoring my trip, and to Igalia for allowing me to attend the event!

Front Page

Jolla to unveil Mer-based Sailfish OS and developer story next month

Last week Jolla announced it will be unveiling its new Sailfish OS, Jolla UI, and SDK at the Slush startup conceference in Helsinki November 21st and 22nd: "The startup, which is comprised of many former Nokia employees, said it will also discuss the Jolla SDK and app ecosystem with developers. 'Device information, ID and expected availability' will be announced before Christmas, it added. 'I’m thrilled to finally be able to show the user interface we have been working on, and it will be exciting to open the developer story with SDK and applications to the public,' said Jussi Hurmola, CEO of Jolla, in a statement."

The reveal of the platform and developer story will be the first major non-business announcement from Jolla, and will give developers a more meaningful picture of what the application story will look like for the platform. The reveal of the Jolla-specific UI differentiation will be our first look at what Jolla's "all new" UI will look like. The release of the SDK will hopefully drum up some excitement for the platform, and it will be interesting to see what sort of information the community manages to dig out about the hardware platform (an endeavor the Maemo community is very familiar with).

Read more (techcrunch.com)

Jolla brands Mer-based MeeGo offshoot ecosystem as "Sailfish"

Last week, Jolla announced the formation of a strategic platform alliance around the newly-branded Mer-based Sailfish platform: "Finnish smartphone start-up Jolla will build a new mobile alliance which will license the MeeGo-based mobile operating system to other device manufacturers and service developers beginning spring 2013, according to Jolla CEO Jussi Hurmola. According to Hurmola, Jolla is currently building up a new 200 million euro mobile alliance based in Hong Kong, China. In the core of the alliance is the MeeGo based mobile operating system which Jolla calls "Sailfish"." No partners have been announced, and the €200 million isn't a particularly large number, but it will be exciting to see what sort of interest it manages to generate.

Read more (talouselama.fi)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Jolla to unveil Mer-based Sailfish OS and developer story next month
   • Jolla brands Mer-based MeeGo offshoot ecosystem as "Sailfish"
2. Development
   • Updated FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) for Maemo 5
3. Community
   • Logs from latest Maemo Community Council meeting

This one has been on my "blog at some point" back burner for some time now...

'Normal mapping' is a graphics rendering technique used for faking the lighting conditions. In 3D software it is often used for bringing small bumps and dents of textures visible to achieve more realistic graphical appearance without using huge amount of polygons. Normal mapping is kinda advanced version of preceding 'Bump mapping'  technique. Where bump mapping uses just one channel for 'bumps', normal mapping uses 3-channel (RGB) bitmaps and can therefore contain more detailed normal vector information.

Normal mapping technique can also be used in 2D applications to get 3D'ish looking UI elements, which means it can be used also in normal non-Qt3D QML applications. Combining image textures with specifically made normal map textures using a suitable shader is all you need. And normal maps can be automatically created with Gimp, Blender, Photoshop etc. drawing tools, although for best results some tweaking may be required.

But enough about theoretical mumbling, here comes visuals:


(Qt5 NMapper tool, running on PC and on Raspberry Pi)

To experiment with normal mapping I implemented a simple Qt5 NMapper application. As seen from video, it can be used to play with different graphical assets, change lighting conditions, switch normal map x&y-coordinates etc. It also includes the essential 'cave mode' for wiggly fire light.. ;-)

Download NMapper application from here and try it on PC/Mac/RPi or equivalent platform with Qt5.

After this brief intro I'll make a follow-up post within few days about example usage. Have a hacking weekend everyone!

For those who haven't been following along with the discussion:

• Board elections have started, and will close on October 18th.
• Council nominations have re-opened and been extended until October 28th.

The election thread has all the details, including the new time tables.  Thanks again to MisterC for creating the candidate declaration wiki page, and to Andrew for helping with clarifications and nomination validation on the community mailing list.

If you have not yet received your token for voting, please check your spam filters and/or validate you are elegable and have a current e-mail address in your maemo.org account.

 

(This is part II of the normal mapping journey, check the part I first for details.)

So you have all now played with Qt5 NMapper tool, right? Goody, that means we have gained experience of normal mapping and created some perfectly tuned normal mapped textures. Now it's time to use these in a separate application.

Let's assume that you are working on a 2D QML application, but would want 3D-looking effect into some part(s) of the UI. To visualize, here's an example NMapCarousel demo application:


(Qt5 NMap Carousel, running on PC and on Raspberry Pi)

Here normal mapping is used to make the carousel icons more dynamic by applying lighting. To increase the 3D impression, there are also extra shadows reflected behind the icons.

To implement something similar, here's how to proceed:

1. If not already, setup Qt5 to your PC/Mac/RPi or equivalent platform.
2. Create normal maps of your graphic assets using Gimp, Blender, Photoshop etc. tool of your choice. Name the normal mapped image with extra "n" in the end, so images are something like "thing.png" and "thingn.png".
3. Test your graphics with NMapper by copying these images into "images" folder and adding "thing" into imageFiles array property. Play with the light intensity, diffuse, switching x&y coordinates etc. If you are not happy with the results, jump back to step 2 to edit the images and iterate.
4. Make your own application. Copy NMapEffect.qml and NMapLightSource.qml from NMapper, use your freshly made images, the lighting settings you tested earlier and implement rest of the UI.
5. Profit! (Sorry that this took a bit more steps than normally... but on the positive side there is no unknown ???-step in the middle!)

Source codes of this demo are available from here. I'm waiting to see cool normal mapping uses!

PS: To learn shaders from the master, check out Andrew's thndl.com!

Front Page

Non-profit board elections underway, council nominations re-opened

The election for the Hildon Foundation Board opened this past week on Friday (October 12th) and will run through Thursday October 18th 2012, 23:59 UTC. For the board elections: "Due to Nokia's state, its funding for maemo.org in 2013 is uncertain. The community is working on bylaws for a new legal entity (currently with the working title “Hildon Foundation”) that can legally inherit the domain name or have donations (monetary, hardware and/or data) from Nokia, the current providers, and community members, which can be used to continue operation of resources vital to the community. The bylaws are currently in discussion, and will be formalized shortly. The initial Board for the Foundation will be elected parallel to, and with the same election rules and requirements as, those currently established for Council elections. It is expected that the Board elected for this new entity will adopt the community's desired bylaws and be ready to take the reigns as soon as the entity is ready for operation."

The nomination period for the Maemo Community Council has been extended through Sunday October 28th, 23:59 UTC. Voting for council will take place from November 2nd through the 8th.

Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (talk.maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Non-profit board elections underway, council nominations re-opened
2. In the Wild
   • The Story of Nokia MeeGo
   • Samsung to merge bada with TIZEN

The results of the Hildon Foundation Board elections, Q4 2012 are now official.  Congratulations to all involved, and many thanks to the community for their support and their vote.

Please keep in mind that the Council election cycle is still going!  Nominations continue through the 28th, and voting will occur the first week of November!  There are currently four standing candidates for Council.

As my mate Simón was writing short time ago in his post Announcing the Gallery Tilt Shift plugin for the Nokia N9, we got published at Igalia some plugins for enhancing the experience of the built-in Gallery application in the N9/N950 through the Nokia Store: Enlarge & Shrink Plugin, Gallery Tilt Shift Plugin, and Facerecognition Resetter Plugin.

The Enlarge & Shrink Plugin is a filter developed by Antía Puentes for the built-in Gallery application which applies a radial distortion to a picture featuring an enlarge or shrink effect (also known as punch or pinch).

The Gallery Tilt Shift Plugin is a filter developed by Simón Pena for the built-in Gallery application which makes a picture look like a miniature.

Finally, Facerecognition Resetter Plugin was developed by me. It is a add-on for the built-in Gallery application which is not a real filter for the pictures. Instead, it is just a way of forcing the deletion or un/protection of the face recognition database through its usage from Gallery. The main reason for doing this is a well known bug in the face recognition feature.

If you are experiencing that the the N9 is not recognizing faces any more or it is not giving any more suggestions just install Facerecognition Resetter Plugin and click on the “Protect” button. You want to do this even if you are not suffering this problem since this will prevent it from appearing in the future.

BTW, comments and reviews in the Nokia Store will be welcomed

Front Page

Hildon Foundation Board election results

The results of the inaugural Hildon Foundation Board election were released last week. The new 3-member board (which includes one of MWKN's own: Tim Samoff) will serve a one year term. Congratulations to your new Hildon Foundation Board!: "Winners are Ivan Galvez Junquera (ivgalvez), Randall Arnold (Texrat), and Tim Samoff (timsamoff)."

The election of the board marks the beginning of maemo.org's transition to an independent entity from Nokia as funding for maemo.org will come to a close at the end of the year. The new board will act as the governing body for the legal entity (Hildon Foundation) that will be taking over control of maemo.org. The new board members are in for a tough job. The staff of MWKN, being familiar with the sorts of challenges they're likely to face, wishes them good luck.

Read more (maemo.org)

Proposed "release candidate" for non-profit Hildon Foundation by-laws

With maemo.org's service contract coming to a close at the end of the year, Nokia's support of the community will end. In a response to this, a non-profit organization, the Hildon Foundation, is being formed to take over operation of maemo.org and its services. The by-laws for the foundation have been undergoing a long process of writing and re-writing over the past two months, and Craig Woodward posted the latest revision to the proposed by-laws on Talk: "Attached find the next (possibly last?) proposed revision of the bylaws. There are several small changes (capitalization, word changes, typo fixes), and one major change around what happens with elections when nominees die or withdraw their nomination. [...] Please review these and get comments in fast!"

With the Hildon Foundation Board election results posted, the new board will likely be voting on the by-laws within the next week or two. Anyone interested in reviewing them before they're instated should do so as soon as possible.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Hildon Foundation Board election results
   • Proposed "release candidate" for non-profit Hildon Foundation by-laws
2. Development
   • Get involved in single public transport app to rule them all
3. Community
   • A Hildon Foundation Board Rules of Engagement proposal
4. Announcements
   • Android OpenGL ES game compatibility environment for Harmattan and Fremantle

Firefox for Mobile Congratulations on IE10: from Mozilla with cake - http://limpet.net/mbrubec... October 26, 2012 from Matt Brubeck - Comment - Like

After a loooong break, I am back to this. I have to confess that I had had several new/cool stuff during this pause: new projects, mind-blowing findings, exciting/stressful experiences, lovely/irritating people. And all of this had consumed a lot of my free time. I am not saying that I hadn´t had time at all: I had done some new/different things with such slots of time than only writing about technical stuff.

Well, but anyway, let´s keep track of new stuff. The main reason to start blogging again was the simply fact that I am not used to describe all solutions for tricky problems in general: how to cross-compile certain applications for ARM devices, how to set up a smart CI environment, and so forth. I swear I have tried it really hard, but my evil side always tells to myself: "if you need it some other day, you will remember it". So, this is also a kind of "Raul´s Recipes Book".

I am really convinced that it will work :-)

As part of my next posts, I will describe a bit more about how lovely is a CI environment for a relative huge project (of course, how you can set up all of this and put the pieces together). Specially, when it has such different clients, such as iOS, Android and QT applications.

Introduction to Eina_Log:

Introduction to Eina_Log:

Front Page

Getting Android Dalvik "Hello world" app running on Harmattan

Thomas Perl has been working on getting Android applications to run from within Harmattan using the Dalvik VM from Nitdroid. Thomas gives detailed instructions on how this was acheived and shows an example program running. He mentions in the comments that he is not really interested in taking the idea any further at this point, but gives some starting points in case someone wants to pick it up. The terms "chroot," "reflash," and "brick" are thrown around from time-to-time, so be sure you understand the risks and know what you are doing before you try this at home.

Read more (thpmaemo.blogspot.co.uk)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Getting Android Dalvik "Hello world" app running on Harmattan
2. Community
   • qwazix running for Community Council