Glom 1.0 is out. It’s reasonably stable, and it does many useful things, in a simple way: Define fields in tables: number, text, boolean, date, time, and image. Define relationships between tables. Define field calculations with python. Define field lookups. Define default field formatting which can be overriden later. List and details views, with automatic [...]

I have reluctantly added ListViewText to gtkmm 2.9/2.10 in CVS. It’s a very simple TreeView specialization that allows only text values, and doesn’t allow children, similar to ComboBoxText and ComboBoxEntryText. Thanks to J. Baltasar García Perez-Schofield, who implemented it. I’m quite sure that this would be useless or awkward in most real-life situations, because you [...]

One of my clients in the U.S. requires me to fill out a W-8BEN IRS form. This is quite normal and probably should have happened with my other clients. It allows them to not withhold 30% of my payments, because I’ll be taxed on that income in my own country, under income tax treaties, and [...]

I was worried there for a moment, but Davyd Madeley and Bob Kashani really pulled it off in the end. The GNOME 2.14 release notes are well done and have been translated into a heap of languages. They’ve been very well received, creating a nice warm glow around the 2.14 release. It’s a lot of [...]

I noticed that I have to renew my passport which expires next month. Looks like I have to post it off to Dusseldorf. I was surprised to still see this remnant of the class system on the application form notes. “Someone who has known you personally for at least two years should complete and sign [...]

Glom tries to always show dates with 4-digit years, in your locale’s appropriate format. Nobody needs the option for it to only show 2 digits years. It just works. I had been using C++’s insanely complex std::time_put and std::time_get thingies to do this, but for some reason the en_GB locale wants to use 2-digit years [...]

I never read Linux Journal so I’d never heard of Don Marti until Jeff pointed out that his old nagazine has abandoned its future by giving the crayons to Nicholas Petreley (repellently irritating like a very stupid, spoilt, hyperactive child). But I’m glad to have discovered this Don Marti guy. What a sensible, constructive guy, [...]

I know I declared a Glom beta, so the features should be frozen, but I just couldn’t help it. I’m working on a Film Production management system, to put Glom through its paces, and hopefully to sell. I needed these new features: Multiple levels of sorting on reports. Vertical report groups: Rows of field values [...]

I’ve always had trouble sleeping. For my whole life, I’ve often had those insomniac nights when I can’t get to sleep, but feel sleepy enough to keep trying. Often my mind refuses to stop thinking about stuff, so I end up giving up at 5am and doing some programming or emailing. That’s at least been [...]

I’ve been squashing lots of bugs, as ever, and I think Glom is nearly 1.0 material, so I’m calling 0.9.8 “Beta 1″ and hoping that it gets some more testing. Realistically, only people using Ubuntu Dapper will be able to test it easily, thanks to Daniel Holbach. There’s lots of post-1.0 features that need to [...]