Makneto is able transfer video calls now! Source code is in “karry” branch of git repository. Own solution is based on Telepathy-farsight, multimedia backend is Gstreamer.

Current gui looks terribly, it isn’t designed for videocalls originally. Makneto is still little bit buggy, video has huge latency… But it is working!

I will focus on touchable GUI based on QML language (QT Quick toolkit) now. Stay tuned!

Screenshot of first video call

When application error occurs, for fix is important deliver useful stack trace to developers (and previous application log). On Linux ecosystem exist many half-automatic report tools like Apport (*Ubuntu) or DrKonqui (KDE). But its does not work on some configurations or situations. Collecting information with DrKonqui fails when your application combine Glib and QT toolkits and error occurs in Glib layer. On other hand, Apport ignores manually compiled binaries for me. I don’t investigate why…

Generally, for getting stacktrace can be always used gdb directly. Here are these magic commands:

> make
> gdb ./src/makneto

(gdb) run
(gdb) set logging file stacktrace.log
(gdb) set logging on
(gdb) bt

...
reproduce crash
...

(gdb) set logging off
(gdb) quit

Resulting stacktrace you can send directly me – to address karry.cz@gmail.com, or put to new ticket on https://fedorahosted.org/makneto/ .

Rememeber, you should compile in debug mode and install debug symbols for dependend libraries…

Vojta rewrote Makneto to Telepathy framework in the 2010/2011 academic year. This work is part of his diploma thesis. Using Telepathy allows split protocol’s core from the main application, which significantly simplifies the code base. The next cool thing of this work is that he could simply add support for voice chat. This feature still has a few bugs, but we will work on it. Vojta successfully ended his studies and received a Masters Degree in July of this year. I’ll continue to work on Makneto as part of my diploma thesis this year. And what I want to work on concretely?

• Split core stuffs (Telepathy interaction, media core…) to shared library and in application keep only user interface.
• Rewrite KDE’s specific constructs in core library to pure QT.
• Add support for video chat.
• Create touchable user interface and integrate it to MeeGo platform.
• Adapt whiteboard for finger control.
• Stabilize whole application and create installable packages.

I believe that Shared whiteboard on touchable devices can improve the experience of communication to the next level. I have pre-arranged with my employer enough time for developing Makneto, so I hope that we will be able to release the usable version at end of this year.

It’s always great for an open source developer to get some support from big companies. For example, Red Hat, my employer supports me a lot in all communities I’m trying to be part of (Fedora, KDE) and of course with Makneto development (indirectly, bachelors/diploma thesis program led by Red Hat). The whole team met through this program. But now we were rewarded another big contribution – Makneto was accepted to N950 Extended Program! We have already received one piece of this awesome device. As someone from Nokia said – we were very close to producing nearly perfect smartphone but it was before 2/11. But still – MeeGo UI (as Harmattan is still more Maemo – the low level platform) can survive in Intel. And thanks to this company, greatest supporter of Qt, we have another interesting touch device – ExoPC. So let’s start with both form factors. I’ll try to make sure that devices passes all people working on Makneto! Thanks!

And what’s the current status? I’m still trying to get into Harmattan/MeeGo development. Trying simple Qt Components based apps etc. It’s really very nice, for design, I think both platforms deservers a little bit different approach. And yeah, there’s one big issue on N950 side – no Jabber support by default! I hope there are no intentions to ban Jabber in final N9 as for example HP did in WebOS (yes, all Jabber outside @gmail.com domain is banned and you have to root your phone!!!).

But let’s see, I hope we will move soon at least with MeeGo part, making the library more QML-friendly. Then it should be quite easy to build another mobile UI on top of it + further Harmattan integration.

Finally! After a long time waiting for a new website we have completely new one. Forget old Sourceforge stub! There’s still a lot of work on WordPress template customization , filling the content etc. But we’re here. Let’s say thank you to Martin Hlahulek, who sponsored domain!

Also we have a big news – Makneto has been ported to Telepathy framework by Vojta (as his diploma thesis for Red Hat)! What does it mean? Better and simple code with core moved to own library and separated from UI. This change will allow easier creation of new user interfaces, especially small factor touch ones for Maemo/MeeGo platforms (and possibly with old libiris code to other platforms too as Symbian?). This UI will be based on Nokia’s Qt Components. Another great feature we will get nearly for free is audio/video support! So yeah, expect bright future!

And what we have for now? Our priority is to stabilize current code and make the first real release soon! Stay tuned!