[Xfce4-commits] <xfce4-weather-plugin:master> Update documentation files.

Wed Sep 12 10:58:01 CEST 2012

Updating branch refs/heads/master
         to bea5e1799c5bf39968307c9db044acf67bfe50a5 (commit)
       from 0b03b7c7be965c7d28242558ad02b4c26b952b6b (commit)

commit bea5e1799c5bf39968307c9db044acf67bfe50a5
Author: Harald Judt <h.judt at gmx.at>
Date:   Wed Sep 12 10:45:42 2012 +0200

    Update documentation files.

 AUTHORS |    1 +
 NEWS    |    8 +++++-
 README  |   91 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 TODO    |   20 +++++++++----
 4 files changed, 113 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index 1b49c2d..a15a28e 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+Bob Schlärmann <weatherplugin at atreidis.nl.eu.org>
 Benedikt Meurer <benny at xfce.org>
 Jasper Huijsmans <jasper at xfce.org>
 Masse Nicolas <masse_nicolas at yahoo.fr>
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 8328180..8b8655a 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,8 +1,14 @@
 0.8.2
 =====
-- More updated translations.
+- Lots of translations updates.
+- Update liquid icon set to be complete (bug #9242).
+- Improve sleet icons (bug #9233).
+- Improve rain icons for darker panels (bug #9233).
+- Correct symbol descriptions and add comments with explanations.
+- Correct and improve liquid icons (bug #9228).
 - Updated README with documentation from Xfce Goodies homepage.
 - Add debugging code and instructions on how to debug in README.
+- Add section about theming and icon sets in README.
 - Remove code for now unsupported GTK/GLIB versions.
 - Bump minimum requirements to match Xfce-4.8 (yes, they were needed
   before) and drop some legacy code.
diff --git a/README b/README
index 2eb0168..a53c522 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -86,3 +86,94 @@ using gdb or any other debugger should the plugin crash:
    print a nice backtrace. Report the issue to the Xfce bugtracker at
    https://bugzilla.xfce.org, providing the backtrace.
 6) 'quit' exits the debugger.
+
+
+ICON THEMES
+==========================================================================
+
+1) Icon theme support
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Currently, there is no real icon theme support, but this will be
+worked on in one of the next releases. Until that feature is
+implemented, you can of course replace the liquid weather icons with
+your own, however this will in most cases require root permissions. If
+you want to design your own set, please have a look at the liquid
+theme to get an idea what the icons should look like and at the source
+file weather-translate.c, where you will find references and
+explanations for the weather symbols.
+
+It was suggested (http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce/2012-August/031180.html)
+to make use of icon themes implementing the freedesktop standardized naming
+scheme, like some KDE and GNOME application do, for reference please see
+http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html.
+
+This might not be such a good idea, however, because
+* the standard only provides a limited set of weather icons which will
+  not be enough to represent all possible conditions the weather plugin
+  can show,
+* it is unclear what to do when those icons are missing, and solving
+  this in a good manner will make things unnecessarily complicated for
+  the plugin,
+* with the liquid icon set there already is a good default icon set that
+  suits most users,
+* the deficiences of the liquid theme can be solved more easily with
+  proper theming support and a bit of editing (providing an
+  alternative liquid theme for dark panels).
+
+Of course, you might take any such freedesktop compliant theme as the
+basis for your personal new icon set, so you only have to design or
+assemble the remaining few icons. And finally, with a bit of searching
+you can find lots of free-to-use icons and icon sets on the web!
+
+2) The "liquid" icon theme and its license
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+In August 2012 a question was raised about the license of the liquid
+icon theme (see http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce/2012-August/031178.html
+and http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce/2012-August/031188.html for
+further discussion), so let's elaborate a bit on that.
+
+According to original author of the plugin, Bob Schlärmann, the
+"liquid" icon theme originates from the now abandoned "Liquid Weather"
+package for KDE Superkaramba and has been part of the weather plugin
+since around 2004. While this is not 100% certain, it is supposed to
+be licensed under GPL-2, as is the "Liquid Weather" script.
+
+Unfortunately, the Liquid Weather website at liquidweather.net is no
+more, and so obtaining the script package is a bit difficult and
+requires searching for mirrors. A link that still works at the time of
+this writing is:
+ftp://ftp.wanadoo.nl/pub/mirrors/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/lwp-15.0.skz
+
+However, trying to contact the developers of Liquid Weather in
+September 2012 for verification about this issue did not yield any
+response.
+
+An archived version of the website which contains information about
+the previously available icon sets and the license is still available at
+http://web.archive.org/web/20100724155753/http://liquidweather.net/icons.php:
+"On this page, you'll find additional iconsets and backgrounds for
+liquid weather ++ - please note that the backgrounds are not easily
+installable with versions earlier than v9.0. With the exception of the
+weather.com, Beginning and Um icons, I believe that these iconsets are
+either GPL or available for redistribution. If I am wrong, please let
+me know and I'll remove them. Please note that the weather.com icons
+are used with permission of the weather.com website, and the Beginning
+and Grzanka icons are used with the permission of their authors. This
+means that these iconsets may not be copied, modified or redistributed
+without permission. The same applies to the Umicons included in the
+core liquid weather tarball."
+
+A further look at http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=6384,
+brings forth this bit of information: "License: Everything is GPL,
+EXCEPT FOR some of the icon sets, which are distributed with the
+permission of their authors." Looking at the archived web page above,
+the liquid weather icon set is not to be found in the exceptions list,
+so according to that it should be GPL. Besides, the similarity of the name of both
+the icon set and its containing package also hints to that licensing.
+
+To sum it all up, the icon theme is considered licensed under GPL too,
+though its original author remains unknown. If someone can resolve this,
+please send a mail to the current maintainer of the weather plugin, and
+he/she will give proper credit.
diff --git a/TODO b/TODO
index 415d62e..b2e0329 100644
--- a/TODO
+++ b/TODO
@@ -4,11 +4,12 @@ categories, but not prioritized or mandatory.
 Panel widgets
 ======================================================================
 * Optionally hide scrollbox
-* Use multiple lines in scrollbox
+* Use multiple lines in scrollbox (bug #5722)
 * Allow choosing a custom text color for the scrollbox widget to
   prevent unreadable or hardly readable text with some themes
+  (bug #7488)
 * Use the Xfce hvbox (maybe, need to check)
-* Support custom icon themes
+* Properly support custom icon themes (bug #6464)
 
 Data
 ======================================================================
@@ -19,9 +20,16 @@ Data
   when the user chooses a location in a different timezone. It should
   be possible to find the timezone of the chosen location and do some
   math to correct this.
-* Find acceptable provider (regarding availability and license of
-  data) for live values, or alternatively maybe cache data for "fake"
-  (e.g. interpolated) live values?
+* Optionally send msl (meters above sea level) parameter when fetching
+  weather data, because sometimes a wrong altitude is returned.
+  Maybe this can be determined correctly by openstreetmap, but I did
+  not see anything like it in the XML.
+* Use openweathermap.org for live/historical data when it is a bit
+  more developed. Maybe check it again in a year or so, or wait until
+  other (open) providers pop up. For the time being, met.no should be
+  good enough. Other providers are only slightly better, like
+  weather.com returning values that have been reported half an hour
+  up to an hour in the past, depending on the location.
 * Optimize data download update intervals. Current update interval is
   3 hours, but in fact data change more often. Updating data currently
   deletes point data at the beginning of the nearest available
@@ -45,7 +53,7 @@ Configuration dialog
 * Reorganize options, the window's already too large for the small
   screen size of netbooks
 * Apply options immediately, like in most Xfce apps
-* Allow editing latitude and longitude
+* Allow editing latitude and longitude and meters above sea level
 
 New stuff
 ======================================================================
