Gnome Clock App – Try it now!

This post was made with another stylesheet and it might be messed up!

I tried the upcoming Gnome Clock App, from Gnome’s Git which is far beyond from completed and there isn’t much to see, but.. the cool part is that Clock is written in Python so you can try it in seconds without compiling ..and of course update it from Git and try it again!

And if you are lazy to clone it, I YouTube-d it for you ;)

As you can see Clock is quite empty at the moment, but you can still can have worldwide clocks, stop watch and timer. Alarms aren’t working yet.

Clock will be integrated with Gnome Shell within the Calendar and it might get some weather widget with it. This is work in progress and isn’t finalized yet. The size of the height is one of the issues of this approach.

Gnome Clock

One thing I don’t like in Clock is Python. I don’t understand why they should use so many different technologies that make the project hard to maintain. Ok, C is necessarily evil(!) but they have Vala and JavaScript. I guess they preferred Python over JS cause of pytz (a Python framework for world time definitions) framework. If any developer of Clock read this, please let a comment about it.

Try HD!

How to try it

You need git to clone the repository and the pytz package:

sudo apt-get/yum install git pytz

and then just clone the repo:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/clocks

and you run:

python main.py

You can visit the Clock Design page for more information about the project!

If anyone know a page with free (quality) music to include in YouTubes, please let us know!

carlos

Why python is bad? Python is an extended language to write desktop applications object oriented(more object oriented than JS). Why do you say that is difficult to maintain? For me it is quicker to develop in python (less declarations, programming words, etc) and more (required)clean code.
Maybe the developer of clocks prefer python over JS because its default features, not the libraries that python has.

alex285

I mean is bad to mix up different languages in single projects. Plus Gnome already lacks in documentation, so they need docs for one more language.

I prefer JS, because JS is a standard with millions of devs.

foobar

Docs for different langauges are only a problem in intermediate-term. GObject introspection is documentation-aware. The documentation part is still young and troublesome but still very usefull. All gnome libs documented in valadoc.org are imported. Most obvious issues in documentation are fixed upstream.

alex285

“Docs for different languages are only a problem in intermediate-term”. Of course I agree on that, but also people quit early a framework because it lacks doc. Personally I think the best thing you do in Gnome this year is writing some docs.

An IDE like QT Creator would be also welcome :)

Philip Witte

Mostly because an environment should use a consistent standard across all UI extensions. This isn’t to say that there should only be one language used for software, of course. Only that within an application, in this case the DE extension, it’s best to be consistent. For a couple reason:

1. API consistency and simplification. Keep the devs happy and sane.
2. Performance (both Javascript and Phython have heavy runtimes, GCs, JIT, etc..), don’t require both to run.

Not to mention, Javascript is faster than Phython 90% of the time (http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=v8&lang2=python3).

Personally, I think Javascript was a bad choice in light of Mono C# which is both JIT compiled (easily extendable) and static + strong typed (efficient mathematical code, which is what makes animations smooth). But that’s a whole different discussion :) Plus I know the Gnome folks wanted to keep inline with the increasingly popular web technologies, which makes sense from a practical point of view.

liam

Dear god, why python? You even had an article about this not too long ago.
If they are serious about being a platform they need to be strict about these sorts of things. Python has been difficult to bind to gobject. JS or vala are both faster and perfectly able to handle the requirements of this sort of app without spinning up yet another interpreter. If they want this to work on a mobile platform these are the things they need to think about.
Aside from that, it is also not very nice looking. Each timezone is represented by a bix within a giant white box? Why not use stylized clock faces? Why are they separate, what is the use case for that? That info can be more nicely represented in the calendar widget as well as being more accessible.

foobar

There is no need to create binding for python. We use gobject introspection in pretty much every library nowadays. Python uses it to access the C libs directly without classic bindings. It works quite well.

Remember: Clock is still in development and not ready for endusers. The blue background is going to be replaced through pictures of related landmarks. The inner box is gluent and makes sure that the time is readable all the time.

liam

From following planet gnome it seems as though python doesn’t exist too easily with pseudo class gobject system, hence why pyftk was the recommended bindings for python until relarively recently. As gobject changes, which it does on occasion, I’d expect python to break again and this is ignoring python3 and alternate interpreters like pypy. BTW, I’ve nothing against gobject though I question whether C was the most maintainable choice.
Regaeding my comments about the design, the design page is up for all to see and what Alex has shown is roughly what they seem to have in mind. I spoke with someone else about this and they had similar reservations about the design. In particular they too wondered about the use case of world clocks as presented above. World clocks in the st box obviously still make sense, though.

Alex: for open licensed music try jamendo, freemusicarchive, magnatune.

Guest

First, I am the only one who is asking: “Do we need this? Really? For what?”? In my opinion an core rss application like Lifrea (or Lifrea with an new interface) is more needed than a, yes a digital clock (I know, I know Gnome Shell is also jused on tablets, but I have never used a stop clock on a tablet (tablet not smartphone)…).
Second, I think the Shell integration looks really ugly. I mean Gnome Shell isn’t about skeuomorphic design. Its is using a _clean_ design.

foobar

We (gnome devs) are distributed over the whole world. The only thing I miss from the good old gnome 2 aera are the clocks. I spoke with folks from 3 different time zones today and I always have no idea how late it is over there. Chances are quite high that I disturb them during lunch, work, or when they are going to bed. It’s not uncommon for me to stay awake for another hour just because someone asked me a question. The clocks helped me and others to estimate how appropriate it is to ask for help / information / a bugfix without interfering. But I surly see why such an application is not really helpful for people who are not part of an international community with the need of synchronous communication.

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