Hi,

I just wrote a PDF reader based on Chromium PDF engine.

It's pretty dummy, written in 30 minutes. But quite useful (at least for me) given the limitations of Document viewer, and that sturmreader is currently broken on noble.

I think it will greatly benefit from Qt6 upgrade, when it comes, because of improvement of the engine in chromium.

It is published in the openstore:

https://github.com/pparent76/chromiumpdf

Regards,
Pierre.

Hello everyone,

I figured I would make videos about Ubuntu Touch, to contribute spreading the word.

I'm thinking about making videos to present my applications, reviews/demonstration/tests of the system in general, and possibly videos where I explain why I'm using Ubuntu Touch, and how I got to it.

Here is my first video presenting the application Maps exporter:

English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR0eqz7wpyM
French version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOJkiSa28Ss

This is still quite experimental so if you have feedback on how to improve the videos for the next time feel free to do so!

I've succeeded in opening the keyboard when editing text in signal-desktop !!!!

I could do it reusing the work of @ChromiumOS-Guy in uWolf!

I can officially send signal messages from a native Ubuntu Touch app, without Waydroid!

Even though for now it's not convenient , since keyboard hides the text area, and the enter button of the keyboard somehow does not trigger sending the message, and the "send" button in signal is hidden until you expend the editing area. But still very usable.

For now everything is messy, but I will try to make it available soon (I think it should be possible to do a click package, but I'm not sure yet)

Ps: Note that I could do it with Mobian version only for now.

Hi,

Just wanted to share that VLC 4 (not yet released) has an interface very close to VLC for Android.

I will be a very good candidate to port to Ubuntu Touch. The interface would probably be usable as such, but with few minimal patches to the interface it could probably be near perfect on the phone screen.

I don't have time to do that now, but probably later (possibly when release officially)

Hi,

Just wanted to mention that I contacted the in-development French identity mobile app, to ask them for interoperability, and remind them their duty to make sure public service is available for everybody, and that their role was not to enforce the choice of mobile OS of their citizens.

https://france-identite.gouv.fr/

Surprisingly I got a pretty open and positive reply, apologizing that their app was not compatible with my OS (Ubuntu Touch), and saying they shared the goal of interoperability, and would study that with the development team what was possible. I did not expect such a positive answer, although I don't know if anything concrete will get out of this.

As a side note I wonder why for this kind of app, with a real need of interoperability, they don't use more Qt, because from what I understand Qt allows to develop apps for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux desktop, Linux mobile (Ubuntu Touch, Sailfishos, Mobian, postMarketOs, pureOs, ect...), all at once, with only few custom things to go for each platform. Any thoughts on that?

Anyway after all the investigations that I've made I'm extremely confident that we'll be able to have a fully responsive client based on Signal-Desktop landed in the openstore within few month. I see exactly how to make it perfectly adapted to the phone Interface like whatsweb. (Funny enough it is possible to use a modified version of the js script of whatsweb to make the interface responsive, because the interface has an extremely similar structure. )

It's not anymore a question of "if" but a question of "when". But there are few tedious tasks in the way, and I need to go little by little, because I can't dedicate all my time to this.

Of course I'm open to any offer for help and testing!

Hi,

Today I just figured why not try:

sudo snap install signal-desktop

And I realize it just works! This is crazy. With this simple command I can link my device and see my chats. Well it is certainly not a responsive interface (but not terrible either, there's just the left menu coming in the way) and the keyboard does not show for now. But I can consult messages, and this is major.

It means:

1°) We can certainly create quite easily a version of Signal-Desktop that is adapted to mobile display (with few patches to the interface to make it responsive), and that we can get a full-fledge signal client on Ubtunu touch, that way.

2°) That Mir2.0 will certainly help with that.

Ps: I guess the first easy thing to make it usable as a consul-only stuff is adapt the scale, which I guess must be easily doable.

I've been able to recompile Signal-Desktop from source and apply my responsive script.

It is available in the Openstore alongside these other improvements:
-Fix startup from OpenStore
-Fix open url externaly
-Fix battery problem
-Fix double window problem

There still are some keyboard issues, it's probably the next thing I will work on.

First of, thank you so much for the development on Ubuntu Touch, it is becoming amazing!

I have a question about Wayland/Xmir apps (e.g uWolf, Signal-desktop, Snap apps) in the context of the upcoming Mir2.0

Will you consider implementing any of the following, to polish experience with Wayland apps:

• Standard desktop notifications showing as UT notifications (with sound, vibration, status led, notification panel).
• Easy Import/export files from content-hub by having a custom xdg-desktop-portal for content-hub.
• Open url externally, by making an URLdispatcher app as default desktop browser.
• Review and possibly adapt apparmor profiles to make sure they don't prevent confined Wayland/Xmir apps from accessing the hardware the way they normally do it (GPU ,microphone, camera, ,...), when they should be allowed to access it. (Eg: Signal-Destkop can access microphone when unconfined, but not when it has the confined + microphone profile.)

Would you need/accept some help to do that?

@AppLee

They have not reached out to me again, but I would say every french citizen that use UT is entitled to contact them about this concern and the more they receive requests about that, the more they are likely to take it seriously. And I guess it is also possible to send them a message in the name of the fundation with an offer for assistance on the technical side.

https://france-identite.gouv.fr/contact/

Ps: By the way an argument that seems efficient to draw their attention lately, in the current context, is stressing that by not being inter-operable (as they are legally obliged) they are effectively offering a duopoly to 2 American companies, and preventing any potential alternative from emerging.

@danfro said:

I couldn't reboot with the power button since that was somehow blocked

I really don't think this can have anything to do with running Signal UT, including the patch I've shared above. I don't see how the app could have an impact on the effect of your power button. Especially because it's confined.

@danfro said:

I can't close it, when swiping into the drawer, it becomes a transparent window which I can't swipe to close

I see that happening from time to time, including with other apps. I think it's more a Lomiri bug. Anyway you can just start another time the app, and kill the launcher indicator, it should kill the remaining transparent window.

Or if you want to use commands in the terminal you can try to paste this in the terminal, it should fix the crash in 24.04-2.x branch (but will not solve the OSK problem):

sudo sed -i "s/\[ \"\$?\" -ne \"0\" \]/\[ \"0\" -ne \"0\" \]/g" /opt/click.ubuntu.com/signalut.pparent/current/launcher.sh
sudo sed -i "s/\[ \"\$?\" -eq \"0\" \]/\[ \"0\" -eq \"0\" \]/g" /opt/click.ubuntu.com/signalut.pparent/current/utils/filedialog-deamon.sh 

@danfro

Well no problem really, I was'nt getting you wrong!

Actually it is possible to do a small edit through the terminal to make sure the app does not crash, I will explain in post bellow.

But if the OSK still does not work I'm not sure it will be very usefull. And the OSK problem in 24.04-2x seem to concern all XWayland apps (including uWold and Chromium for UT)

@messayisto said:

@pparent yea, it has improved, thanks! one question: was it before that one can only send one single picture?

Ps: I misread your comment I thought you where reporting a bug when uploading PDF files that is indeed present.

But yes, you won't be able to upload more than one file at once, at least until we can switch to Walyand with Mir2.x.

@danfro @mango

There's actually a transition problem, with the change they have made on handling XWayland windows. I.e what works on stable does not work on 24.04-1.x daily, and conversely, and provoke crash.

In order to handle the transition I've done a conditional code with a fuzzy check of the version it's running on. So for now I've done the detection based on the current state of 24.04-1.x daily , I've not included 24.04-2.x . It's not trivial to adapt to a constantly evolving base.

BUT normally in few month when 24.04-1.3 will be an old memory I will fully switch to the new way of doing things, and it should be fine on all newer branches.

Also I know that few month ago there was an OSK problem with 24.04-2.x , not sure if it's still the case.

@messayisto

Hum that's true that there is a strange thing happening with uploading PDF. I will try to see that in next revision.

In the mean time from my experience if you try it upload a PDF after uploading a picture first (without necessarily sending it), then it works.

@Moem said:

I have a question... I recently tried running SignalUT on UT version 24.04.2.x and it would not run. Is that still the case?

No Idea about the state of 24.04.2.x for now, I can only say that this version works with current 24.04-1.x daily branch!

They are constantly doing updates on the bleeding edge branches, that impact XWayland apps, it's hard to keep updated all the time.

I've published version v8.3.0-1, it brings the following improvements:

• Significantly improve the reliability of ContentHub.
• Fix the issue with searching for messages in conversations.
• Fix access to the media panel in contacts.
• Fix the message menu opening inappropriately when scrolling.
• Fix the application for the 24.04-1.x daily branch.
• Improve reactivity at startup.
• Update to Signal Desktop 8.3.0.

Don't hesitate to report if everything works well for you!

@Kadafi

Would you have any way to try on another wifi network (public wifi, at a friend) with another provider?

@Kadafi

Did you try to install over Wifi vs Mobile data?