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.

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.

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.

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?

Craziest thing:

The calls are partially working out of the box!!!!
Which means we can certainly get calls working one day!

Ok in this version of whatsweb I have the notifications working without being unconfined, and it gets to the system panel! (Provided the app is not suspended in background)

https://github.com/pparent76/whatsweb/tree/82cd0c659af09bfad4315ba6c39e398d881451c3

Hi,

Whatsweb has been upgraded to version 0.3.0 and later 0.3.2 . @alefnode has merged my work including some improvements listed bellow 🥳. The app should work correctly for all the main features. If you see something not working please do not hesitate report, as I'm working on it these days.

Improvements released in 0.3.0:

• Support for notifications (if app suspending is disabled in Ubuntu Tweaks and app kept open)
• Smoother navigation with transitions
• Smoother keyboard appearance/appearance
• Avoid opening the keyboard untimely, when navigating
• Enable GPU acceleration
• Hide left panel for more pleasant interface
• Make Emoji panel usable
• Better graphical integration of navigation buttons ( back in chatview )
• Copy a message to clipboard quickly with a long push on message.
• Screensaver when the app is not foreground: hide the webview to save battery
• Fix "contact info" panel
• Fix left menus.
• Fix Upload files

Improvements released in 0.3.2:

• Fix screensaver background image ( When app is not in foreground )
• Fix navigation icons&screensaver color in dark mode.
• Fix "new conversation" + "Archived conversation" + "Chats in community panel"
• Allow to download medias and export to other apps
• Optimize scaling and font-size
• Add a notice while the application is loading to inform users about the necessity to disable suspend with "Ubuntu tweaks" to get notifications.

Currently being review in pull request:

• Adapt overlay dialog to screen-size ( Transfer message, delete conversation, config theme dark/light, new chanel, ect...)
• Fix top right-hand corner menu items ( New Group, stared messages, archived messages )
• Enable multiple-Files import
• Make the association page responsive and neat ( scan Qr-code )
• Add internal tweaks menu app ( Scaling + Notifications + Background behavior+ gpu+ quick copy )
• Minor performance improvements
• Minor bug corrections
• Clean code and make it more maintainable.

And I've published the confined version to openstore:

Any feedback about if it works for you, is welcome.

@Opolork Dual boot is possible on vollaphone, it's a feature provided by the manufacturer.

https://wiki.volla.online/index.php?title=MultiBoot_mode_in_VollaOS_for_VollaPhone_Quintus

My solution to the initial question:
Here is my QML module to handle local notifications:

https://github.com/pparent76/UbuntuTouch-qml-notify-module

It contains a script setup-project.sh to install automatically all the requirements into the app project.

---

Also this push request to the whatsweb app can be pretty informative:

https://github.com/alefnode/ubports-apps/pull/44

Especially this commit that corresponds to setting up the module with setup-project.sh:

https://github.com/alefnode/ubports-apps/pull/44/commits/81d08baba14ed941ca0c9b246d0df543b0a452a6

Actually it's published in openstrore:
https://open-store.io/app/chromiumpdf.pparent

Edit:

---

I'm building a new application for the openstore: Signal UT, which will be a custom version of signal-desktop for Ubuntu Touch. I've already succeeded to build an initial .click package of signal-desktop for Ubuntu Touch with basic tweaking to have a more acceptable scale and have the keyboard working. I've made scripts to build it automatically. Currently it is based on a reuse of the binaries from https://snapcraft.io/signal-desktop . But it does not require to use snap to work, it's a standalone click package (that we'll be able to publish openstore later).

https://github.com/pparent76/SignalUT

The app is currently not responsive (but I plan to work on it):

• You can reduce the left menu to it's minimal size, as a temporary workaround
• The keyboard will display on top of the textedit, so you won't see what you type
• [EDIT] Somehow the "enter" and "back" buttons of the keyboard do not work after starting the app, but locking and unlocking the phone with Signal in foreground will solve it. (Probably and Xmir problem)
• You should be able to fine tune zoom by plugin in a keyboard and use the shortcuts Ctrl+= & Ctrl+- (untested)

But it is already usable to consult messages, and send small messages (in a sub-optimal way)

What also works or kind of works:

• Sending Audio messages, and listening to them (seems to work quite well)
• Audio calls (and it's possible to see video from the other person but internal camera does not work), call quality untested.
• Receiving non-Ut desktop notifications when keeping app in background (even when the phone is suspended)

WARNING: This is experimental, use at your own risks. The app currently needs to run unconfined. It contains binaries, that are free software but that I've not compiled personally (coming from snapcraft.io ) and that I have not checked. I do not take responsibility in case of any problem

Knowing that, if you want to be a tester, I'd be glad to get feedback from testers to know if it runs on other phones. So you will find a pre-built .click package here ( ONLY RUN ON NOBLE (24.04) ) :

https://github.com/pparent76/SignalUT/releases/tag/FirstRelease

And I guess privacy and freedom activists especially in the field of mobilephones, might have interest in being proactive and proposing solutions at the edge of privacy protection, rather than letting others propose solutions that are not so good for privacy.

If others want to do it, I'm willing to participate in developing such an app.

I've actually succeeded to start the app with acceptable scaling by creating a dummy unconfined app with simply a .desktop file with the launcher:

Exec=env GDK_SCALE=2 /snap/bin/signal-desktop --no-sandbox %U

@lduboeuf said in Send notification locally from QT/C++/QML App.:

congrats for your perseverance. Now you are in the perfect situation to update or create a documentation

Thank's I will make better than this! I will update my QML notification module, and make a scripts that installs into an existing project all the prerequisites for it to work. Because there are some many tweaks to achieve it that it should not be done by a human, it's a loss of time, and the risk of mistake is too high. And anyway a script is always a more precise documentation on the actions to take than a human readable documentation.

@t12392n said in Potentially turning a negative of Google's tightening restrictions into a positave:

smartphone has become an extension of you as a person

This sure sounds like a frightening statement. I'm glad I don't feel that way.

Hi,

Yet another PDF reader app! This time based on PDF.js

Note that it might currently not be the best PDF engine for touch display, because it is currently based on an old version of PDF.js (v2.13.216) which is the last supported by webengine in Qt5.15. And it does not support pinch to zoom.

But as soon as we upgrade to Qt6, I will upgrade PDF.js version and it should offer a great user experience.

https://github.com/pparent76/PDFjs/tree/master

Pierre.

@theprivacydad said in The Privacy Dad's review of Ubuntu Touch:

Signal

By the way a Signal app was just published. It is in early state of development though, and will improve progressively in the coming month.

Here:

@arubislander @RandomUser
It could be a nice idea to allow the openstore to build itself to build the app:

-The developer provides the repository with clickable app (github, gitlab, ect...)
-The openstore builds the app, when the developer wants to publish a new version, and publishes it alongside the source tarball.

It would increase the level of trust.