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On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, Evgeny Grin has interviewed Isidor Wallimann who is introducing GNU Taler for the local currency Netzbon in Basel.

I do a lot in free software for ham radio, and Steve at Zero Retries encouraged me to take this email I sent him and translate it into something here. UK Packet Radio Network UKPRN is going nicely, with the Nottingham and South segment really quite impressively interconnected over RF - https://nodes.ukpacketradio.network/packet-network-map.html?rfonly=1 I’m excited to see the growth down there! We’re sorting out forwarding and routes in Aberdeen too, and working to grow the RF path to Inverness.

When I opened this Savannah project I imported items from the old GNU tasklist document. 20 years later all of the context has been lost (if there ever was any) so now if anyone asks about these tasks it just leads to frustration on everyone's part.

I therefore deleted the original help wanted entries that date back to 2003. If anyone wants to help the GNU project, the best way to do that is to pick one of the FSF's High-Priority projects:

https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects

Say hello to LabPlot 2.11!

This brand new release comes with many new features, improvements and performance enhancements in several areas, as well as support for more data formats and visualisation types.

The main new features are outlined below. For a more detailed overview of the changes in this release, please refer to the ChangeLog file.

The source code of LabPlot, the Flatpak and Snap packages for Linux, as well as the installer for Windows and the image for MacOS are available from our download page.

What’s new in 2.11? Worksheet

This release includes more visualisations, usability improvements and a new worksheet preview panel:

• You can now use Lollipop, Q-Q and KDE plots
• We have implemented error bars for bar plots
• There is a new preview panel for all available worksheets in the project
• You can use the navigation panel in the presenter widget to select, zoom and navigate in the presenter mode
• You can lock worksheet elements to prevent accidental changes
• LabPlot 2.11 allows you to show or hide the entry in the legend for all supported plot types and not just xy-curve
• You can give your worksheets a fresh new look with the Dracula theme

Spreadsheet

Spreadsheets gain more functions and operations to modify, generate and understand the data:

• We have extended the search and replace features
• You can check statistical properties of the parent in a new child spreadsheet
• We have added sparklines in the header of a spreadsheet
• LabPlot 2.11 comes with spreadsheet linking to synchronize the number of rows across multiple spreadsheets
• We have implemented triangular distributions for PDF, CDF, and pseudorandom number generation
• Equidistant value generation has been extended

Analysis

Analysis tools added to LabPlot 2.11 include:

• Note showing the fit results
• Faster computation of the baseline removal (we switched to Eigen3 internally)

Import/Export

LabPlot 2.11 adds support for new file formats and multiple optimizations to improve the handling of edge-case scenarios:

• You can now import Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) files.
• Templates for ASCII and Binary import filters allow you to save and load current filter settings
• There is a new feature that allows you to to specify the data range to be read (start/end values for columns and records) when importing from SQL databases
• LabpPlot can now gracefully handle out-of-memory situations when importing large amounts of data
• LabPlot 2.11 displays better error messages during the import
• We provide additional information about BLF files (application name with which the file was created with, etc.)
• We have made several fixes and improvements to the import of Origin’s OPJ files

Notebook

The 2.11 release adds a number of usability enhancements to the Notebook interface:

• You can now export the notebook to PDF
• We provide statistics and a “plot data” action from the context menu in the project explorer for variables created in the Notebook
• There is a new option in the application settings to run a selected CAS engine on startup

Web scraping is the process of collecting and parsing raw data from the Web, and the Python community has come up with some pretty powerful web scraping tools.

The Internet hosts the greatest source of information on the planet. Many disciplines, such as data science, business intelligence, and investigative reporting, can benefit enormously from collecting and analyzing data from websites.

In this course, you’ll practice:

• Parsing website data using string methods and regular expressions
• Parsing website data using an HTML parser
• Interacting with forms and other website components

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

I love shopping on Amazon. It's not just about the convenience and fast delivery; it's also how it tailors my experience. From my shopping history to my preferences and even where I'm from, Amazon makes it easy to find exactly what I want. It has been proven that personalized web experiences can significantly boost revenue for any organization. A McKinsey study* found that 71% of consumers expect personalization, and 76% get frustrated when it’s missing. Personalizing website content requires user data. This data gathered with explicit permission, often comes from third-party tools like Marketo, Salesforce, or Shopify. Drupal makes working with integrations like these a breeze. In this article, you’ll learn about creating personalized web experiences in Drupal using consensually collected user data from third-party tools. If your goal is to provide a unified, personalized web experience that meets your users’ needs and drives revenue growth, you need to read this article. We'll even walk you through it with an example. Why prioritize personalized, unified user experiences The primary objective of delivering personalized and unified website experiences is to create a cohesive experience that aligns with users’ digital profiles. By focusing on personalization, businesses can enhance user satisfaction and build stronger customer loyalty. Unified experiences ensure consistency across all touchpoints, creating a cohesive brand image and simplifying the user journey. Tailored User Experience: Customize content and recommendations based on user profiles stored in CRMs like Marketo and Salesforce. Revenue Growth: Increase opportunities for cross-selling and upselling through a seamless shopping cart experience. Cross-Promotion: Recommend best-matched products, services, and content throughout the website using AI-based algorithms. Personalization methods There are multiple ways to personalize a webpage, ensuring a highly customized user experience: Persona-Based Personalization: Content is tailored based on the defined personas. UTM Tags: UTM tags in URLs can track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns and personalize content accordingly. Combination of Both: For even more refined personalization, combine persona-based personalization with UTM tags, allowing for a highly targeted approach. Scope and Technologies : A Sample Drupal Project To make things simpler, let’s explain implementing personalization on a sample Drupal website project. Let’s say the project has a corporate website and an ecommerce store and focuses on integrating the following technologies: Drupal: Used for the corporate website, with necessary modules for integration. Marketo: Marketing CRM housing most digital profiles. Salesforce: Sales CRM containing additional profile information. Shopify: E-commerce platform for transactions. UTM Tags : A set of parameters that can be added to a URL to track the performance of online marketing campaigns Let’s assume that the business requirement is to use Drupal to deliver a personalized shopping cart experience for targeted personas. Which means, when the user logs in with their credentials, the user’s details are fetched from CRMs like Marketo and Salesforce. This information is then used to segment users and display best matched products and content throughout the website. Integrating Shopify, Marketo, and Smart Content with Drupal Shopify Integration Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform that allows businesses to create online stores with ease. In our sample Drupal project, the user journey begins on the Corporate Website, where they discover the product. When they click the "Purchase" or "Add to Cart" button, they are seamlessly redirected to the Shopify product page to complete their transaction. This integration ensures a smooth transition, combining the robust content management of Drupal with the powerful e-commerce capabilities of Shopify. Enabling the Shopify module allows synchronization of products and collections with your Drupal site. Configuration involves setting up API keys and syncing products to provide a unified shopping experience. You can enable the cron run to sync products and collections. Once the sync is done, you can visit your store by clicking on Shopify in your toolbar. You can then perform various activities like viewing all your products, collections (stored as taxonomy terms), tags, change the product display order, and more. Once everything is set up, you have two ways to personalize your content based on user roles or other details. You can display recommended products by: Calling only the required items through the Shopify API directly from your Shopify store. Syncing the products to your Drupal site and adding the necessary tags, allowing you to pull information based on these tags. This approach gives you greater control over your personalization activities. Marketo Integration Marketo enables marketers to create personalized campaigns, manage leads, and measure performance across various channels. Integrating the Marketo MA module with your Drupal website helps you deliver personalized, targeted marketing campaigns and track user interactions on your Drupal site. In our sample Drupal project, the Marketo MA module retrieves user details from Marketo and delivers personalized content based on it. User details such as region, member type, member title, company, job function, and job level are retrieved from Marketo using the user's email ID upon login. The site's content is then dynamically tailored based on these values, ensuring a personalized user experience. You can, for example, display a different banner for a marketing professional and a different one for a developer on their home page. To configure the Marketo MA module, navigate to the module configuration page in your Drupal admin panel. Next, enter your Marketo credentials, including the Client ID, Client Secret, and Munchkin Account ID. These can be obtained from your Marketo account under the Admin section. The Smart Content Drupal module The Smart Content module personalizes site content by setting conditions and displaying blocks based on user segments. For example, you can display different promotional banners to users based on whether they are new visitors, returning customers, or located in a specific region. To implement this module, you will first need to download the module and configure it. Next, you can create different segments based on user personas or if they’re new, returning or regional visitors. It's now time to create personalized content blocks for these segments. For example, for returning customers, you can create a content block with a loyalty reward banner that reads: “Welcome back! Enjoy a special discount just for you.” Next, you can setup conditions for the display of each of these blocks. For example, for the returning customers block, set the condition to display if the user has a specific purchase history. Lastly, you can now embed these personalized blocks to your block layout or your custom template where you want it to appear. For a deeper understanding of using the Smart Content module, check out this detailed article. UTM Tags UTM tags (Urchin Tracking Module tags) are small snippets of text added to the end of a URL to help track the performance of online marketing campaigns across various traffic sources. Not just that, they’re a great way to personalize your content based on the UTM tags content which can let marketers know where their website traffic is coming from and how users interact with their content. The Smart content UTM tags module is an add-on Smart content module that leverages UTM parameters to deliver personalized content to users. This module integrates seamlessly with the Smart Content module, allowing for dynamic content personalization. A typical URL with UTM tags might look like this: https://www.specbee.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=… Now, based on the UTM tags, you can create your segments in the Smart content module. Steps to Creating a Personalized Experience Step 1: Defining User Personas The first step in creating a personalized experience is defining user personas. These personas can be based on various roles such as marketing, sales, and engineering. Each persona represents a segment of your audience with distinct characteristics, preferences, and needs. By clearly defining these personas, you can create targeted content that resonates with each group. Step 2: Uploading Content to Components Once personas are defined, the next step is to create and upload relevant content to your website components. These components can include text, images, videos, and other multimedia elements. Each piece of content should address the specific needs and interests of a particular persona. Step 3: Placing Components Based on Persona With the content uploaded, you can place these components on your website pages based on the defined personas. This involves organizing the content to align with the user journey and ensure that each persona sees the most relevant information. Step 4: Mapping Persona to User via Marketo When a user logs into your website, their job title or role is identified through Marketo, a leading marketing automation platform. Marketo maps the user to the appropriate persona based on their job title or other relevant information. Step 5: Displaying Personalized Content Once the user’s persona is mapped, the corresponding components and content are dynamically displayed on the page. This means that each user sees a personalized version of the Drupal website tailored to their specific persona, enhancing their overall experience and engagement with your site. References https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-value-of-getting-personalization-right-or-wrong-is-multiplying Final Thoughts Drupal’s flexibility makes it perfect for delivering personalized user experiences. By integrating your Drupal site with CRM tools and using smart content along with user personas, you can ensure your visitors get content tailored to their needs and interests. We've done something similar for our customer SEMI with our Drupal development services, so if you have a similar need, reach out to us today!

On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, Berna Alp has interviewed Christian Blättler who implemented a system for using GNU Taler for unlikable discounts and subscriptions.

On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, Berna Alp has interviewed Nicola Eigel who implemented a real-time auditor for the GNU Taler exchange with his colleague Cédric Zwahlen.

We are pleased to announce that Wind River has committed to sponsor DebConf24 as a Platinum Sponsor.

For nearly 20 years, Wind River has led in commercial open source Linux solutions for mission-critical enterprise edge computing. With expertise across aerospace, automotive, industrial, telecom, more, the company is committed to open source through initiatives like eLxr, Yocto, Zephyr, and StarlingX.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Wind River is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Wind River plans to announce an exiting new project based on Debian at this year's DebConf!

Thank you very much, Wind River, for your support of DebConf24!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf24 will take place from 28th July to 4th August 2024 in Busan, South Korea, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 21st to 27th July 2024.

DebConf24 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or visit the DebConf24 website at https://debconf24.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

At the beginning one goes to the conferences to listen to the talks and make new contacts. You meet a lot of new faces every time. Over time a few of them will become great friends and then all conferences will become about friends.

We wait for the conferences so that we can meet our friends. I went back to PyCon US this year after 5 years, means I met many friends after 5 years. It was so happy feeling to see them again.

Last week I went to my first ever Euro Python in Prague, finally the visa was good in the right days of the year. This means I managed to meet more friends, a few of them just after a month (as they were present in PyCon US) and some after many many years. Really enjoyed the social event place selections by the organizers.

Personally the social events allowed me to go full scale nerd out on technical and social issues with friends. I was really missing these discussions. Heard more stories and discussed about fun ideas. One is below :)

$ python Python 3.12.4 (main, Jun 7 2024, 00:00:00) [GCC 14.1.1 20240607 (Red Hat 14.1.1-5)] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> hello 🤌🤌🤌 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> NameError: name 'hello' is not defined. Did you mean: 'help'? >>> [].set("different exception") 🤌🤌🤌 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'set' >>>

Tuesday, 16 July 2024. Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 6, versioned 6.1.3.

Plasma 6.1 was released in June 2024 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

This release adds two weeks' worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include:

• KWin Plugins nightlight: Relax custom times constraints. Commit. Fixes bug #489366
• Fix KCM Clock save on non-systemd distros. Commit.
• KWin Tiling: Don't put maximized windows in tile. Commit. Fixes bug #489463

View full changelog

Profiling displays is already not a super simple thing on its own, but things get more complicated when you try to profile your display in Wayland - profiling applications don’t support Wayland yet, some APIs on the compositor side to make it work well are still missing, and there’s a general lack of information on the topic. So today I’ll show you how to profile your display in the Plasma Wayland session.

I did this in Fedora 40, but you can follow these steps in other distributions as well.

Step 1: Install DisplayCal and start it

This sounds easy, but

• it’s not packaged for Fedora. That’s being worked on, but right now it’s not an option | edit: turns out there is a COPR for it
• installing it with pip just gave me a bunch of compilation errors, and I haven’t figured out how to fix them
• the package on Flathub is really old and broken

To work around that, I used distrobox to install the Arch Linux package for DisplayCAL:

sudo dnf install distrobox distrobox create --name archinabox --image archlinux:latest distrobox enter archinabox sudo pacman -S displaycal distrobox-export --app displaycal exit

After running these commands, DisplayCAL can be started from any app launcher, like Kickoff or KRunner.

Step 2: Setup

To get correct measurement results, the compositor needs to pass the pixel data from the profiling app directly to the display, and not do any color management itself. This will be automated at some point, but for now you need to manually ensure that

• HDR is disabled
• the color profile of the display is set to “None” in the display settings
• night light is off, or at least suspended in the system tray
• all KWin effects that modify colors, like the color blindness correction effect, are disabled
• if you’re on a new-ish AMD laptop and want to profile the internal display, that you’re either plugged in to a power source, or have the power profile set to performance, to disable a power saving feature that changes the colors

Now start DisplayCal and head to the Calibration tab. Here it’s important to set the tone curve to “as measured”, and untick interactive display adjustment, as those don’t work correctly right now and will mess up the profile.

You’ve done everything correctly if the button on the bottom of the application shows “Profile only”.

Last but not least, you also need to adjust the display settings to what you want to use with the profile later, as the profile is only correct for one specific set of display settings. This includes the brightness of the display!

Step 3: Profile

In the profiling tab of DisplayCAL, select your desired settings - in most cases the default will be sufficient - and click “Profile only”. When it asks if you want to continue with the current calibration curves, select “use linear calibration instead” and de-select “embed calibration curves in profile”. Then put the colorimeter in the center of the screen, and let it do its thing.

Once it’s done, it’ll ask you to install the profile. Installing it will not automatically enable that profile to be used, but it’ll save the profile in ~/.config/color/icc/devices/display/ and you can select that file in the display settings.

Step 4: Verification (optional)

If you’d like to make sure the profile is correct or accurate enough, you can use DisplayCAL to verify the result. Make sure you’ve set the profile in the display settings, switch to the verification tab in DisplayCAL and select your newly created profile in the “settings”

Here again, because DisplayCAL doesn’t support Wayland yet, you need to adjust a few settings for everything to work correctly. You need to select the simulation profile “Rec.709 ITU-R BT.709”, select “Use simulation profile as display profile” and set the tone curve to “Gamma 2.2”. Afterwards, click on “Measurement report”, choose a location to save it in, put the colorimeter in the center of the screen again and wait for it to complete.

Don’t be alarmed if the result says the whitepoint is wrong, this is simply caused by DisplayCAL assuming we want to target the whitepoint of the simulation profile, which doesn’t necessarily match the whitepoint of your display.

What about calibration though?

To calibrate the display, that is, to adjust brightness, tone curves for non color managed applications and the whitepoint of the display, DisplayCAL uses an X11 API to set the gamma lookup tables of the GPU. That API doesn’t work in the Wayland session and the profiling process doesn’t handle that situation properly, which is why all calibration needs to be disabled for the created profile to be correct.

DisplayCAL (or ArgyllCMS, which does the actual profiling) could add support for applying a lookup table in the application instead of having the compositor do it, but we can also handle calibration entirely on the compositor side instead, which offers a bit more flexibility.

Changing the tone curves for non color managed applications doesn’t make sense in the Plasma Wayland session, as all windows are always color managed, so that part is already dealt with. Adjusting the brightness on screens that don’t have any native means of brightness control is already implemented for Plasma 6.2, and I have a working proof of concept for changing the whitepoint of the display without needing a new ICC profile too, so we should be at feature parity soon. I’ll talk more about these adjustments in a future post.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is pleased to share that we are joining the founding team of Open Forum for AI (OFAI), an initiative designed by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to foster a human-centered approach to artificial intelligence. OFAI aims to enhance our understanding of AI and its potential to augment human capabilities while promoting responsible development practices.

The missions of OSI and OFAI are well-aligned; at the heart of OFAI is a commitment to ensuring that AI development serves the public interest. With the support of renowned partners like Omidyar Network, NobleReach Foundation, and internal CMU funding, OFAI is positioned to serve as a pivotal platform for shaping AI strategies and policies that prioritize safety, privacy, and equity.

The OSI is proud to be part of this project. Stefano Mafulli and Deb Bryant from the OSI will participate in OFAI, integrating their efforts toward a standard Open Source AI Definition through a collaborative process involving stakeholders from the Open Source community, industry, and academia as well as their contributions to public policy.  

A collective effort

The success of OFAI hinges on the diverse expertise it convenes. Leading this initiative is Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure at CMU and a member of the OSI Board. Alongside him, a team of CMU faculty members and external advisors will contribute knowledge in ethics, computational technologies, and inclusive AI research. 

Notable participants like Michele Jawando from Omidyar Network and Arun Gupta from NobleReach Foundation have emphasized the importance of Open Source AI in driving innovation and inclusivity as well as the need for a human-centered, trust-based approach to AI development.

OFAI’s ambitious goals

OFAI aims to influence AI policy by coordinating research and policy objectives and advocating for transparent and inclusive AI development. The initiative will focus on five key areas: 

• Research
• Technical prototypes
• Policy recommendations
• Community engagement
• Talent for service

Deb Bryant will lead Community Engagement, building in part upon the broad community of interest gathered through the public process of OSI’s Defining Open Source AI.

One of OFAI’s foundational projects is the creation of an “Openness in AI” framework, which seeks to make AI development more transparent and inclusive. This framework will serve as a vital resource for policymakers, researchers, and the broader community.

Looking ahead

With the OSI set to deliver a stable version of the Open Source AI Definition at All Things Open in October, the launch of OFAI magnifies the importance of this work to bring together diverse stakeholders to ensure AI technologies align with societal values and public interests.

The Drupal Business Survey investigates the trends in the digital market, in particular from service providers involved with the open source DXP Drupal. Digital agencies from all over the world participate in the yearly survey. Business insights on market share and growth opportunities are shared in a comprehensive report. The results are presented at DrupalCon Europe, the international Drupal conference. Digital business owners from all over the world are invited to participate. 

The Drupal Business Survey shares valuable business insights from Drupal service providers worldwide. Drupal’s open source ecosystem is supported by a strong community of tens of thousands professionals worldwide, working together on the popular digital experience platform. Because Drupal is open source, anyone can work with Drupal or make changes to it. The Drupal Business Survey gives meaningful data for business owners and decision makers to build their next year’s business strategy on. 

The Drupal Business Survey results in a comprehensive report on business outlook and customer engagement. It has been a valuable guide for digital service providers, even to those working with other technologies but Drupal. Participants are from all continents, with most of the companies being in business for 10 years or more. 

Results in 2023

In 2023, the Business Survey underscored Drupal’s powerful selling points including security, flexibility and  reliability. Business decision makers choosing Drupal for the digital experiences, found these values to be significantly more important. Drupal’s market share increased notably in 2023 in the finance industry as well as industry and automotive. Education and government remain consistent Drupal users. 

Open Source remains one of the most powerful reasons for choosing Drupal. Being vendor independent and using the power is the basis for Drupal’s success. Companies have continued their contribution to the open source ecosystem, in spite of the harder market outlook in 2023. 

Also the need for Drupal talent continues to be strong. More than 70% of the companies stated the business growth or need of expertise as their main reason for hiring new staff.

Imre Gmelig Meijling: “We continue to see a strong position of Drupal as valuable solution. Agencies and service providers remain committed to Drupal and pitch it as one of the best content management solutions on the market. The strong commitment to Drupal by so many organizations worldwide proves that Drupal is a solid choice for many brands and organizations across the globe.”

CEO Dinner

The Drupal market is looking forward to how digital service providers are using Drupal and how the Drupal market has evolved this year. The results of the 2024 Drupal Business Survey will be presented at the CEO Dinner at DrupalCon Europe. DrupalCon Europe is the yearly Drupal summit where over 1500 Drupal users and professionals meet to exchange ideas and further evolve Drupal. The conference is held from 24-27 September in Barcelona, Spain. The CEO Dinner will be on Wednesday 25 September, extending the conversation to a BOF (Birds of a Feather) session on 26 September.

About the Business Survey

The Drupal Business Survey support Drupal businesses worldwide and is organized by a team of industry experts Imre Gmelig Meijling (React Online), Janne Kalliola (Exove) and Michel van Velde (Craftmore) in collaboration with the Drupal Association. 

Drupal is the open source Digital Experience Platform used by many organizations worldwide including Nestlé, Lufthansa and WWF.

Participate and share your insights

Drupal experts are invited to share their Drupal business insights through the Business Survey anonymously and come to DrupalCon Europe to review the results together. 

You can participate in the Drupal Business Survey anonymously here: The Drupal Business Survey 2024. The survey closes on 4 September. 

It has been quiet over the 4th of July weekend on the forums and OSI has been speaking at different events:

• @stefano spoke in a panel at the UN event OSPOs for Good. Access the recording here.
• @mer is speaking at Open Source Community Africa
• OSI was present at the  Linux Foundation hosted AI_dev: Open Source GenAI & ML Summit Europe 2024. Read about the takeaways here.

Why and how to certify Open Source AI

• @jberkus expresses concern about the extensive resources required to certify AI systems, estimating that it would take weeks of work per system. This scale makes it impractical for a volunteer committee like License Review.
• @shujisado reflects on past controversies over license conformity, noting that Open Source AI has the potential for a greater economic impact than early Open Source” He acknowledges the need for a more robust certification process given this increased significance. He suggests that cooperation from the machine learning community or consortia might be necessary to address technical issues and monitor the certification process neutrally. He offers to help spread the word about OSAID within the Japanese ML/LLM development community.

@jberkus clarifies that the OSI would need full-time paid staff to handle the certifications, as the work cannot be managed by volunteers alone.

On the occasion of the Point Zero Forum's Innovation Tour, we have showcased the privacy-preserving GNU Taler payment system along with its various applications and extensions – as well as other payment- and digital identity related projects – that are currently being developed at the Bern University of Applied Sciences and its international partners as part of the NGI TALER EU project. This page includes recordings of the main talks. In the near future, we will also post interviews made with some of the poster presenters (sadly, only about half of the people could be interviewed due to time constraints).

Today we are talking about Config Actions, The Panels Favorite Drupal Modules, and Drupal Contribution. We’ll also cover Transform API as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/459

Topics

• New Config Action: Place Block
• Favorite Contrib modules
• Slack channels
• Preparing for Drupal 11
• Drupal events

Resources

• Config Action Place Block
• Front End Editing Drupal Module
• Gin Admin Theme
• Migrate Boost
• Keysave
• Navigation
• Matt Glaman Smart Date Code Blog Post

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu Baddý Sonja Breidert - 1xINTERNET baddysonja

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to expose your Drupal site’s data as JSON using view modes, formatters, blocks, and more? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • https://www.drupal.org/project/transform_api
  • Transform API
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Sep 2023 by LupusGr3y, aka Martin Giessing of Denmark
  • Versions available: 1.1.0-beta4 and 1.0.2 versions available, both of which work with Drupal 9 and 10
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, in fact the latest commit was earlier today
  • Security coverage
  • Documentation: in-depth README and a full user guide
  • Number of open issues: 14 open issues, 3 of which are bugs, but none against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 2 sites
• Module features and usage
  • After installing Transform API, you should be able to get the JSON for any entities on your site by adding “format=json” as a parameter to the URL
  • To get more fields exposed as JSON, you can configure a Transform mode, using a Field UI configuration very similar to view modes
  • You can also add transform blocks to globally include specific data in all transformed URLs, in the same way you would use normal blocks to show information on your entity pages. The output of transform blocks is segmented into regions,
  • Where Drupal’s standard engine produces render arrays that ultimately become HTML, Transform API replaces it with an engine that produces Transform Arrays that will ultimately become JSON
  • Where Drupal’s standard JSON:API supports more or less exposes all information as raw data for the front end to format, Transform API allows for more of the formatting to be managed on the back end, where it will use Drupal’s standard caching mechanisms, permission-based access, and more
  • Transform API also supports lazy transformers, which are callbacks that will be called after caching but before the JSON response is sent
  • You can also use alter hooks to manipulate the transformed data

A newer Python package called Rich Pixels allows you to create images in your terminal and display them. Darren Burns, one of the team members from the Textual project, created this package.

Anyway, let’s find out how to use Rich Pixels!

Installation

You can install Rich Pixels using Python’s pip utility. Here’s how:

python -m pip install rich-pixels

Once you have Rich Pixels installed, you can try it out!

Displaying Images in the Terminal

Rich Pixels lets you take a pre-existing image and show it in your terminal. The higher the image’s resolution, the better the output will be. However, if your image has too many pixels, it probably won’t fit in your terminal, and much of it will be drawn off-screen.

For this example, you will use the Python Show Podcast logo and attempt to draw it in your terminal.

Open up your favorite Python editor and add the following code to it:

from rich_pixels import Pixels from rich.console import Console console = Console() pixels = Pixels.from_image_path("python_show200.jpg") console.print(pixels)

For this example, you will use a square image that is 200×200 pixels. You can run the code like this in your terminal:

python pixels.py

When you execute the command above, you will see something like this in your terminal:

 

As you can see, the image is a little pixelated and gets cut off at the bottom. Of course, this all depends on your monitor’s resolution.

Here’s what happens when you use an image that is 80×80 pixels:

You can also. use the Pillow package to create an image object and pass that the Rich Pixels too. Here’s how that might look:

with Image.open("path/to/image.png") as image: pixels = Pixels.from_image(image)

You can create or draw your images using Pillow. There is some coverage of this topic in my article, Drawing Shapes on Images with Python and Pillow which you could then pass to Rich Pixels to display it.

Wrapping Up

Rich Pixels is a fun way to add extra pizzazz to your terminal applications. Rich Pixels can also be used in a Textual application. While there probably aren’t a lot of use cases for this package, it’s a lot of fun to play around with.

Give it a try, and let me know what you create!

The post Creating Images in Your Terminal with Python and Rich Pixels appeared first on Mouse Vs Python.

Dear Readers,

Governments worldwide are increasingly embracing open-source software (OSS) to enhance their operations' transparency, security, and efficiency. Open source allows anyone to inspect, modify, and improve software, fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. This shift is transforming the way public sector bodies function, ensuring digital solutions are cost-effective and tailored to the unique needs of each community.

Switzerland's recent mandate for OSS in its public sector is a prime example of this trend. The "Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfilment of Governmental Tasks" (EMBAG) requires government-developed software to be open source, marking a significant step towards greater transparency and efficiency. However, Switzerland is not alone in this initiative; many countries are adopting similar policies to reduce dependency on costly proprietary software and foster innovation.

One of the notable benefits of open source in government is its potential for increased security and reliability. Continuous scrutiny and improvement by a global community of developers result in robust and adaptable solutions that can quickly respond to changing needs and security threats. Additionally, OSS helps prevent vendor lock-in, allowing governments to choose the best solutions without being tied to specific providers.

A recent study by Veniz Guzman on The DropTimes highlights the growing adoption of the open-source CMS Drupal among government entities of all sizes. Larger governments with complex digital needs are increasingly turning to Drupal for its flexibility and robust features. Interestingly, smaller to mid-sized entities are also recognizing Drupal's benefits, with rising adoption rates among smaller cities and counties. 

With that, let's move on to the important stories of last week.

Drupal Starshot has announced the formation of its Advisory Council, a significant step in its efforts to expand the reach and impact of Drupal. This council will provide strategic input and feedback to ensure that the initiative meets the needs of key stakeholders and end users. To learn more about the composition of the Starshot Advisory Council, click here.

In "Using Drupal Migrations to Modify Content Within a Site," Jaymie Strecker demonstrates how to use the Drupal Migrate API for restructuring content within a site. The article provides practical examples and assumes basic knowledge of the Migrate API.

In other news, the Drupal Association has announced HeroDevs as the inaugural partner for the new Drupal 7 Extended Security Support Provider Program. This initiative aims to assist organizations unable to migrate from Drupal 7 by the end-of-life date of January 5, 2025, ensuring their systems remain secure and compliant. 

Additionally, Drupal.org has announced that it will end support for Composer 1 on Packages.Drupal.org. This move is part of efforts to prepare its infrastructure for providing automatic updates for Drupal and upgrading Drupal.org itself. New packages and releases will no longer be available for Composer 1 starting August 12, 2024, and full support will be dropped on October 1, 2024.

Doubling the spirit of community, DrupalCon Europe has announced Tomasz Rogalski as the winner of the Merce Drawing Contest. His drawing of Mercè, the celebrated figure of Barcelona's annual festival, will be featured on the official event stickers at DrupalCon Barcelona.

The Women in Drupal award will be presented shortly at DrupalCon Barcelona, an event dedicated to the Drupal community. This award aims to recognize and celebrate the significant contributions made by women within the Drupal ecosystem. To nominate a deserving Drupal artist, attendees can fill out the nomination form provided. 

Drupal GovCon 2024 is only a month away, scheduled to happen in August 13 - 15, 2024. It will feature a session titled "What the Heck is ARIA? A Beginner's Guide to ARIA for Accessibility," presented by Kat Shaw, a Lead Engineer and Accessibility Advocate (CPACC) at Lullabot. DrupalCamp Colorado has announced its second Keynote Speaker for this year's event, Matthew Saunders.

The DropTimes has compiled notable Drupal events happening throughout the week of July 15 to July 21. This curated list offers a glimpse into the varied activities taking place within the Drupal community, catering to enthusiasts of all skill levels. Read here.

amazee.io announces the launch of a new cloud region on AWS in Tokyo, Japan, enhancing the company's services in the Asia Pacific region. This expansion provides Japanese customers with reduced latency, improved fault tolerance, and compliance with local data privacy laws. 

Roderik Muit and Alexandru Ieremia of drunomics presented the new Custom Elements module at Drupal Developer Days in Burgas, in June 2024. This session, part of an informal "Birds of a Feather" discussion, introduced the latest version of the Custom Elements module, a vital part of drunomics' headless Drupal solutions. 

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you,
Sincerely
Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

Unlock the full potential of Drupal's Migrate API with Jaymie Strecker in part two of this insightful series. Learn how to seamlessly import new content by creating paragraphs, nodes, URL aliases, and redirects. Ideal for developers looking to streamline website updates and ensure smooth content transitions. Read on to elevate your Drupal migration skills!