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Content Tagged with python-gammu + Michal-Čihař

New version of python-gammu has been just released. It fixes annoying problem with reporting wrong Gammu version and brings compatibility with Gammu 1.19.0. Full list of changes:

• Compatibility with current gammu.
• Fixed Gammu version reported by python-gammu.

Download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/python/

When Ubuntu announced public availability of Personal Package Archives, I thought it might be good to use it to provide up to date Gammu related packages. After successful registration I uploaded Gammu package and no reaction so far, so I'll wait.

However this memorised me that I wanted to use OpenSUSE Build Service for same purpose some time ago. I filled in registration and as I didn't receive any email about being accepted, I absolutely forgot about that. Now just tried to log in and it works. So you can now have access to latest Gammu, python-gammu and Wammu packages for most recent RPM distributions (Fedora 7, Fedora 8, Mandriva 2006, Mandriva 2007, openSUSE 10.2, openSUSE 10.3, openSUSE Factory, SLES 9 and SLE 10). I could not test them so any feedback is welcome :-). You can find all packages on overview page or directly in download folders.

Playing with spec files after long time was quite painful, but I got to it after I managed the hardest thing - how to make build dependencies which will work on all these distros.

I hope I will be able to announce similar service for Ubuntu users using PPA, but now I have to wait for some reaction on my source uploads.

python-gammu 0.22 has been just released. New features:

• Complete support for managing calls.
• Compatibility with current gammu.

While working on Gammu, I still wonder why people who want to connect their phone to computer buy phones from vendors who use own proprietary protocol or do not share any documentation. Then they come to Gammu mailing list and/or bug tracker and want Gammu to support their phone. Sometimes the fix is easy, but usually it is quite lot of work to debug unknown protocol.

I know this situation quite good from past. I had Alcatel phone, which was using proprietary protocol for access to in phone contacts and events. Fortunately Alcatel released synchronisation software for these phones (it of course runs only on Windows) which had enabled debugging and it was quite easy to understand protocol thanks to logs it could produce. But as newer phones with some extensions appeared, maintaining this became harder and harder.

When I looked for new phone, I decided to buy Sony-Ericcsson K750i phone. Writing support for most of functionality (well in fact all I need) was just matter of few days. The reason why it was so fast was that this phones is using open standards (e.g. OBEX, IrMC) and vendor specific AT commands are documented in freely available documents.

It's your choice how good will your phone interoperate with computer. If you buy well documented piece of hardware, chance to have it fully supported is much higher.

python-gammu now supports service numbers dialogue. How it is useful for you depends on services your network provides. For example with Vodafone in Czech republic, you can use it to configure various services:

$ ./service-numbers.py 
This example shows interaction with network using service codes
Enter code (empty string to end): *111#
Talking to network...
Network reply:
Status: ActionNeeded
Vitejte v Kapesni Samoobsluze!
1 Muj ucet
2 Me sluzby
3 Nastaveni telefonu
4 Info a zabava
5 Oblibene

Enter code (empty string to end): 1
Talking to network...
Network reply:
Status: ActionNeeded
Muj ucet
1 Vyuct. a platby
2 Vydaje pod kontrolou
3 Osobni udaje
4 PIN a PUK kod
------
0 Zpet
00 Uvod

Enter code (empty string to end):

Python code which can be used for this is available as example. It will be probably one time integrated to Wammu, but it needs a bit more time than hacking this simple script :-).

Today last batch of Wammu and python-gammu has been converted to Subversion. It was almost painless, it only required lot of CPU time. All project pages should now link to Subversion repositories and snapshots. Also all projects now have publicly available statistics on http://www.ohloh.net and http://cia.vc.

Unfortunately for python-gammu and Wammu are statistics a bit messed up - for Wammu ohloh didn't find license header, which is in almost every file, in python-gammu, doc string comments are not counted as being comments, so without it project has obviously to low comments ratio.

Anyway I was quite impressed by code grow of Wammu in last half year, because I still thing I don't have enough time for Wammu. However if their stats are true, the code amount grows quite fast in last months.

Today I noticed, that documentation for python-gammu is not up to date, because I completely forgot to update it since 0.13 release.

Well anything what has to be done manually sucks, so I scripted automatic generating of this documentation, so it should always be up to date with current development snapshot.

BTW: Anybody know how to document constructor of class implemented in C using EpyDoc? I didn't manage to find way for this.

python-gammu 0.19 has been just released. New features:

• Fix crash on wrongly configured locales.
• Added suport for SendFilePart.

python-gammu 0.18 has been just released. New features:

• Cleaned up build system.
• Support for crosscompilation using MinGW32.
• Compatibility with current gammu releases and CMake build system.