Picasa 2.7 Release Candidate available

[Michael]

Even in balmy Los Angeles, summer is finally over. Time for a new
Picasa!

The first Picasa 2.7 for Linux public release candidate is now
available.
To get it, visit http://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html
and scroll down to the Beta section.

RELEASE NOTES:

This release includes the same new features as in Picasa 2.7 for
Windows
including, particularly, Picasaweb integration.
(See http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=53209. )

It also includes the following Linux-specific changes:

* Added amd64 Debian packages.
* New standard Linux folder name for My Photos
* Non-English language support enabled
* New Picasa Font Settings tool (for e.g. Asian users who need to
override
* Backup and Gift CD features now enabled, and create .iso files for
you to burn
* Lots of bug fixes

Known issues:

- Slideshow and Timeline still don't display full-screen unless your
display is set to 16 bits instead of the usual 24 or 32.

- Embedded web browser (used by e.g. the BlogThis! button) gives
some users trouble. We expect this will improve when we update to
the latest Wine. (No ETA on that yet, but we're already working on
it.)

- Video is still not supported.

- Running under Compiz or Beryl might not work well. If you run
into trouble, please disable Compiz / Beryl when running Picasa.
This isn't a big surprise - Compiz is still fairly new - and we expect
it to improve with future releases of Compiz and/or Picasa.

- The Loki installer is no longer supported, but you can still
install in your home directory and/or without using a package
manager;
see http://www.google.com/picasa/linux/faq.html#44
for instructions.

[Guillaume]

Wow great! This new version is so much more responsive on my system!

[James Laugesen]

I've been using this for some time (I scored one of those golden tickets in the google chocolates) in Ubuntu with great success.
Judging by some of the questions/complaints/issues I've seen posted here, I think that a lot of people will be very happy with this version :-)

PS - For us in the southern hemisphere the release is right on schedule :-p

[mhenriday]

Like James, I was fortunate in my choice of chocalates and can say
that the new version - presuming that it is identical to the last test
version released - works very well for me indeed. I'm not a very
demanding user - no video, for example - but I am running a 64-bit
machine, and it's wonderful not having to force the architecture.
Kudos to Dan, Lei Zhang, and the other Picasa developers - and
thanks !...

Henri

On Nov 22, 1:46 am, "James Laugesen" <james.lauge...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been using this for some time (I scored one of those golden tickets in
> the google chocolates) in Ubuntu with great success.
> Judging by some of the questions/complaints/issues I've seen posted here, I
> think that a lot of people will be very happy with this version :-)
>
> PS - For us in the southern hemisphere the release is right on schedule :-p
>

[Mark Patey]

Ditto to Henri's comment.  And I have to say I'm impressed with the responsiveness of the developers when issues were reported. This release may have taken longer than expected, but they had a lot of work to do.

-Mark

[sbbg]

Hi,
Although I also have the golden ticket as well, :P
I still ratherly care about why isn't there a bin package
to do the self-extract. Not every one has apt or rpm on
their system, right?

[The Real Bev]

sbbg wrote:

I (slack 11) have rpm, but I try not to use it. I think i did rpm2tgz or
something like that, which worked fine. Or maybe that was something else, I
should keep notes about this stuff. There's also checkinstall...

BTW, how soon will the screensaver be implemented in the linux version? I
can use tkwallpaper to change my backgrounds to whatever list of graphics I
want whenever I want, but my screens are generally covered with stuff so I
can't see them. Jamie Z, the nazi, won't let xscreensaver be run by root
(beautiful stuff, I hadn't looked at it for a long time and it impressed me
all to hell) and NOBODY has a nice rotate-your-choice-of-pix screensaver for
linux. I'd even be happy with the goldfish aquarium...

Firefox has an extension that will rotate your own pix, but only within the
firefox window. Not good enough.

--
Cheers,
Bev
66666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
Vampireware; n, a project capable of sucking the lifeblood
out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it,
which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless
refuses to die. -- Trygve Lode

[dank]

From the release notes:

> - The Loki installer is no longer supported, but you can still
> install in your home directory and/or without using a package
> manager;
> see http://www.google.com/picasa/linux/faq.html#44
> for instructions.

That FAQ entry also says a bit more about the issue.
- Dan

[dank]

On Nov 22, 7:42 pm, The Real Bev <bashley...@gmail.com> wrote:
> BTW, how soon will the screensaver be implemented in the linux version?

Sadly, there is no standard for screensavers in Unix.
There used to be (xscreensaver), but lately KDE and
GNOME have gone their separate ways.
So it'd be a bit of work. If anybody feels like tackling
it, perhaps the right place to put the logic would be as
an enhancement to
http://portland.freedesktop.org/xdg-utils-1.0/xdg-screensaver.html
- Dan

[Andy]

I'm really happy with this release candidate. I'm on Ubuntu 7.10 and
had the previous Linux Picasa installed, with 28K photos in hundreds
of folders. The new version picked everything up and Web Albums
working fine. I had to adjust my Compiz Fusion "Open" Animation
(previously set to "Glide") because the Picasa menus looked very
strange when clicked as they seem to be treated as windows. The Fade
animation looks Ok. I'm sure there is a way to configure the Fusion
settings so that they ignore Wine menus, but not sure how - its
something to do with the Window Type and Name....

On 21 Nov, 21:18, Michael <mtmm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Even in balmy Los Angeles, summer is finally over. Time for a new
> Picasa!
>
> The first Picasa 2.7 for Linux public release candidate is now
> available.

> To get it, visithttp://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html

> and scroll down to the Beta section.
>
> RELEASE NOTES:
>
> This release includes the same new features as in Picasa 2.7 for
> Windows
> including, particularly, Picasaweb integration.

> (Seehttp://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=53209. )

[Mark Patey]

Andy,

I agree; it would be nice to have menus treated as menus rather than as windows.  I have the same behavior with Compiz-Fusion in Ubuntu 7.10.  I wonder if it's the Picasa code or Wine code that's at fault?

-Mark

[fredv78]

Thank you for that release...

I have Ubuntu 7.10 and have a trouble with sending images in emails
with Thunderbird. The images are not attached in the message...

Will that bug be fixed for the final release ?

Fred

On 21 nov, 22:18, Michael <mtmm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Even in balmy Los Angeles, summer is finally over. Time for a new
> Picasa!
>
> The first Picasa 2.7 for Linux public release candidate is now
> available.

> To get it, visithttp://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html

> and scroll down to the Beta section.
>
> RELEASE NOTES:
>
> This release includes the same new features as in Picasa 2.7 for
> Windows
> including, particularly, Picasaweb integration.

> (Seehttp://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=53209. )

[COD]

Have you tried it with a Gmail account? That works fine with me on
Ubuntu 7.10.

[Sven]

On 21 Nov., 22:18, Michael <mtmm...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Known issues:
>
> - Slideshow and Timeline still don't display full-screen unless your
> display is set to 16 bits instead of the usual 24 or 32.

I have two computers, on one of them the slideshow displays perfectly,
on the other the images are unsharp and get sharp as soon as I stop
the slideshow. Is that the same issue or another? I had this issue
with the old version of Picasa too.

I have opensuse 10.2 installed on the computer it does not work, no
other wine-package than Picasa's and a nVidia 8600 using the binary
driver.

Sven

[dank]

On Nov 25, 2:49 pm, Sven <sven.burmeis...@gmx.net> wrote:
> > Known issues:
> > - Slideshow and Timeline still don't display full-screen unless your
> > display is set to 16 bits instead of the usual 24 or 32.
>
> I have two computers, on one of them the slideshow displays perfectly,
> on the other the images are unsharp and get sharp as soon as I stop
> the slideshow. Is that the same issue or another?
> I had this issue with the old version of Picasa too.

This is the same issue. We've tried tracking it down, but it's
difficult.
We may have another go at it for the next major version, but we'll
probably have to just live with it for 2.7.
- Dan

[mark_okc]

On Nov 24, 5:01 pm, fredv78 <fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have Ubuntu 7.10 and have a trouble with sending images in emails
> with Thunderbird. The images are not attached in the message...
>
> Will that bug be fixed for the final release ?
>
> Fred
>

I'm running the new 2.7 beta on Ubuntu 7.04 and finally got
Thunderbird and Picasa working together wonderfully (for me, anyhow).
A bit of background on this right quick:

The old 2.2 Picasa for linux can't pass more than one attachment to
your mailer or to your picasa-hook-email.sh script (easily provable by
having picasa-hook-email.sh output what is passed to it into a
file... attach one image, you'll see a correct mailto URI. Attach
more than one, Picasa never sends anything at all to your script).
Thankfully, the new 2.7 beta has fixed this bug.

The other problem I've always had with Picasa 2.2 for linux is what
you're running into; when you do try to attach an image to a
Thunderbird email, Picasa is able to correctly trigger the opening of
a new email message, and the subject and body are filled in correctly
but no image is actually attached. This same problem exists in the
2.7 beta, but is very easily solved. Here's how...

1) Install the Picasa 2.7 beta. Since I'm on Ubuntu, I downloaded
the .deb to my desktop, double-clicked it, and let the installer
replace my older Picasa version. Note that you'll lose your
application menu shortcut for Picasa (the new install doesn't create
one), so you'll want to manually create a shortcut after installing,
or else just right-click the existing Picasa shortcut in your
applications menu *before* running the installer and select "Add this
launcher to panel" or "Add this launcher to desktop".

2) Open your favorite text editor and paste this text, saving the file
as /tmp/picasa-hook-email.sh
---------8< snip --------------
#!/bin/bash

# Take the mailto: URI that Picasa sends and break off the
attachments, discarding the rest. We'll
# supply our own subject and body in the thunderbird command-line
below. We end up with a variable
# $ATTACH that contains a comma-separated list of images to attach.
ATTACH=\'`echo $* | sed -e 's/\&attach=/\n\nfile:\/\//g' | awk '/
^file:/ { printf "%s,",$0 }'`\'

# Launch thunderbird with our new custom command-line. Edit the
subject and body as you wish, but
# be certain to leave the single-quotes around the subject and body
text. Of course, the end-user can
# change the subject and body of the email before sending. The
thunderbird executable 'mozilla-thunderbird'
# is in my path (and should be in yours, but make sure it is if you
have problems), so I don't give a full path
# here.
mozilla-thunderbird --compose "subject='EMAILING: Pictures from
Picasa',body='Attached are some photos for your enjoyment.',attachment=
${ATTACH}"

exit 0

-------- 8< snip -------------

3) Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and do
(command should be all on one line):
sudo bash -c "mv /tmp/picasa-hook-email.sh /opt/picasa/bin/ ; chown
root:root /opt/picasa/bin/picasa-hook-email.sh ; chmod 755 /opt/picasa/
bin/picasa-hook-email.sh"


That's it, fire up Picasa, right-click 3 or 4 images, and select "File
> Email...". Click "Native Linux email client" when prompted
(assuming Thunderbird is registered as your default mail client), and
in a few seconds, the new email message should pop up with your
correctly attached multiple images.

BIG NOTE: If you have commas or percent signs in your image
filenames, you're going to need to tweak on the script above to get
rid of those characters. Spaces and apostrophes aren't a problem (eg
I can send image "/home/mark/Documents/My Pictures/Dad & Adam at
Mom's.jpg" with no problem, but an image I saved back in the Internet
Explorer days "/home/mark/Documents/My Pictures/Blue%20Desktop.jpg"
won't send, nor will "New car, old dog.jpg"). Simple solution is
don't have "%" or "," in your filenames in the first place. I didn't
mess with it because I only had two old .jpgs saved in IE, and one
file with a comma in its name.

Hope that helps someone else out there, I looked and looked for a
working picasa-hook-email.sh for Thunderbird but struck out
previously. Finally broke down and put some time into this because I
have my folks running linux, but my step-mom was pushing for going
back to Windows simply because Picasa wasn't doing this and she was
used to the windows version handling it no problem.

Regards,
Mark

[brad]

To Dan, Michael, and all of the other developers:

I just wanted to say a big thank you and a job very well done with the
new release for picasa. I just downloaded and installed it last night
(in Ubuntu Gutsy) and it worked great!! Thanks again to everyone who
put all of their hard work and effort into this project,


Brad

[leiz]

Here's a cleaned up version of the script:

#!/bin/bash

# Thunderbird may fail on some systems because of Picasa's
$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH

# Find the Thunderbird executable
THUNDERBIRD=$(which mozilla-thunderbird 2> /dev/null)
if [ -z "$THUNDERBIRD" ] ; then
THUNDERBIRD=$(which thunderbird 2> /dev/null)
fi
if [ -z "$THUNDERBIRD" ] ; then
exit 1
fi

ARG=$(echo "$1" | sed 's/^mailto:?//' | sed 's/%/%25/g' | sed 's/,/%2C/
g')
CONTENT=$(echo "$ARG" | sed 's/\&attach=.*//' | sed 's/\&/,/g')
ATTACH=$(echo "$ARG" | sed 's/\&attach=/\n\nfile:\/\//g' | awk '/
^file:/ { printf "%s,",$0 }')

NEWARG="${CONTENT},attachment='${ATTACH}'"
"$THUNDERBIRD" -compose "$NEWARG"

[Victor]

This script works fine for me - thank you very much!

I think Google guys should set up a kind of HowTo and Tips and Tricks
in this forum, and publish these pieces of wisdom clean of unnecessary
discussion to make it easily searchable and available for everybody.

Regards,
Victor

[mhenriday]

Or at least a link to a section dealing specifically with Picasa for
Linux in Picasa Help....

Henri