Announce: libgphoto2 2.4.7 release

[Marcus Meissner]

Hi folks!

Freshly brewed from the Linux Bierwanderung 2009, the libgphoto2 2.4.7
release.

This release is mostly targeted for the "remote controlled capture"
users.

A seperate gphoto2 2.4.7 release is also targeted, but I have to review
some things and the --port bug first.

Lots of thanks to all bugreporters, users, translators and developers :)

Ciao, Marcus

NEWS:
libgphoto2:
   * Translation updates from translationproject.org.
   * Widget and choice lists now dynamic, to be able to create longer ones.
   * 3rd generation UDEV rules emission, now able to emit "post HAL"
     UDEV rules.

     print-camera-list udev-rules version 136 > /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libgphoto2.rules
 
   * Disabled LRU of images. Not really useful in times of USB 2.0,
     also disabled by at least Debian und Ubuntu already.

libgphoto2_port / USB:
   * If we detached a USB driver, reattach it on close.
     This allows using e.g. cheap camera as both webcam with in-kernel
     driver and still camera with libgphoto2.

PTP2 driver:
   * Renamed various configuration options and changed values to
     match a unified model. Some common names have changed:
          owner->ownername
          exptime->shutterspeed
          eos-* -> non-eos prefixed variants
          etc.
     You will need to review configuration setting code if you have any.

   * Create config submenus /actions for action triggers and /status for
     read-only values, moved stuff there.

   * New IDs:
    Kodak M863
        Canon Digital IXUS 110IS, IXUS 100IS, Powershot SX200IS, SD780 IS, A1100IS
        Canon EOS 500D
        Fuji Finepix F200 EXR
        Apple iPod Touch first generation


   * Lots of Canon EOS capture improvements, for card capture, for LiveView,
     and for property setting. More properties are now possible.
   * Canon EOS Bulb mode support (available in newer canons).
     --set-config bulb=(0|1)

   * Fixed Nikon DSC shutterspeed setting (also for times < 1/1000)
   * Enable Viewfinder on demand for Canon Powershot, not for all capture things.
   * Generic PTP Property Get/Set in the configuration handling.
   * Decode more Nikon DSC properties (for D90 now nearly complete).
   * Turned several PTP generic commands to macros to reduce number of functions.
   * MTP player list synced with libmtp 1.0.
   * Lots of bugfixes.

Canon driver:
   * Renamed various configuration options and changed values to
     match a unified model.

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[Theodore Kilgore]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2009, gphoto-user-request@... wrote:

> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:44:08 +0200
> From: Marcus Meissner <meissner@...>
> Subject: [Gphoto-user] Announce: libgphoto2 2.4.7 release
> To: gphoto-user@...,
> gphoto-devel@...
> Message-ID: <20090817114408.GA25244@...>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Hi folks!
>
> Freshly brewed from the Linux Bierwanderung 2009, the libgphoto2 2.4.7
> release.
>
> This release is mostly targeted for the "remote controlled capture"
> users.
>
> A seperate gphoto2 2.4.7 release is also targeted, but I have to review
> some things and the --port bug first.
>
> Lots of thanks to all bugreporters, users, translators and developers :)
>
> Ciao, Marcus

Congratulations. A couple of comments follow.

>
> NEWS:
> libgphoto2:
>   * Translation updates from translationproject.org.
>   * Widget and choice lists now dynamic, to be able to create longer ones.
>   * 3rd generation UDEV rules emission, now able to emit "post HAL"
>     UDEV rules.
>
>     print-camera-list udev-rules version 136 > /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libgphoto2.rules
>
>   * Disabled LRU of images. Not really useful in times of USB 2.0,
>     also disabled by at least Debian und Ubuntu already.

What I would really like to see is the ability to turn off EXIF stuff
completely. Cheap cameras do not pass along any meta-data, only the raw
bytes of the images. And sometimes the hardware (worst examples are the
cameras run by SQ chips) just really does not like or appreciate extra
attempts to download the data for an image twice. Yet, if there is no EXIF
data found in the image, for the very good reason that there was no such
thing there in the first place, then the libgphoto2 functions somehow
insist upon trying to download the photos again to look for the
non-existent EXIF data yet again. The only way which I have ever
discovered which can stop the nonsense behavior is a kludge, namely to
return the error that GP_FILE_EXISTS if there is any attempt to download
EXIF data. Unfortunately, this still does not stop the attempt from
happening. It only stops the attempt after it got started.


>
> libgphoto2_port / USB:
>   * If we detached a USB driver, reattach it on close.
>     This allows using e.g. cheap camera as both webcam with in-kernel
>     driver and still camera with libgphoto2.

This is really cool, if it works. Something like this has been needed for
a long time. The whole problem behind this, of course, is the rigid
security separation between userspace and kernelspace. It is one of the
virtues and strengths of Linux, but it has always required a hell of a lot
of explaining to new users.

In case that anyone is curious, the other half of the functionality needed
to be able to use the camera in both modes is that libgphoto2 _can_ grab
the camera away from the kernel module. This fix would mean that it is not
needed to re-plug the camera if it is to be used again as a webcam.

Marcus, what happens now with one of those distros which try to "make it
easy" for the user, by setting up the system so that a camera is opened
automatically with an app which downloads any still photos on it as soon
as it is plugged in? Up to now, this kind of thing has really caused
problems, because the following has been happening recently, especially
with those "user-friendly" distros:

--Camera plugged in, kernel module for streaming mode installed, and it
grabs the hardware.

--But immediately thereafter the module is disabled by libusb because the
still photo app has been started.

--Attempt to re-plug the camera results in rinse, lather, repeat.

If the user wants to use the camera in webcam mode, too, then the only way
to do that is to turn off the "nice" feature which has been built in by
the "clever" distro to make things "easy" but which instead succeeds only
in making us all to look silly.

If this problem is solved now, that is very good, indeed.

Theodore Kilgore

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