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Alexander Larsson answered my Dear Lazyweb on finding a PID given a Window ID, to implement Richard Jones' View Source Button idea. I hacked up a tiny bash script to see what kind of info we could easily get about a window. Running that script and clicking on the Gnome calculator, I see:

$ show-source
Click on a window. Avoid clicking on a window border.
PID:             6272
Binary:          /usr/bin/gcalctool
RPM:             gcalctool-5.28.1-1.fc12.x86_64.rpm
SRPM:            gcalctool-5.28.1-1.fc12.src.rpm
Upstream URL:    http://directory.fsf.org/gcalctool.html
Fedora release:  12
Bugzilla search: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&classification=Fedora&product=Fedora&component=gcalctool&version=12
PackageDB page:  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/gcalctool
Transifex page:  (None)

There's a lot more that needs to be handled -- for example, clicking on a script window reports the interpreter instead of the script, clicking on a window border reports nothing, clicking on the window of a consolehelper'd app fails on access to /proc/$PID/exe, and clicking on a terminal window reports the terminal program instead of the character-mode app that is running (obviously).

All of these can be solved fairly easily, and the idea looks workable! As I noted in a commend on Richard's original post, it would be cool to make this View Source applet capable of taking the user to the pkgdb page, a source code browser (I'm thinking DXR, once we get it indexing all of Fedora), a bugzilla search, the upstream web page, or the translate.fedoraproject.org page; or, if the user chose, the applet could download and install the .src.rpm.

As far as I know, there is no way to reliably get a process ID from an X window ID for local clients (to implement Richard's View Source idea). I would love to be wrong!

Questions:

(1) Did I miss something? Can this be done now?

(2) If this can't be done now, what would it take? Could we create an X extension so that the server can supply connection info for a window, and then trace that connection info back to a specific process?

Last week, at both FSOSS and the Teaching Open Source Summit, I heard a word that jarred me slightly, because I had dropped it from my professional vocabulary a number of years ago: "Kids".

I stopped using the word "kids" to refer to students for several reasons -- including the fact that I had a student twenty years my senior, and another who was a fully accredited Civil Engineer in his home country -- but the main reason that I dropped it was that it is simply incompatible with the way open source communities work. In open source, roles are defined by contribution, not age or formal training. Some of the youngest members of the community are the most active, and make crucial and valuable contributions.

If we're teaching inside open source communities, then it's important that we value students as full members of those communities -- and I think that the term "kids" is dismissive of their abilities.

Fedora 12 is almost here!

For the past several releases, we've held a release party in Toronto, complete with freshly-burned discs and origami disc covers. This time around, we'd like to invite all Toronto-area Fedora users to instead come out to FUDCon Toronto 2009 (where, in addition to great presentations, discussions, and hack sessions, I'm sure there will be real pressed discs with printed labels and real sleeves!).

Please help us get the word out! Point your friends, colleagues, and neighbours to http://tinyurl.com/fudcon

The presentation slate for FSOSS 2009 has been finalized, and it looks like a interesting and diverse line-up including such topics as:

• Apache Qpid (AMQP)
• technical writing and documentation
• Mozilla Dehydra and DXR tools
• Processing.js
• open source in South Africa's universities
• communication in open source projects

...and more.

I'm looking forward to a great conference! If you're within driving distance of Toronto, please consider joining us on October 30. Advance registration -- and the corresponding discount -- ends this weekend as the Toronto Open Source Week gets underway.