What would you like to see in Minbar 0.2?
The first release of Minbar was somewhat hurried, and was more intended for personal use, and as a test of whether Muslim Gnome users really want something like this.
It turns out a lot of people are happy about the idea, and there is an acceptable level of adoption amongst Gnome users. Thanks everyone! This encouraged me to work together a better Minbar for next release, and may be, just may be, build it and distribute for Windows.
So this is meant to get some ideas from people on what they want. Currently I am thinking of:
- City names list, choosing a city instead of entering its details.
- Hide window on start-up (Already in CVS).
- Windows port.
- Fix the menu icon.
- Package it for deb and rpm distributions.
- …? (Your idea here)
Any more?
March 20th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Hmm… let me think…
What about Gnome Panel Integration (a la kprayertime)? but that sounds like it needs a lot of work, maybe leave that for Minbar 2.0 ;-)
Actually, I can’t think of any viable additions to your list… In fact, Minbar 0.1 was more than impressive for a “Hurried Release”.
God bless you, and keep up the good work!
March 21st, 2007 at 4:36 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 6:53 pm
[…] يعمل جهاد عفيفي الآن على إصدار نسخة ثانية من البرنامج، لذلك فمن الجيد أن تجربوا البرنامج و تبعثوا إليه باقتراحاتكم. […]
March 24th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Alright. Finally a athan prayer program for Gnome. I was using NamazTime beforehand, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have the athan with it. I’m going to try this one out now.
March 26th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
I’d suggest that it would take its parameters from .iprayrc (used by ipraytime & ireminder in the itools package). Or at least there would be an option that it would use that file.
Also there are many parameters for computing salat time, like fajr angle & other stuff, they can be put in an Advanced tab.
March 27th, 2007 at 6:20 am
* It would be better that when Minbar is started, that its main window wouldn’t be shown, it is enough just to have its icon loaded in the notification area. The user can then show its main window by clicking on the icon.
* When the Close window button (the ‘x’ button on the top right of the window) is pressed Minbar closes. It is better instead to hide the window instead of ending Minbar.
March 27th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
for the location you can give it a selection to be
- manually set, or
- via google maps such as the used on this FF extensoin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4270
March 29th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
it is already great, and most suggestions i thought about are already listed here by you and other readers like cities list (you may find them with cordinates as aeroports list(like in weather report applet)), gnome panel integration, and also an integrated calender (or may be somehow to integrat with gnome calender (clock applet))
there is nothing other to say
may be to change the “qa3ba” icon, it is not about pilgrimage (7eg) but just prayer.
i realised that minbar package is about 1.2M while athan.ogg file alone is about 1.2M, may be you might make athan.ogg as a separeted package (minbar-data or minbar-sound) where we can also choose between egyptian or saudi athan or just athan’s soft musique.
by talking about packages, it depends on much experimental libraries while it might don’t need the latest version of all of them, i think that’s what omar did in his package by changing the dependencies libraries version
April 1st, 2007 at 12:51 am
another suggestion, add a comand line option to start minimized (in the tray) to be more elegant to add it to startup program list
April 1st, 2007 at 2:20 am
I think an important feature would be differentiating between fajr athan and others. Like having 2 .ogg files for the 2 athans.
Nice work by the way
April 1st, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Thanks for the truly great suggestions, keep them coming :¬) I definitely see most of these making it into 0.2 ISA, here are my ideas about some of them:
First, Art: I am bad at drawing (honest). I made the current Kabaa icon by copying measurements from an image. I really would like to see better artwork for 0.2, inlcuding a better logo and icon. This is an open invitation for anybody who has or knows somebody who has great artistic talent.
On dependencies: The most cutting edge dependency is GTK and libnotify. The first is so cutting edge because of Tray icon integration, believe it or not, GTK didn’t add that funtionality to the library until recently. libnotify is optional, but great to offer notifications prior to prayer time.
Start minimised: this is already in CVS as a preference, should probably also add a CLI option. There is also a proper menu icon for 0.2.
Panel integration: I think this should be in a different application as an applet. It should also probably include a Hijri date applet like the standard one.
Hijri Calender: I like this. I’ll see how it can be done. I’ll also add an option to correct the hijri date if needed ([-2,+2] offsets). Admittedly the real solution is to include a hijri calendar in Glib directly, there is an open bug in gnome bugzilla for this.
Prayer timetable: instead of just displaying the current date, offer the full calender with prayer times, and possibly an option to print it.
Qibla Direction: as Yahya said, this probably should just display the exact direction.
Add an option to store the name of the Athan file: I actually forgot to add this in 0.1, if you change the location of the athan file and restart, you get the old one.
Athan files: my biggest problem with Athan data is that I cannot find some that are Free in the GPL sense. I emailed a bunch of Islamic websites with no response .(Please check your emails thank you :¬( ). As a solution Khaled Khalil gave me an excellent idea: offering Athan data as a separate package. This way, I can offer tens of Athans in a “non-free” package…
Closing or minimising with X: currently X closes, minimise hides. I tried to follow other Gnome applications in this behaviour such as Rhythmbox. Do you guys really think X should just hide? Half of me thinks I should offer it as a preference, the half thinks one should not offer too many preferences.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Salam
April 2nd, 2007 at 8:52 pm
like liferea (and many others AFAIK) close just minimize, to exit the application you’ve to choose file -> quit
April 6th, 2007 at 9:23 am
April 18th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Khaled Khalil
“do you have any specific idea ? i think my brother have some artistic talent, but i have to know what is in your imagination to implement”
Get him interested! people with artistic talents are rare to come by!
As for an idea about artwork, I’d leave it to his imagination without limits, but if you really need something, may be a “minbar” or a “mihrab” will do. Think he can do it? I’d be very grateful if he does.
I’ll upload it to Gnomefiles when I hit 0.2.
PS. I don’t do April fools :~).
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:24 am
About the art work, did you tried to ask for help from any Muslim artists on deviantART
http://www.deviantart.com/
i think there are many really talented people there
May 7th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Salaam,
Minbar is an excellent addition to Debian - and gnome - (Jazakallahu Khayran) but I was wondering if it would be possible to have a version which would work with a Window Manager (such as FVWM) rather than a desktop (such as gnome)?
That is, a gtk gui (or similar) so that it did not depend on gnome. Or is this not possible?
May 9th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Assalaamu ‘alaykum,
I found your minbar soft very good. options required would be to allow to play mp3 files (for the azan) instead of ogg files currently, allowing a custom text for notification, integrate the azan files with dua after the azan (allahumma rabba hazi da3wa tittaama…) and allow us to choose any audui files we cant.
I hope there will be another version soon inshallah!
May 9th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Hello,
First of all thank you to Djihed for making this package :)
I am a relatively new Linux user, I am using Ubuntu and was wondering if there is a .deb package yet and if yes where could I download it from?
Thanks.
May 10th, 2007 at 5:52 am
Alsalamu alaikom,
I’ve always wanted an athan program for Linux. I just tried Minbar, and I love it.
Since the program is supposed to be running in the background, and plays athan at prayer times, I expected it to minimize when I press the close button. So I vote for the minimize-on-close option.
I liked the simplicity and usability of the design. No unnecessary options or buttons. However, I think that selecting the country (and city) instead of Long and Lat should be on top of the list. I know it’s not an easy task, but very important and wanted. Also, the lists should be built in the program, and not online, so people who use Minbar and don’t have internet connection can still select their country.
I travel a lot, and that’s where Minbar is going to help me a lot. However I’m concerned that when I go to another country, the athan will go off at the laptops local time. I’m not sure of how to solve this. Maybe a roaming mode will do.
Thank you for such a wonderful program.
May 10th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Amr Wrote:
“I am a relatively new Linux user, I am using Ubuntu and was wondering if there is a .deb package yet and if yes where could I download it from?”
I installed Minbar using the ubuntume repository.
Go to http://ubuntume.com/ar:installation
Just a final note,
I failed to download the secure keys, which means that it will work, but you’ll have to ignore the security warnings.
May 13th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Thank you Khalid Al-Baloushi for the advice, I installed Minbar through the ubuntume repos.
Now I have another question, does anyone have any links to sites with various athan files? I would like to change the athan.ogg file to one that is a little softer in voice.
Finally I would like to add my voice to those who would like the X to minimise to the panel. Right after installing Minbar the first thing I assumed was that X would minimise, I always assume this with applications that are meant to be kept running minimised :)
Shukran.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:26 am
May 20th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Maybe someone at ubuntume.com can help with art. I am talking to him (sn is nimes) to see what he can do. Look at the screenshots section in the ubuntu muslim edition website (from above) to see some of his work. It’s very good mashallah.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
That’s great! Keep up the good work, god bless you. A nice application, something every muslim linux gnome user need.
The Statusbar-Icon could show the time of next Salaat.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:50 pm
salam alikom,
it’s a great work bro. mashallah
1) i am missing option “change language” …. i can send you my german translation if you like to add it.
2)i think it is a good idea to put the actuell time near the date ? or what do u think ?
salaam
June 1st, 2007 at 10:35 am
Salim, that has been implemented in the next version.
Salam:
1) Please send me an email to afifi at djihed dot com , I will give you a file to translate Minbar to German (the same applies for any other language). After that you will be able to view minbar in German.
2) Yup, that has also been implemented too. I’ll post screenshots of the new version soon.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:06 pm
check your email
wlsam
June 7th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Assalamu alaikum!
Thank you for the program! It’s pretty nice. But I want more. I want all features which exist in Salaat Time program for Windows. Look at: www.salaattime.com
And thank you again.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:57 am
Brother Djihed , you really need to have some pre-sets for cities.
not everyone can enter his city’s details easily (including me)
Barak allah Feek
July 1st, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Assalaamu ‘alaykum,
is the new release coming akhy Djihed?
July 6th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Can you compile this app-n (console version) for arm CPU? My friend compiled it for me, but i can’t ask him always and always :). There is many cell phones based on linux. i have one - rokr e2. i think it’ll be usefull.
Shukran!
July 19th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Assalamu aleikum dear brother,
may Allah bless you for your great work! i use ubuntume and couldn’t imagine without minbar. it’s e great feeling to hear athaan in a land without mosques at every prayer time.
mash Allah there are made many suggestions and it seems to be much work for you, so i will make only one:
for common users it is really difficult to configure his own city. maybe it would be easier to suggest a location by ip-localization? maybe another good approach would be to let the user choose his land/city and download his configuration as file at runtime.
Assalamu aleikum!
Abu Said
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:12 am
as-Salam,
Just a couple of notes to add:
1. This is a splendid work, and your efforts are noteworthy - thank you!
2. A small feature request: it would be nice when I add Minbar to my gnome-panel, that I don’t have to click on it for it to tell me the next prayer time. What I am after, is just a tool-tip when my mouse hovers over the icon, to tell me how much longer until the next prayer time.
3. Is there any way to stop Minbar from poping up everytime I boot up my machine (I’d like to have the option of disabling whether or not the Minbar dialog box come up when I start up).
Again, thank you.
Jazak-Allahu Khayran
–
Farid
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
asslamu alaikum
Isha prayer for me today is 01:12 and i choosed islamic society of north america,
while in the prog. from islamic finder isha today is 11:30 also i choosed islamic society of north america,
11:30 is logic for city here,
lat. 54.88
log. 23.88
I hope that you can correct it
plz reply to my email
July 30th, 2007 at 4:19 am
I really like the program. Thank you very much for your hard work. I currently use a program on my Palm Pilot. The one on my Palm allows me to set different alarms for the different prayers. I can enable the alarms or disable them individually as well as have them set to alert me at different times in advance. For instance, for most prayers I set the alarm for 5 minutes in advance, but for the morning prayer I set it 15 or 20 minutes in advance so as to give me a little time to wake up first. Thank you again and thank you for considering my suggestion.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:56 am
please include timepreyer for cities in Bosnia (like Mostar, Sarajevo, Zenica, Tuzla, Bihac, Banja Luka)
How can I translate it to Bosnian?
August 11th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Thanks for making Minbar it’s a great program and the only proper prayer times prog for linux in my opinion.
3 suggestions:
1) Allow viewing prayer time info in main program screen in 12 hour mode and not just in 24 hour mode.
2) I have yet to be able to compile the program since i have left ubuntu. Why not make an autopackage that will easily work for everyone on all distributions.
see http://www.autopackage.org/
This will make it much easier for less experience linux users to get this vital application on their system.
3) Add more prayer time files or provide them on the website for download. If possible include Athans from areas outside of Arabia… e.g. Syria, Turkey, Bosnia, Caucasus nations…
Looking forward to Minbar 0.2.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I posted this in the wrong entry, so here once again:
August 16th, 2007 at 9:53 am
City names list is a good idea and please make a version for 64 bit linux (ubuntu) :D and a version for windows would also be nice…
August 20th, 2007 at 9:36 am
It would be nice to have configuration for other timezones like GMT +5.5 as some countries such as India have these timezones.
September 8th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
hi,
i’m using minbar in part of ubuntume. but i cannot set up the minbar in the correct time of adzan on it. please help me. i did put latitude and longitude same with islamicfinder website. but the time shown different betwen minbar and the schedule from islamicfinder. could you explain ?
i live in ann arbor, michigan, USA.
thanks alot
September 10th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Salaam,
Wonderful program. But it would be great if you have a seperate Fajr adhan for the program.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
An update for Minbar (0.2) is coming in the next weeks, sorry for the long wait, I hope the new version will make up for it. I will also reply to the comments in time.
Djihed
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
From a user in the ubuntume users:
” I would just like to give a small suggestion that it will be better if u change the ‘Subh’ salah with ‘Fajr’ salah coz the term ‘Fajr’ is internationally recognized and most commonly used as well . So i request u to look into it and please change it if possible . ”
(http://www.ubuntume.com/forums/sutra981.php#981)
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
From a user in the ubuntuME forums:
“There are no options to configure adhan times for Hanafi, safi, Hanbali and Maliki, as in the Adhan pro software. Does any one has an idea about this or this is still under development stage? ”
(http://www.ubuntume.com/forums/sutra980.php#980)
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Could you please also add the version number to ‘About’ so that we can easily identify which version we have installed?
Thanks.
September 26th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Assalamalaikuwarahmatullahwabarkatuhu .
First of all , may Allah bless u for making this version of Linux for us Muslims . I would just like to give a small suggestion that it will be better if u change the ‘Subh’ salah with ‘Fajr’ salah coz the term ‘Fajr’ is internationally recognized and most commonly used as well . So i request u to look into it and please change it if possible .
Ramadan Mubarak!
September 30th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Assalaamu ‘alaykum,
akhy djihed I hope you will include in the coming version the option to play the du’a which can be recited after the adhan.
JazakAllahu khayran, and Ramadhaan mubarak to all.
October 14th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Well first , Thx for this Efficient Soft’ , I’ve been searching for long for something like that on Ubuntu , and i’ve finally found it !
So for the changes , It would be great if it is a “SILENT MOD” When it just show a MSN-Like Notification , and also add more Athan , cuz the one included isn’t that good :p !
And it also bug sometime , but nothing that can’t be solved :-D !
Thx for your Hard Work Brother !
Ahmed
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:50 pm
November 24th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
As-Salam Djihed,
I’ve since gone from Dapper to Fiesty - and yes, now I have the tool-tip showing me all times until the next prayer (, was never that way under Dapper though … can’t say why).
Since my last post, I have thought of one really nice to have feature, but don’t know how needful it is for others… would very much like to be able to run multiple Minbars (for different cities) - would be handy for those among us that fly by plane often (, it’s somewhat inconvenient to have to do the lat/lon switch everytime).
Again, great job, and thank you for your continued efforts.
Jazak Allah,
–
Farid
December 22nd, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Farid,
The new version containing the city database will undoubtedly make it easier for you. Let me know how it goes (After releasing Minbar 0.2).
Djihed
June 5th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Hi Jihad,
I would like to thank you for this lovely SW, and I want to know how to add Minbar to Panel?
I’m using Ubuntu Hardy (8.04)
Thanks
Regards
June 11th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Hi
This is the first time I am trying to use Minbar prayer times. The s/w has an option for Athan, but it is not able to locate the Athan files. I tried to use the wav files that I have, but they don’t seem to work. Can any one help me download the Athan that’s supported by the s/w or is there any way to configure the s/w otherwise.
Please be kind enough to reply to this post.
Thank you.
June 14th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hisham: adding Minbar to the panel is not possible, you can only have it in the system tray.
Jaseem: The installation file should contain Athan files in the form of .ogg files. Those should be playable. Also, you need to install gstreamer plugins.
In the next version I’ll try to support more formats than ogg.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:57 am
I like the software very much. Great work. Jazakallahu khair… Only one suggestion: this software does not take into account the altitude of the location for calculation. this gives an error of few minutes for prayer time for high altitude areas. can u please in corporate that factor?
May 4th, 2009 at 7:59 am
as-salaamu alaykum akhi,
excellent program, may allah (swt) reward you for your efforts.
I noticed some people requested mp3, I would request that you stick with ogg, and not encourage the proprietary formats. Let people learn to use ogg, and understand that by using mp3, they’re encouraging proprietary software that limits choice.
If you’d like to include adhan files, then perhaps look into using the speex codec, which is open source, and which has very small file size. Or using a seperate package (minbar-data) as suggested above.
again, barak allah feek akhi.
wasalam.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Salam, would be nice to place more Calculation Methods, such as Lebanon and Iran. Thanks!
April 1st, 2010 at 1:12 pm
assalamo alaykoum
je n’ai pas de proposition à faire,mais seulement une remarque:
Avec le changement d’heure d’été ,mon systeme a changé l’heure ,mais les heures de priere de minbar sont restées inchangées.
May 4th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Can anyone tell where is the config file for minbar. during set up i selected to have it run in the toolbar. It is running toally in the background with visual appearance at all and I cannot find where to deslect the option. Even unistalling it and re-installing has not fixed the problem. I am running debian sid/xfce.