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Well, I don't think the GNOME developers really publicise the devel versions until they're close to a release, at which point they call them 2.10 pre-release or whatever. But, for example, on the developers blogs at Planet GNOME, they refer to the work they're doing on 2.9 quite often.

GNOME has a prototype-quality unfinished program called gconf-editor which is sort of the GUI equivalent of gconftool. Try it out.

From these lines we must conclude that there are no finished frontends to the gconf ;-)

most people will only care about the games they personally run.

Exactly.. And our solitaire is waaaaaaaay better.

Really? I mean, really? Here's Davyd's screenshot of the Gnome help browser:

http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-10/images/yelp -full.png

Here's some XP help browser screenshots, courtesy of Google image search:

http://www.winona.edu/its/techsupport/images/helpa ndsupport.jpg
http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/security/bulletin /images/hcp.jpg

Hmm, so they both have Back buttons. Oh, and scrollbars. And look, they both display formatted text! Those Gnome developers are just a bunch of copycats.

For the record, I blatently copied the OS X help browser, not the XP help browser.

Regarding Go: Do you know what's under that menu? It has Back and Forward, and it has Previous Section and Next Section. I really doubt the menu itself is used that often, but the actions in the menu are very commonly used, either by toolbar buttons or by keyboard shortcuts.

Regarding Bookmarks: For most simple application help, it really isn't necessary. You see some dialog, you think "What the heck is this option?", and you pull up the help. You don't want to spend time in the help browser. You want to get back to your work.

But then there are people who look up function references for Gnumeric. And systems administrators who have to refer to certain bits of system documentation often. There are people for whom bookmarks are incredibly useful. The interface is still very simple, and the addition of bookmarks doesn't really hurt those who don't need them.

I get the impression that you just wanted something, anything, to complain about.

Actually, GNOME Storage is a pretty dead project. What people probably want to see screenshots for these days is Beagle. Beagle gathers metadata and indexes content instead of replacing the filesystem. And it Just Works. Has done so for months.

I use Gnome on my Debian machine and KDE on my Suse machine. Both are b-apt-ized with the sources.

But honestly, I am more productive with KDE than with Gnome. Gnome can be a pain in the arse. I've listed a few of my quirks below.

Nautilus:
In the folder tree (left window), try moving or renaming a folder. You can't. You have click on it's parent folder and scroll down in the right window and find it to move/rename it.
Konquerer in KDE works fine.

Gnome Clipboard Manager (I know, it's not part of the Gnome project...):
Copy and pasting between GTK1/2 and Qt apps while GCM is enabled total screws up your "highlighted" and "copied" clipboards.
Klipper in KDE has never screwed up my clipboard.

Gedit:
In this Gnome 2.10 screenshot example (http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-10/images/ged it-hilite-full.png) gedit is syntax hightlighting an html file. Gedit can even do Java and Perl files. But, It can't syntax highlight simple sh/bash files? I don't understand that.
Kate/Krite in KDE syntax highlights just fine and cleverly adds an expand/collapse icon to your for/while loops.

(I have lots more, but I'll stop there before I piss someone off ;) I don't want to start a KDE/Gnome flame war... And, yes, I am aware of the whole GTK vs Qt licensing problem...)

One excuse I've been told is that Gnome is designed to be a more minimal Desktop. Then why not just use XFCE? It the best (and fastest) minimal GTK based Desktop I've ever used:
http://www.xfce.org/index.php?page=users_screensho ts&lang=en

Sometimes I think that the Gnome development team is trying so hard not to be like KDE (or even like Windows) it's development is being hindered.

Am I being rude or too honest?

-Joe

7*8*9*19*5783
http://www.thehumorarchives.com/attachment_files/w arning.jpg

the common non-tech-savvy person often will choose a version of Windows over a distro of Linux simply because XP just looks nicer and easier to use.

GTK+ is fully themeable, but the default GNOME theme has many restrictions -- basically, it has to look good for everybody. And as others have mentioned here, the GNOME theme is actually more "useful" -- less space taken up by big blue curvy things.

For reference: the default theme actually did change in GNOME 2.8 (and my, was the older theme ever outdated). For an overview of the design issues, check out this mailing list thread.

"Why can't the GNOME one get better? The 2.4 and pre series was a JOKE and this new one, even with all it's vaunted HIG stuff, is still horrible imho. Why can't I see thumbs? Previews? A decent file tree? Bleh."

How about combined with Gnome Storage? Works well with a spatial metaphor.

...what the heck Evolution is, you can find more info on it here, but it's basically an email/address book/calendar program, a la Outlook, for Gnome. A link in the article itself might have helped, especially since Novell seems to be targetting Windows users like me, who also (coincidentally?) haven't heard of the program.

With the release of GTK+ 2.6, things should be much better. According to the release notes, the "ms-windows (Wimp) theme engine and the IME input method module have been integrated into the GTK+ sources".

Stephen

I know the above comment was somewhat facetious but the bugzilla.gnome.org search form is perfectly usable.

Seriously, a lot of people are under the misconception that Aqua is a set of nifty-looking widgets. It's an interface standard for clean apps.

The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, to be precise.

I don't know whether all the issues you mention are described there, though - I didn't see anything that addressed the number of toolbar buttons, but it does give other recommendations for toolbars, so if by "a row of 20 NSButtons" you mean "something just using a row of NSButtons rather than using NSToolbar", doing the latter might give you toolbar behavior suggested in the Human Interface Guidelines that you wouldn't get with a row of NSButtons.

Now, the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 2.0 does recommend not having too much in your toolbar in the section on toolbars:

Guidelines

• Place only the most commonly-used application functions on your toolbars. Don't just add buttons for every menu item.

The KDE User Interface Guidelines doesn't say anything about keeping the number of toolbar items down in its section on toolbars - in fact, it gives a list of items that should be in the toolbar if you have them in menus, so it might recommend increasing the number of toolbar items. (I think NSToolbar might give you a toolbar that can be customized, so you can have a set of buttons that the user could add to the toolbar if they wanted to, without having them in the default toolbar; the user can also remove items from a customizable toolbar.)

To add one more online HIG to the collection, the Windows Official Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers doesn't recommend, in its section on toolbars, that you keep the toolbar from being too cluttered, and its examples do have a number of buttons; it does recommend that you let the user configure it, at least.

Seriously, a lot of people are under the misconception that Aqua is a set of nifty-looking widgets. It's an interface standard for clean apps.

The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, to be precise.

I don't know whether all the issues you mention are described there, though - I didn't see anything that addressed the number of toolbar buttons, but it does give other recommendations for toolbars, so if by "a row of 20 NSButtons" you mean "something just using a row of NSButtons rather than using NSToolbar", doing the latter might give you toolbar behavior suggested in the Human Interface Guidelines that you wouldn't get with a row of NSButtons.

Now, the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 2.0 does recommend not having too much in your toolbar in the section on toolbars:

Guidelines

• Place only the most commonly-used application functions on your toolbars. Don't just add buttons for every menu item.

The KDE User Interface Guidelines doesn't say anything about keeping the number of toolbar items down in its section on toolbars - in fact, it gives a list of items that should be in the toolbar if you have them in menus, so it might recommend increasing the number of toolbar items. (I think NSToolbar might give you a toolbar that can be customized, so you can have a set of buttons that the user could add to the toolbar if they wanted to, without having them in the default toolbar; the user can also remove items from a customizable toolbar.)

To add one more online HIG to the collection, the Windows Official Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers doesn't recommend, in its section on toolbars, that you keep the toolbar from being too cluttered, and its examples do have a number of buttons; it does recommend that you let the user configure it, at least.

The promise
I remember when Chandler was first mooted. Finally an open souce project that has a vision of how to store and communicate small bits of information. Traditionally these types of applications have been lumped together with *ugly* (but accurate) acronymn, PIM.

Free the data
This is an important step in applications. Historically data is trapped or obfusticated into applications. Once you enter the data in it you can only get at it by jumping through the fire breathing coding hoops. Ocassionally its open souce (mozilla mork) but commercial applications take this to a new level - (think MS Outlook Express).

Updated Agenda?
For the younger /.'s this is not the first crack Mitch has had at this market. In '88 Mitch Kapor (father of Lotus 123, Notes) Agenda was released into the PIM market to some success. The runs are on the board. Could Chandler be the answer?

• ... A major lesson learnt from the last two years, is that we took on too much, and had too high an ambition level for the near-term. This "great leap forward" strategy didn't pan out. Instead, we have primarily switched to a "dog food" strategy to quickly develop a first release that is minimally usable, on a day-to-day basis, for us within OSAF and for our info-intensive, techno-savvy early adopters. ...

Release early and often
Well after 0.4 release I dont see anything compelling. It has trouble working on Windows, it's monolithic and appears to be *weighed* down in specifications of how to do things rather than results. Chandler looks good on paper but in clumping email, calandering, PIM and other messaging it has lost for me its original appeal. I want it usable now. Even if it is a little bit at a time. For me like its name sake (Raymond) I'm still searching for a usable application.

Alternative
So there you have it I've trashed a computer industry veteran who has runs on the board but has failed to deliver. Whats an alternative. Well one example is a Gnome app called Tomboy. Its a simple mono, GTK based note taking applet that is searchable. It allows you to click on links according to mime types and load an application. It has spell checking (along with references to various IBM patents). But the single kicker that has moved Tomboy into my sights is the integration of Tomboy with Evolution (unix version that mirrors crappy Outlook in too may ways) and Beagle The Gnome desktop is now using Tomboy as the *PIM* input and building a plugin to Evolution (email, calander), Beagle (searching). So bit by bit it's making Chandler less attractive to me.

lessons
It helps to have access to an open souce platform. Release often and early. Build an application (especially a first version) to do one thing and do it well. Get a result. Dont bloat a product with features if it is not vital and work out how can you work with other applications. Tomboy may only have a short shelf life or morph into something else in as it develops but it works right now and does the job.

The promise
I remember when Chandler was first mooted. Finally an open souce project that has a vision of how to store and communicate small bits of information. Traditionally these types of applications have been lumped together with *ugly* (but accurate) acronymn, PIM.

Free the data
This is an important step in applications. Historically data is trapped or obfusticated into applications. Once you enter the data in it you can only get at it by jumping through the fire breathing coding hoops. Ocassionally its open souce (mozilla mork) but commercial applications take this to a new level - (think MS Outlook Express).

Updated Agenda?
For the younger /.'s this is not the first crack Mitch has had at this market. In '88 Mitch Kapor (father of Lotus 123, Notes) Agenda was released into the PIM market to some success. The runs are on the board. Could Chandler be the answer?

• ... A major lesson learnt from the last two years, is that we took on too much, and had too high an ambition level for the near-term. This "great leap forward" strategy didn't pan out. Instead, we have primarily switched to a "dog food" strategy to quickly develop a first release that is minimally usable, on a day-to-day basis, for us within OSAF and for our info-intensive, techno-savvy early adopters. ...

Release early and often
Well after 0.4 release I dont see anything compelling. It has trouble working on Windows, it's monolithic and appears to be *weighed* down in specifications of how to do things rather than results. Chandler looks good on paper but in clumping email, calandering, PIM and other messaging it has lost for me its original appeal. I want it usable now. Even if it is a little bit at a time. For me like its name sake (Raymond) I'm still searching for a usable application.

Alternative
So there you have it I've trashed a computer industry veteran who has runs on the board but has failed to deliver. Whats an alternative. Well one example is a Gnome app called Tomboy. Its a simple mono, GTK based note taking applet that is searchable. It allows you to click on links according to mime types and load an application. It has spell checking (along with references to various IBM patents). But the single kicker that has moved Tomboy into my sights is the integration of Tomboy with Evolution (unix version that mirrors crappy Outlook in too may ways) and Beagle The Gnome desktop is now using Tomboy as the *PIM* input and building a plugin to Evolution (email, calander), Beagle (searching). So bit by bit it's making Chandler less attractive to me.

lessons
It helps to have access to an open souce platform. Release often and early. Build an application (especially a first version) to do one thing and do it well. Get a result. Dont bloat a product with features if it is not vital and work out how can you work with other applications. Tomboy may only have a short shelf life or morph into something else in as it develops but it works right now and does the job.

The promise
I remember when Chandler was first mooted. Finally an open souce project that has a vision of how to store and communicate small bits of information. Traditionally these types of applications have been lumped together with *ugly* (but accurate) acronymn, PIM.

Free the data
This is an important step in applications. Historically data is trapped or obfusticated into applications. Once you enter the data in it you can only get at it by jumping through the fire breathing coding hoops. Ocassionally its open souce (mozilla mork) but commercial applications take this to a new level - (think MS Outlook Express).

Updated Agenda?
For the younger /.'s this is not the first crack Mitch has had at this market. In '88 Mitch Kapor (father of Lotus 123, Notes) Agenda was released into the PIM market to some success. The runs are on the board. Could Chandler be the answer?

• ... A major lesson learnt from the last two years, is that we took on too much, and had too high an ambition level for the near-term. This "great leap forward" strategy didn't pan out. Instead, we have primarily switched to a "dog food" strategy to quickly develop a first release that is minimally usable, on a day-to-day basis, for us within OSAF and for our info-intensive, techno-savvy early adopters. ...

Release early and often
Well after 0.4 release I dont see anything compelling. It has trouble working on Windows, it's monolithic and appears to be *weighed* down in specifications of how to do things rather than results. Chandler looks good on paper but in clumping email, calandering, PIM and other messaging it has lost for me its original appeal. I want it usable now. Even if it is a little bit at a time. For me like its name sake (Raymond) I'm still searching for a usable application.

Alternative
So there you have it I've trashed a computer industry veteran who has runs on the board but has failed to deliver. Whats an alternative. Well one example is a Gnome app called Tomboy. Its a simple mono, GTK based note taking applet that is searchable. It allows you to click on links according to mime types and load an application. It has spell checking (along with references to various IBM patents). But the single kicker that has moved Tomboy into my sights is the integration of Tomboy with Evolution (unix version that mirrors crappy Outlook in too may ways) and Beagle The Gnome desktop is now using Tomboy as the *PIM* input and building a plugin to Evolution (email, calander), Beagle (searching). So bit by bit it's making Chandler less attractive to me.

lessons
It helps to have access to an open souce platform. Release often and early. Build an application (especially a first version) to do one thing and do it well. Get a result. Dont bloat a product with features if it is not vital and work out how can you work with other applications. Tomboy may only have a short shelf life or morph into something else in as it develops but it works right now and does the job.

the Gmini

What's the GNOME Foundation got to do with this?

How about art.gnome.org? That's where I get mine from.

-mike

Beagle is what you want. And best part is, you can use it. Today.

Beagle is the closest thing out there that I know of for open source. It isn't web based but when it works properly (it's still in development) it is supposed to be able to search bookmarks, email, IM logs, etc. similar to how these desktop search programs work.

I'll definitely check out Beagle when I get the chance.

Beagle does it.

I can understand your paranoia with closed-source tools, but what about something like beagle?

Wow. The timing on this article is uncanny. I installed Beagle yesterday, and I'm already addicted to it - it indexes documents, mail and web pages as they're accessed, and updates it search results in real time.

Beagle is a search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you're looking for. Beagle can search in many different domains.

The latest edition of the Beagle newsletter has just been released.

Gnumeric is better. As a statistician, he should be avoiding Excel anyway due to its known innacuracies in calculations. Gnumeric is better on that front, too.

I'll occasionally diagram ideas when thinking about how to implement something or design an API, or sometimes in documentation. Dia has some nice looking boxes in a category called "UML" which I use sometimes. Also, Doxygen can generate collaboration diagrams that look like UML diagrams. Mainly I just need some boxes and arrows. All that other stuff is not that useful.

Maybe it's useful to autogenerate IDL or someting, but I've always found that to be a completely broken concept entirely.

Reed

How is this any different from the Windows registry, one of it's most hated "features"?

It's text based. So they're not exactly reimpleneting windows' registry, but rather GNOME's gconf, which is of course, windows' registry only xml based.

GConf means well. It's something that makes sense for the GNOME as a system (e.g. being able to query what is the default web browser for instance). I'm just not convinced for its use for individual apps, especially since state information is meant to be stored outside of gconf. Also, while GConf isn't explicitly tied to GNOME, I doubt it will be used by anything besides GNOME. Just like every other platform invented tool.

So bring in a standard COM system, and standardise the shell interfaces and you will have kde and gnome applications that can integrate with the shell without having to have separate progams.

I thought CORBA at one time was supposed to be embraced by *nix as The One True Component Model, but when the rubber met the road back in the day, the adoption effort shattered for a variety of reasons. Now however, I see that both Gnome and KDE support CORBA (KDE support explained, Gnome support explained). All the preceding is moot of course, if you and I cannot agree that CORBA is a component model, or if you think CORBA is not a valid consideration today.

What the... is Slashdot on crack? Has nobody here ever heard of open source project mailing lists? Ever heard of GNU Mailman? Legitimate uses of mailing lists are right in front of your nose!

You misunderstand what the free software movement is all about. Spend some time reading the philosophy of the GNU project. Consider listening to an audio recording of Stallman speaking instead of the reading the essays, I didn't really understand his views until I listened instead of reading.

Evolution is licensed under the GNU General Public License, by far the most famous FREE SOFTWARE license. See the file COPYING in the evolution source code Evolution IS FREE SOFTWARE.

I've got some surprises for you. Members of the free software movement (including RMS) consider it perfectly ethical for Novell to only include patches that suite their business goals. We would even consider it ethical if Novell didn't accept any patches and didn't even post evolution on their website. Plus, it's perfectly acceptable for Novell to sell copies of Evolution to customers as free software.

Why? The belief of the free software movement is that any person with a copy of software should have the fundamental freedoms of free software. Technically this means that even software developed in-house and never shared with the world is also free software, as such an organization has all the free software freedoms (and more) because it's their code. This is how most programmers make a living, and we do not think it's wrong that their code never is released publicly.

The fact that so much free software is shared through the internet, and that most of these projects have an open development process is irrelevant to the goals of the free software movement, these just happen to be positive consequences of allowing people to share and modify. The free software movement preceded the age of internet access being widely available and the discovery that online collaboration of extremely large software teams could produce good work.

Sorry that they didn't like your patches. Guess what, life is tough. Even Eric Raymond has faced that kind of rejection, an elaborate patch he wrote to the Linux build process was declined from inclusion.

Have you read the file HACKING in the evolution source code? It provides guidance on what they're looking for.

Don't give up. Remember, you are just one fish in a big pond. Evolution is a BIG project. If you're not super confident about your programing ability and online social skills, consider hacking a smaller project to build such skills.

Evolution is free software, you can fork it if you absolutely can't find a way to have your changes included. Perhaps there are other people willing to join you. Perhaps a fork with a different development methodology already exists.

Your fork may even become so good that it overtakes the original program. Sometimes the developers of the original will even see the light and bless your fork as the new official program. This famously happened with the GNU compiler collection a few years ago. (gcc) Believe it or not, the FSF is capable of admitting when they're wrong!

You misunderstand what the free software movement is all about. Spend some time reading the philosophy of the GNU project. Consider listening to an audio recording of Stallman speaking instead of the reading the essays, I didn't really understand his views until I listened instead of reading.

Evolution is licensed under the GNU General Public License, by far the most famous FREE SOFTWARE license. See the file COPYING in the evolution source code Evolution IS FREE SOFTWARE.

I've got some surprises for you. Members of the free software movement (including RMS) consider it perfectly ethical for Novell to only include patches that suite their business goals. We would even consider it ethical if Novell didn't accept any patches and didn't even post evolution on their website. Plus, it's perfectly acceptable for Novell to sell copies of Evolution to customers as free software.

Why? The belief of the free software movement is that any person with a copy of software should have the fundamental freedoms of free software. Technically this means that even software developed in-house and never shared with the world is also free software, as such an organization has all the free software freedoms (and more) because it's their code. This is how most programmers make a living, and we do not think it's wrong that their code never is released publicly.

The fact that so much free software is shared through the internet, and that most of these projects have an open development process is irrelevant to the goals of the free software movement, these just happen to be positive consequences of allowing people to share and modify. The free software movement preceded the age of internet access being widely available and the discovery that online collaboration of extremely large software teams could produce good work.

Sorry that they didn't like your patches. Guess what, life is tough. Even Eric Raymond has faced that kind of rejection, an elaborate patch he wrote to the Linux build process was declined from inclusion.

Have you read the file HACKING in the evolution source code? It provides guidance on what they're looking for.

Don't give up. Remember, you are just one fish in a big pond. Evolution is a BIG project. If you're not super confident about your programing ability and online social skills, consider hacking a smaller project to build such skills.

Evolution is free software, you can fork it if you absolutely can't find a way to have your changes included. Perhaps there are other people willing to join you. Perhaps a fork with a different development methodology already exists.

Your fork may even become so good that it overtakes the original program. Sometimes the developers of the original will even see the light and bless your fork as the new official program. This famously happened with the GNU compiler collection a few years ago. (gcc) Believe it or not, the FSF is capable of admitting when they're wrong!

1) Make filenames and command flags case-insensitive. The few cycles you spend doing case comparisons will quickly pale in comparison to the time savings you experience in tech support situations where a touch typist accidentally hits space too soon and types "emacS."

if you feel you'd like to use ambiguous, case-insensitive filenames, you should be using a UI which handles that re-mapping for you. i want my tools to know that file abcde is different from file ABCDE. Please don't "fix" that feature!

2) Several files that do not have extensions usually have some information about their default parser in line #1. Either parse it, or start using file extensions in *NIX.

But don't make this a part of UNIX, please! Sometimes you need to dig into a file's guts with a different tool than the one "associated" with that file type. Any sort of tight binding would be anathema to the flexibility and power that UNIX represents.

3) Start making UI's that only initially expose the 20% of the UI that 80% of people will use. There's no reason for a CD-burning package to have a checkbox on the main screen about verifying post-gap length for 99% of the people in the world.

Here's an example from GNOME's Human Interface Guidelines. If you find a gnome app that doesn't meet that spec, you should file a bug against it (or fix it, if you have the skills/tools to do so!). For KDE, you might want to read relevant sections from their User Interface Guidelines as well.

Let's clean up the UI so that people who want a Windows- or Mac-style interface can have it, yes! but please don't take that as a shortcoming of UNIX. If it's a problem, it's a problem of the GUI layers that have been built on top of it. But whatever you do, please please please don't sacrifice the flexibility and power that undergirds the whole system!

Seriously, I don't understand why OSS developers can't do things like everyone else on the usability side at least. If you want to bloat your apps with all kinds of perfect, "clean" coding, fine. At least make the apps nice to work with. Why the hell do I have to make bookmarks so I can easily access the same directory multiple times from within Gimp? Wouldn't it make sense for the app's file selector to start at your home directory when opened for the first time, then remember the last directory opened for future file selections? Seems like I had the same trouble with Openoffice, but at least it had the sense to start me off at my home directory every time instead of the directory of the program binary.

I would donate to a cause that would fix the stupid interfaces of OSS via patches, among other things. Hint for developers: if people want file selectors that make sense, give the file selectors to them. If people want a Photoshop-like interface, give it to them! You can include both interfaces if you want! If people want the dumbass name changed, change it already! The name couldn't be tied in too closely, could it? It's almost like the developers don't want people to use their software so their geek club doesn't have to accept new members who might rock the boat.

I know there are plenty of IT project managers out there that could help fix some of the dumb OSS mistakes happening right now, but when it comes down to it, the stubborn programmers still want their geek club to be intact and everyone ends up losing. They may claim that they welcome suggestions, but they will fight anything that isn't purely technical because they fear that outside influence will end up hurting the technical side. Valid to some extent, but when the project's user base suffers, you fix that problem no matter what the technical cost. Err, I forgot...it's open source so people can just change everything themselves. Silly me, I didn't realize that we needed to branch projects to give them a semblance of usability. These people just don't know what battles to fight. I think we've all worked with people like this, and we usually end up letting them have their way because it's a pain in the ass to argue every little point. This doesn't help to ship a good product, though. The vast majority of USERS think the Gimp name is stupid. When even the average /. reader can look past their usual advocacy-at-any-cost stance and realize that the name is, indeed, moronic, there's a problem.

I will leave you with a link to a recent Gimp bug report regarding the name:

what other free, clean desktop software do you regularly use that Windows users should know about?
GNOME

1, 4, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32... the user shouldn't have to care.

As I understand it, once they shim GEGL in, the rest will be easy.

Unfortunately, the GEGL domain is off-air as I type, the last contribution to the GNOME repository for itis some testing stuff 9 months ago, and the last "real" code 11 months ago, most of it's a year or two old, all of the recent (in relative terms) changes were done by dsrogers. Not lookin' too sanguine.

the food company doesn't really lose its 'copyright' when it prints ingredients

I don't know what gives you the idea that publishing source code ammounts to relinquishing your copyright, but it does not.

And what the GP was talking about was API's, as opposed to code.

To use GTK+ as an example, API's look like this
Whereas code looks like this.

the food company doesn't really lose its 'copyright' when it prints ingredients

I don't know what gives you the idea that publishing source code ammounts to relinquishing your copyright, but it does not.

And what the GP was talking about was API's, as opposed to code.

To use GTK+ as an example, API's look like this
Whereas code looks like this.

1. Console access. These include Speakup ftp://ftp.braille.uwo.ca/pub/speakup/, Screader http://www.euronet.nl/~acj/eng-screader.html, YASR http://yasr.sourceforge.net/, and many folks' favorite BrlTTY http://dave.mielke.cc/brltty/

2. Specialized environment. The most obvious option here is emacspeak http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ but there are others.

3. GUI Access. The only real option today is the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html that is part of the GNOME desktop http://www.gnome.org/start via the GNOME Accessibility Project http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/ (though other options are being explored). Note: my day job is as Sun's Accessibility Architect, working on the GNOME Accessibility Project and helping with the development of things like Gnopernicus, and another amazing product for people with physical impairments - GOK http://www.gok.ca/.

A pretty complete list of F/OSS accessibility projects can be found at the Linux Accessibility Resource Site (LARS) http://lars.atrc.utoronto.ca/current.html. I maintain a blog on this stuff as well, which has lots more information: http://blogs.sun.com/korn.

1. Console access. These include Speakup ftp://ftp.braille.uwo.ca/pub/speakup/, Screader http://www.euronet.nl/~acj/eng-screader.html, YASR http://yasr.sourceforge.net/, and many folks' favorite BrlTTY http://dave.mielke.cc/brltty/

2. Specialized environment. The most obvious option here is emacspeak http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ but there are others.

3. GUI Access. The only real option today is the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html that is part of the GNOME desktop http://www.gnome.org/start via the GNOME Accessibility Project http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/ (though other options are being explored). Note: my day job is as Sun's Accessibility Architect, working on the GNOME Accessibility Project and helping with the development of things like Gnopernicus, and another amazing product for people with physical impairments - GOK http://www.gok.ca/.

A pretty complete list of F/OSS accessibility projects can be found at the Linux Accessibility Resource Site (LARS) http://lars.atrc.utoronto.ca/current.html. I maintain a blog on this stuff as well, which has lots more information: http://blogs.sun.com/korn.

They already know but keep putting it off because they are not sure what to do about it.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116145

I think the GNOME On-screen Keyboard is the way to go. It's how it should be done, with hooks in the undelying system and tools that hook to them and the applications, so they sort of sit in the middle, without the need for specialist software. I was blown away by Peter Korn's presentations of GOK at euroFoo. It has so much potential both for the disabled and for the 'enabled' users. Think AppleScript done the way it should be done: with your favorite scripting language and with access to all GUI elements.

I work in an assistive technology facility and most of the screen reading software we see is Windows-based. JAWS has been around since the Windows 3.1 days, so it's got a distinct advantage in both market share and code maturity. As open source software gains market share, they may consider porting JAWS to Linux, but so far they don't seem interested.

There are a number of open source projects out there targeted at creating accessible software, such as the Gnome Accessibility Project.
There's also Oralux, a liveCD distro that supports brailleterms and voice output using Emacspeak.

I find the Oralux approach very appealing since it's the first step toward blind users being able to carry a complete set of accessibility tools around on a CD that will work on stock x86 hardware. Students can access school computers without the need for accessibility tools actually being installed on the machine as long as the curriculum materials are not in a format that requires proprietary software.

What would really be interesting is to see Oralux boot from a memory card like Damn Small Linux does. Accessibility on a keychain would be rather groovy, and it would free up the CD drive.

For Gnome there is Gnopernicus, easy to install and it works with any GTK app including Firefox.

Yes. Dia.

Very good point. This has been in their bugzilla (as a feature enhancement) since Sept '03.

Check this out, from their wiki:

The initial roadmap for Gimp 2.0 included a few "professional" touches that previous releases were missing, such as native support for CMYK and 16 bit/channel image depth for video editing. These features have not made it into the 2.0 release, because the Gimp developers decided that it is better to release a good thing now than to delay much longer in the quest of better functionality.

What a joke! Without CMYK, the Gimp is a toy, useful for web graphics but little else. No good to design pros, or to anyone that wants to be able to produce documents to print -- I fall into that second category, and without Photoshop and/or Illustrator, or a Gimp with decent features like native CMYK, there's no way I'm shifting from OS X. Trust me, graphics people do not give a monkeys about Python-Fu .. they want decent tools, they want them to have professional features, they want a decent intuitive UI (anyone that claims the Gimp has this is either a fantatic, a troll, or has the pleasure nodes in his or brain switched with the pain ones). I am not saying this for my own sake, I'm happy using Photoshop, but for the sake of FL/OSS in general. The lack of a decent graphics package This may not sound such a big deal, but without a *n?x version of Photoshop, and the Gimp being in the state it is, this effectively cuts out the viability of using a FL/OSS OS as a graphics workstation.

It's not up to 2.2 yet, but Gimp.app manages to integrate into MacOS X in a surprisingly elegant manner. It's got a dock icon, which I drag photos from iPhoto on to; it can take screenshots with Grab.app; it can read images from the Mac clipboard. It comes as a single program package (Gimp.app, imaginatively) which you just drag-and-drop into your Applications folder, like any other decent Mac program.

My only real complaint about it is the default theme - I've replaced it on my iBook with one called Milk 2.0 which manages to look a lot cleaner and smarter than the standard.

There's this general opinion that The GIMP is somehow utterly impossible to use, but I really do disagree. I taught myself to use it very quickly some years ago, merely by sitting down and playing around with it. Compared with something like vi or Blender, it's absolutely brilliant - while it's a bit quirky in places, it's generally very consistent in how it does things, and menu entries are logically named and placed. There aren't multiple modes for the program to operate in (beyond indexed, greyscale and full-colour), and with a comprehensive help system, tooltips and so on with no hidden basic functionality, it's more akin to pico than vi... ;-)

I started off using The GIMP because it was all that I could afford. I continue using it (towards my paid work as well as hobbies such as photography and computer game design) because while I could probably afford Photoshop these days, it doesn't really offer me anything useful in addition to what I already have for free.

If you want to use The GIMP, try it with an open mind. Don't expect Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or whatever, it's its own program in its own right, with its own advantages and disadvantages. Do appreciate that it's a cross-platform thing with its home on X11 and UNIX - the Windows and Mac ports are very close in user interface to the original, for ease of maintenance and porting. And above all, have fun. :-)

XPDE, for one.

Mind, it's got the uncanny valley problem after a fashion. It looks, sometimes a lot, like WinXP. But it's decidedly different in subtle (and not so subtle) ways. In balance, I'd think the result is more unsettling rather than less. You're better off with an environment that uses familiar motifs, but doesn't just ape another model.

There are a large number of desktops for Linux, and most of them are highly themable. KDE and GNOME are probably the leaders, and both are highly themeable. I found XFCE4 is really popular among kids (6-18), and prefer WindowMaker myself: clean, configurable, light, stable, and out of my face.

SVG wallpapers work also in Gnome 2.8 (and probably earlier) on my Gentoo. Too bad the Gnome art gallery only proposes bitmaps.

Vector wallpapers and icons: at least two really cool desktop features where Linux based destkops are in advance.

SVG wallpapers work also in Gnome 2.8 (and probably earlier) on my Gentoo. Too bad the Gnome art gallery only proposes bitmaps.

Vector wallpapers and icons: at least two really cool desktop features where Linux based destkops are in advance.