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Miguel Delivers State of Gnome Address
Skeezix writes "Miguel de Icaza has delivered the State of Gnome Address in which he gives an excellent summary of the current state of Gnome, what is being worked on, what the future looks like, and how you can help."
Yes, I suppose you CAN cuddle with a statue, but the question is... would you WANT to?
I believe that would be rather uncomfortable. Plus, it wouldn't be able to put it's arms around you or kiss you back... two things which very much add to the experience.
So, while it is possible to cuddle with a statue, I wouldn't reccomend it.
- Member of ELF (Engineers for Live Flesh) -
I read somewhere Gnome is funded by the Church of Scientology. But I guess most Americans don't even see a problem there.
Yup, I completely agree. Afterstep all the way. That foot looks like it oughtta be in a mouth.
You don't code, you numb-minded buffoon. And, people who live in glass houses don't throw stones, seeing as you probably have the same "look-and-smell" as some programmers do. As for the dead Linux comment, uh, do you even read the news or is your keyboard so rotted over with jizz you can't type anything but pr0n URLs. Bwwaaaaahahahahahaha. Just another case of a frustrated Visual Basic newbie who thinks that a "hello world" application not done by a MS VB Application Wizard(TM) is hard "w3rk." G'nite, lewsers.
Though I have not had an opprotunity to use it,
just looking at the screenshot shows me a couple
problems with the Aqua interface.
* The buttons for min/max/close are not intuitive.
I'm sorry, but yellow does not immediately say
"minimize" to me.
* The buttons are hard to differentiate for those
of us who are color blind. To make it worse,
they chose to use red and green, which is makes
it a problem for the majority of people with
color-blindness.
* The close button is next to the rest of the
buttons. This was one of the few aspects of
the Mac interface I liked. They broke it.
* The dynamically resizing toolbar and alpha
channel transparency. I know some people like
them, but they are a waste of my CPU cycles.
If they can be turned on, this isn't much of
an issue.
* The apple menu is stuck higeldy pigeldy in the
middle part of the finder. This makes it a much
harder target to aim for. Another thing changed
from traditional Mac OS layout that decreases
usability.
I'm sure I could find more if I used the product,
but that's enough for now.
Your assumptions that he is working on ANYTHING of what he says makes you more of an alarmist than Icaza is a bullshitter.
Here, how about this:"I, Anonymous Coward, am hereby looking at a screenshot of Quake 3 Arena. I've looked it over, pondered it for a few hours, and have concluded that it is doable to replicate this application and even improve upon it."
Yes it's bullshit, and that's what programmers do before they do real work. They pontificate, look at someone changing a lightbulb and says finally "man, i can do that shit." I could give two good dumps what Miguel says, it's what he and his gnome team DOES that matters. And he probably has done more than us two idiots, so shut up about it already and I will, too.
>I know some people like
them, but they are a waste of my CPU cycles.
So...you spend alot of time... resizing...???
Are you easily amused? Hard... to... type from laughing at you...>I'm sorry, but yellow does not immediately say
"minimize" to me.
Ok UI guru, what icon does?
> The buttons are hard to differentiate for those
of us who are color blind
Wow, are you one of those guys who also posted everywhere about the iMac not having a floppy drive? FYI genius, labels appear when the mouse nears the buttons.
>I'm sure I could find more if I used the product,
but that's enough for now.
Ok, we're all waiting. Get back to us with your report.
Yawn.
Gnome is DOOMED!! completly dead :((( VBA? oh my god! why not Python or (the FSF way) scheme?? I didn't even know there was vb support for linux... I guess i will have to escape to BeOS ... (is microsoft hand on this?? i mean, spreading vb through opensource would really solve their problem! :) Joao
"and even improve upon it"
Wow, can't wait for those 'improvements' to the Win98 interface showing up in Gnome!
Maybe Miguel can ask Bill G for a copy of the Win98 source since he can't seem to get the Windows interface running as well on the same hardware as microsoft! And they SUCK!
Maybe Miguel should take a copy of Win98 and a hex editor and replace every string "Windows" with "GNOME" and call it GNOME 2.0. Perhaps that would be a project more in line with his coding skills.
that's truly funny!
The point is to cut the weasels (lawyers, robber barrons, wall street types) out of the process of delivering programming. It is a movement to eliminate the Middle Man.
IceWM is nice, and probably better as a standalone WM. If you are still using GNOME though, the Sawmill/GNOME combo really rocks. Sawmill's footprint is a bit larger than IceWM, but not massively so, and it has really cool Lisp configurability for look+feel stuff, plus a great theming system, with some very nice themes out there. In terms of configurability, Sawmill has a much slicker config system than IceWM, and the config system is always up to date with the WM. I am not a big fan of the rather ugly IcePref... of course, I can always hack text files, but for some reason I feel like window manager configuration is one of those things that should be GUI-fied.
Sorry, X can probably be patched and patched and patched to get it to do what people want, and it will probably work pretty well, but it won't be pretty. Better maybe to start over?
Look
The recent announcement of Apple included some very amazing
screenshots of what they could do with their technology. I was
impressed by it for the first two hours, until I realized how easy it
would be for us to actually pull a hack like that.
Although the fully-transparent system can be done with little
effort (as we have a very powerful infrastructure to achieve it: Raph
Levien's libart) a lot of work has to go *first* into making GNOME
easier to use, more intuitive and more easy for newcomers.
If you've seen the screenshot he is refering to that is a pretty impressive statement. Gnome is and is going to be an extremely advanced application framework. But as Miguel points out, there is much work that needs to be done now to make the Gnome Desktop ready to take the world by storm. And no matter who you are, there is something you can do to help.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
I think cmdrtaco should get this guy's ip and ban him from /. since all he does is post totally off topic stuff like this
Tried that, didn't fix the problem. But I did get a "shop" button!
Can I bum a
Scroll down to the bottom. Apparently under the guise of Excel compatibility this spawn of Microsoft (Bill Gates got started with BASIC, wants everyone to use it) will soon infest Linux!
Actually, shudder as I might over the thought, it rationally is a pretty good idea. If anyone is interested the authors are Jody Goldberg and Michael Meeks. The mailing list is gb@helixcode.com.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
After all, that's what "real" Unixes use, and would have gone a long way toward speeding up adoption of Linux/BSD/whatever in corporate environments.
Banning unpopular speech, eh? Yes, that sounds like a typical liberal, all right. You don't want to know the truth about GNOME. You don't want to know that GNOME is actually a bastard child of Melissa Etheridge, fathered by David Crosby. No, you'd rather just use to look at your porn and listen to your MP3s. Well, no more! I will tell the truth about GNOME, and you will not stop me.
I completely agree with you. The strength of linux/gnome and other opensource initiatives have been the freedom of choice. A plugin system with which you could select which srcipting language you want to choose (wether it is perl, java, assembler...) would be great, especially if this would work across several applications. What 's also is important in such a system is that you can choose NOT to use certain language modules that you find a security hazard.
Afterstep and GNOME are two completely different things. Comparing them doesn't make any sense.
I think Gnome is fantastic..although I prefer KDE on a daily basis..it's more stable
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I agree with you totally. I like gnome and the fact that gtk+ is becoming so prevalent. Let me rehash what i said on gnome-news.
I've been thinking about something similar to Aqua, ie using some vector-based layer to do all the drawing. I think Apple did a great job.
I am a total newbie on gnome/gtk internals, but IIRC gtk+ is not tied to X (esp. with the upcoming version), seeing as there are X-less BeOS/win32 ports.
Would it be possible to write a backend to gtk that writes to postscript (or like mac, pdf). This could sit on a layer that displays pdf to opengl, pdf to ggi (speedier?), or pdf to X. Since you're working with postscript, I guess printing subsystems might be easier too.
I don't know if it's worth it. It would be easier to create vector based programs, since they could make use of the extra layer. Things like scaling and anti-aliasing would be smoother too. OTOH, you're adding another layer, which means really lowend hardware would have a harder time.
I have no idea how feasible this is. The ideal would be that all apps except the apps depending on the extra layer would keep working transparantly.
On another note: since Miguel is aiming for people that never used a computer, it might be interesting to hide files (i know a lot of users won't agree with me on this one, but i think that files you don't use just clutter screen real estate - as long as i can quickly reach them if i really want to it's ok by me) and also to use metadata (again i kinda like macosX's implementation with respect to metadata)
Could someone enlighten me if there already are similar things being done?
Hey, so when do we get a "State of /." address?
"With 'first posts' at an all-time high, our readers are setting world records of obsession with petrification of females"...
// zyqqh
Hello, I've read a bit about the HTML widget, will it (or Mozilla, etc.) be integrated into the new file manager to provide anything close to the seemless browsing that one gets in KDE/KFM? Right now, I use KFM for about 25% (light) Netscape for 25% (Heavy stuff) and Mozilla for 50%. Is the HTML widget good enough for general browsing, what about cookies, JavaScript, Java, XML, SGML rendering? So you know, using KFM in Gnome/Sawmill works great. A lot of people still seem to think you can have one of KDE or Gnome. Ben
all the way. No hold's barred. Though, I will admit, GNOME looks quite pretty. I think the foot is quite an endearment..
oh, wait.. i'm getting mushy.. no... [teary-eyed].. *sniffle*.. help me....
Insert mind here.
Damn funny Suject and succinct statement of what happening. Hope some moderators find this gem.
1000 SlashDot sigs
Hey. Just wondering.
WTF is with this petrification shit.
I like my women warm, soft, and wet. And their hair has to smell good too.
If I'm not mistaken, with petrification this is impossible.
Obviously you people have never been with a real woman if you believe that a petrified one would be better.
This functionality has been available in X for ages. I used it in 1989 for the first time.
What I'm referring to is the fact that GNOME RPMs install in a seperate directory (/usr I believe) than the default installation via compiling the source (/usr/local). I know you can set that in the configure script, but one time I forgot that and totally hosed my gnome installation. Libraries are now in conflicting directories and Gnome won't start up at all. I removed both directories and started over, to no avail. Anyway, since Gnome is partially funded by Redhat (correct?), why the hell can't they agree on an installation directory?
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Ideally, we want to make GNOME perfect, easy, small, intuitive,
resource friendly, portable, maintainable, funnier, entertaining,
productive, and the ultimate of the ultimates.
Ahh, if only all Software engineers shared this goal, and without getting paid serious money to boot!
I think, with this kind of dedication, Gnome could easily be the force bring Linux to the masses. Keep it up!
---------------
Yes! That guy!
Maybe I'm just stuffy, but I'm concerned that the GNOME community is missing the boat on features that could legitimately make the dream of 'desktop domination' for GNU/Linux a reality. I'd certainly agree that user interface friendliness and a full-featured array of applications are the major factors in getting GNU/Linux onto corporate desktops, and I think competing with Microsoft OS's and Win32 apps on these points isn't the place when GNU/Linux can show the biggest win.
The 'centralized management' aspects of Microsoft operating systems and most win32 apps are horrendous. Expensive software 'hacks' like Tivoli, LANDesk, Novell ZenWorks, and Microsoft SMS are all ugly kludges to attempt to provide management features for large fleets of PC's. (I just can't say how much these hacks SUCK enough). The fact is, the entire 'single-computer, single-user' metaphor that win32 OS's and apps are based on is completely wrong for centralized management of fleets of PC's. Let's face it-- shit with icing on top is still shit.
As I look at the state of GNOME now, I'm not seeing the move toward management features that would bring serious money-saving features to the desktops of the corporate world. GNU/Linux being free is not enough for most IS managers to give up their MS-based ways-- the real investment is in management labor (all that 'Total Cost of Ownership' crap). Sure-- today a competent hacker could use scripts and some slight-of-hand to provide many remote management features, but what I'm talking about is providing these features to corporate IS managers in an easy-to-use system. Features like:
The only way I see to provide this correctly is to design it in from the start. Look at the MESS that is win32, and look at the leaps and bounds of hacks SMS, ZenWorks, and all the other 'management' frameworks go through. If we don't get to designing in these types of technologies NOW, we're going to end up with a hodge-podge of configuration repositories, labor-intensive application rollouts, and TCO similar to win32.
For GNU/Linux to offer serious labor savings to corporate IS managers, I'm talking about things like:
Maybe we need a Linux Management Initiative or something of that ilk. I'd love to do it, if I was a competent enough coder and had enough time. Instead, though, I'm just a GNU/Linux user stuck working in a win32 based world and dying to get out of it. This stuff isn't glamorous, but I think it's a place that GNU/Linux can kick some serious Microsoft ass.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
I'm really looking forward to 'Evolution', described as : "an integrated client for mail, news, calendaring, tasks and contact management.". I really like gnome-cal (Calendar), but I haven't found a very stable e-mail/news reader. Balsa is very cool, although I've often been having segfaults with the Debian-potato package.
In other words, new user-friendly applications that are quick and efficient to use, with a cool interface. Rock-on! ;)
Quick, we need screenshots!
One thing that I don't understand:
Daniel Veillard has finally finished his work to change the > structure of his XML and HTML parsers on gnome-xml, so that > clients can drive the parsing process instead of the clients > driving the parsing process.
Is it the Clients driving the parsing process or the Clients driving the parsing process ??????
2^n++ * 0.01 cents for you.
This should be "clients can drive the parsing process instead of the parser taking control." This is really cool when you're trying to parse XML and HTML streams from potentially blocking input streams, such as the network. Props to DV for doing this!
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
I haven't upgraded some parts of my system since RedHat 6.0, (legacy cruft, don't ask) but I understand that Gnome has come a long way. What I have is already fairly usable, but I'll be happy to see it get better. Here's what I want:
* a better (more intuitive) filemanager for Unix.
Even if I don't end up using it, (CLI rules!) I'd love to see at least *one* decent filemanager for Unix, because there are a *lot* of crappy, unfinished ones out there. What KDE has looks pretty neat, at least. (and, once it's completely free, we can borrow / steal it all, ha ha ha!)
* Interoperability between toolkits / widget sets.
This is an idea I've had for a while. A consistent theming interface might make my idea obsolete, but in any case, I'd love to have a library that had a front end to handle the different function calls and a back end to map them onto a chosen widget set. Sort of like the GGI project with displays, except for widgets.
I know how hard this would be to implement, but think about it, 'cause it could save a lot of duplication of effort in the long run. Maybe we could end up working together, and have one awesome set of Unix desktop tools, instead of two pretty good ones.
* Window manager?
As far as window managers go, I really like Sawmill. And it looks fast enough and flexible enough to be used for... whatever. Also, now that I'm getting into Lisp and Scheme, it's good to see how useful they can still be...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
If the phrase "spaghetti code" bothers you, your typical spreadsheet is like pulling teeth. Gnumeric may support a million more sane languages, but if they want to ever get anyone to switch from Excel they need to provide Excel compatibility, and that means supporting VBA.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
If you want a lot of good commentary on the MacOS X interface, check out Ask Tog for his detailed critique of the Aqua interface as demo'ed by Steve.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Those who reinvent Windows are missing the point of Unix.
This is very strange. YOu must have done something wrong, as I have used GNOME typically on /opt/gnome on my ex-workstation at work; /gnome on my laptop and in the Alpha at work I always used /da/share/users/miguel/gnome-install So you did something wrong :-) Miguel.
I think you should take a second look at libArt, because it does indeed provide the foundation to do this. :-) rather than giving up easily. :-)
I implemented the Print Preview code and the Print to RGB buffer in GnomePrint in about 2 days of work using libart.
Yes, this is based strongly on all the code written for libart by Raph Levien.
The GnomePrint imaging API is inspired by Postscript, so modulo the language, what I did was to implement a Postscript imaging interpreter (which is basically what DPS is).
Yes, libart can do all of the stuff you described.
Yes, we could use a higher-level API.
Yes, you are welcome to implement it
(that basically implement the Postscript imaging system.
Implementing a DPS-like API renderer with libart is a few days worth of work. Not much more.
About fonts, look here: gnome-print/libgnomeprint/{gt1*.c,parseAFM.*)
Is all of this experimental? Or production code? It depends on what you mean.
But Gnumeric and Evolution use the GnomePrint with libart for implementing their Print Previews.
The possibilities of libart are huge, you just need to be creative about it (for example, the GnomePrint Preview code
Instead of thinking:
"OH IT DOES NOT HAVE A GRADIENT OPERATION IN THE API! IT MUST BE IMPOSSIBLE TO DO".
You can think "Mhm, how can I do gradients with this great API? thnk think think OOPSIE! Found a solution".
I did not bash Apple's work. I just figured "We can do this eye candy; It is not impossible with the current infrastructure we have".
Again, it requires hacking mind and creative minds; Not flaming minds
Best wishes, love, etc
Miguel
2. Bonobo menu merging does not actually feel slow. You do not even notice it on a p133. Maybe on an old 486, but I have not had a chance to try it there.
3. Toolbar handling is done by transfering Bonobo Controls, but I guess you did not want to check your facts before posting. The bottom line is: it is trivial, it is fast, it is good.
ORBit is indeed not the solution to all the performance problems: You need to design your system in such a way that you do not do stupid stuff.
Miguel.
An abstracted configuration repository for applications (ODBC style connectivity to a back-end, either decentralized or centralized, much like Microsoft's Registry, but w/o all the brain-damaged stupidity and a GOOD SET OF DOCUMENTED RULES to follow for developers)
The GConf library in GNOME 2.0 is exactly this. I think the hardware inventory and application installation stuff is outside the scope of GNOME though, distribution vendors need to work on those things.
If you hate the Registry and want this problem solved well, then open source is your friend. GConf is still in flux; you can make sure it's exactly what you're looking for as a sysadmin by reading the docs and sending comments and patches. Right now the latest GConf is in GNOME CVS as module 'gconf', but there will be a release eventually.
Excel support, although very evil, is a key feature which I think Gnumeric should have. I personally hate VBA, as it is a very evil and unefficient script language, but it would be very good for "transitionnal" users.
;)
Does the WordPerfect 2000 Linux edition have VBA support? (If I'm not mistaken, the Windows version does).
Is there currently an application that uses Perl to replace VBA? I'm thinking of some kind of gnome-mod-perl. (If you treat me of heretic, I'll understand
Okay...that is actually very funny :)
AHAHAHAHAHHA FINALLY a decent worthwhile read from a troll :) right on!
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
cases in GNOME where Win95 did things signifcantly differently -- an example is the configuration box with a series of tabs (Win95's Display Properties, GNOME's Control Center). Both GUIs have the same thing with the same intent, but GNOME's is a bit hard to figure out if you're used to Win95.
In Win95 the "Apply" button does things that can't be canceled by the "Cancel" button. If you change something, then hit "Apply", then "Cancel", your change takes effect. But in GNOME, each individual panel has its own "Try" and "Ok" buttons. It's much more consistent.
If you think about how it makes sense to work (how you'd want it to work if you were a new user who had been introduced to the WIMP paradigm but not the historical idiosyncracies of any particular implementation), GNOME is far more intuitive.
I am not sure what you mean.
Certainly may places where VB variants are used, such as ASP, you can also use Perl.
Additionally with the appropriate modules Perl can drive things through OLE automation using the same APIs that VB uses.
But if what you want is a way to take a VB script and run it in Perl, I don't think so. Or to embed Perl inside of a VB application? That could also be hard. (ActiveState sells tools to make dlls and com servers out of Perl, allowing it to be called from within VB. Again I doubt that is what you want.) Sorry...
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Come on, of course it's trivial to add transparency to the desktop if you have a rendering system that supports Alpha channel. Windows 2000 even supports this, and there are little utilities that let you turn transparent windows on and off. Miguel would be sadly mistaken if he thinks this is all he has to add to GNOME to compete with Apple, or even Java2. Enlightenment/imlib already provides transparency in themes, but they provide *zippo* support to apps that want to render say, a 300DPI illustration.
What Miguel is missing is that Aqua is not about transparency, it's about Quartz, the Display-PDF rendering system. The NeXT display postscript system and Sun's NeWS could also handle alpha easily, but does anyone think that the only useful feature of Display Postscript or Quartz is being able to render alpha?
Systems like Quartz, DPS, and Java2D are resolution independent, support anti-aliasing on everything, full affine transformations for everything, virtually all compositing modes you can think of, built in ability to stroke complex shapes, like lines using arbitrary thickness, fill, dash-pattern, and endcaps. For instance, with Java2D it's almost trivial to write a postscript/pdf/svg renderer because the base library is so powerful.
Miguel's solution might resemble Aqua's transparent windows, but without a real 2D rasterization engine, GNOME apps will never approach the flexibility of Quartz apps in rendering. In fact, he won't even approach the quality of Aqua's nice warping/scaling of images with aliasing artifacts.
What I really hate is this not-invented-here tendency to automatically superficially evaluate and dismiss other people's technology without even doing 10 minutes of research besides looking at screenshots, and then making public assertions about how trivial it is, and how much better your "solution" will be.
Clearly, Linux's GUI toolkits need a powerful comprehensive resolution independent 2D API to support powerful display and printing apps. The current mode of separating the display and printing APIs is a pain in the ass to develop for.
The best innovations are built on the shoulders of others, and if Miguel would spend more time learning and stealing technology from Apple, Microsoft, and even the KDE team, and less time dismissing everything and trying to reinvent it, maybe GNOME wouldn't be so buggy and unusable.
He just speak occasionally as an AC.
And what about Borland C++ ?
And if your such a man, why don't you screw Gtk and use ASM bitch ?
Avoiding management of this type is why I want to use free software.
I am not a lawyer.
Do you realize this means that I can moderate down your post for free?
Enough said. The U.S. is such a hot-bed of wackos...
Cool. Thanks!
Peter
www.xenu.net
This is actually a worthy idea, and I would much rather have effort put toward this than "enhancing" my slashdot experience in some other ways that your Andover masters are probably cooking up. Ie, implement a troll ban and you'll get more pageviews. The "trolls", who aren't trolling at all --you'd have to know something to properly troll-- are just stinking up the joint, and they should all vanish silently & forever from legit users' screens.
/. might recover some of its former brilliance with them gone. Thanx.
Thanks for that report. A good troll is worth 2 beta testers. Perhaps you could post a troll FAQ. Seems there are a lot of newbie trolls that don't have a clue.
1000 SlashDot sigs
Hey...prob won't read this, but if anyone does, could you point me to an actual Linux security FAQ for an average, relatively new user? I'm having trouble finding one geared towards a home, non-server desktop system
Thanks
Alpha channel support is already in CVS as implemented as a part of GDK-pixbuf. However, to achieve a fully hardware accelerated alpha channel would require a extention to the X protocol, which the Xfree team is very intrested in, and might be eventually based on the current code, if the code is re-released under the X license. There are anti-aliasing widgets for gnome, ala Gnome-Canvas, but it is no where as low level as quartz.
However, to laugh at X is arrogant. Yes, it is ancient, but the protocol was well designed for networks, and it is very extensible.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
No, you are wrong. Under X I can easily run an app (a complete application, like Netscape Communicator) one one machine and display its entire GUI on another machine anywhere in the world. I do this all the time when I'm sitting at a Sun but I need to run a Linux app.
There will be a client-side API that hides where the rendering is being done. This is necessary so that the interface can be emulated atop X (like Mesa does). But unless there is some promise that this is going to move to the server, there is very little incentive to try to figure out these libraries.
Extending X has similar problems, since there is no standard way by which an arbitrary X server can be extended.
To quote the usual quote -- Keep It Simple Stupid -- X already has FAR too much baggage, and adding more isn't going to help it much in the short run (since it takes too long to produce a good implementation), nor in the long run (X's complication gives no real advantages -- network transparency is far better implemented with an extensible window system and network transparent IPC).
In short, the feature set of a good display architecture needs to be chosen VERY CAREFULLY, not hacked on and extended at will by any old person who comes along. (Consider the question of when X is going to drop its outdated and outmoded font system, or its poorly inadequate pixel based rendering system)
John
John_Chalisque
No, don't put it in the X-Server. Why?
Remote display to low-power x-server. Hmmm, those people that use dedicated X-Servers or run their applications remotely (on the Quad Alpha, perhaps!) aren't going to like that.
Network Bandwidth: 10 mbits/s is still a reasonable amount, and that is the low-end of networks. There is little excuse for not equipping a home network with 100mbit ethernet - if you have multiple computers, you can afford a decent hub!
A 1024x768 24-bit pixmap is around 3 megs of data - 3-5 seconds to transmit over a low-end network - but Print previews will probably be much less than this in size, and could be implemented in greyscale as an option. On a reasonable network, you could update a 1024x768 image 10 times a second, ignoring latency and network usage...
So libart et al can send the 96dpi 24-bit colour image to the screen, and a 1200dpi b&w image to the printer (or PS rendering primitives). No need to include the X Server!
~~
Being able to run an editor in one monitor, a debugger on another, and putting your system monitors and email in a third is just plain handy.
Union Yes! Member of Technical Workers' Local 101010
If you want to see GNOME screw up, try installing it to it's own dir, say /usr/local/gnome. This is not meant to be a flame, it's the honest truth, when. When I installed October gnome to /usr/local/gnome, most of the programs in it *INSISTED* on looking for shared files in /usr/local/share, when they really should have been looking in /usr/local/gnome/share. I think gnome is pretty good, I like the look and feel and stability of KDE much better. KDE 2.0 is coming along very nicely.
1) LDAP support for the address book. DON'T do Yet Another Proprietary Address Book, use the well-defined IETF/IDEF standard LDAP protocol and the INetOrgPerson objectclass.
See http://www.openldap.org for a good, Free LDAP server. See http://www.mozilla.org/directory/ for the Free library source.
2) Seamless integration of PGP and S-MIME. The user should be required to authenticate to Evolution using their PGP pass phrase on startup, and then when sending mail to recipiants for whom the public key is known (this can be stored in the LDAP directory, BTW) the mail should be sent encrypted. By default.
Add these 2 features, and you'll have an e-mail client worthy of the enterprise. In other words, a potential replacement for Lotus Notes or Exchange.
oh, plus Gtk is a bitch to code.
Not sure exactly what "remote window display" is in terms of Win2k, but X makes it fairly trivial to control most of the display aspects of another box on your network, including launching windowed apps, controlling the background image, etc.
I just had a great idea.
Modify the moderation system, such that if a post is marked "troll" then it is checked for certain key phrases, updated by Andover staff. Stuff like "hot grits" "naked and petrified" etc.
If a match is found, then the moderation is free, ie, it costs the moderator no moderation points.
In one fell swoop, defeating the troll's goal of "draining off moderation points"!
Do it Rob!
Say, you realize that if the Slash source was posted, that I could have patched this in myself and sent the diff to you...
libart is meant to be a relatively low-level
vector graphics library. Image processing,
fonts (which can be handled by a seperate
library using the libart), even rendering
the bloody paths to the screen are beyond the
scope of the library. All that stuff is
delegated to clients of the library.
And regarding Java 2d: I don't think that's
a solution. Doesn't it have the same problems
with the division between UI and graphical
canvas? Can you embed a button in a drawing
and rotate...drop shadow, all the while having
it update automatically?
Peter
with a straight face!
how droll.
come on folks.
No dates were mentioned in that summary. So
everybody here slashdotted the article, but none
learned something specific from it.
So let me try to solve the secret: My guess is
that the next version will be released on March
16. Don't believe? So please check what's
happenning on March 16, and I promise you that you
will agree with me.
Don't take me wrong; I admire the GNOME project,
and don't criticize it in any way. I'm just trying
to give you the information which is missing in
the article.
--
Eli Marmor
I'm going to be very blunt here. This stuff should be IN THE X SERVER!!!.
I don't want to link with a giant imaging library for all my programs, I don't want to send image maps to X for all my drawing, and I really want my advanced imaging model to be able to take advantage of advanced hardware!
If the code exists, lets put somewhere where a mortal programmer can actually figure out how to use it, and better programmers may have a slight chance of improving it! It is absolutely disgusting that we have a worse graphics interface that NT, or than NeWS (which was created in 1983!). And it is quite alarming that people are saying that gigantic shared libraries running in my program's memory space will save us. It is theroetically possible to draw everything using a library that calls XDrawPoint(), that does not mean it is a good idea!
PS: although there is a lot of push for it because "thats how MicroSoft did it", there is no need for X to do printing. What is needed is the ability to send *IDENTICAL* streams to two different things and get an image on the screen and on the printer. The screen thing can be a wrapper driver around the lower-level X interface.
I betcha it's California...
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Personally, as a former Windows 95b user, I prefer KDE over GNOME. However, I use tons of the GNOME apps that came with my RedHat 6.1 distro. I simply find the KDE interface more intuitive (or probably just closer to what I'm used to) and more stable. It's good to read things like:
The wm-spec team is almost ready with their new window manager specification which is unified across GNOME and KDE.
Anyways, I wish the GNOME team the best. If you're not a programmer, you can still help by sending in bug reports as you find the need to do so.
I've been using October GNOME and sawmill for quite some time now. Anyone saying that its less stable than kde now is just plain wrong. I decided to give kde a try. I tried to force myself to use it. I gave up after a few days. Gnome's desktop is trully customizable. No two gnome-desktops after being customized to ones needs are alike. Gnome's panel has the best applets. If you like mini apps these kick ass. From a cpu monitor network monitor icq mini-commander pager deskguide. many diffrent clocks. Drawers are great too they let you consolidate your shortcuts. Oh well thats enough for now.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Allright, that was funny.
"*Bug fixing GNOME.
;)
If you are interested in doing some detective work, and helping other people. This is also a great way of learning about the various GNOME framework libraries: it will expose you to real problems in real applications (boy, I sound like Microsoft hiring material)."
Conspiracy? Of course not... That would be just a little too logical...
Quoth the mammal: "What is dead is the notion of selling software as if it were a physical widget. Instead, we are moving to a world where programmers code to solve problems, and then share that code amongst each other to increase the size of problem-solving space.
Employers will pay coders to solve those problems because solving those problems help their business. This is, in fact, the employment model used by the vast majority of programmers, it is those who try and sell code who are the minority.
Those who are the slaves are those who work long hours for little pay and empty stock options hoping that their labours can be sold as product. This model can never hold, as the greatly larger free software community will always beat them on quality and price.
Coding software is a SERVICE industry, not a manufacturing industry. We are more akin to mechanics than to farmers. We are highly skilled operators of machinery that fix problems. We produce nothing!
Those who do not learn this lesson are doomed to fail.
You may not want to work on GNOME, but thousands of others do. They will eat your lunch.
THIS is the Open Source revolution!
Currently GNOME lacks a bit of polishing when it comes to the end desktop because we do not ship a good set of presets for it. Shipping good presets and revamping the user interface (as suggested by our user interface team at http://www.gnome.org/gnome-ui) is a really important task.
The real URL is at http://developer.gnome.org/gnome-ui.
The great thing about developing interfaces with GNOME is the libglade architecture. Designing an usable interface is easier if you can rapidly design it in such a program and if you can tweak and revise it at runtime.
-- adraken
X could do that from the very beginning in the mid 80s. That was the whole point of X. You just "setenv DISPLAY mybox:0" and run the app. The app's windows all show up on mybox's display.
So W2k can do that too now? Cool, it just goes to show that we were all wrong about Microsoft. Here I was complaining about them being technologically backwards, and now I see that their engineers are elbow deep into looking at this new-fangled concept called "networking." Yeah, it's pretty cool; you can have several computers in your office and have them all talking to each other and sharing resources. And I've even heard rumors that you can have large networks that occupy more than one building! Some futurists say that networks have the potential to get really big.
So go back to coding for Bill, temp-bitch. And stop trashing our board with your bile and lies.
bye now
Well, a better solution than just blindly adding more stuff to the server is to raise the abstraction level at the client end. Instead of making lots of calls to lots of APIs that invoke lots of special features of the server, make the client interface higher level, and do a better job of hiding the distinction between client and server. A good example is NeWS. You write snippets of postscript, and whatever is rendering it can do it's best to make it go as fast as it can. Or OpenGL with display lists. You're right about lots of calls to SetPixel being the wrong thing, but then do we end up with "DrawPolygonRotateShadeAndAddADropShadowThenDrawT
I don't know TOO much about what I'm talking about, but making a clumsy distinction of the server then randomly adding features (which is really how it would be with X) seems like the wrong thing.
Plus with client side APIs, you don't really CARE where it's actually being rendered. If you have something nice and declarative (like a canvas type thing) the lib makes use of whatever it has, X server or what have you.
repeating myself trying to make my point...
Yeah, it looks nice, but there's a fundamental problem: While all the compound document stuff and the view/control stuff looks nice, the ui merging/handling is total crap.
Trying to use CORBA for building and merging a GUI
ends up in nothing but bloat (in the interface as well as in the implementation (the ui-handler code is so far the *very* largest code, with 210k) .
Addressing UI elements/containers via path-like-names is not object oriented design.
Third point: It's slow as hell. Transferring the whole UI information (including pixmaps) via CORBA makes switching the UI/focus a pain, no matter how fast ORBit or such is. (besides that it flickers horribly, because client and server run in difference processes and therefore the server process processes X events while waiting for the client to send more ui building information)
Going on: It's a totally unflexible concept. For example I don't see a way to insert an abitrary widget into a toolbar without adding more bloat to the interface.
pffftt
have you tried it?
fortunately there are lots of statues here in new york. I tried cuddling up with the Ghandi in Union Square, but was arrested by the sexualist cops for "lewd conduct" or something before we (and i mean we) could climax.
bastards. i guess there just werent enough unarmed immigrants for the nypd to shoot or something at the time
This may be pure bullshit (I guess), or you may be thinking of the "Gnome Press" publisher of old days, which of course has nothing to do with Gnome.
And guess what, most programs still *INSISTED* upon looking in /usr/local/share for files when they *SHOULD* have been looking in /usr/local/gnome/share
i have naked and petrified trolls on my front lawn
what we NEED is opensource naked-warm-and-wet gnomes
GNOME looks nice, and is getting (thankfully) more stable than it was when I first tried it out. While it may be hard to give up my beloved KDE, I'll definately give GNOME another chance when I feel it is on par with KDE for my needs. ^_^
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
That was one informative message, I must say. From GNOME user's point of view it's nice to see the GNOME folks are doing such hard work and thus the project is advancing rapidly.
So GNOME 1.2 is coming (not that soon, though). And Linux 2.4, Debian GNU/Linux 2.2, FreeBSD 4.0, XFree 4.0, Mozilla and GCC 3.0 are on their way and probably they all are released before Q3/2000.
It's so great to be a Free Unix-like system user, don't you agree?
dear friends,
many people (cute teenaged girls/hot young actresses/men and feminazis) have asked the troll team, where are the trolls headed in the future? when is a new troll coming out? what are the new features that are going to be included in the new trolls? what can we expect from them?
* the troll state.
there are many areas into which the troll project is expanding; you have to keep in mind that trolling is an umbrella project which is made up of various components:
* the OPEN SOURCE trolls: these are trolls that may or may not start out being semi-ontopic but usually quickly decay into something wholely irrelevant. there is, at times, an "open source" theme. natalie portman and/or drew barrymore often appear in these.
* the NAKED & PETRIFIED trolls: these trolls usually focus on the petrification of cute teenaged girls, hot young actresses, men and feminazis. these trolls usually involve the turning to stone of these groups. natalie portman often appear in these.
* the GRITS trolls: these trolls exclusively deal with the various aspects of grits-pouring. these trolls will almost always include the grits being poured down one's pants.
* the X trolls: i won't mention them by name, because they are proprietary. going too deeply into the issue would ruin it for you. they know who they are.
* the MEEPT trolls: none of the above.
the various trolls of the slashdot trolling project have their own release schedule, which lets the troll authors compose their works as the inspiration hits. from time to time two trolls organize a collaborative troll. the most recent collaborative troll was "OPEN SOURCE COLLABORATION."
* the short future of the trolls.
we have been doing a lot of work infrastructure-wise and sometimes we have failed to be very communicative about it. it is our fault, and we need to do a better of job at telling people what we have been up to.
ideally, we want to make our trolls perfect, easy, small (or long), intuitive, resource friendly, portable, maintainable, funnier, entertaining, productive, and the ultimate of the ultimates.
we will ideally try to get the following features in the next major release of our trolls:
* less on-topicness
* more inflammatory
* more gender neutrality (we are sensitive to the concerns of the feminazi movement here on slashdot)
* multi-size panel, smoother icons, more panel types, nicer art work.
* the long term future of the trolls
ultimately our goals are to open source hot young actresses, men, cute teenage girls and feminazis as well as to turn them into stone.
we also wish to eventually drain all moderation points out of the system.
* how you can help.
* moderate the shit out of us!
* respond extensively to our trolls!
* become a troll yourself!
* send us money!
* send us pictures of hot young actresses, cute teenage girls, men and feminazis!
thank you.
hahahahaha. underpants gnomes. awsome
As others have pointed out, this stuff must be in the X server (display server) since to be effective it should be hardware accelerated. The only project which comes near this is GNUStep with Aladdin's Display Ghostscript project. If I remember correctly, the DGS will be an X server extension for the client side widget libraries, so for those X servers with DGS support GNUStep will have hardware accelerated Display Ghostscript -- just what you seem to require.
Of course, the GNUStep project has taken a long time to mature... but they seem to be nearing completion of their core libaries and DGS code, leaving application support left. Since their libraries are close enough to MacOS X and the old OpenStep specification it should be fairly easy to port between the two.
I like GNOME a bunch, but honestly I loved my old NeXT CUBE a whole bunch more. I'll happily buy a PowerMac G4 if MacOS X turns out as nicely as my old CUBE did...
Finally, RE: junking X altogether instead of extending the X prototcol... I'm in favor of keeping X and just extending the protocol. We have such a large application base locked up in X that to toss X would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. X is crufty, and could use a core protocol update, but it's also still good enough for most every day work. We need to either update the protocol (yeah right, like the Open Group is going to bother), or extend it server side.
I'm under the impression that the XFree86 team is having some legal (patent) issues about including TrueType support directly in the newer XFree 4 X server, which is why they're going to only support TrueType font servers. If this is true, then that's another good argument for pursuing a Display Ghostscript model and dumping TrueType support altogether.
Cheers,
Xlib
What is really needed is something like (gag) Windows Scripting Host. I hate to say it, but they did something right with that system. Basically, it's a completely pluggable architecture that allows you to script an application using any language you want. WSH currently comes with VBScript, JavaScript, and some other miscellany, and you can also plug ActivePerl into it, and code your application in Perl. All that is needed is for the language implementation to support the WSH interface, and voila!
Then go and code in Visual Basic. Bwaaahahahahahaha... You probably think anyone that works on Gnome gives a rats ass what you think. Play with your toys, seat-warmer-for-hire boys. Real men code in "hard" languages, not no namby pamby Visual donkey doo.
Geez, you are *SO* biased against nonorganic life forms! You know, there's a WHOLE WORLD out there that isn't carbon-based, and you just brush 'em off and say "Anybody who prefers mineralistic over organic is a freak."
This is just like the issue of interracial relationships. Just as black white relationships were once frowned on, now it's statue organic relationships that are frowned upon. But that'll change. Oh yes. It'll change.
- The ACLU (Anti-Christian Litigation Unit) donated $10,000 directly to Miguel. There can be no doubt that this money is a reward for the development of software that is intended to promote communism. The ACLU will not stop until we are all ruled under their iron fist. It makes sense that they would donate money to a cause that has the destruction of capitalism and decent Christian society at the top of its list.
- The American Atheists also made a sizable donation to the FSF, with the express condition that the money go to the GNOME project. The check was signed by Madalyn Murray O'Hair herself
.. before she was killed by some noble soul .. so this means that the atheists, as an organization, must have been prepared for this! They must have known years ago that somebody would invent some sort of technology that would work to attack capitalism at its roots, and they wanted to have the check signed in advance. If there was ever any doubt that atheists are pathetic socialists, that doubt can be dispelled.
- The Sierra Club donated $25K to the FSF as well, and while they did not specify that any of that money was to go to GNOME specifically, you can bet that the free software commies and environazis made some sort of slick deal behind the scene. Environmentalism translates directly to communism, and it should come as no surprise that these tree-hugging hippies are in bed with the GNOME socialists. What will their slogan be next year? "Plant a tree, erase a Windows partition, destroy capitalism?" Friends, that's probably not too much off the mark.
- Troop 317 of the Girl Scouts of America donated 50% of the proceeds from their cookie sales to the FSF. Friends, while it is heartwarming to see young women being prepared for the role of cookie-preparer (as is demanded by Scripture), it is sickening to see girls band together in a cheap imitation of the Boy Scouts. This smacks of feminism, and is probably the work of the damnable National Organization for Women. Patricia Ireland and the rest of NOW are most likely behind this socialist donation.
So there's the money trail, friends. We will have to watch this closely. But to any and all GNOME-friendly people reading this post, know this: We are on to you. Do you understand me? We're on to you. You'll have to be a little more careful in the future, my socialist compadres. We're one step ahead of you all.Thank you for your time.