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Ask Miguel de Icaza About Gnome
How many of you are using Gnome right now? Wow! A lot of hands went up. How many of you have had a chance to meet or chat with Miguel de Icaza, Gnome's chief instigator? Hmmmm ... not nearly as many. Miguel's a cool dude, way out there on the forefront of Linux GUI development, and well worth meeting. If you don't get to a lot of Linux conferences, here's your chance to get to know him a little better. Take a look at his activity log and you'll see that he's about as busy as a human can be. What should you ask Miguel? Up to you. Post your questions below. One question per post, please, and try to keep things brief instead of submitting extended essays. We'll forward 10-15 of the highest-moderated questions to Miguel by e-mail shortly after 12 noon Tuesday (US EST -- that's 17:00GMT); his answers will run within the next week.
Roman JURKECH
How do you feel , beeing a mexican programmer and famous in the open source linux world? do people beleive you that you are mexican and that you develope GNOME ? have you ever had racist commentS?
The GNOME libraries abstract X-Windows so GNOME is not X dependant. Do you feel that X is an obstruction? Even when it has been abstracted away, and a lot of code exists to support it, don't you feel that it is not right to have such a problematic bottom-level layer?
Do you think that there's a chance for X to be seriously replaced in the foreseeable future? Do you think that it's necessary?
It seems there was a fellow doing this in New York, too.
Is there some organized effort of this sort? If not, are you still interested in it? Why doesn't it get more publicity, with lots of Linux celebs pushing the cause?
Gnome uses the GTK+ object system for all objects. I feel this conflicts with one of the current Gnome precepts: leverage established known-good technologies.
This object system has not been proven enterprise worthy or extensible enough for all problems, as have many other OO systems. This puts the GTK+ Object system in a less well-known, but similar situation to Objective-C when it was first coming into use: enterprise application programmers won't touch it. The learning curve here is simply not cost effective. Especially since you don't know that GTK+ or its object system will be around in 2 years, which would make the whole effort wasted time, wasted money, and most importantly, wasted knowledge.
It is easy to see that C++'s major downsides include its lack of a standard ABI (applications binary interface), and arguably its complexity (it is of course up to the user to determine how C++'s Templates/Exceptions/RTTI/STL are used, if at all). However, with Bonobo, CORBA is now being used in Gnome as a component/object interconnective layer. Corba handles object inheritance, typing, and network transparency (and the related ABI). This ABI handling effectively allows components to be used anywhere, avoiding C++'s ABI hurdles.
So the question is, why not C++? Most arguments about C++ are ended with the insurgence of CORBA. GTK+'s system is not well known, adding a lot of necessary programmer overhead, and its long-term usefulness is not known.
P.S. - I tried to keep my personal feelings out of this, but oh well... GTK+'s system is ugly. It is a pain to use, especially when you didn't create what you are working with. It makes code hard to read and difficult to understand quickly.
That's more of the distribution's role, not GNOME or KDE's. I haven't had much trouble telling people about rpm -i, rpm -U, rpm -e. The trouble comes in people getting to know the idea of users and root and all. But the package management must be kept at the distribution level so users only have one thing to worry about for their entire dist, not one for the dist, one for GNOME, one for KDE, etc.
Miguel,
Something I admire in you is the vast number of things you can keep track of at once. Do you think that's an innate ability that you either have or you don't, or is it something that can be learned?
>Besides Eazel and Helix (two projects I have high hopes for, and I've
>already been impressed with Helix), how much work/thought has been put
>into the user interface? Is there anybody out there currently,
>specifically working on the UI for GNOME and programs for GNOME? We're
>also talking about more than just pretty graphics, but actual design
>of the interface, making it more intuitive (aka, easy enough so the
>novice user can figure it out, but still robust enough the expert can
>still do what (s)he wants).
Sigh. Will you UI interface lamers give it up? There is no reason on earth why Gnome or Kde for that matter should become the place where UI designers dump their ideas to be tested out.
Currently I'm using both siag and Gnumeric at work to deal with spreadsheets imported from PC programs. Bear with me, this isn't a user question. I've found siag better at 1-2-3 files, and gnumeric better at excel (which siag doesn't do). Gnumeric's interface seems a lot more polished. However, I like some of the concepts behind siag. Once upon a time, before gnumeric, there was a project called maxwell's lemur or something like that. (Hey, even back then they were using primate names :-). From what I've heard, it was supposed to be a siag-inspired spreadsheet for gnome.
I don't know how much of Maxwell went into Gnumeric; my question, however, is with all the fancy Corba stuff and the like, how hard would it be to put the gnumeric interface onto siag? (And if I want to try myself, is source for gnome-stuff available in tarballs instead of srpm's and cvs?)
(currently testing something about signatures here)
I have been an avid Microsoft hater going on ten years now...
But my current job forces me to develop for WinNT/98 (which are very different BTW (and Win2000 is the bastard child of both, with alot more of Win98 than Microsoft would like to admit))
But I am getting off-topic here...
While for your average user, COM/ActiveX/OLE/Bonobo aren't that useful (embedding spreadsheets in your a Word Document)
for a developer they are a mixed blessing.
They are a pain in the butt, and poorly documented, but being able to say, do some client-side ADO to get some data, and shoving that data into a Excel chart which is then posted side by side with a GIS map, all inside Internet Explorer, is pretty cool.
What I am pretty much saying is that the power of Bonobo isn't so much for a document writer, as a application writer.
Just my two cents...
(I haven't looked at bonobo at all, but I pray to whatever you believe in that the API is well thought out, well documented, and actually works as advertised, since if I have to fight one more undocumented "you can't do that" in windows I will go postal...)
Jeff
no that just gives you an app switcher in a menu bar at the top, and the "foo bar" built into gnome 1.1 already does that.
What this guy is asking about is something that actually takes the menubar from the application currently in the foreground, being as it's already tearable, and puts it in the menubar at the top of the screen. I'd kind of like this feature too but it would be somewhat hard to do. There would either have to be some kind of communication between all running apps and a menupanel (possibly through ORBit, though that would mean making ALL gnome apps have to link to libORBit, which they currently aren't, breaking binary compatibility) or have the apps themselves put their menubar up there, which introduces problems when one program freezes up taking control of the menubar (since there's no menubar program to reliquish its control) and it also means that libgnomeui needs to know how to deal with the WM hints which previously only a couple applets had to deal with (ie, bloat). Either way it'll take large changes to libgnomeui.
I guess the best way would be to just go with the menupanel thing and save that feature for gnome 2.0, since you're going to need to break binary compatibility anyways...
That's sorta the whole point of CORBA--all ORBs can interoperate with each other using the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol.
Don't know about your other questions though.
Turing Complete WM == SCWM!
I've always wondered about this, and this might be better solved by a little reading, but here goes:
The simplest functions are the ones I tend to miss the most when using a GUI under Linux. Cntrl-Ins and Shift-Ins for Cut and Paste is a good example.
Are there plans for a standard set of interface operations (such as Cut and Paste functions, Right-Clickable Actions, etc) that can be agreed upon universally by GUI designers?
Some would argue that corollaries exist, just using different conventions/key strokes. But wouldn't it be more beneficial to adopt at least a few well-known conventions from Other *cough*Windows*cough* GUI environments that are tried and proven rather than obfuscate the situation with different key configurations and pragmas?
.oO[ M$ Strategy: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy. ]Oo.
You have the wrong idea about the proper use of the powers of illusion. You don't go around pretending that you have the brute-force physical powers of a conjurer or evoker. Instead you have to be cunning and creative: you have to employ psychological warfare. Create a dazzling shower of light and sound to confuse your enemies and break their concentration. Or better yet, fool your enemies into believing that their allies are betraying them. Or you could even create illusions that are patently false, yet stunningly effective, like creating multiple images your fighter partner, only one of which is real (this last one is actually a pretty classic trick). The possibilies are truly endless.
----Daniel Pearson of the UMBC LUG
Gnomes are not a character class, they are a race. Sorry for nitpicking, but I just couldn't help it.
----Daniel Pearson of the UMBC LUG
What are the short term plans, if any, for increasing the connectivity between the Gnome desktop and other platforms? Most of all, I would like to know how much more support I will see for synchronizing with a Palm pilot, but I'm sure that people with laptops would be just as interested in something similar to the briefcase on the Windows desktop.
//Wegge
Two questions: 1) Can you tell us how the project to get Linux computer labs into every Mexican school is going, or how we can find out?
2) How would one find out about this and other opportunities to do Linux programming in Latin America, and maybe make a living wage there while doing it?
Currently, competing commerical companies support or sponsor GNOME and KDE. For example, Red Hat supports GNOME while Mandrake, its competitor, supports KDE.
My question is, to what extent does the commerical competition between the sponsors or corporate supporters affect the competition between the two desktop environments (directtly or indirectly)? Do you think that this is an issue, or that it might ever become one?
Now that these two office suits are in making, I am wondering how well will they support one another's files, data, communications protocols etc. Is there any work done to ensure interoperability?
GOffice and KOffice are an example of how GNOME and KDE are expanding and adding more layers of applications on top of the core desktop environment. Would you say that the new layers add more, or less, interoperability between GNOME and KDE? I am not talking specifically about the Office suits; I'm interested in knowing in general what is done to ensure interoprability when planning the long-range roadmaps.
and you have given back what?
these programmers who work on these projects work on it cause they "want" to, not cause your "i don't want tom, dick and harry using linux too, cause then i won't be cool and different anymore" attitude pays their bills. I feel so sick from just reading your post that it left a sour feeling in my stomache. people like you are what make society a difficult place, cause you always want to exclude your brother from bettering himself, instead, you would rather step on his back while his face is in the mud and laugh at him for not taking his face out of the mud.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
first of all, its NOT two seperate platforms, and you DON'T have to code for both. As long as someone has the libs needed for your program ,it would work regardless of the desktop they are using.
i guess there should only be one of everything, duplication is bad... right?
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
it could be because they wanted you to buy the hardware to go with their OS in some cases, and in others you still had to pay for an OS with very limited choice of software. not that good of a deal for a desktop.
the advantage linux and the bsds have right now is that they are free, run on almost any platform, and the number of apps are rising at a VERY fast pace. i guess the price isn't everything, but it does help in deciding.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
make sure you have the latest gnome, and if you happen to be running enlightenment, config it for lower resources, or use sawmill. and try to avoid pixmap themes in gtk, the theme engine has "issues" which they are planning to get fix RSN
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
am, thats a windowmanager thing, and some window manager let you put buttons anywhere you want.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
you don't need to write to BOTH toolkits.
just pick one, and either compile static binaries for your users... or make sure they have the libs that your program use installed on their system. don't confuse the browser war, with this so called desktop war. since you can run gnome apps while having a kde desktop and the reverse is also true.
some people don't use either gnome or kde, so your point is also lost there. if you can't learn to accept how *nix users like to have things there own way, then you will never make it in these waters my friend.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
thats like asking if linux would ever be finished
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
but you see, the programmers who work on the code, do so cause they "WANT" to. if there project didn't appeal to them, they wouldn't work on it, there fore their talent would still be lost. So, the best thing is to let people code what they want. and like magic, good ideas would pop up, and can be implement into other exsisting projects, so everybody wins.
Don't get me wrong, i understand the point you are making, but its still a bad idea, and would never work, because human resources is not like other resources which can just be moved into another area and expect it to work the same. and especialy when the resource is only doing it for personal reasons, not finiancial ones.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Everyone hates the way the panel works. To change its size, you have to go into a menu, when you should be able to grap an edge and move it.
Ala windows, eh?
It's hard to put spacers in the panel.
Have you actually gone into the menu to see how easy this is?
Helix is doing some great stuff with enhancing the panel that may address your hatred.
From this screenshot:
Click
10 bucks a pancake?!
Was that expenditure at the truly international HOP in paris?
Agreed. I found that odd about the original poster's statements, as well. While pointers are a difficult concept to grasp for the new programmer, they really aren't a tough subject. They're also terribly important to anyone doing serious work. In fact, you really can't do much of _anything_ without 'em. I disagree about C++, though... the user is slightly removed from pointers in C++ (at least, more than in C.) C++ still blows pirahna dick, but pointers _are_, at least as far as I'm concerned, easier.
Peace,
sKroz
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Hoe harsh! It is true, I do not list projects I've worked on in my resume. However, I also do not describe myself as a professional programmer. My programming experience is extensive, however. I've been programming in C for ten years, and C++ for five or six.
I still prefer C, however. C++ has its place, and there are certain applications (GUI design was mentioned in an earlier post,) for which C++ is better suited. The style and elegance of C are lost in C++.
Of course, I hate Perl, too, so what do I know.
I stand by my original statement, though... C++ blows BIG pirahna dick.
Have a nice day.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I agree completely. Manual memory allocation is easy to screw up, particularly for the beginning programmer. And true, development times can be sped up by working in an environment in which manual memory handling is not needed. However, you will end up with bloated, slow, and wasteful products. This is my primary problem with Perl. Perl is a _GREAT_ tool for the quick and dirty, the small scale script, or what have you. But its inefficiencies are too much to bear in a large scale environment. Give me admin scripts in Perl, give me CGI scripts in Perl, but for the love of god... don't give me a whole application for which speed and efficiency are important in Perl. "Compiled" perl is slightly better, but still no replacement for a good solid chunk of C code.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Isn't there a problem with `new desktop paradigm'?
Do you want a new GUI model, or do you want to stick with the `desktop' model?
-rozzin.
When will Bonobo start advertising the real power of distributed components? Haveing Gnumeric be a generic applitation container changes the nature of the application - from spreadsheet to 'application environment'!
I believe that the Gnu Object Modeling Environment has not lived up to its name thus far. An application that is as pervasive as the window manager, if not the WM itself, should keep all applications in containers like gnumeric and promote the persistence, versioning, and serialization features of CORBA.
Don
[diamondc@sugarkane ~]$ ps auxw | grep netscape
now that's the memory killer, netscape sometimes goes up to 35%! somtimes.
i thought I had no sig?
-B
(go sour apple!)
I don't know about anyone else, but I've always preferred KDE to Gnome. When I picked up Linux-Mandrake the first time, I figured I'd check out the Gnome desktop based on what I had heard from users here on /. To put it mildly, I didn't like it. It felt to much like Windows (and in all the wrong ways). Whereas KDE had a nice useable desktop under Mandrake.
What do you see in KDE that you like, and would consider importing in Gnome. What is it about KDE that you dislike, and have tried to make better under Gnome?
What about Gnome, do you feel, should cause me to use it over KDE?
Hey Miguel it's fun to be using GNOME! This thing sure has come a long way... Of course the amount of work seems to also have gone up exponentially right along with the passage of time. As a fairly middle of the road professionally employed linux user I do a lot of installations and tweaking for security and stability. My question is this: When I go to install I normally try to keep the number of packages (yes I use RH mostly) to a minimum. However, what I find is that I almost always end up with alot of development libraries, running daemon's, and other stuff that I really don't know how safe it is to remove during or after the fact? Can you tell us for instance why enlightenment or GNOME seems to be dependant on say: 'esound'? Or in other words, is it safe to install without all those libraries under the 'development' context? Thanks, doulos
In the original D&D, races and classes were functionally equivalent.
:-)
You didn't choose a race AND a class. If you were some specialist like a wizard, that implied human. Non-human races came with their own sets of magic and other abilities.
So, it wouldn't be too far off to just call them all "classes".
Is it wrong, to nitpick a nitpick?
who needs an account when they can troll anonymously anyway?
If I remember correctly, one of the primary reasons the C language was chosen for the GNOME project was to make it easy to create bindings for several other languages.
But the reality is, even after several years, there is only one almost-complete set of useful language bindings (python). Even gtk-- (the C++ bindings) split into gtk-- (almost done) and gnome--(currently incomplete).
Why has this lack of development occurred?
With an influx of windows users, some of them developers, shouldn't it be high on the priority list to create good C++ bindings similar to how MFC is a wrapper for win32?
I would say that if the Gnome and KDE environments can strive to develop a highly flexible environment both in terms of configurability of the desktop and in terms of the development libraries, then you can do what you want with it. If you want it to look and act like windows, fine, or you can make it behave in a totally different manner.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
This technology allows a developer to very quickly add advanced functionality to the application he/she is working on, simply by reusing bonobo components that someone else has written, and it allows him/her to make the functionality of the new application available to other developers.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Actually this question isn't very straightforward at all. Your question assumes that we all know what you mean by "sophistication" and that given your definition of "sophistication" Gnome doesn't match up. So please, define what you mean by sophistication.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I do not find the panel "ugly" and quite honestly like the configuration interface. Feel free to state your opinion of the panel, but to say "Everyone hates the way the panel works" is utterly absurd.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Amen. I know there's a lot of talk about KDE and Gnome working together; well, this is one area, that they could definitely work together on. If all Gnome/KDE aware applications used the same print/display font configuration and selection, and if the Gnome and KDE developers worked together on a good standard, I think it could very easily become the de facto standard for Unix/Linux systems.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Absolutely Not. They simply have to have the necessary libraries installed on their system.
Say you've got 20 uber-spreadsheet-guru guys, 10 working on kSpreadsheetx and 10 working on
gSpreadsheetx. Why not put all 20 together, get it out faster, and with much higher quality and attention to detail?
I guess I'm missing something. I love Linux, but I don't buy into the idea that there should be 120 teams working on different apps that do the same thing.
While your point is well-taken, this is the curse/beauty of an open platform like Linux. You have choice. If developers don't like the KDE development environment, they can switch to the Gnome. Heck, if they don't like either, they could start their own project completely from scratch. They have that freedom. Only time tells whether or not the projects will have a good following and whether the software will be used by the masses.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Much better phrased, however you're assuming now that KDE has a larger user base; I'm not sure this is necessarily true,and if so, it is "sophistication" that drew them to the platform. Windows has a larger user base than Gnome or KDE combined...is this due to its "sophistication"?
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Yes, although a Gnome install-wizard, similar to the installer that Windows software uses, could prove useful. I also think Gnome needs to address the issue of user vs. root maintenance, such as installing software, configuring the gnome menu, configuring the system in general. It can be very confusing for a new Unix/Linux user to understand these concepts.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I have read on the Helix Code site that one of your next projects will be to write a Word Processor. What are your thoughts on that? Will you simply extend AbiWord, fork it, start from scratch?
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Celebrate the finer things in life
What about Objective C and/or GNUStep? How come GNOME isn't based around those? Objective C is supposed to be the bees knees when it comes to GUI programming, even better than C++ (at least for C hackers).
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Helix GNOME can be thought of as similar to the GNOME packages distributed with Red Hat or Debian or something. It is pretty much just the standard gnome packages with a few changes to give different defaults, and an updater utility.
Asking if Helix will be wrapped into a different product is like asking when Red Hat will stop distributing GNOME and just provide a pointer to www.gnome.org. There is nothing wrong with providing a distribution of GNOME programs.
Nautilus will be the standard GNOME file manager in the future (and it does look very nice), so will be part of future GNOME releases and will almost definitely be included with future Helix GNOME releases.
Of course, I am not a Helix Code employee, so this is all based on what I consider to be obvious.
I only have 64 megs, and I don't have your problems. Here are a few things you can try:
Define finished.
October GNOME (gnome-*-1.0.5x) could be considered to be finished, but gnome-2.0 is not finished.
At the top of my wish list (after a really good file manager) is a Mac style menu bar that lives at the proper place, at the top of the screen. As you move between windows and programs the menu bar would change to those program's menu. Will we ever see this in GNOME?
--
You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.
Actually, you probably don't need Miguel for that. You might want to check out the Pango, which is a project to incorporate unicode into Gtk. That is being rolled into GNOME as an intrinsic component as of (what is now being projected as) the November GNOME release, which will basically be GNOME 2.0 -- slated to come out November 2000 (hence the name). This is detailed in the O'Reilly Summary of the GUADEC conference.
:-)
Keep in mind that I don't follow it very closely, so it's possible that this doesn't actually address your question. In which case I'll shut up now
--
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
> Ala windows, eh?
but it works well. Not everything windows does is by definition bad.
> Have you actually gone into the menu to see how > easy this is?
What option are you talking about? With a corner-aligned panel the applets all squish together.
Ah, I misspoke: programmers _seem_ to hate making applets for the panel. AFAIK the interface is crufty. From an end-user's perspective I like the panel a lot, except that it takes a while to get to those configuration options. I should be able to right click on the hide buttons to tell them to disappear.
What this brings to the Desktop is the same thing that Pipes bring to the shell. Imagine being able to write a Perl script that takes a set of data, puts it into a spreadsheet and the displays it in a different program. The neat part is the scripting.
This also allows opensource projects to be more manageable. If we look at the Mozilla project as an example we can see that if there is just to much source code no one is willing to jump in. If we break everything out into components with well defined interfaces then each component is really easy to manage, and for new developers to work on. I think that this is the single most important part of the GNOME project - it is what is going to save Open Source as it moves into larger and larger programs.
It's interesting that you didn't go on to say that Windows was a copy of MacOS which was a copy of the Xerox GUI, which indeed was just a computer generated copy of a desk with papers and folders on it.
Get real.
--- Tao
First of all, it's Model, not Modeling.
But that's beside the point.
Originally, the GNOME project had significantly different goals than it does now. It started out as a framework for building services with CORBA (more or less, I'm not an expert on the subject), and turned into a GUI environment that happened to use CORBA as it's underlying communication architecture.
Even right now, the name isn't really as inaccurate or overblown as it sounds, given the services that GNOME provides, and the way they interact with one another. But that's a more objective point anyway.
Hope this helps.
-zack
Regards,
-zack
The bonobo is not yet out. But since I believe it is one of the hottest feature of gnome 2.0 it is a very expected package (by me at least).
My question is about how it will work with non gnome applications. Since it is free software it will, and already have, an open interface, but usualy this is not enougth. Will bonobo interact with other document apis like the one that the KDE folks are working on or even ole and open-doc?
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
It looks like Gnome are working towards removing all dependencies on Enlightenment-related stuff - Imlib for example. The default Gnome window manager for Gnome 2.0 will in all likelihood be Sawmill. I say this for a couple of reasons, the newest being that John Harper (the author of Sawmill) has just been appointed a member of the Gnome 2 Steering Committee.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
I do, for sure. But I don't think that's what you meant....
--
+&x
And if I write an app to take advantage of all the great things that bonobo can do I have to force my users to use Gnome?
I hope I'm wrong in this assumption. While I agree that choice is good, fragmentation and redudent use of scarce programmer resources is just plain stupid.
Say you've got 20 uber-spreadsheet-guru guys, 10 working on kSpreadsheetx and 10 working on gSpreadsheetx. Why not put all 20 together, get it out faster, and with much higher quality and attention to detail?
I guess I'm missing something. I love Linux, but I don't buy into the idea that there should be 120 teams working on different apps that do the same thing.
I know you can write apps that will work just about anywhere, but then you loose all this great new functionality. It's going to be VERY hard on new users who install RH6.2, get Gnome as their default desktop, and then can't figure out why kDevelop won't work on it.
load "linux",8,1
What is depirately needed is a common set of keystroke functions between apps.
I can sit down at an NT box, load up an app I've never seen before, and zip through it without touching a mouse by using keystrokes.
load "linux",8,1
Is it just me, or is there an interview with Miguel featured every week on Slashdot? There ARE other people to interview, you know...
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
MICO stands for MICO Is COrba, not for mini-Corba. It is pretty huge, actually. At some point a KDE guy stripped most of it to obtain tiny-MICO. I don't know what they are currently using.
I think this is a better link to sawmill.
In the lift scene just before they snap the cable.
that was part of the question. When will Gnome be as sophisticated as KDE?, sophisitication being open to Miguel's interpretation. But it doesn't really matter because no-one else seemed to want it asked :)
Perhaps a better question would have been "How long do you think it will be (if ever) until Gnome is sophisticated enough to gain a larger user base than KDE?
> you should be able to grap an edge and move it.
One of the things I hate most of all about the Windows interface is how frequently my irrational clicking and mouse jiggling leads to 'losing the taskbar' - resizing it to zero. Not only am I losing real-estate which I need for getting ahold of those icons, I've actually got a minor booby-trap built into the interface! What you describe might be nice for some, but all I want is a way to turn that option off, since I hardly ever manually resize my panel anyway (except to hide it).
> It's hard to put spacers in the panel.
That's true - the panel is either unnecessarially long, or exactly as long as the sum length of your applets, launchers, menus and drawers. It's not possible to put extra space in a corner panel (except for Panel/Right Click -> Global Properties -> Misc -> Applet Padding, which isn't the same thing), or to make the panel window only show a part of the panel's contents. Another thing that might be nice is floating panels, that is, panels which can be positioned arbitrarially anywhere on the desktop. I have two vertical corner panels, one in each upper corner of the desktop, and if I could, I'd probably put more up there in between them.
When is GNOME going to make further, substantial strides to becoming a more unified system capable of communication between all objects/programs that are coded according to GNOME rules?
By that I mean the following: KDE is recognized as being a more mature, robust environment to work and code within. I feel much of this is due to the planning and organization of the foundation of KDE which is a CORBA-based. Thus rules for communication of applications are defined and enforced.
It appears that GNOME lacks such a well-defined foundation for application communication which is the hallmark of a good desktop environment.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Because we dont want to encourage you trolls.
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I don't really mind double posts on
You should really check out gnome-print and gnumeric. You can get the cvs modules from gnome or checkout the newest releases (both had new releases yesterday). http://www.gnome.org/gnumeric The print, print-preview, and print-setup dialogs are really nice. They are based on the Libart-based Gnome-canvas. -Dom
This isn't really true IMO. The GTK type system is quite a bit nicer than C++ (it's closer to Java), and although it does look a little unwieldy at first, most of it is boilerplate stuff and very easy to write.
C has lots of advantages over C++ for libraries: it's much more portable, easy for other languages to bind to, smaller and faster.
C++ might be a good choice for writing GNOME apps though. There are several bindings available.
Anyone know why GNOME takes up all my memory? Yes I only have 64 megs, but this seems unreasonable.
How would you know that he doesn't know that C++ sucks anything. On your resume, you don't even list any knowledge of the programming that he has done, just a list of things that aren't on his resume that you claim he doesn't know about.
Just because you think he has recompiled a kernel and is not a developer, doesn't mean that the is not a developer.
schniznit!
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
I notice always when running gnome and other X UIs that they are slow. Mouse movements are choppy at times, incredibly slow redrawing, etc, even using a nice video card. Win98 runs fine on a mid-end machine with 32mb, why doesn't gnome?
This is by no means a complaint, just wondering.
gnome is by far the most usable linux UI I've used.
Is
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
We all know that devlopers take pride in thier work. Objectiveness can be invaluable though, and the insight of a developer about his "competition" is, IMHO, most valuable. If you couldn't use Gnome on your desktop, what would you use, and why? How would you compare your choice to Gnome?
"Jedi Erian"
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This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
(Well, what can I say? I feel like I have far too much Karma for my own good.)
Tastes great or less filling?
Come on, we've all battled with this question, and I'd like Miguel's take on it. Personally, I just can't decide; the arguments for both sides are very compelling at 4AM after eating nothing but Twinkies and coffee while getting that last bit of coding done.
(And yes, at 4AM I eat my coffee - you'd think I'd make another pot, but I was supposed to be in bed three hours ago so why bother.)
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
Go out to Borders, pick up the book on GTK/Gnome development, and read the FAQ chapter. There you will see why I moderated you down
Umm. I thought you can't post to and moderate the same discussion. Do you have multiple accounts?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Pictures, word art: These seem to be more of a problem with the terrible cut & paste functionality in X.
Um, what does cutting and pasting have to do with it? You still need an object model so that the container application is able to delagate with the COM objec t(wordart/pictures etc).
Application development: we already have widgets and things without bonobo.
Yes, but how easy is it for example
Like if someone goes and write a widget that displays HTML pages (yeah like IE
It's important cause Unix programmers (or rather younger ex-windows programmers) are starting to realise that reinventing widgets and components is a waste of time perhaps?
Every geek might get a thrill out of reinventing the wheel, but it gets tiring after a while.
You don't insert excel documents inside word...oik, but do you insert pictures? word art? how about view webpages with java applets on them? what about serious application development? Surely you don't go and rewrite your own data access objects everytime...no in perl you use perl's data access objects etc
well bonobo, like COM will make all objects - no matter what language they are written in/for work together. every application will be able to 'reuse' any object using the same well defined mechanism.
This short sightedness of people who seem to think componentization is bad, monolithic design is good etc, are the same people stopping large modern desktop application development on unix.
What is Spider Monkey? When will we know?
What is your relationship with the Enlightenment developers?
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
When is Helix Code going to release their software packaging for Debian?
How do you feel about the blatant ripoff of the Gnome name in South Park by the Underpants Gnomes. I mean, come on, they don't even have anything to do with linux or opensource. They're just stupid midgets that steal your underwear!
So are you going to sue or what!
Andrew
Framebuffers are developing fairly fast and work nearly anywhere now with vga16fb.
There currently arent any good widget sets (that i know of) to provide a nice GUI on a fbdev.
Is there any chance that in the near future GNOME might look to supporting GUI's on a framebuffer device ?
>Do people in charge of filters work together ?
There was some talk of it on the koffice mailing list, but the idead was quickly dismissed.
I don't really recall why.
Is your main activity really "writing activity logs"? ;]
Do you feel that the increasing size and complexity of Open Source software projects can undermine the 'bazaar development method' ?
... ) may reduce the number of such 'external helpers', leaving only the core development team to deal with software bugs.
An assumption of this method is that at least part of the users can directly try and fix buggy sofware. Pushing toward trendy but complex technologies (CORBA/Bonobo etc
Ciao
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FB
I'm fairly ignorant on the topic, but would intergration of OpenAL(www.openal.com) be a solution to this?
Wiwi
--
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
The C++ standard template library provides an auto_ptr (auto garbage managaing pointer) for things like this. In C++, I can't remember the last time I actually used 'new' for anything because I love using the STL for everything. It truly takes away the worry of using pointers for me. With constructors and destructors, it is also convienient to use pointers if you have to, and you don't have to worry about errors inbetween.
How much (and what kind) of work is being done between the GNOME and KDE efforts (so that they work together better)- and does GNOME have any plans to implement an OLE/OpenDoc-type mutiple-document interface? If so, is there any kind of work being done so that this multiple-doc interface is compatible with (any?) KDE's multiple-doc system?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Do you think there are any/enough "interface hackers" out there willing to contribute time to GNOME like code hackers do, or is the project doomed forever to simply copy Windows and MacOS features, who have the ability to do usability studies.
Are there any papers by the GNOME team regarding this, or about how not to destroy the power of UNIX in a GUI useable by the masses? I'm all for getting rid of the command line, as soon as theres a better interface. If it's going to be developed, I think it's up to the free software/research communities, and/or universities. GNOME is a nice Win95 clone, just like CDE was a fair Win3.1 clone, but if I want those interfaces and the limitations they impose, I know where to get them (and with a whole lot more application support).
Gnome is based on the GTK+ toolkit - It is not based on Xt like Motif is; so, you can't mix Motif and GTK/Gnome widgets in your applications. If you are concerned about bandwith, you can always use the old FVWM style environment.
...is the gnome print architecture, which is already in Debian Potato and possibly others (I know RPM's exist). (Not that it does much good until apps use it -- but it *is* working. I believe Gnumeric uses it).
I love the panel
I use Mac OS and Windows at my job and think the panel beats the crap out of anything either of those OSs has to offer. Well, that's an overstatement -- the Apple menu is easier to congfigure than the "foot"... but I am praying that Mac OS X will abandon the silly "dock" and I'll be thrilled if they add half the functional power of the GNOME panel.
As for layout and customizability, try using the other mouse buttons! I played around with the options and put panels in all corners of my screen... had them runing vertically on the left and right and across the top and bottom, added applets and drawers with more applets... I found it very easy to set up an efficient set of tools that supported my work. True, some hairy bugs made an earlier version of the panel lock up or disappear sometimes (and zombied X at times) but customizability was not a problem.
This is probably more a GTK question, but here goes:
There are currently a couple of projects that intend to bring Display Postscript to Linux (DPS/X and gnusteps display ghostscript). IIRC Gtk+ 1.4 will be more easily portable to other platforms.
The question is: would it be possible to extend GTK+ and Gnome to base it on the vector model of DPS, a la Quartz on MacOSX? Maybe it would be useful in the areas where Gnome could use some more work? (printing model, fonts, anti-aliasing)
Also, a bit related, do you see Gnome being a X-only thing, or do you imagine it being ported to for instance embedded applications, experimental environments (Berlin anyone?) or even (gasp) windows?
>well pointers just suck badly
.oO0Oo.
If you can't get your head around pointers and how and why you use them then you really shouldn't be using C and should certainly steer clear of C++.
Stick to something where pointers are removed from the programmers frame of reference. Crikey even VB gives you a choice in function calls to use a pointer or the stack.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Some people would say that KDevelop is KDE's Killer app.
.oO0Oo.
Any plans to wow the crowd with a "copy" Visual C++ since you've done such a great job with GnuExcel?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Naw... I used my last point on him... After that posting is fair game
"I shoulda never sent a penguin out to do a daemon's work."
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
Go out to Borders, pick up the book on GTK/Gnome development, and read the FAQ chapter. There you will see why I moderated you down
"I shoulda never sent a penguin out to do a daemon's work."
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
Let try a quiz: :)
What desktop is the easiest to use?
...apples
What kind of OS do they use?
...
Have you even gotten into a KDE vs GNOME flamewar? Would you do it again?
Is the KDE vs GNOME issuse anything like the MOTIF vs OpenWin issuse?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Thanks
___________________________________
Linux by Libranet - The TOP Desktop
Libranet GNU/Linux
oh, and assembly.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that the original poster guy said that there were so many other better languages for GUIs and I said, "isn't linux written in C..." of course, I was being shortsighted and didn't think of the fact that the linux kernel has nothing to do with UI and that C is not too bad for a "backend" sort of thing like the kernel. again, I'm sorry.
isn't linux written in C, or am I just an idiot? :|
GNU Network Object Modeling Environment
I've always thought that this acronym is akin to calling someone who works at Kentucky Fried Chicken a "Deep Fry Technician" or something. What do you think?
Hi Miguel
I heard some comments here and there (also at GUADEC) that a Wordprocessor that is well integrated with GNOME would be wonderfull. You said in a post that we would reach "computational nirvana" if we had a "good Pango-based word processor".
I also got the impression that Abiword would not be this WP for various reasons (e.g. because it is focusing on crossplatform instead on nice GNOME integration, progress is too slow, etc.).
Can you give me a hint where I should direct my hacking energy if I would like to contribute to a GNOME Wordprocessor?
A lot of people have tryed making Unix easier to use and none of them have manged it. Some people beleive that it can't be done. While I don't think that its impossible, its got to be a very difficult task. How is the Gnome project dealing with ease of use?
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Not a typewriter
What's the status of the project putting GNOME on educational desktops in Mexico? I can't
remember the exact number but it was something awesome like a million or so. It'd be great to
know a little more about this seeing as you were involved in/initiated it.
I agree ! Let's see a Python port. And therefore some true cross platform functionality.
no sig
As far as I understand the problem, there is really a plan to port GNOME to Windows in order to gain some market share. This justifies Bonobo and Sawmill, since the author of Enlightenment don't want to bother with a port to Windows. And if my hypothesis are right, it is strongly pushed by big names in the computer industry. As a strategy, it sounds good. If you provide the GNOME environment to Windows users and developpers, chances are high you will eventually make the migration to Linux much more easy to Windows users.
However, I don't care much about Windows users because I won't make big bucks on this market. Can we still think the GNOME project is a really free development project?
"There is no spoon"-Neo, The Matrix
Neo never says that, it's the buddha-looking kid with him in the waiting room for the Oracle.
The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Hi there, I am both a frequent linux, windows, and macintosh user and I have a few opinions you may or may not find interesting ;P
When i first got into "programming", I learned HTML. This was back when the IE/Netscape wars were actually a battle. The two browsers gained DOM's, and primitive implementations of DHTML. In order to develop with these new features, however, either two sets of pages had to be used, or a lot of if ... then's were needed. This was what originally drove me to windows and macintosh programming, because you had ONE codebase, and it looked the same on every pc 99% of the time.
Now, I got into linux programming not too long ago, but i've as of yet only produced command line programs. Why? Because of the fact that making my programs for both KDE or GNOME would require the same kind of bullshit that I put up with on IE and Netscape. I know linux users aren't into ONE DESKTOP, but for chrissake, does that mean all programmers who want to cater to everyone (read: commercial apps) need to write two programs? If you're gonna compete, atleast come up with a friggin' standard already to ease the pain of the developers!!!!!
K.I.S.S. (KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!)
-- Just the FAQs Ma'am.
- Useful Java applets are few and far between on the Internet, but when you build Intranet/Extranet applications, this is not the case.
- Yes, Java under Linux Netscape sucks. It's slow and contributes heavily to Netscape crashing (among about 5000 other factors). Everyone knows this. I'm not certain on this, but I believe a componentized architecture if properly implemented would be beneficial to solving this, as the JVM would not have to be an integral part of the browser. You could pick which JVM you wanted to use, and it would be easier for browser-makers to swap-in/out better JVMs as they become available. Of course, a browser that isn't a giant turd would also solve the problem.
- And then of course, there's Java's real niche which is not applets in web page, but multi-tiered enterprise applications (j2ee and all that good stuff). Not trying to start a flamewar or anything I just find it frustrating to see the sentence "Java is completely USELESS as things stand today"
I'm not Miguel, but I think I can answer this one. In the previous Eazel threads, many people have pointed out the fact that the Eazel product is destined to become the Gnome 2.0 desktop shell.
So the answer to your question would be a resounding YES, mozilla technology will be integrated into Gnome. As an aside, I agree with you completely and would find it ridiculous that the Open Source Community would put so much work into a project (Mozilla) and then let other projects duplicate effort (Gnome and KDE).
Perhaps this could be a question to KDE developers: Are there any plans to integrate Gecko into Konqueror?
--
Linux is a copy of Unix. GNOME is a copy of KDE, which is a copy of CDE (which was a copy of Win 3.0) and Windows. I know that GNOME GUI development isn't funded the way Windows or Macintosh GUI development is, and it hasn't attracted the kind GUI experts (yet), but do you believe GNOME will always be a copy of something, or will it eventually have innovations of its own?
g++ (the GNU C++ compiler) is the "standard" Linux c++ compiler. Any problems are g++'s fault (it runs under many OS, not just linux), and are unrelated to linux.
Do you have any thoughts on GNUStep vs GNOME?
And, furthermore, it was more difficult to create an acronym for Gnu Network Object Modeling Environment with dwarf or halfling.
sigmentation fault
CORBA is a standard used on all platforms.
MICO was a mini-CORBA implementation, so it was supposed to be able to talk with any other CORBA implementation, ie ORBit.
It's up to the KDE team to work for interoperability, as it's the KDE team who've adopted a specific solution (DCOP needs both Qt and X, so it's pretty specific to KDE. Well, if you start creating another desktop environment for X-Window based on Qt, but non-connected to KDE, DCOP won't be specific anymore).
AFAIK, they are working on it, as they use a CORBA bridge.
Sorry if this has naught to to with GNOME, 'twas just an answer to an user.
sigmentation fault
One day, someone get tired of this interface inconsistency, IIRC it was Matthias Ettrich, who started the KDE project. His ambition was to have a coherent desktop environment where all interfaces behave in the same way, instead of a strange mix where only initiate can understand how to handle this popup windows. He choose to base KDE on C++ and Qt, for a number of technical reasons.
He has been very criticized for it, as Qt is not GPL. One day, Miguel de Icaza said something like "instead of lamenting on KDE's lib, let's create our own desktop based on GPL libs". Thus started GNOME, based on C and GTK+.
During a brief period, there was lots of flamewars between the two camps supporter, but now they are working together for better interoperability.
The main reason is because interface consistency is essential for GUI. In CLI, you can write a nice Perl script (use Sed if you prefer) which will extract the datas and display them as you want, or feed them to another programm STDIN. You can't do such things with windows, except if you make sure all applications can work together by respecting some protocols. Just an example: I'm using Netscape under KDE. If I copy an extract of text in Kwrite, I can't paste it in Netscape; they don't use the same buffer for copy/paste things. And there's no way to manually set a pipe between both. That's why a complete desktop environment includes mail clients, web browser, editors and other goodies.
But you can still tell Gnome to use Sawmill instead of E, KFM instead of GMC, xterm instead of gterm, etc. You can even use neither GNOME nor KDE, if you want. In a Desktop Environment, the point is made on Environment.
sigmentation fault
These words are taken from David Faure, well-known KDE hackers. It was in article published in issue #13 and #14 of Linux-Magazine France and translated by my humble person. You may be able to consult them on-line on http://www.linuxmag-france.org, or you can try to have them from David Faure (faure@kde.org). I think it means that DCOP needs *BOTH* X and Qt :).
sigmentation fault
So my question is, are there any ideas/plans/etc for integrating xmlrpc into gnome?
I'd love to work full-time toward better Unicode support in Gnome, but right now I can only take on smallish tasks. Is there a list somewhere of tasks toward this goal which individuals with an hour or two to spare now and then could work on?
Is it a good thing that I, as an application developer, have to code, debug, and maintain my application for what amounts to two separate platforms, when I'm really trying to target "Linux"?
I don't understand why it's a good thing that two teams of programmers are implementing essentially the same functionality (with small differences), when they could be working together and getting twice as far in the same amount of time.
But let's take the view of many commercial developers that disk space and memory keep getting cheaper, so there's no real need to conserve these resources. In that case, I fall back on my argument that there is a finite amount of talent and effort in the free software community, and developing two large libraries with essentially the same functionality is a waste of time and talent.
You anti freedom troll!
What are you saying? People are free not to be able to read.
Miguel,
A recent article charged that gnome (and KDE) were simply copying the GUI look and ideas of MS Windoze. Do you feel this is true?
Bob Wooldridge
Miguel,
One question, three parts:
a) will GNOME ever really be 'finished'?
b) if yes, what does that entail, roughly?
c) if no, do you think it's feasible to create a software system/desktop that *could* be finished?
Thanks for your work.
Isotrope
Hello, I've used gnome since pre-1, thorugh 1.0, and into the latest 1.5 release. I've had the same stability problems all the way through, and all of my bug reports have come back "fixed." I'm wondering why the gnome team doesn't reduce the core amount of code, simplify, and stabilize before adding all the other stuff on top?
The GNOME project has made a tremendous amount of progress -- no doubt at the cost of thousands of man hours. I'm interested in hearing about where your time is being spent today vs. where it was being spent a year ago vs. two years ago etc. etc. For example, at some point were you spending a huge amount of time working on un-interesting things like the GUI library, where now you're mostly working on interesting things like the killer applications? How much time has been lost due to instability in software packages that GNOME depends upon? Where would your project be today if all of the dependencies had been high-quality and stable when your project started?
Miguel, can you share your side of this story?
I don't know many of the details, except the enlightnment pager kicks the GNOME pager's ass, and that now enlightenment is trying to recreate a file-manager...there seems to be a battle between esound versions, etc. etc. etc. The SVLUG with the enlightenment didn't really cast a light on this schism, except to add more cryptic references to the flame......
I wish these youngsters would just kiss and make up..
Lately I've heared several people wishing for a standard theme language or format for all their window managers and toolkits, and I myself certainly wish to be able to download just a single theme for both GTK+ and Enlightenment. Do you think it is possible? Is there any work being done towards this?
What is the current status of Window Managers for Gnome? Being a current and avid user of GNOME, I use Sawmill because its small size, memory use, and great integration with GNOME. I guess my question really is...is there currently any talk on picking a "default" WM for GNOME. KDE has one, it's called kwm, but with GNOME, some default to E, some to Sawmill, some to gnome-wm(i think?).
I don't know what everyone else's experience has been, but the newest version of E doesn't seem to be as friendly to GNOME as it used to be, by default...It takes over right-click and middle-click menus, thus not allowing me to use the GNOME menus. Now, i know you can configure it, but by default, it doesn't...
So, what is the current status, if any? If so, what are the candidates??
I, myself, must recommend sawmill, it works beautifully with GNOME.
IMO, we really don't want a GNOME-specific solution to this problem, because then users will have to install fonts once into KDE and once into GNOME -- this is an improvement over installing fonts once into every app, but it's still unsatisfactory.
As for TeX fonts ( metafont ), they are a completely different beast. They are very high quality, but render very slowly, and are unsuitable for WYSIWYG publishing. The TeX font system is also somewhat more complex than anything you'd use for WYSIWYG publishing, and as such, it probably needs to be kept seperate.
PS: For everything you ever wanted to know about Type on Linux, check out the Font HOWTO. Cheers,
GNOME and KDE are not monoliths. They are simply a big bunch of applications that share common APIs. This is a very good thing IMO -- things have evolved to the point that there are two clear winners in the API stakes, GTK/GNOME and QT/KDE. The APIs are certainly modular, though this modularity is at times transparent to the user ( who doesn't know, for example, that "kdesupport" and "kdelibs" are actually several different shared libraries shipped in one package ).
GNOME/KDE are also modular -- you don't need to run all or none of the applications. You only need to have the required shared libraries installed, and you can run any apps. ( for example, there's no reason why you can't just run "panel" and no other GNOME apps. )
There are two ways you can think about KDE/GNOME -- they are either a collection of APIs, or a collection of applications that use those APIs. The fact that you choose to use one of those applications doesn't compel you to use them all. For example, koffice is only "part of KDE" in the sense that it is built on the KDE APIs. But you certainly don't have to run koffice to run other KDE applications ( whether those applications be the window manager, panel, terminal, editor or dialup tool ).
In conclusion, you are free to choose whatever you want. You can run Koffice under Window Maker, with the GNOME panel and transparent eterms running if you like. No one is stopping you.
--
Although I would admit that C++ is good for things and for allowing for a changeable design I wonder if it's totally necessary. I got headaches just trying to comphrend some of the C++ concepts. I have read books which indicate it's really useful however I haven't seen anything that couldn't be just done in straight C.
Its not about not being able to do something, its about the efficiency of doing the development and the stability/maintainability of the end product.
In small development tasks the benifits of C++ are not very large compared to C or some other procedural lanugage. When you start developing large scale, distributed systems, OOD/OOP becomes not only a nice feature, but mandatory.
C++ can add some whoppers to bugs and trying to get them to work. I think before we start to develop in C++ too much we need a tool that does a good job of creating and IDE with compiler, easy debugger, and other features. That's the biggest problem I get into. using vi and the command line is simple and fast but I like interactive things that allow me to see bugs and squash them quickly.
GDB seems to be quite suitable for finding bugs in any code. The name mangling of c++ functions and templates can be annoying, but hopefully we can have tools to ease these troubles soon. A tool like purify and quantify for linux (opensource) would be awesome, however, i wont hold my breath for something like that. glib does a good job of finding memory errors within itself..
Also another thing you have to consider is that perhaps the libraries that are being used the most are C related and not C++ as of this time? That can put a damper on things.
Actually, its a very trivial matter to call C functions from within a C++ program. The keyword extern is used for this.
ex: extern "C" int foobar(void);
I have havoc penningtons book on GTK/GNOME. I have worked with GTK/GNOME and it is because I have worked with these libraries/tools that I am curious about the implementation and design.
True, it is a very powerfull object system. But it is also overly complex and needlessly limited. This complexity and inflexibility are there because the code is implementing object oriented features that would normally be within the domain of a language. You can write object oriented code in assembler, but thats not the point. The point is that when doing this type of development, it becomes increasingly more efficient to use a language designed for object oriented programming, as well the various other practices which aid OOP development. Such as models, detailed designs, patterns, frameworks, etc.
But outside of there somewhat niche markets (SGI for there video power (both in scientific visiulazation and movies/tv) and sun for the more general purpose unix requirments (math, stats, and CS types)) you dont see these machines anywhere, and the later (addadamia) is moving to windows PCs , at least at the uni's Ive seen (in the labs anyway). And all of the systems, while easier to administer that 'bare' unix all seem to be set up so that 95% of admin tasks are realy easy, but the other 5% need a realy experience admin - and since enviroments that use these general have an admin on staff, its not a problem.
So my question (and Im sure youve heard it a million times before) is:
It seems that unix systems are fundimantly unsutable for the desktop (given that you dont see unix on the desktop outside the above cases), why will the Gnome be any different?
Well, that's why I like Enlightenment - love it or hate it, when you use it, you know you're in something different.
My main disappointment is that I still haven't found a really usable theme. My favourite one visually is Hand of God, but it conflicts so severely with the Gnome pager that I can't really use it. Most of the vanilla themes seem vanilla in terms of functionality, too. Or perhaps I'm doing something wrong?
In defense of both Gnome and Enlightenment, as far as I can tell they did invent the integrated pager + Windows95 style taskbar. I find it quite useful, and there's certainly nothing like it in Windows. Admittedly, it's an "embrace and extend" kind of thing instead of true originality, but it does work well, and I use both the Unix-style pager part and the Windows-style taskbar.
D
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That's interesting, now it looks like BeOS!
An improvement, but certainly not the original thinking I'm really craving.
D
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Qué onda Miguel. Since you cleary point it out frequently, a lot of the ideas used to create GNOME and its apps are taken from other products and other plataforms, usually from this company based in Redmond, which I think is not that bad, since some great GNOME apps are based on that similarity (gnumeric and evolution).
But I don't see any effort been focused on creating easy programming tools for GNOME other than Glade, and Glade is far from being as easy to use as other tools. Sure, it beats doing the GUI by hand, but..........
Are there any efforts out there to create a similar tool to program under GNOME other than Glade ?
Dont you think that GNOME needs more developing tools to be more atractive to programmers, so you can guarantee a increasing number of developers for GNOME and therefore killer apps ?
There's a joke around about Microsoft tools been crack to programmers because when you use them it feels so good and great, but they make you stupid because they are so easy to use so you forget how to program the old fashion way.
Miguel, we need crack, but GNOME addictive crack.
Bueno, saludos, y a ver cuando le caes de nuevo a Monterrey.
Francisco Romo Alfaro
http://linux.mty.itesm.mx
C has its shortcomings, but don't forget why hackers like it so much: minimalism. The language has a very brief spec, it does virtually nothing behind your back, and the system standard library gives you basic functionality, no more. Because of this, there is an elegance to C code (particularly in writing it!) that you simply don't get with many more modern languages.
That's my opinion, but I have to agree the lack of language-level support for things like classes, inheritance, fine-grained scoping, etc. is bothersome. Not enough to make me want to move to C++, but enough to make me wish some language junkies in the free-software community would get together, and create a derivative of C that addresses all those problems. A language that can do OO gracefully, without any run-time magic (unlike ObjC), that has a small specification (unlike C++), and a reasonably limited system library (unlike Java).
If that were to come about, in conjuction with a small $LANG-to-C translator program that could be put into tarballs, I think the architects of Gnome would be willing to give it a try. *I* certainly would . . . .
iSKUNK!
uh, where's that undo button?
Most people are misinterpretting my question. I meant that the programming behind the panel is icky, while the outside is nice. There are some UI issues, but my main concern was the implimentation, not the look and feel. I love panels too, but currently I have to do kludgy things to get them to work right. see this page: screenshot for what I managed to get the panel to do after a _lot_ of fiddling.
It is pretty apparent that one of the main reasons for creating Helix was to remove the idea of GNOME from Linux, and make it a more generic UNIX desktop. How successful is this? Are you finding many UNIX vendors that are interested in replacing CDE or are they happy with the status quo? Are there additionaly techinical problems with these 'ports'?
Also, thank you for doing this. GNOME is by far not only a Linux thing, and I find CDE almost completely unusable...
just out of interest...what is so special about the panels in that shot?
There has been a lot of talk about the motivation of Open Source (or whatever...) coders recently. What is your personal source of motivation towards it? What might be done to make the overall motivation better?
I doubt, therefore I may be.
The one piece of Linux software that eased my way into Linux from DOS so many years ago was Mouseless Commander. I'm still rarely without mc under an Eterm.
I couldn't really get into the icon based stuff. It's just not fast enough for me (yet).
I was surprised when I downloaded gmc and saw, well, MS Explorer.
Do you think there's a way to get the best of both worlds? A two-pane file manager that works like Explorer and mc?
I've been playing with the KDE 2 snapshots to see if Konqueror could do it. I then discovered a neat feature. I could have four panes: two containing files and two containing previews of whatever files are currently selected in each of the file panes. In mc there's a quick view feature, but I couldn't stand not having two file panes. Maybe I'm just an old coot...
Oh well, I guess what I'm really trying to ask is if the mc way is dead. Should I give in and use Gmc or Kfm/Konqueror the way other people do? Will I end up happy if I gave it an honest try? (I've given it tries before, but it never worked out. I kept reaching for the 'F3' key...)
Even if it's dead, I have to still thank you for providing what is(was?) the most important piece of software I have used (In my opinion, at least) under Linux.
One of the things I miss from my days using OS/2 is that in the workplace shell (WPS), everything was an object: every folder on the desktop; every template icon that pointed to an app; the launchpad; everything. As a result of this, I could customize the WPS in ways that the engineers at IBM had never anticipated. I could instantiate weird mutated variants of the launchpad with just a few lines of Rexx.
My question is what are the plans for this type of true objectification to come to gnome? When will everything be an object and be embeddedable anywhere the user pleases? Because gnome sits on top of X, which in turn sits on top of the OS, hat do you think the limits are for gnome in this regard, what limits does gnome have as far as objectifying and abstracting the OS?
As Linux (hopefully) moves more and more into the desktop, it's clear that one of the things that needs to be concentrated on is usability by the non-programmer and the non-geek.
With that in mind -- What elements were included in GNOME that were done, specifically, thinking from the ease-of-use standpoint? Did the team work from a "this would be cool, let's make it usable" viewpoint, or a "this would be usable, let's make it cool" one? Or has it been a little bit of both, and if so, when did it change?
How long do you think before Gnome catches up KDE in terms of sophistication?
Okay, this is a fairly simple question: Is Helix a seperate "Distro" of gnome, a new version of gnome, or what? Also, how is Helix related to Eazel's Nautilis, and will Helix, Nautilis, and "Gnome Classic" eventally all be wrapped into one product?
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
You don't insert excel documents inside word...oik, but do you insert pictures? word art? how about view webpages with java applets on them? what about serious application development? Surely you don't go and rewrite your own data access objects everytime...no in perl you use perl's data access objects etc
Actually, I'm a developer too and have used Visual Basic for a long time at work (and at home 'fore I switched to linux). Let me take these one at a time:
Pictures, word art: These seem to be more of a problem with the terrible cut & paste functionality in X.
Application development: we already have widgets and things without bonobo. COM has allowed you to develop faster, but prevents you from developing fast, reliable programs. It has created somewhat of a developer's hell in terms of maintenance, messianic promises notwithstanding.
Web pages with java: Java is completely USELESS as things stand today. No one uses them on web pages except doubleclick.net. I always turn java OFF no matter what computer I'm on (my PII 350 win box at work or my linux 133mhz at home) because its so slow and often unstable.
This is a question about the general direction of Linux DEs. It seems to be going in the wrong direction in terms of feature bloat. Windows did that, integrating IE into Windows 98. Of course, IE is fairly lightweight. What about integrating Mozilla? I'm not the only one here who thinks that Mozilla is not exactly the pinacle of software design. My general beef is that GNOME (and KDE to some extent) tries to do to much. Its Cobra, its OLE2, its a UI, its an environment, its a widget set, it slices, it dices, it make jullian fries! Take OLE2 for example. Even the MS people admit that it is slow and complex. Thats why MS has mostly given up on it and moved to D/COM. And why is COM in the DE in the first place. Shouldn't it be at a lower level? My general gripe is that everywhere in Linux there is duplicated functionality, or functionality layered wrong. Stuff like GNOME isn't doing anything to help. In BeOS, my UI takes up something like 3 meg. All the inter-app interface is in seperate parts of the app server, not in the UI. Its layered correctly. If you think MS is bloated, think about this. With the release of GNOME 2.0, it will be possible, with only 4 apps, to require the loading of 4 large system APIs into memory, (QT 1 and 2, and 1x and 2x versions of GNOME libraries) Whats your outlook into this?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sorry, but the whole minimize/maximize/close thing is much more efficiant on Windows. Face it, most people are right handed. Thus it makes sense to group all buttons togethers on the right side. (Of course it is trivial to adjust for left handers.) I doubt many people hit the close button often because between the two is the little use maximize button. Grouping the two together makes for that much less mouse work. Good apps should always ask if you want to quit. I would rather put up with the occasional accidental quit then the constant extra finger work. In the end, it shouldn't matter. The GUI should let you choose where to put it. (I can theme my GUI to all hell, but can't choose where to put my close button?)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yea, but none of the major GNOME window managers, which is what I was talking about. (Theme to all hell and that.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Therefor: Are there any plans to allow the theme to be fetched from the remote WM, rather than the local system?
www.eFax.com are spammers
I believe tat this is because GTK+ was written in C. here is the relevant section from Havoc Pennington's GTK+/Gnome Application Development:
"Why is GTK+ written in C?
First and foremost: asking this question in any public forum is strongly discouraged. Don't do it. Check the archives for several extended off-topic
flamefests if you're interested.
Here are some reasons:
The original authors wanted to write it in C, and now many C-only applications are based on it. The current authors enjoy C.
GTK+ handles types and objects much more flexibly than C++; it is runtime-oriented, more like Java or Objective C than C++ system. This
is convenient for GUI builders and language bindings.
C is the lingua franca of UNIX development; most people know how to code in it.
There are already nice toolkits for languages such as Java and Objective C. There are C++ wrappers for GTK+; several, in fact.
C is more portable than C++; ANSI C++ is not yet widely implemented, so only an ill-defined subset of C++ can actually be used.
When GTK+ development first started, there was no free, working C++ compiler.
Again: do not ask this question on any mailing lists, because people will not be amused. "
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
why the fsck did you pick C as your language of choice for GNOME? There are a ton of other languages out there that are much more suitable for GUI development than C. Do you plan on overhauling the whole GNOME code base at
any time in another laguage (im sure C++ would be picked, whether or not it deserves to be)?
C has a tendency to make things just a little faster and more nitty gritty in terms of the things it can do. Although I would admit that C++ is good for things and for allowing for a changeable design I wonder if it's totally necessary. I got headaches just trying to comphrend some of the C++ concepts. I have read books which indicate it's really useful however I haven't seen anything that couldn't be just done in straight C. I was able to learn C with little problem (well pointers just suck badly) but C++ and it's interactions started to get murky about the time inheritance and polymorphism started getting added.
C++ can add some whoppers to bugs and trying to get them to work. I think before we start to develop in C++ too much we need a tool that does a good job of creating and IDE with compiler, easy debugger, and other features. That's the biggest problem I get into. using vi and the command line is simple and fast but I like interactive things that allow me to see bugs and squash them quickly.
Also another thing you have to consider is that perhaps the libraries that are being used the most are C related and not C++ as of this time? That can put a damper on things.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
What are your thoughts on graphical interfaces to configuring a user's system (e.g., Red Hat's netcfg)? Are these expected to become a better integrated and more important part of the GNOME project? Are there any ambitious projects in the works (like a universal configuration tool)?
Do you feel it's more important for those people who really want to learn linux to use a GUI to start, or to jump in on a command line and work there way up from there?
'Sometimes I think about killing myself, no, wait, that's you.' -- Jack Handy
I've seen an alarming trend within GNOME and other linux (GUI)programs/window managers to design their programs after other OS-based programs (mainly windows).
I don't mean to say just because it's linux, it should be different than any other OS/program design out there, or that there aren't some good ideas out there ripe to steal. Rather, it seems that a lot of the time, we're stealing the design, and not putting much thought in how to IMPROVE upon those designs (for example, take the GNOME PIM! Looks EXACTLY like the Outlook calendar).
For example, within MS Outlook, I like the function I can e-mail a calendar invite out, and people can accept/refuse from right within the e-mail, without the recipient having to add the invite manually. On the other hand, I'm continually irritated by the lack of being able to sort and view all incoming mail the way I want to (This would take WAY too long to explain how exactly it's irritating)
Besides Eazel and Helix (two projects I have high hopes for, and I've already been impressed with Helix), how much work/thought has been put into the user interface? Is there anybody out there currently, specifically working on the UI for GNOME and programs for GNOME? We're also talking about more than just pretty graphics, but actual design of the interface, making it more intuitive (aka, easy enough so the novice user can figure it out, but still robust enough the expert can still do what (s)he wants).
On top of that, I wonder how versatility is being worked on as well? I remember reading one time, that a major complaint against Microsoft Office, was that it had grown to such massive proportions, that it was currently designing how office operations work (memo's, docs, meetings, etc.), instead of being designed towards how businesses are run (if that makes sense). In my mind, it'd be better to have an office suite you can configure towards your business model, instead of changing your business model to fit with your software (via plug-ins, modules, configuration, etc. of buzzwords)
Which do you consider more important - architectural purity or raw performance? How do you guage where to balance the two, if there is a conflict?
-- Peter
In other words: are you prepared to battle the forces of evil?
Get this cheese to sick bay!
What do you see as the future of GNOME and the different window toolkits currently available? Do you think that in the future, Qt and GTK might somehow create a standard which will allow a persistent look throughout all Qt/GTK applications? If not, how about compatible themes--they would provide a common feel which is usually one of the downfalls of Linux.
Also, what do you think about the porting of GNOME to other desktop platforms(Windows, BeOS, etc)? Would you rather concentrate on providing a stable desktop environment or making it more portable.
Thanks.
1) With LSB basically making life easier for software VARs (loki, oracle, etc.), gnome and kde need to have a common application setup (menu entries, etc). How close are we to that?
2) the gnome faq states that most libraries are under lgpl. Does this mean that some are GPL?? This really scares me. I think that if too many GPL libraries get out there, then linux will fail, and fast. If there are some, can we make it clear which ones they are?
RMS offers good reasons for GPL'ing libraries, but look what we end up with: No commercial apps use readline, which sucks for us users, and companies would probably fear linking against GPL libraries, in a what if posibility. IMHO, GPL libraries is the mess that get's people calling GPL viral.
While there are many applications suited to a point-and-click metaphor with windows and menus and buttons and text fields, there are also many - and perhaps more - where a written or spoken command interface (not just keyboard accelerators) is more efficient/productive and often also more natural/intuitive.
The classic Midnight Commander made progress in some ways towards providing both interfaces where appropriate, allowing a person to do most things through a command interface, and also to quickly/easily switch over to a more GUI-like interface for some operations without losing the state of their application session - especially their own mental state.
Considering, for example, the evolution(?) of the Midnight Commander user interface, how do you feel about the support in GNOME for developing, using, and integrating applications which have strong support for simple, flat, written command interfaces?
The main compatibility should be the file format.
Do Gnome and KDE has the same file format for their office suite ?
Do people in charge of filters work together ?
Miguel, I was glad to see the first integration of Corba with a desktop. Gnome is coming along well now with the apps getting cleaner all the time. Do you forsee the integration of an agent execution enviornment as well? Having a widespred execution enviornment would be nice n'est pas!!
Why are we trying to make the Linux interface so much like Windows? I like Gnome (despite the fact that it's kind of a pig {i know, flamebait}), but the current choice of desktops for Linux are all so much like Windows, and I'm kind of tired of Windows. I don't have any suggested alternative, unless it included body armor and serious weaponry, but I just thought maybe a new direction is called for, since we would like to get Linux to every desktop?
World Domination Rules...
"Before the wreck, I never knew how to type with my face."
Although this is historically a fairly religious issue, I think it's important because GNOME is one of the windows people look through to get a feel for "open source" software. And besides, it's been rattling around in my head ever since I first laid eyes on the GNOME source...
My question: What rationale do you have for putting a space between a function name and the open param in the function call?
eg:
result = my_func (arg1, arg2) instead of
result = my_func(arg1, arg2)
I've seen this used before, but no one (not even the people that do it) can give me a reason why.. I can think of many reasons not to, not the least of which is complexity with multiple function calls..
Can you shed some light on why you do this?
GNOME emulates the Windows GUI to some extent. This is not a bad thing if you copy the good and improve the bad. But what I see is that some known mistakes in the Windows GUI are being copied, for example the close button next to the maximize button. Are you trying to make GNOME look and feel like Windows to make it easier for people to switch? If so, do you think that once Linux is adopted by a majority it will be possible to change the GUI as to make it more efficient? Will you change the GUI?
Illegal Mnemonic Character
* Stay Simple *
How much programming experience is needed to start contributing to the GNOME project? How did you do to learn to hack? What projects did you work on that may have been necessary before starting the GNOME open source project? There are a ton of books, documentation and other open source projects at a person's fingertips to start learning to hack! What suggestions would you give to people whom want to start contributing to open source hacking?
Heath
beltranh@wenet.net
I mean really, if you wanted a kick ass dungeon dwelling fighter, you went with a dwarf. If you wanted a burrow dwelling thief, you went with a halfling. Why the hell would you ever pick a Gnome?
We heard news recently that Trolltech plans to release a Linux Qt that does not require X. To me, this sounds like a great idea.
Will Gnome follow? Has Cygnus/RedHat expressed any interest?
I also noticed that svgalib is depreciated in Red Hat 6.2 and will be removed. Does this leave the frame buffer as the only non-X device?
As an open source coder from a (third world|developing|whatever) country, could you comment on the prospects of the open source model as it relates to the zillions of folks in the world compared to the closed source proprietary stuff our of Redmond (and elsewhere)?
Specifically, it seems like places without a lot of cash can adopt one of three paths:
What the real status as you see it? And where is it going? And are the pointy haired jefes any wiser than their industrialized counterparts?
Everyone hates the way the panel works. To change its size, you have to go into a menu, when you should be able to grap an edge and move it. It's hard to put spacers in the panel.
It has been suggested that the panel be rewritten to be based on XML in order to facilitate layout and customizablilty. when will such work begin? Is backwards compatibility with applets an issue?
I ask not from a programmer's point of view, but from a user's: Will Mico ever talk to Orbit? Will Bonobo get down with KParts? How much work still needs to be done so that I can embed a Gnumeric table in a KWord document?
Kind Regards,
Kind Regards,
Bruce
First off, it's always entertaining to see or hear you speak. You have the artist's flair than keeps people excited and interested in a project.
/integrator customization? What kind of dividing line do you envision between such a standardized desktop, and how much leeway for integrators?
Question: Desktop standardization. Everyone wants it, but it has to be configurable as well. The current menuing, at least as shipped with RedHat, seems overly complicated, too many levels deep, and applications can be tough to find.
Has there been any progress towards a standard desktop, with a seperate area for vendor/developer
Thanks for keeping it fun,
S.D.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
How detatched should the user be from the comand prompt? Or put another way: The average windows user can get away with never seeing a dos promp during normal use, the would not know a dos command if it bit them on the behind. Should / will linux GUIs get to the point that you never have to open an xterm other than for the most arcane issues? Linux bassed embedded apps (set top boxes, etc.) shield the user from the details of the OS but should that be the case on a PC?
What do you think of future user interfaces, now that we are finally starting to approach the level of computing power necessary for more advanced interfaces such as voice control and 3D "desktops"? Where (or will) GNOME fit in the future?
"I will not be pushed, stamped, filed, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered! My life is my own." - The Prisoner
why the fsck did you pick C as your language of choice for GNOME? There are a ton of other languages out there that are much more suitable for GUI development than C. Do you plan on overhauling the whole GNOME code base at any time in another laguage (im sure C++ would be picked, whether or not it deserves to be)?
"There is no spoon"-Neo, The Matrix
"SPOOOOOOOOON!"-The Tick, The Tick
---
Can high-level window managers like Gnome bring a little typographical sanity to Un*x? I realize that the problems are on a much lower level, but could a Gnome-aware application eventually be able to use fonts of any type without having to worry about this font being TeX and that font being TrueType?
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
I currently use the Gnome + Enlightenment system as distributed through Red Hat 6.1. I have to say that I really like them a lot - desktop user interface quality is getting much closer to the SGI workstation I know and love (and also use).
What are the likely consequences of the schism that has occured between Gnome and Enlightenment? I'm not sure if I even understand the whole thing, but it looked to me like the Enlightenment folks were/are trying to create a more aesthetically pure graphical environment. What do you think of their direction, and are there plans to reconcile the two camps? Or were they really UN-reconciled to begin with?
Finally, I'm relieved to see Gnome gaining ground on KDE - I was sick of that group's slavish adherence to the Windows look and feel. It's nice to see that a different path remains viable.
D
----
A common complaint regarding the Gnome desktop is interface consistency. I've heard some people refer to it as being like a randomly mixed jumble of good ideas.
I'm a former OS/2 user, so, to an extent i know what it's like to use an interface where everything has a somewhat predictable "feel" - SOM objects act a particular way on the WorkplaceShell desktop, and you come to expect it.
It's because of that that I use plain old IceWM instead of Gnome. It's not the memory overhead, it's not the processing overhead, it's the feeling that it's a bunch of unrelated methods for displaying data all on the same screen.
Are there plans to come up with a set of design guidelines, like Apple had in the early MacOS days to define how the interface of a particular module should act?
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I have recently been working on a project that uses Motif widgets to do process control displays. We have experienced many problems that seem to stem with compatibility between Motif and Gnome, particularly in the area of colormaps. We have also seen problems with network bandwidth being almost continual while running Gnome, which seems to make it unusable over slow X-term connections.
Though this isn't a proper forum for solving a specific problem, I would like to know the following: How big of a development priority does Gnome put on support for legacy applications and legacy APIs, such as Motif? Also, what about support for slower connections and machines? Is the development priority more forward looking (new machines, new applications), or regression based (old machines, old applications), or do you strive for a balance between the two?
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
In light of the fact that gnome seems to becomming the default method of setting up a modern GNU/Linux machine I ask this:
Is there a formal method of creating a scalable GUI interface that will work well on almost anything but still be gnome? Other WMs have done this to a considerable extent and perhaps a little better being more leightweight. My first impressions from running the latest debs avaible was that perhaps it's still a little primitive and perhaps a little more shall we say corpulent than I care for. Also most WMs seem to be reinventing the wheel and duplicating a great deal of functionality of others.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
GNOME has made a lot of advancements on the "traditional" interface front (I mean all of Xerox-derived WIMP land), both in the "easy (or efficient) to use" and "easy to learn" departments. I find case after case, subtle and not-so-subtle, where GNOME is markedly better with its main competition, Windows and Mac. My favorite example of this is Evolution -- can't wait to try it. Evolution may finally tear me away from textmode mail clients....mmmm, query-able databases :)
:) but i'm doing fundamentally the same things, and none of the various ways of configuring things (GNOME + sawmill = many ways of configuring things) have so far seemed particularly radical or any more efficient.
....
My question is, where do you see GNOME as fitting in to more groundbreaking user interface research? Not that anyone expects the GNOME team to start pondering lexicons for 3D interfaces (or are you contemplating such things!?!). But there's lots of crazy stuff that still goes on in traditional, 2D interface design. A lot of recent research has been in terms of PDA interface design. Do you see GNOME, with its obvious advantages of modularity and scalability, as having a role to play in that arena?
And what about fundamental changes to the way we use our desktops? I for one haven't really changed at all since the days when I used fvwm1. Sure, things have gotten much prettier, and more applet-filled
How 'bout the rest of the folks? Anyone done anything truly funky with sawmill? A Turing-complete wm is a fun place to start
When was it exactly that you knew (or had the feeling) that GNOME was a project that was going somewhere? Free software projects start with no guarantee of popularity, and for every GNOME, there's 1000 totally unknown applications.
Was there a particular application or library or component of GNOME after which you knew GNOME was going to be successful or in general "something special"? What did the GNOME project do that prevented it from sinking into obscurity like so many other free software projects?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Printing and printer support is a major issue with the linux desktop. How do you plan to address this in Gnome in the future? Or do you believe that it should be addressed in a lower level than at the desktop?
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Just how well do you and the KDE guys REALLY get along....don't you GNOME people ever just want to get together all the Nerf gear you can and stage an all out war?
Seriously though, how much communication really does go on between the two camps? I would imagine at least some must if you and the KDE camp are to maintain interoperatability.
Miguel,
:)
My question actually has to do with Evolution, the upcoming Outlook killer..
Will GNOME serve (Evolution) information to MAPI clients? Would be a nice way to get rid of those Exchange servers sitting in most companies server room...
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
visual impairments
mobility impairments
hearing impairments
thanks
--- eric
The problem, of course, is that the printing (usually ) goes through ghostscript, while the screen fonts are handled by X11, which operates independently of ghostscript. However, given a screen ( ie X11 font ), there is no canonical way to get the corresponding outline file (pf[ab]|ttf) or the detailed metric information ( such as kerning ). This problem is quite deep in some sense, because the fact that the X client and X server run on different machines means they may not have the same typefaces available. In short, Linux's right hand does not know what it's left hand is doing when it comes to font management.
Applications such as Star Office and Applixware "solve" this problem by using a text configuration file that basically consists of a catalogue of mappings from screen fonts ( in particular, XFLDs ) and printing fonts ( including outline files, metric files and the printer font name ). While these solutions are all more or less satisfactory in their own right, there are too many of them -- we need one GUI font manager that all apps can share.
It is very unfortunate that there are several incompatible solutions to the problem, because it means that the Linux user needs to install their typefaces once for each WYSIWYG app they need. A standard would be a very good thing. Personally, I like the idea of a well documented XML configuration file that could be used by any app regardless of the GUI API used.
In conclusion, my question is this -- What are GNOMEs plans for attacking the WYSIWYG typography problem ? And will the solution be GTK/GNOME specific ?
Do you see object oriented deisgn and implementation playing any part in GNOME's future?
The architecture of GTK/GNOME is technically somewhat object oriented, however, without all of the benifits of an object oriented language (at least the parts written in C)
It would seem to me that as the scope and size of the GNOME project increases, it would be increasingly advantageous to use C++ or Java with much more CORBA support and more structured design (UML design models?) for reference by the developers. Standard components and frameworks would also fit well into this type of extension.
Do you see GNOME increasing in complexity and size to the point where these types of development techniques would be required?
It seems that among Gnome, KDE and the various other projects around there is a substantial amount of duplicated effort in developing applications that pretty much do the same thing. Many new programs have been developed just to add a new interface on to application logic which (for the most part) has been written before. I think it would be nice if the interface was abstracted from the application logic and then the user could opt to build it for whatever desktop environment they choose (granted, not an easy task). Do you see this as an issue and if so, are Gnome developers working on any solutions?
Now then, how do you think GNOME will evolve in terms of usability? GNOME has certainly conquered the stability mountain (anyone who argues otherwise probably isn't using release versions), which is almost certainly a side-effect of the Free Software development model. However, while Free Software is generally powerful and easy to use for experienced users, it's not generally the kind of thing a novice can operate easily.
I remember hearing about a "usability group" or something like that for GNOME, to concentrate on interface issues. This is a great idea, but I haven't heard much about this group since then. Are modern user-interface issues a concern for GNOME, or is it mainly trying to match the interface conventions of other popular GUIs (like NeXT, MacOS and Windows)?
Thanks for your time,
-zack
Hola, Miguel
As a fellow mexican I want to know...what do you think is the impact of OSS in our country? I know all about the project of putting a whole bunch of linux boxens in schools, so that's nice, but...what about developers? I don't really remember more than a couple of names of mexican developers besides yours, which, in a way, also means that we don't have as much advocacy/knowledge about OSS in Mexico as we should (the MS tax kills easier here than in the US, for obvious reasons).
I guess as part of that question...what do you think should be done to "push" more developers into OSS here in Mexico?
Gracias por un excelente trabajo para todos nosotros.
Vox.
Pain is the gift of the gods, and I'm the one they chose as their messanger...
It seems that the GNOME effort is throwing an awful lot of resources at a component-ized architecture (Bonobo) which aims to do for *nix what COM and ActiveX/OLE did for Windows. And yet it just doesn't seem necessary. I know it's possible for me to insert an Excel spreadsheet into a Word document, but I haven't used that feature in recent memory. None of the documents I exchange with co-workers do, either. Is Bonobo really very necessary? What does bonobo bring to the Linux desktop that users are crying out for, and how is its heavy consumption of development resources justified?
The arguments over Linux Desktop adoption are well know. IMHO, I agree with the strength in diversity reasoning
and WOULDN'T like to see GNOME/KDE/Other merge developement regardless of the benefits.
Dispite this, do you think WM developers would work towards a set of interface or API standards (to facilitate
interoperability) or would this place to great a restiction on innovation and the developement process?
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
I know Eazel is going to be integrating Gecko into their desktop somehow, are there any plans for GNOME to do a similar thing?
Personally, I would like a few things to come out of such an implementation:
1. An awesome XML-based help system that is also tied into online resources about Linux in general.
2. GNOME apps that can use XUL for their GUI.
3. Integrated file manager/web browser (you probably seen this coming), but I think such a combo can be used in a much better way than Microsoft does theirs with Windows/IE.
a. Better search and file management functions.
b. Better customizability, including tools to let the user alter their file manager in many ways.
c. Better blending of local files and network/Internet files into one interface.
Also, I would like to see an XML-based customization panel that allows a person to search through a compilation of quality GUI customization files, including icons, fonts, and window managers (and their related)
Hmm, well, that is all I can think of right now. I know that Mozilla is not GPL, but I hope that will not get in the way of people using their great technologies.
EC
"...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
EverCode
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
I love GNOME, but one thing that I really miss is good integration of sound. Let me be clear... I'm not just talking about blips and burps to coincide with user clicks on the standard window widgets... I want it to be easy for application developer to add in audio aspects to their applications UI presentation.
For example-- if I was developing a word processor, I'd want it to be straightforward for me the developer to add a pleasing click with each word that is highlighted.
I understand there are some technical problems to be solved here, but there are more than enough sharp people working on GNOME to make good sound UI happen-- if it is made a priority. I admit that I'm pretty ignorant as to how GNOME is approaching sound. Could you fill me in (and hopefully reassure me)?
-dbm
When I first started using Linux (about a year ago), what impressed me the most was that you weren't locked into a single, all-encompassing solution. Everything was (and is) so modular. Tools like grep, ls, cat, head, etc. and the use of pipes just seemed so refreshing to me, someone who had been using MS-DOS (including Win95) for as long as I can remember. Even in the GUI, there was the display server, the font server, the window manager...
I see desktop environments as being very contradictory to the traditional UNIX philosophy of "do one thing, but do it very well". We have the two leading desktop environments, Gnome and KDE, which are rapidly expanding to include everything under the sun. Is an office suite really part of a desktop environment? Is an email client? Terminal emulator? Web browser?
Personally, I think the answer is no. I want the freedom to choose my desktop shell, my email client, my web browser, and my office suite.
To get to the point, my question is this: do you believe that the notion of a "Complete Desktop Environment" contradicts the traditional UNIX philosophy? If so, why do you feel the need to change something that has obviously worked so well for so long?
If you would like to know, I would personally prefer that Gnome consist of the panel and shell ONLY, and then we could have something like Helix which could package the panel and shell with a nice browser (branded mozilla maybe), window manager (sawmill or e), etc. I definitely believe there is a need for an open-source office suite, but I think the development should go on outside of Gnome or KDE core.
I am curious about other people's opinions on this as well, email me with any thoughts...
--
Do you think that GNOME and KDE should attempt to become more "windows-ish" to foster familiarity and thereby tempt more desktop users to the Linux platform or do you believe that both projects should continue innovation that sweeps along the current Linux user but may exclude or intimidate the new user?
Your ceaseless work is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who