Looking Ahead at GNOME 2

Able writes "This is a good article that will teach you how to use the new and improved libraries available with GNOME 2 so that you can write your own Nautilus view, and panel applets. It also provides you with the understanding to compile a few sample GTK+ 2 programs that will give you a good understanding of GTK+ 2's many improvements over GTK+ 1."

Comments

Higher numbers faster please..

[PopeAlien]

..Geez.. 2.0? Thats no good.. I mean look at windows for instance - Its way past 3.0, past 98.0.. I think its even past version 2000 now! How is linux ever going to competitive with such small version numbers?

Yay!

[Burgundy Advocate]

Hey kids! Now it's time to pretend that everyone here on Slashdot actually develops programs!

"Yeah, last night I was really tring to get the object-oriented cobol bindings to gtk+ working but then in a fluke there was this gcc bug that caused my userspace code to go wonky and install the wrong x colormap which recursed until the system locked up. It was righteous."

I don't know where open source would be without the fine users of Slashdot and all the wonderful programs they develop.

Using "ClearType" with XFree86, GNOME, KDE

[AirLace]

While they are working on basic AntiAliasing, you should try out ClearType [microsoft.com]. It improves font quality up to 800% on LCD screens. The antialiasing level is also adjustable... One caveat: you need WinXP [microsoft.com] to run it...

Rubbish. XFree86 has supported what Microsoft calls "ClearType" for over a year.

The method, called sub-pixel rendering, is designed to work with LCD panels. This is why Microsoft are pushing for its use on laptops and palmtop devices. On standard CRTs, it holds no advantage over standard greyscale anti-aliasing.

A single pixel of an LCD screen is actually composed of three "sub-pixels": one red, one green, and one blue (R-G-B). Taken together this sub-pixel triplet makes up what we've traditionally thought of as a single pixel. This means that an LCD screen boasting a horizontal resolution of 800 whole pixels is actually composed of 800 red, 800 green, and 800 blue sub-pixels interleaved together (R-G-B-R-G-B-R-G-B ...) to form a linear array of 2400 single-color sub-pixels. That's where I guess you got your 800% from.

"ClearType" can be enabled in XFree86 versions 4.01 and greater by modifying /etc/X11/XftConfig. Just append the following line:


match edit rgba = rgb;


An in-depth look into sub-pixel rendering support in XFree86 is available here.

Re:Worried Gnome User.....

[Skeezix]

I am a Gnome user, and athough I am NOT a sky is falling person, KDE seems to be making much more usefull strides

Which strides is KDE making that are more useful than the ones GNOME is making? I'm curious.

I am also concerned about the Ximian fork, (even though I use it) How long till XImian hack up all the libs to work for their effort and how compatible will it be ?

Ximian does not produce a "fork" of GNOME. Ximian packages a "distribution" of GNOME and makes it easy to download. They tweak some minor things such as artwork, splash screens, etc, but it's not a fork of GNOME. I don't think you understand Ximian's relationship to GNOME. I suggest you spend some time on irc.gnome.org in #gnome and spend some time getting to know folks better.

Does it seem to anyone else latley Gnome is becoming a throw in everything and if the kitchen sink dosent work its OK, or is it just me.

That is not at all how it works. We're very particular about what we put in the release. I suggest you spend some time reading the archives of mailing lists such as desktop-devel. Much work has gone into making GNOME 2 more usable, accessible, functional, and a better development platform while keeping it solid.

Admittedly Gnome 2 has some nice stuff but how much will be functional by first release

We won't release if it's not functional :)

-jamin