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GNOME's Text Editor gedit 'No Longer Maintained', Needs New Developers (gnome.org)
AmiMoJo brings news about gedit, the default text editor for GNOME:
In a post to the gedit mailing list, Sébastien Wilmet states that gedit is no longer maintained and asks "any developer interested to take over the maintenance of gedit?" Just in case you were considering it, he warns "BTW while the gedit core is written in C (with a bit of Objective-C for Mac OS X support), some plugins are written in Vala or Python. If you take over gedit maintenance, you'll need to deal with four programming languages (without counting the build system). The Python code is not compiled, so when doing refactorings in gedit core, good luck to port all the plugins (the Python code is also less "greppable" than C). At least with Vala there is a compiler, even if I would not recommend Vala."
Sébastien's comments were surrounded by a <rant-on-languages> tag, but they're still crying out for some serious discussion. Any Slashdot readers want to share their own insights on Python, some fond thoughts on gedit, or suggestions for maintaining a great piece of open source software?
Sébastien's comments were surrounded by a <rant-on-languages> tag, but they're still crying out for some serious discussion. Any Slashdot readers want to share their own insights on Python, some fond thoughts on gedit, or suggestions for maintaining a great piece of open source software?
just let it die
maintaining a great piece of open source software?
It was ok once upon a time. It's a UI disaster now.
If I took over this project I'd rip all that shit out and simply use Lua for everything. Developers are so stupid.
And now you have five programming languages in gedit.
Exactly. I can keep on using Microsoft Office Accounting, Encarta, MapPoint, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Messenger, Microsoft Expression Design, FrontPage, Picture It!, Microsoft Money, and many other professional grade tools secure in the knowledge that with a huge commercial software company behind them, they'll still be actively developed and supported for many years to come.
Long time Slashdot readers will know how it was always Microsoft, and then later on SCO, who were accused of causing harm to Linux distributions, and open source software in general.
Yet it's now becoming more and more apparent that it's not outside influences that are most harmful to Linux and open source, but rather it's the open source projects that destroy themselves by making idiotic and unwanted changes, which in turn causes the best users to flee to alternatives.
This gedit nonsense is just a small part of the GNOME project destroying itself through the disastrous GNOME 3 released. GNOME 3 is a complete regression compared to the GNOME 2 user experience, forcing its best users and developers to seek alternatives. It wasn't Microsoft that made this happen. It wasn't SCO that made this happen. It was the GNOME project itself!
Firefox is another example. Years of unwanted changes forced on its users by the Firefox developers have caused these users to flee to Chrome and other browsers. Now Firefox has only about 5% of the browser market. That puts it well below Chrome, well below Safari, and well below UC Browser for Android. Even Opera Mini, at 3.26%, has about as many users as Firefox 54's 3.75%! Now Firefox has become an irrelevant, fourth- or fifth-tier browser that's ignored by users and web developers alike. It wasn't Microsoft that made this happen. It wasn't SCO that made this happen. It was the Firefox project itself!
The Linux distros that have forced systemd on their users is another example. Debian was once known as a solid, robust, trustworthy Linux distro. But it has lost that reputation now that it has switched to systemd. Lots of users have reported problems with systemd, as seen by the bug reports and mailing list postings begging for help with problems affecting systemd. Many of these Linux users have had to switch to FreeBSD, macOS, or even Windows in order to get a reliable OS. It wasn't Microsoft that made this happen. It wasn't SCO that made this happen. It was these Linux distros themselves!
The worst enemy of open source projects isn't Microsoft or SCO. The worst enemy of open source projects are their own leadership and developers!
The examples you give are terrible. The reason these programs are not being made anymore is mostly that nobody was using them. Dropping support for gedit is more akin to Microsoft dropping support for Notepad. While I don't think Notepad is all that great, it is used very widely. While I think the wording of the GP statement makes it an obvious troll, I think he has a point. You see a lot of churn in some Linux distributions, where programs and important subsystems are frequently replaced by others which are not clearly superior. I think this is because developers working for free would rather work on their own code than fix programs made by someone else, which is perfectly understandable. It doesn't make for a consistent user experience though, and makes it painful to keep documentation up to date. I think this is what is going to happen in this case too.
Writing Gtk-based applications is about as much fun as root canal without anesthesia. It is no wonder that popular open source apps are migrating to Qt.
Emacs and/or Vim.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
View -> Toolbar to disable the toolbar. The default layout reminds me of nano, which is targeted toward people who might not want to learn how to use it.
Some things get to the point where they serve their purpose well, and they don't need changing any more. People don't invent new flatware to eat with; companies keep coming out with new patterns, but everything is pretty much the same size and weight and angles, and forks usually have four tines, and the designs are pretty well set. The FOSS community seems to think that constant change is good; most products in the real world stabilize.