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GNOME's Text Editor gedit 'No Longer Maintained', Needs New Developers (gnome.org)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In a post to the gedit mailing list, Sébastien Wilmet states that gedit is no longer maintained and asks "any developer interested to take over the maintenance of gedit?"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?
I've used Geany for years. Active development, lots of useful plugins, capable of being built with GTK2 or GTK3, etc.
Wait... Could we use Emacs as an init system too? It's got a heavyweight scripting system and even a half way usable editor.
The short answer is yes. Even some years ago there were several pages on the practice. However, it's a dumb idea, because you need a static emacs. It's better to use sysvinit (or busybox, or whatever) for init, and just use emacs as the shell if you must.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
gedit is written in C. There is a little bit of Objective-C for Mac OS X support. Then plugins are written in Vala or Python.
Why is this rant-worthy? IMHO Python is a great choice for writing plugins. And for a while GNOME was pushing Vala so that is not a shock.
Seems like Sebastien Wilmet is nakedly trying to encourage people to want gedit to die. After the language rant he says that helping gedit also helps some guy who sells gedit on the Mac. He also rants that gedit ought to be a super-thin shell around his new project Tepl, libraries for text editor features. This is a weird and barely-concealed agenda.
I am not going to volunteer for this, but it's because I am busy, not because I am scared of a project with 4 languages.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Actually, MSPaint is being discontinued and people still love it.
Then again, MS broke it in Windows 7 and literally never fixed it since then. Go ahead, zoom 2x or higher, and try and adjust the canvas size by shrinking it inward. The second you let go, it actually shrinks further in.
Also, Microsoft discontinues SUPPORT of products before they even discontinue them. Everything has to be Office 365. Got Office 2010? It'll work with CRM 2016. Except it won't, because you need the CRM Plugin for Outlook which DOESN'T support 2010.
BUT WAIT. It also only supports IE10 and IE11. No Edge browser. Wait. WHAT? (And God forbid they support competitors browsers on this thing called The Internet which is supposed to be designed for compatibility.) Even funnier is, when we were supporting a client, we had to escalate to the (India) Microsoft CRM team, who then instructed us to "Try using it in Chrome" when IE kept breaking.
Microsoft is a complete shitshow of compatibility. Half of it is intentional, the other half is their company is in complete disarray. Every year I support their products, I lose a little more respect for them. I have written page-long replies on Slashdot before detailing my horror with their lack of actual compatibility between products. (Like how you can make textfields in SQL that are too long that will crash Microsoft's import/export tool. So you can basically never migrate certain databases without insane workarounds like 3rd-party ODBC drivers.)
Yet he is speaking the truth.
Gnome changes in 3 were UNWANTED. Fedora lost almost 2/3 of it users with that and systemd.
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,
This is and isn't true. It's true now but I remember the age when SCO and MS were fighting tooth and nail to destroy Linux. They were a lot more destructive than the most pigheaded designers or developers. The reason that errant project leaders seem to be the problem these days is because the SCO threat was destroyed and Microsoft have simply accepted that Linux exists and have given up fighting (no doubt due to internal changes during the late 00's), people who don't remember those times forget just how much of a threat they were. The fact there is still a FOSS community is because these threats were destroyed almost a decade ago.
In that respect it is a good thing the worst thing about the open source community is that we have developers making unwanted changes. In a way this is good as it spurs new projects but that's a useful side effect to a bad thing, like the way that a bad gastro bug promotes weight loss. I think the biggest threat to open source is apathy. We've rested on our laurels too much, become too comfortable and now we have another company rising that threatens to be worse than Microsoft... and many here herald their rise with celebrator cheer.
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
Not strictly true. The worst mistake the Firefox developers made was not taking the mobile device market seriously.
The other problem they have is one that Open Source railed against for years under the iron fisted reign of Microsoft... pre-installed browsers. Every Android device comes with Chrome, a lot of personal computers come with Chrome pre-installed. A lot of Chrome's user base is there because they've thought to use another browser, this is why Chrome has the lions share of the market (50% +). Safari is the same, but restricted to Apple devices which is why it's in 2nd place with 14% of the market. In fact in the case of most Apple devices, users have no choice but to use Safari. This is why I consider Apple to be the new Microsoft... and they aren't nearly as... shall we say "nice" as Microsoft were in the 90's and 00's.
Apple is now the threat, not just to Open Source, but to almost all the freedom we've come to expect from computers. Imagine if Microsoft prohibited any other browser but Edge in Windows 11, or forced us to go to the Microsoft store to get software because we couldn't install it from any other source... We'd nail MS to the wall, well if there were anything left to nail to the wall after their partners and major clients were finished with them... So why do we accept this behaviour from Apple?
If your answer to that question is anything but "I don't and nor should anyone else" then you are part of the problem. Apple are already committing the same excesses that made Microsoft so hated and despised in the 90's... but in a far more extreme form and are being celebrated for it. Apple abides open source as long as they get what they want, but what they want is total control so you're gambling that they'll come for open source last. Fortunately, we still have an option and powerful opposition to Apple, unfortunately it's Google. Much as we relied on IBM to destroy SCO, not because IBM cared about FOSS, but because IBM and FOSS shared a common enemy, FOSS and in fact anyone who wants to have any form of control over their computer is now depending on Google... and as much as I dislike a monoculture, Google's is far less restrictive and destructive than Apple's.
No doubt the fanboys are frothing at the mouth, ready to mod this into oblivion but this needs to be said and I will not be scared of saying it because it offends a few fanboys.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.