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GNOME's Text Editor gedit 'No Longer Maintained', Needs New Developers (gnome.org)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In a post to the gedit mailing list, Sébastien Wilmet states that gedit is no longer maintained and asks "any developer interested to take over the maintenance of gedit?"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?
maintaining a great piece of open source software?
It was ok once upon a time. It's a UI disaster now.
I don't gedit.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.
Just wait for systemd-geditd
A Slashdot commenter predicted the demise of gedit almost three years ago. The core of this argument was the following:
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.
For me, "Pluma" is the real gedit anyway.
One of the first things when I upgraded from GNOME 2.0 to Mate was to add an alias. Too bad that it uses GTK+ 3.0 now though, with the crap scrollbar and the annoying smooth scrolling that can't be turned off.
Pluma is still actively maintained, as is the core of both forks: GtkSourceView.
The rest of GNOME 3's "gedit" is specific to GNOME 3. Let it die!
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
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!
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.)
Emacs and/or Vim.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?