Slashdot Mirror
GNOME Development Site
An anonymous tipster contributed the following "To make it easier for hackers to write GNOME apps
and make contributions to GNOME,
the GNOME developers have just opened up the GNOME
developers' site, where you can find brain dumps of their knowledge on the
GNOME architecture, as well white papers, tutorials, FAQs, and web-browseable source code. " The site really does contain a lot
of good documentation, and actually looks quite nice, I think.
True - everything will be twice as fast, but getting to the point where twice as fast (or slow) of something tiny doesn't make much difference.
.1 sec .2 sec for the same thing
For a wild-guess example:
1999 cpu/buss:
windows gui renders something in 1 sec
X takes 2 seconds for the same thing
(the difference is noticeable)
2004 cpu/buss:
windows gui renders something in
X takes
(the difference is still by 2, but to the user it's so tiny it doesn't matter)
Back when PC/Workstations cost several thousand dollars it may have been cost effective to have one box with several monitors running from it - but we're at a point where you can buy SEVERAL killer AMD boxs with monitors for less than what that one box cost ten years ago.
A display system with more emphasis on performance for a single user has become more important than the ability to save money by running several monitors from one box.
But what if X had widgets defined in the X protocol and they sucked or were limited in some functionality? I agree that having the application break the widgets down to the basic drawing primitives supported by the protocol, send them to the X server (either over the net or via shared memory), and then have the X server draw those primitives is a bottle neck.
Why not define an extension, similar to the XIE or the direct draw extensions where the X server can load shared libraries for the widget sets being used? That way whenever a widget needs to process a redraw event, it just passes the information needed to the X server and the server uses the widget's libraries to perform the drawing of the primities. The widget information would be in shared memory for local apps and transferred via the network for remote apps. The widget set could just transmit the data needed by the X server when the widget changes state to minimize network traffic. When an application is started, the X server could be queried to see if it supports this extension, and if so, then queried if it supports the native drawing of the current widget set. If this isn't the case, everything would act like it does now. But if it did support the widget set, on the app side, the widget would just have to send a message to draw it, and the X server would use the widget library routines in 'server-mode' to draw the requested widget.
This does have the disadvantage of making the server take up more memory, open security holes, or if there is a bug in the server side widget library, it could crash your program as well as the server or just cause a memory leak that requires you to restart X every so often. The latter case has happened in a few versions of X. I remember having to periodically shut down X on my workstation a few years ago because of a memory leak in X that became very noticable if one was manipulating large images.
Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:
...just make sure we cover all the cliches.
OK, so extrasolar didn't hold his punches, but he makes a good point.
Perhaps I should follow up with something like:
We need a Beowulf cluster of the developer.gnome sites.
But here's a better question:
Look at the site. Ask yourself: what isn't here that I need.
Compare it to some other developer connections, like Sun's Java site and Netscape's rat-nest of a developer page.
Now ask of yourself how can I get involved to provide what I think is missing.
Documentation will really help with the acceptance of Linux, I think.
-----------------------------
Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
LinuxPPC comes with both KDE and Gnome in the installer.
The point is, that GNOME *does* suck. It's not even as good as the Mac for GUI development, and that's pretty sad.
From the site:
"For localization, GNOME uses the gettext() interface. gettext() works by using the strings in the original language (usually English) as the keys by which the translations are looked up. All the strings marked as needing translation are extracted from the source code with a helper program. Human translators then translate the strings into each target language. "
THE STRINGS ARE EMBEDDED IN THE CODE! Christ, this is a Nightmare to try to internationalize, and it doesn't address at *all* the fact that there's more to internationalization than converting strings!
In NeXTStep (ten years old and counting!) an app can have multiple co-resident UI's, selecting the appropriate presentation based on the user's language preference.
Didn't the GNOME folks look at the current state of the art before setting out to write yet another X-windoze disaster?
Linux is for servers. If Linux manages to jettison X-Windows (Yes, I call it X-Windows, mostly to irritate its proponents) and come up with a decent graphics architecture/GUI/windowing system/end-user application model, then it will become a challenger to Windoze. It's not there yet, and it won't *get* there, until toys like X and Gnome are abandoned.
-jcr
There has been a central point for Gnome developers to get
information for some time - looking at core dumps. Is this what
the book is about, then?
Gnome sucks. Several months ago (May) I installed Gnome 1.x whatever.
Supposedly with a lot of bugfixes on top of the initial 1.0 release.
Most things worked, but the performance was terrible.
Of course it came with "E" as the designated window manager.
I got a very negative impression of Enlightenment because its
performance was so degraded by Gnome and the Gnome people
kept blaming crashes on E instead of Gnome's sorry code.
More recently, I reinstalled E without Gnome, and it works beautifully.
It has *never* crashed except when installing some new,
experimental themes and even then E trapped the segmentation
violation and allowed me to restart X.
I still have some of the Gnome libraries installed because
sadly quite a few Gtk programs require them. They should not
need the Gnome libs, though. They don't use CORBA, and why
the hell sould a program unnecessarily be linked to the Gnome
control panel and require ESound (which E itself dosn't even
require?) Why should you need sound to copy a file?
This really is sort of a conspiracy - to make Gtk apps which really
don't need to use Gnome dependent on it. Gtk developers -
please don't Gnomify your apps. Miguel should rot in hell for
crashifying applications by encouraging developers to link them to
buggy Gnome code.
Gnome does not just have bugs. It is incompetently designed
and the problems go much deeper than what can be fixed by
changing a line of code here or there. The whole design is
flawed and most of what is in Gnome is there for political reasons
and to put "hooks" into apps to make Gnome the centeral point
of control and to make everything dependent on itself. That's
pure greed and power hungriness. Not good code.
What for? Of what use is the crappy control panel? All the
Linux desktop needs is some way for apps to more easily
share information and commonly accepted drag and drop
protocols, etc. And more mature apps for end users - not
just for developers and sysadmins.
And it's been there for over a year...
Anyone else unable to connect to
developer.gnome.org? Anyone connect successfully yet?
I can't even access www.gnome.org today.
Yes, but this has already been done for Perl and lisp, which are more commonly used on Unix.
Didn't NeWS implement something like this - the idea of an extensible server ?
-- I'm drinking myself to sleep again...
If you don't like ACs then raise your threshold so you don't see them. Don't bitch and whine.
THE STRANGER
by Rudyard Kipling
The stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk -
I cannot feel his mind.
I see his face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.
The stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I can not tell what powers control -
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But at least they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And what ever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf -
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936
Wasn't that what guile was for ? or has that fallen by the wayside ?
The reason that X is bad is not becuase of its features, but becuase of it's kludginess. The reason they guy said that Linux is for servers is becuase X is causing horrible problems with its bloat in local applications. Look at how people had to come up with LibGGI and DRI to bypass some of the X bloat. Most people don't need network transparancy, they don't want a windowing system that hurts local performance by using TCP/IP locally. A clean, light local windowing/graphics system is what Linux needs to penetrate the home/workstation market and thats what that person was lamenting about. And don't even think of saying that X is not bloated, it responds slower than Win2k on my computer (PII 412 64MB)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It won't be that way if intel gets it's way.
Intel will push it's hardest to get companies to design and implement ever more complex GUI's and OS'es.
Microsoft also needs to create new "features" (read: bloat) which means render time will not really drop. That is if software is going to start to catch up w/ hardware again.
Much of this bloat we can do without, such as "Active Desktop" (who the hell thought that one up?), and so we can narrow the gap between X and Windoze if we do not implement these utterly useless, buzzwordy "features".
Microsoft may have an ace up it's sleeve w/ 3D GUI's however, and with the current state of 3D on linux, they'll be years ahead.
Hopefully OpenGL can bypass the bloat of X (Like SVGAlib??) and we can have a fast, kickass 3D GUI.
That is, if we ever get accelerated OGL.
On a side note, Gnome AND KDE must be horribly unoptimized, on my P200 w/64 megs of ram, I can hardly TYPE in Kedit and such. Are KDE and Gnome made for >=P2??
I was wondering when you guys would post that. Perhaps I should've submitted it days ago when I found out. :)
That is Kick ASS!
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Don't know about '98, but GNOME runs just fine over Windows 95. (You're just going about it wrong -- you've got to start with "format" rather than "pkunzip".)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Check out www.linuxnewbie.org
Looks like a good site for newcomers to Linux.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Further, although the HTML output generated from the source documents does not all contain the license information (some does, for example mine does), it is included in the source forms of the documentation - which is the way people actually modify it.
I don't see what is wrong with attributing hosting facilities either. It wouldn't be there if SOME company didn't pay the bills. Why is RedHat so evil?
Don't yanks think about anything but sueing each other? Its only making the lawyers rich! Anyway, this would generally fall into the 'fair use' category.Maybe there needs to be more explicit legal information, but that is not terribly difficult to add.
__// `Thinking is an exercise to which all too few brains
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
This guy clearly hasn't even read the website, or any of the information on it. Nowhere do I see any information whose copyright is held by Red Hat. It IS all clearly marked with copyright information though, sometimes held by the author, often with the copyright turned over to the FSF. Either way, it clearly doesn't fall to Red Hat, nor does it say anywhere that "all rights are reserved."
I think this is a pretty clear-cut case of lying FUD. I recommend some moderator knocks his post down to -1.
If you use undump on a brain dump, do you get :P
a working brain? Can I do a backtrace on people's
brain dumps?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
While we're on DE's, I'm a total Linux newbie and I got LinuxPPC 5 for my Mac. It comes with WindowMaker by default, can I replace it with Gnome/KDE, or are those only only for x86 Linuxes?
Please, no one e-mail that address. This person obviously is trying to get everyone to send hatemail to that guy, presumably his enemy.
I'm glad that Gnome finally has a good API reference document.
It's just an abstraction of the video framebuffer. As a matter of fact, there is an X server that runs on top of GGI.
It's called KScript and it's in the CVS. It will be part of KDE2.0.
1. Linux sucks.
2. Linux uses outdated Unix technology.
1. KDE sucks.
2. KDE looks a lot like Windows.
1. GNOME sucks.
2. GNOME uses technology similar to Windows.
1. Diplomacy sucks.
2. The minority has no voice.
1. The Space program sucks.
2. It uses money from the national bugdet.
1. World Peace sucks.
2. The arms contracters don't make as much money.
Gee, this is easy. I guess everything really sucks then.
And I hate to see people bash GPLed software. We don't make fun of Windows because it crashes, we make fun of it because it doesn't get fixed. Gnome is getting fixed very rapidly because of it's open source nature. Same thing goes for KDE.
I think we can do without your kind of advocacy (Hint: You aren't changing anyone's minds).
Oh, and about Miguel's misquote that was tooken out of context. It was a very good compromise, otherwise KDE or Gnome would have had to change to interoperate with the other. Quit expecting developers to speak like diplomats!
--
Well, there are python bindings for GNOME (don't know about glade). That's getting pretty close.
In a couple years when we have ghz-range cpus with comparatively fast m/b buss, will the speed difference between the windows gui and X that we hear so much about be rendered moot?
I was wondering this for a while now, anyone know?
--
Man nothing brings 'em out like GNOME or RedHat. Maybe slashdot should put the topic of AC posting to a vote.
Moving on to the topic:
I can't see how anyone could view this in a negative light. More documentation makes for better programs, and some is better than none. Atleast there now is a central point for GNOME developers to look for information, in an organized matter. Keep up the good work GNOME developers.
I don't see what all the fuss is about. I started using X in 1988 ( I think it was X10 at the time) and it's made a lot of improvements since then. It's funny to hear ppl complaining that X is bloated and slow on their PIIs with accelerated video cards. No, X11R3 on a Sun3 w/ 8MB was slow. There were several companies at the time selling X accerlator hardware at the time because X performance was slow. The code cleanup in X11R4 helped greatly and made a lot of those products unnecessary.
People gripe about having network support in X, but that's one of the best things about it. You can have several inexpensive X terminals hooked up to a fast server or two and display GUI applications from several different locations. NT is just trying to do that and as usual, Gates & Co. think they've invented something revolutionary. We've been able to do that for over a decade!!!
XFree86 4.0 is supposed to be more modular and faster. If you don't mind proprietary software, some of the commercial X servers are faster for many video cards. In my experience, X usually runs slow when: