GNOME Summary, July 25 - August 1

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

This is the GNOME Summary for July 25-August 1. It summarizes development
activity and news.

=============================================================
  Table of Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------

 1)  Jim Cape heads usability-tuning initiative
 2)  GNOME 1.0.50 planned
 3)  Fix the Window Manager
 4)  gnome-libs and gnome-utils 1.0.12
 5)  Realtime CVS tracking
 6)  Hacking Activity
 7)  New and Updated Software

==============================================================

 1)  Jim Cape heads usability-tuning initiative

--------------------------------------------------------------


Miguel posted to gnome-list, requesting a volunteer to compile user
comments on GNOME usability and transform them into suggestions for
enhancing the GNOME desktop and applications. Jim Cape
<jcape@jcinteractive.com> signed up, so he's the man.

Discussion of this topic should go to
gnome-gui-list@gnome.org. Please, keep it focused on incremental
enhancements to the existing codebase. Radical redesigns of the user
experience are only welcome if accompanied by multiple hackers ready
to do the work.

Here's Miguel's post:

  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-August/0011.shtml

James Cape has a preliminary web site:

  http://www.jcinteractive.com/gnome-ui/

==============================================================

 2)  GNOME 1.0.50 planned

--------------------------------------------------------------


We're about ready to move on to the next major revision of GNOME; but
before doing that, we'd like to be sure the stable 1.0.x series is
100% the way we'd like it to be. So we're pushing for 1.0.50 over the
next month or so.

Once that's out, we'll be moving on to GNOME 1.2 or 2.0 or whatever we
decide to call it. We have lots of cool things ready to fold in as
soon as we fork gnome-libs into stable and unstable branches. Expect a
detailed roadmap soon.

Elliot announced the 1.0.50 plan:

  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/1999-July/0046.shtml

==============================================================

 3)  Fix the Window Manager

--------------------------------------------------------------


Dr. Mike posted to say that we probably need a GNOME window manager
that "matches" GNOME and integrates with it extremely well. Users
shouldn't have to see the word "Window Manager." This seems to be a
growing consensus; read Dr. Mike's post here:

  http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-August/0052.shtml

GNOME will continue to work with all window managers, but we want to
provide a nice default that gives the user a truly seamless
experience. If hackers don't care about mismatched themes and the
like, they're free to use any WM that implements the GNOME/KDE WM
spec.

Now all we need is someone willing to hack on this window
manager. It's perhaps hard to find someone, since the express purpose
of the WM is to blend into GNOME and be user-invisible, so it's not a
glamorous job. But it would improve GNOME enormously. There are
several people who've been working on a GNOME WM of one kind or
another, but no one has emerged with the definitive hunk of working
code.

==============================================================

 4)  gnome-libs and gnome-utils 1.0.12

--------------------------------------------------------------


New releases of these two, see the main GNOME site for details:

 http://www.gnome.org

==============================================================

 5)  Realtime CVS tracking

--------------------------------------------------------------


For those who haven't seen it, GNOME Bonsai now has a page listing CVS
commits in the last two hours. A fun way to monitor the GNOME
development action:

  http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/cvsquery.cgi?module=all&hours=2&date=hours&link=front

==============================================================

 6)  Hacking Activity

--------------------------------------------------------------


Module Score-O-Matic:

  58 gimp
  56 gnumeric
  54 gtk--
  33 gnome-libs
  31 gnome-applets
  28 bonobo
  25 gnome-core
  23 dryad
  21 gnome-pilot
  19 gnome-pim
  15 gxsnmp
  14 gconf
  13 libgtop
  11 gnome-utils
  11 gnome-filer
  11 gnome-chess
  11 ORBit
  10 libglade
  10 gnomeicu
  10 control-center
   9 mc
   8 libunicode
   8 gmf

User Score-O-Matic:

  78 sopwith
  36 kenelson
  33 unammx
  33 martin
  22 mmeeks
  21 jody
  20 kmaraas
  17 jrb
  16 sipan
  16 pcg
  16 jamesh
  15 vinc
  15 hp
  14 jberkman
  13 teichman
  13 dcm
  12 tromey
  12 stric
  11 yosh
  11 tonyt
  11 pablo

Elliot dominates everyone by a factor of two - I think he changed
every spec file in CVS or something like that. :-) I know he also did
a lot of cleanup and bugfixing.

Gtk-- is really under heavy development, and has been for a long time;
Karl Nelson's libsigc++ is making it a really nice development
framework for C++ applications. Check this out.

==============================================================

 7)  New and Updated Software

--------------------------------------------------------------


GameStalker
Gnomba
Xwhois
gproc
GSokoban
vsa
GFile
GNotes!
Pybliographer
Pharmacy
GPeriodic
gaddr
Giram
POP Checker
libefs
gcad
gaspell
gx10
BMUD
Gaim
Gears
IglooFTP
mosquito
gvsy
GSnes9x

There were more software releases last week, but a good bit more CVS
commits this week. So go figure.

===========================================================================

Until next week - 

Havoc