Re: The point of GNOME/Offer of service

[Havoc Pennington <rhp zirx pair com>]

On Tue, 6 Apr 1999, Stephen Szyszkiewicz wrote:

> I guess I was trying to determine if this list was
> aimed at actually developing/maintaining Gnome (the
> overall UI) or applications that will work in Gnome
> (like the Gnome Minesweeper).

The list is about developing/maintaining the Gnome libraries, questions
about using the Gnome libraries in your own applications, and also about
developing/maintaining "Gnome core" which is basically the panel, control
center, session manager, and so on. It is fairly free form - anything
about development with Gnome. The large applications have their own
mailing lists though, so when there is a dedicated list that list is
probably more appropriate.

We are going to fire up a "Gnome Office Suite" mailing list soon too, so
that will be a more specific forum appropriate for that topic.

> I am looking for the
> overall strategy/vision of Gnome. What are we
> developing here, and what gets installed with Gnome
> and what gets installed seperately.
> 

"The Gnome Desktop" can be roughly defined as the gnome-libs, gnome-core,
control-center, and gmc modules from CVS. Some of gnome-utils might be
"Gnome Desktop" too. However all the apps in CVS and some that aren't
could loosely be said to be part of the "Gnome Project."

> I am willing to put in 10-12 hours per week at least.
> I have Fridays off from my regular job and I am
> itching to learn Linux programming. Besides I have to
> stop playing Quake or my brain will start to shrink
> now that school is over.
> 
> I hope I can help.
> 

A good way to get a sense of development is to subscribe to the CVS
commits list, but it will flood you with mail (you need to use a program
that supports mail sorting or threading). Then you will end up looking at
a bunch of source code, Gtk/gnome-libs/applications to get a sense of
things. You'll also want to read the Gtk tutorial if you haven't, etc.

Havoc