Re: What to do in order to make the gnome development platform rock.

[Sander Vesik <Sander Vesik Sun COM>]

These are 100% my very own opinions, just replace the domain name with
foo.bar.

On 15 Sep 2001, Kenneth Rohde Christiansen wrote:

> Some thoughs of mine, please read:
> 

[snip]

> For instance, Java-GNOME has the following "namespaces"/"packages":
> 
> gnu.gdk, gnu.gtk, gnu.glade, gnu.gnome
> 

having java packages called gnu.blah is not a good idea. In fact, just
arbitrarily leavng aside the standard package naming convention is
pointless. 

[snip]

> If we want people to use these bindings we have to make them easy and
> hide implimentation/bindings details.
> 
> An idea for Java-GNOME could be like this:
> 
> org.gnome.drawing                       - gdk
> org.gnome.ui                            - gtk
> org.gnome.ui.extra                      - libgnomeui + bonoboui
> org.gnome.ui.glade                      - glade
> org.gnome.accessibility                 - atk
> org.gnome.containers (or .utils)        - glib containers wrappers    
> org.gnome.canvas                        - libgnomecanvas
> org.gnome.vfs                           - gnome-vfs
> org.gnome.config                        - gconf or bonobo-conf
> org.gnome.bonobo                        - bonobo
> org.gnome.bonobo.activation             - bonobo-activation
> org.gnome.xml                           - libxml (if it makes sence to
> bind)

It does, except not in this way. The way that would make sense to have a
binding for libxml/libxslt would be a wrapper that would allow it to be
used as a "standard" sax/dom parser a'la xerces/xalan. If you can't do
that, there is no point in doing the binding. 

> org.gnome.print                         - libgnomeprint
> --
> org.gnome.misc.eel                      - eel
> org.gnome.misc.gal                      - gal
> org.gnome.misc.panel                    - panel applets
> ...etc.
> 
> 
> This doesn't confuse people with the difference with gtk, gdk and gnome,
> and it integrates well with the Java language. All not well integrated
> things have been put in org.gnome.misc and might be moved elsewhere
> later.
> 
> A similar hierachy can be used for C++ bindings.
> 
> Also, something people don't like about the Gnome bindings is that none
> are OFFICIAL. For people outside our community it seems that the
> bindings 
> are made by people with no connection to the Gnome Community, and they
> then fear the quality of the bindings, and goes elsewhere.
> 

There is a lot more to making people want to use a binding than just it
being "official". 

> What can we do to make this better? Should we decide on a class library
> that should be followed by binders if they want their bindings to be
> official. Do we need some kind of quality control?
> 

If the binding isn't documented and complete (or at least documented as to
how complete it is) or there is no clear way to tell what additional bugs
I will be running into, why would I use it?

Also, consider that you don't necessarily need to standardise the java
binding code - any many cases, having decent interfaces (that can then
have several code incarnations) might be sufficent.

> I really think that we should get some good Java bindings. Both Sun and
> IBM said that they support Gnome, and they both have a strong Java    
> commitment. Cooperation with Sun and IBM about this would really rock.
> Maybe something for the Gnome Foundation?.
> 
> Also the development pages really scare people away.
> 
> Take a look at these two pages:
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Cocoa/CocoaTopics.html
> http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/
> 
> We really need something like this. And we need to group our
> technologies,
> maybe something like this could be an idea?
> 
> GNOME System Architecture
> -------------------------
> 
> GNOME User Experience (libgnome, glade, gtk, gdk)
> --
> Bonobo Component System
> GNOME Language Framework (Java-GNOME, python, etc)
> GNOME Multimedia Framework (gstreamer)
> --
> Linux/UNIX Kernel
> UNIX into the future. GNOME expands on many open souce
> and industry standards towards providing UNIX users and
> developers with a userfriendly and powerful desktop and
> development platform.
> 
> Anyway, it's just some ideas. Please comment
> 
> Cheers, Kenneth
> 

	Sander

I haven't been vampired. You've been Weatherwaxed.