Re: Future of GNOME

[Dietmar Maurer <dm vlsivie tuwien ac at>]

Todd Graham Lewis wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 14 Oct 1998, Dietmar Maurer wrote:
> 
> > I'm a little bit disappointed about gnome. Although many people implement
> > programs, it seems that we don't have any new ideas. Most of the initial
> > proposals are ignored, and I don't see what makes gnome better than
> > other approaches
> 
> Initial proposals are taken seriously when they have code to back them up.
> People who do not code but who expect their ideas to be taken seriously
> are naive.
> 
> > (Maybe I'm wrong, but if the only advantage of gnome is that
> > GTK is under the GPL, it's easier to rewrite QT (and provide C language
> > bindings for QT)).
> 
> You are wrong.  I think that our object model is better; we are multi-
> lingual; we have much tighter code, from ORBit v MICO on down.
> 

Yes, there are some advantages, but it would be better to have more.
(i.e. I think it's simple to use ORBit in KDE)

> > I think it's time to rethink the gnome design and state more exactly
> > what
> > gnome should be. The low-level part (gtk, libgnome..) is OK, but many
> > other
> > things are unclear (UI-Guidelines, software component model, ...).
> 
> How about we work on helping you understand where GNOME is going rather
> than change direction just because you never seem to have understood
> what our design is on these issues?
> 

Yes, that would help a lot!

> > Just some example/thoughts:
> >
> > gnome-mdi:
> >
> > I've written two programs where it's possible to use
> > the gnome-mdi interface.
> 
> Wonderful!
> 
> > But it seems that there is no common acceptance
> > on gnome-mdi, although it's in the core libraries.
> 
> Nonsense.  It's there and it's not going anywhere.  I have no idea
> what you mean by "common acceptance"; as long as our benevolent
> dictator accepts it, it doesn't matter whether acceptance is common
> or not.

We have serveral programs which use something like multiple documents
(ghex, gedit, ..). But some use gnome-mdi, others not - resulting in a
inconsitent
UI.

> 
> > baboon:
> >
> > What's the state of baboon? Will gnome use a software component model?
> > (gwp doesn't use corba/baboon).
> 
> The use of CORBA was significantly hindered by the lack of a good ORB
> to use; that put us about 6 months behind.  Some software still suffers
> from a lack of corbafication, and they will continue to do so for a
> while, I imagine.  BABOON is coming along very nicely; people will
> retrofit their stuff to it when they are comfortable with it.
> 
> > panel:
> >
> > OK, the panel works, but it provides the same functionality as one
> > module of
> > my window manager, not much more - features like a drawer are useless
> > for most people. And the menus are at least uncommon. I can't see any
> > new
> > idea.
> 
> I agree; I don't think that the panel is very revolutionary.  Nice,
> but not earth-shattering.
> 
> > scripting language:
> >
> > Scheme is a nice language, but most people don't like it (see the amount
> > of
> > gnome programs written in scheme until now). Tcl/TK would be a much
> > better choice because there are so many Tcl/TK programs - and it's very
> > easy to learn Tcl/Tk.
> 
> Eh?  TK is a widget set, just like GTK.  Ok, not "just like".  TK has
> a really dumb event model and an unfortunate requirement that any
> programs using TK embed TCL.  And the API changes every year.  And we
> already have a very good widget set.
> 
> As for TCL, GNOME is multi-lingual.  You should feel free to do TCL
> bindings for GNOME functions to your heart's content and put them out
> there for others to use.  I know a few people who would love to use
> TCL to write GNOME code.
> 

Tcl-bindings for Gtk would also be a good idea.