Re: How to port applets to GNOME2 (again)

[Ole Laursen <olau hardworking dk>]

John Fleck <jfleck inkstain net> writes:

[...]

> And I'm trying to suggest that you're applying the pressure in the wrong
> place. The hackers maintaining the core modules are always swamped. We
> all know that GNOME would be well served by improved developer
> documentation. This is a perennial issue. Pointing that out helps
> nothing. Getting the hackers to stop hacking and write docs simply isn't
> going to happen.

But _why_ not? Because when we plan for the next release, other
features and bugs are always more important? Then why don't we take
aside the necessary time? Put reference documentation on top of the
bug list and declare it a show stopper for 2.4. Or is it because people
consider it a boring task?

If people really consider it a boring task, I can see that it is
unfair of me to suggest that they spend their time with it. But else I
don't understand your attitude.

> History suggests that in many cases that's a new volunteer,
> not one of the core modules maintainers, jumping in to help. You said in
> the mail that started this little side-thread that the gnome-panel
> applet tutorial is misleading and apparently outdated. Lots of people
> have apparently overcome that and written applets successfully. If one
> of them had taken the time required to apply that knowledge to rewriting
> the tutorial and submitting the patch, we'd have better docs.

True. But I'm not going to do that because you've made me feel guilty
about it. :-)

People contribute because it is fun. Writing documentation for your
own library is much easier and much more fun (yes, writing reference
documentation _is_ fun) than writing documentation for someone else's
library.

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~olau/