Re: [gnome-love] GNOME Utilities :: Needs a maintainer

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 14:09 +1300, Glynn Foster wrote:
> Heya,
>
> For the past few years I've been casually maintaining the gnome-utils
> package on and off, although making very few code changes. A long time
> ago, the gnome-utils package was full of all sorts of weird and wacky
> utilities, that no one really used. Much of the code was unmaintained
> and started to bit rot. Since then, we have managed to reduce the module
> down to the following utilities -
>
>       Dictionary
>               - Uses a dict protocol to connect n online dictionary 
>                 server, which proves to be not so useful for 
>                 non-native English speakers. The code is decent
>                 enough, but could do with a rewrite, or some clever
>                 way to integrate better into the desktop - should a
>                 beagle [1] search look up dictionary? Could it be
>                 part of the help browser? ...

I'm willing to entertain suggestions for putting that in Yelp.  I'd sort
of like to give Yelp some dictionary functionality, but I want it more
for looking up the obscure words that we sometimes fail to avoid using
in our documentation.

>       Floppy Formatter
>               - I've never used this, but Stef Dermurget has done 
>                 quite a bit of work improving the code. This one's
>                 in good shape

For all the potential new contributors on the list:  the documentation
team had a *really* hard time with the Floppy Formatter Manual for 2.8,
because none of us actually have a floppy drive.  If you have one of
these ancient relics on your machine, here's your chance to become a
documentation contributor.

>       Search Tool
>               - Dennis Cranston has done an excellent job maintaining
>                 this in the past, and there's not much more that is 
>                 needed. The code is good, and the app looks and feels
>                 great
>
>       Log Viewer
>               - This one is a bit dud, and starting to code rot. I've
>                 thought about rewriting this time and time again, but
>                 never really got around to it. Should it even belong
>                 in a gnome-utils package, especially since it seems 
>                 to be more oriented towards system administrators?
>
> Anyway, that's discussion to be had on another day. I don't have the
> time or motivation to continue maintaining gnome-utils, and I really
> feel that it's unfair for me to continue doing nothing [2] on the
> module, code wise, when there are 1000's of potential contributors who
> could give the module some life. 
>
> I've decided to give up maintenance and won't be doing any more releases
> in the future. If you're interested, and have some time to spare, drop
> me an email if you would like to maintain gnome-utils.

Ooh!  Ooh!  Don't pick me!  ;-)

--
Shaun