Re: Website ideas

[Shawn T Amundson <amundson eventloop com>]

On Sun, Nov 19, 2000 at 07:19:15PM +0000, Ross Golder wrote:
> 
> I've been 'put right' before when I offered to help Gnomify someone's
> GTK+ application, assuming that this was what they wanted to do ;) These
> GTK+ guys can be fairly religious.
> 
> Without meaning any disrespect to them, I'd like to suggest that Gnome
> applications are kept distinct from GTK+ applications (in terms of
> software maps/searches) somehow. To promote GNOME as a viable
> alternative to commercial desktops, applications must be GNOMified to
> appear in the main software map. However, where a GNOMified application
> doesn't exist for a particular purpose (or in case the GNOME one doesn't
> fit), the GTK+ applications could be listed secondarily.
> 
> The trouble with GTK+ applications is that GTK+ is mostly only a widget
> set, so the other 'desktop framework'-type interfaces provided by GNOME
> are often fulfilled with other dependent libraries, which the user also
> needs to locate, download, install (and sometimes configure).
> 

Once www.gtk.org is integrated as a GNOME site, I think this general
attitude will start to disappear.  The idea of coding only with GTK+
will simply disappear into oblivian as new developers get introduced
to the entire package all at once.

However, it is necessary to list all GTK+ apps.  It is easy enough
to mark apps as GNOME-aware or whatever, and to search or browse
based on that.

And actually, I don't think a GNOME-specific application repository
is a good idea in general.  The best would be a completely free version
of Freshmeat tied closely with Advogato.  Then we just pull the info
from that as needed.  That method is more community building than 
everyone writing their own little thing.  (And if Freshmeat's content
is under a free license, we could just use that.  I just assume that
they won't send you the entire database.)

-Shawn 

--
Shawn T. Amundson                       amundson eventloop com	
Research and Development                http://www.eventloop.com/
EventLoop, Inc.                         http://www.snorfle.net/

"The assumption that the universe looks the same in every
 direction is clearly not true in reality." - Stephen Hawking