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GNOME GUI

GNOME Development Site 43

Posted by justin++ from the at-long-last dept.
An anonymous tipster contributed the following "To make it easier for hackers to write GNOME apps and make contributions to GNOME, the GNOME developers have just opened up the GNOME developers' site, where you can find brain dumps of their knowledge on the GNOME architecture, as well white papers, tutorials, FAQs, and web-browseable source code. " The site really does contain a lot of good documentation, and actually looks quite nice, I think.
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GNOME Development Site More

GNOME Development Site

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  • Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:

    OK, so extrasolar didn't hold his punches, but he makes a good point.

    Perhaps I should follow up with something like:

    We need a Beowulf cluster of the developer.gnome sites.

    ...just make sure we cover all the cliches.

    But here's a better question:
    Look at the site [gnome.org]. Ask yourself: what isn't here that I need.
    Compare it to some other developer connections, like Sun's Java site [javasoft.com] and Netscape's rat-nest [netscape.com] of a developer page.
    Now ask of yourself how [gnome.org] can I get involved to provide what I think is missing.
    Documentation will really help with the acceptance of Linux, I think.


    -----------------------------
    Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
  • LinuxPPC comes with both KDE and Gnome in the installer.
  • > THE STRINGS ARE EMBEDDED IN THE CODE! Christ, this is a Nightmare to
    try to internationalize, and it doesn't address at *all* the fact that
    there's more to internationalization than converting strings!

    Obviously you know next to nothing about gettext.
    gettext works on a simple premise, *If localization
    hampers the developer, then the developer (usually
    an english-only speaking american) will say screw
    and not even bother.* gettext is actually pretty clever in that it has a minimal impact on the original developer and others can localize the code. And yes there are more issues than just changing strings, (dates comes to mind) but gettext's job is strings, and if you read the doc on it you would see that it makes reccomendations about things such as plurals (not all languages pluralize by adding an 's' kinda thing)
    In short gettext means 1) more readable code 2) more likelyhood that the program will get localization. We live in the real world, not some fantasy "everbody codes by my standards, no one would ever use a 2 digit date!" world
  • From your response, it is not clear to me that you have ever actually looked at the gettext library, GTK+'s internationalisation features or the ideas that are being considered for the next version of GTK+.

    In case you didn't know, gettext is not just a GNU or GNOME invention -- the original implementation was done by Uniforum and used in Solaris.

    Yes you have strings embedded in your source code -- this means that the changes to add translation are minimal. You just have to call gettext() (usually you will create macro _() as a synonym for this) for each translatable string before displaying it.

    You can then pass all your source files through the xgettext program that will extract all the strings for you and put together a po file template where translations can be made. At runtime, if a translation is not available, the original strings are used. If there is one, the translations are used. This is a very clean way of doing translations -- don't knock it unless you have tried it.

    And yes, strings aren't everything. GTK+ supports using fontsets to display languages with large character sets. It also handles internationalised input methods.

    As for separate user interfaces, it is possible to code this sort of thing with the libglade library and the glade user interface builder (hint: there is documentation about using libglade on developer.gnome.org if you want to take a look).

    Lastly, what is your problem with X? It is the most stable, versatile (what other systems are as configurable as X?) and useful windowing system available. It has had network transparency for a long time -- windows is just starting to add it, and is not part of the standard package. Why do you think we should stop using X and wait for a better windowing system?

    Wouldn't it be a better idea to use X now, and build applications on top of libraries that abstract away some code specific to X, so if something better comes along, it can be used? But if you actually take a look, this is what is currently being done with GNOME by using gtk/gdk, and by KDE by using Qt.

    If you still think that X and GNOME suck, don't use them (that means KDE is also out of the question). No one forces you to use them. If you are interested in seeing a better windowing system for Linux, I urge you to take a look at the Berlin project, or offer to lend a hand with Hungry programmer's Y windowing system.
  • Didn't NeWS implement something like this - the idea of an extensible server ?
  • If you don't like ACs then raise your threshold so you don't see them. Don't bitch and whine.
  • Posted by stodge:

    I'm not too technically minded, but why have a graphics subsystem that is abstracted away from the core of the OS if you don't want to throw the display across the network. I find X bloated as well - but I get that impression from looking at top.
  • Wasn't that what guile was for ? or has that fallen by the wayside ?
  • The reason that X is bad is not becuase of its features, but becuase of it's kludginess. The reason they guy said that Linux is for servers is becuase X is causing horrible problems with its bloat in local applications. Look at how people had to come up with LibGGI and DRI to bypass some of the X bloat. Most people don't need network transparancy, they don't want a windowing system that hurts local performance by using TCP/IP locally. A clean, light local windowing/graphics system is what Linux needs to penetrate the home/workstation market and thats what that person was lamenting about. And don't even think of saying that X is not bloated, it responds slower than Win2k on my computer (PII 412 64MB)
  • Half and education is a terrible thing. X does not use networking locally. It uses local IPC. This is transparent. If its available many toolkits (including Gtk+) use the shared memory extension to get rid of even that overhead.

    Network transparency is absolutely vital to large companies. If you want proof just look at the lengths people go to to acheive it under Windows.

    Yes, X has problems. The protocol is showing its age a bit, and arguably the distinction between what runs on the client and what runs on the server is in the wrong place for many applications. The Berlin people are taking a different approach, but that too has its problems.
  • Yes. It used DPS as an extension language.
  • Which resulted in horrible security problems, I believe.
  • I was wondering when you guys would post that. Perhaps I should've submitted it days ago when I found out. :)
  • Don't know about '98, but GNOME runs just fine over Windows 95. (You're just going about it wrong -- you've got to start with "format" rather than "pkunzip".)

  • Check out www.linuxnewbie.org

    Looks like a good site for newcomers to Linux.







  • If you had read much of the content you would find that the actual reference content is output from the DocBook tools and has no such reference to RedHat anyway.

    Further, although the HTML output generated from the source documents does not all contain the license information (some does, for example mine does), it is included in the source forms of the documentation - which is the way people actually modify it.

    I don't see what is wrong with attributing hosting facilities either. It wouldn't be there if SOME company didn't pay the bills. Why is RedHat so evil?

    Also, if you end up wording your own documentation similar to something on the website then you maybe sued for copyright infringment.
    Don't yanks think about anything but sueing each other? Its only making the lawyers rich! Anyway, this would generally fall into the 'fair use' category.

    Maybe there needs to be more explicit legal information, but that is not terribly difficult to add.


    __// `Thinking is an exercise to which all too few brains

  • Ahem. No X I have seen ever uses TCP/IP locally. It uses a unix socket or even shared memory. It's the fact that widgets aren't representable in the X protocol and have to be drawn naively that causes some of the more major slowdowns (not to mention bloat).
  • Please, no one e-mail that address. This person obviously is trying to get everyone to send hatemail to that guy, presumably his enemy.

  • Documentation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm glad that Gnome finally has a good API reference document.
  • You think in the opposite direction than most people. You have your conclusion (GNOME sucks) and then scurry to justify it. With that logic, everything sucks. Let me give you a few examples:

    1. Linux sucks.
    2. Linux uses outdated Unix technology.

    1. KDE sucks.
    2. KDE looks a lot like Windows.

    1. GNOME sucks.
    2. GNOME uses technology similar to Windows.

    1. Diplomacy sucks.
    2. The minority has no voice.

    1. The Space program sucks.
    2. It uses money from the national bugdet.

    1. World Peace sucks.
    2. The arms contracters don't make as much money.


    Gee, this is easy. I guess everything really sucks then.

    And I hate to see people bash GPLed software. We don't make fun of Windows because it crashes, we make fun of it because it doesn't get fixed. Gnome is getting fixed very rapidly because of it's open source nature. Same thing goes for KDE.

    I think we can do without your kind of advocacy (Hint: You aren't changing anyone's minds).

    Oh, and about Miguel's misquote that was tooken out of context. It was a very good compromise, otherwise KDE or Gnome would have had to change to interoperate with the other. Quit expecting developers to speak like diplomats!

    --

  • Well, there are python bindings for GNOME (don't know about glade). That's getting pretty close.
  • Given Gnome's language bindings and things like GLADE, I am wondering, hypothetically, if it is possible to have a Gnome BASIC, sorta like Visual Basic (not that anyone would want to).

    I was wondering this for a while now, anyone know?

    --

  • Yes, and anything that's twice as fast will STILL BE TWICE AS FAST. Citing Moore's so-called "law" is a lame cop-out I would expect from marketroids, not a geek who actually takes pride in having good code.
  • Man nothing brings 'em out like GNOME or RedHat. Maybe slashdot should put the topic of AC posting to a vote.

    Moving on to the topic:

    I can't see how anyone could view this in a negative light. More documentation makes for better programs, and some is better than none. Atleast there now is a central point for GNOME developers to look for information, in an organized matter. Keep up the good work GNOME developers.

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