Hi, One of the marketing efforts that the Foundation Board discussed during GUADEC is the possibility of having "certification levels" for GNOME applications. Apps that get rated higher are "nicer" or "more GNOME-like"; hopefully we can use the rating metrics to let users gauge how well a particular app integrates with the rest of their GNOME desktop.
Remember that this is a MARKETING thing. ISVs are starting to develop GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat Reader). We need several things: - A sort-of checklist to let ISVs know what they should do in their apps to integrate well with the desktop --- to make their apps more GNOME-like. - A way for GNOME to say, "app Foo integrates better with GNOME than app Bar". - A way for users to know which app is more GNOME-like; hopefully this will give them a way to pick the better product. You know those printers or modems that have a penguin sticker that says "works with Linux"? Don't they give you a warm and fuzzy feeling? GNOME certification is the same thing: it means that someone tested your app to see that it works well with GNOME. I don't have names for the certification levels yet. They are something like this: Level 0 - the app runs without doing idiotic things like taking over your desktop. It appears in the panel menus, and it installs its MIME handlers. Pretty much any X app can be made to conform to this. Level 1 - the app uses the standard GNOME dialogs (file, printing). Drag-and-drop works. See OpenOffice.org a good examples. Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. Level N - etc. The idea is that lower levels are easier to implement, and higher levels denote that you actually put in a good effort to make your app GNOME-like. This will benefit ISV apps and core GNOME apps. In the case of core apps, the certification checklist can be a way to keep ourselves honest: we can say that an app cannot ship as part of the GNOME platform unless it attains level N of certification (e.g. drag-and-drop would work, it would have online help, etc.). Having the checklist also allows one to plan a project better, because you can start making technical decisions from the start. The certification effort is here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeCertification Your ideas are most welcome. Federico _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
