Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 7/19/06, David Nielsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As if the question of Mono's inclusion doesn't already fragment GNOME, those who are opposed to it because it's MS technology or similar, IMHO, silly reasons (read: not based on technological merit) won't let it in. Then there are people like me who have been waiting for the right moment for Mono to get included so that one day I might rely on Mono for any development I do - I'm frankly getting to the point where if Mono doesn't get included, I'll simply stop using GNOME. I'm getting tired of this debate, I think Mono is great and I think continuing to push a C based platform is a mistake.. We are handed great technology to move GNOME forward, do we want that or are we willing to bet that C is a viable option for Topaz. If you think that not including Mono is a way to keep users you are mistaken, there are plenty out there who will not switch over or leave GNOME if we don't take this step. What is this? Some type of threat? To date GNOME does not have Mono and GNOME is doing great. The majority of users do not use Mono and do not want to depend on Mono. If you have your way, more people will lose their way. Who have heard any users today who refuse to switch to GNOME unless Mono is adapted? (What do these people use today? KDE?) When Mono works comfortably on a machine with 32 MBytes of RAM, than maybe it makes sense to talk about basing some parts of GNOME on Mono. -- Andy Tai, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Hi, David! I already wrote I agree with Lluis that the success of a desktop is driven by a diverse and large set of applications. I've also seen many people say Mono is a nice platfrom to build apps on. I can't judge this due to not being a developer but I have no reason to mis-trust these statements. You're right that the majority of user don't care about the language an application is written in. However, you miss one point: Linux users do care because they were taught to do so. ;-) When you are required to install dependencies, required to know what a compiler is, and several other things, you do start to care about the language and the development platform! And: Yes! You are required to know about this stuff because OS application developers unfortunately don't care about making proper binaries that run on many distributions. And not even Debian offers packages for all applications. ;-) You say many people run Mono applications already. So, what would change if Mono becomes a dependency in the desktop release? Nothing, it seems. It would be just a sort of approvement. If Mono would really need it for market success, that's wouldn't be a good sign. Don't you agree? You asked why should any user want to de-install an application. Indeed, the harddisk space is no reason to do so but my _attention space_ is much more restricted. I don't like Totem so there's no reason for it to waste space in my (right-click) menus and my attention. For this reason, I de-installed Totem; and Nautilus started to get a hick-up when using the right-click menu on media files. You also said, nobody is going to de-install a rocking application. You're right but please understand that there's no such thing as a rocking application for _everybody_! Totem might rock for most people -- I don't like it. You probably love F-Spot -- I don't need it. You may like Rhythmbox -- I don't use it. And this is a good thing! Because this is what a desktop is for: That we don't need different desktops just because we don't agree on certain applications! You wrote, you're going to stop using GNOME if Mono's not included. But why should you do that? * You want to use C# and Mono: You can do so. * You want to use something like MonoDevelop: You can do so, too. * You want ISVs to be able to use Mono: They can do so right now! * You want GNOME's blessing for GTK#: It could be included in the platform release. The only disadvantage is that an application like Tomboy or Beagle would not be able to enter the desktop release. Tomboy's nice but including it won't be a major selling point for GNOME. Beagle might be a selling point but there seems to be an alternative option (IMHO, the search stuff is over-hyped, anyway, but that's just me). And apps like F-Spot don't need to be included by default. It would be a completely different discussion if we were talking about Topaz but we are not -- I mean: hopefully we not otherwise I missed an important piece of the debate. ;-) And we're not talking about certain application suites, as proposed by Dave Neary. I believe nobody would mind if you want to use Mono for one of these projects. There's enought demand for cool applications, and enought room to use Mono, C# and GTK#. But according to what you wrote, there's C# just one way to use Mono and it needs the GNOME desktop release to depend on it. Why not the killer-application for Wannabe-Quentin-Tarantinos? So: Yes! We need more applications! But not more of those that we could include in the desktop, and certainly no more editors or audio players. We need applications that can stand on their own, that could sell themselves on gnomefiles.org and freshmeat.org! Something as useful as GIMP or Inkscape. Instead of fighing over a non-issue -- depending on Mono won't make GNOME something completely different that everybody wants to have suddenly --, we should think about a way to let users install application more easily, IHMO. Because that's the major restriction on marketing applications on Linux right now: They don't spread because users can't install them! And I don't seem to be the only one: Havoc Pennington wrote: ... RPM and dpkg are not designed for third-party software, and the diversity of Linux distributions makes it even harder. The whole Linux ecosystem is set up assuming a single giant pool of built-from-source packages. Which has many advantages, but easiness for ISVs is not one of them. However, that's a different discussion. :-) So: Using Mono for Topaz or applications is not a problem. Making the desktop release depend on it, however, is one. IMHO as a user, of course. :-) Cheers, Claus P.S.: Accusing me of using GNOME because I hate Microsoft wasn't polite, really. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On Jul 19, 2006, at 3:19 PM, Andy Tai wrote: What is this? Some type of threat? To date GNOME does not have Mono and GNOME is doing great. The majority of users do not use Mono and do not want to depend on Mono. If you have your way, more people will lose their way. Who have heard any users today who refuse to switch to GNOME unless Mono is adapted? (What do these people use today? KDE?) It's not necessarily an issue of the platform itself keeping people from switching; does the end user care about the platform at all? What they /do/ care about are the applications written in Mono. Things like Beagle and F-Spot make Gnome much more attractive as a desktop to Windows and OS X users (not to mention new users!) than it is without them. When Mono works comfortably on a machine with 32 MBytes of RAM, than maybe it makes sense to talk about basing some parts of GNOME on Mono. 32 megabytes of RAM is the minimum to install a purely console-based installation of Debian sarge. I would like to see _any_ desktop framework meet this requirement anymore, be it Mono or C/GObject. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Iain * wrote: - Younger teenagers who want to stay in touch with their circle of friends, share the latest funny video they've found and play some cool flash game. - Older teenagers who have to do coursework and school reports, look up information online, develop hobby abilities around the computer, express themselves. - Students who want to type essays, and keep in touch with friends back home and at other unis, letting them know what they've been up to. - People with a role in a club or society (say youth group, church activities, sports club, etc) who want to write newsletters, or send out flyers. - Small business/medium owners who need to do basic bookkeeping, stock checking and making silly signs that say No, we have no bananas and I assure you we're open when required. Indeed. The common thread that runs through your list above is that all of them are *activities* and include a collaboration or sharing of content in its various forms. Given that the desktop might not be the *only* means of accessing and manipulating information, wrapping around the activities could be one area that can be looked into :Sankarshan - -- You see things; and you say 'Why?'; But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEv2RPXQZpNTcrCzMRAlArAKCR/UwYanu7P2ihSfpjwEQsYqfAzwCggjbF ekzmUN3+xDHPpChCe8Yfwq8= =USsm -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 12:19 +0200, Steve Frécinaux wrote: Murray Cumming wrote: As for bringing in new functionality and allowing varied focus, I still think this could be done with additional release sets such as - Productivity: Spreadsheets, Word processing, Slides, Databases, Publishing. - Creativity: Photos, Graphics, Drawing, Video- and Audio-editing, sharing, mixing, augmenting, collaborating. We could get inspiration from what KDE guys do. If the gnome desktop expands to any kind of applications in various fields (like it seems to be the case), we could issue metapackages like gnome-libs (gtk, gnomevfs, etc.), gnome-base (nautilus, panel, etc.), gnome-multimedia (photo management, editing and such), gnome-games (oh, this one already exists!), etc. Mandriva (Cooker) has a small list of meta-packages. task-gnome task-gnome-devel to name a few. Since we would have meta-packages and no real packages like KDE do, these parts of the environment could even overlap, so that a photo management application could be part of gnome-multimedia as well as gnome-photo for instance. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list -- Ritesh Khadgaray LinuX N Stuff Ph: +919822394463 Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Hi, On Sun, 16 Jul 2006 18:57:04 +0200 Lluis Sanchez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] If there are memory and performance problems with Mono or Python, excluding them from GNOME is not a solution, because like it or not users will still use them to run applications. GNOME should adapt to this reality if it wants to survive. [...] I don't understand the argument: You're right that some users use Mono apps but others don't. So, why should GNOME adapt to one part of the user community, and ignore the other part? Users can already use Mono applications if they like to; it's just an 'apt-get install * ' away. No problem. Why should they care about Mono apps being included (in the desktop release)? Also, developers can already use Mono without GNOME depending Mono so why should the policy be changed? On the other hand, if GNOME depends on Mono, it will be hard to deinstall it without breaking GNOME. Just wait a few releases. This will fragment the user community, and we don't need any more fragmentation in the desktop: It's already bloody complicated to write an article for a journal when considering the differences between KDE and GNOME. It's frustrating to explain every time: Under KDE, you do this to get X, and under GNOME you do that to get X. If you don't write it, you just frustrate new users. Reading all this stuff is even more frustrating! Including Mono will just lead to another desktop being used widely, namely XFce. Splitting our user community will also lead to less influence. Third-party projects already ignore very basic HIG recommendations. And in fact: Why should they bother? It's not that GNOME appears to be the leading Linux desktop, isn't it? If we split due to the desktop release depending on Mono, it will be even harder to convince third-party projects to follow our example. I absolutely agree with you that it's the width and variety of available desktop applications that matter for the success of a desktop! At the same time, a (core) desktop is more useful the more people use it. Mono seems like a good platform so it should be able to sell itself. On the other hand, the risks of forcing users to opt-out instead of letting them opt-in are immense. Just my 2cents from a non-developer point of view. Cheers, Claus ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
ons, 19 07 2006 kl. 12:48 +0200, skrev Claus Schwarm: Hi, On Sun, 16 Jul 2006 18:57:04 +0200 Lluis Sanchez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] If there are memory and performance problems with Mono or Python, excluding them from GNOME is not a solution, because like it or not users will still use them to run applications. GNOME should adapt to this reality if it wants to survive. [...] I don't understand the argument: You're right that some users use Mono apps but others don't. So, why should GNOME adapt to one part of the user community, and ignore the other part? Users want good applications, Mono is a really good foundation to build good applications rapidly on. Tomboy, Banshee, Beagle - all applications that have good testing, good stability and a rapid development cycle meaning we can deploy functionality with the users with every cycle. For developers using Mono means we get a free development environment that integrates with GNOME, it's basically unlike python, java, etc. a platform that cares about GNOME and provides GNOME style tools for us to work with - if we bless it today we get the tools today as well, no waiting required. One thing I miss from my college days is visual studio for development, it was a great tool and to date only MonoDevelop comes close within GNOME - you'd be surprised how much this means for some developers. Users can already use Mono applications if they like to; it's just an 'apt-get install * ' away. No problem. Why should they care about Mono apps being included (in the desktop release)? Also, developers can already use Mono without GNOME depending Mono so why should the policy be changed? Users don't care if an application is based on Mono, they care if it's functional, stable and snappy. Blessing Mono is largely a decision for future developers - e.g. I was trained in C++ and Intel ASM when I attended college but I absolutely refuse to write another line of C/C++ in my life after discovering C# - it makes programming fun and it does most of the boring work for me so that I can spend my time making applications rather than chasing common idiotic problems. On the other hand, if GNOME depends on Mono, it will be hard to deinstall it without breaking GNOME. Just wait a few releases. So.. why should users care, if Mono provides the user with good applications that does what he/she wants why would there be any reason to remove it - if you don't run the applications that require Mono all you lose is the bit of space it takes up (much like many GNOME distros ship QT as well) - unless you are on the OLPC or Maemo platform this shouldn't be a big issue. This will fragment the user community, and we don't need any more fragmentation in the desktop: It's already bloody complicated to write an article for a journal when considering the differences between KDE and GNOME. It's frustrating to explain every time: Under KDE, you do this to get X, and under GNOME you do that to get X. If you don't write it, you just frustrate new users. Reading all this stuff is even more frustrating! As if the question of Mono's inclusion doesn't already fragment GNOME, those who are opposed to it because it's MS technology or similar, IMHO, silly reasons (read: not based on technological merit) won't let it in. Then there are people like me who have been waiting for the right moment for Mono to get included so that one day I might rely on Mono for any development I do - I'm frankly getting to the point where if Mono doesn't get included, I'll simply stop using GNOME. I'm getting tired of this debate, I think Mono is great and I think continuing to push a C based platform is a mistake.. We are handed great technology to move GNOME forward, do we want that or are we willing to bet that C is a viable option for Topaz. If you think that not including Mono is a way to keep users you are mistaken, there are plenty out there who will not switch over or leave GNOME if we don't take this step. Including Mono will just lead to another desktop being used widely, namely XFce. Why would this be? remember so long as applications rock users will want to use them - be that in GNOME, XFce, KDE, etc. Mono apps across the board pretty much rock already, f-spot is the best photo management tool out there, banshee for my money is a much more snappy application than rhythmbox (not to mention more stable), Blam! can't be beaten for RSS feed reading. Yes, we need to optimize those applications, just like every other application we ship - Evolution being the prime example that even a C application written by good programmers can be a horror to use - it's slow and eats your ram for breakfast. Untill we have good data we can't really say anything about Mono' ressource consumption longterm, I believe that Mono based applications can be made to run at least as well as 90% of what we have currently in C - some claim that we could actually optimize better in a high level language
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On 7/17/06, Havoc Pennington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Havoc Pennington Or even why is GNOME sidelining things like: - Maemo - Elisa - One Laptop Per Child - ... You make it sound active - it's not, it's passive. But that's changing. I don't mean to imply active or not, and I'm glad to hear it's changing. I think having some of those non-desktop projects on equal footing within GNOME alongside the desktop release would make a big difference. _Especially_ if each subproject is defined by its target audience and benefit, rather than by its codebase. I thought of a more concrete approach to understanding what this means. Question for the list, what is the target audience and benefit to them of the desktop release? The target audience is ME!! :) Seriously look at Windows and ask the same question. What is the target audience and benefit to them of Windows? The answer is it makes the computer work and present a graphical interface that allows more advanced applications to be built ontop of it. A simple computing environment usable for anyone. That is the goal Microsoft is striving for, GNOME should have a just as ambitious goal. There are lots of functionality that is generally useful to everyone. Or atleast a large minority of all users. Like a file manager, window manager, display manager, configuration center, text editor, package manager, games, web browser, music and video player, system monitor, terminal emulator, word processor, spreadsheet calculator, email manager, calendar, cd burner, irc client, im client, mobile phone synchronization, plus lots more. And that IS GNOME, isn't it? The challenge is to integrate it into one coherent mass so that it becomes maximally useful for the largest number of people possible. Current: - historical UNIX workstation users who want something similar but not dead - technology fans who want a set of apps they can mess with and heavily customize - thin client / computer lab deployments who want something with good manageability / security and low cost (the low cost especially for government/edu) - server administrators who want to pack a lot of ssh sessions onto the screen, use some web-based admin consoles, and occasionally waste some time doing non-work stuff - ... Future: - ... ? (try to be as specific as the above) Look at Windows. All this talk about the target audience scares the hell out of me. Because if is decided that the target audience is the white collar office worker (or some other stereotype I don't belong to) it means that GNOME wont benefit me anymore. -- mvh Björn ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
quote who=BJörn Lindqvist All this talk about the target audience scares the hell out of me. Because if is decided that the target audience is the white collar office worker (or some other stereotype I don't belong to) it means that GNOME wont benefit me anymore. That doesn't have to be true. Consider OS X - if anything, their target has been 'creative professionals' (which reaches into all kinds of places) for a long time. But they've been able to amass a *huge* number of hacker and geek users with their development platform, UNIX heritage, 'just works' approach, and lustful upmarket / cool kids attractiveness. Picking an audience doesn't necessarily mean picking *only one* audience. :-) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ Socks for the foot menu! - Liam Quin ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Havoc Pennington wrote: My first-order answer is that GNOME thinks of itself as making a desktop - even though the _reality_ is that the larger GNOME community/ecosystem is doing way more than that, and that the larger tech industry is doing still more. Would you consider junking the concept of GNOME as a desktop in favor of GNOME as an application development programming context or would think that the slicing should go deeper ? Namely, percolating the idea right down to the level where applications are developed around GNOME core (assuming the segregation of GNOME core and GNOME extras). From the earlier mail that you posted it would appear that you favor a shift of GNOME from a software development paradigm to a more personal/social (if I may) context. Wherein the *who* assumes greater importance while releasing GNOME rather than *what*. As it stands I don't see an aggressive movement towards (re)doing the GNOME messaging - its happening but its taking its time probably because of the distribution centric messaging that goes for GNOME. Perhaps the time is really there to start talking more about the context in which GNOME figures in every day computing rather then the concept where GNOME provides applications (cool as they may be) but in no ways do emphasize the stuff GNOME is supposed to do. :Sankarshan -- http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Jeff Waugh wrote: Picking an audience doesn't necessarily mean picking *only one* audience. Would it be that while searching for the *this is our audience* block, we have managed to begin to stop to think about what GNOME really is ? :Sankarshan -- http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Jul 18, 2006, at 9:50 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: Havoc Pennington wrote: My first-order answer is that GNOME thinks of itself as making a desktop - even though the _reality_ is that the larger GNOME community/ecosystem is doing way more than that, and that the larger tech industry is doing still more. Would you consider junking the concept of GNOME as a desktop in favor of GNOME as an application development programming context or would think that the slicing should go deeper ? Namely, percolating the idea right down to the level where applications are developed around GNOME core (assuming the segregation of GNOME core and GNOME extras). ... If that happened, the platform developers would likely have less interaction with application developers on mailing lists like this one. So you'd be more likely to end up like the W3C's HTML Working Group has with XHTML 2.0 -- spending huge amounts of time producing an extremely elegant platform that's useless for real-world applications. To ensure usefulness of the platform for as many distributors as possible, perhaps it would be better for Gnome to contain *a representative sample* of software for various genres (office, artist, scientist, gamer), skill levels (cf. iLife vs. Apple's Pro apps, or Microsoft Works vs. Office), and hardware types (desktop, PDA, OLPC) -- so you can demonstrate that Gnome is a suitable development platform for all those audiences, rather than trying yourself to solve all the problems of any single audience. Gnome-wide efforts on things like usability, localization, library deprecation, etc would also be less effective if it was reduced to an application development programming context. Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Actually I have to say we should stop idealizing Apple that much, they are a company which basically has gone from being the desktop leader to today being a fringe player. They have survived partly by clinging onto a couple of niches like graphical design and to some degree education. They have over the last few years managed to grow a little into the tech geek segment and the multimedia market, but even using things like iPod and iTunes to push their desktops they seem to have managed little apart from not slipping further down in market share and instead staying around their allotted 4% to 5%. I am not saying we shouldn't take good ideas etc., from Apple, but lets try to remember that Apple is basically a failure in the desktop market. Nothing objectively wrong with many of the approaches Apple takes, but obviously the market doesn't care enough about them to reward Apple with any significant market share gains. Over the last decade there has been many 'must have' technologies hyped which turned out to marginal and worthless. For instance many of probably remember that one of the last battles fought in the browser wars where in the area of 'push technology'. All analysts seemed to agree that who of Microsoft and Netscape that managed to come up with the best push solution would be the winner of that generation of browsers. Well both active Desktop and Netscape Netcaster was released with much fanfare only to relatively quickly fade into obscurity and be discontinued. Apple's 'cool' is a bit like 'push technology' it is this thing people talk about, but if you look at the marketplace it isn't obvious it matters. Christian On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:57 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=BJörn Lindqvist All this talk about the target audience scares the hell out of me. Because if is decided that the target audience is the white collar office worker (or some other stereotype I don't belong to) it means that GNOME wont benefit me anymore. That doesn't have to be true. Consider OS X - if anything, their target has been 'creative professionals' (which reaches into all kinds of places) for a long time. But they've been able to amass a *huge* number of hacker and geek users with their development platform, UNIX heritage, 'just works' approach, and lustful upmarket / cool kids attractiveness. Picking an audience doesn't necessarily mean picking *only one* audience. :-) - Jeff ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote: [a snip here] They have over the last few years managed to grow a little into the tech geek segment and the multimedia market, but even using things like iPod and iTunes to push their desktops they seem to have managed little apart from not slipping further down in market share and instead staying around their allotted 4% to 5%. [and another here] Perhaps one of the aspects of this thread would be to look beyond the metaphor for the desktop and more into the metaphor as one that extends the workspace area (without calling it a desktop) into the space and context of personal computing and social collaboration. Apple might have got it wrong to use iTunes and iPod to push their desktops (I don't know since I don't have the stats) but using non-desktop metaphors to a GNOME platform might not be utopian as on date. :Sankarshan -- http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: If that happened, the platform developers would likely have less interaction with application developers on mailing lists like this one. So you'd be more likely to end up like the W3C's HTML Working Group has with XHTML 2.0 -- spending huge amounts of time producing an extremely elegant platform that's useless for real-world applications. Why would that happen in the event GNOME decides to remould itself from being a kick-ass *desktop* to being a coherent platform ? :Sankarshan -- http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Jul 18, 2006, at 11:54 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: If that happened, the platform developers would likely have less interaction with application developers on mailing lists like this one. So you'd be more likely to end up like the W3C's HTML Working Group has with XHTML 2.0 -- spending huge amounts of time producing an extremely elegant platform that's useless for real-world applications. Why would that happen in the event GNOME decides to remould itself from being a kick-ass *desktop* to being a coherent platform ? ... Because I was using platform as shorthand for your application development programming context, which apparently excluded applications (applications are developed around GNOME core). I've used only one kick-ass desktop, and that's the one my computers sit on. -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
quote who=Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller Actually I have to say we should stop idealizing Apple that much, they are a company which basically has gone from being the desktop leader to today being a fringe player. They have survived partly by clinging onto a couple of niches like graphical design and to some degree education. That was true five years ago. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public relations problems. - Bruce Schneier ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 09:33 -0400, JP Rosevear wrote: On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 11:30 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote: On 7/17/06, Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Which makes me wonder why we are able to bless some applications and not others. The point of blessing the application is saying that this application meets the gnome standards for X,Y and Z and has a release shedule that coincides with the gnome platform release. And that people will work on it to bug-triage it, bug fix it, translate it, document it, UI review it, integrate it, and present it, which is what that release schedule makes possible. And so why does what language it is written in matter to this blessing at all then? - Multiple languages make the work harder by requiring people to know more languages Only for bug fixing part, the language for development has no bearings on triage, translation, ui review, documentation, etc. To be perfectly fair, both .Net and Python have different format strings than those used by printf. So there is some extra burden on translators. So including Mono apps would give translators four different format string conventions to learn (counting the crap I made them learn for XSLT.) It can also have an impact on bug triaging. A lot of bug folks do basically understand stack traces, and they're able to triage accordingly. On more than one occasion, I've had bug squad members identify duplicates that the simple dup finder didn't catch. Neither of these are deal-breakers. But they are do make work a bit harder, and they shouldn't be ignored. -- Shaun ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote: I am not saying we shouldn't take good ideas etc., from Apple, but lets try to remember that Apple is basically a failure in the desktop market. What were you smoking when you wrote this? ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 08:33 -0700, Rich Burridge wrote: Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote: I am not saying we shouldn't take good ideas etc., from Apple, but lets try to remember that Apple is basically a failure in the desktop market. What were you smoking when you wrote this? I don't think that your comment is very constructive or insightful. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Rich Burridge wrote: Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote: I am not saying we shouldn't take good ideas etc., from Apple, but lets try to remember that Apple is basically a failure in the desktop market. What were you smoking when you wrote this? Well, it depends on your success metric when talking about failure Christian is right in many ways if you are talking about marketshare... their marketshare is in the 3-10% range (depending on who you ask) and has not really shown signs of exceeding that... and most of it is based on a historical market that Windows never really had (creative professionals) so Apple's track record of getting people to 'switch' is even worse than 3-10% might indicate. There's recent health caused by getting out of the switch people's desktop rut and creating something new with the iPod/iTunes/etc. line of stuff. That brand equity has rubbed off on the desktop a bit. But basically Apple's desktop remains a premium product for certain audiences, with no real chance of having 20-50% marketshare anytime soon. GNOME could learn a lot here. Both OS X and Firefox illustrate to me that even with near-perfect branding, marketing, and usability, the switch from A to B in the same category - same benefit to same audience premise for a product will not be a blockbuster success vs. the market leader. While with something that's really a new category with no clear market leader yet, you get breakout successes - in many cases _despite_ bad usability, low quality, lack of marketing, and other issues. That's why qualitative/disruptive difference in kind is so much more interesting than quantitative betterness along some continuous dimension, if your goal is to have a huge impact on lots of people. I do think OS X has some qualitative/disruptive differences in the apps Apple offers, but in those cases the apps are sort of boat-anchored by the OS; that is, offering the apps' benefits minus having to switch to OS X would make the apps take off far faster. For example, if iTunes/iPod were Mac-only it would be much less successful. Anyhow... you could definitely say that OS X is a design success or serves its audience well or has made Apple a lot of money, i.e. in many ways it's not a failure, not really interested in arguing that. But in marketshare terms it isn't the best kind of product for rapid/mass adoption. Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Havoc Pennington wrote: Rich Burridge wrote: Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote: I am not saying we shouldn't take good ideas etc., from Apple, but lets try to remember that Apple is basically a failure in the desktop market. What were you smoking when you wrote this? Well, it depends on your success metric when talking about failure Thanks for the good summary. I was talking about things like: * look and feel. It's a beautiful desktop. * ease of use. Most things just work. * integration of different desktop components. I'm not talking about market share. I've seen GNOME steadily improve over the last few years, but it still doesn't have a cohesive wholeness to it. One of the problems in this respect is that different distros customize GNOME as they see fit. You can't always assume what's going to be there (or if it will be the same place in the menu hierarchy). It's like the different flavours of UNIX and Linux all over again. Perhaps there needs to be a concise definition of what you can always expect in a GNOME desktop and where it will be. Maybe that's exactly what Core GNOME desktop is all about. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Rich Burridge wrote: I was talking about things like: * look and feel. It's a beautiful desktop. * ease of use. Most things just work. * integration of different desktop components. I'm not talking about market share. This of course is a personal question that everyone has to answer for themselves; if GNOME made a beautiful just works super-integrated desktop, that did not in the end have that many users (that failed to bring an open source alternative to the general public); vs. if GNOME made a lot of not-desktop-in-the-traditional-sense things and some of them had a chance to reach the general public on a large scale; which would we rather have. I know for sure that if people are honest with themselves, we have a lot of developers on both sides of this question. I'm not sure we're doing either of those things right now though - our current audience-benefit focuses that I've listed a few times don't care _that_ much about just works or beautiful or integration. Not as much as Apple's creative professionals audience does, for sure. So we tend to prioritize things like hackability/configurability, diversity of apps, interoperability, i18n, reliable releases, management/security, and so forth over more Apple-like priorities. The de facto audience here winning over the audiences some people might more idealistically have in mind. The enterprise Linux distributions have some strong incentives different from the Apple-style priorities as well. Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Rich Burridge wrote: I've seen GNOME steadily improve over the last few years, but it still doesn't have a cohesive wholeness to it. One of the problems in this respect is that different distros customize GNOME as they see fit. That's totally backwards. GNOME doesn't have a cohesive wholeness because *it's not a cohesive whole*. It's a part. The distros *need* to make changes to integrate GNOME with the rest of the distro and *make* a cohesive whole. Look, here are some quotes from the first 4 (non-duplicate) hits for Novell SLED review[1] on google: The desktop environment itself is clean, attractive, and free of clutter. Novell claims to have done extensive user testing to refine SLED’s UI, and it shows. This is not your average, stock Gnome system. (InfoWorld) this desktop is probably the cleanest and most logical desktop of ANY operating system I've come across. All in all it's hard to imagine a better organized workspace and set of capabilities. (dcperspective) The most impressive feature is its complete lack of, what I call, 'ducktape' feeling. Virtually all distributions I have tried gave me the direct feeling I was using a product stitched together by ducktape; group A did something, group B as well, and group C stitched those two together with ducktape. SLED, however, feels as if the parts are surgically sewn together, after which a plastic surgeon hid the stitches. A huge step forward for desktop Linux. (OSNews) For one thing, they’ve completely redesigned the GNOME interface (more on that in a moment), and integrated Beagle desktop search into the distro so completely that you wonder how you lived without it before. I fought [the new main menu] at first, but trust me when I tell you that once you get used to it, you won’t know how you got this far without it. (madpenguin) (Ahem. Sorry for the advertising.) The reviewers have spoken, and they think that SLED is a cohesive whole, and that upstream GNOME and the distros that ship vanilla upstream GNOME aren't. So what can we (GNOME) do? There seem to be two broad directions: 1. Agree that (for now at least) GNOME is a part, not a whole, and that we can best help users by helping distros to build good wholes. 2. Figure out what sort of whole GNOME wants to be, and become it. Eg, if we want to be the sort of whole that SLED is, we'd become it by integrating Beagle and Tomboy. If we want to become the sort of whole that OS X is, we'd integrate Rhythmbox or Banshee and F-Spot. But regardless, if we want to be cohesive, we have to *integrate*, not keep a wall between the applications and the rest of the system. -- Dan [1] at first I tried just SLED review, but that actually turned up reviews of sleds. :-) ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Dan Winship wrote: Rich Burridge wrote: I've seen GNOME steadily improve over the last few years, but it still doesn't have a cohesive wholeness to it. One of the problems in this respect is that different distros customize GNOME as they see fit. That's totally backwards. GNOME doesn't have a cohesive wholeness because *it's not a cohesive whole*. It's a part. The distros *need* to make changes to integrate GNOME with the rest of the distro and *make* a cohesive whole. Fair enough. This is the Novell desktop (based on GNOME). I'm sure I could dig up some comments on the Sun JDS (based on GNOME) desktop too. My concern here is that each of these desktops will have a different lookfeel that goes beyond what the GNOME desktop provides. A user that is used to one, won't necessarily be automatically at home on the other. Other distro's provide their own lookfeel which will be different again. One of the things I like about the Mac OS X desktop (and Windows Xp desktop for that matter), is that all applications provided by the vendor have a consistent lookfeel. If I'm familiar with one application on that platform, then I can apply that knowledge as I'm learning a new one. This isn't true of all applications on the various GNOME desktops. What I'd like to see is more cohesive wholeness bought done to the common denominator. The underlying GNOME desktop that all these distros start from. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Ter, 2006-07-18 at 13:08 -0400, Dan Winship wrote: [...] But regardless, if we want to be cohesive, we have to *integrate*, not keep a wall between the applications and the rest of the system. IMHO, GNOME doesn't need to integrate apps onto itself. On the contrary, apps need to integrate with GNOME. For that to happen, GNOME needs: 1- Framework for desktop extensibility, in the line of some of the things we already have: ability to register new MIME types, install menu items, register new applets with the panel; some others are missing, like notifications (libnotify, hopefully some day part of gnome); also nautilus/epiphany/gedit extensions.. 2- A sound developer platform. glib/gtk+; hopefully gnome-vfs lower in the stack... GStreamer... 3- GNOME integration guidelines: the HIG is an excellent start, but not enough; I don't remember if there are others... And BTW, nautilus supports search folders, which can be optionally powered by beagle already. Nautilus _optionally_ depends on beagle. That means beagle integration without GNOME depending on beagle. If beagle were part of GNOME, would things really be any different? I think not. IMHO, GNOME should be _open to integration_, not assimilate all good gtk+ based applications. Regarding the focus issue, perhaps the distribution needs to drive this, not GNOME. I'm thinking for example of ubuntu vs edubuntu (education oriented variant of ubuntu). They're basically the same distribution, with different default colors and different default set of apps. _Maybe_ we could go one step further and have apps customize the level of complexity of the UI (like very early nautilus had as preference, like RB has a compact mode). Regards, -- Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] The universe is always one step beyond logic. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Regarding the focus issue, perhaps the distribution needs to drive this, not GNOME. I'm thinking for example of ubuntu vs edubuntu (education oriented variant of ubuntu). They're basically the same distribution, with different default colors and different default set of apps. So where does that leave GNOME and the GNOME project if really all we are is an API vendor for distributions to come along and do whatever they want with some apps that due to our coherent APIs all work lovely together. What is the need for The GNOME Desktop? (I'm still sorry I'm asking questions, I still don't have any [coherent] answers...) _Maybe_ we could go one step further and have apps customize the level of complexity of the UI (like very early nautilus had as preference, like RB has a compact mode). As we saw with Nautilus, it sucked. And RB's compact mode wasn't to simplify the GUI, it was simply to take up less screenspace. iain ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 11:14 -0700, Rich Burridge wrote: One of the things I like about the Mac OS X desktop (and Windows Xp desktop for that matter), is that all applications provided by the vendor have a consistent lookfeel. If I'm familiar with one application on that platform, then I can apply that knowledge as I'm learning a new one. This isn't true of all applications on the various GNOME desktops. Big tangent: the GNOME Certification plan will help in defining what is a good GNOME application and what isn't. That certification will include things like consistent lookfeel [insert a lot of handwaving about how to quantify this...] Federico ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On 7/17/06, Havoc Pennington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Question for the list, what is the target audience and benefit to them of the desktop release? Current: - historical UNIX workstation users who want something similar but not dead - technology fans who want a set of apps they can mess with and heavily customize - thin client / computer lab deployments who want something with good manageability / security and low cost (the low cost especially for government/edu) - server administrators who want to pack a lot of ssh sessions onto the screen, use some web-based admin consoles, and occasionally waste some time doing non-work stuff - ... Future: Not sure if this is one of them rhetorical questions or if this was even what you meant but its late and I'm bored, split the way I understand best; generationally: - Younger teenagers who want to stay in touch with their circle of friends, share the latest funny video they've found and play some cool flash game. - Older teenagers who have to do coursework and school reports, look up information online, develop hobby abilities around the computer, express themselves. - Students who want to type essays, and keep in touch with friends back home and at other unis, letting them know what they've been up to. - People with a role in a club or society (say youth group, church activities, sports club, etc) who want to write newsletters, or send out flyers. - Small business/medium owners who need to do basic bookkeeping, stock checking and making silly signs that say No, we have no bananas and I assure you we're open when required. Now I'm getting silly, maybe other people have other ideas if this was indeed what you wanted people to do. iain ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 10:46 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote: GNOME Maemo: I don't know their concept or target audience, but I can imagine something like - Create a newspaper replacement device for coffee shops, the kitchen table, riding the train to work. So the funny thing is that although that's who they are targeting their marketing towards at the moment, I rather suspect that they have their sights on a much different - and bigger - market: disconnected enterprise mobile computing. There is a burgeoning industry for mobile computing devices (gizmo for sales person to carry around, warehouse applications, medical devices, you name it) yet the usual problem with embedded devices is needing to develop such custom code for obscure processors, etc. What Nokia has done is different - it's a general purpose computing platform with a (more or less) commodity and powerful stack on top of it. I rather expect that what they're hoping is that people will flock to it as an easier place to write their apps [for] rather than having to muck about in the low level drudgery that usually accompanies having to do embedded work. AfC Toronto -- Andrew Frederick Cowie Managing Director Operational Dynamics Consulting http://www.operationaldynamics.com/ Management consultants specializing in strategy, organizational architecture, procedures to survive change, and performance hardening for the people and systems behind the mission critical enterprise. Available worldwide: Sydney+61 2 9977 6866 New York +1 646 472 5054 Toronto +1 416 848 6072 London+44 207 1019201 ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Which makes me wonder why we are able to bless some applications and not others. The point of blessing the application is saying that this application meets the gnome standards for X,Y and Z and has a release shedule that coincides with the gnome platform release. And that people will work on it to bug-triage it, bug fix it, translate it, document it, UI review it, integrate it, and present it, which is what that release schedule makes possible. If this is all we are really saying, then how can we discriminate on the language the program is written in. Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 7/17/06, Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Which makes me wonder why we are able to bless some applications and not others. The point of blessing the application is saying that this application meets the gnome standards for X,Y and Z and has a release shedule that coincides with the gnome platform release. And that people will work on it to bug-triage it, bug fix it, translate it, document it, UI review it, integrate it, and present it, which is what that release schedule makes possible. And so why does what language it is written in matter to this blessing at all then? iain ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 7/17/06, Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Which makes me wonder why we are able to bless some applications and not others. The point of blessing the application is saying that this application meets the gnome standards for X,Y and Z and has a release shedule that coincides with the gnome platform release. And that people will work on it to bug-triage it, bug fix it, translate it, document it, UI review it, integrate it, and present it, which is what that release schedule makes possible. And so why does what language it is written in matter to this blessing at all then? - Multiple languages make the work harder by requiring people to know more languages. - Because not everyone will be adept in all languages, multiple languages make it more difficult for people to work together. - Doing all this work on a language that might later have to be ripped out would be unpleasant. Blessing leads to integration, which makes this more significant. These are all pros and cons. People should choose their priorities and judge the risks. Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On Sun, 2006-07-16 at 18:57 +0200, Lluis Sanchez wrote: Hey LLuis, I very much agree with your point of view. And I thank you again and again and again for MonoDevelop. You should be extremely proud of your work. As a developer who is *very* worried about memory consumption of mobile applications like tinymail and desktop applications like Evolution (and a few others), I will most certainly use your MonoDevelop and the Mono virtual machine for many of my upcoming software developments. If GNOME wants to lose software developers, it should definitely keep rejecting innovations like .NET and Mono. By the subtile way GNOME is currently already rejecting Mono and other higher programming environ- ments, it will definitely lose for example me. Most people know I'm very opinionated and working hard to get GNOME to be much more friendly for higher programming languages and environments. I also agree the situation *is* actually improving. All GNOME people should understand this: Software developers, want to work with the finest technologies available on this earth. If GNOME glues itself to GObject and C, it will not be used by the generation of young software developers that will come after us. Yet THEY will be the ones that will build compelling applications. WE will burn out and WE will eventually stop development. FACE THIS. I will even strongly advise them to use another development platform. GObject and C, will not get them anywhere compared to modern other software development infrastructures. You don't even have to face this anymore: it's already the hard reality. GNOME, its community, needs to understand this. If it doesn't, it will not survive. Which would, in that case and in my opinion, be totally fair and totally correct. Innovate. Like MonoDevelop. Thanks, LLuis. You are one of my heros for making MonoDevelop reality. GNOME is useless if there are no applications running on it. That's the key success factor. Applications. It's not so important which applications do gnome include, since distros can take this decision, depending on the specific target of the distro. What's important for gnome is to provide a good infrastructure for developing and running applications. Some of the posts in this thread have been defending the purity of GNOME, and they have been against the inclusion of Mono because it could lead to a bloated and memory hungry GNOME. But purity is an abstract concept, we should look at the reality. The reality shows that people are using everyday Mono based applications, and they are happy with them. The reality shows that new applications are being built with high level languages and frameworks like Mono and Python, not in C. If there are memory and performance problems with Mono or Python, excluding them from GNOME is not a solution, because like it or not users will still use them to run applications. GNOME should adapt to this reality if it wants to survive. And adapting here means giving the best support it can provide to high level languages, like it did in the past for C. The Mono framework overlaps in some areas the existing gnome framework, yes, but this problem is not specific to Mono. That's a problem you will have with any other high level language/framework, because the gnome framework is based on a C API, and some of this API do not fit well in higher level languages. Or maybe it could fit, but at the cost of losing ease of use and a better integration with the rest of the framework. If the goal of a high level language/framework is to make it easier to develop applications, it can't be constrained by the underlying C api. If it means duplicating libraries and having for example two xml parsers in memory, so be it. It's still a good deal. -- Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org work: vanhoof at x-tend dot be http://www.pvanhoof.be - http://www.x-tend.be ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Hi, Murray Cumming wrote: The desktop includes stuff that everything (apart from very tightly focused embedded stuff) needs. Vendors who don't need some part of the desktop usually don't want any part of it. So, it's just a base that isn't yet a development platform. You're saying this as if it's a given, which I don't think is the case. If it's an attempt to define the term, and get consensus around that definition, then I suggest core or base/basic environment. As for bringing in new functionality and allowing varied focus, I still think this could be done with additional release sets such as - Productivity: Spreadsheets, Word processing, Slides, Databases, Publishing. - Creativity: Photos, Graphics, Drawing, Video- and Audio-editing, sharing, mixing, augmenting, collaborating. This has now been proposed a few times (by Darren Kenny first, I think), so let's have a go at defining it. We'll need (imho) a proposal for an initial module set for: * Platform I assume everyone is happy with the platform we have now? * Bindings So far, GTK# in the bindings seems pretty uncontroversial * Bare bones Do we take the current core module list, or should we strip it down to move, say, Vino to a sysadmin bundle with Pessulus and Sabayon? It would be helpful to have a full and complete list of all the applications which are currently part of the core desktop. It would also help to have some idea how to handle panel add-ons (ideally, the core would be C only, and deskbar would move elsewhere) * GNOME life (we need a different name) Rhythmbox, Totem, Soundjuicer, FSpot, Serpentine, Pitivi/Diva/both, Thoggen, Ekiga, more? * GNOME admin Sabayon, Pessulus, Vino, gconf2-editor * GNOME graphics (don flameproof pants) Inkscape, the GIMP, others? * GNOME developer Glade, Gazpacho, MonoDeveloper, Eclipse (am I off my rocker?) Profiling stuff (Frysk, gprof, ...?) * GNOME Office Abiword, Gnumeric, Glom, OpenOffice.org, Planner, Dia, ... * GNOME Connected (yeuch - someone else really needs to take on naming these things) xchat-gnome, gaim, gnome-blog, gossip/liferea/straw, ... There's lots of duplicate functionality in there, and perhaps lots of missing stuff too, this is intended just as a sketch of the kinds of things we could do with the big tent approach of a small core and vibrant release sets. We're getting all of these applications into GNOME, and distributors would choose release sets (and even parts of release sets) which interested them. But GNOME itself would be a fully functional environment. A nice job for some young whippersnapper would be to come up with a first draft of a proposal for release sets and functional guidelines for inclusion of an app into a release set, and we can see what happens. In reality, however, all end users and vendors will want everything. But the vendors will just prioritise on some of these parts. That suits me fine. Currently, that happens anyway, but the GNOME project isn't giving any signpost to people about what we consider solid, useful, well supported, etc. And it nicely addresses the issue of people who want the bare bones. Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Murray Cumming wrote: As for bringing in new functionality and allowing varied focus, I still think this could be done with additional release sets such as - Productivity: Spreadsheets, Word processing, Slides, Databases, Publishing. - Creativity: Photos, Graphics, Drawing, Video- and Audio-editing, sharing, mixing, augmenting, collaborating. We could get inspiration from what KDE guys do. If the gnome desktop expands to any kind of applications in various fields (like it seems to be the case), we could issue metapackages like gnome-libs (gtk, gnomevfs, etc.), gnome-base (nautilus, panel, etc.), gnome-multimedia (photo management, editing and such), gnome-games (oh, this one already exists!), etc. Since we would have meta-packages and no real packages like KDE do, these parts of the environment could even overlap, so that a photo management application could be part of gnome-multimedia as well as gnome-photo for instance. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
* Bare bones Do we take the current core module list, or should we strip it down to move, say, Vino to a sysadmin bundle with Pessulus and Sabayon? It would be helpful to have a full and complete list of all the applications which are currently part of the core desktop. It would also help to have some idea how to handle panel add-ons (ideally, the core would be C only, and deskbar would move elsewhere) I remember that, some handfuls of months ago, Jeff Waugh [1] proposed a Power User Tools suite outside of the traditional Platform / Bindings / Desktop (/ Admin). IIRC he was musing about things like Brightside and Devil's Pie, but one option might be to spin out Tomboy, Deskbar, and suchlike into that. Just one more idea to fling around the zoo. :-) [1] I think it was Jeff, but for some reason my GoogleFu is weak and I can't find a reference in the mail archives. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On Sun, 2006-07-16 at 18:47 +0100, Calum Benson wrote: On 16 Jul 2006, at 17:57, Lluis Sanchez wrote: It's not so important which applications do gnome include, since distros can take this decision, depending on the specific target of the distro. Up to a point... although a distro's choice of application is also somewhat influenced by the level of support they can expect from its community and its maintainers, because distros aren't usually in a position to fix things in every app themselves. Since applications that are included in the core GNOME desktop are known to be well- maintained, widely-translated, and released on a regular schedule, it can certainly be more desirable for a distro to include a core GNOME app than an alternative, especially if it's one for which their users are paying for support. They are known to be somewhat well maintained but the quality varies widely in practice. -JP -- JP Rosevear [EMAIL PROTECTED] Novell, Inc. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On Jul 18, 2006, at 12:09 AM, Nigel Tao wrote: ... I remember that, some handfuls of months ago, Jeff Waugh [1] proposed a Power User Tools suite outside of the traditional Platform / Bindings / Desktop (/ Admin). IIRC he was musing about things like Brightside and Devil's Pie, but one option might be to spin out Tomboy, Deskbar, and suchlike into that. Just one more idea to fling around the zoo. :-) [1] I think it was Jeff, but for some reason my GoogleFu is weak and I can't find a reference in the mail archives. ... http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2005-December/msg00069.html -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
quote who=Dave Neary So, my employer has thoughtfully (and unknowingly) donated an hour of my time to this: http://live.gnome.org/ReleaseSets - it includes the power users set suggested above. Suites First impression: Too much, too fast, and in many cases ill-defined given the lengthy discussions we've had about where to take the definition of the release suites over the last few years. (I will take responsibility for this feedback, as I'm covering this in an email I'm writing as an attempt to get this debate back on track - right now, it's horrifically conflated to the point of being useless.) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ It makes perfect sense. If you're a narcissistic arsehole spawned from a curdled gene pool. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Hi, Jeff Waugh wrote: First impression: Too much, too fast, and in many cases ill-defined given the lengthy discussions we've had about where to take the definition of the release suites over the last few years. Like I said, first draft, and we definitely need someone better with names than me. I hadn't seen any attempt to define this like this in the past. (I will take responsibility for this feedback, as I'm covering this in an email I'm writing as an attempt to get this debate back on track - right now, it's horrifically conflated to the point of being useless.) Yay! Jeff also wrote: Additionally, if I ever hear the word core or the phrase loosely based on the KDE idea of meta-packages applied to GNOME release management issues, I will go absolutely fucking mental. Community service announcement. Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty. Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
quote who=Dave Neary Jeff Waugh wrote: First impression: Too much, too fast, and in many cases ill-defined given the lengthy discussions we've had about where to take the definition of the release suites over the last few years. Like I said, first draft, and we definitely need someone better with names than me. I hadn't seen any attempt to define this like this in the past. (Re)definition and creation of suites have been a significant part of the discussions about framing GNOME for ages now. :-) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ Love never misses the chance to put the boot in. - Kelly, SLOU ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Murray Cumming wrote: The word desktop is like a cancer. Its problems include: - it's vague as hell [snip] The desktop includes stuff that everything (apart from very tightly focused embedded stuff) needs. Vendors who don't need some part of the desktop usually don't want any part of it. So, it's just a base that isn't yet a development platform. I don't agree. I think it's stuff oriented toward the niches that have already been adopting GNOME. That's why they've been adopting it, and others have not. I mentioned these niches in my earlier mail; the computer lab / thin client; the unix-to-linux transitions; the Fedora/Ubuntu tech enthusiasts; tech workstations for animation and software development; a couple others perhaps. It doesn't mean anything to say that some of these audiences need a photo app and some other possible audiences also need a photo app - the issue is not specific tech items, it's the whole package and the benefits it offers as a whole. The current audiences are the ones who need a desktop as GNOME has defined desktop. Much of the very tightly focused embedded stuff based on GNOME tech is IMO focused on larger and more mainstream audiences than the so-called general purpose desktop is. So why does GNOME get so stuck on the desktop (by which we mean the enterprisey/thinclienty/unixy desktop) and act like everything else is some kind of distraction? If GNOME were Apple we'd be sitting here going gee, the iPod seems too tightly focused, we need to make a desktop, not just a music player You have to talk about need in the sense of person XYZ already has a bunch of stuff, why do they need what we offer also? Or why would they bother switching - what's so compelling? And how does it relate to what they have? - and then you start thinking about what to offer that they _don't have already_ in any form. To the niches GNOME has been successful in, GNOME _does_ offer stuff they didn't have before, and without breaking what they had already. Either the goal is to spread open source and build stuff people want and will adopt quickly; or the goal is to make a desktop for everyone make a desktop is about as clear as make a website IMO. It doesn't say a thing about what sort of desktop. Don't get me wrong; again, GNOME de facto has more focus than that on the specific audiences I've mentioned. The whole point here is: is that really all GNOME aspires to? And if not, when is someone going to acknowledge that it's the de facto reality of the desktop release (as opposed to the rich ecosystem of related projects)? Because the current audiences ain't gonna reach the 10x10 goal, I assure you of that. As for bringing in new functionality and allowing varied focus, I still think this could be done with additional release sets such as - Productivity: Spreadsheets, Word processing, Slides, Databases, Publishing. - Creativity: Photos, Graphics, Drawing, Video- and Audio-editing, sharing, mixing, augmenting, collaborating. This is splitting by codebase, or some kind of abstract taxonomy. The split has to be by _audience_ and _benefit_. The splits may well involve _overlap_ in order to do this. It's also critical to avoid terms like photos or spreadsheets as if they are all the same. Photos for who? Spreadsheets for who? For example, one large set of people using photos might want some very simple way to 1) share photos with family 2) make a slideshow screensaver and 3) order prints online. Someone else, a serious photo hobbyist, might want 1) detailed photo cataloging/organization 2) Flickr integration 3) Photoshop. You can't just say photos! It's too vague. We all do this, but that doesn't make it right. (Can the same app serve the two photo audiences I mentioned above? Maybe, but can we share code? is a second-order question, not the organizing principle.) In reality, however, all end users and vendors will want everything. But the vendors will just prioritise on some of these parts. That's only the case if by all end users and vendors you mean most end users and vendors of linux distributions and just ignore anything that isn't a linux distribution. There's also Windows apps, embedded (focused?) devices, online services, all kinds of stuff that could serve the goal of bringing an open source computing platform to the general public. Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Dave Neary wrote: So, my employer has thoughtfully (and unknowingly) donated an hour of my time to this: http://live.gnome.org/ReleaseSets - it includes the power users set suggested above. My take: this subdivides GNOME's existing audiences (sort of - it's partly an audience split and partly a codebase-oriented split), but not adding anything for any new audiences, or moving beyond the make a desktop rut. Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
quote who=Havoc Pennington There's also Windows apps, embedded (focused?) devices, online services, all kinds of stuff that could serve the goal of bringing an open source computing platform to the general public. If you were at GUADEC you would've heard about some interesting action in this area (which will be more widely announced in the coming months). :-) Next year, COME TO GUADEC, HAVOC! - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ He's not an idiot. The doctor said so. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Havoc Pennington There's also Windows apps, embedded (focused?) devices, online services, all kinds of stuff that could serve the goal of bringing an open source computing platform to the general public. If you were at GUADEC you would've heard about some interesting action in this area (which will be more widely announced in the coming months). :-) Next year, COME TO GUADEC, HAVOC! Good to hear! Now spread it through the project: why are GNOME mailing lists, web site, release groupings, etc. all proceeding merrily along as if the goal is make a desktop... while even the immediate ecosystem is clearly not about that exclusively or even mostly. My big picture question, why would GNOME never have produced things like, and still is not producing things like: - itunes/ipod - gmail - last.fm - shutterfly - flickr - MySpace - TiVo - ... Or even why is GNOME sidelining things like: - Maemo - Elisa - One Laptop Per Child - ... My first-order answer is that GNOME thinks of itself as making a desktop - even though the _reality_ is that the larger GNOME community/ecosystem is doing way more than that, and that the larger tech industry is doing still more. Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
quote who=Vincent Untz But we'll obviously need to change the way we release GNOME too... Not significantly so... I really warn against this - no throwing babies out with the bathwater! - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ You put on the pants, and the pants start telling you what to do. - Bono ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Le mardi 18 juillet 2006, à 00:02, Jeff Waugh a écrit : quote who=Jeff Waugh Suites First impression Additionally, if I ever hear the word core or the phrase loosely based on the KDE idea of meta-packages applied to GNOME release management issues, I will go absolutely fucking mental. Community service announcement. The core would help us to ship something loosely based on the KDE idea of meta-packages. Love, Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Iain * wrote: Once again, who are we targetting with the desktop. Apple know who they're targetting, which is probably why text editor and terminal are not high on the list of features. I thought we were targeting a desktop platform for ISV to integrate it? In that case it make sense to provide modules. BTW what about providing the Office suite first? Because Gnome penetration is first into large business [1] deployment, and and Office suite is more likely to hit that target. We still don't, but distribution vendors do. Nobody install Gnome as is, but everybody install a distribution that comes with Gnome (or KDE). That is were things are, and distribution vendor are our first ISVs. Hub [1] business as in opposition to home market: cities, universities, whatever were people do *productive* work and not hobby/entertainment, which is essentially e-mail, web-based, office (word processing, spreadsheets), etc. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Vincent Untz But we'll obviously need to change the way we release GNOME too... Not significantly so... I really warn against this - no throwing babies out with the bathwater! The way GNOME is released is probably pretty good for the linux distribution GUI release. It's a matter of labeling and changing that to part of GNOME instead of the main point of GNOME Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
quote who=Havoc Pennington But we'll obviously need to change the way we release GNOME too... Not significantly so... I really warn against this - no throwing babies out with the bathwater! The way GNOME is released is probably pretty good for the linux distribution GUI release. It's a matter of labeling and changing that to part of GNOME instead of the main point of GNOME 100% agree. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ GNOME, launched specifically to counter a threat to our freedom, is the free software project par excellence. - Richard Stallman ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Havoc Pennington Or even why is GNOME sidelining things like: - Maemo - Elisa - One Laptop Per Child - ... You make it sound active - it's not, it's passive. But that's changing. I don't mean to imply active or not, and I'm glad to hear it's changing. I think having some of those non-desktop projects on equal footing within GNOME alongside the desktop release would make a big difference. _Especially_ if each subproject is defined by its target audience and benefit, rather than by its codebase. I thought of a more concrete approach to understanding what this means. Question for the list, what is the target audience and benefit to them of the desktop release? Current: - historical UNIX workstation users who want something similar but not dead - technology fans who want a set of apps they can mess with and heavily customize - thin client / computer lab deployments who want something with good manageability / security and low cost (the low cost especially for government/edu) - server administrators who want to pack a lot of ssh sessions onto the screen, use some web-based admin consoles, and occasionally waste some time doing non-work stuff - ... Future: - ... ? (try to be as specific as the above) Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Hubert Figuiere wrote: I thought we were targeting a desktop platform for ISV to integrate it? In that case it make sense to provide modules. BTW what about providing the Office suite first? Because Gnome penetration is first into large business [1] deployment, and and Office suite is more likely to hit that target. We still don't, but distribution vendors do. I'd advocate being more specific than this. According to Federico's stuff, which also agrees with my observations, the success is when: - thin client / fixed function works - low cost is important (government / edu) [1] business as in opposition to home market: cities, universities, whatever were people do *productive* work and not hobby/entertainment, which is essentially e-mail, web-based, office (word processing, spreadsheets), etc. But business as in large companies with a lot of money and people doing office productivity, there's not much success. Some reasons for that: - the cost of the Windows/Office license simply is not a big deal - thin client has no value when laptops are involved, and laptops are almost always involved - these companies have hundreds of existing apps - these companies have bothered to set up all the active directory and other windows management stuff and have it working - users are heavily invested in MS Office, Outlook, and similar and the IT department is not going to be able to win a political battle to disrupt all that So this is a different thing entirely from the thin client / government-edu deployments. Small business, medium business, and I might guess businesses outside the US are all yet more different cases. When talking about target audience, it should be a lot more specific than home vs. business in other words. The specifics here heavily affect decisions. For example, would we want a word processor more like Pages or more like Word. Or do we need to care about a word processor at all. Or a desktop at all. Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Murray Cumming wrote: So why does GNOME get so stuck on the desktop (by which we mean the enterprisey/thinclienty/unixy desktop) and act like everything else is some kind of distraction? Really, lots of people are trying lots of other stuff, because people generally share your thoughts on this. It's just not quite there yet. Plus, we don't know how to do or fund web-based services. Personally I think we could go mass market by having a great creativity platform that provided an easy way into the new world of easily-created and easily-mashed-together free(dom) audio and video. Annodex feels key to this: http://www.annodex.org/ It could be way more than iLife by joining us all together. It's a good line of thought. What's missing in my mind is 1) who is it that wants to enter the new world of audio/video creativity, and why aren't they already there 2) what else do they want 3) what else are they already using 4) what is the shortest (or at least a short) path to offering them this new world of creativity. One thing is to not presuppose that it involves Linux/GNOME/a desktop/a PC at least in the historical sense of those things. The problem statement / project definition should not be how do we get people to want a desktop it's how do we make what people want Because the current audiences ain't gonna reach the 10x10 goal, I assure you of that. We can meet the needs of people who want a transition away from a corporate Windows desktop, while at the same time creating a radically better life experience. Let's encourage the great new stuff that's happening without discouraging the great old stuff. Please don't think I'm discouraging the old stuff. On the contrary, I'd like to list it more explicitly (as I've done in several of this mails) and get better focus on it. It's just as terrible for our thin client deployments to get dragged along with decisions for some other audience, as the vice versa. There's also Windows apps, embedded (focused?) devices, online services, all kinds of stuff that could serve the goal of bringing an open source computing platform to the general public. You of all people know that we do need to be at least a little focused. To me there are two useful levels of mission statement; the very high level, values/aspirations kind of goal like completely open source platform for the general public and the very specific kind of goal like enable young artists to mash-up and share audio and video with ease (I listed a few very specific goals of that nature that I think the current desktop release embodies in a mail a few minutes ago.) In the middle is the bad kind of goal; make a desktop, make an office suite, write some software To continue my car analogy; at the highest level you have the mission of the whole project - how is SAAB different from Toyota is the question. How is GNOME different from Microsoft, Google, Ubuntu, Red Hat, KDE, MySpace. At the lowest level you have the specific subprojects; a car for young people who love cars and want to drive fast, but don't have a lot of money or a car for mid-life-crisis men with lots of cash who want to show off their social status and good taste or what have you. But the not-useful level is let's make a car or worse, let's make a car that has a V-8 engine and uses our new manufacturing process (that would be let's write some stuff in Python or let's do something that involves a desktop for example). It's this middle/vague, or alternatively wrong (tech rather than audience/benefit), level of focus that tends to be problematic. Havoc ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
On 7/17/06, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Bindings So far, GTK# in the bindings seems pretty uncontroversial Assuming it can satisfy the rules of the bindings release, that is. Multiple people have pointed out that they would dislike it being accepted in the proposed form, with it intentionally depending on modules in the desktop release (as this does not conform to the API or ABI requirements of the bindings release set). I'm one of those; I fully support Gtk# (the portion that wraps platform libraries, that is) entering the bindings release if this issue is fixed, and personally am against it otherwise. If Gtk# is agreed upon as okay for modules in the desktop to depend upon, then it probably makes sense to also have a gtk-sharp-desktop accepted module (which woudl bind modules in the desktop suite) akin to how gnome-python and gnome-python-desktop are split. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Jamie McCracken wrote: Iain * wrote: On 7/15/06, Chipzz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Beagle Quite important IMO, but we have tracker as a replacement. I'm not holding my breath for tracker really...Call it a hunch, or female intuition or something... Well I suggest you try it rather than dismiss it out of hand. Tracker is already integrated in both nautilus search and deskbar and provides the fastest and most memory efficient search available in both those cases. I will be proposing Tracker for inclusion in 2.18 by which time it will include support for indexing emails, logs and others. and just to make clear it will have an abstraction layer for indexing built in so you can use Beagle with it if you prefer. I am more than happy to do this cause Beagle does have some popular support and is well polished in certain areas. Tracker can also be used as a stand-alone metadata database without any indexing if you dont want it (it would be used in this mode when abstracted with Beagle as stated above). Hopefully this will keep everyone happy and let Gnome get world class search *and* metadata/tag/storage database support. -- Mr Jamie McCracken http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, Luis Felipe Strano Moraes wrote: On 7/15/06, Iain * [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Diva Same as monodevelop. Umm, no, its a video editor...same as pitivi. I believe he was making a reference to the comment he made for monodevelop. Indeed. Do we really need an audio/video editor in gnome??? Jokosher Or a music editor??? Well, it hasn't harmed apple in any way. But MacOSX != gnome Ubuntu, Gentoo, and the other distros should come with a music editor, a video editor, and everything else. The discussion here I believe is what should be made part of the basic gnome distribution, and I think that music/video editors might not qualify. That's exactly what I meant. Windows starting to be shipped (well, starting...) with everything but the kitchen sink, and I hate that too. I don't even *have* a camera, why would I need a video editor??? The question that I'm asking, and which we should be asking ourselves is, does gnome really need to endorse everything and the kitchen sink in order to become successfull? I think not. We do need applications to survive, but that doesn't mean that we (or they) will be any less suc- cessfull if we don't include them, given the success they have now. IMHO, the program on that list that most likely should become a part of regular gnome is beagle. I haven't seen tracker yet, gonna take a look at it later. See ya, --lf Thx for the mail, you seem to have explained exactly how I feel ;) kr, Chipzz AKA Jan Van Buggenhout -- UNIX isn't dead - It just smells funny [EMAIL PROTECTED] Baldric, you wouldn't recognize a subtle plan if it painted itself pur- ple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing 'subtle plans are here a- gain'. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Ubuntu, Gentoo, and the other distros should come with a music editor, a video editor, and everything else. The discussion here I believe is what should be made part of the basic gnome distribution, and I think that music/video editors might not qualify. That's exactly what I meant. Windows starting to be shipped (well, starting...) with everything but the kitchen sink, and I hate that too. Ubuntu would come with a video editor in your setup...and you don't even *HAVE* a camera... I don't even *have* a camera, why would I need a video editor??? If you want to leave it all up to the distros then what is the point of there even being a gnome desktop release? Why should we have any of the applications in gnome? Why do we feel we are able to bless a terminal program and a text editor and a clock, but unable to do the same to a video editor or an audio editor? You ask: The question that I'm asking, and which we should be asking ourselves is, does gnome really need to endorse everything and the kitchen sink in order to become successfull? Why do we need to bless anything, if the distros are going to do whatever they like? ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Iain * iaingnome at gmail.com writes: Why do we feel we are able to bless a terminal program and a text editor and a clock, but unable to do the same to a video editor or an audio editor? There is a huge difference between essential programs (editor, terminal) and specific applications (photo management, music editor) And to return the example or Apple/MacOSX. iPhoto, Garage Band and iMovie are part of the iLife suite. It comes bundled with the machine like the OS. Not with the OS. If you pay the $149 upgrade fee for MacOS X, you don't get and upgrade of these. You have to pay another $79 to get it upgraded (actually there is no upgrade price). That clearly show that there are just different package bundled together with a machine. This is the distro choice. If we want to take care of all of this, why don't we just create Gnome Linux, and pick the kernel, the base system, the package management, etc. Hub ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 15 Jul 2006, at 23:43, Iain * wrote: On 7/15/06, Chipzz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Or a music editor??? Well, it hasn't harmed apple in any way. FWIW, GarageBand isn't part of OSX though... granted it currently ships with all new Macs, but if you go out and buy OSX off the shelf, you have to buy iLife separately. Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Java Desktop System Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 16 Jul 2006, at 09:36, Jeroen Zwartepoorte wrote: On 7/15/06, Chipzz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mono: F-spot Image viewer, really non-essential. Come on, Eye of Gnome is an image viewer. F-Spot is a photo management application (like iPhoto). Try asking Mac users if iPhoto is non-essential. Apple seem to think it is, otherwise they'd make it part of OSX instead of iLife :) (As per my last post, though, I'll grant you it does currently ship with all new Macs.) Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Java Desktop System Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
That's exactly what I meant. Windows starting to be shipped (well, starting...) with everything but the kitchen sink, and I hate that too. I don't even *have* a camera, why would I need a video editor??? The question that I'm asking, and which we should be asking ourselves is, does gnome really need to endorse everything and the kitchen sink in order to become successfull? I think not. We do need applications to survive, but that doesn't mean that we (or they) will be any less suc- cessfull if we don't include them, given the success they have now. GNOME is useless if there are no applications running on it. That's the key success factor. Applications. It's not so important which applications do gnome include, since distros can take this decision, depending on the specific target of the distro. What's important for gnome is to provide a good infrastructure for developing and running applications. Some of the posts in this thread have been defending the purity of GNOME, and they have been against the inclusion of Mono because it could lead to a bloated and memory hungry GNOME. But purity is an abstract concept, we should look at the reality. The reality shows that people are using everyday Mono based applications, and they are happy with them. The reality shows that new applications are being built with high level languages and frameworks like Mono and Python, not in C. If there are memory and performance problems with Mono or Python, excluding them from GNOME is not a solution, because like it or not users will still use them to run applications. GNOME should adapt to this reality if it wants to survive. And adapting here means giving the best support it can provide to high level languages, like it did in the past for C. The Mono framework overlaps in some areas the existing gnome framework, yes, but this problem is not specific to Mono. That's a problem you will have with any other high level language/framework, because the gnome framework is based on a C API, and some of this API do not fit well in higher level languages. Or maybe it could fit, but at the cost of losing ease of use and a better integration with the rest of the framework. If the goal of a high level language/framework is to make it easier to develop applications, it can't be constrained by the underlying C api. If it means duplicating libraries and having for example two xml parsers in memory, so be it. It's still a good deal. Lluis. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 7/16/06, Hubert Figuiere [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Iain * iaingnome at gmail.com writes: Why do we feel we are able to bless a terminal program and a text editor and a clock, but unable to do the same to a video editor or an audio editor? There is a huge difference between essential programs (editor, terminal) and specific applications (photo management, music editor) Really? depends on your context... For some people a terminal and text editor are completely worthless, but take away photo management Once again, who are we targetting with the desktop. Apple know who they're targetting, which is probably why text editor and terminal are not high on the list of features. iain ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 16 Jul 2006, at 17:57, Lluis Sanchez wrote: It's not so important which applications do gnome include, since distros can take this decision, depending on the specific target of the distro. Up to a point... although a distro's choice of application is also somewhat influenced by the level of support they can expect from its community and its maintainers, because distros aren't usually in a position to fix things in every app themselves. Since applications that are included in the core GNOME desktop are known to be well- maintained, widely-translated, and released on a regular schedule, it can certainly be more desirable for a distro to include a core GNOME app than an alternative, especially if it's one for which their users are paying for support. (Which isn't to say that non-core apps can't be well-maintained, widely-translated and released on a regular schedule too, of course, but there can certainly be less incentive for that to happen.) Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Java Desktop System Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)
Iain * wrote: Really? depends on your context... For some people a terminal and text editor are completely worthless, but take away photo management Once again, who are we targetting with the desktop. Apple know who they're targetting, which is probably why text editor and terminal are not high on the list of features. Yes! I was hoping your thread about this would catch fire instead of the one about mono, because answering the what is gnome anyhow? question would make the mono-type debates much simpler. If GNOME can't figure out a way to answer that question, its only option is to be a platform provider for Elisa, Maemo, SLED, Fedora, Ubuntu, Palm, Firefox, WINE, etc. etc. Those are all more focused, more target-audience-decided-upon solutions that in many cases use GNOME technology but diverge to a small or large extent from the GNOME desktop release because guess what, actually shipping something useful requires more focused, specific thinking. There's nothing wrong with the platform provider path, and it's probably inevitable by inertia and industry dynamic, but if taking that path it'd be interesting to do it consciously and optimize GNOME as a platform provider - with the providers of all those more focused solutions as the primary customers. And this _also_ helps answer the Mono debate - the question would become how to best serve the specific solutions and the teams building them. To me there are two hard parts to answering the target audience / what is GNOME question: 1) how does GNOME decide anything? it's a big swarm of people 2) which audience or focus to choose? Here's one way one might approach it. : Step 1. Collect underpants. j/k : Step 1. Redefine GNOME as in the original charter; provide an open source computing platform to the general public. Do this on the foundation level and get wide buy-in. Hammer the message consistently through the web site and other communications. The goal is to fight off the GNOME = desktop environment legacy. Note, platform in the charter I think has to be understood as environment or solution not as APIs - might be worth officially rewording in that way. In fact, I think it has to include both software bits AND finding some way to work with content and online services if there's a serious interest in offering open source alternatives to today's proprietary software companies. So, let's assume platform includes all that stuff for purposes of redefining GNOME in this way. : Step 2. Kill the single desktop release and replace it with target-audience-specific/solution-to-problem-specific more focused releases. For example, while they may not be interested, Maemo and Elisa would be candidates. The current desktop release should become one thing among peers; or it's even worth considering splitting it up to be multiple peers. Don't call the desktop release desktop either because it's too vague. More specific examples might be an enterprise unix/linux GUI release, or tech-oriented consumer/hobbyist release or tech workstation release or high-powered MS Office user in an office release or computer lab / thin client release or whatever people feel is the right focus. The word desktop is like a cancer. Its problems include: - it's vague as hell - includes a zillion target audiences and apps - it accepts an existing category definition (essentially, what windows and mac are) thus precluding meaningful innovation - it excludes content and online services - key elements of all the new stuff going on in the tech industry today The huge debate here is how to split things up; the important thing to remember is that there can be lots of code sharing (where it makes sense) between related offerings. So e.g. almost everything could use GTK, but only some offerings might want the GNOME panel. i.e., doing the split by _codebase_ is wrong; the split is by _target audience_ and _focus_; some splits might be worthwhile _just to change the default config options_ even. The technology can be made to support such things, and in fact it should be made to do so. Also of course, the split depends on having volunteers to own each release. The counterintuitive and hard-to-accept reality is that trying to be universal just leads to being vague and useless. The right approach is to try to be specific (and useful), then factor out common elements between multiple specific solutions, resulting in a platform. aka top down This is happening de facto _anyway_! Look at all the different things people are building on GNOME tech. It's just that GNOME is not acknowledging it, and not taking credit for it. GNOME still sits here claiming to be a desktop and that's a very limited view. A couple other notes: - something like http://live.gnome.org/Personas is not helpful, because it's way too broad. Need to pick only some of the people there, and then (even harder) pick only some of the
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 7/16/06, Hubert Figuiere [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BTW what about providing the Office suite first? Because Gnome penetration is first into large business [1] deployment, and and Office suite is more likely to hit that target. We still don't, but distribution vendors do. I have no problem with that at all...but that would involve defining our target market and focussing on it, but currently our way of picking modules is currently kind of haphazzard and untargetted. NB: My use of iLife type applications is not because I want that sort of stuff included, although, it'd be cool if they were cos I'd use them more than a spreadsheet. Nobody install Gnome as is, but everybody install a distribution that comes with Gnome (or KDE). That is were things are, and distribution vendor are our first ISVs. Which makes me wonder why we are able to bless some applications and not others. The point of blessing the application is saying that this application meets the gnome standards for X,Y and Z and has a release shedule that coincides with the gnome platform release. If this is all we are really saying, then how can we discriminate on the language the program is written in. iain ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On 7/14/06, Corey Burger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey all, It seems that the recent discussions of mono (and to a lesser extent python) have lost sight of two very important things: innovation and why we are really here. Regardless of what you think of the language they are being written in, there are a number of very cool apps and tools being written in various heavy languages. At the end of day, what GNOME is about delivering a simple and powerful desktop to users. Python and Mono-based apps are delivering this, in spades. Without futher ado, to remember what this conversation is really about, Corey's gallery of innovative and very cool Mono and Python apps: Mono: F-spot Beagle MonoDevelop Diva Banshee Python: Gimmie Pitivi Jokosher Serpentine Gramps Gourment Recipe Manager So lets focus on what really matter: delivering a rocking desktop to masses, rather than get bogged down in pendantic debates about the spelling: pedantic Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-) ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
On Fri, 14 Jul 2006, Corey Burger wrote: Hey all, It seems that the recent discussions of mono (and to a lesser extent python) have lost sight of two very important things: innovation and why we are really here. And your mail loses perspective as of how much these apps are actually needed in a default desktop. Most of these apps are non-essential, and belong in gnome-extras, which can depend on the language bindings... I am not saying those apps ain't cool, because they are, I am wondering if gnome as a project really *needs* to contain/endorse these apps. (Obviously gnome needs apps written with the gnome framework to survive, but that's not what this is about). Regardless of what you think of the language they are being written in, there are a number of very cool apps and tools being written in various heavy languages. At the end of day, what GNOME is about delivering a simple and powerful desktop to users. Python and Mono-based apps are delivering this, in spades. Without futher ado, to remember what this conversation is really about, Corey's gallery of innovative and very cool Mono and Python apps: Mono: F-spot Image viewer, really non-essential. Beagle Quite important IMO, but we have tracker as a replacement. MonoDevelop Development environment, really not needed by the majority of our users. Diva Same as monodevelop. Banshee Overlapping functionality with a couple of alternatives. Python: Gimmie Sounds like an exciting alternative to gnome-panel. Pitivi Do we really need an audio/video editor in gnome??? Jokosher Or a music editor??? Serpentine Usefull, ubuntu ships this. Gramps Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System Oh ffs, why on earth do you think this belongs in the gnome desktop??? Gourment Recipe Manager Or this for that matter? So lets focus on what really matter: delivering a rocking desktop to masses, rather than get bogged down in pendantic debates about the merits of various platforms. Flame away! Ok, to sum up: this leaves us with beagle, which has an alternative (tracker), serpentine and gimmie. As wrt the last one, this sounds like something for the ever elusive Gnome 3.0. Also, given it's young age, there obviously are some concerns wrt it's stability. It also may be a candidate for reimplementation in C(?) Corey Please, do not just start summing up random applications as arguments, a lot of the examples you pointed out were bad examples. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list kr, Chipzz AKA Jan Van Buggenhout PS: despite what's in this mail, I think a lot of those apps are cool apps, and pygtk and gtk# are cool developping environments (I use pygtk myself!). -- UNIX isn't dead - It just smells funny [EMAIL PROTECTED] Baldric, you wouldn't recognize a subtle plan if it painted itself pur- ple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing 'subtle plans are here a- gain'. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al
Hey all, It seems that the recent discussions of mono (and to a lesser extent python) have lost sight of two very important things: innovation and why we are really here. Regardless of what you think of the language they are being written in, there are a number of very cool apps and tools being written in various heavy languages. At the end of day, what GNOME is about delivering a simple and powerful desktop to users. Python and Mono-based apps are delivering this, in spades. Without futher ado, to remember what this conversation is really about, Corey's gallery of innovative and very cool Mono and Python apps: Mono: F-spot Beagle MonoDevelop Diva Banshee Python: Gimmie Pitivi Jokosher Serpentine Gramps Gourment Recipe Manager So lets focus on what really matter: delivering a rocking desktop to masses, rather than get bogged down in pendantic debates about the merits of various platforms. Flame away! Corey ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
