More on the "Wishlist"

It appears I got lots of comments on my blog last night... I'll field them here. Note that the long post by Andy which ends "powertools are not part of GNOME Desktop" was actually by me, no idea why it says Andy.

"If you do a skin of GTK+ 2.x for EMACS" -- there is a GTK+ 2 port of emacs already -- "like there is one for OOo" -- all OOo does is copy the theme colours, my patches to the GNOME control center (in 2.4) mean that emacs should do that for you too.

Paul Gnuyen -- you don't want "viewports" over "workspaces". You want the implementation of virtual desktop to include spanning windows across desktops. That is fine, I thought there was a bug about this but I can't seem to find it at the moment :( The spanning issue I think might be possible if you fiddle with the X virtual desktop size too, but I've only got a single screen so I don't know the details of this.

Eugenia -- I was waiting for your reply. :) I understand that low-tech journalists and "normal" users will bitch, moan and generally complain about things which annoy them without going through the proper channels to get the problems solved. However, I expected you, someone who was recently a member of the nautilus mailing list, to be up to date on what is happening in GNOME development. It is a little late posting a wishlist for GNOME when 2.5 has just his the API freeze, and contains a large number of the entries on your list. I expect you to file bugs all the time, to be active on the usability lists, because "you care" (as you say). Or I'd expect such an article to be passed to some of the people close to GNOME development first so that they can point out the differences in direction/features which already exist/etc etc.

I want GNOME to be a commercial desktop. I want GNOME on the NHS desktops, in our government, one as many desktops as possible. I wrote Sound Juicer to be a CD ripper for normal people, as the existing rippers are not very user friendly. It is this focus on end-users which GNOME has, 800,000 users inside the NHS will not want a powerful text editor, or an integrated IDE, but a powerful email client, a easy to use web browser, a easy system to use. Yes, there should be comprehensive CD burning software using the GNOME library, and video editing software using GTK+/GStreamer, but at the moment there are larger fish to fry. We need the best email client (luckily Evolution 2 is looking excellent) and the cleanest browser (Epiphany is developing so fast and so well) before we can look at other, less important, programs.

In a related note, I see Federico has fiddled with the new file chooser, and renamed the Frobnicate button... For people who didn't know what "Frobnicate" meant, the Jargon File is a handy reference for "Lart" too.

Finally, contact-lookup-applet now sports auto-completion. I hope to get 0.3 out soon.

10:16 Thursday, 11 Dec 2003 [#] [computers] (6 comments)

Posted by Eugenia at Thu Dec 11 10:38:57 2003:
>It is a little late posting a wishlist for
>GNOME when 2.5 has just his the API freeze

But my article was not speaking of Gnome 2.6 in particular, but a "future" Gnome 2.6/2.8 or whatever. And also as I clearly wrote in my article, I started writing that article many days ago (about 2.5 weeks ago), and I have adjusted it saying that some of these wishes (undone when I was writing them) have already being granted.
Posted by seraph at Thu Dec 11 11:47:10 2003:
I find it odd, that someone with as little to do with GNOME as eugenia has so much to say about it. It's rather like oGALAXYo and his 'opinions'. Only difference here, is that unlike oGALAXYo, Eugenia has a site called OSNews. And she fields her personal opinions (which the other equally unqualified fans eat up and comment on) there.

But at the end of the day, that's all it is. Hot air, KDE trolls, and We Want GNOME complete and Windows-like NOW! (that includes you, Eugenia).
Posted by seraph at Thu Dec 11 11:53:45 2003:
Personally, I feel GNOME has progressed a HUGE amount in the time it's had. Sure, I freely admit it's a catchup game right now - but look at the rate. The rate at which GNOME develops is insane. I say it's insane cause it's Good Stuff. Well thought out, and most of the time reliable (except for say ... VFS for a bit there - understandably so though). Asking the moon and stars (of them) does nothing really. GNOME developers are very well aware of what needs to be done. they've proven that. GNOME doesn't publicise it's unimplemented everythings (unlike say, Longhorn?). Look at the roadmaps, at the plans within the community.

As for your burning app, a Nero-like (in functionality) app is quite possible with Gstreamer/Libburn etc. However, time/manpower are limiting factors. I admire your 'care' for the OSS desktop, but you go about it the wrong way - it inflames too many. I hope that i don't sound like I am trying to put you down, but people are starting to react negatively towards articles like these (on gimpnet, and other networks related to OSS).
Posted by Gene at Thu Dec 11 17:15:19 2003:
I generally agree with most of the points Eugenia is making.  I also see Ross' side.  I am both a software developer and a user of Gnome at home.  I too am excited about the growth of my fav Linux DE.  In addition to better quality apps that Ross has talked about (Evolution & Ephiphany).  I'd like to seem some low level interoperability between apps.  (ie common shared bookmarks for Nautilus & Ephiphany or Galeon or moz or even Konq, common contact lists for IE and E-mail clients).  Maybe the new bounties will bring some of these things, and maybe it wont.  But looking through the bounties, it looked like they were just concerned about Gaim and evolution.  Would it not be better to support a common system wide way of sharing contacts so that Gabber and Evolution could also share contacts?? I suspect once DBus comes out that may help things a bit.  I just hope that the DEV's don't loose sight of what functionality a DE should provide. 

Thanks!
Posted by Gene at Thu Dec 11 17:17:18 2003:
One more thing.. A common way of installing software would be nice.  Any chance of Autopackage making it into Gnome 2.8??
Posted by Ross at Fri Dec 12 08:39:48 2003:
Gene -- some points.  The bounties are funded by Novell, which indicates that they are features they would like to see in their desktop, thus the OOo/gaim/evolution emphasis.

However, evolution should be in GNOME 2.6, and this is rocking as it makes the tight integration possible. Imagine the flames if gnome-panel suddenly depended on evolution and evolution wasn't in the GNOME desktop... everyone on /. and osnews would claim it was a corporate takeover of GNOME (again) and blaa blaa blaa.

As far as I understand the official GNOME line, installing software is a distribution thing, and therefore will not be in GNOME.  I don't want to switch from my lovely apt-get to autopackage, thankyou very much.

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