Submitted by According to some, one of the adoption problems of the Gnome development platform is the lack of good documentation for new developers. And so the GNOME Foundation has hired Shaun McCance as a contractor to write such documentation. Elsewhere, the Gnome developers discuss about which new apps should be included in the upcoming Gnome 2.14 release.
Author Hired to Write Gnome Documentation for Developers
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Not even good documentation would spur acceptance of a poor platform.
Not even facts would spur acceptance for your comments…
Further proof of the dream world in which you people live
I believe that the corresponding mod ratings for each of the first three comments here are indicative of the massive GNOME wankfest that is OSnews.
I don’t think one person can write all the documentation
it’s a huge work.
Developers would to write examples for their libraries not freelances.
If you bothered to read the links you will find the person contracted is a long term contributor and lead of the GNOME docs project and he is only being contracted to write a introductory guide and not everything required
> If you bothered to read the links you will find the
> person contracted is a long term contributor and lead
> of the GNOME docs project and he is only being
> contracted to write a introductory guide and not
> everything required.
Well not that long term contributor, compared to many other people who had been contributing to GNOME since beginning but that isn’t my point actually.
The thing is that from my opinion it would have been a much more need to get some replacement for the scrollkeeper package which hasn’t been maintained nor touched or fixed for quite a few years yet. And it’s still an urgent requirement for GNOME.
What would also be required is that Yelp finally get’s printing support so people can finally print the documents or certain pages of the documents for offline reading.
He’s been working on the GNOME doc stuff and primarily yelp from what I know. It would have been better to have him paid for doing this work (getting rid of scrollkeeper + yelp printing support) and have any random XYZ person write the docs who is probably not able to code, rather than have a coder taken away from this resource doing documents. Just an idea.
Documentation is an important part of programming thus it makes perfect sense to have a programmer write documentation. Also if the docs are decent, (future) developers might be able to do their work better so while you take one programmer of the coding everyone gains. Of course it’s never that simple (it’ll take more devs to write good documentation and after all it’s “just” a foreword)
5 GNOME articles vs. 5 Other Articles
They are always denying it but it’s so open visible that they get money stuffed up their tail from GNOME.
and btw for this articles there’s planet.gnome.org
Perhaps, if you want to make such remarks based on nothing more than the tendancy of Gnome to produce more news than other platforms, you should register so that everyone here knows who you are and can ignore you and you’re pathetic comments.
Its also worth noting that if you want to stay up to date with KDE news that you can join their feed and get the latest news as it happens.
But I guess you never thought about than and will continue to flame Gnome for no reason.
If you don’t like the platform, good for you, I don’t like KDE but you don’t see me taking negative and offensive action against it, grow up and register or go away.
> If you don’t like the platform, good for you, I don’t
> like KDE but you don’t see me taking negative and
> offensive action against it, grow up and register or
> go away.
Well, If you don`t like my comments then it`s your freedom to go and read on another site. There are dozens of nice pages reporting similar news and are beside this much more crediable in the work they are doing.
I for myself take the same given chance that has been given to most other readers to speak out my very own opinion and I believe I don`t have to justify this infront of you or anyone else. Can`t take my comments, fine your problem. Sometimes the truth around GNOME seem to hurt too much
“Well, If you don`t like my comments then it`s your freedom to go and read on another site.”
You dont get it. Your comments are not relevant for the topic at hand. This is not a “Whats your opinion on GNOME” news item.
“I for myself take the same given chance that has been given to most other readers to speak out my very own opinion and I believe I don`t have to justify this infront of you or anyone else.”
When you post “opinions” that has no relevance to the topic you do.
” Sometimes the truth around GNOME seem to hurt too much
”
Opinions are not facts nor truth but that’s besides the point anyway. You are trolling.
On the one hand the comments are for people to post their opinions on articles, on the other hand Anonymous shouldn’t post misinformation and then expect not to be told off and moderated down.
Just my view of things.
> Anonymous shouldn’t post misinformation and then expect
> not to be told off and moderated down.
Just because you have the ability to post anonymously still doesn’t mean that everything posted are misinformations. You can be moderated down anyways, be it with account or without account. There are sick enough people with multiple accounts on OSN who moderate down for the sake of it and not for the context of the written comment. Just because you have an account with a pseudo name “godcrawler” doesn’t make you more crediable that someone whose name is “anonymous”.
GNOME Articles on the front page:
1) Author Hired to Write Gnome Documentation for Developers
2) Open Source Java Desktop System Released (it is GNOME-based after all)
Not-GNOME Articles:
1) Oracle: Free Express Edition Database Released in Beta
2) More Information on the Microsoft Research OS Singularity
3) Review: Mandriva Linux 2006 PowerPack
4) Microsoft: Windows May Be Pulled in Korea
5) Pixel Ported to SkyOS
6) Avahi Now API/ABI Compatible with Howl/Bonjour
7) Sun Freezes Hell, Gets IBM To Sell Solaris on Blades
8) Microsoft Earnings Present a Mixed Bag
9) How To Speed up OpenOffice
10) Microsoft Warns Software Industry Is Ill-Prepared for Multicore
11) Why Do People Switch to Linux?
12) MySQL CEO: Partnerships Will Propel OSS Into Mainstream
13) Linux Kernel 2.6.14 Released
14) P.A. Semi’s PPC Announcement, and Looking Back at The Switch
15) VS 2005, SQL Server 2005, .NET Framework 2.0 Released
16) OpenOpenOffice Plans To Bring ODF to MS Office
17) Novell Missteps Not Affecting SuSE
18) Microsoft Denies Preparations To Support OpenDoc in Office 12
2 out of 20 is very different from 5 out of 10, and by the way, you’re ALWAYS trolling in every article that mention the word GNOME. 24:7.
you really should check a good therapist…
Well, the problem is that OSN primarily reports about GNOME stuff and reject most supplied KDE articles. I know this from first hand since the amaroK developers tried a few times to report the news about the amaroK live CD here. While it has been made online on various other news sites it has been ignored on OSN and from what I was told this has happened with various other KDE related articles as well.
You may beg pardon but you can be sure that this leads to the conclusion that OSN primarily wants to push GNOME infront and giving KDE a good bunch of shits by ignoring most of its articles. There is also a tendency that I see from my side that this is done by intend.
There are a lot of worthwhile KDE articles either on their blog site as well as on the dot site. I recall times where Eugenia has put every single blog entry from various named GNOMER online and made it sound like these private own statements were true happenings. Well I don`t expect the same for KDE because I believe this is a silly thing to do but I as crediable reader of OSN can expect that every OS is being treated with the same respect.
If you are complaining about Trolls then please complain towards the OSN staff for exactly providing a plattform for this. If it`s not them treating their readers with disrespect and if it`s not them who primarily post more GNOME related material than XFCE, E or KDE ones then it`s clear that we have the tendency to believe that someone is pulling the ropes behind OSN.
Now OSN can`t live without money, so the guess is near that they are getting some sort of extra love from GNOME supporting companies. Now I don`t want to tell any names and can not prove it either but the feeling is there. Still!
Thats much better, well written for a start, I hope to see you register.
Perhaps there is some extra love, but perhaps its also just as simple as all the reporters here are Gnome fans, and don’t keep up with KDE news?
Perhaps they’d be willing to take someone on to post KDE news? If you’re up to it, I’d ask.
> Thats much better, well written for a start, I hope to see you register.
I do have a registered account on OSN and I once used it but saw that my basicly well written comments got moderated down faster than I was able to press reload due to all the fake accounts existing and due the fact that people are not interested to read what actually was written rather than who wrote it.
So before trashing my account I decided to write anonymously until the OSN staff find time to fix their broken moderation system and get rid of all their fake users.
I see, well, sort of. What are fake users?
The reason I like to talk with logged in users is because it makes it simple to reply to someone, and that way you can tell if it is one person trolling or not.
Its hard to reply to an Anonymous user by name.
> What are fake users?
Fake users are users who have 2 and more accounts on one site with the primary intend to bash other people or discredit them or to collect more moderating points than necessary. A good example can be seen here
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12417&comment_id=51580
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12417&comment_id=51583
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12417&comment_id=51599
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12417&comment_id=51600
As you can see he has two accounts here. Probably more “Yuske”, “Hiev” and “Manuma”. I mean how can you write one serious comment if you have to deal with these kind of people. Being upset as normal commenter is basicly programmed. That’s why I believe Anonymous posting is better, you at least get part of the IP and thus can verify who the person is (and not writing with 20 IP’s)
I see, still, I’m not sure why it should prevent you from using your account.
But if you don’t want to I won’t make you (I can’t)
I think this site needs a forum where such things can be discussed and resolved.
I’m pretty sure he has an account, as I’m fairly certain as to who it is who is posting. I’m also pretty sure I know why he’s posting anonymously.
I would have to agree that I think its best when people log in and post, posting anonymous comments allows an end run around the moderation system, since it can let you mod up your own posts.
There’s a place meant for this kind of discussion, it’s called OSNews MetaBlog. Please go there and stop the offtopic. This article is about Gnome.
> Please go there and stop the offtopic. This article is about Gnome.
… as 90% of the other articles are about GNOME …
if only half the time trolling in OSN would be spent in something useful as, say, writing documentation for developers…
Really? Thanks, I had no idea what the ‘meta’ blog was about
Well, the problem is that OSN primarily reports about GNOME stuff and reject most supplied KDE articles.
In the past I’ve submitted a couple of KDE articles, and they’ve got on, but that’s just stuff I considered to be noteworthy. One of them was something about Tenor I thought was interesting. I do not consider this article (where is the article, anyway?) to be noteworthy, Gnome, KDE or otherwise.
As for this bit of so-called news, I don’t think a couple of half-cocked announcements on mailing lists qualifies. If you look at what this guy who has allegedly been hired is doing, he is merely writing a high level series of chapters about Gnome. This is not about going through every single damn API call and documenting it (actual development documentation), which is what Eugenia seems to be hinting at and what she’s complained about in the past.
If it`s not them treating their readers with disrespect and if it`s not them who primarily post more GNOME related material than XFCE, E or KDE ones then it`s clear that we have the tendency to believe that someone is pulling the ropes behind OSN.
Well, on the desktop front it would be nice to see more XFCE stuff, Enlightenment or Looking Glass, just to see what different people are doing and how they go about doing them. I do not wish to see mailing list entries, or too many blog entries unless they’re describing something that is actually interesting.
OK Eugenia, we get the picture – you want us all to believe that Gnome is actually doing something by presenting the least thing as news.
This article has nothing to do with KDE. Take it somewhere else.
This article has nothing to do with KDE. Take it somewhere else.
What article? There’s nothing here.
Surely today’s articles about Koffice, or the item about mandriva qualify as KDE stories. In fact, as far as I can tell there are an equal number of stories pertaining to both desktops today.
There is definitely a lack of good KDE articles on OSnews…
As pretty as GNOME looks on the surface, it does have its shortcomings in the developer documentation. This project seems to give a good overview that allows the aspiring developer to put the pieces in context before delving down to the (well available) doxygen level.
One thing I would like to see in addition to that is a decent guide to the abysmal build system. While PyGTK is totally pain free with precisely zero overhead, it gets brutally nasty with C/C++ and the autotools. (Alternatively, getting an easy-to-use project manager into Anjuta might help as well)
Rich
I see, well, sort of. What are fake users?
By fake user I guess he means user having multiple accounts under different names, giving them extra moderation power. And some of those still post as Anonymous, only using their accounts for moderation.
The reason I like to talk with logged in users is because it makes it simple to reply to someone, and that way you can tell if it is one person trolling or not.
Agreed, and if they are trolling or simply clueless you soon learn to recognize them. That said, I wish there was a way to mark a user as clueless moron, the same way you mark friends. Making sorting even easier:-)
Its hard to reply to an Anonymous user by name.
Yes, unless the Anonymous post anything slightly negative, but somewhat reasonable argued about Gnome. Then you can call him Ali, that those comments sometimes originating from 4-5 ISPs in 3-4 countries on 2 continents does apparently not matter here on OSN:-)
But that’s rater OT.
Edited 2005-10-29 11:24
> That those comments sometimes originating from 4-5 ISPs
> in 3-4 countries on 2 continents does apparently not
> matter here on OSN.
Thanks for your helping words. I just allowed myself to write a nice article about Jess’ this month KDE SVN report for OSN and submitted it. I primarily wrote about Krita. But chances are big that the OSN staff don’t care for about it. But it’s a good test to see whether they take their words serious when they say that everything is dealt the same and that they respect KDE as much as GNOME.
will you guys (from both sides)stop this stupid behavior and comment only on the topics?
Sheesh, where do you get your education from?
This line strikes me as rather strange:
The GNOME Foundation reserves the right not to publish the Work.
It sounds like they give themselves option to spend money without having to show anything for it.
This is great news! Thanks a lot!
Professional docs — for developers and users — are always a plus. Let’s hope, then, tha Gnome users finally get something worth reading, too. (Shipping with broken or incomplete help files ought to be as verboten as shipping with broken apps.)
Excuse me for being a bit off-topic, but I’m just curious whether the GPL covers documentation as well.
Excuse me for being a bit off-topic, but I’m just curious whether the GPL covers documentation as well.
No reason why it can’t, but as always you have to specify a license. A GPL program does not necessary have documentation licensed with the GPL.
Regarding the documentation in this news item it’s supposed to be released under the GFDL. Which is something like GNU Free Documentation License according to Google. A rather more restrictive license than the GPL btw.
Just a side note on the GFDL: some Debian developers believe that it’s so restrictive that it does not follow their DFSG. In fact, they are writing a draft[1] explaining why they cannot accept documents with such licence in Debian. To what I understand (e.g. don’t take this as cold cash, I might be wrong), one of the main issues is that you cannot print a GFDL-licenced document without including the licence, even for personal use, even if you only need one of the pages. There is also the irony that the GFDL is GPL-incompatible and vice-versa…
I remember that RMS justified this licence a while ago by stating that documentation is not like software code. Needless to say, he is right. Still, I question the need of the additional restrictions. Yes, documentation should stay free, but it shouldn’t be a burden to distribute. IMO, anyway.
While the GNOME project probably got their reasons for their choice, I believe the CC would have been a wiser choice. Nevertheless, it’s still better than no documentation!
[1]: http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html
“I remember that RMS justified this licence a while ago by stating that documentation is not like software code.”
It runs on a different kind of CPU. :>
This will bring more developers henese more quality, Good job GNOME team.
How to access a widget from inside a call back or otherwise gain access to the global environment.
How to do this seems to be missing from every single example.
It is missing as variable scope is basic programming, you can only access what you pass in. You want access to a variable (pointer to a widget for example) you need to make sure it is available, passed as user_data, a global variable, accessible via g_object_get_data, or by manually walking the widget tree via widget->parent etc. etc.
If you are using libglade and are in a callback from a widget event, e.g.
static void clicked(GtkWidget *button, gpointer user_data )
{
GladeXML *xml = glade_get_widget_tree (button);
GtkWidget *widget = glade_xml_get_widget (xml,”whatever”);
}
I really don’t know what the problem people have with the documentation is, yes it is incomplete in places, but such basic things as the post this is replying to is only a problem of the programmer, not the documentation.
Not that it’s a competition, but GNOME license blends well with any software, not just GPLed software, but the same does not apply to KDE. Thus, GNOME already set itself on the road to conquering the desktop in the enterprise.
To conquer the desktop, you need applications that can mingle with proprietary software, and the GPL hinders that.
The other step necessary is decent, thorough documentation, and GNOME must be congratulated for adopting an industry best practice (professional technical writers), instead of depending on [busy, voluntary] developers.
Soon, we’ll have books and more books out, and people will start building stuff around GNOME, and OpenOffice.org and GNUmeric, and Evolution, and newer stuff!
Way to go GNOME!
GNOME has a better marketing team. Get over it.
> GNOME has a better marketing team. Get over it.
No, it has not. Their marketing team is spreading a lot of untrue facts and bullshit to the masses. However marketing can be a good thing, but the team is just unqualified. If I sell an unfinished, broken, incomplete and undocumented product to the masses as “corporate ready” then I consider this to be a lie. And I seriously doubt lying to the masses will get GNOME anywhere.
Yeah, whatever, more FUD from Ali.
Mystilleef, you give a good example of how GNOME developers or simply narrowminded users are treating other users and people. Specially as soon as you run out of arguments you gonna start insulting people or in this particular case start namecalling former valuable members of the GNOME community.
You say that I am spreading FUD, but you did basicly all to prove my so called FUD. What else did I say in all the years on OSNews.com ?
I said that GNOME is broken and it’s true. I said the GNOME community as well as the majority of developers are quite instulting and namecalling. You and some others regulary try to prove me wrong but you are shooting in your own legs because the harder you try proving me wrong, the harder you prove that I am right.
So what was the reason namecalling me here ? Do you see any particular fun in diffamating me or what’s wrong with you ? Forgot all the stuff I contributed to GNOME ? Was it not enough for morons like you to finally shut the f–k up ? You think I spread false informations but yet you show everyone how right I am.
And that’s why I believe that KDE makes the better desktop, not just because of the desktop – no! but because of the better community and the better people. Sure we deal with disagreements in all communities, we do have good and bad people everywhere but the amount of crap that the GNOME community sents out to their daily decreasing userbase is disgusting. The only thing that kept GNOME alive till today are the diehard people who keep playing nepotism inside GNOME and all the new users that you won from all over the world. Those who learned GNOME a bit better moved away from it.
Even the GNOME developers have stopped believing that GNOME will fruit into something great. Most of them are MACOSX users and developers anways and use that machine for their daily work. This of course is not valid for everyone contributing GNOME but it’s generally valid for the majority of core developers who stopped believing that GNOME will fruit into something anytime in the future.
KDE will make the desktop of the future. Not because of its better technology, but also because they seem to know what the users really want and because they are not trapped into bad marketing and bullshit spreading like you do and some GNOME marketing muppets.
I think till now the GNOME crowd gave a good example how ugly the entire GNOME movement became and they do best to stay away from it as far as even possible. At least they should stay out of contributing to it because it’s just a waste of time.
Huh?
You are a f–king homo!
Ali for you, ladies and gentlemen. The liar, FUD monger and troll.
Did you at least read what I wrote in my lengthy reply to you ? I don’t expect you to understand the context, but you could at least have spent 1 min reading it.
I did. It was junk. You wasted my time. Thanks!
Talking about the Krappy Desktop Environment is off-topic here.
GNOME has a better marketing team. Get over it.
No. It’s just the usual bullshit we’ve come to expect over the years. Unfortunately, it spreads to other open source desktops and pieces of software when people cry wolf and nothing happens. The consequences of that are that people out there, and the very people who Gnome want to try and attract (allegedly), think that anyone who promotes the use of open source software is full of it.
Maybe I, or other people who happen to like KDE, should try and submit every mailing list or blog entry to here as news. I mean, Aaron Seigo getting hired by Trolltech to work on Plasma and KDE and to do actual useful things like the OSDW workshops (actually getting people developing) would make a hell of an article. But, you know, many of us have different ideas of news.
That’s the point. All you do is bitch and whine, instead of submitting KDE news. You and Ali in particular.
i tried all versions of kde they all seem the same if they do anything new im sure ut will get posted like the kde composite thingy.
Now is proved, GNOME is a hit an KDE is falling big, why? take a look.
KDE trolls where whining about GNOME in GNOME threats, a user happy with its desktop wouln’t even come here to read news related a DE they don’t use or care but here they are, ain’t KDE anough to them? prolly, this prove KDE is to overrated and they wan’t to believe it is a good desktop but they are proving something real different?.
They complained about the lack of KDE articles in OSNEWS, they get 2 and what they did? they stick to the GNOME threat to keep bashing it and it doesn’t stop there, they take the GTK applications issue to the KDE threat and my question is:
Is this an example of a comunity happy with is DE? they look like a bunch of 12 years old bitter kids, and it doesn’t stop there, if you go to planetkde.org you will read that some developers are just like them they just can’t live w/o bashing GNOME, what a shame.
This is why KDE is a mediocre DE, cause the inmature comunity they have formed, live your lives, stay away from GNOME related news, feel proud of you DE because you trolls are distroy in it.
Wow, I’d really like some of what you’ve been smoking…