Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 15:00:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> To: gnome-list@gnome.org, gnome-announce-list@gnome.org Subject: GNOME Summary, July 25 - August 1 This is the GNOME Summary for July 25-August 1. It summarizes development activity and news. ============================================================= Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Jim Cape heads usability-tuning initiative 2) GNOME 1.0.50 planned 3) Fix the Window Manager 4) gnome-libs and gnome-utils 1.0.12 5) Realtime CVS tracking 6) Hacking Activity 7) New and Updated Software ============================================================== 1) Jim Cape heads usability-tuning initiative -------------------------------------------------------------- Miguel posted to gnome-list, requesting a volunteer to compile user comments on GNOME usability and transform them into suggestions for enhancing the GNOME desktop and applications. Jim Cape <jcape@jcinteractive.com> signed up, so he's the man. Discussion of this topic should go to gnome-gui-list@gnome.org. Please, keep it focused on incremental enhancements to the existing codebase. Radical redesigns of the user experience are only welcome if accompanied by multiple hackers ready to do the work. Here's Miguel's post: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-August/0011.shtml James Cape has a preliminary web site: http://www.jcinteractive.com/gnome-ui/ ============================================================== 2) GNOME 1.0.50 planned -------------------------------------------------------------- We're about ready to move on to the next major revision of GNOME; but before doing that, we'd like to be sure the stable 1.0.x series is 100% the way we'd like it to be. So we're pushing for 1.0.50 over the next month or so. Once that's out, we'll be moving on to GNOME 1.2 or 2.0 or whatever we decide to call it. We have lots of cool things ready to fold in as soon as we fork gnome-libs into stable and unstable branches. Expect a detailed roadmap soon. Elliot announced the 1.0.50 plan: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-announce-list/1999-July/0046.shtml ============================================================== 3) Fix the Window Manager -------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Mike posted to say that we probably need a GNOME window manager that "matches" GNOME and integrates with it extremely well. Users shouldn't have to see the word "Window Manager." This seems to be a growing consensus; read Dr. Mike's post here: http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-August/0052.shtml GNOME will continue to work with all window managers, but we want to provide a nice default that gives the user a truly seamless experience. If hackers don't care about mismatched themes and the like, they're free to use any WM that implements the GNOME/KDE WM spec. Now all we need is someone willing to hack on this window manager. It's perhaps hard to find someone, since the express purpose of the WM is to blend into GNOME and be user-invisible, so it's not a glamorous job. But it would improve GNOME enormously. There are several people who've been working on a GNOME WM of one kind or another, but no one has emerged with the definitive hunk of working code. ============================================================== 4) gnome-libs and gnome-utils 1.0.12 -------------------------------------------------------------- New releases of these two, see the main GNOME site for details: http://www.gnome.org ============================================================== 5) Realtime CVS tracking -------------------------------------------------------------- For those who haven't seen it, GNOME Bonsai now has a page listing CVS commits in the last two hours. A fun way to monitor the GNOME development action: http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/cvsquery.cgi?module=all&hours=2&date=hours&link=front ============================================================== 6) Hacking Activity -------------------------------------------------------------- Module Score-O-Matic: 58 gimp 56 gnumeric 54 gtk-- 33 gnome-libs 31 gnome-applets 28 bonobo 25 gnome-core 23 dryad 21 gnome-pilot 19 gnome-pim 15 gxsnmp 14 gconf 13 libgtop 11 gnome-utils 11 gnome-filer 11 gnome-chess 11 ORBit 10 libglade 10 gnomeicu 10 control-center 9 mc 8 libunicode 8 gmf User Score-O-Matic: 78 sopwith 36 kenelson 33 unammx 33 martin 22 mmeeks 21 jody 20 kmaraas 17 jrb 16 sipan 16 pcg 16 jamesh 15 vinc 15 hp 14 jberkman 13 teichman 13 dcm 12 tromey 12 stric 11 yosh 11 tonyt 11 pablo Elliot dominates everyone by a factor of two - I think he changed every spec file in CVS or something like that. :-) I know he also did a lot of cleanup and bugfixing. Gtk-- is really under heavy development, and has been for a long time; Karl Nelson's libsigc++ is making it a really nice development framework for C++ applications. Check this out. ============================================================== 7) New and Updated Software -------------------------------------------------------------- GameStalker Gnomba Xwhois gproc GSokoban vsa GFile GNotes! Pybliographer Pharmacy GPeriodic gaddr Giram POP Checker libefs gcad gaspell gx10 BMUD Gaim Gears IglooFTP mosquito gvsy GSnes9x There were more software releases last week, but a good bit more CVS commits this week. So go figure. =========================================================================== Until next week - Havoc