Update.

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

So we have copied the mailing lists over to gnome.org, and shortly I
will be shutting down the mailing lists in Mexico, this should be a
nice addition, as we get archives and all the nice features from
GNU Mailman. 

I met with Pavel Roskin this weekend (the joys of living close to each
other) and we discussed a bit the future of MC, here is more or less
what we talked about:

	* In about a week I will branch the module "mc" in the CVS
          repository.  The branch will keep the GNOME code, and the
          HEAD branch will drop support for GNOME and fully deprecate
          tk and xview (they were already, but there is some cruft
          here and there that needs to be removed).

	* MC has accumulated some bad code over the years that we
          would like to clean up at some point.  At this stage our
          objective is to go for maintainability and cleanliness in
          the source code to encourage people to contribute.

	  Part of this is dropping entirely the multi-"frontend"
	  support that we had.  Another part will be cleaning up after
	  the mess we have done in a few spots (vfs has a few
	  "interesting" pieces as well as some of the older code).

	* We need a web master for the project.  The MC web pages are
	  old and outdated.  Janne did a great job for the MC team for
	  a long time, we need to find a replacement for him. 

	* Updating documentation: we need to update the docs to
          reflect the location of the mailing lists, the web page (old
          or new) and drop the mc.sgml file (which was never actually
          used) 

	* Encouraging people to use bugzilla (mention it on the docs,
	  have a segfault handler that points to it, include a menu
	  entry `Make a suggestion to the MC team',m etc) so we can
	  keep track of features requested by people. 

	* Usability: there are a few spots where we could do better,
          for instance in the text editor if you make changes
          accidentally and you try to quit, you get one of the most
          bizarre error messages I have ever seen.
	
	  The problem with the wording and the options and the default
	  in that dialog is that I actually have to stop and think for
	  a minute about what the dialog is telling me.  A total
	  contradiction of the Norton-Command interface which is: go
	  as fast as can. 

	* MC will be maintained by a team of people (mc-devel), we do
          not want random people making changes to the code without
          some peer-review of their patches.

	  If you are an "authorized" CVS user (and you have talked to
	  me in the past), I just want to ask you that when you make a
	  change to MC in the GNOME CVS, you also CC a patch to the
	  mailing list.

	  This will provide maximum speed: in one hand you will get
	  your change into CVS without having to wait for approval,
	  but you will give us a change to review and comment on the
	  patch without forcing us to make some complex scripts or
	  change our existing updating scripts. 

Research-ish topics:

	* In the future, when the GNOME VFS progresses we might
          consider replacing the current VFS with the GNOME VFS (it
          has no GUI dependencies, do not fear), but currently it
          lacks a number of features that MC has (tar browsing, extfs,
          fish, good ftp support).

	  GNOME VFS code is better written, but it has still has got
	  some time to mature.  We will keep our options open.

	  GNOME VFS would also allow us to do cancellation of
	  operations at any point (which should be a nice addition). 

	* Cloning good ideas from existing Norton Commander clones.
          Apparently there are some very pretty additions made by the
          FAR file manager.  Some of the ones described by Pavel seem
          to be easy to implement (if you are familiar with the Widget
          stuff in MC you would know it is easy ;-).

	* And of course, no program is complete without a mail reader,
	  so we have to write one

I think that is most of it.  Pavel, did I miss anything?

OK.  That is all hackers and users!

Best wishes,
Miguel.

The mail thing is a joke: dont start coding such a beast.

Miguel.