Re: Some 'misc' question on Gnome

[hobbit aloss ukuu org uk]

On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 03:03:20PM +0800 or thereabouts, Zenith Lau wrote:
> Hi to all developers and all Gnome Fans,
> 
> 	As what I have stat in the title, I have some question regarding 
> Gnome, I'm not sure it is the right place for my question, but in case, 
> I am wrong, please let me knows : )

Well, I can't think of many better places. 

> 	While playing with Gnome2, I find that, it is more and more 
> difficult to find information, or documentation about Gnome2 and all 
> the apps on top of it. Though, there is a lot of doc. on the 
> deverloper.gnome.org and some others spread over the net, I can not 
> find the information easily. And I always wonder if it exists. For e.g, 
> the i18n issue, both input and output: I know that, gnome2 has adopt a 
> modular approach and use module to load input program for differnet 
> locale/ script, but where is the documentation about this?? For the 
> output, pango is great, but again, there is no tutorial on this, on 
> the API hosted on gnome.org. Most importantly, there is a whitepaper 
> on i18n of Gnome by owen, but seems that, the white is some what 
> outdated, you (and all other develpers) has implemented a lots, but 
> seems that, the information and related documentation does not 
> organized very well.

Concrete examples are excellent, and I agree on these you give. 
One of the concerns the release team had was documentation. But
when you're not a hacker, trying to write documentation about
APIs, common errors, common questions ("how do I...?"), and the
right auto* tools to use is not a great idea :) It appears that
when you are, it's optional.

I had cause to poke around in the gnome-docu/white-papers CVS module
(which is where things like the ProgrammingGuidelines docs live) the 
other day and found the ChangeLog stops in January. Of 2000.

We really should have something more up to date than this. If this
is the wrong place, someone should tell me where I -should- be looking.
If it's the right place, I would love it if people would update it
with things they know about.

And if that module's so totally out of date that it's not rescuable
(which I don't believe) then it should have a THIS_MODULE_DEAD
file. This is a cheap cop-out of a solution though really: and
we need the info somewhere. 

I have collections of this stuff and I just don't know where to
put it. I have Frank and Morten's comments on gcc-isms and bash-isms
to avoid and how to make sure you find perl; I have half a CVS usage 
doc, culled from gnome-hackers posts about "Who did this and why? It's 
a bad idea because.."; I have links to how to test your GNOME programs 
work in Japanese; and I am sure I am not the only one with piles of this 
stuff just squirrelled away.

> 	IMHO, the web site of a large project like Gnome should provide 
> most up-todate information for the user, but I don't see that for Gnome. 
> Rather kde does a good works on these. (Personally, I don't like KDE, 
> but Gnome is really lose on this aspect)

KDE's website is an excellent resource, yes.
> 
> 	Right, the above is my complaints, afterall, I have some questions, 
> can I post comments or questions on this list, which is regarding the 
> usability, or functional features of Gnome apps?? For example, the 

I think here, or perhaps usability gnome org? 

> 	This mail is a little bit long, but I just want to bring out some 
> point. I am Gnome Fans and hope that this great and large project can 
> be keep improving and got a greater succeed!

Well, we certainly need docs that people can find in order to do
that!

Telsa