Re: Unbreaking the gnome clipboard

[Philip Van Hoof <spamfrommailing freax org>]

> The author of gcm is rewriting it in gtk# and has no interest anymore
> in the C version (gcm in gnome cvs) - so if we want to use any of the
> code someone here would have to maintain it.

I there,

Great you guys are talking about my last-year project :)

Yes, I am the maintainer of that project and I have to disagree if you
tell people that I am nolonger interested in the old C code.

But

I think that it's time to start using Gtk-Sharp for applications. Also
because its just way more easy to create something that way.

People started flaming me about the application yet I did this
application for my own purposes and for "fun". When it's not fun anymore
because people like article writers of osnews.com start calling your
application a "thing" that should absolutely never be included with
GNOME then one like me starts thinking things like .. "hey, why the f*
am I worrying about that version of my application anyway? lets rewrite
the damn thing in C#", so thats what I am doing.

So I decided to rewrite this application using Gtk-Sharp as language
binding. I don't think that using C or C# will matter very much by the
time it's finished. I do think that Mono and Gtk-Sharp will be finished
then and I do think that it will be installed on MOST Gnome desktop
installations. Mono and Gtk-Sharp will (and already do) kickass. And
"thanks a lot" goes to the people who are at this moment working on Mono
and bindings like Gtk-Sharp, you guys are doing a really really great
job.

However, I AM interested in patches and bugfixes for the current version
of gcm. I am "even" interested in really huge changes. And I would like
to invite everybody to start helping the gcm project instead of starting
yet another fork of a Clipboard Manager.

However, I WILL most likely focus most of "MY" energy to a new version
written in C# using Gtk-Sharp and Mono (this does NOT mean that I will
not help with the development of an improved Clipboard Manager in C).

I am even interested if somebody wants to co-maintain the current
version of gcm. I don't want to give it away to just anybody but I am
more than happy if somebody want's to co-maintain this application and
create huge changes -and patches to it. I will grant CVS-access to
anybody who seriously want to work on the application.

Gcm has never been a closed-development-thing. It was never impossible
to join my development efforts. Yet few have showed interest in helping
me with the application and many have complained about whatever issues
it had concerning the GNOME HIG. I really do hope that this complaining
on websites and these E-mails to me will get converted to patches
someday.

I would also like to note that many HIG-issues have been fixed during
the last release and that most HIG-issues existed because Gnome
Clipboard Manager 2.0 is a port from a Gtk-1.2 application. Because
people started flaming me during that process of porting .. I stopped
being motivated. The application started doing what is has to do for
"me" a long time ago. I have invested a lot more time fixing stuff for
assholes who do nothing but complain, than I needed for creating what
the application has to do for me ... 

I hope people will now understand.

Also note that I got a "excuse me" E-mail from the person who wrote that
article on osnews.com so it's not that I now hate that website nor
person.. it's okay for me. But reading that article was not like ...
Person me = new Person(); me += new MotivationFor(new
GnomeClipboardManager()); I hope article writers will be more carfull
next time, also for other projects.

A lot people, like me, still do this "for fun".


Btw. If you want to include the current gcm in gnome .. then go ahead.
If you want to release a new version of gcm (my debian maintainer asked
about this) then go ahead. If you want to create a huge patch for it and
change a lot details and it's way of working : then go ahead. This damn
source is GPL and I am not the owner of it .. I am only the person who
wrote the initial version two years ago and ported that to Gnome 2.0
last year.



On Sat, 2003-06-14 at 21:09, Mark Finlay wrote:


> Right now in gnome, IMHO, the clipboard is broken. You can't
> copy something into the clipboard, close the program, and then
> paste. This is really frustrating. What's worse is that all
> we need to fix this is a simple deamon running in the background
> that manages the clipboard. And what's even worse is that one
> already exists:
> 
> http://gcm.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Gcm includes a clipboard manager ui (not very important IMHO),
> and a clipboard managment deamon, which goes a very long way
> to totally fixing the clipboard. I know it's probably way too
> late to start trying to get this included in 2.4 but I just
> thought that I should draw people attentio to it, so that maybe 
> we could look at "brinking the project closer to gnome.org", and
> helping them out with usability et all.
> 
> Later
-- 
Philip Van Hoof, Software Developer @ Cronos
home: me at freax dot org
work: Philip dot VanHoof at cronos dot be
http://www.freax.be, http://www.freax.eu.org