Re: Revisiting the Gnome Bindings
- From: "Eugenia Loli-Queru" <eloli hotmail com>
- To: "Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>, "Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation" <director gnome org>
- Cc: language-bindings gnome org, desktop-devel-list gnome org
- Subject: Re: Revisiting the Gnome Bindings
- Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 00:39:48 -0700
Maybe you would like to make contact with the various distros,
and/or encourage the individual bindings projects to do this.
I have had a little success with this for gtkmm.
This should be the job of the Gnome Foundation, not yours or mine. Gnome
Bindings is now an official Gnome Project, and so it's under the
juristiction of the Foundation. Why do they get voted for? To simply exist?
From their web page: "The Foundation will act as an official voice for the
GNOME project, providing a means of communication with the press and with
commercial and noncommercial organizations interested in GNOME software."
Where is the advocacy about the gnome-bindings and their "communication"
about it with the distro makers? I have seen *none* such communication (and
I would know about it if there was some, Pat from Slackware would have told
me already)! Gnome Bindings is a big thing for Gnome, because ~1/4 of all
the Gnome third party apps (think "platform") depend on them, and so it is a
matter which needs attention.
Besides, *I* have done my part (yes, except cluttering Pat's mailbox asking
him to include the bindings). I have reported via OSNews.com about the
releases of gnome-bindings numerous times in the past, and I have urged
distro makers to include them (we serve 190,000+ pageviews per day these
days and I know that people from all major distros are reading it, as OSNews
is the No2 Linux-related site behind Slashdot -- with LinuxToday and
NewsForge following us in traffic numbers).
I think that perl developers are familiar with using CPAN. And I think
that might be the best way to install those bindings. I'm not an expert on
that though.
I am talking about the users. Exactly because most distros don't package the
bindings, the users will find themselves in need to install them by hand.
And gtk-perl is a /nightmare/ to install properly, in particular. Ruby is
troublesome too (or just "very different", to be more fair). Gtkmm & pygtk I
have found them to be adequate regarding their installation routines.
Clearly, this is a job for the distro makers though. Gnome-bindings were
meant for developers and distros, not for users (that's what you told me
last year). So, where's that distro support a year later? Debian only
supports it in its experimental tree, Fedora has half-packages for it, and
many of the rest of the distros don't even know about the existance of the
gnome-bindings!
I blame "marketing" and "distro communication" (a job that's part of
Foundation's responsibilities), not the developers. I read the results of
last year's elections and except Leslie, all the rest of the people there
are engineers or developers I believe. And engineers/devs don't have time
for such things like "marketing", "communication" and "advocacy". It's not
their thing (who can blame them? ;-). But bottomline is, these facts hurt
the Foundation's goals. It is a good thing to have people who know the
internals of Gnome on the Board, but *some* of them should be people who
have the time to do the things that an engineer would never do. They are
called Evangelists and they usually have some development clue.
As a Gnome user who cares about the platform, please allow me to voice a
concern about the slow activities of the Gnome Foundation: I am not
satisfied with the pace in the gnome-bindings situation.
Or, maybe, this is the only matter that was understimated/underplayed by the
Foundation by mistake, in which case I apologize.
Rgds,
Eugenia
------
http://www.GnomeFiles.org
GTK+ Software Repository
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