Re: International Space Station Images

["Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>]

> Murray, I was thinking once that you present gtkmm as something superior
> to GTK+ on purpose, but recently I changed my opinion. Your desire to
> expose gtkmm in the most advantageous fashion is understandable. But how
> can you explain this phrase from gtkmm website: "gtkmm is a GUI toolkit
> and nothing more, and it strives to be the best C++ GUI toolkit"?

You'll have to be more clear. What don't you like about that sentence? It
seems to be a fair statement of what gtkmm is and tries to be. It's not an
XML (as opposed to GUI) toolkit, and it's not a perl (as opposed to C++)
toolkit, and it's trying to be the best (as opposed to worst) C++ toolkit.

Whatever it is that you don't like about that sentence, it's possible that
you are misunderstanding or placing unnecessary importance on some
interpretation of it. Benefit of the doubt might be advised.

> There
> are also strange things in gtkmm FAQ, for example "why use gtkmm instead
> of GTK+" - note the word "instead".

Now I really think that your English dictionary and mine are in wild
disagreement. Do you think that the use of "instead" there intends to
imply that a user of gtkmm would not be indirectly using GTK+. I can't
imagine anyone else interpreting it in that way, particularly when the
first question in the FAQ makes _very_ clear that gtkmm is a wrapper, and
a thin one: "GTK+ is the foundation on which gtkmm is built.":
http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/FAQ/html/index.html#id2506937

> If that all was said unconsciously,
> may be it's time to make gtkmm more loyal to GTK+?

If any GTK+ developers thought there was a problem then I'd take that
seriously. But there is no problem. They like and support gtkmm and the
other language bindings, and I even consider myself an occassional GTK+
developer myself.

> My negative attitude
> towards gtkmm was increased also after somebody started a (paid?) google
> ad campaign promoting a gtkmm tutorial chapter about Glade.

That's nice of someone. I wonder what words trigger it. I don't know who
did that, though I experimented with 50 dollars on gtkmm Google adwords
about 3 years ago. I also pay for the gtkmm.org domain registration and
donate large amounts of my usually-expensive time, maybe you'd prefer that
I didn't.

> Regarding my proposals... I said that I want to retire from free
> software (I have a different mentality), so I hope nobody could accuse
> me that I seek selfish gains here. I gathered some knowledge during
> development of Gideon and I wanted to share it with the Gnome community.
> Oliver Stone said recently that he criticizes America because he loves
> it. My points are sharp, here is a full list of what I wanted to say
> (just to *say* and may be discuss, not to push):
>
> 1. State openly that gtkmm website contains subtle (unintentional?)
> lies. (This was the most important for me personally.)

Enough. This is completely unhinged and I won't reply any more. An active
moderator (such as you suggest below) would have banned you by now.

I'm sorry that you seem so dissatisfied, but I don't understand what
caused it. I haven't used Gideon (I haven't needed to) but the screenshots
suggest that you are a talented and dedicated software developer who could
benefit any community. But not like this.

> 2. Propose a position of a Moderator. This could automatically increase
> signal/noise ratio of mailing lists; debates won't be endless; people
> would afraid to lie; less politics and more activity; Gnome will be more
> comfortable for people from Eastern Europe and Asia (some if not all
> eastern cultures are not compatible with meritocracy!)
> 3. Show the benefits of a split of Gnome and GTK+: this eliminates
> technology and ideology mixture, so both projects could improve faster
> since they have different goals.
> 4. Propose Gnome certification (originally I was thinking about it as a
> replacement to the HIG, but I was shown that the HIG is needed, so it is
> a complement now).
> 5. Formulate the Gideon Principle and propose it as a cornerstone for
> Gnome HIG and certification.
> 6. Discuss the possibility of contribution of Gideon to Gnome since
> Gnome hosts GTK+. (I admit that I sounded frivolous on the
> "Contribution" thread, but that's because I was not sure that such
> contribution could happen and is fully sensible.)
> 7. Propose to narrow Gnome by ideology (this is a short formulation of
> an implementation style - not a HIG, but something like a motto: "Simple
> interface, great functionality, coherent behavior") (In fact that's my
> motto that I use when I develop GUI applications. It is a
> user-understandable reformulation of the Gideon Principle)
>
> Hmm... may be something else I can't recall now. Some of these points
> raised *after* I made my first post here.


Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com