Re: request to federico

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico nuclecu unam mx>]

>  where is the hard border here? e.g. it is generally considered a good idea
>  to request an app should not pop up a window larger than the screen or other
>  such things, while  strictly speaking this is between the app and the window
>  manager with gnome nowhere involved.

In that particular example, it is OK to suggest that an application
should not create windows larger than the screen.  (The window manager
is allowed to override the size, anyway, but that's a whole different
issue).

People who want to make suggestions about window behavior that is
related to the window manager are encouraged to read the ICCCM to see
what a window manager is, uh, allowed to do.  This will help them see
whether what they are talking about is a GNOME issue or a window
manager issue.

>  is there a hard line or do we state that "hints" and proposals such as this
>  are within scope, but full details or implementation issues are not?

As far as window managers go, the only thing we can specify is
compliancy about supporting the GNOME window manager hints and session
management.  We cannot specify the way a window manager should
organize windows or their decorations.

People are very welcome to discuss implementation issues.

>  > 	- General information for developers, such as how to make sure
>  >           applications internationalize well, how to integrate
>  >           documentation into the GNOME documentation framework, etc.
>  
>  depending on the sheer volume - would it maybe make sense to move this to a
>  seperate, all-gnome "how do I write a gnome application" guide?

The UI Guidelines should only give programming examples and "generally
useful information"; it is no replacement for the GNOME programmer's
reference documetation :-)

Some examples on how to make sure applications internationalize well:

	- Don't build strings out of sentence fragments using
          strcat(); it is better to use some sprintf() format that can
          be internationalized properly.

	- Allow for localized things like week displays that can start
          on Sunday/Monday.

On how to integrate documentation, we could go as far as defining a
"suggested structure" for GNOME programs documentation (i.e. general
overview of the program, teach-by-example, reference part, index).

>  time to learn sgml...

Mark Galassi has a good primer on DocBook markup here:

	http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/docbook-intro.html

DocBook is not hard; it is more or less like HTML markup with a
greater number and more verbose tags.  It is designed to give
documents a logical structure (chapters, sections, etc.).

  Federico