Re: Mono and GNOME. The long reply.

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

I agree with Martin completely here. Bonobo and other nice platform
things simply haven't been worth the stagnation of things that actually
matter to users. The train got derailed with "platform issues" somewhere
after GNOME 1.2, and I feel like we're only just starting to get back on
track. 

Do I like developing on the new platform? For the most part, yes. Am I
more productive? Yes. But I think we would have done better putting more
energy into tier-one (i.e. Evolution, Gnumeric, AbiWord, not fly by
night hacks) applications and the user environment itself.

-seth

On Wed, 2002-02-06 at 20:48, Martin Sevior wrote:
> 
> Hi Miguel,
> 	 Thank you for your interesting perspective on why you've chosen
> this long term project. My only concern with your choice of actions is
> that it moves very scare resources into a long term project that *might*
> pay off in 2 - 3 years.
> 
> Ximian has done an outstanding job in Evolution. I can't help but wonder
> what could be achieved if the same concentration of talents was placed on
> the development of the other killer apps of a modern desktop.
> 
> Most notabally:
> 
> A word processor and a presentation program. 
> 
> Gnumeric is more than enough for my humble needs as a scientist and
> academic but AbiWord has a long to go before I can use it as a drop-in
> replacement for MS Word. Gnome has no presentation program at all and I
> cringe when I go to conferences and see scientists who I know use Linux
> all day for their data analysis make their presentations in Power
> Point. At my University we're strongly encouraged to use Power Point for
> all lectures.
> 
> Having been intimately involved in AbiWord for the past two years and
> having come to know the developers on the team very well, I can assure you
> that 5 full time developers would make a huge difference in development
> speed.
> 
> So the qustions have to be asked: 
> 
> Isn't it better to get these apps written first? 
> How can gnome make a case for being a modern desktop without these
> fundamental programs? 
> Does it make sense to spend two years developing a
> framework so that you can spend only 2 years writing a Word Processor
> having written the framework?
> 
> In any case we at AbiWord will keep on coding in whatever time we can
> snatch.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Martin Sevior
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-hackers mailing list
> gnome-hackers gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-hackers
>