GNOME project status report.

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel nuclecu unam mx>]

Hello,

   This is a quick status report for those people that do not feel
like following the gnome mailing lists.  For a detailed description on
what is going on, check Dr Mike's http://www.gnome.org/status.shtml
web page which keeps a list of known problems in gnome apps. 

    Remember: you can get daily RPMs and daily tar snapshots from
ftp.labs.redhat.com, they come directly from the gnome CVS
repository. 


The Desktop:

    The default desktop is composed of the Panel, the file manager,
and the help browser.  The file manager and the Panel are now usable
components of the GNOME desktop.  The next two things that will be
addressed in the file manager will be the iconic file listing and
enhanced dialog boxes layouts (as I am not particularly good at
this). 

    This basically means: you can get a usable desktop nowadays with
gnome.  Still a bug here and there and an ocassional crash, but
fixable items.  

The Help browser:
   
    Red Hat Labs has written a very nice help browser for the GNOME
desktop: it supports documentation in HTML format;  man format (with
hyper links to any other man page) and info format.  

    The help support is now part of the Gnome-App widget support
routines, and automatic topic generation and help invocation code is
provided for every gnome application by using these routines. 


Our HTML engine:

    We are using our Gtk port of XmHTML as the HTML engine used in
GNOME.  Koen is hard at work for making XmHTML as toolkit independant
as possible (and by doing so, we are getting export-to-text and
print-to-postscript facilities into our widget).


New applications in the gnome distribution:

   gEdit is getting on the CVS tree; and the nice tcd/gtcd cd player
with cddb access and text-mode support is now on the gnome-media
package.  Tim has done an excelent job with this program.  Francisco's
GNOME Mahjongg program is nice but does not work on my Indy.  I need
to have a few words with him. 


Enhanced applications: 

   Electric Eyes, the image viewer/browser/story-teller program by
Raster has got a new look and feel.  The SNMP front-end has been
steadily improving (Joschen and Greg are the hackers behind this
project).  Radek Doulik's GTOP program has been rated by the
DrMike-Software-Co as the coolest gnome app.   That means, I lost the
race.  GTT is still one of the best looking GNOME applications and
probably the most polished of all. 


Calendar/Todo application:

   We are getting a Calendar/todo application, it does what it was
intended to do, but it still lacks open/save dialog boxes as well as
the alarm support.  This should be finished shortly though.


CORBA:

    MICO generates huge and bloated stubs.  We have to thank whoever
came up with C++ Templates for this bloat.  This has prevented us from
doing more CORBA work.  Right now the Panel has worked as the testbed
for CORBA.  After we get the basic GNOME desktop up, some of us are
concentrating on getting a better CORBA ORB for the GNOME project (the
ORBit project). 


Internationalization:

    I am very happy to see all of the GNOME hackers add
internationalizations support to their applications.  This is a good
area where everybody has done a great job.


Session Management support:

    This is a good area: everybody seems to be adding sm support to
their applications.  This is good.  I am probably the only one who
does not yet understand how SM works at all :-).


Stalled development:

    Some applications have not shown any progress during the last few
months and the maintainers are busy, so they have been left behind the
rest of the gnome development.  

    We need volunteers to help us improve these important gnome
applications: gemvt; gnfax; cromagnon; logview; girc (I know there is
another IRC program out there for Gtk, probably it is time to look at
how advanced the other IRC program is).  

    There are still other programs that have no gnome equivalent yet:
a postscript viewer, dvi and a free pdf viewer. 

enjoy,
Miguel.