Bounce a few ideas off

["Kenneth R. Kinder" <Ken KenAndTed com>]

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I'm new to this mailing list (never been very fond of them -- usenet is so 
much easier), but I figure if I plan on being a part of gnome, I better 
get on!  :)

I'd like to bounce some ideas off you folks, and get some feedback.  
Mainly, ideas for projects.  I can't work on all of this projects, but I 
plan on taking on some coding on one or more of them this summer, when I 
have time to.  :)

 * RPM GUI Builder type program

Install Shield makes it relatively easy to build an installation program 
on Windows 95.  RPM is vastly superior to Windows' "system" for keeping 
tract of installations (although, in some areas, RPM could use work).  
Glint (and possibly a gtk based glint someday?) gives a GUI package 
browser with a short learning curve.  And although building RPMs is 
relatively simple, for what you get, it involves reading a HOWTO.  Even 
people who use RPMs don't often build them for the own projects until well 
into the project, because of the amount of effort that one has to put into 
making RPMs.

That's where my idea comes in.  A graphical application that takes the 
user through a few steps of questions in building an RPM, then some 
optional scripting ect could quicker the process of building RPMS for 
independant programmers.

To add an extra bonus, it might also build DBI (Debian Package Files), and .tar.gz installation procedures... although it's beyond my simple dream.  :)

 * DocBook IDDE (Integrated Document Development Environment) <grin>

DocBook, being the new choice for LDP (Linux Documentation Project), Gnome, and probably more and more, the community as a whole, it a spectacular information markup language!  But again, this requires at least soooome reading.

My idea is a sort of not really WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get would be impractical for such a structured systems), but "aided" environment.  I would see it as having a tree-like listbox at the right, with a textbox at the right.  The left would have your outline (Articles, Sections, Books, ect - it's how DocBook works!), and would edit your outline.  The right would have the document itself.  Selecting part of your outline would jump your text box to its location.

The program would also include menus to quickly generate all your "tags," and some templates for programs to work from.

 * System utilities converted to GNOME

I'm a big OS/2 fan (although I'm not a fan of its marketting!!! or license agreement!), and think it was a revelation in how we think of software.  OS/2 did more for the GUI than Apple (sorry, Mac fans!), and gave Microsoft hundreds of new ideas to clone.

Now I've always advocated the command line interface, and I suspect I'll be a bash fun until death.  :)  But newbies aren't, and I'm staaarting to develop a new respected for the less enlightened.  <grin>  Anyway, to catre to the newbies, systems utilities like fsck, shutdown, fdisk, fuser, ect - could be ported to gtk and made graphical (gfsck, gshutdown, gfdisk, gfuser).  Like in OS/2 (and sort of in in Win95), there would be both graphical and character-mode versions of these tools...

Anyway, the newbies would love us!

FYI, I know C, C++, Python, the Basics (yes, all of them.  From GW to Power to Visual)... non programming: DocBook (although I haven't used it, besides tinkering), Tex (sort of), HTML, SGML (sort of).  And I'm learning GTK (I know Qt, Tk, Object Windows [Borland's], and a few others :)

....

Well, just a couple of thoughts... let me know if they

Just to let you know, I'm also bouncing these ideas off the folks on Usenet... :)


- -- 

 H3C-N--C=N      | Kenneth R. Kinder, aka Bouncing     "code=caffiene*hours"
      \==/       | Ken@KenAndTed.com  http://www.KenAndTed.com/KensBookmark/
    O=<__>N-C3H  |
  H3C-N \\O      |                   Ken & Ted's Software
_________________| http://www.KenAndTed.com/          Software@KenAndTed.com




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