Re: [gnome-love] New to the list

["Ciaran O'Riordan" <ciaran_o_riordan hotmail com>]

What to start coding on? hmmm. (get comfortable)

When I first started looking for a project I saw that
there hadn't been a new gnome-games release in a while
so I took a game I liked (gnome-stones) and mailed
the gnome-games maintainer (Juan Pablo Mendoza
<pablo_juan yahoo com>). I asked if I could do some
work on gnome-stones without "stepping on any toes".
He was delighted and gave me the go-ahead.

Embarassingly after getting lost in the code a few
times I found I didn't know enough Gtk or GNOME
to follow the code.

Right now I'm working an my paint app (codenamed
"moo"), I hope it will be used some time in the
future but more importantly I reckon I'll be
competent enough to fix bugs in other peoples
gnome apps pretty soon.

If you know Gtk/GNOME from a programming perspective
then just look at the tools you use and see if any
aren't being updated very often.

Many of the basic GNOME apps were quick'n'dirty
projects which the original GNOME developers wrote
because every desktop needs games, utils and other
small apps. Those developers are now the core
hackers, working on the platform or the big apps
like gnumeric or whatever so the smaller apps are
sitting there, getting occasional bug fixes.

Personally I think gnome-games are good options
because there mission-critical to no-one :)

I can't name any packages right now but look at
the tools you use, is there any with an interface
that could be better? any small features that
should be present? (I'm on a Windoze machine in
an internet cafe so I cant look through the GNOME
menus to give examples).

If you haven't done any large projects using Gtk/GNOME
yet, maybe work on something on your own. Just write
something, you'll get used to it quickly and then you
can start working on a larger project.

Here's one idea:
The basic GNOME clock applet. The font can't be changed
in the preferences dialog, this causes my verical panel
to bulge out by 2 or 3 pixels, I wish an option to
change the font would be coded by someone so I could
use a smaller font!

It's probably 20 lines of code but it could take 2 weeks
if you have to learn Gtk along the way but after you've
done this you'll be able to do similar fixes in a day or
two, or move on to bigger things.

Hope this helps, ask again if I missed something.
Ciaran O'Riordan


> From: Empty One <emptyone_1 yahoo com>
> Well, sorry to ask like this, but like what where do i
> look to see where to help, what specific apps need
> work that are not maintained, with out stepping on
> someones toes?
>
> Empty_One
> > On Thu, 2001-11-15 at 16:43, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> >
> > > Start looking for something to code. now!
> > > <snap>
> > > Contributing to an existing project is an option
> > > but I find
> > > it easier to work on a fresh project (you can't
> > > get lost in
> > > your own code!). I believe some of the gnome-games
> > > and
> > > gnome-utils aren't being actively maintained (?).

Dennis Smit replied:
> > That is indeed true.. some are not maintained and
> > actually NEED
> > maintance.
> > Dennis Smit.



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