Re: [gnome-love] At last.................... I made it.......

[Elijah Newren <newren math utah edu>]

On Thu, 2004-05-27 at 01:31, Melinda wrote:
> > That
> > would probably mean use plain gtk instead of gtkmm 
> This is the problem. I hate coding in C. I just wonder the reason you
> said this is Gnome desktop is developed in C and is stupid to rewrite (
> although just one component like gnome control center ) in another
> language ( although C++ is brother from C ) or it is impossible for non
> C programmer to join Gnome desktop development team ( to contribute ). I
> thought the reason people to make GTK+ binding is to make non C
> programmer to contribute easily to Gnome project. Please correct me if I
> am wrong. Is it still possible for non C programmer like me ( I love C++
> ) to contribute to Gnome desktop project? It is stupid if I have to move
> from C++ to C just because I want to do this.

Here's my position on the issue (which may not mean much).  I'm cutting
and pasting directly from the tutorial I'm writing on developing with
Gnome (found at
http://www.gnome.org/~newren/tutorials/developing-with-gnome):

"Finally, a discussion of what are low level details would not be
complete without discussing the language itself. While the core of Gnome
is implemented in C, it was designed with other programming languages in
mind and therefore has perhaps one of the cleanest and most
comprehensive set of language bindings of any toolkit (see
http://www.gtk.org/bindings.html). To quote Owen Taylor [the maintainer
of GTK], "Don't use C; In my opinion, C is a library programming
language not an app programming language." Now, of course, if you want
to work on existing Gnome applications, you should use whatever language
that application is written in, and that will usually mean C. But for
those starting their own projects, they will probably want to pick a
different language. This guide provides all example programs in C and
C++ and Perl and Python to assist you in doing so. However, this guide
is biased toward the C bindings as one of my original goals in writing
it was to encourage more people to work on existing Gnome applications
and libraries, most of which are currently in C."


I think Paolo was suggesting that you make your program not be a
separate program but rather just be part of the code of
gnome-control-center.  Since it's in C, thus came the suggestion of
changing the language of your app (since it is most likely smaller than
gnome-control-center).  But, even if you don't do that, your app is more
than welcome.  I for one, am very happy that you wrote it.

> > and it would not be
> > "your" program anymore, 
> doesn't matter to me. But you know, assume I write this program in C and
> pure GTK+ so the languange is not issue anymore. Assume my program is
> stable enough to merge in Gnome. I doubt they ( Gnome developers ) would
> like this feature included in Gnome control centre because they would
> like to keep Gnome as simple as possible. Their motto is KISS ( Keep It
> Simple Stupid ).

I disagree.  Many people have expressed a desire for this option and it
isn't just the end users.  If you look at
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48004, Bryan Clark (among
others) has also argued for this option--and he's the one in charge of
the UI-review.  I very much believe this feature could become part of
core Gnome.

> > but I'm sure that your pride would be satisfied
> > by seeing your work used by millions of people and shipped with linux
> > distributions!
> Of course............. Ok, here what will I do.... I will improve this
> program so this program will be stable. This program is in alpha stage
> now..... :) After stable enough, I m looking into possibility to merge
> into Gnome control centre and if it is not possible ( because I write
> with gtkmm not pure gtk+ ), I am open minded if someone would like to
> rewrite this program into C ( pure gtk+ ) in order to merge into Gnome
> desktop. I will help him.

Cool, thanks for taking on this great project.  :)


Elijah