Re: Language bindings on developer.gnome.org

["Curtis C. Hovey" <sinzui cox net>]

On Sun, 2003-07-20 at 16:35, Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-07-20 at 20:51, Curtis C. Hovey wrote:
> > I see that the language binding section at developer.gnome.org is hidden
> > in /arch/lang/index.html, and that it points to a very out-dated page on
> > another site.  I'd like to help fix this.
> 
> Yes, I removed it because we already have a very up-to-date page here:
> http://www.gtk.org/bindings.html
>  
> The d.g.o page also attempted to have details of exactly what GNOME lib is 
> wrapped by what binding, but that was clearly impossible to maintain.

I read the 'developer.gnome.org needs some love' thread in the
gnome-web-list archive
(http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnome-web-list/2003-June/thread.html)
and the past few months to catch up on the issue.  I don't want to upset
anyone, but the GTK binding page did not answer my questions. I'm
interested in GNOME desktop application development, not GTK app
development; the GTK binding would not have helped me join GNOME.

My computer says GNOME all over it, it doesn't say GTK.  Thus I went to
d.g.o a few months ago to get the dirt on fixing my favorite tool and
get in integrated in the GNOME desktop.  Medusa is a lib/ex-daemon, and
to fix it I need gnome-vfs, GConf and bonobo.  I swore I would never
program in C again in '94, so I checked out the other language options,
I know dozen of them.  I found:

http://developer.gnome.org/arch/lang/index.html
http://www.gnome.org/projects/devtools/bindings.shtml
http://www.gtk.org/bindings.html
http://erik.bagfors.nu/gnome/languages.html

None of the above really helped (Hello C, how have you been, changed
much in 9 years).  Not all those URLs are easy to find.  I found them
because I'm determined to rescue an application.  Other developers may
have gone to KDE, or some lesser application kit in frustration. 

In short, some developers know a language, hunt down a binding for what
they know, but others like myself, are looking to solve a problem, and
need to know the APIs and language options to fix the problem.  Not all
applications are GUIs, and GTK is not GNOME.  If/when I do make a GUI, I
will use libglade...and I don't know from the GTK binding page if I can.

> > Is the developer Web site named web-devel-2 in CVS?
> > If so I'll need to make a new main.in and tree.in.
> 
> Please don't.
> 
> Are you promising to keep this table up-to-date for 30 language
> bindings, whose maintainers do not volunteer information? I don't
> believe it can be done, and it's already been tried.

Hmmmm, yes I'm willing to be the maintainer if we can keep this
manageable.  I'm feeling some-what benevolent, and I don't think a green
developer should be greeted with the same frustrating experience I just
had.  I've watched the d.g.o binding page over the past few years, and I
understand that I cannot keep this table up to date in the scenario you
put forward.  But the truth of the matter is there are very few active
GNOME2 bindings (gtkmm, PYGtk, Ruby), all others are historical.  As
www.gtk.org does a good job for itself, I would only need to focus on
GNOME2.

The bigger (and harder) question I have is what constitutes a GNOME2
binding?  I'd like to say all gnome libs that the GNOME2 platform
requires to build.  This is kind of blurry and it's a moving target. 
GStreamer has some bindings, and it was added in 2.2.  We could present
a simplified table lists a rating for a specific GNOME version, or each
column could list a set of libs

Should the page be updated 12 or 24 times a year? 
I can subscribe to the lists for updates, watch gnomedesktop.org for
announcements, and surf the home pages.  If this were really too routine
to do, then a script is in order cull the info and make a report (I do
that a lot at work).

I'm not opposed to hosting such a page myself, but I think any developer
who is thinking of building a GNOME application is going to go to
d.g.o.  I'm sure a developer would also like to see the language
bindings within the context of the d.g.o site.

-- 
__C U R T I S  C.  H O V E Y____________________
sinzui cox net
Guilty of stealing everything I am.