Re: Language bindings on developer.gnome.org

[Murray Cumming <murrayc usa net>]

So add a link from d.g.o if you like.

Add an additional page somewhere about GNOME bindings that doesn't
duplicate the information if you like. But expect it to be removed a
year from now if it is not up to date.

If you just want a list of complete bindings instead of the (impossible)
detailed list of coverage of every binding then your list will be empty.
There is not one single language binding that wraps every part of the
GNOME Platform. 

On Mon, 2003-07-21 at 01:33, Curtis C. Hovey wrote:
> 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.
-- 
Murray Cumming
murray usa net
www.murrayc.com