Re: 2.10 release notes screenshots

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

Sure. I'll use live.gnome.org/JoiningGnome for now. Thanks.

Please do send the other comments to the gnome-love list or something
else appropriate, in case they would prefer to use/build something else
to be linked to in the release notes.

On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 12:38 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 15:28:13 +0100, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> > Davyd, will you be able to do the screenshots again for 2.10? It seemed
> > to work really well last time. Most of the text is now written.
> > 
> > I'd like to have the release notes finished by March 2nd so that they
> > can be translated in time, though I suppose it's not awful if we only
> > have the text for the <figure>s then.
> > 
> > The release notes are again in releng/2.x/2.10rnotes.
> > Status is here: http://live.gnome.org/ReleaseNotes
> 
> I took a brief look, and noticed that in the section for potential
> developers you listed the URLs
>   http://developer.gnome.org/projects/
>   http://developer.gnome.org/documents/joining-gnome
> 
> I don't think either one should be used, because:
> 
> The former misses some projects while also listing the long since
> atrophied Gnome Packaging Project.  A much better URL to use would be
> http://live.gnome.org/JoinGnome, which lists more ways to contribute
> and does not include defunct projects.  (It was put together by some
> cool volunteer (forgot the name, but it was a fairly recent posting to
> the gnome-love list) who sent it to gnome-love for review)
> 
> The latter is woefully out-of-date, enough so that I'd consider it
> more harmful for people to read than helpful.  Examples (I'm running
> through the document in order, though I may not be catching
> everyting): (1) it lists the Gnome Packaging Project and other defunct
> or never-existed projects in its overview of what the various projects
> are, (2) it links to the "GNOME Todo Database" (which thankfully has
> been redirected to bugzilla.gnome.org instead of providing misleading
> information, though it still is kind of sucky), (3) it links to TODO
> lists for the GDP and GTP; the GDP one is clearly at least 2 years out
> of date and the GTP appears to be way of date too (though it's hard to
> tell for sure exactly how out of date), (4) finding the right contact
> person lists several defunct projects, misses several of the bigger
> Gnome projects that would seem to make sense for such a list today,
> and provides the wrong contact information for several of the projects
> which are still alive, (5) It has a "details on joining particular
> parts of Gnome" which repeats much of the information from the
> overview of what the various projects are (meaning that it defunct or
> never-existed projects are listed multiple times...), and also
> provides dated information that will no longer be helpful (and may
> even be hurtful--e.g. pointers to bugzilla.eazel.com and
> bugzilla.helixcode.com, email addresses of individuals that I've
> mostly never heard of before and which I am fairly certain are not the
> right individuals to contact anymore for various projects), (6) extra
> links to the "GNOME Todo Database" with false information about what
> the page contains and relinking back to the incorrect contact
> information section, (7) Pretending that developer.gnome.org is useful
> for beginners (it most certainly isn't--see
> http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog/contents/2003/11/25-gnomedevel/read),
> (8) links to GGAD (out-of-date since it's 1.x material, even though it
> was definitely cool and has useful information...), (9) pretends that
> gnome-hello is a program written as an example for beginners (it's one
> of the worst examples for beginners; it's purpose is for teaching how
> to deal with auto-fu and documentation and internationalization in a
> Gnome context, not how to actually write programs using the basic
> Gnome libraries, e.g. libglade and gtk; in other words, don't teach
> calculus before arithmetic), (10) in its mention of glade it extolls
> the "virtues" of automatic code generation; the gtk+ developers have
> long requested that people not use that and provide a number of
> reasons that it is harmful--libglade should be used instead, (11) it
> mentions an "extra" GNOME Application List which I don't believe
> exists (if so, it has escaped my attention, though I do think I
> remember one having existed just before I got very involved with
> Gnome) (12) it links to the Gnome Software Map and claims that it is a
> resource that tracks Gnome applications, but the link has been
> redirected to gnomefiles.org which does not do that (it includes
> applications which use gtk+, meaning that things like XFCE and
> non-free applications are included--neither of which type could be
> considered "Gnome applications")
> 
> Unfortunately, for this case I don't have a perfect replacement.  My
> developer guide covers parts, but is focused at new developers
> (whereas this guide covered stuff for non-developers and included some
> stuff for more advanced developers).  http://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove
> includes some information like this, but besides not covering all the
> same material it is also focused more at developers (though combined
> with http://live.gnome.org/JoinGnome it is fairly close), and is in
> need of some cleanup (though I could do that before release if you
> want to make use of it).  I don't think we could have a full
> replacement for this document by release time, but I personally
> believe we'd be better with a partial replacement (or even no
> replacement) than mentioning this document at all.
> 
> Just my $0.02,
> Elijah
-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com