Re: GNOME Gripes
Thanks to you and the other posters for some interesting points. I
ended up with GNOME/enlightenment/balsa based on picking some of
debian tasks for GNOME, so I do think the issues are partly GNOME and
even partly Debiain. Specifically, Debian picks a standard window
manager (Enlightenment) and theme, and it also chooses to install
Balsa.
It seems to me that if certain programs aren't at all stable they
shouldn't be in the distribution, and certainly not in any kind of
automatic install (e.g., Balsa and the GNOME gv--though the latter had
spectacular anti-aliasing when it was up).
On Wed, May 03, 2000 at 01:25:02AM +0200, Felix Natter wrote:
> "Eric G . Miller" <egm2@jps.net> writes:
>
> > On Mon, May 01, 2000 at 07:59:25PM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > > I've been using GNOME for awhile in potato--my first encounter with
> > > it. It just doesn't seem ready. I know potato is pre-release, and we
> > > may not have the latest GNOME in it, and the GNOME folks are working
> > > hard.
> > >
> > > So I thought I'd gripe, check if this matches others experience, and
> > > then maybe file some bug reports if I haven't made some configuration
>
> to the original poster:
> which version of gnome are you using ?
It looks as if potato is on v 1.0. Here are some package listings
from my system:
ii gnome-admin 1.0.3-2 Gnome Admin Utilities (gulp and logview)
ii gnome-bin 1.0.56-3 Miscellaneous binaries used by Gnome
ii gnome-control- 1.0.51-4 The Gnome Control Center
ii gnome-guile 1.0.1.cvs.1999 Guile-Gtk scheme interpreter (part of Gnome)
ii gnome-gv 0.82-2 GNOME PostScript/PDF viewer
ii gnome-help 1.0.55-1 GNOME help browser
ii gnome-help-dat 1.0.55-1 GNOME help browser data
ii gnome-libs-dat 1.0.56-3 Data for Gnome libraries
ii gnome-network 1.0.2-5 The gnome network utilities.
ii gnome-panel 1.0.55-1 Launch and/or dock Gnome applications
ii gnome-panel-da 1.0.55-1 Data files for GNOME panel
ii gnome-pim 1.0.55-2 Calendar and address book for GNOME.
ii gnome-print 0.10-5 The GNOME Print architecture
ii gnome-session 1.0.55-1 The Gnome Session Manager
ii gnome-terminal 1.0.55-1 The Gnome terminal emulator application
ii libglade-gnome 0.11-2 Library to load .glade files at runtime (Gno
ii libgnome-dev 1.0.56-3 The Gnome libraries -- development package
ii libgnome32 1.0.56-3 The Gnome libraries
ii libgnomesuppor 1.0.56-3 The Gnome libraries (Support libraries)
ii libgnomeui32 1.0.56-3 The Gnome libraries (User Interface)
ii sawmill-gnome 0.20.1-2.1 GNOME components for Sawmill
ii task-gnome-app 1.0.3 GNOME applications and utilities
ii task-gnome-des 1.0.7 GNOME basic desktop
ii task-gnome-gam 1.0.5 GNOME games
ii task-gnome-net 1.0.4 GNOME network applications
> There is a much-improved 1.x out now (well, it is currently beta, but
> will be released sometime soon: "April" GNOME).
>
> > > goof. I also have no idea if the problem is GNOME or the debian
> > > integration of GNOME.
> > >
> > > I'm running on i386, mostly with sawmill window manager. gdm runs the show.
> > >
> > > Stability:
> > > Balsa crashes very frequently.
[snip]
>
> > > Aesthetics:
> > > I think the default enlightenment theme--in fact most of the themes
> > > for most of the window managers--are just ugly. The default theme
> > > makes it look as if you have a rusting scrap heap on your desk.
> > >
> > > Only the NextStep derivatives have a decent look, to my eye.
> >
> > GTK is just not very attractive. GNOME can't do too much about that
> > until the look of the base widget system is improved. But, heck, it
> > looks better than Tk apps!
Hmm, I though GTK itself was supposed to be pretty good--at least
that's what I read in all the propoganda for GIMP.
>
> there are themes available at gtk.themes.org (for example "aqua" a la
> Mac-OS 9 or "informer" which aims to be plain). You can change this in the
> control-panel (win95, motif and pixmap are included by default).
>
> > > Internal Design:
> > > I think GNOME's facilities and interfaces should have been done in
> > > object oriented fashion. Instead, it's got this clunky C interface
> > > that reminds me of MS Windows. I understand KDE went the other
> > > route. Yes, I know it can all be packaged in CORBA someday, but why
> > > do the How to program for GNOME docs say (it has been awhile since I
> > > looked) that the C interface is the native one?
>
> because it is the lowest layer. all other language-bindings are stacked
> on top of it.
I don't think the lowest layer metaphor is quite right here. CORBA
objects can, in principle, be written in many different languages.
Because CORBA models objects (vs. RPC's function calls), an object
oriented language seems a better fit (C++ rather than C).
C++ is quite capable of exporting functions callable from C.
Similarly with the later comment on ORBIT being in C. That may be so,
but again the implementation language of ORBs does not determine the language
clients use. Admittedly, there may be some efficiency concerns.
>
> > Well, I'm not going to get into a C vs. C++ flame war. However, my
> > rudimentary knowledge of the GNOME and GTK interface is that it *is*
> > designed in the closest approximation to object-orientation that C can
> > do. I think there's a promising future for libglade with Python driving
> > the show. Then there's a bit more "object orientedness". Still, you'd
> > probably want to do heavy processing with a compiled language.
>
> There are also advantages of a C-based GNOME:
> - usable from C-applications (like libxml)
> - it seems that many fsf-programmers are most familiar with C
> - many possibilities for scripting-languages.
> - GNOME still uses CORBA, as opposed to KDE. maybe this is only possible
> with the the fast C-implementation of CORBA: ORBit ?
> (CORBA is a standard for network-transparent interface-definitions)
> - C++-wrappers are available: Gtk-- and Gnome-- (gtkmm.sourceforge.net)
Thanks for the pointer.
>
> --
> Felix Natter
>
Are you any relation to David Natter in NY?
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