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The Upcoming Changes of the Gnome Subsystem

Submitted by Eugenia on Tue, 2004-11-16 01:29. Gnome 2.x
Gnome 2.x

Anders Carlsson of Imendio outlines and explains (copy) the API changes that are coming with the Gnome 3.0 release in the future.

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Sad

Submitted by nsh on Wed, 2004-11-17 01:17.

Sorry for my sharp objections but...

> We've learned a lot about API design since then.

> Also, in GTK+ 2.6 there are more hooks that need to be filled by someone, for example

Do you mean that this is good style of API? GLib/GTK are OO-oriented library while hook style is pure C concept. Is it good to mix two concepts in the same code, is it suitable for bindings? Also, what's wrong with signals/signal handlers?

>The GNOME libraries are pretty high in the dependency chain.
> specially now that less and less program are using Bonobo at all.

Yes, they use modules now, plugins like gnome-vfs-extensions and gtkfilesystem. What is the difference between bonobo components and such plugins? Plugins lacks some services like inspection, registration, activation, query language. Loadable binary modules are more _acient_ technology which you use instead of more advanced bonobo components. Bonobo allows you decrease number of dependencies by runtime introspection. Why gnome-panel requires evolution-data-server? Because it can't discover data server presence in runtime.

There are lot's of more important questions about Gnome 3.0

1. How multimedia system will look like. Why totem is not part of Gnome yet?

2. What to do with session management. Here is hidden one interesting moment - GnomeCombo can save it's values in GConf and those values are remembered between application session. How are you going to implement such functionality in pure GTK?

3. When there will be WM suitable for many windows, with docking and tabbing for use spatial nautilus.

4. What to do with dozen of unmaintained modules.

Every candidate to Gnome Foundation should have answer on those questions. And to summarize all it, such large project as Gnome _should_ have long-standing roadmap, but currently there is nothing even similar.

Nickolay V. Shmyrev

> 2. What to do with session

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2004-11-17 04:25.

> 2. What to do with session management. Here is hidden one
> interesting moment - GnomeCombo can save it's values in GConf
> and those values are remembered between application session.
> How are you going to implement such functionality in pure GTK?

Any application that uses GConf to store session information is
broken. GConf is for preferences, the session manager is for session managements.

Does GConf have global 'machi

Submitted by hubick on Wed, 2004-11-17 05:58.

Does GConf have global 'machine' or 'domain' properties, in addition to per user properties? Inheritance from those to the per user props?

I know that as it stands now, I had to set my GStreamer properties in GConf on a per user basis...ie, which Audio Sink to use.... when really, you want to configure that for all users on the box, and just override some properties on a per user basis. I can see this being true for all sorts of things.

Yes. Look at the paragraph ab

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2004-11-17 07:05.

Yes. Look at the paragraph about Configuration Sources in http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/

Gnome 2.9?

Submitted by silux on Tue, 2004-11-16 16:24.

Anyone know what the next release of gnome is going to contain. I know that there has been a lot of progress in the gnome front but I'm not want to sift through newsgroups (and to be honest I don't understand a lot of the code). I was wondering if anyone had a link to a page that gives progress updates on additons/changes to Gnome.

http://siluxx.net

>Anyone know what the next re by Anonymous George

I just want it to be troll-fr

Submitted by Anonymous George on Thu, 2004-11-18 09:16.

I just want it to be troll-free. Something like: Gnome 2.10: the troll slayer.

Sorry

Submitted by isak on Tue, 2004-11-16 17:28.

There is no such document that states whats new that I know of. You'll have to look at changelogs and check mailing lists for the specific projects. Perhaps this is a future project for GNOME? A site (wiki maybe) where developers regulary post the progress of the development...

If you want to search yourself:
* desktop-devel-list is a good place for mayor desktop changes.
* planet gnome is pretty good because many developers blog about their ideas.
* Check the webpage for the interesting projects. They may contain summaries of changes.

Development Updates

Submitted by Anonymous George on Tue, 2004-11-16 17:49.

It's really not that hard to find the collective development progress - the GNOME 2.9.x releases have the NEWS and ChangeLog files incorporated.

You can also always read Planet GNOME to see what people are working on.

A month or two before release is usually when people starting compiling together all the Cool Stuff that has been done, because up until then, noone really knows. There's all sorts of proposals and experimentation going on right now, but who knows what's going to be in 2.10 or what's going to be punted until 2.12?

API additions (rather than changes per se)

Submitted by Anonymous George on Tue, 2004-11-16 16:00.

I interpreted what Anders said a little differently. Anders, I believe, is saying that various libraries, such as GTK+, are currently *adding* APIs that make the crufty APIs in libgnome and libgnomeui redundant. What's more, these new APIs have the benefit of developer experience over the past 5 years; so, the new APIs can be better designed.

Note: throughout the GNOME 2.x lifecycle, libgnome and libgnomeui will continue to exist for developers. API and ABI stability will not be broken for 2.x.

Rather, libgnome and libgnomeui will eventually be marked as deprecated, and developers will be encouraged to use the new APIs in GTK+, etc., which will be better maintained, and more well thought-out.

When GNOME 3.0 comes out (and there does not seem to be any planned timetable for GNOME 3.0 at the moment), then the developers may sweep out the cruft in the GNOME libraries, including all of libgnome and libgnomeui, and thus break API and ABI stability.

So, you can take advantage of the new API in GNOME 2.x. There's no need to wait for GNOME 3.0! :-)

Re: API additions (rather than changes per se)

Submitted by slowsloth on Tue, 2004-11-16 17:08.

Rather, libgnome and libgnomeui will eventually be marked as deprecated, and developers will be encouraged to use the new APIs in GTK+, etc., which will be better maintained, and more well thought-out.

Yeah, I had this impression too.

Looks like, in the future, GNOME will stand for GTK+ Network Object Model Environment :)

or GTK as GNOME Tool Kit

Submitted by Anonymous George on Tue, 2004-11-16 18:18.

or GTK as GNOME Tool Kit

Nice!

Submitted by Tyr_7BE on Tue, 2004-11-16 13:58.

This is what Gnome needs...people actually thinking about the design. Gnome kind of has a reputation for flying by the seat of its pants and forcing together 3rd party apps into a makeshift platform. Ask any KDE advocate why they like it so much and they'll say it's the integration. This is the first step on the road to bringing Gnome up to speed.

Anyone have a rough estimate of the timeline for Gnome 3?

Gnome3 Timeline

Submitted by Anonymous George on Tue, 2004-11-16 15:06.

Not even a rough estimate exists at this point. There is no big reason at the moment to go for GNOME3. There aren't all that many integral parts of the desktop that are blocked on breaking compatibility.