The new GNOME 2.18 modules

Here is what to expect in the area of new modules:

GNOME Devtools: "Our end goal is to create an easy to use and powerful environment for developing applications. This means having an environment that the user can tailor to his or her needs, and that fits in with the developer's way of working. Our basic strategy is to build small, well defined components that will work together to form a complete environment."

GNOME Devhelp: a component of GNOME Devtools which includes full indexing of books in XML, the GtkHTML HTML viewer, the ability to search by functions, structures and macros, automatic completion, transparent HTTP support with GnomeVFS, command line search via Bonobo and including Emacs integration, a simple installer for books, print support, multiple zoom levels and vi support.

Seahorse: "Seahorse is a GNOME application for managing encryption keys. It also integrates with nautilus, gedit and other places for encryption, decryption and other operations. With seahorse you can Encrypt/decrypt/sign files and text, Manage your keys and keyring, Synchronize your keys and your keyring with keyservers, Sign keys and publish, Cache your passphrase so you don't have to keep typing it, Backup your keys and keyring, Add an image in any GDK supported format as a OpenGPG photo ID Create SSH keys, configure them, cache them."

Nm-applet, which is the visible component of NetworkManager: "Networking on Linux right now is painful for the mobile desktop user, especially in comparison to other operating systems. A laptop user should never need to use the command line or configuration files to manage their network; it should "Just Work" as automatically as possible and intrude as little as possible into the user's workflow. NetworkManager attempts to make networking invisible. When moving into areas you've been before, NetworkManager automatically connects to the last network the user chose to connect to. Likewise, when back at the desk, NetworkManager will switch to the faster, more reliable wired network connection."

Glade-3: "Glade is a RAD tool to enable quick & easy development of user interfaces for the GTK+ toolkit and the GNOME desktop environment, released under the GNU GPL License. The user interfaces designed in Glade are saved as XML, and by using the libglade library these can be loaded by applications dynamically as needed. By using libglade, Glade XML files can be used in numerous programming languages including C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, C#, Pike, Ruby, Haskell, Objective Caml and Scheme. Adding support for other languages is easy too."

The modules that have been retracted for possible later inclusion are: Gnome Scan, a project whose goal is to add scanner capabilities across the desktop applications, the Tracker search and index tool and MonoDevelop, a GNOME IDE for C# and other .NET languages.

The list of removed modules includes gnome-main-menu and the Anjuta DevStudio, a C/C++ IDE. Anjuta has been removed because the stable version is unmaintained and the development version is not ready yet.