GNOME 3.0 worries

(Luis Villa here.)

It is worth emphasizing that there are lots of great options for GNOME out there. Jon mentions
a couple in online desktop and document-centric ideas; in addition, deep integration of
search, 'people', and collaboration have all also been discussed. So I'm not, overall, worried
about the future of GNOME- one or more of these will happen. And in the meantime, there has
been tons of incremental progress in refining the desktop experience and laying the groundwork
for the next generation of desktop. I just don't think calling anything '3.0' makes sense
until there is real movement in one of those directions.

My idea: revert to 1.4 and call it 3.0.

In my opinion (as user) a desktop is there to enable a user to do his/her work efficiently.
Having a stable, reliable and usable platform is what the user cares about. If there is no
coherent well laid out vision of a big leap forward in the user interface, just stick to
incremental improvements.
I can imagine that GTK+ is working on a new ABI. That does not mean that the new GTK+ would be
API-incompatible. If a mere recompilation of GTK/GNOME program is enough to move it to GTK3,
there will be few compatibility issues for Open Source programs.

If we are looking for core stuff to change, here is one. :)

Look at how many ways we show a program depending on it's state. Why?
For me rhythmbox shows up three places, if you subscribe to the idea of topbar as shortcut
bar. 

"A program in memory is the same as program on storage".  [1]
There is a technical difference, but who cares? 

[1] I gave up on a non-techie phrase, i suck.

As a long term gnome user, I'm worried this will end badly.  There has been little, if any,
far reaching direction during the recent incremental development.  While this may be a result
of incremental development; where people get used to looking only a short distance in front of
them; it does mean they don't have a well oiled machine developing direction.

If I could suggest a place to start looking for a 3.0, it would be with the HIG, not a
particular gnome component or feature set.  It shaped 2.X and could do the same for 3.X

Components change all the time, but it's the HIG that users see.

I'd like to advocate "integrity and connectivity".

If I knew that my data was safe(r) with gnome than with the alternative (xfce) - I'd switch
back in a minute (I'm on gentoo - there's some compilation involved here, would switch back
even faster otherwise ;). For example, if I'm reading some interesting webpage and
firefox/linux crashes (or I have to shut down in a hurry and killall -9 firefox) - the next
time I start firefox, I get the choice to restore the browser to where I broke off (to the
point that I get to keep browsing history and pretty much everything else). I'd love to have
this as a standard behaviour in gnome apps!

The second thing would be to have connecting my phone/pda do the right thing. (Admittedly it's
been a while since I last tried and was dissatisfied with the solultion.) Having connected a
phone should result in having gui access to contact list, alarms/reminders, storage and modem
without following four different howtos.

Instead of really getting to into 'the vision' it's time for 'put up or shut up'.


One of the 'natural' aspects of software development I've noticed is that you have a very very
very hard time defining the question without working on the answer. That is your ideas about
what a program should do and how it's going to do it is going to be wildly different from the
actual practical execution of your ideas. You can't predict in a accurate manner what your
needs are until you actually need them.

So what needs to be done is that people need to start hacking their ideas into Gnome and GTK.
Start moving, start shaking things up. If they wait around for everybody to agree with them
THEN NOTHING WILL EVER GET DONE.

That's all. There is never any guarantees to anything in life. 

So people, who want change, are simply going to have to start hacking those changes. When they
reach a brick wall, when they reach the point were the policy of ABI compatibility is holding
them back then they mark that up and discuss it with other people.

Everybody who is prominent seem to say the same thing:

1. Breaking ABI for Breaking ABI's sake is stupid and destructive.
2. Don't pull a KDE 4. If Gnome does that it will be a huge mistake.
3. Not totally against ABI breakage.. They just need a _demonstrable_ and have a very damn
good reason why it _needs_ to be broken.

If people have a concrete reason why they can't do what they want and they have a plan of
action then that's a entirely different matter.




As a end user I care about a few things, in the order of importance, starting with the most
important:

1. I need my applications to run. I need to be able to get work done on a day to day basis.


2. I need a effective work environment with good work flow, consistent, and is fast to use.
(this is very different from actual code performance. The code can be slow as crud as long as
it's faster then me I don't really give a damn)

3. I need to have decent documentation (doesn't matter were, just as long as it exists and is
accessable) and good help system.

4. I need the ability to write simple programs in a sane and consistent manner. I need to be
able to deploy these programs. I need to be able to run these programs created by other
people. I need to have these programs to be able to run without constant maintenance. (aka
enterprise-ish stuff)

5. I want it to be fast. I want it to take advantage of my hardware for efficiency and run
fast on older machines to reduce the cost of running the software.

6. I want it to be pretty. Pretty is very good.


Pay careful attention to the needs vs wants.


Just my opinion. Take it or leave it. If your a Gnome developer, this is your project and all
I can say is 'Go for it'. Really. 

Is any info on the GTK+ plans online somewhere?  I keep hearing about it, but haven't found
anything substantive.  Surely someone from the team must have given an Impress presentation or
something?  The GTK+ roadmap in the wiki seems to be out of date.

If people have a problem with a 3.0 release of GTK+ not having new features, there's a simple
solution.  Call it 2.90, and work from that toward a 3.0 with whatever fancy new stuff is
desired.

I have no sympathy for the people bitching about the GTK+ API changing.  If you don't have a
clean break at some point, it will just keeping accumulating cruft.  If there wasn't a plan
for 2.x to work in parallel with 3.x for a while, it would be a valid concern.

As I see it, the only problem with KDE 4.0 is that it should be called KDE 3.9.

It was well stated the 4.0 version is not suited for joe average user, but as preview and
version from which applications should begin to stabilise. Unfortunately, everybody was eager
to try it out and forgot that it was not expected to be super stable and finnished.

Now 4.1 is far better (it is published, along with KDE-PIM, but some apps, that are not direct
part of KDE, such as Koffice or Amarok are not ready yet).
And probably 4.2 will be great with most apps ready (these are just my expectations).

a. It is not a given that if Gnome simply focuses on refining the great desktop they have,
while KDE spins out after dumping the great desktop they had, that Gnome will be at a
disadvantage and lose increasing numbers of users. In fact the opposite might be true.

b. Also as a long-time KDE user myself, I'd like to submit that KDE 1.0 was the turning point
where my desktop started being truly great.