Re: for the GNOME hater in all of us...

[Shimpei Yamashita <shimpei@example.com>]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2000 at 09:20:34AM +0000, Simon Cozens wrote:
> Stephen J. Turnbull (lists.tlug):
> >read GTK code, and I've attempted to read the docs.[1] 
> >[1]  I'm  pretty fast reader, but not so fast I can read stuff that
> >ain't written yet.
> 
> Stephen, I appreciate fully the fact that you're trolling, but the art
> of trolling is to do so with information that is not easily
> contradictable; here, you're just way too easy to defeat.
> 
> Game over:
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/gtk/index.html
> 
> That's a straight API reference. (And there are a bunch of other API
> reference manuals where that came from) 

Small correction: it's a straight API listing, with *partial* API reference.
Entries for some widgets like, say, GtkWidget are nothing more than 
pretty-printed versions of the header files; since I'm not smart enough to
figure out what widgets do just by reading function declarations, I expect
a "reference" to include actual explanations.

(I realize that a good part of the widgets do have explanations in English.
The ones I've had to look up all lacked documentation, though.)

> >Dividing things into multiple libraries just makes it worse; you can
> >change your APIs _without_ breaking your own builds.  Unless the APIs
> >are documented.  Sorry, Luke, the source is _not_ acceptable
> >documentation for an API[3][4].  It will change tomorrow---"that's
> >called development", eh, Simon?
> 
> Underdocumented it ain't.

Well...see above. I have had to dive into gtk's sources in the past to
understand what its published interface was supposed to accomplish. It's nice
that you can do that in an open-source product, but I'd rather spend my free
time doing something more productive.

I'm not *that* anti-GNOME, by the way. I'm just not as wide-eyed
enthusiastic about it as I used to be, and high-quality killer apps
continue to fail to show up for me. A GUI file browser is nothing but a
nuisance on an 800x600 screen, so Nautilus isn't for me. I'll give
Evolution a chance when I can tolerate its Outlook-clone look and feel;
I use Outlook during the day (not out of choice), and I'd rather not
relive the trauma at home. Gnumeric was a joke when I tried it last time;
hopefully it's gotten better. Gimp would be great if I edited graphics,
which I don't. Gnucash...well, er, I haven't had time to code in the past
month to make it do Japanese, and it also suffers from design problems,
mostly involving Trying To Do Too Many Things At Once. Abiword still doesn't
do Japanese the last time I checked. As for StarOffice, well, I hope they
do a better job with GNOME than they did with their old library....

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with Linux at all. Then I go to work
and have Excel blow up in my face, and I remember. 

-- 
Shimpei Yamashita                   <http://www2.gol.com/users/shimpei/>
"Outlook not so great"  -- Microsoft Access 2000 "Magic 8-Ball" Easter Egg