Talk:GNOME

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GNOME has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.

To-do list for GNOME:

edit · history · watch · refresh

Replace the lists with written prose, or remove unnecessary content from them Address the identity crisis regarding "GNOME Applications", probably by addressing the Bindings vs Platform thing (will have to wait until there's consensus within the actual project for this one) Expand the look and feel section to better explain what actually using a GNOME desktop feels like; widgets metrics, button functionality etc.

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GNOME has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Archives
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Contents 1 Explanation of the word GNOME 2 Entities Vs Unicode 3 Release announcements and press releases 4 Pronunciation 5 Language bindings 6 Nautilus - just another app? 7 GTK sub-projects and Qt 8 Logo 9 GNOME applications 10 On Portal:Free software, GNOME is currently the selected article 11 Unicode again 12 Criticisms/Usability 13 2.16 screenshot 14 List of distributions

[edit] Explanation of the word GNOME

While I know that GNOME is an acronym for GNU Network Object Model Environment, I am curious exactly why the software suite has this name. In particular with regard to the network aspect of the name, why did this software include this word from the beginning? I am not trying to start any sort of a flame war here, but GNOME for as long as I have used it from 1.4 onward has possessed atrocious networking support, so I would really appreciate a critical explanation of the inclusion of the word into its name. Before labeling me a zealot of any stripe, consider that I have devoted a lot of my time to the GNOME Project in the field of bug writing and small patches. --Matt.proud 02:58, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The name was proposed by Elliot Lee, one of the authors of ORBit and the Object Activation Framework (OAF). So it refers to the possibilities that people, at the time, thought CORBA would bring to a desktop environment. Since that no longer reflects the core vision of the GNOME project, many members of the project advocate dropping the acronym and re-naming "GNOME" to "Gnome" -- markmc 10:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Would you like to add that explanation to the article? - Motor (talk) 23:45, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I added it ages ago... but we could do with a source (mailing list link would do) to confirm it. The information posted here on the talk page came from User:Mark McLoughlin, a Red Hat employee. There's no reason to doubt it, but we really need some kind of verification. - Motor (talk) 19:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Entities Vs Unicode

There's a good talk piece at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes) which discusses why using character entities in a Unicode-enabled application (which has a bar along the bottom where you can just click to enter one) is broken. This is 2006. I'm more concerned about my own ability to read what I'm editing than any hypothetical argument about other people's broken editors.Chris Cunningham 20:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

We could start by reading the actual article: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes). Use the HTML entity —, which the MediaWiki engine automatically converts into a numeric entity in the rendered HTML. The numeric entities, — and —, should be avoided in the wikitext: they produce the same result in the rendered HTML, but are more difficult for editors to interpret. You may also type an em dash directly if your keyboard allows it. Discussion on the talk page are just that... discussions. Mdash is allowed, that's what was used and is used across many articles, with no problems. When the manual of style specifically says no to the entity mdash, then I'll change it. Until then... I'll be returning it to the way that makes things easy, mdash, when you are finished with your current changes. As for readbility: were we talking about numeric entities, I would agree... but we are not. In truth, I'm more concerned about your outburst. It was not acceptable. As I've explained to you before (in the pages you just archived), your edits are not being reverted... parts of them are being changed back. Just because other editors do not agree with everything you change is not an excuse for your behaviour, your inappropriate use of edit summaries for taking shots at people, attitude and talk page raging, nor is it justification for your repeated edit warring. However, the fact that you had the good sense to delete your own post is encouraging.

Regarding the GNOME versions and start pages. Those are useful references. The start pages can go, but the mailing list release announcements should definitely be kept. Are you going to show some move towards working constructively with others and add those mailing list references back, or will I have to do it? - Motor (talk) 21:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Archived release information is not encyclopedic. Is it to sit there forever? Lots of things are useful references, but this doesn't mean that lots of things must be linked individually from articles. I'm planning on reorganising the links anyway, so I might stick a link to the archived information back in, but not a huge list of archived posts.

As for the mdashes, the style guide doesn't give an opinion on whether to use entities or unicode. It simply explains when to use each kind of dash. That's why there's a talk page on the subject. Your interpretation is unjustifiable in light of the fact that the character generator box at the bottom of the edit page inserts Unicode entries and not entities, and while I eventually relented on other changes because you came up with good reasons I'm not making my own life more difficult by having to decode entities mentally when I'm editing.

So basically, in the interests of fair play and compromise, I'll try to come up with a sensible way of displaying the archive information (i.e. not linking to over a dozen archived emails) if you will refrain from removing the Unicode.

As for the attitude, lecturing me is not a good way to ensure it doesn't happen again. Chris Cunningham 21:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Archived release information is not encyclopedic. -- archived information is the source for everything on Wikipedia. It is the foundation on which this place is built. Lots of things are useful references, but this doesn't mean that lots of things must be linked individually from articles. -- lots of things are not actual GNOME release announcements. I'm planning on reorganising the links anyway, so I might stick a link to the archived information back in, but not a huge list of archived posts. -- I will be adding the links to the mailing list announcements back in... whether you do it or not. I probably won't add them into the external links section, I'll make them notes in the version table.

As for the mdashes, the style guide doesn't give an opinion on whether to use entities or unicode. -- which is exactly what I said. It is not making your life more difficult Chris, because you can read them. It does make the lives of people using external editors more difficult (me included). So I will be changing them back to HTML entities. If you wish to push this matter further, go ahead. I've repeatedly tried to reason with you on a number of matters, and put up with your behaviour because some of your edits are useful... but this particular point is not negotiable as far as I'm concerned.

So basically, in the interests of fair play and compromise, I'll try to come up with a sensible way of displaying the archive information (i.e. not linking to over a dozen archived emails) if you will refrain from removing the Unicode. -- that's not a compromise Chris. You've changed a lot of things, most of which I have no problem with. I'm not about to start bargaining with the two things I disagree with. Let's not go back to pretending that I'm reverting all your changes.

As for the attitude, lecturing me is not a good way to ensure it doesn't happen again. -- nevertheless, considering your repeated behaviour, I feel it is important to point out the relevant policy regarding these matters. Thanks. - Motor (talk) 21:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Have it your way. I'd rather edit articles than spend time reading up on dispute resolution. I see you've already been through the process. Chris Cunningham 22:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I have indeed, and I've no doubt you'll find yourself in a similar situation sooner or later if you rack up enough time and edits here (BTW: I don't feel the need to remove things from my talk page). Feel free to investigate those disputes (on the talk pages of the articles/editors/dispute mediators in question -- my talk page is only a quarter of the story)... the resolution of one in particular makes for interesting reading for anyone concerned with Wikipedia policy regarding editor intimidation, information reliability and many other things. Just make sure you look into the context too -- for example, there were some really quite disgraceful off-site attacks on Wikipedia editors. With luck, all the fuss could result in some policy changes to help put a stop to it. - Motor (talk) 22:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Release announcements and press releases

I've added some of the press releases and sources in the version table, but there doesn't appear to be a GNOME press release for all versions (particularly the earlier ones). So I've used the mailing list announcement for those. An actual GNOME press release is more reliable (if anyone can find one), but the mailing list link will do. I'd appreciate anyone checking that there were no mistakes while adding them. Thanks. - Motor (talk) 23:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. The GNOME press page states that it has a complete archive of GNOME press releases, and their lack of Google juice seems to confirm that 2.4, 2.6 etc. didn't get press releases at all. Chris Cunningham 14:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

I've no problem with this edit... mentioning the alternate pronunication, but we really need a better way of wording it for an introduction. The current version is too jargony re: phonological grammar. How about: "acceptable for those whose native language makes the hard 'G' difficult to pronounce." Or something along those lines? IPA, pronunciation, phonology etc isn't something I'm all that familiar with, so I would appreciate feedback. - Motor (talk) 15:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language bindings

The wording of this section is unnecessarily complicated because of the "GNOME app" kerfuffle. Half the apps on the "list of GNOME applications" are written in non-blessed langauges, so the article is contradictory. Contradiction is, like, bad. Chris Cunningham 11:24, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The List of GNOME applications section is clearly defined. If the wording of the future developments section is too complicated... then that can be made clearer. It would help, for example, help to have more information on the GNOME release process what does and does not get included from the larger GNOME project, why and how those decisions are made. We currently skimp on that to the detriment of the article. BTW: I mentioned this ages ago but, the architecture section is a mess. It was originally started just to list the main bits making up GNOME. If anyone wants to take on the job of describing the architecture of GNOME clearly and simply that would be great. I've often hoped we could find a diagram that describes the overall dependencies and layers of GNOME -- hardware, kernel, glibc, glib/gtk/pango etc etc. - Motor (talk) 11:33, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Chris, you seem to be confusing "GNOME application" with "software distributed as part of the official GNOME release". A GNOME application can be written by anybody, and would be defined as "an application intended for GNOME". Software distributed as part of the official GNOME release is even better defined, it is the software that is taken from the GNOME CVS as part of a GNOME release (parts of CVS are excluded from a release, CVS can contain experimental code or junk). To be accepted into GNOME CVS, an application must match strict criteria and be chosen by the GNOME Foundation.

I would say that the fact that the GNOME applications are not written in a "blessed" language is not a contradiction, as a GNOME application may be written in many languages, as long as it doesn't expect to be included in any official GNOME release. - 213.103.12.232 23:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually I've realized that using GNOME CVS as a basis for defining software that is part of a GNOME release is not a good idea at all. GNOME CVS contains many many things that are not part of GNOME (the Gimp for example). Strictly speaking a GNOME release consists of the software you can find at http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/ in the platform, admin, bindings and desktop sub directories - this IS GNOME. This of course is written in 100% pure C (will all the glue : the toolchain - makefiles, config, bash scripts, macros...) - 213.103.12.232 10:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I've removed all discussion of C/Python etc from the architecture and just listed the bindings (moved the ref down into Future developments). It's ugly, but no uglier than the rest of the section... and the section really needs a rewrite anyway. - Motor (talk) 12:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Why was the sentence saying what language GNOME is written in moved from the architecture section : "The GNOME desktop itself and the applications that are part of a GNOME release are currently mostly written in C." ?

Is it not interesting when talking about system architecture to mention the prevailing programming language used to construct the system ? Would somebody interested in the GNOME architecture think to look in the future developments section for this information ?

213.103.12.232 18:33, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the architecture section needs a complete overhaul, regardless of anything else. - Motor (talk) 22:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

True, many things are yet to be done. However I still don't see why the mention of the programming language used to develop GNOME should be removed from the architecture section. Is it not by putting the relevant information into the relevant sections, even if slightly unpolished, that bit by bit we may construct a complete and well written article ? In that case removing relevant information from the appropriate section, to add it as fluff and as an unnecessary detail elsewhere would seem rather counter productive, would it not ?

I agree that "discussion of C/Python" is not at home here, but reference to the programming language used for development would seem primordial. - 213.103.12.232 23:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nautilus - just another app?

It might make sense to categorize Nautilus under "Architecture" rather than "Applications", since it's a rather key part of the integrated desktop. Twinxor t 23:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

In that case, gnome-panel is also as yet missing. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I've been mulling over the previous comments and thinking about what can be done to make things a bit clearer. Fist of all I noticed that in some parts of the article, there seems to be an effort to distinguish between "The GNOME Desktop", which I suppose would be the user visible parts, and the rest. However, in much of the rest of the article, "The GNOME Desktop" is used simply as a synonym of "GNOME".

Let me start with trying to define GNOME : as mentioned above, if you go to the GNOME website, and ask to download GNOME (http://www.gnome.org/start/2.14/), there are four directories full of "tarballs" : this IS GNOME ! In the platform directory are basically the guts of GNOME, few things if any are user visible, but you need all of this to get anything working - here are the core libraries : GTK+, ORBit, Gnome-VFS, etc. In the desktop directory is much of the rest of GNOME : user visible applications (file-roller, gedit...) and other "less core" libraries (gstreamer, librsvg...). Then you have the bindings directory, with the official GNOME bindings, and the admin directory (witch I think is new with GNOME 2.14) witch contains a couple of administration tools. An important note is that these tarballs contain nothing other than pure C source code - I have checked them and asked about on IRC.

Correction - the tools in the admin directory are written in python. I'm disappointed to see that it is not so clear cut - further research needed.

Karderio 01:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Now back to the definition of "GNOME Desktop", if we look at the GNOME website, we find that "GNOME Desktop" is simply used as a synonym of GNOME. (search for site:www.gnome.org "GNOME desktop" and site:www.gnome.org version GNOME) For example the site says things like "GNOME 2.14 is the latest version of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment" as well as "The GNOME desktop is now faster and easier to configure than ever before" here "GNOME" and "GNOME Desktop" are interchangeable (with a little rewording). Moreover, there is no clear separation, as to API and GUI packages, between the tarballs in the platform and those in the desktop directories in the distribution.

So here is my point : when our article says things like : "A great deal of software is created or hosted under the umbrella of the GNOME project, some of which is collected and released together as The GNOME Desktop." and goes on to say "The Desktop is used in conjunction with an operating system" it seems to me that "The GNOME Desktop" is implied to be somehow different to "GNOME". So, I've gone about removing a few specially selected "Dektop" occurrences from the article to try to avoid confusion, any comments ?

Karderio 01:22, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I have reorganised the applications section, to give prominence to applications that are included as part of GNOME (http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/ desktop - platform - bindings - admin). I have proposed a page "applications included in GNOME" to list all these applications.

Karderio 02:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Several comments:

• I think gnome-terminal and gnome-panel deserve a mention in the article, even if they are red links (this should never be a deciding criterion!)
• I don't see the need for two separate "list of" pages. Better to make one page with two sections and avoid duplication.
• I see several apps in the "Other applications" section that a) I'd never heard of, and b) I'm not convinced many people use (Alexandria and Banshee). Do we have some usage figures (e.g. Debian, Arch or any other distro which mainly installs packages by ftp rather than from CD would have the appropriate figures in their ftp log) that we can base a list of "most popular apps" on?

Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:20, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I have added gnome-terminal and gnome-panel to the list and merged the two seperate lists of official and other applications into one. I have removed Alexandria, but have left banshee, as I belive it is "en vogue". I'm sure that the list could be taylored to be more representative of major applications, perhaps gnomefiles could be useful for this ?

Karderio 20:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

A page for "applications included with GNOME" would be a good start in sorting this out, but I fear that the "representative subset" included here is unlikely to be reduced unless a consensus can be reached on killing all the lists. Chris Cunningham 15:27, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GTK sub-projects and Qt

I don't see any justification for removing the mention of those GTK sub-projects -- certainly not "lists taking over the earth". If we are discussing GNOME architecture (and we don't do this very well), then GObjects have to be mentioned.

This article is creeping gradually towards being nothing more than a long series of lists. Those parts of GTK+ which come free for developers need not be elaborated on here. Chris Cunningham 08:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I've shifted the text which follows up a bit, so GTK looks more fleshed-out. Again, as far as GNOME is concerned i18n support comes for free from the toolkit. If there are subprojects of GTK which developers need worry about, they should of course be added back. Chris Cunningham 08:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

As for the short description of the Qt controversy... it's the main reason for GNOME existing, and the licensing problems are the big reason why the desktops are still separate. It's entirely appropriate to address it, and matter has ben discussed in detail previously.

That paragraph says exactly the same thing as the one preceeding it. Qt's history after GNOME is launched is irrelevant, at that point Qt's license wasn't important. Chris Cunningham 08:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I've added a bit about the reconciliation, but don't want to expand upon it too much without references... has there ever been a serious move to combine the two / relicense appropriately? I wouldn't have thought Trolltech would be very receptive to LGPLing Qt... Chris Cunningham 08:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Additional: why were the notes attached to the GNOME release versions changed to simple http links, rather than references. The numbering is now broken. - Motor (talk) 23:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

It keeps the references section short enough to fit on one page while retaining the information. I'll admit that this is an imperfect solution. Chris Cunningham 08:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

References are references... if they take more than one page, so be it (what page size did you have in mind?). These are references the same as any other on the page, and I have converted them back. As for the removed Qt text -- you might note that that the text was written over many many revisions, stripped down, built back up and argued over. The end result is just enough to describe the history of the QT toolkit and the how that has touched and affected the development of GNOME, and why the two are separate -- your wholesale removal was not justified and your cut down version misses much of the story (which you would know had you, as suggested, read the archives). I'm not reverting it at the moment, since I'll wait and see how this plays out.

There's plenty of backstory which isn't mentioned, and perhaps an "early history" section would be good. But that paragraph was little more than nitpicking. Qt isn't grestly more relevant to one's understanding of the story than, say, Motif is, and regardless of how many rewrites that section had it still duplicated large parts of the preceeding sentence. Chris Cunningham 13:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

BTW: Please stop using inline replies. It confuses things. Incidentally, if you are wondering why I didn't use the "cite web" template, it's because IMO, it's over-complicated and tedious with very little benefit... but if someone wants to convert to it... well, that's upto them. ;- Motor (talk) 12:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Those parts of GTK+ which come free for developers need not be elaborated on here. -- simple widget support no. Glib/Pango and ATK are all designed to be used without GTK. They are fundamental enough to GNOME to be mentioned specifically. I don't care whether it is done in a list. As I said above, they need more detail not less... particularly the way GNOME uses its own objected oriented system with GObjects. - Motor (talk) 12:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with expansion of important parts of the article when it reads better than list expansion. The way you've reincorporated it is great. Chris Cunningham 13:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Logo

Why isn't the GNOME logo a gnome ? ( and why is it a footprint instead ? )

Miguel talks about this at http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html -kurros 17:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GNOME applications

Everyone OK whit adding this to "GNOME applications" ?

Applications that are specifically designed for GNOME will work under KDE too, and vice versa, but the apps usually do not load and work as quick, and there are sometimes bugs when used under an other desktop environment than intended. Similarely, applications designed to work under both desktop environments load and work more slowly then apps disigned spicifically for that desktop environment (e.g. OpenOffice works more slowly under either DE, than Kword works under KDE).

That would be better saved for an article on portability or interoperability (or even freedesktop.org) than on the GNOME article, where it would just look like POV. Chris Cunningham 11:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On Portal:Free software, GNOME is currently the selected article

(2006-08-21) Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was Netfilter/iptables. Gronky 21:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The selected article has changed again and is now Tor (anonymity network). Gronky 14:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode again

Discussion has died down on this one. Does anyone currently object to adding proper dashes and so on to the article in place of the HTML entities? It makes it rather easier to read. Chris Cunningham 15:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I find the unicode characters harder to read when there are both em dashes and en dashes in an article. Perhaps this is because I always see article source in Bitstream Vera Sans Mono (regardless of whether I'm using Vim or Firefox), where en dash and em dash are indistinguishable. I imagine that must be a popular textarea font for people who edit this article, but I could be wrong. It's easy to see which is which when — and – entities are used instead. —ptk✰fgs 20:19, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticisms/Usability

The contents of the Criticisms section didn't have a neutral pov and contained factual errors. Also, as has previously been discussed, there's no need for a separate Criticisms section. If there are criticisms of Nautilus, it belongs in the Nautilus section (or on Nautilus' own wikipedia entry). I transformed the Criticisms section to a usability section. It's still kind of weak, and needs to be fleshed out a bit.--Megakelvin 08:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Also grave spelling and grammatical problems, and no sources for the statements. Also, "Nautalis". —ptk✰fgs 17:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as it was added very recently by a new user, I don't think you're going to get many arguments. I'd probably have been less sanguine and just reverted it. As-is it paves the way for further discussion on exactly what distinguishes GNOME. Chris Cunningham 21:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2.16 screenshot

I added a screenshot of GNOME 2.16, just to get *something* up, but it's not a terribly optimal one so someone who has a more worthwhile shot should definitely replace mine. -Senori 04:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of distributions

I added a table containing a list of distributions see here, but it was reverted by Thumperward. The reason given was "...this article doesn't need more lists of trivia, and this information should be given on the list of linux distributions page" (in reference to the box at the top). However, although the KDE article doesn't have such a list, the Xfce article does, and I think that it should be kept as it is useful for those looking for a Linux distribution with GNOME. Does anybody else think that it should be kept? If not, I wont add it. 0L1 Talk Contribs 18:11 27 10 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't seem too useful to me, given that a whole lot of distributions support it. It's really nothing unique or interesting about a distro. Twinxor t 20:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I still think that it is worth mentioning, even if only the popular distributions that have it are mentioned e.g. openSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora Core. 0L1 Talk Contribs 21:44 27 10 2006 (UTC)

A sentence mentioning the most influential GNOME users might make sense. Start up List of operating systems using GNOME if a bigger list is really needed -- it clutters up this article badly. Twinxor t 22:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

I'll create that article now. I just realised that there is a brief mention of Ubuntu and Fedora Core in the article in the Platforms section. 0L1 Talk Contribs 10:47 28 10 2006 (UTC)