Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Philippe Roussel]

Hi

On Wed, Oct 07, 2009 at 03:24:01PM -0400, Gregory Casamento wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> There are a number of things which need to change on the project:
> 
> We need to:
> 1) improve our website.  It's been the same for years and doesn't
> reflect our progress.

For me, the one thing that really lowers GNUstep credibility is the
super high 'bitrot factor' : a lot of the software found in the wiki
is outdated, or it's website disappeared, or it won't compile or it's
almost useless. Building the core librairies is good (thanks guys !)
but we need a good set of working applications, easily found and
easily built.

One example I ran recently is AddressManager and the VCFViewer
inspector. There is one version in GAP, one version in Etoile. One
version of VCFViewer in AddressManager tree and one in GWorkspace
website and wiki page.

There are multiple terminal applications (gap, backbone, etoile ?) but
none really usable (to my knowledge, maybe I missed something).

There is Preferences and SystemPreferences.

GNUMail doesn't work for me and seems stalled.

What I'm trying to say is that I think we should try to centralize
things (one repository for all !) and work on a set of defined
applications instead of collecting random stuff.

One last thing about stable/unstable : the website frontpage advertize
gnustep startup 0.23.0 as a stable release with make 2.2.0, base 1.19.1,
gui 0.17.0 and back 0.17.0.
In the download page, stable startup version is 0.22.0 and unstable
0.19.3. Stable base is 1.18.0 which for me means that base 1.19.1
included in startup 0.23.0 is not stable. Same thing for gui and back.
Question is : what should I download ?!

I hope this doesn't sound too negative, really. I really like GNUstep
and wish to use a GNUstep desktop one day :o).

Thanks,
Philippe
-- 
Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are!