Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Ariel Rios]

On 23 Jul 2001 12:32:48 -0400, Neil W. Van Dyke wrote:

This is probably the wrong list to send this messages,
guile-gtk mailing list is the good one.
 
> Ximian, which effectively controls the direction of Gnome, will now be
> preoccupied with cloning Microsoft architecture and collaborating with
> Microsoft.  They'll presumably be unable to move Gnome development in
> ways that are conducive to its use with Guile (not to mention that there
> is now arguably business disincentive to actively aid the success of
> Guile).
This statement is not fair with Ximian. And it also states wrongly
that Ximian leads GNOME. That's no true. 

Maybe Guile is not widely used in GNOME but I can say that
there has been very little interest inside the Guile community
to make it happen, altho guile is used in some really interesting
parts of GNOME such as gnumeric and guppi
 
 
> The first thing I'd like to suggest is to put a canonical tree of GTK
> 1.2 support for Guile into Guile's CVS repository, make it work well,
> and keep it up to date with Guile releases and CVS versions.  GTK is a
> good and popular GUI toolkit, 1.2 is stable, and 1.2 is not dependent on
> the current Gnome build environment (which is larger, much more complex,
> and constantly changing).
Wrong again. GNOME 1.x API has not changed in a long time.
Also guile-gtk and gnome-guile is stable, works well and is kept up to
date with Guile.

Please check guile-gtk and gnome-guile modules in GNOME cvs.
 

> Finally, full Gnome support for Guile would be a good thing.  That could
> be maintained as part of the Gnome CVS repository or Guile's CVS
> repository.  I have a suspicion (and anecdotal experience) that making
> Guile support for GTK 1.2 and 1.3 dependent on a full Gnome environment
> would be problematic, though.  I would therefore like suggest that "GTK
> support for Guile" and "Gnome (including GTK) support for Guile" be
> treated as two separate projects, with the GTK support project
> independent of the Gnome support project.
Oh my... gnome-guile has been out for a long long time...
And we have unstyable work for Gtk 1.3 (as ever, guile was the first
language to support 1.3)

> 
> Unfortunately, I don't yet have the GTK familiarity to do this myself,
> (and don't have the time in the near future), so I'm hoping someone else
> would be excited about doing this.
This is already done. 

Can someone explain to me, why I only receive flames about gnome-guile /
guile-gtk?

ariel

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Martin Grabmueller]

> From: Ariel Rios <ariel@linuxppc.org>
> Date: 24 Jul 2001 00:13:24 -0400
> 
> On 23 Jul 2001 12:32:48 -0400, Neil W. Van Dyke wrote:
> 
> Please check guile-gtk and gnome-guile modules in GNOME cvs.

I planned to do this for quite some time, but you know, the time...

> Can someone explain to me, why I only receive flames about gnome-guile /
> guile-gtk?

I guess the requirement of having the gnome build environment
installed is a problem for people -- at least it is for me...  Or is
there a released tarball which works with current stable CVS Guile?

Anyway, I would really like to appreciate your work, but first I want
to see how it looks like :-)

Best regards,
  'martin

[off to checking out guile-gtk]

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Ariel Rios <ariel@linuxppc.org>
   Date: 24 Jul 2001 00:13:24 -0400

   Can someone explain to me, why I only receive flames about
   gnome-guile / guile-gtk?

(1)
Therefore when hacking is lost, there is kludging.
When kludging is lost, there is binary installation.
When binary installation is lost, there is net.pleading.
When net.pleading is lost, there is flaming.
Now flaming is the husk of collaboration and goodwill,
	the beginning of confusion. 
Knowledge of the feature is only a flowery trapping of the hack.
It is the beginning of folly.

Therefore the truly great programmer dwells on what is real
	and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower,
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.

(2)
i've observed that most programming projects either explode into a
balkanized mess or become insular gardens w/ a touch of malice to the
sweet but sticky fruit.  where projects touch (A-HYPHEN-B) cultural war
breaks out, each project's conventions another throng of solider ants
gnawing at everyone's throat, 99% genetically identical but driven by
some imperitive to deny the potential of harmonious co-existence.
library dependencies twist and tangle, terminologies jumble and jangle,
implementation approaches mince and mangle, it's all a great roar, this
sea at the door, we've got seven object ontologies, why not add four
more?  (why make the call to stop or to stall -- hey, after all, take
two, they're small!)

(3)
there was a rabbit that after many years became enlightened and was able
to transform itself into human form.  monkey king, his stone head shiny
in the autumn sun, could not help but notice this old man w/ exceedingly
flowing silver beard stumbling along the road to the West before him.
the pilgrim called out "hey old man, could you tell us where we may find
the main city in this strange land?", but before he could speak another
word, old monkey had sized up the situation and turned the figure into a
meat patty w/ his cudgel, thus reverting it to its original form (though
now flat).  the pilgrim, tears in his eyes, wailed to the heavens "oh
how am i to attain salvation travelling w/ this brute?  he knows no
pity, shows no compassion, is quick to anger, never thinks twice?"  old
monkey, having heard this sort of tripe for many a league, just laughed
and pointed to the unmoving lump.  "c'mon, master, let's you and i find
some rice for our bellies before the sun falls.  the ants are already
feasting!"


thi

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Neil W. Van Dyke]

Ariel Rios <ariel@linuxppc.org> writes at 00:13 24-Jul-2001 -0400:
> > Ximian, which effectively controls the direction of Gnome, will now be
> > preoccupied with cloning Microsoft architecture and collaborating with
> > Microsoft.  They'll presumably be unable to move Gnome development in
> > ways that are conducive to its use with Guile (not to mention that there
> > is now arguably business disincentive to actively aid the success of
> > Guile).
> This statement is not fair with Ximian. And it also states wrongly
> that Ximian leads GNOME. That's no true. 

I'd actually rather not argue this point.  I mentioned it not as a
criticism, but as leading fact that I thought was already evident to
everyone who stopped to consider it.  But people are of course free to
disagree with the assertion and disregard any argument predicated on it.

> Also guile-gtk and gnome-guile is stable, works well and is kept up to
> date with Guile.

Great!  I'm glad to hear that!

I'd like to suggest that those packages be made more accessible to
people by putting them in a centralized place with Guile and being sure
they continue to work with the latest version.

I've often not been able to build those packages when I tried, and it
hits the frustration threshold where people decide to use Java or C
rather than try to get an unknown quantity to work.  Another Guile
recently reported a similar problem.

When I looked for latest versions of various people's GTK support
libraries for Guile a week or two ago, I ended up having to do a
brute-force search with Google.  Among other pages, I found your
personal Web pages, where there was a link to a gnome-guile home page of
yours that presumably once existed, but it no longer exists.  The
download directory was not indexed, so I had to Google through mail list
archives for URLs to specific versions that were available for download.

All the little headaches are barriers to Guile adoption because they
occur for Guile newbies during a crucial phase, as the newbie is excited
about trying Guile and willing to get wrapped up in flow activity as
Guile leads him/her with a series of immediate gratification rewards --
only the newbie instead ends up with days of disconcerting hassle before
they can actually hack on their own little pilot project.  The first
time people have to go looking for something, or it doesn't build for
them, you lose people.  I'm guessing that more often than not, people
who were open to becoming Guile application hackers get the
not-entirely-fair-but-understandable impression that Guile is not ready
for prime-time.

> > Unfortunately, I don't yet have the GTK familiarity to do this myself,
> > (and don't have the time in the near future), so I'm hoping someone else
> > would be excited about doing this.
> This is already done. 
> 
> Can someone explain to me, why I only receive flames about gnome-guile /
> guile-gtk?

My original message wasn't intended as a flame, certainly not of you or
your work, and I'm sorry if it came out that way.

If you are a developer of working GTK and Gnome libraries for Guile,
then your work really deserves more prominent exposure than I think it's
getting right now.  I think that centralizing them with Guile and making
it really easy and glaringly obvious what people need to do to get the
best GTK support with the latest Guile will help.

-- 
                                          Neil W. Van Dyke <nwv@acm.org>
                                          http://www.neilvandyke.org/

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Dale P. Smith]

Ariel Rios wrote:
> Can someone explain to me, why I only receive flames about gnome-guile /
> guile-gtk?

Any comments I have made about guile-gtk were *never* indented as a
flame. I was very frustrated though, and that probably came across.  I'm
sorry.

I would prefer it if guile-gtk could be built from cvs without
installing a bunch of gnome-* stuff, but if it makes your life easier,
I'll accept it without complaint.

I appreciate all the work you've done with guile-gtk. Keep it up!

-Dale
-- 
Dale P. Smith
Treasurer, Cleveland Linux Users Group http://cleveland.lug.net
Senior Systems Consultant, Altus Technologies Corporation
dsmith@altustech.com
440-746-9000 x309

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[John Kodis]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 08:49:31AM -0400, Neil W. Van Dyke wrote:

> I'm guessing that more often than not, people who were open to
> becoming Guile application hackers get the
> not-entirely-fair-but-understandable impression that Guile is not
> ready for prime-time.

This has been my experience.  I'd love to make more extensive use of
guile and its Gnome and Gtk bindings, but frequently run into problems
getting a working installation set up.

I just tried this today.  The problems I encountered were:

- I could find no guile-related package in
  ftp.gnome.org:/pub/GNOME/stable/sources.

- I tried to follow a previous suggestion and get the latest CVS
  modules.  I checked out a copy of guile-gtk and gnome-guile, but was
  unable to build either.  The autogen.sh script couldn't find
  gnome-autogen.sh and failed.

- From what I remember, the last time that I was able to build these
  packages, I was unable to run any of the programs in the gnome
  examples directory -- they would all fail with an error to the
  effect that the "gtk gtk" module could not be found.

I don't imagine that any of these problems would be difficult to
overcome, but there's no way of knowing how many of these types of
minor difficulties I'd run into before I had a working gnome-guile
system.  Faced with this uncertainty, I tend to just fire up glade and
use C instead.  It's less elegent, but I know I can get it to work.

-- 
John Kodis <kodis@acm.org>
Phone: 301-286-7376

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Seth Alves <alves@hungry.com> writes:

   Hmm.  Someone<tm> should make glade output scheme code directly.

besides guile-glade, see also:
http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/guile-user/2000-October/000345.html

thi

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Seth Alves]

Ariel Rios wrote:
> On 23 Jul 2001 10:40:34 -0700, Seth Alves wrote:
> > style release, you don't need any of gnome.  I like gnome-guile.  It
> > needs some polishing in places, but overall it's very effective.
> What kind of polishing?

Nothing major.  I'm tripping on minor bugs as I go along, but I'm also
using the version in CVS, so that's to be expected.

Oh, more documentation!  It could be that many of the problems I
experience would go away if I had some more examples.  Overall it's a
great interface.  It's really painful to switch back to gtk's C
interface.

Hmm.  Someone<tm> should make glade output scheme code directly.

	-seth

Re: suggestions for Guile wrt GTK and Gnome support

[Ariel Rios]

On 23 Jul 2001 10:40:34 -0700, Seth Alves wrote:
 
> I would be very very surprised if gtk ever began to depend on gnome.
Yes indeed. That will never happen =)
 
> There is a module called gnome-guile in the gnome/gtk cvs tree.  It
> contains the guile-gtk code, and other code that wraps the more stable
> parts of gnome.  To build this from cvs, you DO need bits of the gnome
> build environment, but these dependencies are simply a convenience for
> the maintainer.  Perhaps we could try to convince Ariel to break or
> reduce these dependencies?  

A solution might be to fork guile-gtk in stable (1.2) and unstbale (2.0)
Strable branch should include the old autoconf stuff and the unstable
branch might use pkg-config...

>=) These dependencies only exist if you
> are building gnome-guile from cvs.  If you are building with a tar.gz
> style release, you don't need any of gnome.  I like gnome-guile.  It
> needs some polishing in places, but overall it's very effective.
What kind of polishing?


ariel