Ideas for 3.0

Documentation

• Create tutorial for at least these task avoiding command-line usage as much as possible:
  • Starting a new GNOME application from scratch (in C, C++, Python, Vala, etc.)
  • Fix a bug in a GNOME application (upstream, should explain bugzilla, git, patches, etc.)
  • Create website that links all these things together, including installation instruction for the development tools

• GNOME Documentation team plans to improve documentation

Tutorials (features command-line most of the time)

• Glade turorials (with C and Python)

• GTK+ C tutorial

• GTK+ Python tutorial

• Vala tutorials

• JavaScript tutorials

• Ruby tutorials

• PHP tutorials

• Perl tutorials

• Java tutorial

• Haskell tutorials

• Lua tutorials

• D tutorials

Anjuta

• Have a wizard to generate a complete application, where the user is asked about:
  • Will the app be i18n?
  • Will the app have menubar? (optional, just create a menubar anyway)
    • The app generates some common menu items, like View/Statusbar... Help/Contents... (also generates actual code for those actions)
  • Will the app have a statusbar?
  • Will the app have a side panel?
  • Will the app have a plugin system?

• In the end of the wizard, Anjuta generates a complete skeleton of an app, based on data above. User just have to hit "F3" and see their baby running

Note: This is just a matter of improving the template: http://library.gnome.org/devel/libanjuta/stable/project-wizard-format.html

Discussion

Introduction in Glib - Gobject

I think GNOME should focus on a specific language and force the use of this. For me as a Newbie it is not simple to get it handled with all the GNOME Librarys especially the Gobject System. A Step-by-Step Introduction for Gobject (really Step by Step) would lead in easier understanding.

Additionally, i think GNOME should focus on a special Development Environment. Make Anjuta the State of the Art. Anjuta must be a Killer-Application for Development in GNOME.

Choose and Stick:

I think we should come up with something like Quickly. Quickly is a command line tool developed by folks at Canonical to make it easy to develop apps for Ubuntu. They have selected a limited set of tools to do the Job. Python for logic, Glade/GTK for design, Launchpad for bug tracking and code hosting, DesktopCouch for data storage. We could adopt it or create something similar. We can change Language to JavaScript (I would personally prefer Python) and Launchpad to Bugzilla. This can really speed up things for newbies (like me) and attract lots of casual programmers.

We welcome our potential developers by saying: "You can use GTK with almost any language out there. There are bindings for lots of languages".

We should say something like this: "Gnome uses Python as it's programming language and Glade as interface designer. PyGTK is simple and powerful.. bla bla bla..... Not a Python programmer? Become one or Program in another language"

Python is really cool. It has not just the downsides (like slowness or memmory usage), but has many advantages (huge easy-to-use multi-purpose library, that is directly part of the language (not some third party)). But for me it makes better sense to choose Vala (and/or maybe other Vala-based language) as TheProgramingLanguageForGNOME. Vala has been created specifically for this task. *OndrejPelech

Integrating things into Anjuta

(because it is integrated development environment ) Anjuta IDE should be one big universal all-in-one swiss-army knife able to satisfy your every need related to developing GNOME/GTK+ applications. If all the tools are reachable from one place, be it Anjuta, they are very comfortable and efficient to learn and use.

So it seems to me as a good idea, to integrate Accerciser and Parasite into Anjuta, same as Glade is today. And maybe even Nemiver if it has some features over the current Debugger plugin. Sure it's probably for a longer run, but I believe in the right direction.

*OndrejPelech