[Calendula-devel] re: GNUe analysis - might be helpful

[James Thompson]

Someone pointed out to me the mail below.  So I figured I'd join and 
respond.... 

> Why GNUe isn't good for Calendula:
> 
> * Poor documentation

This is true.  It's worse than I recall it being.  I'll try and address that.

> * Unstable framework

I'm not sure which part of GNUe is being referred to here.  I'm using 
gnue-common based apps 24/7 in local company that does business almost 
nationwide.  They use gnue-forms based UIs daily to accomplish tasks, such as 
routing their incoming faxes (billings) to the appropriate customer accounts.

> * Poor support (very little list traffic), 

We have gravitated toward IRC based support.  This did make for poor list 
support.  On the other hand if you catch a developer in IRC you can 
frequently get patches in minutes working in real time with the developers. 

> limited adoption 

This partially falls back on poor documentation.  But any project, such as 
your own, will also have limited adoption at first.  

> * inflexible UI design

I think this is where some of the confusion from the docs is hurting GNUe.  
All the gnue tools can be used separately.  When using parts of GNUe you are 
not forced into things like using GNUe-Forms as your UI.  GNUe-POS (available 
in our svn tree) is based upon gnue-common and wxPython.  I'm currently 
building a web based project using mod_python, gnue-common, gnue-reports, 
etc.  I may or may not add gnue-forms based administration forms.  It's 
basically just another set of tools in your toolbox.

> 
> them they said, "well that's how we like to work."
> 

This may indeed be what you were told.  If so then I'll apologize and try to 
explain a little.  We constantly have people people drop by IRC telling us 
how we're doing things wrong.  We've had people suggest we throw out 10s of 
thousands of lines of code to do things their way.  Most the time they won't 
bother to learn our systems before doing so.  Often times these same people 
are the ones that will never contribute anything.  We've had people come in 
then quickly fork after telling us we're too slow.  I don't think any single 
fork has ever survived.  I think they tend to figure out that some of this 
stuff can't be written fast.  And it's hard to find people willing to write 
business apps for free in their spare time. 

Anyway, after a while you tend to get a little touchy when people start to 
question the hows and whys.  Call it burn out, apathy, whatever you'd like. I 
know it's not right, but we're all human.  I'm not meaning to say that Darryl 
said anything wrong.  It's probably more like he caught that grumpy old man 
GNUe in a bad mood. :)

So, is GNUe right for your project.  I really can't say as I don't know much 
about it.  Savannah web seems to be down.  IMHO though, using gnue common 
alone would save a project an amazing amount of development work.  But I'm a 
little bias about that :)

If you have any questions please feel free to ask me.  I'll do what I can to 
answer them. 

Take Care,
James