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Date:      Fri, 11 May 2012 15:11:59 -0700
From:      "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com>
To:        Jeremy Messenger <mezz.freebsd@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-gnome@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: yelp update ?
Message-ID:  <15321.1336774319@tristatelogic.com>
In-Reply-To: <CADLFttf=tUxw5y4Yte%2Bf=OV2KTZ%2B_K9UzFHcE1hMzk8iFEfozQ@mail.gmail.com>

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In message <CADLFttf=tUxw5y4Yte+f=OV2KTZ+_K9UzFHcE1hMzk8iFEfozQ@mail.gmail.com>
, you wrote:

>> 2.31.1
>> 2.31.2
>> 2.31.3
>> 2.31.4
>> 2.31.5
>> 2.31.6
>> 2.31.7
>>
>> 2.91.8
>> 2.91.9 <==== fixes the %u issue
>> 2.91.10
>> 2.91.90
>> 2.91.91
>> 2.91.92
>
>The odd number is a development version. Even number is a stable
>version. Therefore, 2.30.2 is a latest version of 2.x.

Ummm... OK.  (In this case ``stability'' would seem to be in the eye of
the beholder, because 2.30.2 has a clear and seriously debilitating
glitch, but all the releases from 2.91.9 onward have that fixed.)

>>>You should ask GNOME folks why they stopped update the 2.x version.
>>
>> I am guessing that they would probably say that it was because they moved
>> on to work on 3.x. No?
>
>Yep. MATE is trying to fork GNOME 2 and keep it alive.
>
>http://mate-desktop.org/

Hummm... never heard of that before.  But I just looked at the "About" page
on that web site.  Unfortunately, it doesn't answer the obvious question...
Why fork?  Why not just go with the flow and work with the other chaps who
(it seems) are pushing ahead to GNOME 3.x?

(Forgive me.  I am entirely ignorant about any of this stuff.  I really
don't know any of the history or politics of anything even remotely connected
to GNOME.  I only know that, in general, forks are Bad, because they imply
fracturing of a development community.)

>> I understand your difficulty here. However I am inclined to ask if you
>> have been laboring under this unfortunate impediment since circa Sept. 28
>> 2010.
>
>Who care about the date? It is a latest stable version. We finally got
>this bug report in 2012! It took about one and half year for anyone to
>find this bug. It shows that how many people click on the help?

Well, the long gap between the bug's first existance and its first formal
report is indeed rather surprising.  But keep in mind that not everyone who
sees a bug will make a formal report about it.  Many folks who are new
(or new-ish) to FreeBSD or to GNOME may be hesitant to file formal reports
because either they think (incorrectly) that they must have done something
wrong (e.g. during installation) or else they don't want to cause any
``trouble'' to/for the developers, or perhaps they are just (wrongly)
intimidated by the mechanics of the PR filing process.

I certainly would not assume that nobody had ever even noticed that Help
didn't work before now (e.g. in gthumb, evince, braceros).  It is, I think,
a testament to the skill of the developers of these packages that their
individual user interfaces are sufficiently intutive that people, including
myself, can struggle along and make productive use of these things for
quite some time even in the total absence of documentation.  (I knew about
the problem myself a couple of months ago, but was never motivated to file
anything about it until just recently.  I myself believed for awhile that
the problem must have arisen from something that I had screwed up during
installation.)

>Thanks for offer. But sorry, I do not allow anyone to donate me now
>until I can actually work on FreeBSD much more like what I did two
>years ago. What you did last a few days have 'donated' to me, so
>thanks for find bug and submit patch!

You are more than welcome.  Thank you for your service to the FreeBSD
community.

Even if you won't accept any from me, please do keep in mind those
Genica brand ``mobile racks'' (removable drive holder thingies).
I really have found them to be most useful.  Certainly, this ``manual''
way of swapping out one's OS is arguably not as elegant as, say, Xen
or other such things, but the upside is that as you are doing development
work, you never have to wonder if the problem you are looking at is
actually due to the code you are working on, or if it is maybe due to
the code that is bridging the gap beteen the virtual handware and the
real hardware.  (Geeks.com was selling those things dirt cheap for
awhile.  I have a message to them pending, to see if they still stock
them.)


Regards,
rfg



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