New to the List

[Stefan Bidigaray]

Hey, figured it would be a good idea to introduce myself before I
start sending random messages.  My name is Stefan, and as the subject
of the e-mail sugests I'm new to the list.  I've been dabbling with
GNUstep for a little over a month now... started by installing it on
Debian using the deb repositories, but recently decided to go with the
latest releases (Debian still has GWorkspace 0.7.0 in it's repo, worst
with other packages).  I'm not really a developer, which from what
I've read in the list might make some of you sad, but I've been around
GNU/Linux for almost 2 years now and consider my self an intermediate
user (ie I've built an LSF system, know my way around the
command-line, and can usually solve my own problems).  I'm actually a
Senior in Mechanical Engineering, as you can see not much of a
programmer, but I do know my way around MATLAB, C, Pascal, and some
shell scripting--all frequently used in Engineering applications
(except shell scripting).

Anyway, enough about that.  I decided to join because I want to help
the project.  I really like the direction it's going--from the
documentation and some e-mail on this list (I read a lot)--think it
has a future, and would like to be part of that.  Like I mentioned, my
programming experience is limited, and because of that I think I could
help with some of the documentation/wiki (and maybe advocating the
project).  One example would be that yesturday I successfully
installed GNUstep on Slackware 10.2, yet a document on ww.gnustep.org
says Slackware is not supported (I understand it's talking about Slack
7.0, but things like that need to be updated, I think that's one of
the reasons most people think the project is dead,
documetation/website isn't being updated consitently).  I haven't made
an account on the Wiki yet, but plan on doing so soon.

As a side note, I did find some inconsistancies with GWorkspace 0.8.3.
On "Logout", when all that speech about making sure of what I want to
do, there seems to be a small typo where it says "in 120 seconds"
either there's something wrong with my monitor or there's no 'space'
between the word "in" and "120".  Also, I'm sure there's a reason for
it, but I really don't get the reasoning behind putting all those
linked application in the Applications directory.  Most of them are
not even installed on my system.  One suggestion might be to have
whatever script creates them check to see if the linked application
actually exists (in bash "if [ -x /usr/bin/acrobat ]" ... for
example).

There's a few other suggestions/comments that I have, but right now
I'm not at home to check what they were and can't remember most of
them.

Thank you for hanging on,
Stefan