Re: ANN: LuserNET 0.4.3

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,


On 03/29/15 19:17, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf wrote:
> Hi Riccardo,
>
> it's very great to see you and all the others doing great work on and for 
> GNUstep. This is said much to seldom, so seldom that some developers think 
> about quitting their work on GNUstep. That's why: kudos to everybody who brings 
> GNUstep forward.

thank you. In the case of LuserNET I didn't do anything serious, however 
indeed your words are of meaning right now that Fred expressed his 
disappointment.

The GNUstep community itself is quiet indeed. Most users do not seem  
interested in GUI apps or if, they don't participate.

I have no clue of LuserNET is still used, it is packaged and found in 
ubuntu and debian. It is still a convenient way to access e.g. our lists 
through the news bridge. That way you don't need to subscribe.


> So now for something different. I, for instance never tried LuserNET and that 
> is (and you may call this reason a strange one) because of it's name. That name 
> is not actually transporting a positive image, while it might have been thought 
> as a joke or some tongue in cheek irony I think it has the same issues like 
> those Haxies from Unsanity had ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxie ): their 
> name and their icons implied somehow to expect hackish stuff (which was true to 
> some degree, those extensions and their Framework Application Enhancer 
> sometimes did borderline stuff which caused crashes, kernel panics, 
> incompatibilities and sometimes strange behavior).
>
> So I wonder if this is just me and my weirdness or if we possibly should change that name, why not to just UseNet.app? App names for 
> NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP and later OS X have always been very simple and descriptive like "Mail.app", "Address Book.app", 
> "Preview.app", "System Preferences.app" and so on. Why not following that style? Even when we prefix all our Apps with 
> "GNU" like "GNU Address Book.app" or the like … GNUserNet. app, hehe!

I understand your reasoning, the name is a bit of a joke, but at the end 
not that offending I suppose.

I don't htink renaming an application is a good idea: it causes 
confusion, packages in distirbutions fail to be updated, etc. All the 
names in tutorials, wikis... and just an internet seach will confuse 
people, loosing even more of the little notoriety we have. (I tried that 
with GDraw / Graphos and it ended bad, even if I retained the file format)

At the end this is just a bunch of patches and fixes. Sill, it is better 
to release them and give the app a new home with SVN, so it doesn't get 
lost. As I wrote one or two important fixes are still needed.

Cheers,

Riccardo