Andrei re-start work on PHP-GTK2

王朝php·作者佚名  2006-01-09
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最近新闻组里有很多关于PHP5和PHP-GTK2的讨论,20日,PHP-GTK的项目领导者Andrei 在新闻组里发了一封关于该项目的未来以及寻求帮助信 。在这封信里他概述了他的目标以及目前必需要做的事情。如果你有希望帮忙 PHP-GTK2 的文档撰写、网站的维护、意见或建议、或其他任何事情,请你阅读下面这封信。

Dear PHP-GTK community,

I have just read the extensive "what is going on with gtk.php.net?" thread

that Steph has brought to my attention and I have to say this: I'm sorry.

It is apparent there is an impression out there that PHP-GTK has been

relegated to the convalescence home of dying open source projects. Mostly it

is my fault, as I have been absent from the scene for entirely too long. All

I can say in my defense is that in the last year I had moved to another

coast, switched jobs, started a new relationship, and have generally been

busy pursuing other interests. Hopefully, you've been in the same situation

and know what I am talking about. Might not be much of an excuse, but that's

all I have at the moment.

Steph, in her infinite patience, has possibly been the only person who has

been investing any significant amount of time into PHP-GTK by fixing

the docs, answering emails on the mailing lists, and poking me from time to

time to find out when I would be back. For that, I think we all owe her

a debt of gratitude. Without Steph, this project would be quite dead indeed.

But, let me also say this: PHP-GTK has not and will not be abandoned. It has

been made clear from the thread that there are a lot of people in the world

using it for things that I, frankly, could not have imagined when I started

tinkering with the code almost 4 years ago. And seeing the renewed interest

in the project with the release of PHP 5 I cannot help but be inspired by

the energy that is suddenly circulating through our little community.

So, what's to be done? Clearly, the documentation is lacking. Obviously, it

is an enormous effort to document all the classes and methods that PHP-GTK

inherits from GTK+ in addition to its own idiosyncrasies. Simply linking

back to GTK+ manual is not a solution as that manual itself is quite

incomplete. So, what seems to me to be a good approach is to invest some

time and effort into either fixing the current documentation system and

continuing the course or rebuilding it to use Livedocs. Whatever we do, we

should probably be compatible with the PHP documentation project to

facilitate reuse of tools and technologies.

Everyone says that PHP documentation is simply great, but how did it get to

be so great? Through efforts of regular users and developers who

self-organized into teams of documentors, administrators, user note

maintainters, etc. Of course, the PHP doc project consists of many people,

but I remember when there were only a few folks who even knew how to build

the docs. We are basically in the same position right now, but we have the

advantage of hindsight and can draw on the best practices of PHP docs team

as well as learn from their mistakes.

Website can also be improved. Ben Ramsey has offered to work on it, and

I couldn't be happier to hear that. It would be even better if we had 2 or

3 people maintaining the web site as there is a lot of good PHP-GTK and GTK+

information out there that the website simply does not link to. It is, after

all, supposed to be the central repository of all PHP-GTK knowledge.

Improving search, moving Wiki to be hosted on gtk.php.net, and implementing

a semi-regular news system would be something to do as soon as possible.

Beyond that, I will leave the ideas for how the website should function best

to those willing to work on it through collaboration and consensus.

Borrowing ideas from php.net, go-mono.com, and other sites should not be

viewed as a bad thing.

This may sound familiar, but I think that my personal strength lies in

developing code, rather than designing web sites or writing documentation.

So far I have been waiting for PHP 5/Zend Engine 2 API to stabilize, and now

that PHP 5 has been released, I believe I can re-start work on PHP-GTK

2. However, it is not going to be a straightforward port of PHP-GTK 1

because Zend Engine 2 offers much better ways to exploit the power of

object orientation and we can build a very slick interface to GTK+ if we

start from scratch. I am going to start thinking about it and posting RFCs

on the mailing list in hopes of soliciting feedback from users as to how

this interface can be best structured. Consider the connect() and

connect_object() functions (a source of much confusion apparently): There is

no reason that the second one needs to be called connect_object() aside from

the fact that that is what GTK+ uses. So, one of the first questions will

be, do we stick to GTK+ API rigidly or do we replace/rename some methods to

suit us better?

As far as project structure goes, perhaps we could have 3 loosely organized

teams: development, website, and docs, each one headed by an informal

leader. I nominate Steph for the docs team which will probably leader to her

kicking my virtual butt. :-)

Well, I'd better wrap up. The recent activity on the lists makes me think

that people are willing to contibute to the project. Of course, how much

time we can contibute is the biggest issue. No one can make you share your

time, effort, and goodwill except yourself. I just hope that the ant analogy

holds and piece by piece, grain by grain, we keep building this project up.

As Ben said, let's not let the interest die out, And to paraphrase JFK, ask

not what PHP-GTK can do for you, ask what you can do for PHP-GTK. The

project cannot die until the last one of us loses interest in it.

Talk to you all soon,

-Andrei

备注:PHP-GTK2是指工作在PHP5环境下的,目前Andrei 已重新开始写 PHP-GTK2 了。

 
 
 
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