Re: GNUe is quite OK (was Re: [GNUe] Re: GNUe)

[James Thompson]

I'll respond to parts of both Darrl's and Joost's mail below.

> 
> >
> > Meaning no disrespect to the hard volunteer work you have all done, I
> > will continue to bypass GNUe until there is up-to-date docs, more
> > traffic on this list, case studies, and screen shots of working apps
> > in the field. Is anyone besides Derek and Jason using this stuff? Show
> > me.
>

I'm using the tools both here in our department at at a local business.  
Here's a rough breakdown of how I use them.

In our department:
  gnue-forms: data entry for miscellaneous school data, calendar
              information,  personnel data, other small jobs.
  gnue-navigator: I use this to provide a single location for our 
                  receptionists and office staff to launch gnue apps 
                  as well as custom apps.  They no longer need to remember
                  lots of seperate commands.
  gnue-reports: We annually do mass faxings to various participating kansas
                schools regarding a series of mathematics competitions. 
                gnue-reports and  hylafax have replaced a student manually
                doing the work.  
  gnue-common: The work horse of the group.  I rarely create non 
               gnue-common based python apps anymore.  I use this for
               custom data import stuff, reports that gnue-reports can't
               handle, etc, etc.  

For the local biz:
  gnue-forms: Interfaces to the tables created for their custom
              java sales application.  This has given them better query 
              capabilities than the original app provided.  All incomming
              faxes (hylafax) are routed thru a form that allows their 
              receptionists to assign faxes to specific customers.  Inventory, 
              shipping, and purchasing all use gnue-forms based interfaces. 
              We're adding more forms all the time.

  gnue-navigator: same as in the department.

  gnue-reports: nightly reports on data from their sales app.

  gnue-common: same as in the department.  quite a bit of back end batch jobs 
               there are common based.

The single biggest issue with regard to my providing samples is that the local 
company will not allow me to release anything I've done specificly for them.  
And the stuff in our department is nothing fancy.  We're slowly upgrading 
from a word perfect based system the office staff created with macros :(

In addition I'm using them in a pet project.  This will probably sound nuts 
but I'm attempting to write a 3d role playing game using gnue-common and soya 
3d.   I'm doing this partially because I know gnue-common is a pretty good 
general purpose library, and partially because using business software to 
create a game seems so wrong that it's right :)  www.adrius.org but the 
project is idling for a little over a month so the site will seem out dated.  
The code runs, it loads levels and allows you to move about them, gnue common 
triggers are used fire events based upon player position/actions.  I'm at the 
point I need test levels and thus artistic talent (I'm in trouble :)

>
> > I have complained before that all new developments are regulated to IRC
> > discussions, which is not a good log for developer serious about
> > researching solutions. I don't want to spend anymore time grepping IRC
> > logs....
>
> On IRC, I agree. I joined once and was not amused at all: too much
> noise. Didn't join again and probably will not in the near future.

Actually things have quieted down some in IRC.  I'll admit our communication 
channels are simply not the best.   Email seemed to die off due to the fact 
we could not ever come to an agreement about things in email.  IRC allowed us 
to quickly work thru the differences.  We also seem to have fallen into a 
groove with the devel team all heading in the same general direction, so we 
don't debate as much.

> Writing applications is quite easy, although there's still too little 
> documentation (I'm working on that). 

Yes, our documention needs work.  If you are working on that then this is 
great.  We'd be very interested in anything you come up with.

>
> > Sorry for kicking up dust, but I suspect this is what is holding up
> > the horde.
>
> Don't apologize, although I'm not sure this is true.

Actually, i think it's mostly the number of developers with the same general 
vision vs the amount of free time they have.  Most of us seem to work in 
spurts, when real life provides the time we need.

> GNUe is quite OK; i.e. the toolset is. The applications are not
> available yet, and I don't think they will ever be.

I'm starting to wonder this myself :)  

One thing we did set up about a week or so ago is a new svn repository named 
gnue-contrib.  We wanted to provide people a place to donate gnue based 
solutions that people could study, use, adapt, etc.  You can get it at

svn co svn://www.gnuenterprise.org/var/svn/gnue-contrib

Right now the only thing in there is what I call web-po (desperately searching 
for a better name).  This is an application I'm writting for my wife to use 
in her department and hopefully, if interest from some of her friends is any 
indiction,  a few other departments on campus.  It uses apache2, mod_python 
3.1.3, and gnue-common to provide a multi-user, multi-organization po 
thing :)  I'll call it a thing because it's not really limited to POs.  It 
uses common to dynamically load section handlers that can provide pretty much 
any type of web site you'd like.  Still very early in development cycle.  It 
currently has the modular framework functional, user access based upon roles, 
and is partially saving POs.  I expect a more fleshed out demo completed in 
the next week or two.

If anyone has any code they'd like to donate to this repository please contact 
us.

Take Care,
James

-- 
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James Thompson    138 Cardwell Hall  Manhattan, Ks   66506    785-532-0561 
Kansas State University                          Department of Mathematics
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