Do GNOME developers actually use GNOME? I’m not sure they do.
When I’m working on documentation I use the following:
I have the folder with the files I’m working on open in Nautilus. I can open XML files in Yelp with the Open With context menu. Thanks for a script from Brent, I can validate DocBook from the context menu too. However, if I’m working on more than one set of documentation, I have several folders which are all called ‘C’. And Nautilus could do more. It would be nice if the validation script had been easier to make. I’d like to be able to make a patch without having to switch to a terminal and look up the command.
For editing DocBook, I use Bluefish. It’s good, but the old version I have on my Ubuntu is slow for the very large documents I work on. There’s also a very irritating GTK bug which makes moving lines of source around a real pain. Nobody else seems to have noticed this one before. Do GNOME developers actually use GNOME?
I use Meld to work with CVS. It allows the basic commands: update, diff, commit. That’s enough for me. It uses a two column layout to show diffs which is really neat. There’s a few niggles though: copy and paste shortcuts don’t work in its location bar, for example. Ctrl-X/C/V should work anywhere I can select text. Repeat, anywhere. And its general model is a little bizarre. I click ‘New’ to get a new folder listing. Yes, it’s a new thing, but it’s not what I understand a New button to represent.
I rarely have to use the terminal. I ssh-add my CVS password (yes, I know technically it’s not a CVS password, but it’s the password I type to use CVS, so that makes it my CVS password). I occasionally use XSLT, because I’m gradually converting ugly tables to variablelists. And I check out modules when I find another set of docs that need work. And then I have to go dig up the command, navigate to the correct folder, and so on. I tried using links on the desktop to commonly-used folders, but links in Nautilus are completely useless, because they don’t take me to a spot in the hierarchy, they create a clone of it. What on earth is the point of that?
Last of all, I have X-chat open (except when it closes when I hit Ctrl-A to select some text I’ve typed, which is unforgivable). I’m in the docs channel of course, and the french GNOME channel, and the general gnome-hackers channel where I can often be heard asking questions like ‘How does this feature work?’ People probably think I’m a n00b asking in the wrong place.