GNOME(1) GNOME(1)
GNOME 1.2
NAME
GNOME - The GNU Network Object Model Environment
SYNOPSIS
gnome-session
DESCRIPTION
The gnome-session program launches and initializes the GNOME desktop
environment. This program is usually executed from your X
initialization file. If your system is configured to use gdm (the
GNOME display and login manager) you can start your GNOME session by
selecting the Gnome login profile.
If the special WINDOW_MANAGER environment variable is set, the gnome-
session system will use that as the session window manager. Otherwise
it will default to your system's configured window manager.
GNOME is a collection of libraries and applications. A collection of
these form the GNOME Desktop: an easy to use, yet powerful desktop
environment for Unix systems. You can find up to date information
about GNOME in http://www.gnome.org. You can find more information
about the GNU project in http://www.gnu.org.
From a user's point of view, the GNOME desktop consists of a desktop
metaphor, a file manager and an easy way to launch applications
installed on the system. Various desktop tools are provided with the
GNOME desktop to take advantage of a computer system.
GNOME's desktop metaphor allows the desktop to be used as a place to
temporarily storing files, shortcuts to programs and documents. Drag
and drop is an important part of the system; we have tried to make the
system as intuitive as possible.
The session management in GNOME will automatically restore all of the
applications you were running when you log in into the system again.
With session managed applications, the user can turn off or logout
from the system and when he logs in again, he will see the same
desktop he had before.
GNOME supports themes that allow users to change the skin of an
application: the look of applications in the GNOME desktop can be
configured to look in the way that more pleases the user: it is just a
few mouse-clicks away. You can choose from a wide range of GTK
themes. A web site has been devoted to this: http://gtk.themes.org
ARCHITECTURE
The GNOME architecture addresses a number of problems and missing
features found on Unix systems and it uses a number of components to
achieve this:
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glib
This is the foundation library that provides portability functions, a
collection of reusable abtract types for C programmers and a main loop
abstraction. For more information see
http://www.gtk.org/rdp/glib/book1.html
ORBit
This is the CORBA implementation used in GNOME. CORBA provides basic
RPC functionality and it is the foundation for the component model and
the compound document and document model systems. For more
information see http://www.labs.redhat.com/orbit.
GTK+
This is the GUI toolkit used by GNOME. It works on Unix and Win32
systems and other ports are being worked on to lighter windowing
systems. You can find more information on http://www.gtk.org/
gtk-engines
The GTK+ toolkit has support for changing the apperance of application
by providing support for themes and theme engines. See
http://gtk.themes.org for a collection of readily-available themes.
Imlib
The graphics library used to load, save, manipulate and render images
in GNOME applications. It includes routines to do fast drawing and
use a limited set of colors from low-end displays. We expect this
library to be replaced soon with the more modern libart.
libart_lgpl
An imaging library used for implementing various high-quality imaging
components in GNOME.
gnome-libs
These libraries are the core libraries that provide the uniformity of
the applications. They are divided in five: libgnome (for non-GUI
dependant code), libgnomeui (for GUI dependant code), zvt (the xterm
terminal emulator), gtk-xmhtml (an HTML rendering engine) and
libgnorba that implements the CORBA object activation and registry.
libglade
This library enables programmers to create their interfaces using the
Glade GUI desginer and loading at runtime the user interfaces.
gnome-print
The GNOME printing architecture implements a Postscript imaging model
with two extensions: alpha transparency and anti-aliasing (all of this
is done by using the libart_lgpl imaging library.
gnome-xml
This library provides GNOME application with an API to load, parse and
walk an XML file.
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Docbook
GNOME documentation is written in the Docbook SGML DTD. You can find
more about this at http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/docbook-
intro.html
GNU gettext
GNOME uses the GNU gettext to allow applications to be localized for
various countries and languages.
Bonobo
Bonobo is the GNOME architecture for creating reusable software
components and compound documents. It was designed and implemented to
address the needs and problems of the free-software community for
developing large-scale applications.
More information can be found at
http://www.helixcode.com/tech/bonobo.php3
GNOME is window manager independant. This means that the GNOME
desktop and the GNOME tools will work with any window manager. Window
manager can optionally provide a number of features that will make the
user's desktop a more pleasant experience. The GNOME window manager
hint spec is available at:
http://www.gnome.org/devel/gnomewm/book1.html
HISTORY
There were two projects that lead to the creation of origins of what
became the GNOME project: the libapp project and the old-GNOME
project. The former was a project to provide standard workstation-
like services to applications. The old-GNOME project was intended to
provide a component model for Unix systems. These were projects some
of us had discussed but never actually implemented.
Enter KDE, a project that wanted to make Unix usable as a desktop
machine. Sadly they chose the proprietary and non-free toolkit Qt as
the foundation for their work. It was a giant step backwards in terms
of software freedom[1].
In response, the GNOME project was started later to create a
completely free desktop environment, and various early ideas were
reused.
Early talks about the creation of GNOME involved some recognized free
software leaders: Erik Troan and Mark Ewing of Red Hat software,
Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, and Peter Mattis and
Spencer Kimball of the GIMP project. We launched the project after
considering the various alternatives that could be tried.
The original call for developers, which included the team of
programmers working on the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP
[GIMP]), the Guile mailing list and the free software mailing lists.
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This is important because the mix of people that were part of the
original GNOME team had a good background on free software issues,
graphics and language design.
Red Hat created the Advanced Development Laboratories division on
January 1998 (http://www.labs.redhat.com). RHAD labs was initially
created to help out in the development of the GNOME project.
We made releases of the GNOME source base since the beginning of the
project. During the development of GNOME, the group has produced a
number of libraries and components that are useful to provide
integration, and consistency troughout the system.
GNOME 1.0 was released after eighteen months of development in March
1999. Updates and fixes are continously released; At the time of this
writing, the GNOME 1.0 series is at version 1.0.5.
GNOME 1.0 marks the contract between GNOME developers and the user
base to provide a stable API on top of which new applications can be
developed. Software developers will be able to take advantage of all
the functions available in the library, and they can be sure that
their applications will continue to work in the future.
In May, 1999, International GNOME support was launched: a company that
offers contractual support for the GNOME system founded by Nat
Friedman and Miguel de Icaza.
In October, 1999 an updated version of GNOME codenamed "October GNOME"
was released with many bug fixes and improvements. This new version
of GNOME also included Glade and libGlade as part of the platform
In October 1999, GNOME Support became Helix Code, Inc.
(http://www.helixcode.com) and started work on Evolution (an
integrated groupware solution) and Helix GNOME (a continous updated
distribution of GNOME for various operating systems).
In November 1999, Eazel was introduced to the GNOME community
(http://www.eazel.com) founded by Andy Hertzfeld, Bart Decrem and Mike
Boich to provide a new desktop for GNOME: the Nautilus project.
Also in November, the Bonobo component system started to become used
in the GNOME project, and it became the foundation for various of the
most advanced GNOME projects.
In March 2000, Mathieu Lacage organized the "GNOME Users and
Developers European Conference" (http://www.guadec.enst.fr) in the
Telecom, Paris school in Paris, France. More than a hundred GNOME
hackers got together to discuss the state of GNOME and its future.
In March 2000, The GNOME Steering Committee was created to overwsee
the development and deployment of GNOME 2.0
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In May 2000, GNOME 1.2 codenamed "Bongo GNOME" was released to the
public.
MAILING LISTS
There are various mailing lists used by the GNOME project to
coordinate the development of GNOME, you can subscribe to these lists
by sending mail to the <listname>-request@domain address and put in
the body of your message the word "subscribe".
gnome-announce-list@gnome.org
Where general announcements about the GNOME system are done. A good
way of staying in touch with the developments of the system
gnome-list@gnome.org
General discussion of the GNOME system.
gnome-devel-list@gnome.org
Discussions on the development of the GNOME system and on writing
GNOME applications.
gnome-gui-list@gnome.org
Discussion about user interface improvements for the GNOME system.
gnome-components-list@gnome.org
Discussions about Bonobo: the component and compound document
architecture of GNOME.
cvs-commits-list@gnome.org
Used to keep track of changes to the GNOME CVS source code repository.
There are many other lists that discuss specific parts of the project,
for a complete list, check http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists
BUGS
To report bugs or suggestions you would like to see in the GNOME
system, please use the command gnome-bug to send us information about
the problem you are experimenting, or go directly to our bug tracking
system on the Web at http://bugs.gnome.org
AUTHOR
GNOME has been developed by a large number of free software
programmers, users and enthusiasts on the Internet. The guname
program lists some of the contributors to the system.
This manual page has been written by Miguel de Icaza (miguel@gnu.org)
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