--- a/gflib/doc/gflib/gflib-docs.sgml Sat Oct 10 16:48:04 2009 -0500
+++ b/gflib/doc/gflib/gflib-docs.sgml Sat Oct 10 16:48:47 2009 -0500
@@ -6,28 +6,15 @@
<title>Guifications Library Reference Manual</title>
- <title>Guifications Library Overview</title>- <partintro id="overview-partintro">- Guifications Library is heart and soul of Guifications 3. It- is the base library that defines the base behavior and- structure for everything Guifications related.+ <title>Overview</title> - <chapter id="building">- <title>Building</title>- <xi:include href="./building.sgml"/>+ <xi:include href="./introduction.sgml"/> + <xi:include href="./building.sgml"/>
- <title>GfLib Core Reference</title>- <partintro id="core-ref-partintro">+ <part id="CoreReference"> + <title>Core Reference</title> <xi:include href="xml/gf_core.xml"/>
<xi:include href="xml/gf_enum.xml"/>
@@ -40,14 +27,10 @@
<xi:include href="xml/gf_marshallers.xml"/>
- <title>GfLib Object Reference</title>- <partintro id="object-ref-partintro">+ <part id="ObjectReference"> + <title>Object Reference</title> - <chapter id="object-hierarchy">+ <chapter id="ObjectHierarchy"> <title>Object Hierarchy</title>
<xi:include href="xml/tree_index.sgml"/>
--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/gflib/doc/gflib/introduction.sgml Sat Oct 10 16:48:47 2009 -0500
@@ -0,0 +1,149 @@
+<refentry id="Introduction"> + <refname>Introduction</refname> + <title>Introduction</title> + Guifications Library is heart and soul of Guifications 3. It + is the base library that defines the base behavior and + structure for everything Guifications related. It's been built + from the ground up to be extremely flexible, but also easy to use. + You'll see a lot of abstraction and a lot of helpers in it's API. + Guifications 3 is, what can only be describe as, a global + notification system. What does this mean? Well to put it quite + simply, ever want to be notified of something regardless of where + you happen to be? Well Guifications 3 is meant to make that + happen. I know that sounds confusing, but the examples below + should be able to clear that up. + <refsect1 id="Concepts"> + <title>Concepts</title> + HAHAHA nothing here yet, and there probably won't be until they're + better defined, and most likely implemented. This is a war we're + fighting to get to market, can't give our enemies our secrets! + <refsect1 id="Examples"> + <title>Examples</title> + The example I've been using forever to explain this is, say you + a few servers sitting on a UPS at work, and you'd like to know when + you've lost power and the UPS has kicked in. Solutions exist today + for this, but they're horribly specific, and usually implemented by + a pager. This may work great for this problem, but say you have + a UPS at home and you'd like to do the same. In most cases, your + employer won't let you connect your home UPS to this system, thus + you'll have to get another pager to do the same thing at home. + If you were using Guifications 3, all you'd need to do is replace + the paging system with a Guifications Daemon monitoring the + servers. After that, you include the daemons into your + notification cloud, and wahlah you're done. If you want to add + your home UPS, it's the same deal. Now, you've gotten rid of the + pager, and the notification can come over anything that + Guifications can talk to. + <refsect1 id="History"> + Guifications has an interesting history that only few actually + It all started around June of 2003 when Gary Kramlich finally made + the big move and replaced Windows with Debian GNU/Linux on his main + workstation station. During that transistion he had settled on the + instant message client Pidgin (Gaim at the time). + Pidgin was awesome for instant messaging, but Gary really wanted + something with toaster popups. He had tried all of the plugins + that existed for Pidgin at the time, but he couldn't find one that + he liked. So like any coder with an itch to scratch, he started + When Guifications was started, it was original known as notifwin. + Which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is a crappy name. After some + brainstorming with friends, it was renamed to Guifications. The + name is a mash of GUI and notification, since the toaster popups + are GUI windows that show notifications. + The Guifications 1.x code base had a decent life span, where it + quickly climbed to the top plugins for Pidgin, but it didn't take + long to realize that it wasn't going to fit the bigger picture Gary + had in his head. This sparked a the Guifications 2.x code base. + The Guifications 2.x code base was meant to be a complete rewrite + that would extend the customizibility in Guifications 1.x as well + make sharing those customizations easier and to create a bunch of + code that could later be used in the already planned Guifications + Guifications 2.x was meant to be a short term update between + Guifications 1.x and Guifications 3.x. It has, unexpectedly, + turned into a long term stable branch while Guifications 3.x has + been in development. It has seen quite a few releases, and + continues to spark user created content in the form of themes. + For quite a few years now, Guifications 2.x has been in what we've + been calling maintenance mode while Gary, the lead developer, has + been focusing on the Guifications 3.x code base. It has had a few + corner case bugs that work arounds have existed for, and has for + the most part laid completely dorment. + The Guifications 3.x code base has stretched far beyond the + original idea that sparked in Gary's head so long ago. The goal, + that seemed so innocent at the time, of writing a global + notification system, has turned into what can only be describe as + a distributed micro kernel. Or as Gary likes to refer to it + "Capable of becoming skynet". + As development continues on Guifications 3.x, many inadaquieces + have been discovered and in most cases, completely nullified. + However, there are still problems, but those are slowly being dealt + with. But the biggest problem of time continues to eat away at the + project, destroying both morale and motivation. The biggest + problem by far, has been that the entire concept and implementation + details live in Gary's head. While he's tried to document them, + it raises questions in the other developers which take time to + answer, and thus, time away from Guifications 3. But one day, + hopefully soon, Guifications 3 will see an alpha release. 