>> Given how excruciatingly hard it is to get access to the OpenSUSE bug
>> tracker... no, I haven't.
>
> 1. Create user ID
> 2. Validate your e-mail address
> 3. Go to bugzilla.opensuse.org and enter a bug
>
> Not terribly difficult, really.

Except that you have to give them your *real* name, who you work for, 
your annual income, your mother's maiden name, and your inside leg 
measurement. No, not hard at all.

>> Besides, they'll just report it upstream and then go back to doing
>> nothing. That's what they did with the Zypper bug I spent ages
>> diagnosing and reporting.
>
> You don't know that unless you file a bug.

Given that the bug is almost 100% certain to be a GNOME bug, they will 
just pass it to the GNOME team and then do nothing.

> File a bug, or don't
> complain.  Seriously, that is probably the most annoying thing you can do
> is bitch about something that's fixable and not report a bug.

Well, maybe they shouldn't actively dissuade people from filing bugs by 
making it so sodding hard to file a bug? :-P

You know what's *really* annoying? Seeing an open bug for THE EXACT 
PROBLEM that our production application has, seeing that upstream has 
fixed it, and yet OpenSUSE refuses to release an RPM for it. *That* is 
annoying! (We're talking about a different bug now. The ticket has been 
open for many months. The fix is literally to build a new RPM. Yet it 
isn't happening...)

>> Perhaps it was the "show task list" option then. I remember spending
>> weeks trying to configure the shell the way we want it, and in the end I
>> couldn't do it.
>
> Not sure what you mean by "show task list option".  What was the specific
> thing you were trying to do?

The option to have an icon for each window that's open, so you can 
instantly switch between windows (or just tell when a hidden window 
closes itself). You know, like the Windows taskbar.

GNOME 2 had it, and there's a dozen different mutually-incompatible 
extensions to add it back to GNOME 3. Because it's a basic feature that 
should have been in the shell to begin with. But hey, it's a tablet. Who 
runs multiple applications on a tablet?

>> I'm not saying it doesn't *work*. I'm saying it's clearly not optimal.
>
> It's optimal for me, and I don't use a tablet.  "Optimal" is clearly a
> matter of personal taste, and I wish people would stop putting forth
> their personal opinion as cold hard fact - it's not.

Well, I don't know man. Version 2 of a product has a heap of features 
which are gone in version 3. To be, that means that version 3 
*objectively* has fewer features. I didn't think there's much to argue 
about that...

>> How you write a minimal Hello World type thing is documented. The vast,
>> sprawling mass of code you need to interact with to do anything
>> nontrivial is utterly undocumented.
>
> Since I don't write extensions, it's kinda pointless for you to
> continue.  However, again, given your track record, I'm not going to take
> it on faith that your assertion that these things aren't documented is
> true.  You'll have to forgive me my cynicism on that point.

Sure, I can understand that.

>>> No.  What you do is you identify what it is you want to do, and you
>>> find that part of the code, if that's the way it's actually done (I
>>> don't for a moment pretend to have written an extension, however given
>>> your track record in overstating things, you don't really think I'm
>>> going to take your word for it, do you? ;) )
>>
>> You realise I got *paid money* to write several shell extensions and
>> modify some existing ones, right?
>
> You realise that that's no guarantee that anyone's an expert at a task,
> right? I know lots of people who get paid to do things who don't take the
> optimal route to doing them.

Your point is valid. My point is that I'm not talking about "oh hey, I 
tried to do this thing, but it was a bit hard so I gave up after five 
minutes". This is something I spent MULTIPLE MONTHS trying to solve.

> How many questions did you ask on, oh, I don't know, the GNOME mailing
> lists?

Yes, because I *want* to sign up to yet *another* mailing list just to 
get basic developer information that should already be written down 
somewhere. :-P

In seriousness: I asked on Stack Overflow. The question was upvoted 
several times, and many other people lamented the utter lack of any 
documentation. But nobody actually answered the question. Which is what 
happens when nobody knows the answer!

>> (How THE HELL these other people wrote this stuff utterly baffles me...
>> I guess one or two people might have too much free time, but given the
>> vast number of extensions available [most of which add back
>> functionality that GNOME 2 had built-in], it screams that somebody
>> somewhere must have some real documentation...)
>
> Bingo!  Just because you didn't happen to look in the right place doesn't
> mean that the documentation doesn't exist.

As I said, I find it really baffling. The extensions I've looked at 
aren't exactly trivial or simple. And yet, I can't find any 
documentation, and nobody I asked about it can find any either. Not even 
so much as a blog entry or an auto-generated object list...

>> In an OO language, you don't generally modify a huge, complex framework
>> by deleting code from the running system and replacing it with your own.
>
> Of course not.
>
>> Then again, JavaScript isn't completely OO, so...
>
> And "deleting code from the running system" isn't the same as extending
> it.

 From what I've seen, you write extensions by deleting existing objects 
and replacing them with new ones. (Or maybe just replacing a method or 
two.) You'd think it works by creating a new object that exposes a 
defined set of operations, and passing that to the framework. But no, it 
seems you just put your hands in the framework, rip out the bits you 
don't want, and then replace them.

And then watch it all break horrifyingly in the next minor-release of 
the shell. >_<

Still, IMHO, I think most of this brokenness goes back to "we decided to 
build a huge, complex application in a scripting language". All problems 
flow from there.

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