The big news is that I finally released a binary-API-frozen gtkmm 2.0.0. It’s been almost exactly a year since we started, but it feels like a lot more. I’ve sunk an insane amount of time into it, and I suspect that danielk must feel the same. But the end result is damned good, and seems to be appreciated by many people. I’m proud that we had about 30 patch submitters to credit in the announcement – I feel a little guilty when people thank me personally.

I’m sure we’ve missed stuff, and we’ll want to make API changes. But that will not be the end of the world – the patches can wait until the next API break. We don’t expect the C++ APIs to stay stable as long as C libraries. Every time I mention API stability it seems I have to explain that API stability is about the API not changing, rather than about the code being likely to crash, or being somehow dodgy. So there, I just explained it in advance.

Now that there are taballs of the ORBit that support orbitcpp I think we should start using libbonobo*mm in gnomemm 2, with the aim of completing it. That should give people something new to patch.

Talk of APIs leads me back to Xerces-C++, which still doesn’t seem to have any concept of API stability or parallel installations. In the latest version, make install doesn’t even seem to work. It’s always been difficult to package Xerces-C++ for distributions, but this is taking things too far. What’s the point of a library that nothing can depend on? I’ve tried at various times to get these points across to the current Xerces-C++ maintainers, but they just don’t get it, and it takes them so long to take the baby steps. So, sadly, it looks like I’m going to kick libxml++ into shape instead, because that shouldn’t stop me from actually releasing applications.

I’m not exactly sure how this works, but I like that googlism says that I am the person to speak to.

I have been reading lots of german recently – Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, Kafka’s Die Verwandlung and Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig. It’s getting easier. I’m also translating my CV into german, because things aren’t working out so well so far.

I’m trying to explore the new Pinakothek der Moderne in occasional half hour bursts when they wave the entrance fee at the end of the day. After 3 years in Munich, I only just visited the Lenbachhaus and I’m sorry I didn’t go sooner.