We released gtkmm 2.2.0 and began branching for gtkmm 2.4 which will break API to allow us to make some more improvements. I’m very glad that gtkmm is now so much more in sync with GTK+ compared with the past.

And now that libxml++ has been released with its new DOM-like API, I was able to release the new UI-abstracted Bakery and a couple of apps that depend on it – PrefixSuffix and SubSubSub

I updated the orbitcpp web page, created a gnome.org mailing list, and released a new version to try to stimulate some more interest. I wish we could get people working on it so that gnomemm could stabilize. libgnomeui’s dependency on libbonoboui is starting to become annoying because it doesn’t seem to be used much in the API. And I’m starting to think that it was very foolish for GNOME to decide to write its own CORBA ORB and to expect language bindings to write their own CORBA mappings for that ORB. I thought the whole point of CORBA was reuse.

However, I’m not impressed by KDE’s DCOP alternative – strings are a lousy API. And they built that awkard system because of performance problems with their own CORBA ORB (something that isn’t a problem with ORBit), instead of just fixing the performance problems. There may be other reasons not to use CORBA (e.g. having to use CORBA types) but that’s not what was mentioned at the time.

For Bonobo to survive, I think it needs to slim down to only a component model and surrender the UI/menu/toolbar stuff to GTK+ and its new libegg APIs. If Bonobo becomes simple and tightly focused then maybe its API can be improved by the community.

Real life is kind of in limbo at the moment. I decided I have to give up this freelancing malarky and find a real job. Hopefully I can get something in Muenchen that’s at least Unixy. I find it very strange to be in this position after the last few years of success.

I run now in the scraggly Truderingerwald out here in the Munich suburbs. There are few things better than running at constant speed across a snow-covered field with Bernadette on the headphones, trailing breath behind me, thinking I would so buy the soundtrack to my life.