LinuxMint needs easily created apps

[psionprime]

You can have a great OS distribution but without easily created apps it is just so so. You have Applet and Desklet frameworks. Those use one language, Javascript. That is popular and has massive documentation. What you don't have is official current version documentation on how to create those apps.

I have programmed for years. Applying logical thought to programs, I can do. Sorting out the glue of APIs, I can do but it takes time. I wanted my current IP on the desktop. Oh, here's an applet to put it up top, okay - Access Denied ! There is an error. I looked at the code. Something seems like a versioning error somewhere. Whoever wrote the app seems like they knew how at the time but Cinnamon or something else has changed. I sat down to write a quickie desklet to put up a label with the current IP address. How hard can it be ? It is just JS.

After many hours researching, finding one HelloWorld (thanks OrangeShark !) that only produced a small dark box with nothing visible, hunting down Clutter properties, setting various things, reading others code...I stopped. This should not be this hard to display a label. During those hours of research I read many many users and experienced developers (by how they asked questions) produced question after question concerning app/desklets that worked just fine the previous version ago. I thought about it.

My conclusion is you need an official board here or wiki for development, not an obscure IRC device. The IRC medium is not conducive to retaining knowledge. You need a place to present code samples and tutorials that are kept relevant to the current release. GitHub can work as well and maybe easier with community maintained samples (with documentation) as well as the issue tracking.

LM Developers, please choose a medium and create a minimal HelloWorld tutorial and another moderately significant one to showcase widgets, CSS and use of external libraries that are maintained to work with the current release; references to change logs will help. Right now we have nothing. You gave us tools without knowledge on how to apply them. Grant us this and you will see a surge in popularity as developers port other OS style applets (eg. Rain) to the LM platform.

Holy crap, I will paypal anyone US $50 to provide a good tutorial on how to make a reasonable app/desklet to display all my IPs that actually works on LM 19.3 and update it through 20 and explain line by line why that line is required with a couple sentences assuming the reader has some programming skills to follow.

I appreciate everyone involved with the development of LM. Thank you !

[smurphos]

You can install documentation

Code: Select all

apt install devhelp cinnamon-doc muffin-doc libclutter-1.0-doc

Launch devhelp from the menu.



Other resources - https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint. ... -tutorials

And as CJS is forked from GJS - much of the GJS documentation will be broadly relevant - https://gjs-docs.gnome.org/