[lug] The deal with applets / notifications / panels / indicators / systray.....

[Rob Nagler]

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Bruce Long wrote:
> Thus the "distributed project" functionality. If a handful of us can
> maintain a model or two that we care about perhaps we can keep them all up

This actually is an extremely difficult problem.  Even with
microformats (which seem to change by the day), google can't gather
enough information to answer the question: Who's playing live jazz
tomorrow night in Boulder?  This is a model I would like to maintain,
but frankly, it's a very hard model, because you actually have to
maintain the meta-model: What's happening in Boulder?  Jazz could be
anywhere, e.g. on Monday night's Brad Goode and friends play at the
Caffe Sole in Table Mesa Plaza.  It's a lot of fun, and nobody is
there, unfortunately.  Some popular local artists show up (e.g. Kenny
Walker) whom you could pay to see at Dazzle for $15+ and have to drive
to Denver to boot.

One of the things I've learned about programming is that starting with
a "framework" like proteus/slipstream is the wrong way around.  Sit
down and tackle a few "models" for real problems you have, and see
what it is like to keep them up to date and returning useful results.
Often times, there are so many special cases (don't get me started
about broker data feeds) that the problem seems intractable until the
structure emerges after a lot of head banging.

Have a great weekend. :)

Rob