From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 20242 invoked by uid 1002); 28 Aug 2003 17:44:09 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-dev-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 23922 invoked from network); 28 Aug 2003 17:44:08 -0000 Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 19:44:16 +0200 From: Spider To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Message-Id: <20030828194416.189ef484.spider@gentoo.org> In-Reply-To: <200308281600.13232.pauldv@gentoo.org> References: <1062076911.3455.116.camel@rivendell> <200308281600.13232.pauldv@gentoo.org> Organization: Gentoo X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.4 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg="pgp-sha1"; boundary="=.1LRrYIaRdXkEqa" Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop X-Archives-Salt: 43015b1d-0fd6-4b75-86a2-a6fc7fd4e9bd X-Archives-Hash: 4422ba6f564fbe2097101b0c5497abe8 --=.1LRrYIaRdXkEqa Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit begin quote On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:00:13 +0200 Paul de Vrieze wrote: > Gnome's configuration does not include a menu system with all > installed X applications > No, and this is in many cases a -good- thing. Gnome does not -need- to provide menu entries for xcalc, xmag, xeyes and a lot of other X applications. To include theese on a default menu would go against guidelines and common sense. This means that for many such applications a good line of reasoning has to be added so our default "newbie-friendly" desktop doesn't end looking like L random User 's desktop did in the year 1997 after 1.5 years of active installation in windows 95. ie, it would be a clear sodomization of a good interface. However, there are some points coming up otherways in the thread that we have to bring up front. 1) No major redesigns of the DE's. This is important, we shan't make all icons look like different versions of larry, replace all Foot's , K's and other such things with a G', make the default to include Gentoo Tip of the Day, add Gentoo.org links on every desktop, make all desktops install Evolution and add it as the default mailhandler everywhere "because its the best" . 2) We need a consensus and smooth integration of tools. This is the more important part of a Gentoo desktop. A cdburner shall work for users in the 'cdrw' group, and preferrably without running a Druid or Wizard. 3) Multimedia. The various DE's partially integrate their own multimedia applications, but theese all use common backend libraries. We need somone/s to dump all quicktime library related bugs, and that takes care of libmad and other background things (lame, flac, libid3 and so on) wherea's the various DE's make sure the end user tools work as desired. This is a thankless task that has to be done. (fex, gstreamer + related is part of the gnome herd, whereas ffmpeg, xine-lib, lame, libogg, libvorbis, libmad and a lot of other background things that need to work has to be taken care of. ) 4) Menu's There's a lot of controversy here. I want the installation of such a system to be a consious act and preferrably kept off per default. (genmenu is a good example here. very good even.) 5) extra-DE integration. This mainly belongs upstream, as DE's move towards common standards this is something we can lean back and reap the fruits of. 6) intra-DE modifications I'm all for the various DE's implementing or removing features, as long as its maintainable, and sane. Adding highstrung pipedreams that can't be made to work properly is not our thing. Leave this to Mandrake, SuSE and RedHat. They are good at it. 7) "Vanilla flag" This shouldn't be necessary. Anything thats intrusive enough to require something like that needs to be thought over -veeery- carefully and is a bug per design. adding an option to remove a broken feature is -wrong- and the implementor of said patch and flag should be made to read "A discipline for Software Engineering" by Watts S. Humphrey. And follow the rules described therein. 8) Extra What needs to be made work though, is a consistent set of graphics to be made avaiable, and perhaps default. Fex, the GRUB loader should have a graphics design similar to the framebuffer background, as well as the GDM and KDM + elogin themes. This sort of branding is not intrusive on the user (framebuffer background is the most intrusive one, and should and could well be disabled by default) 9) Decisions and communications All theese things need to be properly discussed and in the open. I was shocked to find out I suddenly got a manager who thought I was to run my decisions about including applications to the Gnome desktop by them, as well as the idea of a single uniformed Gentoo desktop is completely -appalling- to me. In this regard the ruling cabal (ie, management) have flunked completely and their actions , and more importantly, inactions are to be questioned. This whole process could have been dealt with far nicer. End rant, Spider -- begin .signature This is a .signature virus! Please copy me into your .signature! See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more information. end --=.1LRrYIaRdXkEqa Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/Tj9zZS9CZTi033kRAkqEAKCYEQPhVMNGSFm4HnX6GXmbRfCaowCaAh20 dJFlhTQcKPQrpdJPikkAU6Y= =jHoQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=.1LRrYIaRdXkEqa--