From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NfgnV-0001qJ-3q for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:42:05 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2177BE09FD; Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:41:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-ew0-f216.google.com (mail-ew0-f216.google.com [209.85.219.216]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C4103E09FD for ; Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:41:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ewy8 with SMTP id 8so1940124ewy.29 for ; Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:41:40 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:content-type:to:subject :references:date:mime-version:content-transfer-encoding:from :message-id:in-reply-to:user-agent; bh=sb/h5KgKMMZUCnepicLVeHugbZVbqHj61AWStBz5XJ8=; b=Uw8Z/PInxKTKPzX1D7yg8ZT7RaadjfiFkNTH59KzvwTNPilb2emaJePXofIV3R6ZJw iJ86YN6HJh/UkhBi2uKCCKf4tf0R3u6yNuE0XKjhtc/WprC/ZGkA9HnpeJxPaeDsS01A rKSblNoiRdvF4fz/K3DdVafFaed5BqF43wGhU= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=content-type:to:subject:references:date:mime-version :content-transfer-encoding:from:message-id:in-reply-to:user-agent; b=xDOngzBmvvTVL7rJ4AtxDmXIkte045gUdLk9PJls4DC0yZrCpmWoQBE0qn9DdQEFHU MsyPiZAYOTkfbbIvYVuSfW4t0ow1aTSG1PSEXSCEDMlEpIBTn2c/+yWt8DEr7y7KJYXX 8B9NEq4mLKZV33bVJfbEwWS48dg1ucmHC1KbY= Received: by 10.213.1.19 with SMTP id 19mr412924ebd.21.1265924499718; Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:41:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from zeerak (0110ds1-abc.0.fullrate.dk [90.185.49.13]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id 7sm6673189eyg.33.2010.02.11.13.41.37 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:41:37 -0800 (PST) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed; delsp=yes To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files? References: <20100208222047.GA6553@muc.de> <20100210141843.6777b7c7@digimed.co.uk> <20100211073121.GA14006@waltdnes.org> <201002111005.46531.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:40:37 +0100 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: "Zeerak Waseem" Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <201002111005.46531.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> User-Agent: Opera Mail/10.10 (Linux) X-Archives-Salt: 11c3d038-a10e-49d6-9b18-76bce576775f X-Archives-Hash: a8cf17dab04f6f1f7ce3343d606ccb5b On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:05:46 +0100, Alan McKinnon wrote: > On Thursday 11 February 2010 09:31:21 Walter Dnes wrote: >> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 02:18:43PM +0000, Neil Bothwick wrote >> >> > On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: >> > > > but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate >> > > > with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as >> > > > it should. >> > > > >> > > Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 >> > > years, >> > > >> > > pray tell? >> > >> > Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use >> interprocess >> > communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily >> > everything. For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs >> when >> > your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client >> goes >> > into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your >> mailbox. >> > KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. >> >> There is too much solution-in-search-of-a-problem here. XMMS followed >> the original Unix philosophy... it did one thing did it right, namely >> playing audio. Unfortunately, XMMS was hard-coded to use a now obsolete >> GTK library. > > Unfortunately, that's analogous to a business employing 5 people, all of > whom > do their own thing all the time with no inter-person communication and > no co- > ordination. Perhaps they might scribble a note on a white board once a > day, > but that's about it. > >> The "successor" to XMMS is Audacious. It seems to subscribe to the >> Microsoft philosophy, and tries to do everything under the sun, and >> pretends it's a server, which requires dbus. Is it *REALLY* necessary? >> I used XMMS to play mp3's and Live365.com. I ended up switching to >> mpg123 for both functions when XMMS was dropped, and then to the Flash >> player for Live365. I emerged Audacious, but unmerged it when I saw the >> post-install warning that said not to submit any Audacious bug reports >> if I don't have dbus installed. > > Modern desktops are integrated, because that's what users want. Any two > apps > should be able to inter-communicate wherever that communication makes > sense. > > Example: You have any old arbitrary email client. A mail contains a URL. > Click > it. The URL should open in your preferred browser, whatever that should > be. > Please note that any email client should support launching any browser, > whether the dev built in support for it or not. Yes, I know there are > the xdg* > scripts, but tally up the number of things a user would want to work like > this, tally up the number of scripts in the infinite number of locations > this > will take, and then ask the user to "pick one". > > Example: Notifications. I have 3 (yes, three!!) kinds of popups that > show up > here daily. There's KDE's system which is the majority of them, some GTK > apps > throw popups in the top right corner where I don't want them and them > then > there's Skype which does it's own thing. God, you gotta love proprietary > sekrit apps . The solution is a notification service, apps send > their notifications to it and the service does whatever the user > configured it > to do with the notification. Note that the user is in control here, the > user > says what happens with popups and does it in one central place and the > apps > does one thing and one thing only with it's notifications: sends them. > It's > like syslogger, letting the app concentrate on it's real purpose (which > is not > logging, and definitely is not making sure it doesn't clobber log files > from > any other apps that might be running). > > See where this is going? Do you need a hundred more examples? > > When you have arbitrary, unknown (at install time) sources of data that > may > interoperate with other arbitrary, unknown (at install time) sinks of > data, > good data modelling says that a known broker of data should sit in the > middle, > which is generic enough for anything to be able to use it. > > And the transport for that is dbus. > > Just to bring this back to your original statement of Unix philosophy. > IPC on > modern desktops conforms exactly to the Unix philosophy. Apps were > moving away > from that and were becoming IM clients cum custom loggers cum notifiers > cum > . > > Standardized IPC is moving back TOWARDS the Unix philosophy, not away > from it. > Apps can now concentrate on their core function, and hand over the > integration > aspects to something else dedicated to IPC and nothing else. The apps now > merely does the minimum required to hand over data to the service via a > messaging bus. > > Which if you look at it in that light, is EXACTLY the same rationale as a > syslogger. Do you use a syslogger? Why? > > If you don;t like all this integration stuff, and you have every right > to not > like it, then you should uninstall KDE and use Openbox (or similar > lightweight > WM). These WMs exist for users that do not want desktop integration. One > thing > you cannot have is the latest KDE without it's integration features. > > True, but even those using Openbox, icewm, etc. were introduced to the mess that HAL is, and also to dbus. Sure you can choose not to have hal/dbus/*kit, but then you also choose not to use a growing number of apps that seem to depend on it. The way I see it, they should be optional features. If you've got the useflags set, great. If not, then it'll still be able to compile and run. -- Zeerak