Re: GNOME Development Series Snapshot 2.3.0: "Mighty Atom"

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="mpeseng tin it">

> >>   galeon - A GNOME web browser based on Gecko.
> >
> > Not convinced that Galeon or Epiphany are ready yet. I use Galeon 1.3.x
> > as my primary browser, but it doesn't feel *quite* as smooth as 1.2.x.
> > There are also all the difficult maintainership and direction issues to
> > think about.
> 
> Can you elaborate on this ? What is not sleek as before, something that
> cannot be fixed in 2.4 timeframe ?

The small issues I have with Galeon are most likely things that can be fixed
in the 2.4 timeframe, depending on how many people are working on it, etc.

> I remember you was favourable to the inclusion of galeon in 2.2, apart the
> mantainance issues.

I am very strongly in favour of including an integrated GNOME-based browser,
but it's such a significant piece of the desktop puzzle (to end users) that
we have to be very careful about committing to it. There's two sides to that
commitment too -> GNOME committing to a browser project, and the browser
project committing to the GNOME Desktop release goals. :-)

> Certainly both Galeon and Epiphany has improved a lot in the meantime. So
> I'm confused.  I think both projects has a good manteinance and a clear
> direction now.  What's the problem ?

I guess it comes down to communication. I know a lot of people have said
nice things about Epiphany, but I haven't tested it yet because it hasn't
had a tarball release for a very long time [1]. While I test Galeon every
day as my primary browser, there's not much communication with the Galeon
dudes on the main GNOME mailing lists (same with Epiphany hackers).

But all of this is what the proposal process is meant to address -> it's up
to you guys to convince us to include your software. I'm pretty sure
everyone is already sold on the need for a GNOME-based browser in the
desktop release...

- Jeff

[1] I don't test from CVS. This has proven very useful when smoketesting
releases and being the 'last wall to fall' before software hits users.

-- 
GU4DEC: June 16th-18th in Dublin, Ireland             http://www.guadec.org/
 
     "Free software never simply picks up its marbles and goes home." -
                            Jonathan Corbet, LWN