Re: GNOME ABI review

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 11:51:30AM +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote: 
> > 3. Applets/System Tray Icons
> > 
> >  The current applet/tray-icon split just doesn't make any sense.
> >  Mark's attempt to clarify the difference and how to use a tray icon
> >  floundered on massive disagreement. This ABI clearly needs to change
> >  at some point if only to clarify the UI that results when you do 
> >  various things with your tray icon.
> > 
> >  In my opinion, applet ABI should be stripped of all dependencies and
> >  become a protocol specification built around XEMBED and some IPC
> >  mechanism (possibly just X events, but whatever is general). Then we
> >  can change our desktop architecture significantly, while keeping
> >  applets working, and let applets be implemented by lots of different
> >  toolkits.
> 
> 	What you are essentially saying is "applet's shouldn't be Bonobo
> components"[1], right ?

Yes, I don't believe applets specifically should be. If they are we
can only implement them with the whole GNOME stack, and we are then
stuck with lots of app authors using the tray icon spec just to be
cross-desktop or avoid dependencies. And the tray icon situation is
fucked as you discovered.

I was trying to avoid the more general argument about Bonobo in my
mail, since my views have been stated in the past, and it's not really
the primary issue. There are plenty of ABIs we ought to address that
have nothing to do with Bonobo, like the vfs, menu system, etc.

If people want to have the general Bonobo argument then you're
probably right that it's healthy, but I'm not expecting it to be
resolved...

Havoc