RE: 2.4 Proposed Modules - 2 weeks left

[mpeseng tin it]

>
>All this stuff about "move forward or die" is just scaremongering IMO.

>The advantage about raising the bar for inclusion in GNOME (rather than
>taking the "something is better than nothing" position) is that the
>overall integration and consistency of the "GNOME Desktop" will be
>better.  That's the _good_ part of the well-integrated/featureful
>tradeoff; so there is something to be gained by waiting.

I don't think raising the bar too much is going to to produce good results.
IHMO we are not talking about adding a feature to the desktop here. There
is a de facto GNOME Browser and it's mozilla.

The options are:
1 Start to ship gtk2 mozilla (or phoenix) with major, _not solvable_ usability
problems (not HIG compliant, not native, ui mess in the mozilla case), but
accessible.
2 Start to ship a mozilla embedder with the usability problems solved and
with a clear path to add accessibility features (it's not like writing them
from scratch, we can inherit most of mozilla work).

No one of these is a regression. But the first one is short sighted (to
have a feature faster, we ship something that will never reach our targets).

We all want an accessible and usable browser for GNOME:

- A gtkmozembed based browser is the only way to reach such target for the
forseable future
- We have a mantainer and a community very interested in putting work on
such a solution
- There is a clear way to solve the current accessibility issues. And the
mantainer is interested in working on them when it will be possible (Sun
guys complete their works on mozilla widget)
- There still an alternative for disabled people until this work is completed.
Adding a native browser to GNOME is not going to damage mozilla in any way.
- The work on the native browser can help to solve another major issue in
our development platform (the gtkhtml mess).
- At some point we will be forced to choose an alternative to the mozilla
interface. While we change it would be better to choose the best possible
solution. Distributions are not forced to ship a GNOME component until it's
ready for them.
- There is a conflict in the GNOME community between two projects. It would
important to make a call about it, so that one of the two will retarget
or die. Mantaining two very similar projects is a waste of resources and
a Galeon vs Epiphany war in the community is insane.

In such situation I think GNOME should adopt the project and work together
to solve the remaining issues. I'm convinced this will speed up a lot the
accessibility work too.

Havoc said that software has historically been improved by virtue of its
inclusion.
I'll just say that this "do the accessibility work or you will not be included"
is certainly not working very well with me, it's making me lose motivation
rather then gain it.

Marco