Re: Request for breakage in gnome-panel

[Bryan Clark <bclark redhat com>]

On Sun, 2005-02-13 at 15:55 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:
>Le dimanche 13 f�ier 2005 �5:40 +0100, Samuel Abels a �it :
>>On Sun, 2005-02-13 at 15:18 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:
>>> Le dimanche 13 f�ier 2005 �8:44 -0500, Havoc Pennington a �it :
>>> >And the rest of the thread didn't address these release team questions.
>>> >A simple "no, we can't take this now due to already-written docs but it
>>> >will go in 2.12" is fine.
>>> 
>>> I suppose that I should mention here I'll commit the patch as soon as we
>>> branch and start the work for 2.12.
>>
>>I didn't have the feeling there was consensus on this. Maybe in the end
>>it's just a maintainer's decision, but I actually had the impression
>>that most people voted in favor of keeping the menu item.
>
>The idea here is to see at the beginning of 2.12 how it feels to have
>the menu without the item. We'll have feedback. Don't see this as a
>final decision, but as a test :-)

Vincent I'm sorry dude my fault, I never meant to waste you time like
this.  I don't think this is worthwhile anymore.  I hesitated to ask for
a break in the freeze simply because of exactly what happened.  The 'Run
Applications' item has fallen prey to the 'color of the bike shed'
syndrome [1] and probably has a removal half-life of about 10 years now.

So I retracting my request, even though it's already been denied.
Remember it was just a request to see if docs and translation and
release would ok to slip this through and do some minor wart surgery,
not a time to wax poetic on pendulums dude. ;-)

Any value out of trying to remove this has been completely lost.  Value
like people actually filing bugs and getting that ~20% of apps that
don't have .desktop file to actually create .desktop files.  Instead of
using the Run Applications as a way around missing .desktop files, which
really is hurting everyone who doesn't know the executable name by the
way.  The only thing that will come out of removing this item in the
next release is flames.  People will be looking for it to leave and as
soon as it's gone they'll scream bloody murder without thinking there
might exist another (better) way.  

And just to take the flames point head on, no flames do not generally
mean that what was done was the wrong thing, they generally mean that
very vocal people are upset that things changed.  People obviously fear
change, if we get rid of Run Applications the desktop won't come
crashing to a halt.  Instead we should expect to get bug reports on
missing .desktop files and maybe people will get together to finally
create a menu editor?  But since we have this nice band-aid(tm) out in
the open we won't get those bug reports and no one will think it's too
much pain to live without a decent menu editor.

That's my end of this thread,
~ Bryan

[1] http://www.unixguide.net/freebsd/faq/16.19.shtml