Re: Recent Files Manager in libegg

[Mark McLoughlin <markmc redhat com>]

Hi Emmanuele,
	(I have to admit that this is the first time I've noticed this
proposal. I can't blame you for that - you clearly have been writing
proposals and discussing those proposals on various lists. Bear with me
while I go back to the beginning, though ...)


	Looking over your work:

  http://devel.emmanuelebassi.net/software/recent-chooser-commit.diff
  http://live.gnome.org/RecentFilesAndBookmarks
  http://devel.emmanuelebassi.net/papers/bookmark-spec.html

	I'm failing to see any solid goals I can relate to. I see:

  1) It would be nice if applications shared a common format and
     location for bookmarks

  2) Recently used files are essentially bookmarks, so they should be 
     stored in the bookmarks format too

  3) The API for accessing the list of recently used files should be
     in gtk+

  4) Re-design the current recently used code and API because it isn't 
     great

	I can relate to and agree with (1), (3) and (4), but (2) seems to be a
bit of an "architecture astronaut" leap of abstraction.

	I mean, given that we already have a pretty well adopted .recently-used
format, it seems to me like goals (3) and (4) should be addressed
completely independently of goal (1).

	Certainly, it seems a little premature to dump the .recently-used
format for a proposed "common desktop bookmarks" format, before the new
format has seen any use for genuine bookmarks - e.g. by web browsers.

	I'd love to see someone to take up the work to re-design the
recently-used API and get that API into the platform, but I don't see
where rationale for changing the file format.

Cheers,
Mark.