Re: Gnome 2 infinity and beyond [was Re: Tango and 2.16]

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad cs toronto edu>]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Alan Horkan wrote:

> I return to my point about Gnome being quite different from what it was
> and all the change that have happened.  A developer (an Independant
> Software Vendor (ISV) for example) could create an acceptable gnome 2.x
> application but using older APIs that are supported but not exactly the
> ideally recommended choices.  Gnome 3.0 could be taken as an oportunity to
> clarify best practice and appeal to ISVs which has been previously
> mentioned as something people were interested in.  Gnome 3.0 could be
> taken as a way to celebrate all the progress and encourage people to take
> another look.

We can also enforce the best practices by leaving the deprecated
interfaces *behind*.   For example, currently we have the library
gtk+-2.0.  When gtk+ goes 3.x, we will rename the base library to
gtk+-3.0, and leave all the deprecated stuff in a dummy gtk+-2.0
which itself will depend on gtk+-3.0, pulling all the
non-deprecated stuff in.  The effect is that applications written
for gtk+-2.0 will continue to work and compile still, but those
targeting gtk+-3.0 do not see the deprecated interfaces.  A bit
hackish, but I thought I would say.

--behdad
http://behdad.org/

"Commandment Three says Do Not Kill, Amendment Two says Blood Will Spill"
	-- Dan Bern, "New American Language"