Re: Time to heat up the new module discussion

["Christian Hammond" <chipx86 chipx86 com>]

On 7/12/06, Elijah Newren <newren gmail com> wrote:
> On 7/12/06, Calum Benson <Calum Benson sun com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12 Jul 2006, at 08:56, Johan Svedberg wrote:
> >
> > > * Jul 12 02:21 Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > >> So, to start of the discussion, the proposed modules AFAIR are:
> > >>  * orca (as a replacement to gnopernicus)
> > >>  * alacarte
> > >>  * gnome-power-manager
> > >>  * Tomboy
> > >>  * Gtk#
> > >
> > > What about libnotify? It was proposed for 2.14 but rejected because of
> > > lack of HIG-docs IIRC?
> >
> > Hmm, I don't remember that, but I hope that wasn't the only reason.
> > The HIG's notification section is certainly very poor at the moment,
> > but if there's a surefire way to get us to improve it, it's to
> > include the technology in the core platform so we have to do
> > something about it :)
>
> It was a worry, but the bigger issue was that it depended on libsexy
> and lots of people didn't like the idea of adding another widget
> library to Gnome when we were doing our best with project Ridley to go
> in the opposite direction.

In order to get support for the widgets notification-daemon needs from
libsexy into gtk or Ridley *properly*, GtkLabel, GtkEntry, etc. would
need extensive modifications. libsexy "does naughty things to good
widgets." It manipulates them in ways that ideally wouldn't have to be
done. It works, but I wouldn't feel right trying to get those added to
gtk/Ridley without GtkLabel and GtkEntry becoming more extensible.
Unfortunately, that's a bigger task than I have time for.

So given the things libsexy widgets do, I don't think it's too bad
keeping them in their own library for now. It's a library that most
distros now ship anyway, and does provide very useful functionality.
Notification-daemon and libnotify are practically everywhere as well
too.

I would like to once again propose libnotify and notification-daemon
for GNOME. I'm pretty sure it won't be accepted though because of the
lack of a HIG (which could be written after it goes in, could it not?)
and libsexy (which is maybe a bigger problem, but probably a necessary
evil for now). If that's the case, it's a shame, because this is
useful functionality for a lot of apps. I'd love to find a solution
that most people are happy with.

Christian