Summary of (Was: GNOME desktop integration lib)

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

Hi

After a few days left for the discussion to die, here's a summary of
what has been said in that long thread, and my conclusions, hopefully
the next step, if we all agree, is to start working on them:

* Gdk/GtkSession as a replacement for GnomeClient. I think we all agree
on this, and Dan is working on an implementation.

* Call it libgtkdesktop and include in GTK source? Or in GTK proper?
This makes sense for some of the stuff, like:
	* screensaver (see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=305688).
This could be merged with Dan's work on Gtk/GdkSession, and we could add
there all kinds of hooks for the session-oriented operations
(online/offline, screensaver, change background, etc, etc).
	* desktop_launch (that is, a hook for gnome-open / kfmclient /
MSWindowsOpen / whatever, so that apps can open files with the
appropriate application for the desktop being run on). This could also
be in Gdk/GtkSession
	* notifications? It makes sense to me to have this in the widget
library, not sure, since it depends on d-bus (I'm talking here about
libnotify)

* People want ways to put help buttons in GTK chooser dialogs
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333878)

* gnome-desktop and gnome-menus. Even though this was my initial
proposal, little has been said about them, so, what do we do? Do we
merge them into glib/gtk, or do we merge them in that 'GNOME desktop
integration lib'? Whatever we decide, we need to merge them, they serve
very similar purposes and make no sense as separated libraries. Can
these go to GTK?

* some people mentioned a GnomeSettings API, to easily access standard
GConf keys. I guess it would make more sense to solve the Gconf
situation, as described by Havoc, although we really need to offer easy
access to common config keys.

* we need a common 'open with dialog'

* we need a clean and easy-to-use lockdown API. Not sure yet how this
would be, so can't comment much on this

* Panel IPC and applets/Nautilus libs live better in their separate,
specific libraries. I tend to agree here, but it would be nice if all
these libs were merged into one single libgnomeextensions lib. We have a
few libs in control-center also that might make sense also there

So, with these points on, my conclusions are:
* put everything we can in glib/gtk. Being able to, optionally, depend
on D-BUS would make things much easier for including as many things in
GTK as possible.

* but, we still need a place for other high-level things. Having that
libgtkdesktop with all common desktop operations for all platforms might
help, thus avoiding the need for a gnome-only lib (except for that
libgnomeextensions thing).

* and, gnome-desktop and gnome-menus should be in a single place! :-)

So, anything else? Where do we start from to solve all this?
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>