Re: gnome desktop integration library

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

Joachim Noreiko wrote:
[...]
> I requested last cycle for a help button to be put
> into the File Chooser dialog [1], and the general
> feeling I got back from the GTK people was that they
> didn't want a dependency on parts of the gnome desktop
> going in GTK.

Please bear in mind that when you propose something for inclusion
into gtk+ there is a very high bar to pass, (see the long discussion
attached to this seemingly simple patch [1] for example) a few things that
I think should be taken into consideration:

 o When you propose something, and nobody is volunteering to actually
   do the work - its a dead-end conversation that is going nowhere
   (who wants to bother offering thier opinion even ?)

 o GTK+ people are only interested in an ultimate solution that will live
   out the long run - the api has to be perfect and it must function
   nicely on all supported platforms - so what someone might have thought
   was just a matter adding a button to a filechooser - will most definitly
   turn into a philisophical discussion about "what kind of content" to put
   in that help button, how the app will interact with that content, how it
   will behave on multiple platforms etc... I would expect such a discussion
   to last at /least/ a month before any code gets written.

IMO this is not a bad thing - this strong community criticism is exactly
what makes gtk+ good quality software in the first place.

I think the "They didnt like it in gtk+ so lets put it into our own lib"
approach might be good for a few people "right now" - but as I stated in
my other mail - personally I think that is of no value at all, if it didnt
get into gtk+ - there obviously a reason for it - there must be a long road
of work to do before the comminity is satisfied with the implementation.

Cheers,
                  -Tristan

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345778