Re: [gDesklets] FYI discussion of a merger

[Lauri Kainulainen <lauri kainulainen gmail com>]

Hi Bjoern,

just shortly going to clarify my points..

Bjoern Koch wrote:
> > screenlets on the other hand is just python + gtk + cairo (AFAIK). 
> > The question remains to develop a common -- let me put it the 
> > gdesklets way -- ADL.
>
> yes... a common - let us name it - ADL *is* a beauty, isn't it ?

A 'common ADL' isn't mandatory. I don't even see it as a good idea. Let
gD devels do their thing with ADL and let screenlet/jackfield devs do
their thing.

I'm gonna post my short view on this from the compiz forums:

> And if someone asks me, I'd see a kind of an umbrella project as the 
> best solution for the current situation. Gene ('reh4c') suggested 
> XEmbed. We could build a wrapper engine that could take the outputted
>  windows from all the other sub-engines (screenlets, jackfield, gd) 
> and shove them into separate windows. That would already remove the 
> need to do a separate UI for each widget-engine.

That would remove the unnecessary boilerplate stuff that's produced by
each project.

> 1. show activity - update the homepage more frequently and keep users
>  up to date, even if there is not too much to talk about (include the
>  release of new desklets for example) - include all working desklets 
> from the archive site (even if it is just one desklet a week)

Show activity of what? There is no activity worth reporting. I do agree
that it would be nice to have something like "newest desklets" on the
frontpage, but we really don't have much to report.


> 2. make it much easier for new users to be helped - set up a forum - 
> start a user wiki (or faq) - ever thought about producing screencasts
>  for the first basic steps (like the installation tutorial)

Have to agree with Robo on this. It needs work. And we lack the manpower.

> > However the 0.4 branch is now lacking a lot of development 
> > manpower. I feel that one big distraction is that it was a bit over
> >  designed in the beginning.
>
> Well... the more I think about it the merge looks to me like another
>  thing being overdesigned. Like heading for 0.5x before even starting
>  0.4x. gDesklets doesn't look ready for things like this to me right 
> now.

Well.. the biggest bonus of merging would be sharing the workload and
ideas. The latest change to the 0.4 branch (trunk on lp) was on
2007-05-29. I'm not talking about 0.5. I'm talking about an 'umbrella
project' (for the lack of a better term).


> > Instead of just doing widgets nicely, we wanted messaging over TCP,
> > swappable rendering engines and window engines, different
> > parsers, etc..
>
> Ahhhhhh... there you go. Maybe it is time to do exactly that NOW. 
> Maybe we should start doing widget nicely before thinking about a
> merge ?!

FYI, I tried this. I updated my branch and started to hack to get the 
messaging and everything away. Unfortunately it's not that easy. 
Simplifying the codebase without breaking anything is more a long term 
target than a quick release.

I'm really up for making concrete plans on what could be achieved with a 
merger. Or let's call it cooperation. Merger usually means burying the 
original projects. After we have real plans, we can do some real 
discussing :)

Cheers,
Lauri