Re: Heated agreement? (was) Re: Canvas shortcomings

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris ximian com>]

Hello!

I see the temperature raising...

There is problem in designing generic interfaces for gnome, yes. But
I see no easy solution in current development model. And I am not
very sure, whether changing development model makes sense.

Each maintainer is genuinely interested in his/hers project. I am quite
sure many people are capable of writing decent API abstractions, but
alone these do not make sense. And each project implementing its own
slightly incompatible abstraction layer does not make the system
better - even worse - instead of good specific API-s, we will have
something like:
gnome-print API -> canvas API (print preview)
canvas API -> gnome-print (adding ::print to canvas model)
canvas API -> display abstraction API (proposed Gdk/libart/gp commonAPI)
display abstraction API -> gnome-print API
and so on...

So IMHO generalizations have to be addressed in separate layer,
developed mostly independently of underlying projects. Anybody can
start such project - and if it turns out to be good, I am quite sure
it will find use(r)s.

IMHO gnome has deliberately chosen an approach to build loosely tied
framework of independent technologies. Whether it is the right decision
in long run, or whether it will ultimately be superceded by something
gnome-VM like, we will see. AFAIK KDE (Qt) has chosen more VM-like
approach - which is logical, as its core is basically evolved from
single project of single company.

Best wishes,
Lauris Kaplinski

On 28 Jun 2001 00:24:18 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Nathan Hurst <njh hawthorn csse monash edu au> writes: 
> > My point: I don't see what value there is in building complex systems such
> > as bonobo on top of something as primative (wrt current technology and
> > needs) as plain X. 
> That doesn't even make any sense - Bonobo is completely
> not-GUI-related. Even the Bonobo controls interfaces (the GUI stuff
> built on top of Bonobo proper) have only one or two API entry points
> that assume anything about X.
> > njh, another person close to dumping Gnome in favour of KDE.
> Please use whichever one meets your needs best. You aren't doing us
> any favors by using GNOME out of charity or something.