Re: Random thought...

[JR Tipton <nails maybe net>]

On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Dan "Effugas" Kaminsky wrote:
> Whatever ships with Redhat 6 is going to be the standard.

Is it?  

Or is it just going to be the default installation with Red Hat 6?
 
> That being said, other WMs must be able to, in a simple manner, take
> advantage of the functionality that GNOME provides and provide the
> functionality that GNOME requests.  This is what "hints" are about.

But the Manifesto says that if it doesn't take hints, all is well.  "Hint"
does not mean, "follow this or die," but rather, "follow this if you
want."
 
> A further explanation, probably better:  GNOME is going to specify a style
> for applications to install themselves.  GNOME Compliant WM's should be able
> to read the "installed applications" menus and import them into themselves,
> instead of requiring constant resynchronization.  If you think about it,
> this is far better way of encouraging diversity of window managers--every
> time you change WMs, the common segments follow you.  Yet another separation
> of content and presentation!

GNOME "compliant" window managers or window mangers targeted at GNOME will
work fine with this.  But others should do as they normally would, no?
 
> I do not want GNOME to be a bad thing for WMs, but we have three choices.
> Either GNOME becomes a standard but extensible windowing system(what I
> want), or a standard and inextensible windowing system(KDE), or it fails.
> It's That Simple.

I guess I must be That Stupid because it's not making sense to me.  I
don't see why GNOME would fail if it didn't enforce anything upon the
window managers. 

> >See, I'm confused here.  Why do you say the wm "needs" to do anything?  It
> >says in the GNOME Manifesto that it doesn't.  Again, I hope you can afford
> >the time to elaborate a bit :)
> OK, we're poking at the WMs a little.  They really really ought to accept
> the hints that say "you have an application here that wants to sit in your
> dock, please manage it".  Fine, GC2 instead of GC1, but really...

So are you talking about GNOME compliant window managers?  Okay, that
makes sense.  If you're talking about all window managers that work with
GNOME, that's where you lose me.  The other parts of your argument
indicate that you're saying all window managers that work with GNOME, not
those that are compliant.

...just trying to clear this up for myself:)

william r. tipton