Re: Random thought...

[Tom Vogt <tom lemuria org>]

Dan Effugas Kaminsky <effugas@best.com> wrote:
> In a way, I'm arguing that there's going to need to be a standard
> "hintreader", if you will, much like Amaya.  KDE, for all of its faults, is
> a complete environment.  In fact, it is so complete that it is impossible to
> extend.  That's Bad.  What I'm saying is that GNOME *will* have a standard
> WM.  This isn't a question, this isn't something we can choose not to have.
> Whatever ships with Redhat 6 is going to be the standard.

a) you are VERY quick to convert ideas to fact. "gnome SHOULD have..." is a
much better way to state your opinion.

b) redhat ships with various wms at the moment. anyone from redhat here who
can enlighten us to why this should change? I doubt it will.



> 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.
amen

I'm afraid you are TOTALLY missing the point. gnome is a very specific
project, and a LOT of the ideas you have are simply outside of its scope. in
the same way that a style guide has no job talking about reboots, gnome is
not a window manager and not a replacement for them.

we have the kernel - basic system functionality
next layer is X - basic graphics functions
window manager - basic window functionality
gnome - inter-application consistency and interaction
app - user actions

does that make sense to you? of course ALL of it is part of the "user
interface", but only 1/5th is part of gnome. we can make limited demands on
the apps, because they will rely on gnome for parts of their functionality.
we would be idiots putting requirements to the kernel. we would have to have
not one or two, but a vast collection of really good reasons to ask for any
changes to X. we should work using the established and existing ways to
interact with the window managers. if we can ask for a favor or two (gnome
specific wm hints), it's mostly thanks to gnome having a higher profile than
the wms.


-- 
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
		-- Henry Spencer