Re: Random thought...

["Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Vogt <tom@lemuria.org>
To: gnome-gui-list@gnome.org <gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Saturday, August 15, 1998 12:52 AM
Subject: Re: Random thought...


>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.


No.  Should implies I like this state of affairs.  Will implies there's
nothing that anybody can do to stop this:  Due to the inordinate amount of
power the American media has, in general, the amount of free press Redhat 6
is going to recieve will be massive.

>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.


Now, as far as I've heard, Redhat has been saying that GNOME will be the
standard UI for its next distribution.

We're already using a panel, Tom.  That's headlong deep into "window
manager" territory--guess what, this is a good thing.  If Caldera has a
complete interface and we have a mess...welp, KDE wins and we go away into
the night.

>> 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.


So then you have a problem, don't you.

If the ideas are good, but don't belong in GNOME, where do they belong?
Some single, specific window manager?  Oops, KDE goes ahead and integrates a
few of them, suddenly KDE is better...

if the ideas are bad, then say so.  I don't think they are, Tom.  I think
Cluehunting, Keyboxes, Minbars, and so on are advanced components that are
damn well good enough to be standard.

We can either do a half assed job designing an interface, hoping that we
don't do anybody else's work, or we can do a complete job that other can
choose to build off of or choose to stay with where we are.

>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.


GNOME isn't tied to Kernels(Litestep), nor is it tied to X(Berlin).  It can
make "demands", if you will, of anything that pisses of the user.  I'm
sorry.  If a computer pisses me off, I don't want to hear "well that's not
my job".  We're supposed to describe how to build an interface that *DOES
NOT PISS PEOPLE OFF*.  What part of MAKES PEOPLE HAPPY is a bad thing?

You know, this reminds me of my reaction when I heard people complaining
about how PCs in general are smart enough to recognize that a floppy isn't a
boot floppy but too dumb to move on to the bootable hard drive.  I thought,
"That's not something an operating system can deal with", then I realized,
damn, that's a bug, and if Microsoft deemed this functionality a bug you can
be sure it'd be gone in the next flashable bios.  Microsoft hasn't been too
hot on calling rebooting a bug, because that'd require major re-engineering.
But, guess what:  The need to reboot continually is a huge interface FLAW,
MISTAKE, etc.  Refusing to admit it as such because of some kind of "layer"
issue is as foolhardy as refusing to complain about the boot floppy bug
because "oh that's the BIOS".

I'm not afraid to call a cigar a cigar.  If that means I step on a few toes,
well, thing about the fact that, according to your definition of GNOME up
there, about the only thing GNOME refers to is copy/paste, save file
windows, and anything else that's consistent between applications.


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


Those who do not understand the few flaws in Unix are condemned to reinvent
it, poorly.

Being afraid to set a standard--even one that we accept can be overridden
and expanded upon--is classic Unix.

>
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