Thoughts on GNOME 2.0

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

I was thinking about GNOME 2.0 recently, and I kind of agree with him in
that
we seem to be aiming to high. Right now, I think the biggest issue for
the 
GNOME 2.0 platform is gnome-libs and how it should be cleaned up. Right
now there seems to no coherent plan for it. First though, let me outline
my 
"view" on the GNOME 2.0 Platform:

- Migrate to Gtk/glib 2.0 + Pango
- Usage of libxml2 and eradication of libxml1 usage
- Usage of gdk-pixbuf and eradication of imlib
- Migrate the panel to oaf and eradication of gnorba (or alternatively
   re-write the panel (Vertigo))
- General polish and feature addition to various libraries (gnome-vfs,
   gtkhtml, gal, etc.)
- Sorting out of where the X bonobo stuff will go (i.e. move to
gnome-libs)
   and the full freezing of bonobo for the 2.x platform

The major item though is:

- Get gnome-libs in shape

I want to elaborate on this last point though.  First of all we should
feel free
to break binary compatibility to fix the API and remove any brokenness
of
found in the prior versions of gnome-libs. Secondly, any of the
incomplete
"features" in gnome-libs should either be finished or removed. For
example,
the gnome-helpsys and textfu stuff appears to be very broken. I also
asked 
Sopwith about it, but he never gave me a detailed response about the
plans
for it or anything like that. This also might mean we have to
undeprecate
some stuff (e.g. gnome-help.c if the helpsys and textfu stuff is not
done).

Anyway, I think the first 3 items in the list should be "relatively
easy" to do
since a lot of the work for it has been done already. 

What do people think of the above plan for GNOME 2.0? I think the above
is sufficient if we plan to release sometime this year or sometime next
year.

Note: Remember that there will be point releases such as GNOME 2.2 and
GNOME 2.4 - and if anything is horribly wrong we can redeem ourselves
in GNOME 3.0, like miguel said (although we shouldn't rely on this
"redemption factor")

Regards, 
Ali

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