Re: Deprecation of libgnomeprint(ui)

[Mike Kestner <mkestner novell com>]

On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 15:15 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Since GTK+ 2.10 features everything needed to print, everyone is
> encouraged to migrate away from libgnomeprint(ui). It's a bit late for
> 2.16, but it would be a nice thing to do at the beginning of the 2.17
> release cycle.
> 
> The libgnomeprint and libgnomeprintui modules are now marked as upcoming
> deprecatings in the desktop release suite. We hope to get them out of
> the suite as soon as possible, and 2.18.0 sounds like a nice
> deadline :-)

I'm hoping your smiley means the 2.18 bit is a joke.

The six month release cycle is fine for getting new stuff out to users
and developers that want to take the dependency.  Removing something 6
months after a replacement is available is another story.  

GNOME has to keep in mind that the 6 month release cycle puts 4-5 gnome
releases in play for the application developer to target.  It is going
to be a lot longer than 6 months before they can reasonably take on a
Gtk 2.10 dependency if they want their app to be deployable to a large
segment of the installed base.

We can stand back and say "It's in the desktop, there's no stability
guarantee" all we want, but the fact is that gnomeprint is the only
printing solution available now on the vast majority of GNOME
installations.  Any app that prints on GNOME is using it, despite the
lack of guarantees, and will need to keep using it unless they decide
the large majority of GNOME users don't need new versions of their app.

I see very little gain in removing it that quickly.

-- 
Mike Kestner  <mkestner novell com>
SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10
Your Linux is ready™
www.novell.com/linux