Re: Drag 'N' Drop Protocol (?!)

[Derek Simkowiak <dereks animal blarg net>]

> 1. I do not understand your definition of `proprietary'.  If your
>    definition of proprietary is `you do not use what someone else
>    mandated', then, all of gnome is proprietary (including the DnD).

	GTK+ is 'proprietary', that's true.  But, a Gnome app will not
have to interface with another app's Widget set.  It could, however, be
asked to accept something "dragged" onto it from a non-Gnome app.  It
would be great if it could deal with that data.

	Incidentally, it seems to me that CORBA, Display Ghostscript (i.e.
Postscript) and Scheme (read: Guile) is (what I would have called) an
"open standard".

> 2. What defines an `Open standard'?

	I'm not sure what the technical or legal definition is, but what I
was trying to say was "a standard which was not developed in order to
benefit a particular environment or widget set".  More to the point, I was
thinking of a DnD protocol that *anyone* could use in their program,
whether or not they used GTK+ to develop it.

	My apologies at not being able to find a better term.

> 3. Gtk+ is very probably going to implement the OSF/1 DnD protocol,
>    and we will switch to that when it is made available.  Wonder if
>    you consider this one also `proprietary'.  

	According to the above clarification, no, I would not, and I am
glad to hear we are using a protocol set by OSF/1.

	Summary: I know that the GTK+ is "Open", I understand GNU, and I
know "open standard" and "proprietary" were not the best terms to use, but
I don't think Gnome should limit its Drag'n'Drop interactivity to only
apps which have been developed using GTK+.

	Simply implementing XDnD would already give us D'n'D
inter-operability with the large range of KDE software that's out there.

	I think we can all agree that it sucks that there are many
different DnD protocols for X, and none of them works with any of the
others.  This, IMHO, is one of the reasons Unix (and more specifically,
Linux) has not swamped the mainstream desktop market.  It's just
depressing that we're using Yet Another Incompatible Protocol.

	I suppose the thing to do is wait for the OSF/1 DnD protocol and
hope everyone else also decides to switch to it.

Derek