Re: xscreensaver capplet.

[Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>]

On 01 Aug 2001 15:53:41 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> To be fair, I think the GNOME screensaver properties probably predates
> the GTK-based xscreensaver tool, so I'm not sure it's a "fork," merely
> a "duplication of effort." ;-)

> On the other hand, Chema I think coordination with Jamie is necessary
> if we are going to use xscreensaver. The KDE route of "make our own

I agree, this is why i want to improve the relationship and coordination
between the two projects.

> copy of xscreensaver" resulted in a crappy screensaver collection and
> unmaintained xscreensaver. And the current situation with Jamie's
> xscreensaver leads to the capplet breaking all the time.

I agree too.

> With the new capplet setup we don't even need to link to libcapplet,
> right? We just launch capplets as their own window as a dialog. The
> only reason the screensaver capplet even needs to use gnome-libs is
> the Ximian archiver stuff. (Stock icons can be easily cut-and-pasted,
> and in GTK 2 will be in GTK.)

Yes, the ximian archiver is called config_archiver now and is inside of
the control center. Using the new config_archiver has implications on
its own, like depending on the new control center and its dependencies.

> Anyhow, allowing capplets to be simple standalone apps makes it a lot
> easier to just ship the screensaver panel with xscreensaver.
> And I think the effort to make that possible will pay off, because
> we need to be able to ship capplets outside of the control-center
> module anyhow.

I think we should work with the technical issues rather than deciding
one one codebase. We just don't have the resources of redoing the gui
based on jamie's code and he is not going to want to base the capplet in
our code, for obvious reasons. I don't have the resources to offer
towards fix this problem at this time.

We can have one config file that both capplets can read/write, find a
way of getting the screensavers from xscreensaver in a way in which
translators can still translate the descriptions and fix the issues with
the preview window. We don't need to support all the features and jwz
does not need to add the "one screensaver" feature to xscreesnsaver-demo
gui, as long as the configration file can read/write both.

Code duplication is bad, but the duplication has already been done and
we have two sort-of-working codebases. We just don't have the resources
to move a lot of code arround. I don't have the time to discuss all the
issues and reach agrement. This sounds like a lack of comitment on my
part, it is not. I just REALLY don't have the time nor the hacker
resources to do so. There are a lot of capples that need a LOT of work,
this is just one of them.

We have a lot of capplets/xst tools that share configration files. I
don't see why we can't make it work here.

I really hope we can make this situation better. We didn't created this
problem, our ancestors did. We inherited the problem and i would love to
find a good solution (or at least a better one than the current).

regards,
Chema