Re: Map Library

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 10:18 -0400, Michael Terry wrote:
> On 06/04/11 13:08, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 14:05 -0400, Michael Terry wrote:
> >> Bump!  Any thoughts on the idea of splitting out the map widget into a
> >> library (new or existing) for easier use by other packages like
> >> Ubiquity, other installers, etc?
> > There's no plans for it. I'd find it particularly hard to believe that
> > your employer would want to use GPL-non-attributed code in Ubiquity,
> > given how hard we had to work to get the source files for the map used
> > in that widget (which we still don't have, despite the brave efforts of
> > some of your colleagues).
> I realize there are no plans for it now, but I was hoping we could 
> create a plan.  This map library wouldn't be part of Ubiquity's source, 
> it would just be a linked library, which attributed code uses all the time.

Fair enough.

Turns out that Matthias asked me the exact same thing for the first time
wizard (it was supposed to be added to the control-center, but made more
sense in GDM).

This is where it would be used:
https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointOne/Features/LoginScreen

Note that the code itself is GPL, no LGPL.

> > In my opinion, most users shouldn't even see this map during the
> > installer, or afterwards, given a working Internet connection. I'd want
> > the system to figure out where the user is by default.
> I can understand the desire to have things work automatically, but I 
> suspect you'll always want a manual 'escape hatch' for such 
> functionality.  Plus, the map (or associated timezone code) might be 
> useful in other contexts like picking timezones that you want displayed 
> in your clock.
> 
> Are you saying you don't believe other applications have valid uses for 
> the map, so you'd rather not split the code out?  Let me put it this 
> way: right now Ubuntu has two copies of this code (and will have three 
> once we push the new control center after natty is released).  I'd like 
> to see a library used for it in Ubuntu 11.10 to reduce the duplication 
> (it's not really all that much code, but a good chunk of data).  I 
> figured you'd rather have that be part of GNOME so we could all benefit 
> from any patches.

Matthias was interested in adding key navigation to it as well.

You guys can hash out what you need the widget to provide. I think it'll
probably be quite cumbersome to move, depending on whether you just want
the map widget, or the selection bits as well (the drop-downs we have
now are not the best, and I completely failed at trying to use
libgweather's location entry instead).

Cheers