Re: GTK+ 2.10.7 released

[Yevgen Muntyan <muntyan tamu edu>]

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

> On Sat, 2007-01-06 at 00:24 -0800, Sergei Steshenko wrote:
>  
>
> > [really impressive list of bugs deleted].
> >
> > As an end gtk+ user I just want to know which of the two
> > gtk+2.8.20 <-> 2.10.7 is less buggy.
> >    
>
> Indeed 2.10.7.  The impressive list of bugs you saw has only been fixed
> in 2.10.7.  Another set fixed in 2.10.6.  Same for 2.10.5, ...  None of
> them fixed in 2.8.x.
>  
There is a natural question, how many of those bugs didn't even
exist in 2.8.x?

> This idea of thinking about newer series as buggier versions is
> fundamentally bogus.  The way you should be thinking about 2.10 is 2.8
> plus some new functionality plus lots of bug fixes.  It typically is the
> case that if you don't use the new functionality, it's just added value,
> not many bugs introduced, etc.
Right, you *should* think that way, or GTK *should* be that way,
but it's not quite so. Take infamous GtkFileChooser thing - more
bugs, less usable.

I am not claiming that Gtk-2.10 is worse than Gtk-2.8, my opinion
about it is very subjective, I didn't count bugs or something; some
things are certainly better in 2.10 (e.g. printing is sort of there).
But Sergei's question is completely reasonable. You know about
that debian thing, that folks do not (or did not) want to use Gtk-2.10
because it's buggy, don't you? It's not just like someone says "You
guys suck, 2.10 is broken and is no better than 2.8". There are things
that make some people believe something is wrong with Gtk-2.10, and
you can't simply say those things are bogus because version number
is bigger.

I understand that Sergei's question didn't make any sense on
any gtk list, because it's taken as "You suck" (and maybe it's really
what he meant too). But then it should be simply ignored, answers
like "No, 2.10 is better because it must be better" do no good and
only may add to one's belief that GTK developers ignore problems
or do not admit problems do exist (no, I am not thinking this way).

Best regards,
Yevgen