Re: WM Extended Spec Summary, 6/21/99

[Cristian Tibirna <ctibirna total net>]

On Tue, 22 Jun 1999, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> 
> > 2) CORBA in wm, not! All a WM need to communicate with the desktop can be
> > done with X.
> 
> Any particular reasons?  Or it is just a policy decision?

Errr... Yes, the reasons are below, but they're not at all political.

We hope this spec to be respected by most wm designers and creators.
Introducing CORBA as a requirement will ensure almost nobody will consider
following these specs. Many will see CORBA as an unnecessary overhead for
a WM. Needed communication with desktop and clients can always be done in
a sufficent manner solely by using X communication mechanisms.

(I'm not at all original here, I surely heard these arguments debated a
lot in the past).

> Using CORBA basically means scripting languages could talk to Window
> managers and programatically control the desktop.

Scripting is a particular feature of a window manager. If desktop needs
scripting, desktop implements it and uses this spec's provisions in order
to communicate with WM. If WM needs scripting, implements scripting (even
with CORBA if wanted) and uses this spec's provisions to communicate
scripting actions results to desktop. No need to include CORBA in the
specs.

> It could be a separate level of compliance.  Given that ORBit's
> footprint is what most mathematicians would have defined as epsilon I
> could envision this being a nice addition to bring Unix into the
> future.

I don't want to get into discussions about different ORB's sizes and
features. This list has other purposes.

Anyway, even if me personally don't believe stratificated compliance is
a good thing, I believe this idea has merits. I abstain here.

Cristian

Cristian Tibirna     : ctibirna@total.net     : www.total.net/~ctibirna
PhD Student          : ctibirna@gch.ulaval.ca : web.gch.ulaval.ca/~ctibirna
KDE contact - Canada :  tibirna@kde.org       : www.kde.org