Re: WM-SPEC - what needs to happen for release ?

["Bradley T. Hughes" <bhughes trolltech com>]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 Sasha_Vasko osca state mo us wrote:

> >On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, John Harper wrote:
> >
> >> Bradley T. Hughes writes:
> >> |> I think the differences were in _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE and another 
> similar
> >> |> property (spec defines these as vectors of atoms, KDE implementation
> >> |> has them as integers). A few days ago someone tried sawfish with the
> >> |> KDE2 beta and ran into problems due to this (sawfish includes a
> >> |> prototype implementation of the current spec)
> >> |
> >> |and as i recall... this was discussed but never resolved... perhaps 
> now is
> >> |the time
> >>
> >> Definitely -- is there any possibility that you will change your
> >> implementation to match the current state of the spec?
> >
> >Well... a binary incompatible change to KDE2 just before a release would
> >upset quite a few people.  A very good, convincing argument over why a
> >list of atoms is more desirable than an enumerated value would have to be
> >presented.  The argument that the list can be extended in the future also
> 
> Isn't that what betas are for - to iron out bugs and deficiences ?
> It would only take a few lines of code to convert from flagset/enum into
> the list of atoms and back, thus effectively hiding the change from any 
> app that is using API.

A few lines of code in the classes I wrote, correct.  But the large amount
of code in KDE would then have to be recompiled and fixed for each
application/library that broke

> Lot more people will get upset for lot longer time, if the change is not 
> made and KDE goes out with incompatible implementation of specs.

I guess it's good that this issue was raised (for the second time) before
KDE2 was released.  As I stated before, nothing came of the discussions
before, so I didn't change my code.  I am going to look at the current
changes the next couple of days and check on what will/will not break with
the change

> >Bradley T. Hughes <bhughes trolltech com>
> 
> Cheers
> Sasha Vasko
> 
> 

--
Bradley T. Hughes <bhughes trolltech com>
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