Comments on GNOME Foundation?

Wade Hampton whampton at staffnet.com
Tue Aug 22 04:06:54 PDT 2000


Francis Galiegue wrote:
> 
> > > So why wouldn't LSB decide that Linux has *two* default graphical
> > > interfaces: Gnome AND KDE?
> >
> > I think LSB should remain completely environment neutral until one
> > environment overwhelmingly dominates the installed base.
> 
> Uhwell, will this ever be the case? Gnome vs. KDE flames are still very alive
> nowadays and I don't see them extinguish as it goes now, especially since the
> one and the other keep on coming with new features, so that X says "we beat Y"
> and vice versa.
Competition is great.  It drives both teams to excel.  When MS had
no competition....
> 
> IMHO, the LSB must be involved in graphical desktop environments, would it be
> only to say "we will preferably use library foo for application interaction"

The following should be standardized:

1.  base set of libs, e.g., athena, gtk, qt
2.  icons and menu item definitions -- hooks that ALL WM's could use
3.  other standard X items like app defaults
4.  means of registering with the WM for services and menu items

The WM should use these hooks to add to menus, add help about the 
item, etc.  However LSB should not attempt to standardize the desktop.

> > It's confusing to provide two completely different standards. Hopefully, one
> > day, Gnome and KDE can come together and, if not produce a single
> > environment, can at least cooperate on the lower-level aspects and thus
> > provide a commonality that LSB or another standards project could base their
> > work on.
> >
> 
> Well, why not enforce this merge? :)
Maybe enforce some low-level items.  However, we still need choices
and light-weight desktops like fvwm.
> 
> > Gtk+ is the dominant widget set, I'd say, and if the LSB gets into the scope
> > of graphical/X11 environments, I would argue that it should include Gtk+ (and
> > its dependancies) as requirements, regardless of desktop environment
> > employed.
Maybe, but why not qt as well?
> >
> 
> Maybe I'm gonna say something utterly stupid, but agreeing on a widget set is
> not going to please anyone... Always IMVHO, standardisation should be done at a
> "higher" level than that. Would it be only for DnD, but also for embeddable
> components in applications. I know that DnD can be agreed on, but am very
> unsure (and unknowledgeable for that matter) on embedding. It'd be nice, for
> example, to be able to use Gnumeric to edit a table into a kword document...
That would be nice, however much later -- standardize on the basics
first....

My 2 cents (oops, after taxes, 1 cent),
-- 
W. Wade, Hampton  <whampton at staffnet.com>  
On July 8, 1947, witnesses claim a spaceship with five aliens aboard
crashed on a sheep and cattle ranch outside Roswell, New Mexico.
On March 31, 1948, nine months later, Al Gore was born!




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