On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 04:02:00PM +0100, Leonard Ritter wrote: > life is like a rollercoaster ;) > > what's you suggestion to fix the problem? what exactly is the problem? i think there are two separate cases: revolutionary next-gen systems, and shorter term evolutionary improvements. In the first case, the main problem seems to be that no one has any good ideas. At least not good enough to break compatibility. I'm happy to see a time of relative stability. People can really get to know the system, push it to its limits and actually write some decent applications. I would have thought that any big change would have to involve OpenGl graphics hardware. (And by this I mean enhancement of existing 2d drawing functions, not walkthrough desktops). Progress is being made here at the X and window manager level, and once that is stable, maybe it'll be clear what the next step is. On the other hand, proprietary graphics acceleration could all turn out to be a huge dead-end! In terms of evolutionary improvements, I'm happy to see things happening slowly but surely, and the mistakes of the past being corrected. One major shift is the redoing of functions that were implemented incorrectly at the "Desktop" level. Positive developments include cross-toolkit IPC with dbus, the replacement of gnome-vfs with one at the glib level, the disembowelling of proprietary desktop soundservers, etc. In terms of Gnome, well, should we just come to terms with the fact that Gnome is a disaster area? Perhaps its demise will have the benefits of bringing us such goodies as a general purpose "Display Manager", general purpose session manager, mime icon system, application configuration system, more variety in the WM area etc. Unless these functions are devolved - as difficult as that may be in the short term - developers will continue to be frustrated at the difficulty in penetrating the inevitable wall of conservatism and indecisiveness necessary for the stability of such an established monolithic pile of cards. Perhaps Gnome was always doomed? Lets face it, it doesn't have the gloss to tie it together as a finished product - in fact it doesn't even have the basic apps. It doesn't have a native browser, (due to the problems of Mozilla architecture) it doesn't have a file manager (Nautilus is not a file manager), and it doesn't have a nice terminal. And inevitably it doesn't have the "finishers" - the people with the most important yet time-consuming and unrewarding job for a desktop intended for non-geek use - the artists and technical project managers. He he, maybe the above paragraph is a little harsh. I think there's a point in there somewhere though :-) In terms of Gtk, it does seem that one of Gtk's problems is that it is "good enough". Its a very powerful system, even if very frustrating in some areas. No doubt Gtk-3 will have an improved layout system, but its a really difficult task to come up with a system that can satisfy everyone without it being too big. At the moment the people with the both the vision, and cross-discipline technical expertise to carry off a major and worthwhile api change don't seem to be in evidence anywhere. The loss of some funding from Red Hat will presumably mean that minor upgrades get delayed. I'm thinking of things like deciding on which of the already-written gtk canvases (such as Goocanvas) to use as a replacement for the old GnomeCanvas, additions to the theming system, better html support etc. (Perhaps even a themable rotary widget for us audio guys!) Meanwhile, composite widgets continue to get added. While the fiasco over the file dialogue, for example, is frustrating, the basis is there for someone to step up and improve it. And maybe I should just mention Freedesktop.org. Some good work being done there (some funded by Red Hat, even). And lets not forget the many other much improved libraries such as cairo and popplar. Is Eugenia a troll? Sure. I think she's right in this case, but that's no bad thing. I got a bit disturbed after reading her "wake-up call", but after some reflection, I feel positive. Know your strengths! Audio is a another matter, but that's a different discussion altogether:-) Regards -- Tim Orford
