Proposed: libpcre

[Brad Hards]

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 10:06 am, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-08-01 at 02:46, Brad Hards wrote:
> > On Sun, 1 Aug 2004 15:18 pm, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > > Maybe this points out that the freedesktop.org platform should be
> > > limited to things that need to be shared for interoperability and/or
> > > consistent user experience across apps.
> >
> > Serious question: what does "consistent user experience mean"?
>
> The various UI guidelines out there are full of examples:
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/
An example doesn't provide scoping, which is really what this is about. In 
terms of the Gnome HIG, which parts are supposed to be addressed (in part or 
in full) by the platform?
Section 1 - Intro - I can see that the accessability / i18n / l10n could be, 
but platform doesn't have anything that covers those yet.
Section 2 - Desktop integration. The menu spec, shared mime database and maybe 
some kind of shared notification are probably worthy objectives here.
Section 3 - Windows- nothing that platform can really do - this is a toolkit 
issue
Section 4 - Menus - nothing that platform can really do - this is a toolkit / 
application issue
Section 5 - Toolbar - nothing that platform can really do - this is a 
toolkit / application issue
Section 6 - Controls - nothing that platform can do - this is mostly a toolkit 
issue
Section 7 - Feedback - nothing that platform can really do - this is mostly an 
application issue
Section 8 - Visual Design - not much that platform can do. Perhaps some kind 
of shared definition of colour / palette, and the fonts issues could be in 
scope.
Section 9 - Icons. Maybe some scope for platform in terms of shared icons?
Section 10 - User input - not much platform can do. Maybe some longer term 
work on CJK input?
Section 11 - Language - not much platform can do.
Section 12 - Checklists - nothing platform can do.

So I'm not really sure how you intend that platform can provide a better 
user-level experience

> I'm not really interested in reductio ad absurdum, clearly all the lines
> are blurry. I just think it's a mistake to be pulling in things that are
> only very loosely desktop-related. Also, the first release of
> freedesktop.org should be very conservative about how much to include.
You need to be careful about providing so little that you aren't doing 
anything.

> My definition is that it's a "substrate for platforms" or "backend for
> toolkits" - in other words it should basically contain the *shared*
> dependencies of Qt, GTK+, XUL, WINE and other common desktop toolkits.
Then on that basis, libpcre is a reasonable part of the substrate.

> In other words, I'm often not expecting anyone to code to
> freedesktop.org libraries directly, or exclusively; the fact that we
> won't include a toolkit is the most obvious example.
substrate for development or substrate for users? Perl is required to build 
lots of applications, but isn't used in many.

> But I also don't think we should include things like an ODBC-style
> database layer, a scripting language, an IDE, or whatever. Let's stick
> to our core competency.
SQLlite is emerging as a common dependency...

> http://ometer.com/DesktopCon2004.sxi has some notes I presented at
> DesktopCon
Interesting slides, but not very definitive about scope or goals. In fact, 
almost careful to avoid annoying people ;-) That consistent user experience 
is pretty difficult without a common toolkit, theming or not.

Brad
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