Time for me to say something

[Daniel Stone]

Hi guys,
Sorry about the mail lag, I've been hella busy lately.

So, I guess I should say something. The reaction from the KDE side, as
best I can tell from kde-core-devel archives and various postings/IRC
messages everywhere, is that more clarification is needed. So, this mail
is just stepping through and clarifying various stuff, for the time
being.

Firstly, the platform is designed to be a collection of software to give
you a good baseline for a desktop. Basically, you can say "we
support/require/whatever freedesktop.org platform 2", and you can be
assured of certain features. Or something like that, anyway.

There also seems to be the impression that the platform is set in stone
and there's a conspiracy to force stuff on people. It's not. I'm not
here to dictate[1] - I'm here to consult, first. There are some very
core items I have decided upon, but the rest is open. The only core
items I have are xlibs, D-BUS and Cairo.

I also have some questions: where do people feel the relevance in the
platform lies? Which modules should be in? How often should releases be
made? et cetera.

OK, so here are the list of proposed modules:
  * xlibs:
    + freedesktop.org xlibs. Forked from XFree86 some time ago, working
      on merging in XFree86 changes between then and the license change.
      Not affected by the license change. Plans to remain with the same
      license. Work underway to trim down the size of codebase, open to
      new enhancements upon request. Recently released 1.0, most major
      distros plan for adoption at some stage.
    + http://xlibs.freedesktop.org
    + http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xlibs
  * xserver:
    + freedesktop.org X server. Completely different to XFree86 -
      formerly known as TinyX/KDrive. Has Damage and Composite
      extensions, but driver support really not ready for primetime. No
      release schedule as yet; more driver support is needed first.
    + http://xserver.freedesktop.org
    + http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xserver
  * D-BUS:
    + freedesktop.org IPC system. Written from the ground up, taking
      design inspirations from both DCOP and Corba. Quite lightweight,
      implements both session and system buses, making it usable for
      stuff like udev/HAL, while also being usable as a standard desktop
      IPC bus. Implements stuff like ACLs. Recently released 0.20, API
      is reasonably stable but still subject to change a little. Qt
      bindings available, some Mono bindings too. Next release not
      planned as yet - more contributors needed.
    + http://dbus.freedesktop.org
    + http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dbus
  * HAL:
    + freedesktop.org abstraction layer. Works hand-in-hand with D-BUS
      and udev. 0.2 is out, plans for 0.3 unknown.
    + http://hal.freedesktop.org
    + http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg ?
  * Cairo:
    + freedesktop.org SVG stuff. Implements a lot of 2D drawing
      thingies, and does lots of cool SVG stuff. Works with Xrender.
      Yes, I lack the graphical technical terms to describe this
      properly. C++/Qt bindings available. Cross-architecture output -
      currently only supports X11, but OpenGL/PDF support possible. No
      releases as yet, none really planned. I plan to examine this and
      look at what needs to be done for a release.
    + http://www.cairographics.org
    + http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/cairo
  * XDG/Startup-Notification/Systray/etc.
    + Various freedesktop.org standards. Every desktop should (and does,
      pretty much) support these.

There are more, which seem to be controversial, so I'll gether them and
start separate threads. Or, if anyone wants to start *separate* threads
on scrollkeeper/intltool, please feel free.

[1]: ... much.

-- 
Daniel Stone                                            <daniel at freedesktop.org>
freedesktop.org: powering your desktop                http://www.freedesktop.org
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