hey, remember the platform?

[Havoc Pennington]

On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 14:09 -0400, Chris Lee wrote:
> 
> Not "all projects" should be using it, but if you don't have support
> from both KDE and GNOME that's kind of a showstopper in my book.
> 

For Cairo that just doesn't make sense to me. It's useful to everyone
else (including third parties) and there's no harm if KDE doesn't use
it. Assuming of course 1.0 and adoption.

KDE is in a unique situation here since it uses Qt and Qt already has a
vector graphics solution. Using Cairo is probably stupid, and that's
cool, and I don't see why you guys should have to defend yourselves.

If I were writing a Swing app I'd use Java2D instead of Cairo, also.

> And unfortunately, in spite of the good intentions of many of the
> involved developers, I have no doubt that if we *do* let any software
> not being used by both desktops into the platform, there WILL be
> pressure on the desktop not using it to adopt it because otherwise
> OMFGWTF THEY ARE REINVENTING TEH WEELZ.

To some extent I see this argument, but also when Aaron and others say
this I find myself thinking "OK, so some people say stupid stuff; just
tell them they are stupid and roll on" ;-)

Basically I don't think we should base decisions on the opinions of
random bystanders. If core developers are getting all OMFGWTF, that's
important. If Slashdot kiddies are getting excited, well, yay for them.

Let's put it this way. In my capacity as maintainer, if you mail me and
say "I saw something stupid on freedesktop and you should use it" I'll
just say "it's stupid -> WONTFIX" and think nothing more about it. But
granted, some people are nicer than I am ;-) and I also love to reinvent
the wheel. I did after all write a window manager.

Havoc