Official protest against bug 1060 / was: Re: Away for a few days..

[Roland Mainz]

Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> > i am in sympathy with roland's official protest, but was not in aposition to
> > argue the details alone.
> >
> > I believe this is a very serious issue, and should not be dismissed on the
> > grounds of actions on the wrangler's calls.
> >
> > it is a bad precedent to set, in my opinion.
> >
> > you may also all recall that i was concerned on those calls to guarantee
> > that this issue was not closed by any immediate actions.
> >
> > i cannot post to the fdo lists, therefore I am writing to the board list,
> > but copying alan coopersmith, who is a member of the architecture group.
> >
> > if roland sends me a telephone number, i can discuss with him directly from
> > ludwigsburg.
>
> I know I agreed to it with great reluctance, and believe others did as
> well, because we were not able to discuss it with anyone who knew the code
> and its details since Roland was unavailable and we did not know if he
> would be back before the release. 

Why was the backout then this close before the release ? The originally
commit of XawPrintShell was made shortly after the tree was opened. Any
there were _MONTHS_ for complains and debates. And the change was
---->WIDELY<---- annouced. It's hardly imaginable that people are THAT
deaf and blind. xx@@@!!!

> I believe that now that he is back
> we should discuss this more, though it is dangerously close to the release
> date to be making changes.  We understood there were various alternatives
> to keep everyone happy, but no one available had the time or knowledge of
> the code to do more than back it out so that the release work could continue.
> The timing of this issue just worked against everyone here.   It highlights
> that we need to get people more involved in watching and testing the CVS
> tree through the entire cycle, not just in the weeks leading up to a release,
> so that if disagreements like this pop up they can be solved when there is
> still time for both sides to present their arguments and proposals and come
> to a solution agreeable to both sides.
> 
> As I remember there are two arguments against this change:
>    - Some people want the ability to build without Xprint support, which
>      they have had in previous releases.

I have nothing against turning off that people can disable the Xprint
server side - but we are talking abiut the Xprint _client_ side
extension library - a piece of code, 25kB on x86 and _mandatory_ for X11
installations in these days. Sure, you can turn it off in your private
build - with the result that lots of applications don't run.

>    - Many people consider Xaw to be legacy code that should not be
>      enhanced further, since doing so encourages use when we should
>      be discouraging it.  (Though no one was so much in favor of
>      discouraging Xaw that they were volunteering to port all the Xaw
>      apps in the tree to a newer toolkit.)


Erm. _WHO_ decided that libXaw is legacy code ? I thought the new X.org
Foundation is an _open_ organisation where people are allowed to
continue development on any piece of code.
At least my plans for libXaw are more directed in continuting
development on libXaw - which means: Better font support, print support,
accessibility support (e.g. making it 508 compliant) etc. And creating a
library on top of libXaw which provides more complex sets of dialogs
(file, font, print, list selection etc.).

> There was also discussion about adding apps such as xmore to the tree when
> the long-term goal of many people is to break the X.Org tree into many small
> trees, not make the monolithic tree even bigger so that modularization requires
> even more work, but that did not go anywhere beyond a general agreement that
> we should think about ressurecting the old "contrib" tree for things that are
> useful, but not required to be part of the core X distribution.

"xmore" is primarly the "carrier" for new libXaw development stuff
(right now it is the home of the print dialog, next step is the file
picker...).

----

Bye,
Roland

-- 
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