Menu spec update (summary; closure?)

[Joerg Barfurth]

Lennon,

I have to agree with Jeremy, that you miss the point here.

Lennon Cook schrieb:
> Joerg Barfurth wrote:
>> The problem is that it complicates things for users that simply want
>> newly installed applications to be in their menu.

> I would think that these people would often be using distro-provided
> tools for package management, so everything just working becomes the
> distros concern. Users who install non-distro packages usually have to
> put up with other things anyway.

We are talking here about an interface that allows *independent* 
developers to develop applications that integrate with the user's desktop.

In general these applications won't be available as distro packages. 
There are many reasons for this:

- Not all software is open source or even free to distribute. And there 
are valid reasons for that.
- Developers may prefer people to use their release (and refuse to 
support other versions).
- The 'get everything from the distro' model doesn't scale. There are a 
zillion applications out there, all over the world. No distro can 
repackage them all.

The distro's responsibility is to provide a distro-independent interface 
to their distro-specific functionality. So it is their cincern that 
everything just works, if developers use those interfaces correctly. But 
they can't possibly provide a custom adaptation of of every application 
there is to their distro.

> Therefore, this is realy only a problem for those of us who run Linux
>>From Scratch or similar. And given that LFS is specifically targeted
> at technically advanced users (ie, those for whom getting this to work
> would be a trivial task), that is moot anyway.
> 

Unfortunately even the mainstream distros provide too many different 
interfaces for small ISVs to track them all, particularly if those have 
to be multiplied by the number of free desktop flavors.

- Jörg

-- 
Joerg Barfurth           phone: +49 40 23646662 / x66662
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