Amazed and appalled

[Olivier Goffart]

Le Friday 26 June 2009, Mike Hearn a écrit :
> As I was one of the original authors of the notifications spec,
> somebody pointed me to the recent discussions on xdg-list about it.
>
> When Christian and myself wrote this spec, it was to solve a problem
> the Linux desktop had: the only poptart implementation was KDE
> specific and so most of the apps we used or worked on (like Gaim and
> Wine) did not use them. The point of freedesktop was to solve that
> sort of problem, so we stepped up and spent our evenings and weekends
> doing exactly that. It was not a perfect solution. It did not include
> every possible feature, partly for reasons of time and partly for
> reasons of design.

You came right before KDE4 while we had to redesing everything anyway. And you 
deliberatively chosen not to listen to the KDE requirements. 
We specificaly said at the time that we would not implement that specification 
as it was.

> But it met the needs of many apps, they started to use the spec, and
> we thought the problem was solved. This was in line with the
> philosophy of the xdg founder, Havoc Pennington, who believed in
> deployed code above endless email threads.
>
> 5 years on, I just wanted to say that I am in awe at how much time has
> been wasted discussing the *name* of the *interface* of the
> *notifications system*.

Again!!! This specification is NOT a notification system!!! Or if it is, it is 
a VERY POOR one compared to the KDE needs.  Chosing a good name would have 
helped to define the scope of the speification, in order to avoid confusion.