we need a spec for handling mediums

[Thomas Leonard]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 10:14:58AM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-08-15 at 12:41, Thomas Leonard wrote:
> > "Implement the API primarily as a D-BUS interface. The client library
> > should be a thin convenience layer over the D-BUS interface."
> > 
> > This is fine for desktop infrastructure (like ROX-Session, gnome-session,
> > etc), but what about applications? Programs like Gimp, ROX-Filer, etc,
> > can't assume there is a D-BUS daemon running to handle their
> > configuration.
> > 
> > (This isn't a problem for RedHat, of course, since you'll start a D-BUS
> > session on login for all desktops, but upstream authors can't assume
> > everyone will be using RedHat.)
> 
> s/RedHat/Red Hat/g, please ;-)

Oops, too much WikiWiki...

> Anyhow, I don't think it's "Red Hat" - the point is "all sufficiently
> new distribution versions" - basically the idea is to add it as an
> expectation for UNIX desktops that the dbus daemon is running.

But that might change. What if someone makes an X-extension to fix the
problems that led to ICE and D-BUS in the first place, for example? I'm
worried about being tied to a particular technology (D-BUS) to solve a
very generic requirement (configuration). Of course, I haven't seen the
proposed API, but I'd want something that hides the fact it's using D-BUS,
even if D-BUS is easily the best implementation to use in practice.

> It's a trivial one-line addition to .Xclients (or whatever someone is
> using)

Very few users would be able to do that (or want to), and we can't do it
automatically. This essentially means waiting several years before
upstream authors can start requiring it (assuming all distros adopt D-BUS
right now).

> Realistically nobody is going to install a newer GTK+ or whatever than
> the one that comes with their distribution, either.

Well, if they're using zero install, they might get a newer version
without even noticing (if they run a program that needs it)...


-- 
Thomas Leonard			http://rox.sourceforge.net
tal00r at ecs.soton.ac.uk	tal197 at users.sourceforge.net
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