Re: Update: 2.2 Proposed Modules List

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman sun com>]

>Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 14:47:17 -0500
>From: Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>
>To: Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman sun com>
>Cc: desktop-devel-list gnome org
>Subject: Re: Update: 2.2 Proposed Modules List
>Content-Disposition: inline
>User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i
>
>On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 05:15:49PM +0000, Bill Haneman wrote:
>> Jeff mentioned:
>> 
>> >  - vte: Terminal widget with improved font, internationalisation and
>> >    accessibility support. Designed to replace libzvt.
>> 
>> Ah, lest someone think that means 'improved accessibility support' note that the 
>> accessibility support in vte is unusably incomplete at the moment, thus much inferior 
>> to libzvt's accessibility, which does work.  See bugzilla 95901
>> 
>
>I always have to point out that a working maintained terminal widget
>is the issue - we can fix bugs.

Right; but bugs don't fix themselves.  In theory we could have fixed the
zvt bugs too.... from the point of accessibility, vte is not
a 'working' terminal widget, though I take your point that it is
more actively maintained at present.

My point is that the current state of vte represents a large
(nearly complete) regression from libzvt from an accessibility 
viewpoint.  So we need to make sure this regression is dealt with
before we release a vte-based terminal.  Swapping one set of 
serious bugs for another is not in itself very satisfying.

I am not suggesting that we take a one-dimensional view;
i18n, performance, and accessibility are all important in a
terminal widget.  But if we recognize the concept of 'stopper bugs' 
then we need to identify them when mapping features to releases,
and put resources on them.

regards,

-Bill

>Patches to zvt terminal emulation don't even get applied, because no
>one knows how to evaluate them. This means the codebase is dead.
>
>Hinging the big picture on one bug or area of functionality is just
>wrongheaded.
>
>Havoc

------
Bill Haneman x19279
Gnome Accessibility / Batik SVG Toolkit
Sun Microsystems Ireland