Re: KDE Interop [Was: D-BUS background]

[Zack Rusin <zackrat speakeasy net>]

On Friday 28 February 2003 18:55, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Havoc Pennington">
> > Depending on how things turn out, we may leave the official GNOME
> > solution as CORBA - and use D-BUS only for some shared specs with
> > KDE, for broadcasts, and/or for the systemwide bus. The code isn't
> > all written so time will tell.
> >
> > I'm not working on D-BUS with the assumption that GNOME will use
> > it; I need it for the systemwide bus case anyhow.
>
> So, from a devil's advocate viewpoint [1], why do we need to work
> hard on interoperability with KDE? How will deep interop enhance
> GNOME's place "in the market"?

Hey, first of all our official position on D-BUS is that we don't have 
one ;) Personally (again, not speaking on behalf of KDE) I love the 
idea and think it has bright future. 
Standardized message bus would not only profit desktop environments as 
almost everyone here seems to think. This goes beyond KDE and GNOME. 
System wide daemon sending messages whenever a new device is connected, 
screensaver app sending messages whenever a screensaver is about to 
start... There's so many places one could use that thing.

And why would you want an interoperability? Here's an example: lets say 
you use an email client and  want to open a new contact editor for the 
vcard that came with an email to store the contact in your addressbook 
(whichever your preferred one might be). Now lets say we agree that our 
address book interface will containt a message like 
"org.freedesktop.AddressBook.NewContact" that takes the vcard as a 
string as the argument. You send that message and whatever addressbook 
you use it will take over (and KAddressBook is really good ;) ). No 
code duplication in the email client and we have an interdesktop 
addressbook sharing. As you can imagine the permutations of the above 
template are infinite.

We (KDE) do have a great and a working message bus, but we still 
consider D-BUS a hugely interesting development with an infinite number 
of possible uses and IMHO you're (general statement, not replying to 
your email Jeff :) ) judging the work of Havoc, Anders and other D-BUS 
contributors a little bit too harsh. Some of you seem to be 
disappointed that they don't spend more time on more immediate GNOME 
tasks, some that D-BUS doesn't use CORBA and some don't like it for 
some others, unidentified reasons and the bottom line that not one of 
you is required to work on it or even use it and when the time comes 
our (now, speaking for D-BUS developers, hopefully no one will mind ) 
hope is that we will be able to prove to you that D-BUS is the best 
thing since sliced bread.

Zack Rusin

-- 
Every man for himself, all in favour say "I"