Re: Shipping Vera with 2.4

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

> > > > Take "recent documents" feature of GNOME 2.2 - it completely sucks
> > > > because of the big-three end user apps Mozilla, OpenOffice, and
> > > > Evolution, exactly zero of them use the "recent documents" feature.
> > > > There's a file-format-based spec for recent files now, and I guess
> > > > people are adding OpenOffice support, but it would have been much
> > > > easier with a D-BUS style system.
> > > 
> > > 	I believe you confuse adoption with simplicity. Persuading umpteen
> > > projects to link to yet another heap of IPC is easier than parsing /
> > > writing a simple XML file ?
> > > 
> > 
> > gnome 2.2 is a quite new piece of software that not all that many ship yet -
> > it is extremely unsuprising nobody has bothered to offer support for new features
> > found in it yet.
> > 
> 
> Not the point at all. The point is about what the recent files spec
> had to contain (how hard it was to design and write as an
> interoperable feature). As Alex says, you have to handle locking, file
> change notification, file format, etc.
> 
> If you had shared IPC, then you could have just specified a message to
> add a new file, and a broadcast when the list changed, and that's it.

I am not sure this would be a solution workable for people logged into
multiple hosts that happen to share their home directory for example. 

Having a good file locking protocol for your home directory is still a
good idea, and I believe that a bus-based setup for recent-documents
will break for most sites that use NFS-like system for home directories.

Miguel.