Re: goad status

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel gnu org>]

> It might meet your specific requirement, but I wouldn't put it in. In the
> long term we're going to need a complete solution, rather than just a
> change to avoid using the X display. Your proposed solution doesn't take
> into account networkability at all - you're not thinking about what
> happens when people run programs on different computers in the same GNOME
> session.

Sadly, the problem of a distributed system is hard.  And delaying code
waiting for a solution that will not come or that will not be
practical, nor easy to manage nor address 99% of the problems is
wrong.

I think that the X-based system is wrong at this point for a number of
reasons.  I think both X shows these weaknesses (problems with
incompatible Xresources, problems with fonts and expected fonts) but I
think gnorba is also starting to show some of those problems.

Here is why I think the distributed system does not make much sense:

     1. It is far from perfect: We have seen its problems in the form
        of applications not starting up because the name server is
        wrong (can provide test case if you want).

     2. There is no easy way to solve it.

     3. It is a feature used by a fraction of the population.  This is
        something most users will not need nor care about.

     4. Those who need or care about can easily go trough the extra
        hop (setting up ssh proxies for gnorba files for example).

So I believe that a more pragmatic approach (for example, killing the
X dependency on libgnorba entirely) will be good.  

I do have a very heterogenous network myself and I find it hard to
even use these distributed features efectivelly.  It is a pain to set
them up and they barely work. 

Lets not fool ourselves.

I would take this patch any time.

best wishes,
Miguel.