Re: [Gnome-print] Re: GnomeFont state of affairs

[Wolfgang Sourdeau <wolfgang ultim net>]

>>>>> In article
>>>>> <Pine.LNX.4.21.0006171506420.4249-100000@localhost.localdomain>,
>>>>> Lauris Kaplinski <lauris@kaplinski.com> writes:

    >> Both goals could be achieved together. When GNOME will be totally integrated
    >> in the GNU system (which would be a way of separate GNU from UNIX, for the
    >> better), the GNOME libraries could become as important as the C library.

    Lauris> Still, at the current stage of development Gnome has chosen to support
    Lauris> proprietary systems too. Either such support has to be dropped, or
    Lauris> separate glue libraries have to be written for those, or we need political
    Lauris> decision that now it is the time of other vendors to emulate GNU, not of
    Lauris> GNU to try being compatible with others.

I don't think it will be that much of a problem. Take for example the
Xview framework from Sun. Gnome is just another framework.
If vendors want to include Gnome, I don't think it will be such an
integration problem. It will probably be even simpler since there
would be less libraries to take care of.

    Lauris> Modular system is just easier to upgrade and modify. GNU (is Not Unix) at
    Lauris> all, so it should be trivial to port Gnome to some future architecture,
    Lauris> having very different C library.

Well, this is a design decision which has to be taken.
But for the moment, GNOME is dependent on a few specific libraries.

    Lauris> This needs the aforementioned political decision.
    Lauris> Also the GNU projects includes people with very different backgrounds and
    Lauris> experience lists. For many hacking some mega-library is simply too hard to
    Lauris> start with - gettings hands dirty with some little thing is much easier
    Lauris> and the possibility of breaking other things is much smaller.
    Lauris> Just imagine idea changing some function behaviour slightly in libc - I
    Lauris> would dare not to do/experiment with it just to see, what happens. I would
    Lauris> be forced to study most of C library, to completely understand its
    Lauris> functioning etc. If hacking libgnome, I can at least be sure, my console
    Lauris> apps will continue working. Changing libc requires carefully set up build
    Lauris> environment, at least. etc.

I don't think you should worry about breaking socket or bind if you
modify printf.
What I mean is, as an object framework, Gnome can be separated in
small parts, independent from each other. And for this matter, the
structure of the source directories could be organized following that
logic.
Btw, the glibc source code is actually organized in small parts in
which is it easy to dig in.

All in all, my point-of-view is more practical than political.
Although I do assume that GNOME is an important part of the GNU system
(which doesn't mean it couldn't be adapted to fit in other systems
such as the free BSD's).


Wolfgang