Re: Thoughts on GNOME 2.0

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Sat, Feb 17, 2001 at 11:02:43AM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> (Though as I've said several times, polishing libs until September
> MUST throw out either the user environment changes or the release
> date; I'm not clear from your mail which you would advocate throwing
> out?)

I think you are seeing this too black and white.  We can do all.  Perhaps not
in the same quantity.  Thisis not a binary operation, it's not all or none.
We should work on everything, however perhaps we should set a focus.  However
I still don't see how you will manage to "enforce" a focus since there is no
authority over gnome (thank god).  What we need is to discuss what needs to
be done, but we can't stop people from working on new features in the user
platform even if someone arbitrairly decides that the focus should be the
devel platform, and same in reverse.  I think the idea here should be:

1) Decide what are the biggest ills (not by such broad categories as yours, but
more fine grained).

2) convince people to work on those issues.

For example, in some places refining/adding to the devel platform might make
a lot of sense, in others, refining user interface might.  It needs to be
fine grained.  That is, someone should post a list of specific things that he
things needs to get done for 2.0, and then we should discuss their
priorities, and hopefully people will work on the ones with the highest
priority in such a manner that we can release 2.0 this year (which I think is
crucial).  What I'm saying is, let's not divide things into devel platform/ui
and pick one of those.  Let's divide things in specific tasks and pick those
that we can manage for 2.0.  Sometimes we can only manage part of some task,
which is quite ok as well.  For example say:

  Switch applications to using libfoo.

Well if we convert half the apps it's also good.  We don't have to go for all
or none here either.

Just because we do work on devel platform in some instances and the UI in
others, doesn't mean that we can't make the date.   We may not get a complete
overhaul of either done, but that is hardly something which I think should
happen anyway.

I thinkt he proposed list as stated in the previous mail was quite good and
far more specific then yours.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   The great masses of the people ... will more easily
   fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
                       -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", 1933