Re: complete system or individual components?

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel nuclecu unam mx>]

> There I discovered that the source had been changed so that it was
> unable to compile without most of GNOME being installed.

I think this is an exageration.  In the case of `ee', "most of GNOME
being installed" means installing the gnome-libs package.

> GNOME and other desktop environments should not be clones of CDE but
> rather a set of programs that share the same look and feel.

We are here not just to provide applications that look the same, we
are here to provide a desktop environment that will allow free-unix to
be usable for normal computer users as a desktop machine.  The desktop
is owned by Windows, we want to change that. 

This requires us to: have applications that can talk to other
applications; We need those applications to be fully
internationalized; We need to provide drag and drop functionality
where possible; We want to provide a common user interface (bits of
this are implemented/handled by gnome-libs).

Now, lets enter the fabulous world of buzzword compliance (which shows
that I got a book on ole2 to read last week): we want GNOME to provide
automation;  a compound document system;  in-place editing;
component-oriented software and other niceties.  

No, we are not trying to make a minimal system, if you want a minimal
system you probably want to look at MGR or one of Plan-9's windowing
systems.  

> but "little" programs such as EE should not be dependent upon a
> massive set of stuff being installed.

In this context, I can deduce that "massive" is defined as 192k of
shared libraries.

> but if somebody wants a single program, they should be able to do
> that without gobs of external libraries being installed on their
> systems.

"gobs" here is defined as two.  Yes, we require more libraries than
hello-world.c.  Sorry to dissapoint you.

Miguel.