Re: [OT] Re: Third draft (was Re: defs files)

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Guillaume Laurent <glaurent@worldnet.fr> writes: 
> Actually, when you released Sugar, I came about an inch close to do
> just that.
> 

Which was ridiculous, because Sugar and Gtk-- are clearly not the same
thing and lots of people like Gtk-- more.

If I want to experiment with a different wrapper then that is a
perfectly legitimate thing to do. I was thinking of doing some C++
code and I wanted something like Sugar.

I'm sorry but there are _tradeoffs_ and one wrapper, library, or
program can not be all things to all people.

> > GTK was not originally designed purely for language bindings and can't
> > be redesigned purely for that now. You have to understand that there
> > are tradeoffs. Something that is good for Gtk-- may be bad for other
> > reasons, including niceness of the C API, code complexity, backward
> > compatibility, code maintainability, memory/speed issues, etc., etc.
> 
> Seriously Havoc, don't you think I'm aware of all this ? :-)
>

Then why do you keep complaining about it?????? I do not understand
the hostility toward GTK+, GNOME, and the C bindings if you know this
stuff. Yesterday both you and Karl posted or mailed to me rants about
GTK and GNOME maintenance.
 
Especially since, as Karl points out, Gtk-- has 4K lines of manual
code and most of the other language bindings are _far_ larger and thus
_far_ more difficult to maintain, and only the Gtk-- maintainers are
complaining like this. Furthermore, you are complaining about slow
response time from people maintaining a couple hundred thousand lines
of library code, rather than several thousand lines. Give them a
break. There is a lot of code and there are lots of people other than
you throwing patches at GTK and gnome-libs.
  
Please try to be productive and helpful!

I am tired of reading the daily
GTK-GNOME-maintainers-dont-listen-to-us flame from you and
Karl. Seriously. It is just absurd. The fact that Gtk-- requires some
work is NOT our fault, for the reasons given above that you say you
are aware of. GTK is simply not written purely for Gtk--. There are
tradeoffs and the maintainers are simply unable to make every change
you might want. On the other hand they are happy to make changes when
possible (and if they have time or you send patches!).

Karl says that some GNOME people have been flaming you guys, and I do
apologize for that, and fixes for gnome-libs _will_ go in regardless
of those people. But flaming all the maintainers because some few
dudes have been flaming you will not help anything. Just flame those
dudes back and be done with it, or ignore them.

I am hoping that meeting you and Karl in Paris will help a lot to get
everyone feeling better, and I am looking forward to it.

> I'll keep that in mind, but I don't expect to have the time to look
> into the HEAD branch right now. However, your defs file spec is
> addressing many of the problems, and George has reached me for advice,
> so things are definitely looking up.
> 

That is good to hear. But please, at least file bug reports for
changes that you really want made; we'll go through the bug reports
before we freeze. If you don't tell us what to change then it won't
happen. And if it doesn't happen I do NOT want to hear about it after
we freeze the library. :-)

Thanks!

Havoc