Re: Outsanding GLib/GTK+ API bugs

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman sun com>]

>Here's what I said when the issue first came up in April:
>
>   At this point, I don't believe that adding multiple-display support
>   is a feasible goal for GTK+-2.0.0. As you can see, the list of
>   API issues that we still have to deal with at this point, at what
>   we've been targetting hard as our API freeze date, is quite long.
>
>   I'd certainly like to discuss your proposal with you at at GUADEC to
>   make sure that we can get it in as soon as possible after
>   GTK+-2.0.0. And if there are any minor changes that need to be made
>   now to make this posssible, we probably can slip them into GTK+-2.0.0.
>
>   Unfortunately, I simply have not, up to now, had the time to go over
>   your interfaces in detail :-(, so without regard to issue of 
>   debugging, trying it out in practice, making sure it makes some
>   sense for all ports, I just don't think we have enough time to
>   do the final refinements to get something we sure that is right
>   long term.
>
>   As always, you have to draw a line somewhere so you can move on
>   to the next release. Rest assured, there are many, many things
>   that I wish I could do for this release, but are not feasiable
>   for GTK+-2. at this point.
>
>This is the same message I tried to convey at GUADEC, and since
>then. It seems that I didn't succeed in this. 

Hi Owen:

This is indeed what you said before GUADEC.  However it is *not* what Erwann and I 
came away from GUADEC.  Our (mutual, we thought) understanding at the end of our 
GUADEC meetings was that you were much more comfortable with the proposals, having 
seen them, and Erwann worked to expedite making all the changes you requested 
immediately upon arrival.  For our part, we tried to clarify the point that 
multi-head was more than a must-have for 2.0, from an enterprise perspective - it 
was essential if Gnome is to be put forward as the 'standard' enterprise desktop.

>I'm very aware that it's now 5 months past GUADEC and we still
>aren't completely frozen. But this is _not_ a reason why we can
>say "well, one month more or less won't hurt, let's just slip
>feature X in.".

We know that you, like us, have a lot on your plate.  But the re-emergence of the 
suggestion to punt multi-head has come as a shock to us, as Erwann has been 
awaiting feedback from the GTK+ team for quite awhile now without mention of it.

I still think we should identify what the real risks and issues are and see what 
can still be done to address them.  At this point, since the proposal is to 
finalize the few external API changes required now, and add the multi-head support 
compatibly, the API freeze doesn't seem to be the issue here.  If the changes 
truly are compatible, they can be backed out at any time prior to Gnome-2.0 Beta 
should they prove unstable. 

Regards,

Bill

>
>Regards,
>                                        Owen

------
Bill Haneman x19279
Gnome Accessibility / Batik SVG Toolkit
Sun Microsystems Ireland