Re: Freedesktop.org specs

[Fred Kiefer]

Adam Fedor wrote:
> On Monday, November 24, 2003, at 11:45 PM, Alex Perez wrote:
> > Also, I know that in the past some folks has mentioned their intention to
> > at least attempt to adhere to some of the freedesktop.org specifications,
> > and I would like to implore those folks to make official contact with the
> > guys over at the freedesktop.org mailing lists so they know we're alive

If somebody did mention fredesktop.org it must have been me. I keep on 
making those resolutions, but rarely find the time to fullfill them. Ok, 
the pasteboard interaction should now be almost up to the standard, at 
least for text. XDnD does not work, due to a concept mismatch, GNUstep 
expects the pastebaord server to handle the data exchange, whereas XDnD 
puts this burden on the specific process. I remember having implemented 
desktop entries some years ago, but the standard will have changed in 
the meantime. And I added standard thumbnail handling just recently. And 
some of the EWMH extensions are also there. Overall we are not fareing 
that bad, still we could do better.

> > and kicking. I had a couple hour long conversation with the folks over in
> > #freedesktop on irc.freenode.org, and they need to be hearing from us if
> > we truly do plan on supporting or implementing some of their specs. The
> > general opinion was "Since GNUstep developers have never contacted us,
> > they are not using or planning on using any of our specs" which I don't
> > really think is the case, but it was their collective opinion
> > nevertheless.

Yes, I always wanted to join their mailing lists. It is only that I 
barely find time to follow the discussions on our own lists. I do it 
right in a minute, or just a little bit later. But I surely wont join 
any IRC, this was kids stuff even back than, when I was at university.

> Wow, I was thinking it all was pretty much controlled by GNOME/KDE, so 
> it's nice that they at least know we exist :-)

There has been a GNUstep entry on their pages for quite some time. There 
 just was no official contact.

> > To re-iterate, what are the plans for freedesktop.org standards adoption?
> > We don't live in a vacuum, and frankly I'd really love to see GNUstep and
> > any WM's written for GNUstep play nice with other apps and such.
Plans, there a few, but will there be time? What about not asking for my 
or anybody elses plans but making your own and working on them? Isnt 
this a free software project?

> >
> Perhaps we should put up a Buzzwords wiki page so we can record which 
> buzzwords we conform to. Perhaps we could even get Freedesktop to 
> include some of our ideas into a standard.

The later is perhaps the more important thing. If we could persuade them 
to give some more meaning to the window level they already have defined 
GNUstep applications would be able to interact better with the window 
managers following these standards.