Re: XML idea

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 7 Jan 2004, at 11:32, Helge Hess wrote:

> On 07.01.2004, at 11:09, richard@tiptree.demon.co.uk wrote:
> > > The extensions library is available for a looong time. Not sure why 
> > > we need a new "PortabilityKit" library.
> >
> > The problem with the extension library was that its copyright was not 
> > owned by the FSF, and I think FSF policy was that it should therefore 
> > not be distributed as part of GNUstep.
>
> Of course. Did someone ever talk with Ovidiu (which probably holds the 
> Copyright on most stuff) before rewriting everything
>  I'm pretty sure it would have not been an issue for him to assign 
> copyright.
> Sigh ...

I believe the issue of  getting the copyright assigned was looked into 
and there were idealogical reasons for the copyright holders not doing 
it.

> > For this reason, the base additions library was added to the base 
> > library, so extensions and portability issues could be addressed by 
> > code which (while clearly separated from the main base library source 
> > for clarity) would be available as part of the core distribution.
>
> Which is an excellent decision - something like GSXML really does not 
> belong into Foundation and was actually one of my major complains on 
> gstep-base ;-).
>
> But on the other side the question is whether Apple extensions always 
> belong into Foundation and not into Foundation-additions? I think it 
> is important that GNUstep makes a statement on this, so that I know 
> what classes I can safely use between Cocoa, gstep-base and 
> libFoundation.

If it's in additions, it's also in base ... since a build of the base 
library incorporates additions.
If it's in additions, you should be able to use it in MacOS-X either 
natively or by using the additions library.

I really don't think you can produce a definitive statement on new 
MacOS-X features ... they keep changing.
Some we might want to incorporate directly into the base library 
(probably most changes to existing classes
and new classes we think are really well designed), others we might put 
in the additions library for compatibility
but not treat as 'core'.
In other words, I think that if/when we get contributions of MacOS-X 
classes we don't particularly like, we could
put them in the additions library, and document them as unsupported or 
semi-supported ... meaning that the
core developers would give low priority to their support.