[11] in Athena User Interface
Re: Athena User Interface Project seeks advice
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dan Winship)
Mon May 1 14:49:54 2000
Message-Id: <200005011851.OAA26799@twelve-monkeys.helixcode.com>
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Cc: aui@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 01 May 2000 13:53:14 EDT."
<Ut3QG_EGgE6e1=siM0@mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 01 May 2000 14:51:17 -0400
From: Dan Winship <danw@helixcode.com>
> It seems like we have two very risky choices here:
>
> Work with 1.0, except that the panel, and the file manager, and
> possibly other major stuff will be completely rewritten by the time we
> are ready to do real work.
>
> Work with 2.0, except that we have no clue how much effort it is to get
> the shifting sands of 2.0 to produce a reasonable prototype for
> acceptance testing.
No. When you say "1.0" and "2.0", you're muddling three different
things:
- GNOME 1.0 core libraries (gnome-libs 1.x/gtk 1.2) vs GNOME 2.0
core libraries (gnome-libs 2.x/gtk 1.4)
- support libraries with cool features that exist only in 2.0
- The apps which ship with GNOME 1.0 vs the apps which ship with
GNOME 2.0
If you are hacking on existing apps, then the risk is as you stated,
although Thomas seems to feel it's not as hopeless as you think.
For new apps you're creating, the majority of the code you depend on
will be in gnome-libs and gtk, and you absolutely don't want to be
working with the unreleased versions of those (even Nautilus and
Evolution don't), so there's no risk involved there. If you decide
from the start "we won't use any of the new-in-2.0 support libraries",
then there's no risk there either, you just deny yourself some cool
new stuff.
From Thomas's mail:
> Changing the panel does not mean that old configs can't be trivially
> changed, or that old applets would fail to work. I think we are
> supposed to be able to rely on old applets continuing to work.
I was assuming you were talking about changes to the panel itself, not
creating new applets. Yes, if you're writing applets, build them to
the 1.0 specs, and they'll work fine in 2.0.
-- Dan
