What happened to my panel?

[Patrick Wiseman]

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 at 1:15pm, Bryan J. Smith wrote:

:On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 10:16 -0400, Patrick Wiseman wrote: 
:> Well, that's the kind of lack of consideration I expect from KDE or GNOME 
:> developers, not from Xfce.  Oh well, I guess I'll figure it out.
:
:On Sun, 2006-06-18 at 17:05 +0200, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
:> That makes no sense at all. GNOME and KDE have lots of developers 
:> (although probably not so much on specific key modules), and have a much 
:> larger community, so it is more likely they will have the resources to 
:> do this right.
:
:I really don't like the attitude Patrick portrayed in general.  You
:don't have to say one open source project is great by bashing others --
:or say one project is "being like the others" which are then demonized.
:It's counter-productive and its the "versus" marketing non-sense that we
:left with the commercial software world.

Have YOU seen the new file selection dialog that's been foisted on us by 
the GNOME folks?  And I don't even USE GNOME, but they apparently control 
GTK now.  Sorry if you don't like my "attitude" but the fact is that some 
opensource projects ARE better and more responsiive than others.  Xfce I 
consider to be among the best in that regard, which is why I've already 
apologised (twice) for my venting about the change which I hadn't seen 
coming.  Comparing some opensource projects unfavorably with others 
doesn't demonize anyone.  As I said, some are BETTER than others.

[...]

:> Anyway, the new panel is a complete rewrite that was required to provide 
:> much-needed features like multiple panels, drag and drop support for 
:> adding/moving/removing items and protection against crashing plugins by 
:> making them external processes.
:
:I'm still running XFCE 4.2.3 on Fedora Core 5.  I'm sure Fedora Core 6
:will probably ship with XFCE 4.4.x, assuming it is released.
:
:One thing I'd like to see is some uniformity between how the panel and
:taskbar are configured.  Right now the configuration dialogs for
:location, size, etc... are completely different -- even though they are
:basically "two bars that can be moved around".

Then you'll be happy with 4.4, where the configuration dialogs are the 
same.  You can even add whole new panels - it's rather cool.

:> Given the available resources it was basically impossible to provide 
:> proper conversion from the old configuration to the new configuration. 
:> Mind you, I'm not sure it would have been easy to do this at all, even 
:> with enough resources.
:> Does this mean I should not have done the rewrite? I'd like to think the 
:> advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but I certainly could be wrong.
:
:If there is a critical mass of developers, someone can write a
:conversion script that takes the old panel configuration files and gives
:you a base for the new news.  That's what community developed software
:is all about.
:
:If it's not important enough of an itch for someone to scratch, then
:anyone who thinks it is should step up and do so.  Otherwise, be happy
:we have what we have and don't play "versus" games or "demonize" the
:goodwill of any project.

Enough of the self righteousness!  If I think one opensource project sucks 
and another blows, I'll say so.  Sorry you don't like it.  There's a 
_reason_ I use Xfce.  I consider it BETTER than GNOME or KDE, for lots of 
reasons (leanness principally).  To say so is not to "demonize" anyone.

Patrick