The future of Xfce (or beating the Gtk3 horse to death)

[Liviu Andronic]

Dear all,
After reading a couple of horror stories on the evolution of Gtk3 (and
Gnome 3), I'm once again pondering the likely future of Xfce.
http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/opinion/a-linux-conspiracy-theory
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/gnome-is-simply-losing-its-grasp/3834

If those stories hold even remotely true, it seems that Gtk3 minor
releases follow hand in hand with Gnome3 releases, including
(Apple-style-) breaking of 3rd party applications on each new release.
Some even go to the extremes of saying: “GTK 3 isn’t a reliable API.
Maybe it should be called libgnome instead… I genuinely get the
feeling that GTK 3.4 is developed for GNOME 3.4, that it doesn’t
really matter if it breaks things and that we’re not supposed to use
it outside of GNOME.” This eerily recalls me Apple-related horror
stories.

So if Gtk3 indeed evolves to become incompatible with Xfce by having
hitherto standard functionality removed, what would Xfce do? Stick
with Gtk2, as remotely likely as it seems right now? Radically change
direction and switch to Enlightenment (
http://www.enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/efl ), as Auke once
suggested and especially since Enlightenment seems more compatible
with the Xfce philosophy than Gtk3 given the direction in which the
latter is currently heading?

I know that this has already been discussed on the list in the past,
but it seems to me that Gtk3 just comes back hunting us. Regards,
Liviu


-- 
Do you know how to read?
http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
Do you know how to write?
http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail