ANNOUNCE: xfce4-panel 4.15.1 released (Andrzej)

[Andrzej]

Hi Simon,

There was never a consensus regarding switching to CSD, and will never 
be, because:

- Xfce is an X11 desktop and as such it has to work and look well with 
other X11-compatible components. Removing or interfering with the 
third-party WM's ability to handle window decorations makes Xfce 
non-compliant X11 desktop. This is not a hypothetical issue. Until 
recently even Xfwm4 didn't support CSD correctly and there is no lack of 
WM's that will have problems with it because they handle windows 
differently. Xfce as a small project strove for being standard 
compliant, not pushing our way of doing things onto others. Basically, 
for as long as we use X11 SSD is non-optional, whether we like it or not.

- Community is split - some users strongly prefer CSD, many others 
strongly prefer SSD. The latter part includes new users who have 
switched to Xfce because of similar changes implemented in other 
projects. If you find my email harsh, wait for them.

You've mentioned discussions and voting - the only thing I've seen was a 
couple of posts pretty much announcing your decision, where critical 
opinions (mine included) were swept under the carpet because of "limited 
manpower". This is not how things work - if you want a feature - you 
have to find manpower to implement and maintain it. Controversial 
features are particularly tricky - say there was a vote (was it?) and 
30% (just an example) of people voted against the feature. Are you 
really going to throw them under the bus to provide eye candy to the 
remaining 70%?

To be clear - CSD is a valuable feature, even if mostly concerning 
aesthetics, and many Xfce/Xfwm4 users will like it. I'm against the 
current non-optional implementation, not having CSD at all. Just add a 
user accessible option for opting in/out and be done with that.

Cheers,

Andrzej


On 15/01/2020 17:45, Simon Steinbeiss wrote:
> Hi Andrzej,
>
> the switch to client side decorations was discussed and voted on in 
> the currently active core development team, put publicly on the 
> roadmap for 4.16 [0] and announced in a blog post [1].
> We didn't take this decision lightly and there was a lot of 
> discussion, but in the end we agreed on taking this step - including 
> not making this optional (in parts because of the very limited 
> manpower the project has at hand). I stand by this common decision.
>
> While I appreciate your concern, I don't appreciate you offering to 
> revert my work on this agreed-upon roadmap item. This is not in the 
> collaborative spirit I learned when joining the project and I hope you 
> reconsider - especially as this is not the result of an isolated 
> design decision taken by an individual.
>
> Finally (and more technically speaking), the bigger chunk of change is 
> in libxfce4ui [2], not the panel. So even if you were to revert those 
> two tiny commits, it would not change the overall usage of CSD in the 
> panel's dialogs.
>
> Cheers
> Simon
>
>
> [0] https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.16/roadmap/general_ui and 
> https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.16/roadmap/general_ui/csd
> [1] 
> https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2019/10/19/xfce-4-15-development-phase-starting/
> [2] 
> https://git.xfce.org/xfce/libxfce4ui/commit/?id=40743c4158f4f4d2357dd72326a915a969f20f94 
> (and the following commits)
>
>
>     Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2020 08:21:01 +0000
>     From: Andrzej <andrzejr at xfce.org <mailto:andrzejr at xfce.org>>
>     To: xfce at xfce.org <mailto:xfce at xfce.org>
>     Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: xfce4-panel 4.15.1 released
>     Message-ID: <96b2113b-36e6-cf5d-3588-6679cdbaf486 at xfce.org
>     <mailto:96b2113b-36e6-cf5d-3588-6679cdbaf486 at xfce.org>>
>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
>     On 14/01/2020 00:11, Simon Steinbeiss wrote:
>     > - tic-tac-toe: Fix XfceTitledDialog with CSD
>     > - add-item dialog: Fix XfceTitledDialog with CSD
>
>     Please revert these changes or make them configurable in UI and
>     off by
>     default. Or I will revert them myself.
>
>     Andrzej
>
>
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