is Xfce getting too bloated ?

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 10/14/04 15:34, purslow at sympatico.ca wrote:
> 
> i have  2  general misgivings about the direction Xfce seems to be taking.
> first, some developers seem -- from the above -- to be too in-grown
> & losing sight of the real aim, which is to provide something people can use.

i think the "real aim" is whatever we want it to be.  you can suggest all
you want, but if you want to start dictating the "real aim" of xfce, you'd
better be prepared to back that up with some code.  i know that sounds harsh,
but that's just how it is.  as i've mentioned elsewhere, there are at most
10 people that spend a large amount of time working on xfce.  that's not a
lot of manpower.

> second & much more important, the project seems to be going off at tangents,
> adding plug-ins, pop-ups, goodies, bells, whistles & gew-gaws,

that's because they're _fun_ to work on.  i do this stuff because i enjoy it.
if i stop enjoying it, i stop working on it.

> while neglecting such basic needs as a configurable installer

huh?  i see two perfectly good installers: benny's GUI installer, and my
garxfce4.  this is somewhat irrelevant, since most people that generally
test beta stuff are perfectly able to do a "./configure && make && make
install".  sure, there are a bunch of modules that need to be installed,
but you can quickly write a bash script to automate it.  or if not, just
use one of the two automated installers.  some people have graciously
volunteered their time to create .deb or .rpm packages.

at any rate, installation is generally considered a distro packaging problem
in the linux world.  the distros differ too much for us to have a shot
at supporting them all.

> -- even omitting a simple README with the standard source distribution --
> & proper documentation for all the rapidly accumulating pieces.

this isn't even a final release!  documentation is notoriously bad in the
OSS world.  while this is regrettable, you can't expect a beta release to
have full documentation.

> recent messages have covered a compositor & C++ bindings,
> whose purpose & relevance i might understand if they were explained.

the compositor has been pretty well explained, methinks.  the c++ bindings
are only of interest to developers wishing to use the xfce core libs in
new applications.  in essence: if you don't know what it is, you don't
need to.

> i fully appreciate & am grateful for your work in creating 4.2
> -- i have said that more than once before -- ,
> but you are not going to go on being successful,
> if you don't listen to opinions & comment from outside your group.

i love opinions and suggestions.  but they're just that: opinions.  it is
fully within our rights to disagree with any particular opinion.  as to
your other point, i think xfce is already plenty successful anyway.  even
if it wasn't, i'd be perfectly happy just using it myself.

	-brian