4.4 ETA?

[Erik Harrison]

On 12/4/05, Brian J. Tarricone <bjt23 at cornell.edu> wrote:
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> Jani Monoses wrote:
>
> > - is the coupling between panel, xfwm and xfdesktop going to be loose
> > enough to use one but not the others from 4.4?
>
> None of the three depend on each other in any way.
>
> > - is xfdesktop the same as Benny's xfdesktop from os-works?
>
> No.  Also, is not considered a part of the "official" Xfce, and AFAIK,
> Benny's xfdesktop is not developed any longer.  Differences off the top
> of my head:
>
> Benny's xfdesktop:
>
> * Has a more-or-less fd.o-compliant menu system.
>
> Official xfdesktop:
>
> * Creates the menu similar to how fd.o suggests, but does not use menu
> files as specified by the spec.  The menus end up being a bit different
> in practice.
> * Has more features in the menu plugin for the panel (icon and text, use
> different menu files).
> * Has a couple more backdrop-drawing features (Xinerama stretch, etc.).
> * Has support for minimised window icons on the desktop.
>
> This may be a bit of an unfair comparison, as I've never used Benny's
> xfdesktop, so I only know what I've been told, and I don't know if he's
> been working on it behind the scenes.  Also the official xfdesktop is my
> work, so obviously I'm likely to promote it a bit more.  I'm by no means
> an unbiased source.
>
> > - do new apps and orage in particular assume xfce4.4 or will they run on
> > 4.2 too? Do xfcegui, xfceutil and xfcemcs stay mostly compatible?
>
> The base libraries should remain backward-compatible, but apps that
> require a higher version will not run on a lower version.  I'm not sure,
> but I think orage requires 4.3/4.4 at present.  You can always try
> compiling against 4.2 libs to find out.  Xfmedia will continue to work
> against 4.2 libs for at least a few months after 4.4 comes out, and
> possibly longer.
>
> > - what new fd.o standards are planned to be supported in 4.4 vs 4.2?
> > From the above article 'Session Manager: Now supports the new startup
> > items standard' and also Erik mentioned the possibility of using tango.
>
> Aside from the autostart items spec, I don't believe there's anything
> new on this front.  We're not going to use Tango's icon theme, as we
> already have a perfectly wonderful icon theme.  We may modify the Rodent
> theme to provide the icon names suggested by the icon naming spec, but I
> don't think anyone's actively working on it.
>
> > - what is the status of xfce feature-freeze-wise as I understand the
> > code itself is still devel. Anything else planned for panel besides
> > stabilization and porting of existing plugins? Anything planned for
> > xfce-session?
>
> Feature-freeze is not in effect yet, and we haven't discussed a firm
> date (maybe we should?).  I can't speak for the plans of others, but I
> don't really plan on doing all that much more with xfdesktop aside from
> bugfixes and minor improvements.  Though that's not set in stone; search
> bugzilla for all 'enhancement' requests for a list of things I might
> work on if I have time, plus anything random that pops into my head.
>
> > I hope you take this just as a gentle nudge and not an annoying attempt
> > at making you reveal your most secret devel plans :)  But since most of
> > the development - besides thunar maybe - goes on in relative quiet, it
> > is not easy to figure out from just svn commits what stage you're at and
> > how to best integrate this with the clearer schedule I need for ubuntu.
>
> I know you're mostly joking, but there are no "secret devel plans".  In
> many cases there are no devel plans at all.  Some think this is a bad
> thing, but I don't really look at it as good or bad at all: it just is.
>  We're a very small group of developers, with other lives beyond Xfce,
> so whatever we have time to do ends up being what gets done.  Lurking on
> this list will usually tell you what's going on, though I'll admit for
> myself I probably don't talk too much about what I'm doing until I make
> the first SVN commit adding the new functionality.  Probably because I
> never really know if I'll have time to get around to finishing something
> until it's done ^_~.  I'm sure this is seems a bit confusing and
> disorganised if you're more familiar with the GNOME or KDE development
> processes, and you'd probably be right.

It should be pointed out that this was much the way of Gnome in the
1.x days, and even big chunks of 2.x. It takes money to get a roadmap,
I've found, or a smaller development group.

We're too big to run the tight ship that one man project has and too
small to be funded to be a tight ship.

>
> > PS: and since Brian mentioned xfce's reputation yesterday please feel
> > free to make suggestions regarding what you expect from an xfce centric
> > distribution, and also what decisions you would feel uneasy with.
>
> 1.  I'd feel a bit uncomfortable with someone distributing a non-release
> version, unless they'd done a significant amount of stabilisation work
> (and hopefully contributes that work back to Xfce!).  While many people
> will report bugs via your distro's bug tracker, we will still get a lot
> of people reporting bugs to us, and there's no way we can provide
> support for slightly-forked version.  It'll likely waste a lot of our
> time simply finding out that the person with a problem isn't even
> running one of our releases.
>
> 2.  If you're going to call it an Xfce-based distro, it would be nice to
> use all "official" Xfce components, or at least make the defaults all
> official, and offer easy choices later on.  If not, you should probably
> call it something else.  If you want to supplement the base Xfce with
> extra apps and things, that's certainly fine - we don't pretend to offer
> a full everything-including-the-kitchen-sink environment.
>
> That's really pretty much it (from me, anyway).
>
>         -brian
>
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--
Erik

"If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it
would have changed the history of music... and of aviation."