new dev branch stuff

[David Fraser]

Benedikt Meurer wrote:

>> [strip]
>
>
> Playing the devils advocate: Do you think we are still in-line with 
> the goals of Xfce? Do we have any clear goals for Xfce (esp. for 4.4)? 
> For me, the primary goals have always been to be lightweight, easy to 
> use and advanced (which implies well-designed code, stability and 
> maintainability); as a side note, this is the reason why I was never 
> really happy with xfprint4, until JF took over maintainership.
>
> To me, it seems, we are loosing the focus somehow. I can't tell you 
> any exact reason; it just feels like Xfce is going in the wrong 
> direction somehow. Applications should be designed for the specific 
> user (not the general user, but the specific user of this 
> application). But a desktop environment is more difficult, as there's 
> not really a "specific user", since the desktop environment is more of 
> a container for applications.
>
> Picking up what Auke suggested some time ago, the core of the desktop 
> environment should be very small and lightweight, leaving only the 
> core desktop applications in there, and having the "non-core 
> applications" outside the core.
>
> I think, KDE and Gnome both went this way (and had to decide on 
> exactly the same issue) earlier, and somehow decided to go the complex 
> way with all-in-one.
>
> My personal vision for Xfce was always to make it
>
>  (a) "just work"
>  (b) "easy to use"
>  (c) "lightweight"
>  (d) "advanced" (this is least important, IMHO)
>
> Atleast the first 3 points imply that the core is small and easy to 
> maintain, which isn't the case currently (I think I say that, as I was 
> the one that tried to release the beast!).
>
> With all the recent changes and ideas popping up, I thought it was 
> time to ask if we still have a goal, or if we simply follow the 
> tradition of KDE and Gnome (which would basicly mean for me, to 
> re-think if its really worth to spend my spare time on Xfce).

Hear hear, this is the right way forward for Xfce. But I think DBus 
could actually help here, as somebody else suggested, by possibly 
replacing MCS.
DBus seems like a great idea because it abstracts the neccessary 
functionality without dependence on the graphical toolkits etc.
The desktop ends up being a lot lighter because instead of applications 
pulling in the whole Gnome / KDE framework they only need one common 
lightweight dependency.
I don't know all the underlying issues here, but here's the philosophy I 
like:
I don't think the goal should be to have many Xfce-specific 
applications. I think the goal should be to create the needed set of 
lightweight applications to have a lightweight desktop. So as many of 
those apps as possible shouldn't have *any* Xfce dependencies - what 
does a terminal need from the desktop? It could be part of Xfce, but 
work just as well in another environment.

What I need from a desktop is fairly simple: a window manager, a panel 
to start applications, logon/off etc, a taskbar, system tray and pager. 
That's why I love Xfce. (Some people may note that I omitted a file 
manager. I don't really use one. But I must admit I can't find my way 
around xffm, maybe another email on that...).

The primary exception would be panel plugins, which seem to be 
Xfce-specific. Imagine if we could an architecture where those plugins 
will work on KDE, Gnome as well, with one minimal dependency (it's 
possible for system tray icons, how different are plugins?). This seems 
to me to give us the best of all worlds. This one may not be possible 
without freedesktop.org cooperation.

Hope that makes some sense...
David

PS As far as the "lightweight" goes, I think a great thing would be to 
have menu parsing, initial login, and opening of "Run" dialog box sped 
up a lot :-)