GTK+ target version [WAS Re: new dev branch stuff]

[Olivier Fourdan]

Hi all

On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 10:02 +0100, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> > 1) what's our new gtk target for xfce 4.4?  gtk 2.4?
> If we plan for august, which was mentioned on IRC, then maybe we could aim for
> 2.6 even?

I think targeting GTK+-2.6 is a bad idea.

Not because I don't like GTK+-2.6, not even because I don't like the
features added in 2.6, but simply because of the target audience of
Xfce.

I don't want Xfce to be yet another geek toy, requiring all the brand
new stuff. I think Xfce should be aimed at the most general use, and in
a corporate environment you very rarely see the latest versions of libs
or software (think RHEL for example)

In many places, you'll still find RH 7.2/RHEL 2.1 and gtk+-2.6 doesn't
work there. Every app that use a text widget (inclufing text input
field) in 2.6 dies with a "Bad implementation" error.

An bug in GTK-+2.6? maybe, maybe not. It may simply be that GTK+-2.6 is
not designed for such old systems anymore. So if we depend on 2.6, we
shall limit ourselves to the same targets as GTK+-2.6.

Let's keep in mind that there is no "Xfce centric major distribution".
RH/Fedora use and promote GNOME, SuSE and Mdk are KDE. It doesn't matter
for GNOME or KDE to require the latest GTK+ or Qt version because there
is always a major distribution that will match their requirements,
whatever it could be. 

We are not there yet with Xfce IMO.

Hope you get my point.

Cheers,
Olivier.