Xfce4-dev Digest, Vol 102, Issue 2

[Jérôme Guelfucci]

On 02/05/12 18:30, Nick Schermer wrote:
> On 2012-05-02 17:10, Raphael Groner wrote:
>>> Don't be a half-informed ass here mister. You obviously have no clue
>>> what you're talking about so leave this to the experts please (the
>>> mail didn't start with "Devs" in the first place).
>>
>> Mister, please keep being nice with the user base. Well, I guess you
>> don't know me, according to your harsh comment here. I have been to CLT
>> 2012 (and already also to ohter events but as a normal user) and
>> worked at the Xfce booth there. I talked with a lot of users there,
>> most of them said they've moved from Gnome3 to Xfce and are now missing
>> their loved features. Those comments included often the request for a
>> menu editor. So my question is: How can we communicate to the users
>> about promised but delayed features or goals? To name each of those
>> requesting users an "half-informed ass" would not make anybody happy,
>> believe me.
>
> If the user base is nice to me, I'm nice. If they start to shout about
> stuff they miss this is what I read:
>
> "I'm a lazy user who has no intention to learn/submit or even try to
> code. However, you need me because I'm a user, so grab a pen and I'll
> list what you should do."
>
> Well I have some news. The **ONLY** reason I work on Xfce is because
> **I** use it. Luckily for the users the stuff I code also works on their
> system. That also means I only work on the code that makes it for **me**
> easier to use Xfce.
>
>> It was not my intention to start a flame war. I would like to mention
>> only my impression about what feature requests are important.
>
> And you think I'm not aware of missing features? If you don't want to
> start a flame war, then start a new topic on the ml (and stop using the
> digest) about what people want in 4.12 and leave the whole gtk3
> discussion out of it.
>
> I ask a question, a technical question if people see problems when
> porting to Gtk3. Instead people start to whine about other features,
> login managers, menu editors (not only your fault)...
> Very cute and all, but now we have 2 or more questions with no answer.
>
> This proves for me it is a lot easier to decide things like this myself,
> it saves me energy typing emails like this, less spam on the ml and in
> the end (not bragging here, just looking at 4.10) 90% of the gtk3
> porting is either done or review by me. So why do I ask anyway...
>
> Nick

Hi,

+1 on this Nick, if you feel confident on the technical side, let's go 
for it. If you don't, let's not do it. Point.

Personally, if we go for Gtk3, I would say we focus on the porting then 
develop new features to avoid merge issues as much as possible and get 
this done as soon as possible. As said, it won't bring value for users, 
but it's a necessary step to simplify maintenance and further 
development of Xfce.

Re porting the goodies and non-core projects, I agree with Andrzej that 
this could be smoother if we had a policy for applying compatibility 
changes. A team of trusted individuals with universal commit rights but 
are only allowed to commit compatibility changes? But I guess that's 
another topic, though strongly linked.

Cheers,

Jérôme