Why not reusing more GNOME components?

[Matthew Brush]

On 14-08-29 02:36 PM, Ángel wrote:
> Sébastien Wilmet wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 01:53:23PM +0200, Liviu Andronic wrote:
>>> But then I'm not sure I follow the issue that you're having. What
>>> could Gnome2 ever do that Xfce >=4.8 cannot? Configure Xfce to use the
>>> visual layout of Gnome2, plugin all your favorite Gnome apps, and be
>>> done with it.
>>
>> That's what I do. I install the Fedora Xfce spin, and install GNOME
>> apps. What I want is to install Fedora with GNOME, and replace
>> gnome-shell with xfce4-panel.
>
> The problem is that gnome apps have been changed to match the new design
> of Gnome desktop (remove toolbar and menus, put everything behind one
> button...). So if you install the applications as shipped by Gnome, they
> will be inconsistent* with your desktop, which is "traditional".
> * and possibly harder to use
>

+1, compare new Gedit:

http://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/files/2014/01/gedit3.png

with new Mousepad:

http://codebrainz.ca/images/screenshots/mousepad-0.4.png

Mousepad actually now looks quite similar to how Gedit used to. Before 
this UI thing happened, I'd even say Gedit would be a good candidate to 
replace Mousepad, but then this has the side effect of being captive to 
GNOME/Gedit development processes, tools and infrastructure, commit 
access, release cycles, too new GLib, GTK and other dependency versions, 
not to mention "design" decisions and general project directions going 
in opposite directions.

Even for a simple app like a text editor, there's a number of practical 
issues to consider for replacement, I can't even imagine how that'd work 
for core XFCE applications, services and libraries.

Luckily, Sébastien and others are nice enough to make GtkSourceView 
library so good that an app like Mousepad can offer much of the same 
functionality as Gedit without too much duplication :)

Cheers,
Matthew Brush