Re: A strawman proposal for X.org & XFree86.org

On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 11:42:12AM +0400, Vadim Plessky wrote:
> We need to put Xr/Xc support in basic toolkit libraries - Qt and GTK.
> And later to get it to upper level - KDE and GNOME.
> But what toolkit developers say at a moment: "as Xr/Xc not available on other 
> X implementations (except XFree86), we can't use due to interoperability 
> issues"

Toolkit developers do NOT say that. Xr/Xc are client libs. When we add
support for them, if you don't have them on your X implementation, you
can download and install them as a separate package.

We're going ahead and requiring fontconfig for GNOME 2.2 and GTK+ 2.4,
because you can download it and install it if you don't have it.

> I mean, we should make it clear:  either you commit yourself to implementing 
> all necessary extensions (not only Render, but Xr/Xc/RandR as well) to X on a 
> timely basis, or we do not allow you to participate in further development of 
> standards.

There's plenty of incentive to ship the standard without having silly
rules like that. Lots of software such as GNOME and KDE will use
standard features, so everyone will have plenty of incentive to ship
the standard features. You don't need incentive beyond that. If part
of the standard genuinely offers no value, there's no reason to
require people to follow it.
  
> Don't get me wrong: I vote for *one* OpenSource implementation of X.
> But I am wondering wether we should keep compatibility with previous X 
> versions?

You have to keep compatibility. That's not even discussable, just a fact.

> I think you don't want to drop some legacy code in X fo Solaris, right?
> But most Linux users do not need legacy apps and old code, users request to 
> trim bloat from X, make more frequesnt releases and reduce distribution size.
> That's somewhat opposite with X.org members, IMO.

You are not thinking about this the right way. The correct approach is
not to *delete* old stuff, but to *modularize* the codebase so you can
take what you need.

> If leading role of XFree86 is accepted - than X.org should follow Xfree86 in 
> trimming old code from sourcebase, that's it.
> Do we agree here?

You are putting the cart on the other side of the world from the
horse. ;-) 
 
> Drop xterm, twm, old X toolkits, PCF/BDF fonts, etc.
> We need just basic X APIs, sufficient for GTK and Qt toolkit to be 
> operational.
> Motif support, etc. should be dropped ASAP.

No, there is no value to dropping this stuff. There *is* huge value in
modularizing it so there's not one huge distribution. But actively
deleting it - there's no value in that. If someone wants to maintain
it, let them do so. If you don't want that stuff, just don't install
it.

Havoc