On 5-1-2015 05:04, Larry Hall (Cygwin-X) wrote: > So I'm guessing with your statement above that English isn't your primary > language. > [..] > 1. I am not the maintainer of the xinit package. [..]
English is indeed not my first language, but that is no excuse for not carefully reading your replies and not verifying assumptions about you being a maintainer. I did not read your replies carefully enough and did not check my assumptions. Please accept my apologies. > [..] > 2. Yaakov is a very capable and prolific contributor to the Cygwin project > and has been for many years. [..] I do appreciate your (yours, Yaakov's, and others) efforts very much. I tried to express that in the last paragraph of my original mail [1]. Please tell me if this intent did not come across or was drowned somehow, so I can phrase it better next time. > [..] > You'll notice that sometimes Yaakov is answering > the question raised and other times others are doing it. That's > standard operating procedure. [..] I did read all the previous questions and answers. I interpreted the focus on having users change their configuration rather than changing the xinit package as a denial of the problem. However, now I see that none of the replies were by the package maintainer. I now realize that you were doing the best you could in helping me and others. > [..] > When I mentioned above that you or others can help out by pointing out > where the solutions proposed fall short [..] As far as I can tell, from the available information, users which meet any of the following criteria will run into trouble: - Custom .startxwinrc or .xinitrc - Using untrusted X11 forwards over SSH (e.g. ssh -X or PuTTY) My assumption is that this covers the vast majority of xinit users. Including these which previously complained about the non-standard way of handling configuration. As a software engineer I strongly believe in the principle of least astonishment [2]. At least for the vast majority of users. In this case, in my opinion at least, that would mean that changing the behaviour of startxwin should be done in such a way as to provide a seamless way of users to upgrade. Preferably by maintaining compatibility with existing configurations, or by automatic conversion, or, if necessary through a well documented manual transition process. What I am trying to say is that I don't object to your solutions, but I would really like this to be solved in a way that provides a create user experience. For me that would mean that the first step would be to retract the update (revert back to 1.3.2-1) as to prevent more users from running into problems. I do realize that that would mean forcing people who have already converted to go back. But I assume this is a minority of users. Then I would propose to evaluate what could be done to provide a smooth transition, possibly over a longer time, popping up increasingly annoying warnings about the configuration, for example. I would like to help with this. I think I can assist in figuring out what kind of configurations are out there, as well as in testing, and in writing documentation. I could even code the solution, but that would probably be more efficient of people with more experience in bash scripting would do that. > [..] > So I withdraw my previous request that you not post > your policy question to the Cygwin main list (since I agree it is a > general issue) but instead request that you only discuss the policy and > not overlap with the specifics covered in the xinit package threads [..] Thank you, I would like to discussion on the general list to be broader. Because, for me, this issue was highlighted by xinit, but is by no means related to it. I, and I assume many others, rely on Cygwin and also assume, possibly incorrectly, that it will continue to function as expected, after applying (security) updates. An incompatible change in any other package would also be problematic for me. The reason I mentioned xinit explicitly is to provide the reader with a background, and as soft of a 'full disclosure' of my involvement. I will also make it very explicit on the common list that the post is not specific to xinit, but that is merely serves as an example. > A: Yes. > > Q: Are you sure? > >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. > >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email? I really like your signature, do you mind if I borrow/steal it? Laurens [1] https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2014-12/msg00060.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
