This is all well and good. It's certainly not where we (read: I) would like to be, but it's a pretty accurate summary at this point.
I would disagree with you on backwards compatibility, slightly. I think we shouldn't try too hard, but we also now have a clear goal for theme authors: standard CSS. We should obey the goals of the standards, and follow their guidelines about vendor prefixes. When we implement CSS features, we should try to implement them to the letter of the spec, not half-ass it, and if it's not ready, put a vendor prefix behind it. That's a guarantee I think we can make for now, which should help signify to theme authors that their work is as volatile as CSS itself. Obviously, we won't be able to make this guarantee everywhere: the margin/padding/border scenario is a gigantic mess, and it's this weird hybrid box system that some things respect but others don't. I'm fine with breaking this between releases, as long as what we release is moving towards the CSS standard in what we implement. On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Benjamin Otte <o...@gnome.org> wrote: > Mike C. <compmastermike <at> yahoo.com> writes: > > > It is, but I'd talk more about GTK as a platform than GNOME here because > I see > > a lot of caution to port to this mythical GTK3 beast. XFCE and LXDE seem > to > > position themselves as wanting GTK3, but hesitant to grab it. SpaceFM > only > > recently got GTK3 compatibility because I decided that was what I wanted > and > > contributed it, managing compatibility back to GTK 2.18 in the process. > I don't > > like the thought that the hesitance is justified beyond not finding the > porting > > process interesting. > > > (Important disclaimer: I am now stating the de-facto situation, not the > situation I wish for. But I think naming - and accepting - the status quo > is an > important first step.) > > GTK 3 at this point really is just the GNOME toolkit. There is absolutely > zero > involvement from anyone else. Neither XFCE nor LXDE nor Windows or OS X > developers take any interest in pushing the toolkit forward - apart from > occasional bug reports and patches. All features are prototyped, coded and > maintained by GNOME developers. So in its current state I would call GTK a > part > of GNOME. It's worth pointing out that this was basically the same > situation > with GTK 2. > > The first conclusion from that is that it is (and has been for a few > years) a > bit disingenuous if people say "we're not using GNOME, we're just using > GTK". > XFCE, LXDE, Mate etc (even Unity) are just different panels and apps built > on > top of technologies driven and developed by GNOME developers. (You could > include > not just GTK but also glib, Cairo, NetworkManager, and probably even X, > GStreamer and systemd to an extent in those technologies.) > > Where this all gets interesting is the transition in mentality and > behavior (for > lack of a bettter word) of the GNOME development community in the > transition > from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3. GNOME 2 development was a steady process with a > clearly > defined goal. Almost everything was static. As such, nothing ever really > got > different. If anything, it gained more features or changed a default value. > Sure, occasionally there was a hickup, but in general everything was > obvious. If > I had to describe it with an image, I'd use http://i.imgur.com/TXzZh.jpg > GNOME 3 is (it didn't start out to be, but quickly transitioned into) an > experiment. People don't know how GNOME is gonna look in 3 years. Or even > what > hardware it's going to run on. What are the minimum system requirements? > Nobody > knows. Goals, design, code and APIs keep changing all the time. The > obligatory > image I'd use to describe it is http://i.imgur.com/ysSK3.png > > Now what does that mean for you or me working with GNOME 3 (or GTK 3)? It > means > they can't rely on things staying the same or having a stable base to > build on. > Things keep changing. You can't just write something for 3.0 (be it an > application, a shell plugin or a GTK theme) and expect it stay working > that way > forever. Instead you need to constantly improve on your work. > There's one important thing to note about this however. If you participate > in > this process - like a bunch of applications do - you get two things: > (1) You get the help of the GNOME developers. People are generally > interested in > your use cases and want to make your life easier and better. > (2) You get to influence the direction of development. You can request > features > that you are missing and can expect help to get them implemented. > However, you also lose your independence to do whatever you want and you > get to > compromise on your vision. Which is why at this point in time I'd advocate > against Mozilla, Libreoffice, XFCE or LXDE to switch to GTK 3. They value > their > independence from GNOME too much. > > > Now what does that mean for theme developers? And how can we improve the > situation? I don't know really. An important step is agreeing that what > I've > written above is the status quo and communicating that. I think that would > help > a lot of people (both the people developing on top of GNOME/GTK 3 and the > regular haters that comment on all the articles appearing about it). It > would > also set the expectations right about what you're going to get into. It's > not > just about changing 5 colors and 3 settings in a gtkrc file anymore to get > a new > theme that'll work until eternity. > > I think what we shouldn't do though (and you seem to be advocating it in > your > mail) is care too much about backwards compatibility. Sure, it's nice to be > backwards compatible where we can. But no, we shouldn't try too hard. That > slows > us down too much and then we can't experiment quickly anymore. And so far, > that's what we want. Backwards compatibility is a huge time sink. > > Benjamin > > _______________________________________________ > gtk-list mailing list > gtk-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list > -- Jasper
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