Re: About XD2, OO.O and that stuff...

[James Strandboge <jstrand1@rochester.rr.com>]

On Sat, 2003-09-13 at 07:58, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Ross Burton">
> 
> > * Applications:/// layout changed
> >   * "Personal Preferences" added, and Desktop Preferences removed from
> >     applications
> >   * General cleanup
> 
> Probably not something that Debian (or Debian desktop administrators) would
> be interested in, because it pulls us away from upstream in a fairly
> dramatic manner.

I'd agree since this can be changed on a system by system basis or site
wide using:

http://www.gnome.org/learn/admin-guide/2.2/menustructure-0.html

For work, I created a debian package that sets up various system wide
gconf defaults and menu entries for my users.  As such, I can make site
wide changes to the menu system easily without having to change the
gnome defaults.  Perhaps something along these lines would be easier to
maintain in the long run?


> > * Totally rocking libgnomeprint changes
> >   * I've packaged libgnomecups, but that is only for gnome-cups-manager,
> >     Ximian has cool print dialogs and has hacked libgnomeprint so that
> >     Galeon can use its print dialog without using its rasteriser.
> 
> Interesting, but also pulls us away from upstream, which will almost
> certainly mean patches to various packages - possibly quite a lot given the
> number of GNOME packages in Debian. Might not have a huge effect on upgrades
> or anything, but it seems like a deeper change that is pretty unattractive.
> 

One of the goals of my backport is to not lose functionality when
upgrading from the woody backport to sid.  In other words, don't
introduce unexpected changes for the users so they are left scratching
their heads.  I have backported Ross' gnome-cups-manager though and am
interested in the Sun/Wipro/Ximian printman program (but haven't made it
part of the backport yet).

> > * "GNOME" looking OO.o
> >   * As our OO.o maintainer is working with Michael Meeks et al I expect
> >     to see this soon.
> 
> Interesting, but largely NOTGNOME, and a problem for the OOo maintainers to
> deal with. ;-)
> 
Agreed.

> So... What's the benefit to packaging XD2, instead of improving the Debian
> Woody backport? Given James' goals, It seems a far saner thing to do in
> terms of administration and maintenance (from a Debian maintainer
> perspective and a sysadmin point of view).

I am wondering too?  Though the above list probably isn't exhaustive,
the only thing that is incompatible with the gnome2.2 backport are the
libgnomeprint patches (I won't introduce those).  If your project really
needed that, all you need to do is repackage those.  

I welcome packaging suggestions and bug reports on the backport and
would like to help Ghe with leveraging the gnome2.2 backport in the
projects he is working on.

Jamie

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