A couple of serious questions

[Nils Philippsen]

Hi,

On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 23:00 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 20:50 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 06:11:12PM -0400, Kelly wrote:
> > > 1)  Is there sufficient interest in having the system-config packages
> > > split into data and GUI components so there might be Qt/KDE versions in
> > > the future?
> > 
> > I don't know about "sufficient", but there's interest in doing that for
> > privilege-separation reasons. Being able to use alternate front-ends comes
> > for free.
> 
> Exactly. And moving the back-ends to somewhere central (e.g. fd.o) and
> adding the front-ends to the actual desktop projects (e.g. GNOME, KDE)
> is what we really want. That way we get all the distros/OS's to rally
> around the same code base and the user experience as a whole becomes
> better and more integrated.

This partly relies on all distros actually wanting to use the same
codebase ;-P, I don't take that as a given. Has some potential for NIH
syndrome.

> That's already been happening with all the HAL/NetworkManager/GNOME's
> Project Utopia/KDE's Solid stuff and we're only going to do more of this
> in the future; not less. With some of the PolicyKit stuff I talked
> about 
> 
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-March/msg01211.html
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-March/msg01212.html
> 
> it will be, for example, a patch around 100-200 lines to GNOME's clock
> applet to provide the same functionality we today have in

I take it that you mean 100-200 lines of glue code in addition to the
(not yet) separate frontend and backend that communicate via dbus?
Because frankly I'd be seriously amazed if the functionality in s-c-date
could be replicated with so few code.

> system-config-date. And it won't have to run as root; we can configure
> it such that laptop users don't have to auth, admins can lock it down,
> yadayada etc. etc. etc.
> 
> (The good thing, also, is that most of the hard work on PolicyKit is
> already done [1]; I plan to land it early in the Fedora 8 cycle and then
> go on a spree to integrate it with GNOME where applicable.)
> 
> So, in other words, I guess I'm saying that at least my point of view is
> that much system-config-* is a dead-end for all but really Fedora
> centric stuff that don't apply to other distros/OS'es. So my advice to
> people asking if it's a good idea to write Qt front-ends would be to
> start helping out on integrating these features in the respective
> desktop environments. 

Having UI and logic better separated would actually make it easier to
bring back meaningful text/command line apps which is a good thing.

> Of course, this task is a lot harder than doing s/GTK+/Qt/ to some
> source code; it actually requires that you come up with an architecture
> and design that can work on all distros and don't do silly things like
> running X11 apps as root. But I think in the end, it's a lot more
> rewarding doing this than just Qt-ifying code; I think it also helps
> create a better user experience.

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
 Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."  --  B. Franklin, 1759
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