libpurple theme support improvements

[Felipe Contreras]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Etan Reisner
<pidgin at unreliablesource.net> wrote:
> I would like to state, for the record, that pidgin is perfectly willing
> and able to particpate in accepted specifications (very *very* few things
> are standards so avoiding the term is a good idea in general) and play
> well with others. That being said, we are *not* willing to be brow-beaten
> into following said specifications and are not going to support
> specifications we do not agree with. We likewise have no vested interest
> in whether the current round of specifications are good specifications if
> we have no interest in their outcome.
>
> Specifically, as in this case, I believe I speak for many (if not most) of
> the pidgin developers when I say that we have no particular vested
> interest in the goal of this XDG sound theme spec. pidgin has never been
> tied to a specific desktop environment and will never become so tied,
> pidgin has no direct expectations of any desktop environment even
> existing. We don't expect a taskbar, we don't expect a notification area,
> I even routinely remind people that we can't even depend on windows having
> titlebars.

A specific desktop environment? What part of "free desktop" do you
think suggests the specs are for a specific desktop?

The specs are meant to work on *any* desktop environment.

> So expecting us to depend on a library that is specifically designed for
> use in only a very small handful of possible environments (those using the
> current set of mainstream desktop environments or Windows) and accusing us
> of in all ways being poor citizens for not supporting a specification
> which is not even a year old and a library which is half as old as the
> specification is, at best, less than charitable and at worst an active
> attempt to be hostile.

I'm not accusing you for not supporting it, I'm accusing you of not
being interested in supporting it. More specifically, I'm accusing you
of not being interested on dropping "your way" and use a freedesktop
standard by default.

"designed for use in only a very small handful of possible environments"

Lies. libcanberra is designed to be used on any environment, just like glib.

Also, freedesktop is not telling you to use libcanberra, it's telling
you: this is the spec, do it this way. There's no need to re-invent
the wheel, if you want you can use libcanberra, otherwise you are
completely free to implement the sound theme spec in any way you wish.

That's why the spec doesn't mention anything regarding libcanberra,
except that it's a known implementation. Do a little research.

Similarly you don't need to use glib if you want to use the XDG base
directory spec, it's implemented there, but you are free to use other
implementation such the one in KDE lib, or come up with your own.

An example is libomxil-bellagio, which doesn't use glib, nor kde, it's
not tied to posix systems and even works on symbian. It;s still
following the XDG base directory spec.

> As has been mentioned previously by other people in this thread, we are by
> no means unwilling to consider this specification without investingating
> it and further the SoC sound work was specifically done so as to make
> plugging in various sound themes doable (to exactly cover cases like
> this where specifications either evolve, are born, or are ones we would
> rather not support ourselves).
>
> I would very much appreciate if we could let this thread end now, unless
> people wish to further discuss the *merits* of the sound theme spec
> (ideally specifically as it relates to pidgin). Discussions which may
> perhaps end up being worth moving over to the appropriate XDG list for any
> further discussion which may be needed.

The sound theme has been designed and reviewed by more parties than
Pidgin's theme, so my bet is that is that it's better designed.

The specs are very short, it would probably take you less than half an
hour to read them, but you can go directly to see the example[1].

It's nice, easy, straight to the point. I really don't see how there
could possibly be any issue with it.

[1] http://0pointer.de/public/sound-theme-spec.html

-- 
Felipe Contreras