Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 13:54:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> To: Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org> Cc: John Birrell <jb@cimlogic.com.au>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Adding desktop support Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9904281348160.378-100000@picnic.mat.net> In-Reply-To: <199904281736.LAA15179@harmony.village.org>
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On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Warner Losh wrote: > In message <199904281004.UAA27348@cimlogic.com.au> John Birrell writes: > : The FreeBSD kernel is not affected. I'm not proposing to specify what > : the desktop looks like, just the information that is made available > : to the desktop programs. > > I really like this idea. For too long there have been too many > kludges to get around not having this infomation co-located with the > executable. > > After all, we're just talking an icon here. Window managers can > display it, or override it as they see fit. Honestly, even tho it can be done via objcopy, what we need is a API, something that we guarantee to folks that we won't subtract from (additions only, and no changing stuff), a standard way to ask a application for a property, and get back that property, whether that property is a gif file, or a string, or data. I'm aware that this would be global data, but it could include things like ~ based paths to user state files. If we offer folks a neat way to store state, this would be a strong attraction for GUI programmers to do things for FreeBSD. This could actually become very interesting. This isn't all that difficult a job, and can be done in a way that would have no effect at all to those folks who don't want the new features, removing any sane basis for complaint. We'd still get the insane complaints, but I give you permission to forward those to me (great, Chuck, open mouth, insert foot!) ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@picnic.mat.net | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 213 Lakeside Drive Apt T-1 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run picnic (FreeBSD-current) (301) 220-2114 | and jaunt (Solaris7). ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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