From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 28 10:57:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from picnic.mat.net (picnic.mat.net [206.246.122.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 42D5C151BC for ; Wed, 28 Apr 1999 10:57:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chuckr@picnic.mat.net) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost) by picnic.mat.net (8.9.3/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA19188; Wed, 28 Apr 1999 13:54:37 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 13:54:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey To: Warner Losh Cc: John Birrell , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Adding desktop support In-Reply-To: <199904281736.LAA15179@harmony.village.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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