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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Malaga Discussions I
From:       Stephan Kulow <coolo () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-08-28 11:00:37
Message-ID: 200508281300.38041.coolo () kde ! org
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Hi!

I wanted to blog about it, but then I figured I should just write a mail here, 
so everyone knows what we discussed.

So far this is a User and Administrator conference in Malaga, but as the KDE 
e.V. meeting was before that many KDE developers are here too (just reviewed 
the remaining tickets and it will be fun if everyone of those arrived... ;). 
So we came together in the afternoon and discussed some issues that we 
consider interesting enough to discuss.

The first one was IPC. We once again summarized the benefits of KDE
switching to DBUS (among the lines of 'well maintained', 'support from
toolkits and other desktops', 'distribution support already very high')
and what bothers us with it ('C API', 'unsolved performance problems',
'unknown upgrade path').

So it was pretty clear, that we do should switch, but what we discussed
in a pretty long and heated discussion was: how and on what level should
we support applications accessing the KDE3 dcop interface. And so far
we only found one use case that we consider important enough to support
it: kpresenter/kdetv for KDE3 wants to disable the screensaver running within
KDE4. All other dcop3<->dcop3 conversations have to be supported in a way
as we do now when KDE applications started under twm. In that area KDE4 
just has to make sure not to get in the way of KDE3 (e.g. different file names
for communication sockets).

One can argue, that we should support all our internal APIs forever, but then
again this might not worth the maintaince effort (and take it as it is: 
untested APIs bitrot and then they are unusable just as much as if they would
not exist at all). So the screensaver issue (and others you can come up with)
can be fixed by a kde34bridge process registering to a running KDE3 dcopserver
and registering as kdesktop and others and then forward the old calls to new
calls.

_BUT_ if we go there and disregard e.g. KImProxy, because it's not worth it
keeping two interfaces around (and assuming the applications using it will be
ported in a pretty short time anyway), then we're left with the screensaver
and we could just as well a) rely on xset or b) let kdetv try dbus too - 
taking that by then gnome or other desktops may let their screensavers 
deactivate by dbus anyway.

So I'd like to open this discussion to a broader audience: Do you know of any 
DCOP interfaces currently used, that you consider worth surviving for about 
forever?

Greetings, Stephan

-- 
Mein Lebensmotto?
Man muss auch mal 1+1 gerade sein lassen können.

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