[PLUG] "Portland" in the news

Michael M. nixlists at writemoore.net
Mon Jul 3 21:34:55 UTC 2006


Ronald Chmara wrote:
> On Jun 28, 2006, at 5:43 PM, Michael M. wrote:
>> Lancashire, Pete wrote:
>>> quoted ..
>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/27/portland_linux_distributions/
>> Am I the only one who doesn't get how or where the Portland Project 
>> fits in with LSB, Freedesktop.org, the Free Standards Group, and 
>> Gnome and KDE?  I can't figure out if it is superfluous, competing, 
>> complementary, or just confusing.  Well, it confuses me, anyway.
>
> Problem:
> I want to install an application. I do not care what desktop 
> environment a user has, I just want the user to be able to launch it 
> from a desktop menu. How do I populate the menu for fvwm, kde, gnome, 
> fvwm95, (blah blah) menu with one programming statement?


Yes, that's certainly a problem, but one that I thought Freedesktop.org, 
with the xdg-menu specification, had solved:

http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/menu-spec-0.9.html

"It allows third-party software to add menu items that work for all 
desktops, and allows system administrators to edit menus in a way that 
affects all desktops."


>
> Problem:
> I want to enable a user to click on a URI, and launch their web 
> browser (email client, preferred RSS reader etc.). I do not care, or 
> want to care, what desktop environment a user has, or what they have 
> open. Thus, if a user has a pine session open to another machine, and 
> the user has a URI, how do I make the user's preferred web page viewer 
> *open* and load that URI when that user clicks on a URI in pine?
>
> As I understand their code, they are a "glue" project. If a user wants 
> a Konqueror browser window to launch when they click on a URL in an 
> gnome session email(!)... make that happen, by adding "glue" code to 
> the app that reads the email. If an app wants to bring up a "print" 
> window, it shouldn't have to care what UI it has.
>
> Sounds ambitious.


Ambition's okay.  I just don't get what the Portland Project is doing 
that other standardization efforts aren't already doing -- in 
particular, Freedesktop.org.  Isn't your second example an example of 
mime types?  Freedesktop.org has a spec for that too.  If both KDE and 
Gnome are following the specs, then a user should be able to set 
Konqueror to launch from a click on a URL in a Gnome session email.  A 
user *should* be able to choose whatever default browser he wants from 
either KDE or Gnome, even if the browser isn't part of either project.  
It's things like that I thought Freedesktop.org was tackling.  And from 
what I've seen of the xdg-menu system, Freedesktop.org seems to be very 
effective.


-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson




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