On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 08:09:27PM +0200, Danilo Schöneberg wrote: > Moin, > > There is one system left I'm checking out the build for - Linux From > Scratch. I'm building it right now (the system. Not CDE yet). > > I have ten days of vacation coming up, I was thinking about what to do. > I'm completely useless at sitting around idly for more than two days. So I > was thinking about some ideas: > > 1) A CDE-based Live-CD
Look at CDEbian; I think it's not active any more, but it should be helpful. On this note, work on making the install scripts more suitable for packagers would be very helpful. > 2) researching integration of some modern technologies (like automount of > devices, udev, sound systems) As far as automount goes, it would seem that if you have a panel in dtfile that lists block devices, you could create an action for block devices that would call your automounter/open dtfile at the mount point. As far as sound support goes, there's a whole lot of APIs under *nix. I'd suggest that the best approach would be -get a separate mixer program working -make sure it can be embedded in the dtwm front panel The first place I found is "CDE frontpanel embeds sdtperfmeter-but how?": http://www.verycomputer.com/168_b0cb70320892a5a3_1.htm xmmixer is the first program that comes to mind, but there are a couple others; I'm not aware of any work towards embedding these. If you're talking about 'sound theme'-type deals where you need to modify CDE to play a sound when you click on a certain item, please don't. (I, for one, don't like the modern stuff that "blinks, beeps, and dances".) > 3) "modernizing" some of the dt apps (mail, text editor, dtlogin) Modernizing dtmail to some extent sounds nice. My own wishlist would be IMAP support, and perhaps xmhtml integration. Don't touch Webkit; it's a security nightmare and a bottomless pit for time. One of the GTK webkit developers wrote about the security status of the ports; it seems that gtkwebkit sporadically gets some security updates, the others get none, and there's no channel or protocol for communicating about vulnerabilities between ports. In essence, it's several projects that happen to use a single tree. Besides that, webkit regularly breaks API, requiring periodic rewrites. Timewise, you might get a port ready in a few months. > 4) code cleanup (warnings) This would be the best, I think. > What would be the preferred option from the team point of view? This also > brings up another question. What is the long-term goal? Do we try to keep > CDE running as it is or are there plans to actively develop it into a next > generation? As far as I can tell, the goal is * clean it up * make the parts conform to relevant standards underneath. - there was talk about using libmagic for filetype detection - there was talk about using *.desktop rather than *.dt actions - dtwm needs EWMH for modern programs to act nicely - tooltalk to dbus migration came up; dbus is apparently an incompatible clone of tooltalk, so this might be relatively simple > For instance, I would love to see some more applications > developed (like a really good ftp client, image viewer, perhaps adding some > HTML support to the mail client (either via XmHTML or maybe even webkit). > All based on Motif of course. It has all a UI needs. It may look a bit There were several Motif FTP clients in the past; I've never looked hard enough to say if any/which were good. For image viewers, Ida is quite good and the code is very clean, though the image format support is pretty limited, and it can't set the desktop background (that's a longstanding TODO item, so patches are quite likely to be accepted). When I asked about whether CDE integration would be welcome, the maintainer was quite ready to accept patches. I don't think I got much feedback here, though. (Then I ended up switching to a much-less-compatible distro, where I've never tried building CDE. And now, I'm a week or so from going offline for the summer.) I already commented on XmHTML vs Webkit, and mentioned IMAP support for dtmail. Other roles where Motif programs are sorely lacking, IMHO: - A video player (I'd start with ffmpeg or libav, rather than gstreamer. But that's personal choice.) - An audio player. (You don't really need a dedicated one, if your 'video player' is properly set up.) - Something like the "X printing panel", where you can essentially build an 'lp' command line - web browsers, but these are *big* projects. (Daydreaming...I'd like to see the video player done as a widget, which can be used for 'HTML5'-style video support in XmHTML, and then XmHTML hooked up to libcurl to create a web browser. I realize that this would not be a high-feature browser, having no JS/CSS, and only limited HTML, but IMHO the main reasons to use something newer than MosaicCK are: -a lack of any security support -Mosaic's network code is old and slow -it isn't possible to play video Unfortunately, some knuckleheads have decided that a novel's worth of JS and CSS is the only way to show webpages...) Thanks, Isaac Dunham ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial! https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z _______________________________________________ cdesktopenv-devel mailing list cdesktopenv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdesktopenv-devel
