KSVG - ready for KDE 3.1?

[Andreas Pour]

Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:

[ ... ]

> > I think that ksvg is a very important part of the infrastructure and thus
> > should really be in one of the core modules - but only if the quality is
> > good enough of course.

[ ... ]

> Gentlemen, it will be at least 4 months until KDE 3.1 will be officialy out.
> Until then, quite a lots of KSVG bugs will be squashed, and ofcourse - if it
> will be included, lots of tests will be performed by users who compile, beta
> testers, etc - so we'll have a very stable KSVG support by the time release.

Hehe, famous last words.   IMHO if it should be released the focus
should be on graceful handling of files that it does not understand -
better to fail on many files than to crash on 1.  Is this a case where
exceptions or setjmp's would be useful?
 
> Remember - for SVG support we have either KSVG or none. Adobe's Mozilla plugin
> does not run under nsplugins in Konqueror (since it's using XPCOM if I
> understood correctly). IMHO I would preffer to have something that works
> which got at the moment few bugs, then nothing.

You are free to go that route, but if you have been paying attention
quite some people prefer stability over feature creep.  If the bugs are
of the type (i) this icon fails to display (b/c it handles failure
gracefully) or (ii) this image is not displayed correctly, that's a fair
tradeoff to make, but if the bug means Konqi and the 10 tabbed windows I
have open crashes, I do not think so.
 
> KDE 3.2 will be out (if at all) only a year from now and it would be a shame
> not to have any SVG support until then.

Is it possible to get an agreement that if any image can be shown to
crash KSVG, it will be set not to be installed by default (and, for this
commitment, fixing that one crash would not solve the problem, the point
is it should not be crashing at all by then)?  So there are no hurt
feelings or arguments if it needs to happen - just show one example and
that's it?  B/c if there is any crash I do not think it should be
shipped, stability is more important right now.

> One more thing if I may: from knowing Niko, I know that he fixes his bugs and
> works on his projects quite extensivly, so I belive that he done (and will)
> an outstanding job regarding KSVG.

I don't hear anyone saying he will not try, question is if he succeeds. 
Inserting it in a beta release, if it is at least beta quality, together
with an agreement to "pull" it if by 3.1 it is not rock solid, seems
reasonable.

Ciao,

Dre