Bespin

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On October 5, 2009, Thomas Lübking wrote:
> Am Monday 05 October 2009 schrieb Lydia Pintscher:
> > Is it better if we get them?
> 
> No, no one should get bug reports.

as long as bugs exist, someone will get them.

the Plasma team faced a style related crash in plasma-overlay with the QtCurve 
style (and forks of that style, of which there are a few). we kept sending the 
reporters to the QtCurve project until the problem was identified and fixed. 
it took several months overlapping two different KDE releases to get this 
sorted out. it sucks that apps get the reports first, but you're right that 
the user won't know any better. so the app devs need to send those reports on 
to the style devs.

as a side note, until bug reporting systems become magically delicious and 
allow moving bugs easily between different bug repositories, this is a great 
reason for developers working on such things to use KDE's infrastructure. 
instead of simply sending the people with problems on to the QtCurve project 
and CC'ing them on bug reports when i remembered to, i could have just re-
assigned them to the QtCurve component.

similar things could have been done (and could be in the future) with Bespin 
and bugs related to it that are filed against KDE apps

> You are aware that the recent bug and all reports on it would have popped
>  up regardless of the presence of those hacks?

regardless, the hacks are in the wrong place (style vs app).  :)

> See: /I/ would have to explain this, and the "I was asked by amarok guys &
> girls" answer would be pretty weak and in doubt Amarok could then get mean
> postings on /this/.
> 
> So please help me to create a picture on the issue beyond "we don't like
>  it" - what can understand, but fear to be unable to sell to the Bespin
>  users. :-\

i'd suggest simply being honest about it: 

the approach taken by Bespin can not be made reliable because code that 
changes application state does not belong in a style. the application must be 
able to assume ownership of its internal state and styles need to respect 
that. in the past, Bespin has not done that in order to tweak the look and 
feel of certain applications, and while it gave short term benefits to some 
Bespin users it has resulted in problems for others. a more correct approach 
is going to be explored and taken, with people will be working on making 
improvements where they actually belong (e.g. in the application).

sth like that. :)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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