Freedesktop summit 2014

[Albert Astals Cid]

El Dijous, 17 d'abril de 2014, a les 20:17:38, David Faure va escriure:
> I represented KDE again this year at the freedesktop summit in Nuremberg.
> Please find our report below.

Awesome work as always David, let us know how we can help :)

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> 
> "
> From March 31 to April 4, Free Software desktop hackers from many of the
> largest desktops (including GNOME, KDE, Unity and LXDE-Qt) met to
> collaborate on specifications and tools to improve application
> interoperability between the desktops.  Clarified standards are expected
> not only to improve the experience when running applications designed
> for one desktop inside of another, but also to provide a clearer picture
> of what is required from 3rd party application developers approaching
> the Free Software desktop for the first time.
> 
> This was the second time the annual event occurred.  Both times, it was
> sponsored and hosted by SUSE at their offices in Nuremberg.
> 
> The meeting accomplished a standardisation of the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
> environment variable for allowing applications to know in which desktop
> environment they are running.  The meeting also produced the first
> formal specification of how applications should be associated with given
> mime types and URI schemes, including how to select the default
> application in a way appropriate to the current desktop environment,
> respecting the choices of the OS vendor and the local system
> administrator as well as the user.
> 
> Small progress was made on a simple common inhibit specification that
> applications can use to prevent events such as locking of the screen or
> powering down of the network interfaces, but with improvements on
> fine-grained power control capabilities on forthcoming hardware devices,
> additional research (and perhaps time) is required before a complete
> specification can be produced.
> 
> The meeting also produced an agreement on the future of startup
> notification in the Wayland world.  A protocol based on broadcast of
> D-Bus signals will be used instead of the current approach with X client
> messages.  This approach is expected to integrate nicely with future
> frameworks for sandboxed applications.  Improvements were also made to
> the protocol to allow for tab-based applications that make dynamic
> choices about creating a new tab or a new window depending on the
> workspace in which a document was opened.
> 
> The introduction of the long-awaited Implements= key in desktop files
> was also finalised.  This is used to express support of a given
> interface by an application.  Among other things, this is expected to be
> used to advertise supporters of the provider side in a future "portals"
> system for exchanging data between sandboxed applications.
> 
> Also discussed was the possibility of defining a "resource base" for
> desktop files so that application resources such as icons can be
> accessed without being merged into the 'hicolor' icon theme.  The lack of
> certainty over how future sandboxing approaches would deal with this
> situation prevented any progress on this point.
> 
> Time was taken to perform significant cleanups of the xdg
> specifications (and their build system) and to deal with bug backlog on
> some freedesktop components such as the the shared-mime-info database.
> 
> The meeting was also used to discuss details of the API of the
> forthcoming memfd interface in the kernel that will be used to support
> efficient sending of very large kdbus messages.  kdbus and GVariant were
> also discussed, as were the desktop file index and systemd support for
> time-based activation of applications that want to exit when idle (such
> as alarm clocks).  The possibility of standardising the new notification
> interface based on D-Bus activatable applications was also briefly
> discussed.
> 
> After the meeting, work continues on publishing updated specifications
> and writing implementations.  The meeting is expected to happen again,
> in 2015.
> "
> 
> (Written by Ryan Lortie, from glib/gnome, reviewed by all participants)