Freedesktop summit 2014

[Jos Poortvliet]

On Thursday 17 April 2014 23:59:48 Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> 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

David, should I put this on the dot?

> > "
> > 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)