Matthew Garrett wrote:
It can be completely unusable. There's no way to design an
application
that will work with all valid implementations.
Sure there is. Just provide the data and let the implementation worry about
how it is displayed.
Yes, but it's not about visual uniformity. It's about
ensuring that
information is presented.
The fact that the information is provided to be presented and not ignored is
blatantly obvious to everyone other than you, the GNOME developers.
If the point is interoperability then just propose a version of the
spec
that actually guarantees useful interoperability.
If you think the version as written does not guarantee interoperability, why
don't YOU propose a version which you think does? Canonical had no problems
implementing KDE's spec as is. You are the ones who think it's poorly
written. (Of course, the modified spec should still be compatible with the
existing implementations and should still comply with the non-goal of
enforcing visual uniformity! The changes GNOME demanded on the XDG list
failed on both counts.)
Kevin Kofler