gnucash's dependencies criticized/OT

[Bill Gribble]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 08:43:55AM -0400, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> I mean, why do I need corba to run one, lonely Gnome app??

This is a case of "be careful what you ask for; you may get it". 

The whole raison d'etre for KDE and Gnome is that people have
complained since the dawn of time that the UNIX model of what an
application is (a little pipe fitting on a data stream) does not
smoothly make the conversion to a graphical operating environment, or
to users that are not experts.

The Macintosh UI and its offspring got people to want integrated
desktop environments, with graphical apps that work together, share a
common look and feel, reuse common system components instead of
reinventing the wheel every time, and use the right technology for
their various functionality.

Both Gnome and KDE provide mechanisms to do the above, but if you want
a Gnome app, you need the Gnome libraries, and likewise for KDE.

You can complain about gnome-print needing esound, but can you
complain about providing a uniform sound API for desktop applications
within the framework, or about client libraries using that library to
provide various beeps, bongs, and bells instead of directly opening
the sound device and stomping on other apps that might be doing sound
stuff?  "Real programs just use the console beep", you say?  uh,
right.

IMO, it's a deceptive oversimplification to say that "gnome-print
depends on esound".  The truth is that "Gnome applications depend on a
complete set of Gnome system resources being installed".  There's
nothing broken or worthy of ridicule there.  KDE and Gnome are trying
to respond to users' desires that applications work together and share
system components, and it's totally reasonable to require a basic set
of those components to be installed.

Bill Gribble