http://www.osnews.com/story/17255/Portland_Improves_Linux_Desktop_Portability Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:59:59 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?212507 http://osnews.com/thread?212507 Portland is anything but new. They have just hit 1.0 last october: I guess that want they want to say by "new".

As I recall Portland project is part of LSB, let's hope that the distros quickly make the xdg-util package part of the base installation. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 01:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bouh) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212519 http://osnews.com/thread?212519 As I recall Portland project is part of LSB, let's hope that the distros quickly make the xdg-util package part of the base installation.

It's tentatively scheduled for LSB 3.2, but that basically depends on whether the mainstream distros have packaged it. The question mark from what I last read was around whether or not Red Hat would be shipping it with RHEL 5 which would lead to inclusion in LSB 3.2; otherwise it will probably have to wait for 4.x. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 02:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212520 http://osnews.com/thread?212520 Here's a post from one of the KDE devs that was published a couple of months ago, it may give a better example of how xdg-utils can be used to tweak and better integrate existing applications with non-native desktops or setups. They can be useful utilities for users, as well.

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2535 Wed, 14 Feb 2007 02:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212533 http://osnews.com/thread?212533 Neat, but this should become unnecessary for users in short order. Distros should just set all of the external handlers for DE-neutral apps to xdg-blah by default. Then the user can select preferred handlers through their DE's configuration panels, rather than knowing XdgUtils even exists.

I'm very glad to see that Portland is happening and the initial code is already working well. I'm also happy that Portland 2.0 will provide the abstractions at the D-BUS level. D-BUS is turning out to be quite handy for implementing the "it just works" kind of features. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 04:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212585 http://osnews.com/thread?212585 that's no body care that much about LSB and specially portland. I say that because the very little comments. I Think it's primary for Linux advancement.Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Google Wireless Transcoder;) Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (frozen5555) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212603 http://osnews.com/thread?212603 I fully agree.

I currently maintain the Fedora IceMW and Gmrun packages - both of which depend havily on xdg-utils.
Without it, generating menus and/or starting the default applications would have been a royal pain in the back side.

- GilboaEdited 2007-02-14 11:03 Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212618 http://osnews.com/thread?212618 I know it's not an X11-based desktop, but those utils used in makefiles & apps would save some work when porting and let ppl concentrate on the gui code.
xdg-open is quite easy as Zeta/Haiku has a similar open command already Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmu_man) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212620 http://osnews.com/thread?212620 Distros should just set all of the external handlers for DE-neutral apps to xdg-blah by default.

Some of the distros even have extended their version of the scripts to include their previously used "adapters" in the generic fallback case, e.g. Debian's xdg-open calls x-www-browser in the code branch that handles the "no DE detected" case.

The main question however is, will vendors of very common apps, e.g. Mozilla, use it, or will they stay as little integrated as possible. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212621 http://osnews.com/thread?212621 The install time helper scripts now also get used or are being looked at in third party installers as mentioned in the comment section on linux.com

http://applications.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37893&pid=95101&a... Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212631 http://osnews.com/thread?212631 for the time when it will be possible to access to the native file, print and other dialogs of the running DE from any app - so that, say, Gimp opens KDE file dialog for saving a file, and Krita opens Gnome one. AFAIK Portland plans to implement that, but at some later stage.

Also, it would be nice to take over the seemingly abandoned, but once promising Metatheme project to implement a uniform look for all widget toolkits.

And of course, a unified, standard API for cross-distro package installation would be a most welcome addition. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Temcat) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212634 http://osnews.com/thread?212634 For file dialogs, the xdg-utils repository already contains a script which just hasn't been in the 1.0 release since the availabilty of zenity (used in case of GNOME and XFCE) can not be sufficiently expected. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212636 http://osnews.com/thread?212636 Interesting! But is it really necessary to rely on zenity? I don't think Portland needs all its capabilities and versatility to open several dialog windows. Also, a script is IMO not the optimal solution for opening a dialog window from an application such as Gimp or Krita. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Temcat) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212643 http://osnews.com/thread?212643 But is it really necessary to rely on zenity? I don't think Portland needs all its capabilities and versatility to open several dialog windows

If you know a better dialog program for GNOME/XFCE which can do file selection dialogs, we are interested in hearing about it.

Also, a script is IMO not the optimal solution for opening a dialog window from an application such as Gimp or Krita

Yes, true, the service based second phase will be more suitable for this, but I thought it can't hurt to mention xdg-file-dialogs in case someone wants to do file related stuff in a script Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212651 http://osnews.com/thread?212651 Anyone care to mention software installation? *Ducks*

I think Portland could help out quite a bit here, and the DBUS interfaces could prove to be mighty useful for everyone.Edited 2007-02-14 15:41 Wed, 14 Feb 2007 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212657 http://osnews.com/thread?212657 "for the time when it will be possible to access to the native file, print and other dialogs of the running DE from any app"

I would like to suggest to look into: (search kde-apps.org)
kgtk - for OVERRIDING the GTK open / save dialogs with KDE ones. (yes, Gimp, Inkscape, OpenOffice etc with KDE open / save dialog)

"Also, it would be nice to take over the seemingly abandoned, but once promising Metatheme project to implement a uniform look for all widget toolkits."

gtk-qt-engine - for making ALL applications follow chosen KDE look.

I am not prescribing, but just suggesting that these are worthy, working tools for KDE-centric users. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (suslik) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212744 http://osnews.com/thread?212744 kgtk - for OVERRIDING the GTK open / save dialogs with KDE ones. (yes, Gimp, Inkscape, OpenOffice etc with KDE open / save dialog)

This is cool, didn't know about this proggie! But unfortunately, it's not DE-agnostic.

gtk-qt-engine - for making ALL applications follow chosen KDE look.

Yeah, I knew about gtk-qt-engine, but IMO Metatheme created more uniform look. Also, Metatheme was toolkit-neutral right from the start. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Temcat) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?212746 http://osnews.com/thread?212746 If you know a better dialog program for GNOME/XFCE which can do file selection dialogs, we are interested in hearing about it.

Nah, I just think that the corresponding functionality should be implemented right within the Portland project - possibly by borrowing the relevant code from Zenity. Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Temcat) Comments