On Wed, 11 Feb 2004, Zhang Weiwu wrote: >Hello. I'm zhangweiwu from the minichinput project. This is the >first time I post to this list, so please forgive me if I posted >to the wrong list. > >To be brief: minichinput is a Chinese input method server. Can >XFree86 accept minichinput as its subproject? > >Minichinput is one of the most widely used *nix input server >among the simplified Chinese users (or at least I think so). >Linux distros like RedHat and Turbolinux adopted minichinput as >the default input server. minichinput handles both GB, Big5 and >UTF8, it is lightweighted, doesn't rely on gtk/qt. > >Who/what list should I contact if I wish to make minichinput a >subproject of XFree86, and release as part of it? Do XFree86 >accept this kind of subprojects?
Personally, I think having minichinput as it's own separate piece of software is the best thing to do. Everyone is currently trying to get rid of this massive monolithic source code tree which includes everything under the sun. It is easier to maintain applications like minichinput if it is it's own project, and it's easier to package, and to update. Having to recompile the entirity of XFree86 to fix a small bug in a single tiny application is going backwards IMHO. So, while I can't speak for the XFree86 project at all, and I'm definitely not trying to do so, I can at least give you my viewpoint from a distribution engineering perspective. We will continue to ship minichinput as a separately packaged rpm package that is not included with the XFree86 sources, even if the XFree86 project were to include it in their tarball, much in the same way that we now currently ship xterm as a separate package. Other distribution X maintainers that I am in contact with daily on IRC share this sentiment generally, and look forward to having more modular X sources to deal with in the future as well. Note that this is not to discourage your idea in any way, but rather just to indicate that it wont be useful to everyone out there for this to be included directly in XFree86. It may however benefit other OSs and distributions which XFree86 supports which may not already ship minichinput, such as commercial proprietary OSs however. Hope this feedback is useful. Take care, TTYL -- Mike A. Harris _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
