Updates from the Free Standards Group

Daniel Quinlan writes "Today, the Free Standards Group released version 1.2 of the Linux Development Platform Specification and let loose with the public review of FHS 2.2-beta that will be used in the Linux Standard Base (and is already being used by distributions). Also of note, the Linux Standard Base has a new chairman, George Kraft IV, and the LSB specification is nearing completion. Really."

Comments

If they only had the balls..

[slick_rick]

This could really be a good thing. They could fix many of the "problems" that prevent Linux from dominating the desktop.

Setting a standard set of APIs for stuff like the clipboard, file associations, desktop integration, etc. The Windoze way to handle clipboard stuff is to first "register" a type for the data you are placing there. Most apps use a canned type and therefore you can cut and paste between almost any windows program. Why is it bad for things to work? Couldn't we do the same thing in X with a XML spec of some sort?

And how about standardizing the interface a bit. I can't tell you how hard it is to explain to my wife that in KMail you use CTRL+C to copy, but then to paste it in Netscape you push the middle mouse button, and hope...

Not to mention the 15 different file open dialogs I see every day. Some of them are really rotten too...

I love Linux, don't get me wrong. However, I believe that standardizing some of the more obvious stuff for the GUI crowd would benefit us all immensely.