From: John P . Looney (valen at domain tuatha.org)
Date: Wed 08 Sep 1999 - 12:09:07 IST
On Wed, Sep 08, 1999 at 11:07:07AM +0100, Shane Dempsey mentioned:
> > Surely you are not advocating the creation of a third set of widget
> > libraries ? It should be pointed out that GNOME's CORBA stuff has
> > **nothing** to do with the GUI libraries. You can write GNOME apps that
> > don't have a GUI interface, just a corba/text one.
> I know that and have done it a few times in the past.
> Yes , I am afraid that I am advocating the creation of a 3rd set of
> widget libraries. Kinda like a plug and play system for widgets where it
> really doesn't matter what you think a graphical widget should look like as
> long as you extend the widget interface or delegate event processing to a
> common widget object ( button , scroll bar etc. ) defined in the common lib.
That's been done in GTK. However, it hasn't stop people using Xforms,
motif, Athena3D, Qt. If another widget set was created...why would people
use it, not what they know/have ? Making it extensible & customisable
doesn't make it standard.
> Anybody wanting to add to this functionality would have to provide the
> source for their changes, get their lib approved and added to the common
> lib. In the meantime the source / binary distro for the lib could be
> downloadable and all programs developed using it should handle the exception
> that occurs when a lib isn't available by using default lib functionality.
Sounds like the way you can add widgets to the GNOME and GTK libraries at
the moment really. Works well too. Doesn't mean people don't also write
widgets for QT and KDE though.
> > Very tall. Widget sets aren't interchangable. At all. Although GTK has a
> > "gtk-engine" idea, whereby you can re-write what the widget does and looks
> > like (even look like KDE, if you wanted), the supporting code, the way the
> > widgets are created, mapped and positioned are different in every widget
> > set.
> Make Them Interchangeable . That is what I am saying is wrong with them.....
You can't. Motif is based around Xt, and requires a completely different
looping structure than gtk or Qt. Qt is C++ based, so (AFAIK) you can write
KDE apps in straight C. They aren't just widget sets, they are wholly
different APIs.
> Then ensure that users know that if they download software from
> certain accredited sources , gnome / gnu project etc..
> that it will be standardised in terms of help and look and feel.
Sounds like the GNU project. You have to support long options, use GTK,
have a COPYING INSTALL and README files, automake etc ...hmm ?
> No I haven't - I have found gnome nice but unstable.
> Which is a pity I suppose.
Upgrade to more recent libs. The version that came out with RedHat 6.0 is
decent, with the updates, it's perfectly stable.
> > I fear a single, tight standard, as much as complete chaos.
> It doesn't have to be oppressive or static . I think that there is another
> way and I was just expressing that opinion.
I think another way would be nice, where Linus decides to start his own
distribution, and he says "GNOME makes it in, Athena, KDE don't, no apps
that use such and such a lib makes it in" etc. Where you have a common
base, and then all other distros add to that. Sort of a linus-ified Linux
Standard Base". But you and I know that it's not going to happen.
Kate
-- Microsoft. The best reason in the world to drink beer.
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