[lazarus] GTK or XLib or Whatever

[Sergio Kessler]

sorry to re-introduce this to the mailing list

Sebastian Günther wrote:
> I'm personally quite bored of this discussion. Do you really think it's
> _that_ difficult to write a re-targetable component library, i.e. a CL
> which supports whatever you want to?

*NO*
and this is what I've been saying in previous emails, check the 
mailing list archive if you want (one with the subject 'multiplatform ?')

But I've heard many people here to say:

"we must work on gtk because it's multiplatform"

and this is wrong, /wrong/, *wrong*

YOU must deal with the multiplatform issue, not expect that the
toolkit resolve it for you.

and this can be done somewhat easily, in fact I've done it in
my house, but stopped for lack of time.

I've done something like:

fcl/
   gui/
      /inc    -> interfaces and multiplatform code
      /gtk
      /gnome
      /win32
      /qt
      /kde
      /be
      /motif
      /<include your platform here>

if someone want the code for this, just tell me.
(I don't know if it compile with 0.99.12, and is pretty basic)
But I guess the people of KCL (FCL, MCL, LCL .. this is driving me 
crazy) have done a similar approach.

> > >  Megido, Lazarus, and KCL.
> > >2 of them seem to be stranded in the discussion 'which widget set to use'.
> > >I don't want to see a third one get caught also.
> >
> > this is because 2 of them have started with /just/ ideas, and
> > even worse those ideas are not clean nor well designed.
> 
> hmm, what are these two projects, in your opinion?

Megido and Lazarus.

> I can assure you than KCL is not just an idea, currently there are about
> 3500 lines of KCL code (GTK target only, the Win32 target is being
> developed by someone else); and about 2000 lines in our IDE (which is
> basically just an editor widget with syntax highlighting support, and
> some file management stuff; that will change soon, of course, and I'm
> trying to work together with the Lazarus team. My intention is to speed
> things a little bit up).

I will not comment on KCL until I see the code.

> > and this is _not_ how open source work, saying:
> > 'hey, let's do this, let's do that' just doesn't work
> 
> who is saying this, currently

all the people.

> > you need something done first (read the "Cathedral and.."),
> > something to play, you need a benevolent dictator, someone
> > with clever ideas and spare free time, someone who knows
> > /what is doing/ and knows where to go.
> 
> Very intersting. IMHO the biggest problem of Lazarus is that there is
> too much talk and too slow progress.

I agree, but this come for the reasons above.

> I'm quite amused about all those
> component library problems in Lazarus, as KCL just worked fine after
> just a few days of development.

because they started with the wrong idea, the very wrong idea
look at the "code" if you want ...
Absolutely tied to gtk and horribly structured.

> > And in free software the better ideas prevail, so competition
> > is good.
> 
> Agreed. And we are trying to be some competition for Lazarus.
> 
> > if you like a dialog like Delphi you have to
> > add more than 40 lines of code.
> > Now use libgnomeui (wich is built on *TOP* of Gtk), and you can
> > have a really nice looking dialog (modal or not) with THREE lines.
> 
> Is this simple enough, in your opinion? :
> [snip of pascal code]

I was talking about the /gtk/ code (not pascal) vs. the gnome code
needed to implement a showMessage() routine (60 lines vs. 3 lines)

and in the /long run/, when you have to do DB access, Corba access,
media (audio, video, etc) access, desktop access, etc
HOW do you do it with Gtk-only approach ? (or Qt-only ?)

In the long run, you will =need= Gnome or KDE, no matter what you
think, no matter if you like it or not.
So _I_ think that going with the full toolkit from the begining
will simplify things.
Anyway, I'm out of Lazarus for the time being.

-- 
  |    Sergio A. Kessler  http://sak.org.ar
-O_O-  Keep working at it... you will either succeed, or become an expert.