[lazarus] GTK or XLib or Whatever

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, Sergio A. Kessler wrote:

> >> btw, I've just convinced to the author of gIDE going to gnome-only,
> >> and I'm helping them now (in C) and is unbeliable how the code
> >> is simplyfied.
> >
> >Maybe, but I don't have GNOME, and I don't want it on my PC. I have KDE,
> >I like it, so why would I want/use GNOME ? 
> 
> hey, a year ago I was without Gtk, this imply that doing
> Xlib-only is a good decision ?
> (if you like KDE so much, why you have Gtk after all)

Because Qt is C++, and we can't connect to it. If we could connect to C++,
I would have used Qt. 

> 
> I've looked at Gtk *and* I've looked at Gnome, I can say that
> doing an app gtk-only and not using /at least/ the gnomeui library
> is plain stupid.

Thanks for the compliment :-)

> Is like using Delphi without the VCL, exactly like this.
> 
> And see all apps that started Gtk-only, a _lots_ of them have
> evolucioned to use Gnome. Now ask why.

I can understand why THEY did it.
I'm only saying that WE have different goals, which make this step NOT so
obvious.

> 
> >Sigh. This is an old problem. The decision was made to use GTK, let's 
> >stick to it.
> 
> I'm not the desicion maker here, I'm out of Lazarus
> (if anybody has doubts before)

A pity. You seem to know what you're talking about. If your coding
is as good as your arguments, we would evolve much faster.
If we don't spend too much time discussing, that is :-)

> 
> >Until now, 3 projects have started to work on a component library annex 
> >RAD: 
> >  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.
> 
> and this is _not_ how open source work, saying:
> 'hey, let's do this, let's do that' just doesn't work
> 
> 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.

You're telling ME ! This is how I have worked from the start of FPC !
Glad to see we agree on this :)

That is why I don't publish e.g. TDataset code yet.
I'll finish it first, publish it, and then I am open for suggestions.

> 
> >This is a discussion of more tan 10 years old, which cost large companies
> >lots of money (Motif/Open look etc) Let's not get into the same street.
> 
> I don't care about companies nor business, I only care about
> free software.
> And in free software the better ideas prevail, so competition
> is good.

I will be the first to agree.

> 
> >So, please, stick to the original plan. Later down the road you can still
> >make changes. Discussing all this now will NOT get you any further.
> 
> Michael, I'm out, but for example, look at dialogs.pp of lazarus
> the function ShowMessage, it's a little mess, no ? and indeed is
> a very crapy dialog, if you like a dialog like Delphi you have to
> add more than 40 lines of code.

I don't look at lazarus' code, no time. I checked it in the beginning,
and I was amazed that it actually worked then %-) But it does.

But this is a matter of design: If the lazarus people have messy code,
then that is a problem. But it doesn't influence the discussion
'which widget set' At most, a code cleanup is needed.

> 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.
> 
> simplicity, simplicity, simplicity ...

Yes, but also WORKABILITY. gtk compiles on Win32 - GNOME doesn't.
If we can throw in multiplatform support, then I think it outweighs
the advantage of GNOME. (yes I know you don't think that gtk
ensures multiplatformness, but it at least ensures that the same
code runs on 2 platforms)

Finally, nothing stops you from making a 'advdialog.pp' with a gnome
dialog in it. Then that component would be available on Linux only.

Michael.