[lazarus] Progress

[Michael A. Hess]

Jeffrey A. Wormsley wrote:
> 
> Is this an absolute requirement?  What I am saying, is that if the GTK
> library, as it exists now in C, does not have what is desired, and if
> someone is willing to go to the hellishly low levels of implementing
> it in FPC, is there any reason not to?

Sure they can in their application. They can link directly and
efficiently to whatever library they so desire. They can talk directly
to X Windows if they wish. Should this be in the LCL? I don't think so.
If we intended on writting the LCL to work with just GTK and only GTK we
would for one be further along then we are and we could get as ugly and
hellishly low level as we wanted. However there are some people who do
not and will never use GTK. They want to use Qt. They want to write it
using Gnome. That is why I say we just stick to the basic components and
let the user get as messy with it after that as they wish.

<snip>

> Or is it better in your opinion to develop the widget in C, have it
> made part of the GTK, then wrap it into Lazarus?

Yes this is exactly what I think should be done. Should the Lazarus and
LCL team do it? No. Can the application developer do it? Sure.

> While this would indeed work, personally, it seems to hold us at the
> mercy of each API that we support.  In other words, Lazarus can't have
> feature A until everyone else has feature A.  Surely this can't be
> your meaning?  What have I missed?

You are already considering yourself at the mercy of the API. That is
why I feel that the LCL should only support the base set of components
found on just about every API. This way if someone builds code with just
the native LCL code they can use any API they wish. If they wish to
extend the capability of the API they are using, great, let them. If we
try to write the LCL so that any extended component can be used with any
API we will pull our hair out.

As it is with the currently movement the LCL development has come to a
halt. We had decided months ago that the initial LCL would support and
be written for GTK. When that worked then and only then would we begin
to work on supporting other API's. We need to stop trying to support
GTK, Windows, Qt and whatever else before we have even managed to
support one. Attempts are being made to be able to support extended
components in various API's and we haven't even finished with the coding
to support the basic ones yet.

Can't we just work on supporting the base components first???

-- 
==== Programming my first best destiny! ====

Michael A. Hess      Miracle Concepts, Inc.
mhess at miraclec.com   http://www.miraclec.com