[Lazarus] Is Lazarus project in a downward spiral?

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 6 Mar 2010, Juha Manninen wrote:

> 
> Hi!
> 
> > If Graeme had spent his time and effort on helping out in the LCL,
> 
> > instead of fpGUI, then the graph would have looked quite differently,
> 
> > I'm quite sure.
> 
> If fpGui is used as a base for a light native *nix widgetset for LCL, and if the design change I suggested (in my reply to DoDi) gets
> implemented, then Lazarus will be revived (again). :-)
> 
> The current bindings will never be good, because of inherent problems. That doesn't kill Lazarus but it will remain as a freak show case,
> instead of becoming a popular high quality application.
> 
> I see the quality of Lazarus code is now strictly divided between core features which is high quality, and the widget bindings which has
> problems.
> 
> What do you think?

It is a matter of resources. The design of the LCL is good. 
It's goal is 
- to look and feel native on all platforms. 
- At the same time it also aims to be Delphi compatible as
   much as feasible: porting a basic Delphi app to lazarus
   should be a fairly easy task.

In my opinion, it succeeds in these goals. More and more so.

Keeping the various widget-sets up-to-date is just a task that
requires work and resources. And yes, there will be bugs in the
process.

The same will be true if you use fpGUI under the hood.

With the added downside that it's far from certain that you'll 
ever be able to make fpGUI look native on all platforms: one of
its explicit design goals was to look exactly the same on all 
platforms, which is contrary to the Lazarus design goal.

It may require a huge effort and maybe even a complete rework to 
make fpGUI able to do this: an uncertain path, which may well mean 
more work.

This time is IMHO better spent on improving the existing widgetsets.
All that is left to do there is bugfixing.

There is also simply a strategic reason for not using fpGUI:

The GTK/Qt toolkits are tried and tested, because they 
a) Are used widely since years.
b) have a larger development group.
compare this to fpGUI which is essentially a one-man show. 
If Graeme for some reason drops out (gods forbid): bye-bye fpGUI.

None of this means that I think fpGUI is bad (I have used it), 
or that making a LCL widgetset for fpGUI (next to the others)
is in itself a bad idea. But basing Lazarus' LCL on it: No, thank you.

Michael.