[Lazarus] Gtk 1.2 fixes (again)

[Kostas Michalopoulos]

On 2/13/22 23:41, Maxim Ganetsky via lazarus wrote:
> But I still can't understand, why you put so much an effort into an 
> ancient and obsolete widgetset. 

I only spent 2-3 days, including getting Gtk 1.2 itself to compile and 
tracking down a gdk_pixbuf version that was compatible with Gtk 1.x, it 
wasn't that big of an effort. As to why, as i wrote in the comment in 
the merge request, i was curious about the Gtk 1.2 state, noticed that 
it didn't work and decided to fix it. I just simply like it when 
software doesn't drop support for old stuff just because they are old. I 
am into retrocomputing and various retrocomputing communities and i like 
being able to use modern software in retro environments (if anything i'd 
like to see what it'd take to bring back Win9x support to both FPC and 
Lazarus as in a game i made for a gamejam a couple of years ago i had to 
use several year old versions of FPC to make a Win9x version that would 
work with graphics cards on my older computers - like 3dfx Voodoo - and 
couldn't make the editor available for it because it wouldn't compile on 
the last Lazarus that supported Win9x - at least i was able to use the 
latest FPC for the DOS version, which is great).

Beyond that, as i wrote in the merge request, MUI is even more "ancient" 
and yet Lazarus added support for it recently. I do not see why it being 
called obsolete by its original developers means that one couldn't work 
on it if they want, it is open source after all, the entire point is 
having the freedom to do things like that.

Also i do not see why this is such an issue, the code is there and 
doesn't bother anyone - it isn't like i as a user who mostly works with 
win32 and gtk2 am bothered about the existence of 
gtk3/gtk4/cocoa/carbon/mui/fpgui/customdrawn/whatever. The worst that 
happens is that it takes a couple of MB of disk space in the source 
checkout.

 > IMHO finishing fpGUI widgetset makes much more sense.

AFAIK fpGUI hasn't seen a release in years now and i think the 
development version has several incompatible changes, meaning that if 
anyone works on it now they may have a Gtk2->Gtk3->Gtk4 situation where 
they'll need to go and spend time getting the code base in a working 
state. TBH i am not a fan of APIs that break themselves - i'd rather 
make a Motif backend (it is technically still developed :-P and even 
theoretically an IEEE standard - or, well, it was at some point) as its 
API has a stability that goes back to the early 90s. While it'd be neat 
if there was support for it, it isn't something i personally find 
interesting.

Also why fpGUI specifically and not the custom drawn widgetset instead? 
It does seem have some issues but at least this one seems to be 100% on 
Lazarus instead of relying on an external project to remain working.

Kostas