Re: Plans for 2.8 - GNOME Managed Language Services?

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Sat, 2004-03-27 at 02:07, aigiskos wrote:
> So, is this the proposal?
> 
>      *Platform: GNOME C libraries + Classpath 
>      *Runtime: GObject and CLI (from Mono; IKVM to
> allow easy Java usage)
>      *Desktop: C, C++, Java, Python, etc (but not
> Mono?)
>      *3rd party apps: whatever language they feel
> like.
> 
> I guess my confusion is whether we're talking about
> the platform or the desktop level (and where does the
> runtime come into it?).  It does seem beneficial to
> limit the platform to C (with maybe one other
> language-- Python? Java?).
> 

Here's how I see it:

Platform : pure C only - needed for portability/speed, easily wrapped
into other languages, cross platform for use on Solaris, FreeBSD, OS/X
etc

Default Runtime/lib : GObject/GTK 

Optional high level Runtime/Lib : CLI/GTK#  - should always be optional
so that unmanaged code has a choice. Will almost certainly be richer and
easier to use than default runtime. New widgets here would not be
enforced by HIG but would probably be made available to unmanaged code
as bonobo components - that way developers of unmanaged code can decide
whether to use them on a technical merit basis only (and not be bullied
MS style).  

Desktop : C, C++, Mono (C#, Java, Python on mono?, Perl on mono?),
Python (if not on mono) - mono should be fully supported here so that we
get the full benefit of its runtime here. Hopefully Perl and Python can
be ported to Mono so that loads more people can contribute to the
Desktop using the richer CLI runtime - this should drastically speed up
desktop development.


jamie.