Re: layers of abstraction, and how Gnome can win

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

>  a) use an XP toolkit that does its own rendering, possibly 
>     emulating native looks
>     (current openoffice, mozilla, Java/Swing)
>  b) use an XP toolkit that wraps native widgets
>     (old Netscape, Java/AWT, wxWindows)
>  c) separate backend "engine" from frontend and rewrite the frontend
>     for every target platform (though usually elements of a) and b)
>     arise on an ad hoc basis)
>     (AbiWord, some mp3 players, etc.)
> 
> a) is the most maintainable because the functionality and behavior of
> the app is 99% the same on all platforms. This is why people use it. 
> Its disadvantage is nonnative L&F.

I must disagree. a) is the most unmaintainable of all. You will spend years of
engineering time fruitlessly trying to fix all the annoying look and feel
subtle behaviour differences. You will also never be able to say you are
a Gnome app or a KDE app, which will longer term count against you when someone
decides 'Gnome shall be our desktop'. Ask the folks who had beautiful motif
clone guis but got thrown out of bids because they were not CDE even if they
looked CDE and integrated

Alan