Re: wxWindows and GNOME

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Robert Roebling wrote:
> > To integrate well in a GNOME enviroment, basically means using the 
> > GNOME libraries
> 
> Not a userīs standpoint. Does GNOME care for users? I am no
> longe sure about that.
> 

Let's reiterate that wxWin/GTK+ is a _good thing_ and we want to encourage
it. It is just not a GNOME thing; it has nothing to do with GNOME. We
encourage people to write GNOME apps instead of plain GTK+ apps, and a
wxWin app running on the GTK+ port is a plain GTK+ app.

There are distinct advantages to users if you use GNOME, and there will be
more in the future. Here are some of the things that are important:

 - consistent location for storing configuration data
 - proper session management behavior
 - consistent appearance of dialogs and dialog buttons (including
   specific dialog types, such as property box, about box, etc.)
 - consistent configurability of dialog boxes and other UI properties
 - in the next version, it will be essential to use our VFS-based
   file manager that links to GNOME metadata
 - the GNOME help system (which will also be more crucial in the 
   next version, but is important now)
 - GNOME stock icons
 - Small UI consistencies, such as the icon, font, and color pickers,
   or the menu pixmaps
 - Planned window manager hints and maybe session management extensions

There are also lots of developer advantages to using platform-specific
features like GnomeCanvas, gnome-print, libxml, libglade, etc.

However, I _am_ happy to have a good cross-platform toolkit like wxWin
that at least partially integrates with GNOME. Sometimes people need a
cross-platform app, and I'd rather have them use wxWin than some other kit
that doesn't integrate with GNOME at all. I also want nice C++-based ways
to program for GNOME. It's just that wxWin isn't a core GNOME component
since it isn't "gnomified."

Please, let's not discuss whether it _should_ be gnomified, because you
are probably right that your existing developer base doesn't want that.
It's beside the point; I'm not saying it _should_ be gnomified, I'm saying
that if it isn't gnomified, it's not part of GNOME.

This looks like a budding flamewar, so let's just understand each other
and move on. Again, I'm not trying to change your wxWin/GTK+ product,
I just think it is not a GNOME product.

Havoc