Re: official support for more scripting languages in gnome needed

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Ben Ford <ben kalifornia com> writes:

> > > I think we are all getting somewhat off the subject.  The post that I originally
> > > replied to proposed making perl, python and lisp *REQUIREMENTS* for gnome.  To me
> > > (and at least one other), that is not an option and if you do so, you will lose
> > > me as a user / developer / distributor / advocate.
> >
> >  Yes, I was proposing to suggest programmers writing small utilities for gnome
> > to use scripting languages, that would be mean requiring user to install those
> > scripting languages for running these utilities.
> >
> >  Currently gnome is shipped with 4 major packages that require scripting
> > languages:
> > * sawfish - it requires rep (a dialect of lisp) - all logic is written in lisp
> > * gnucash - uses guile internally for all logic
> > * sketch (vector editor) written in python
> > * gimp - most of plugins are written in guile and some  in perl
> >
> >  Did you experienced any performance and memory issues with them that can be
> > attributed to the choice of language?
> >  I doubt very much..
> >
> 
> I don't know.  I don't run those apps.  Actually, I take that back.  I tried sawfish
> and not only was it a total bitch to compile, but it was slower than hell. It actually
> took about two seconds for the window titlebar menu to pop down on a PII450 w/ 192
> RAM.  Totally unacceptable.

The reason why it was slow is that it starts a separate process to display
the menus. Completely architecture, nothing to do with language.

I was using Tcl/Tk on a 486-33 and it was fine. (And Tcl as it existed then
was a much slower language than the languages being discussed here.)

Regards,
                                        Owen