Re: Food for thought: Why (and how) should KDE and Gnome unite?

[Gleef <dzol virtual-yellow com>]

On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Fredrik Liljegren wrote:
[snip]
> >  Gnome chose to be WM-independent, but in order to take full advantage, a
> >WM should be Gnome compliant. Advantage: more choice.
> >  KDE chose an integrated WM. Advantage: more efficient.  Applicaitons
> >communicate with the WM by invoking member functions directly, not through
> >hints, as Gnome does. The first is more efficient, but doesn't work with
> >other WMs.
> >  Should KDE-WM be Gnome compliant?...
> 
> Making kwm gnome-compliant would in fact be a merge of part of the core,
> wouldn't it?

Not really.  The full description of what makes a Window Manager GNOME
Compliant is at (http://www.gnome.org/devel/gnomewm/).  What it boils down
to, essentially is:
  1) Proper ICCCM Session Management Support
  2) Support of the full suite of MWM hints
  3) Support of a few new GNOME hints and window manager queries
As I understand it, KWM already has 1 and 2 down well.  In addition, as I
understand it, KWM has added several of its own hints, some of which
surely overlap with GNOME's.  It should be trivial for KWM to support
those hints under either KWM or GNOME's name.  Adding GNOME support to KWM
is probably quite easy, with little coding involved.

 
> As a programmer (allthough not in either project) my choice of GUI seems to be
> done for me, because I prefer C++ in my apps. If there would be a decent
> object-library (wich there might be, cause I don't know that much about GTK)
> for writing apps in C++ for GNOME, then I would have a choice.

Check out GTK-- (http://lazy.ton.tut.fi/terop/iki/gtk/gtk--.html), it's
the C++ API for GTK+/GNOME.  I'm not a C++ programmer, but those who I've
talked to have said it is a joy to work with. 

Best of Luck,
-Gleef