Re: [freeqt] Re: opening Gnome to multiple (windowing) systems

[Federico Mena <federico nuclecu unam mx>]

>  Don't want to start a religious debate, but I'd like to know (at
>  least) Miguel's exact position about the end of the forwarded mail.
>  It's not the first time I hear that Gnome is totally opposed to
>  support something (even a bit) different of GTK.  Mr Robert
>  Roebling <roebling@ruf.uni-freiburg.de> itself (the guy who writes
>  wxGTK) told me something like that.
>
>  This is one of the main problem of KDE (closed opinions). 
>  Why does Gnome follows the same path??
>   
>  GTK is not perfect and wxGTK and (future) Harmony have many qualities.
>  (C++ for example)

One of the original goals of Gnome is to let people use whatever
language they like.  KDE seemed to be aimed at C++ programmers only,
and we thought this was a mistake; people should be allowed to write
programs for their environment in whatever language they like.  Right
now we have stuff that is written in C, C++, Obj-C, Scheme, Perl, and
whatnot.

At the time the Gnome project was started, GTK+ looked like a good
toolkit to use.  The GIMP seemed to be getting good acceptance in the
free software community, and its toolkit was well designed and it was
being actively developed, so it was a good option.

Now for my personal position.

I know that GTK+ is not perfect.  No other toolkit is, for that
matter.  I think the issue is pretty much moot at this point, as GTK+
is a toolkit that you can fix yourself to bring it closer to
perfection.  And people can use it from several languages; I think
that is good.

Personally, I don't like C++.  But that's only my position.  I am
perfectly happy if people contribute code to the Gnome project
regardless of the language they choose.  After all, they are free to
choose.  I am not going to send a foaming mail with the reasons I
dislike C++, because that is another flamewar.

As for Gtk-- and wxGTK, I have no problems with people using them.  If
people feel comfortable programming with them, then let them do it!

>    Gnome seems unfriendly to a) C++ and b) any other widget set than Gtk.
>  (or at least a fair number of Gnomers do, which amounts to the same thing)

I don't know KDE's official position, but following the same line of
reasoning, it looks to me like you could say that it is unfriendly to
a) anything not-C++ and b) any other widget set than Qt ;-)

  Quartic