Re: opening Gnome to multiple (windowing) systems

[Jim Pick <jim jimpick com>]

Bertrand Guiheneuf <Bertrand.Guiheneuf@inria.fr> writes:

> Thus, and as Qt is after all a very good library, wouldn't it be
> possible to make Gnome a platform that would allow anyone to choose its own
> GUI lib (wxGTK, GTK++ , GTK-- or Harmony) for its Gnome app?

I like to think that Gnome is open enough for that.  (not my call though)

Using multiple toolkits does raise the issue of increased memory
requirements when you have all those libraries loaded in at once.

Even so, you have to weigh that against the significant duplication of
application writing effort that is going on in the Free Software
community (duplicate apps based on Qt, Gtk, Lesstif, Tk, Athena, AWT,
etc.).

I'd personally be willing to trade some increased memory requirements
to run the Gnome environment in exchange for having integration across
all the pre-existing applications presently written for KDE,
Gnome/Gimp, mozilla, tcl/tk, emacs, etc.  Keep in mind that down the
road, work could also be done to reduce the amount of duplicated code
the various toolkits contain.

Just as I don't believe there is "one true language" - I also don't
believe that there is "one true toolkit" (although Gtk isn't bad).

I do eventually want to see full blown-themes / pluggable
look-and-feel as part of the Gtk environment.  Most toolkits have some
support for theme-like stuff (Qt, Gtk, Tk, Xt, Athena, AWT) - I'm sure
this could be made consistent across all the toolkits if somebody
really wanted to.

I'd bet that if somebody wanted to make a variant of Qt, Tk, etc. that
worked nicely alongside Gtk - none of the guys in the Gnome project
would object.

Cheers,

 - Jim

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