External libs support : Re: JAVA in Gnome (fwd)

[robert havoc pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

Forwarded on author's request.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 13:54:24 +0300
From: Bertrand Guiheneuf <Bertrand.Guiheneuf@inria.fr>
To: robert havoc pennington <rhpennin@midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: External libs support : Re: JAVA in Gnome 

rhpennin@midway.uchicago.edu said:
//  Why would these things (Mesa, Java, font servers) be in Gnome rather
// than distributed separately?  Would any of them have Gnome-specific
// features?  

You are perfectly right. There is no reason why a "non gnomified" app or lib
would be embedded in the gnome dist.
But What I mean is the following:

As a programmer, I would like to include neat fonts, and I'd like to be able 
to
visualize 3D graphics. But if I do so, I have (at least for Mesa) to suppose
the user has the correct libs installed on its system. If he doesn't and the
app is included in Gnome, then Gnome will be broken.
So does this mean that a app using 3D visu can not be included in GNOME?

On the other side. Suppose the developper knows that Mesa or a 
semi-professionnal font system is included in gnome, then he will think about
using them. That will make the difference with a programming environment  
which would not have this possibilities. SGI is the leader in Image Sythesis
because their environement includes 3D possibilities. 

But still you are right, those shouldn't be mixed with the gnome package. 
(Does gtk+ have to, thus??) as they are completely separated stuffs.

But then, there must be a way to create a Gnome-Support package which includes
the stuffs a Gnome App can suppose to be available on the system.
A future Gnome-Install program would then have to look if those package are 
already present, and if not, install them by default.



	Bertrand.