Re: gtkhtml

[Matthew <matthew mattshouse com>]

>> See, this is what bugs me.  Gtk is the widget set, and Gnome is the desktop
>> environment.  Widgets should be added to Gtk, not to Gnome.  Gnome should make
>> use of the Gtk widgets.  That tail is wagging the dog.
>
>I think this is way separates us, I have always considered GNOME primarly as a
>development plattform, not as a desktop. The desktop part is in my head just a
>marketing channel for the development environment. If people want to replace the
>desktop part with XFce or Enlightenment,
>I see that as a separate issue than GNOME the development plattform.

Yeah, we may just need to agree to disagree. :)

>> Irrelevant.  A widget is a developer tool, not a political pawn.  Developers
>> are not going to use that widget just because it links to Gnome libs.  However,
>> they might fork it, or NOT use it because it does.  The developer community
>> would be better served with a strong Gtk rather than a weak Gtk and a bloated
>> Gnome.
>
>But you are making it a political issue, because you say that merging it into gtk
>would be the solution, since it wouldn't be GNOME anymore. Which is a purely
>political move not a technical one.

This is true, however, it's not exactly what I meant.  I want the widgets to
move out of gnome and into Gtk so that I can write nice looking apps without
being political.  So yes, the reasoning is political but I see it as a means to
an end.

>> It's not about me.  It's about my users.  I don't know what libs they have
>> installed, so I don't want to take my chances.  If I stick to stock Gtk then my
>> odds of having a happy user are increased.  If I want to make a Gnome app,
>> which I have, then I make sure to be clear about the dependencies.  I don't
>> call a spade a club...
>
>I don't fully buy that, take CSC Mail for instance, it depends on the PerlGtk
>bindings which judging by
>default inclusion in distributions is much less common than gnome-libs, yet the
>author decided to use it instead of starting out in plain C which would have
>increased the chances of his users not needing any extra libs tenfold.

Yes, but to avoid the dependency they distribute PerlGtk with the applications.
 At least if you use their installer.  

>And as for your users Mathew, we use your apps since they are the best Oracle tools
>out there, and  that is also why we get any dependencies we have to, in order to
>get them to run.  And if you decide you want some functionlity in your apps,
>offered in GNOME, you can't claim that forking a couple of Gnome libs to get new
>functionlity would probly make things easier for us as users, instead of asking us
>to get the original libs.

First of all, thanks. :)

I did have to duplicate some of the widgets distributed in Gnome.  Really,
having a default messagebox and entry box and preferences window is nice,  but
it wasn't worth the -lgnome.  So we duped 'em. 

So how many more people can use the apps since I don't link to Gnome?  Not
many.  Probably not enough to get nutty about.  However, there will be a few.  
But most importantly I haven't alienated a large segment of the market (KDE
users).  My market is small enough as is.  I guess in my quest to remain
non-political I've become, well, political.

>That said I really like CSC Mail and if the author feels strongly about having a
>gnome-libs dependency I will not hassle him anymore on the issue, actually unless
>he reads the GNOME list I will not hassle him at all :)  I was just wenting my
>frustration over claims that developing their own libs is less of a hassle for
>their users than their contributing to and using libs already in widespread use.

I've never used it.  I use Kmail on Helix Gnome <Gasp>.  Now if I could only get
the Kde people to launch netscape from it instead of konquerer.  :)

Thanks for the argument.

Matthew