RE: gtkhtml

["Poletti, Don" <don poletti comverse-in com>]

I think you are both argueing the wrong reasons. While
trying having the end-user require less libs is nice I think the
primary motivation should be from a programming perspective. Basically
if you have sloppy dependacies soon you have bloat, coding dificulties
trouble unit testing, buggier software etc. poor depencacy management
is a sign of spagetticode. "i.e damn good pratices I'm going to call the
function from here because I can and it will save me some time"

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christian Schaller [mailto:uraeus@linuxrising.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2000 3:57 PM
> To: matthew@mattshouse.com; gnome-list@gnome.org
> Subject: Re: gtkhtml
> 
> 
> Matthew wrote:
> 
> > >Things like this really bugs me, how many machines out 
> there have gdkpixbuf and
> > >libart installed, but not gnome-libs? Very, very few is my 
> estimate.
> >
> > 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 agree here if a widget can go into gtk then it should. Any
Gnome specific functionality should be added at the gnome level.
In other words inheritance.  Wouldn't it be nice is we had gtkhtml
that did everything you'd expect and a gnomehtml widget that added
gnome print and other goodies without any code duplication. 

> 
> 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.
> 
> Marking the GUI part as GNOME and moving stuff like Orbit, 
> gnome-print, gdk-pixbuf,
> libxml etc. into gtk seems to me as a rather silly way to try 
> to be 'neutral' in
> what basically boils down to the GNOME \KDE desktop supremecy 
> competition..
> 
> > >Of all potential and current CSC/Pronto users how many of 
> them will use GNOME
> > >or have GNOME installed? A very large perctange is my estimate.

what do you base this on?

> >
> > 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 was Havoc's argument.  Developers that are 
> dependency-minded are "weird".
> > If your application does not require the Gnome libs, then 
> why link them?  So
> > you can be cool in front of your Gnome-using friends?
> 
> Is it really a better solution to 'bloat' libraries instead 
> of using the
> functionality that is available in other libs? Is for example 
> 20% code overhead a
> price we should be willing to pay in order for all libs to 
> say independent of
> eachother?
 This is just plain dumb. (sorry I hate to be rude) Code
should never depend on something it doesn't need. why on earth
would someone do that? I don't unserstand the response to this
one. why would I want 20% and interdependence. There both bad.

> 
> > >This reminds me a bit of Gimp which also have talked about 
> wanting to use 6-7
> > >of the GNOME libraries in their next version, but in order 
> to keep their GNOME
> > >dependancy low, GNOME libs will not be one of them.
> >
> > And this is a bad thing in your mind?
> 
> My point was that if you require 90% of GNOME then I have 
> trouble seeing why the
> last 10% is so controversial.
Because if it has no use its just sloppy to include it and
leads to bloat. Also if its linked in it would probably slow
down startup time. People who code like this work at microsoft.
the hard drive manufactures love them.

> 
> > >Who the hell are 'all' these people who have all these gtk 
> and GNOME support
> > >libraries installed and who gladly will install 50 others 
> as long as there is
> > >no GNOME dependency, yet who think GNOME libs will take up 
> to much of their
> > >precious disk space.
> >
> > 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 
I agree with you here. It would be nice if there were less
languages so people wouldn't code in one for which I don't 
have some library but people like to code in the laguage they
most proficient in. At least he has a good reason for including it.

> which would have
> increased the chances of his users not needing any extra libs tenfold.
> 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.

I agree forking is rather extreme if you need a good part
of the functionality go anhead and take the gnome plunge (hmm
new web site slogan". But sometime that is asking alot I only
have gtk running here at work so that next step means I will
be out in the cold. 

> 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.

To summerize if everyone was more depencay minded this wouldn't 
have happened in the first place. only a non-programmer would
ever argue that interdepency are good or that including extra
dependacies are completely harmless.


> 
> Christian
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-list mailing list
> gnome-list@gnome.org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-list
>