Re: GTK+ Modules and GDK

[Joel Becker <jlbec evilplan org>]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 05:08:41PM +0100, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > 	I must admit I can't quickly come up with a situation where I'd
> > want to start a GUI toolkit without a GUI, 
> 
> I can ;-)
> 
> for instance, accessibility... if I'm using a braille display, why do I
> need a video card?  Of course some/all of GTK+ might not work very well
> without a backing GDK instance.

	See, a braille display is a display, and likley could have a GDK
representation.

> This is reminiscent of the situation with 'headless Java' which was a
> major PITA for a long time.  Lots of folks wanted to use Java apps
> server-side, conversion utilities, etc. but couldn't unless there was a
> valid DISPLAY.  The workaround is usually Xvfb, to create a virtual
> display.  However that may conflict with our accessibility support.

	But these Java apps were text-only.  I can certainly understand
how a text-only app (say, server-side something or other) would not
require a display.  I saw this with Java way back when as well, and I
agree it was silly.  But it is one thing to say "Java shouldn't require
a display." and quite another to say "AWT and Swing shouldn't require a
display."  I agree with the former, I can't see the latter.

> It's quite possible as well that a non-GUI application or utility might
> want to use some GTK+ api.

	Like I said, I'm not quite sure I see this, but hey, if someone
does the work, why not?

> I think use of ATK without GTK+ is already possible, and certainly
> assume that any app can use glib without a DISPLAY.

	I know glib doesn't require a display, and separating ATK from
GTK+ would probably be a really good thing for getting ATK to work
across different parts of the programming world.  It would be a great
thing to have accessiblilty API for just about everything.
	I'm not discussing ATK or GLib or curses or anything like that.
I was specifically discussing GTK+ as a widget set, and I still can't
see how you use widgets without a display (I don't mean "X display", I
mean "display of some kind."  Braille, Win32, Quartz, doesn't matter.
Something to target drawing to, because GTK+ draws.  In the 1.2 days,
GTK+ did fun stuff like the object system and signals etc.  Now that is
in GLib.
	Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying no one will ever figure out a
reason.  I was just saying I don't see the reason.  This could very well
be a failing on my part! :-)

Joel

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