Re: [gtk-list] Re: Objective-C binding

[Helge Hess <hh mdlink de>]

[FoundationKit]

> Looked at this way, the concept sounds quite interesting.  what's in
> libFoundation and gstep-base and are they packaged seperately from gnustep
> (excuse my ignorance, I don't know how the gnustep project is setup at all.)
>
> I don't know if introducing another dependency into the code is desirable,
> though if it can be avoided.  You hint that FoundationKit might be somewhat
> large in size.  How large?  How much of it isn't strictly necessary to having
> gtk-ObjC bindings?

Note that there are several different FoundationKit libraries, eg. gstep-base and libFoundation. I prefer libFoundation for reasons which do not belong into this group. There is the OpenStep standard which outlines what belongs to a FoundationKit, so all FoundationKits should be compatible. In reality some lack some features, eg libFoundation does not support Distributed Objects
yet (soon to come ..).

The shared library libFoundation is around 1.2 MB, there are some resource files, but they shouldn't take much memory. Stripping the Foundation isn't a good thing, since Foundation is some kind of standard, so while GTKKit may not use all things provided by it, user's would be annoyed because of several different environments.

Actually I do not know which apps already use obgtk (like to know that, so I can make an example how to do the same in GTKKit). I would see GTKKit seperate from gtk+ distributions anyway.

> I'd definitely like to see what you come up with, but the present
> bindings and yours might really be filling two different niches.

I fear so (at least because Elliot seems to love Object, while I love Foundation ;-). Actually I would place the binding more in the GNUstep zone than in GNOME. However, I think while GNOME maybe the right thing for C++, C or whatever language enthusiasts, for Objective C programmers Foundation is the best available starting place.

However, we'll see what comes out. There is already much done. Please note that GTKKit isn't supposed to be a nice gtk+ wrapper. The goal is to provide OpenStep programmers a convenient start into X11. So many things which you used to have in gtk+, like signals are replaced by similiar but different stuff, like NSNotificationCenter's.

I think this list isn't the right place to go into deeper discussions of Objective C programming stuff. People which like to do this are invited to the gnustep-discussion list (www.gnustep.org) or to the appropriate newsgroups.
However, since GTKKit is somewhat related to this list, I will post an announcement if the kit becomes public available on some site.

Bye
    Helge

Helge Heß
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