Re: [gtk-list] Re: To GTK, or not to GTK - that is the question

[Ulric Eriksson <ulric edu stockholm se>]

On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Ulric Eriksson wrote:
> > 
> > The lack of a decent Motif replacement for Linux makes porting to Linux
> > harder than porting to other Unixes, because like it or not, Motif is the
> > standard.
> 
> You can still get Motif for Linux just as you can on other Unixes, it just
> costs money. And you can get Lesstif. It's not like Gtk makes them go
> away.

That is part of the problem, not the solution.

I can understand why one would like to get away from Motif. It was never
free in any of the three or so meanings attached to the word "free".

Xt on the other hand is open, free and already available everywhere you
have X. Replacing it is like replacing stdio for C programming.

> Gtk's framework isn't proprietary; anyone can use it and modify it and
> whatever. It is new and different though. I haven't written in Motif, but
> I imagine its object system is both harder to use and less well adapted to
> language bindings and GUI builders, two big advantages of the Gtk system.

Proprietary as in not conforming to standards.

I have written language bindings for Xt. It isn't particularly hard; the
fact that all resources are accessed through a common interface makes it
very straightforward. And resource tags are strings, which maps well to
all languages.

> However the fact is, from a free-software perspective, there are very few
> significant applications which require Motif. I can think of XEmacs (where
> it's optional), and DDD. Recently Mozilla was added; but they've decided
> to drop it. Maybe a couple things of less general interest, and small
> easily-duplicated or easily-ported applications. The most common kit has
> been Tk, or Xaw, and even in those there are few applications worth
> mentioning.  The fact is, GUI free software was not very common or good
> until KDE and the Gimp/Gtk, followed by Gnome. 

And still isn't. ;-)

> If you consider GNU/Linux as a system, there is simply very little legacy
> code to port. So this is not a concern to many of us. Proprietary apps may
> not like porting to Gtk; but they don't have to. They can buy a Motif
> license and ship statically linked. 

I'm allergic to the view of GNU/Linux as the only environment worthy of
our attention.

> But the real reason is probably this: successful free software must be
> interesting and fun to code, unless it is devastatingly useful. Motif is
> not devastatingly useful to most free software developers. So interesting
> and fun is the primary motive in a GUI kit. This means it has to be
> possible to add new features (themes, language bindings), the API must be
> nice, etc. Adhering to the Motif standard is just not interesting for most
> developers; the benefits are not visible from a free software point of
> view.

This I can agree with. Die, Motif, die.

Ulric