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

[Havoc Pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, Ulric Eriksson wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > 
> > That is not the point. The point is, people are using GNU/Linux. People
> > code what they want to have. *shrug* - at least they write portable code.
> > But they aren't going to code things with a Solaris box in mind, because
> > they don't have a Solaris box, or Motif. People don't mind taking
> > portability patches, and if proprietary system users find it useful -
> > great. But that is not the motivation for most, I don't think. 
> 
> I am aware of that attitude; I just don't agree with it. I test build and
> test run my software on all the platforms I can lay my hands on, and it
> really helps shake out bugs caused by endianness or minor OS differences.
> If there is anything the Internet should be good for, it is to get things
> compiled on as many platforms as possible.
> 

I'm not really talking about making software portable or testing it;
that's no big deal with a whole world of free software developers, and can
be done with small patches. Gtk is very portable for this reason, as is
most free software, even though few developers have the relevant systems.

I'm talking about motivation. You asked why people write stuff with
GNU/Linux in mind. Well, if I have a GNU/Linux box, I don't care that
Solaris has a nice CDE environment and extending it would be cool. I am
concerned about the fact that GNU/Linux does not have such an environment,
and if I wrote the environment in such-and-such a way it would be cool.
When deciding whether to use Motif, the fact that most free systems don't
have it (and Lesstif sucked when Gtk started) is a big factor. 

If you think about it, Motif has never been a standard on free systems. 
And Xt by itself is just not that useful or exciting; if you're dropping
Motif and CDE, you lose little by reverting to Xlib and starting over from
there. Most people hacking Gtk apps were never Motif programmers, so their
was no lost-expertise cost in that respect. Basically there was much to
gain and little to lose by dropping Motif.

Havoc