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

[Dave Cole <dave dccs com au>]

>>>>> "Ulric" == Ulric Eriksson <ulric@edu.stockholm.se> writes:

Ulric> On 10 Nov 1998, Dave Cole wrote:

Ulric> When projects become sufficiently incompatible, "taking bits"
Ulric> becomes more work than rewriting from scratch.

Rewrite from scratch then.  Take the path of least resistance.

Ulric> Let's say you are right about Gnome being one of the competing
Ulric> desktop environments; I agree with you there. Today there is no
Ulric> way to make an Xt application fit in there short of a
Ulric> rewrite. Waste of effort, duplication of work.

Try making Motif widgets fit in with a theme enabled Gtk built on top
of Xt.  You have no chance.  The source is not available for Motif.
Lesstif is there, but I suspect that the Lesstif people would resist
attempts to make their project deviate from the Motif specs.  You
would probably have to fork the development stream (oops we weren't
going to do that).

Ulric> Second, Gtk/Xt would be able to use third-party widgets that
Ulric> can't be used by Gtk.

Such as...

Anyway, using Xt does not give you any real advantage.  Each widget
set on Xt is a rule unto itself.  Programming OLIT, Athena, and Motif
could not be more different.  I suppose, you can always fool yourself
into thinking that resource files are the most important aspect of a
GUI environment.

Ulric> Third, using Xt would get some benefits not available from Gtk,
Ulric> such as proper encapsulation.

Ah, proper encapsulation.  I worked for a company which had a source
license for Motif.  Proper encapsulation is not something that came to
mind when looking at that source.  It looked nice on the hierarchy
diagram with the XmPushButton based upon the XmLabel and that sort of
thing.  Unfortunately, when you looked at the source, the two widgets
were completely unrelated.  At some point someone just pasted the
XmLabel source into the XmPushButton source and hacked away.

If OSF programming practices had been employed with Gtk, we would
still be on version 0.0.9876 and hacking.

The only possible benefit of Xt is that wbuild is available.

Ulric> And possibly more.

Possibly.  What are they?

- Dave

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