[gtk-list] Re: Gnome/GtkCanvas (was Re: gtk_args_collect & gnome--)

[James McPherson <jmcphers laurel ocs mq edu au>]

KC5TJA writes:
 > On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Shawn T . Amundson wrote:
 > > The best way to do this is to make GNOME look nice and list those
 > > real features, not by this type of combining-products marketing. 
 > > The great part about UNIX is its built on a large number of little 
 > > utilities that do things well.  GTK+ does the toolkit part well.  
 > > Imagine if you still had to download and install GIMP to get GTK+!

that used to be the case, I believe.
 > Worse, JUST BECAUSE Gnome has a really cool Canvas widget, imagine having
 > to download Gnome just to use the later versions of GIMP and/or any of its
 > extensions!!

that's why Gtk is the Gimp ToolKit. Clever, huh?

 > > > On top of that, I want to add some form of font rendering and
 > > > postscript printing to the Canvas.  Of course, this will include some
 > > > default font setup and some default font policies, and those will be
 > > > part of the Gnome framework.  
 > 
 > Have you considered adding any type of print services BESIDES Postscript?
 > Postscript is relatively rare among those of us who can't afford
 > enterprise-level Laserjets, ya know...
 > How about WYSIWYG output on HP Office Jets?  Cannon bubble-jets?  My
 > crappy 24-pin dot matrix printer (that still works great!)?  Without the
 > use of enormous memory hogging Postscript interpretters?  I can go and get
 > a cheap laser printer that understands HPGL, but is incapable of
 > supporting Postscript, for well under $500. 
 > This is perhaps the NUMBER ONE reason why Linux isn't used for serious
 > desktop productivity right now -- it can't print!  What's presented on the
 > screen is one thing -- that has already been mastered.  Now let's start to
 > tackle the paper output side of things.

you _do_ have ghostscript installed, don't you? ghostscript, the free and
portable postscript interpreter from the Free Software Foundation which is
getting to be ubiquitous amongst any unix version (including linux) and can
convert from ps to hpgl, pcl5, pdf, epson, bubblejet - you name it, there's
almost certainly a conversion facility _built in_ to ghostscript. You're
incorrect as to why linux is not yet as visible in the desktop environment -
it's not printing (anybody who reads the documentation could tell you that) -
it's a lack of publicity about the existing office environments that's the
problem. Do you know about Applixware (http://www.applix.com), Corel (which
publishes WordPerfect as part of an office suite) at http://www.corel.com, or
Star Division (http://www.stardiv.de) which publishes StarOffice free for
non-commercial linux use? 

Anyway, Gnome and Gtk are not linux-specific - it just happens to be the case
that linux users are well represented on the mailing lists and amongst the
development team.

And we now return you to your regularly scheduled development comment.

Re: fonts - How easy is it to use fonts that are supplied by other
applications with gtk? I've got a whole heap of fonts with applixware that I
rather like the look of - can I make their use a viable option with my
application? (I'm in the design process for a gtk frontend for hylafax).


cheers,
James C. McPherson
--
Unix Systems Administrator            Phone: +61.2.9850.9418
Office of Computing Services            Fax: +61.2.9850.7433
Macquarie University   NSW    2109 
AUSTRALIA