Re: a broad question

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Paul Davis <pbd op net> writes: 
> looking at the API (its very well documented; the headers are
> available and even contain some useful stuff) it appears that it
> wouldn't be incredibly painful to use Xlib directly. but then again,
> doing anything directly with Xlib tends to be fairly painful. it would
> delightful to use GDK, but i have a strong feeling that GDK is
> thoroughly rooted in the g_main_loop() abstraction, and so is not
> suitable. doing it in Xlib would allow the library to be used by any
> application using X, regarding of which toolkit it was based on.
> 
> if anyone has any thoughts on this, they would be very welcome.

<viewpoint you won't like>

Non-native pixmap GUIs are completely broken, for reasons such as i18n
and accessibility. Plus you'll probably end up doing various ICCCM and
other X stuff incorrectly. If you use at least GtkWindow you can get
at least part of this right - you get proper WM hints setting,
gdk-pixbuf, and the nice expose compression/anti-flicker. It'll still
be a broken app of course.

</viewpoint you won't like>

;-)

Havoc