Curious about next version and developer updates

[Thorsten Haude]

Hi,

* Offer Kaye wrote (2007-05-29 14:34):
>On 5/29/07, Joachim Lous wrote:
>>
>>Using any other toolkit would either introduce dependencies on stuff
>>not availavble
>>on some platforms (where NEdit is the only good, stable graphical editor), 
>>or
>>force us to bloat the distro with the entire toolkit code (which would 
>>have to
>>be verified for all the platforms supported), so its no longer a
>>"small, fast editor".
>
>In other words, you've made a conscious decision to sacrifice feature
>set for the sake of portability and size. Respect :)

That was not too hard once, when every important system supported
Motif and nothing else. It was only after Motif was killed by its
owners that alternatives are no longer that, but the only way to go.


>[Re-sorted a bit]
>I couldn't find a definitive list of OSes where NEdit runs, except
>the sentence on the home page that NEdit will run wherever "there is
>a working X Window environment available".

Any Unix, VMS, Windows, OS/2.

It will not need X11 to run, but to display. (Although some OSes no
longer make that distinction; I had to install an X11 server on SuSE
to get all client libraries.)


>But even though I'm no developer, I know there are existing
>cross-platform toolkits (e.g. wxWidgets). (...) However according to
>the wxWidgets home page it allows you to write code for "Win32, Mac
>OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more using one codebase." So maybe
>the problem is that wxWidgets simply isn't installed by default in
>most places.

That's certainly also true for Motif for most possible installs (ie.
Linux) nowadays. At least wxWidgets is free, after the trouble with
OpenMotif I wouldn't switch to another unfree toolkit.

(I don't get this part: "... GTK+, X11, Motif ..." Are these supposed
to be alternatives? Is it possible to run Motif or GTK without X11?)


>But isn't it required just for developing the app, not running it? I
>guess I'm confused... :)

It might be possible and you might be allowed (two unrelated
conditions) to run it with static libraries.


>But would moving to a more modern toolkit such as wxWidgets really
>force you to drop the core strengths you mentioned, such as the wide
>system support and single-file install?

Probably not the single-file install, but wxWidgets is almost
certainly not as well-tested as Motif on most Unixes. The problem is
really that NEdit is dyed-in-the-wool Xt/Motif, and it would be a
major rewrite to change that. Now considering that we cannot even
agree on (I think) necessary maintenance work...


Thorsten
-- 
Der Leser hat's gut: Er kann sich seine Schriftsteller aussuchen.
    - Kurt Tucholsky
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