Motif

[Thomas Orgis]

Am Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:11:36 +0100
schrieb Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum at orgis.org>: 

> Anyhow, fixing lesstif issues would make more sense than fixing openmotif...
> though, there is again this itch to somehow rewrite nedit to have my very
> own best editor in the world;-) 

I wonder how the people at Arch Linux apparently made the Clipboard
work with nedit 5.5 and lesstif 0.95 ... they still have the Alt+H+Esc
thing, though.

What I also want to add is that it's wrong that nedit is about the only
app needing Motif on my system.
There's xpdf, xdvi ... well, but I did a little research in our package
database and there are in total 23 "spells" (packages) that can make
use of some Motif (doesn't have to be a complete list with regard to
unnoticed optional dependencies).

But by far most of them have Motif as an option among other toolkits
like gtk or qt. So, in effect, the Motif GUI is about never used on
modern GNU/Linux.

Nedit's hard dependency on Motif separates it clearly from the crowd of
GNU/Linux applications. Furthermore, nedit being apparently the most
picky application for specific versions of lesstif / OpenMotif. But
then, the bug reports involving nedit and Motif (and not some other app
and Motif) may just due to the fact that nedit is among the very few motif
applications used in the free software world, outside corporate environments
(where people may have installs of CDE etc. running or some specialized
software they paid for).

There are xpdf and xdvik that I use, but regardless of their popularity
(compared to evince, kpdf, etc.), I don't recall having problems with
specific Motif versions or lesstif.

Then, I want to point out that our Solaris system at work also drops
CDE and Motif... they have it still there, but the default environment
is some GNOME2 thingy (the Sun Java Desktop); with other free software
(like KDE or several window managers) being available through
CSW/Blastwave.

Bottom line is that I see nedit being dragged down to death on newer
platforms (also commercial) unless it either separates itself from
Motif or learns to work with the current free Motif alternative;
heck, even the current
not-really-free OpenMotif (which I didn't manage to build yet on a
current modular Xorg system without libxp).
How tight is the dependency on Motif in nedit, btw? Would it be
possible to restructure nedit to work with another toolkit, without
killing it's leanness and speed?
I have to think of the dillo browser project... it was dead for some
time and has been resurrected recently, replacing the gtk1 toolkit with
fltk. Seemed to be manageable -- they even moved from C to C++ along
that (OK, the other way round would be more difficult;-).
I wonder how much the toolkit dictates for nedit's performance as an
editor (I guess one would _not_ use a default text widget...;-).

I see the petition to make CDE/Motif free... and I wonder how much it would
matter if it succeeds. Would Motif reclaim the world? Or would nedit
folks end up being the people finding fixing up Motif bugs (instead of nedit
bugs) on free software systems, being about the only app left relying on Motif
in that ecosystem. Isn't it a sign that lesstif seems to be rather dead
since 2-3 years, despite of a royal bug list?

I'll finish now, before the rant gets out of hand... but I am really worried
about my editor of choice staying a valid choice for me.
Dammit, others are sluggish, and I am so used to the shell interface the nedit
client offers me (I don't care about bugs in the file open dialog as long as
ncl works;-).


Alrighty then,

Thomas.
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