Jakub Piotr Cłapa wrote:
DJ Delorie wrote:
The HID pcb currently supports a Lesstif interface, which is very
different than the Xaw or Gtk interfaces (yes, this is intentional).
We're working on re-integrating the Gtk interface (which should be the
same as before).
And could you write something more about the reason behind using
Lesstiff and Xaw in this project? Why is GTK+2 not good enough for you?
Most of the code using Xaw/Lesstiff/Athena/Tk I saw was some old
legacy/proprietary/commercial (or all three together) crap.
I'm not trying to evangelize GTK here but I'm curious why you choose
other (not really modern) toolkits rather than the new ones (which
should be better).
Actually, a huge goal of the HID project was to provide a clean break
between the PCB core and the GUI. In prior versions, the gui code and
the pcb code were heavily tied to each other. By defining the
interface, DJ has made it easier to do things like have a native win32
GUI or a gtk GUI or a lesstif GUI. Turns out that exporters like
rs-274-x (gerber) or postscript fit into this model.
As to why lesstif, why not? DJ has experience with it, lesstif has a
considerable shorter dependency list[1], and quite frankly having 2
options under unix-like operating systems will probably help keep the
developers "honest". I.e., it should help keep us from letting gui and
core code creep together again. Oh, and of course he who ante's up the
time and code gets to pick!
-Dan
[1] On a non-linux system you may already have motif and gtk really
isn't a light weight dependency. Try getting a gtk2 development
environment running on solaris-2.9 for example and you'll find a pretty
huge list of dependencies you have to build first. For many users, the
choice of OS and OS version is fully dictated by other considerations to
a shorter dependency list can be a big benefit. That was the big
advantage of Xaw. Of course Xaw had plenty of issues.
