On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 12:18:52AM +0000, Tom Payne wrote: > > All the g* libraries have gone way beyond that line a long time ago and > > Ion isn't too far either. > > Yes. Which is why admitting defeat and moving to gtk might be a good idea.
Why move from one kludge to an even more awful kludge? No way I'm going to waste time trying to figure out the g* libraries. If someone likes to write an Ion-like WM based on gtk, then, please, go ahead. Ion was never meant to become some huge software development project, just a quick hack for me to test out ideas. And I'd like it to remain as much so as possible to keep at least some fun in it. Overengineered libraries are no fun. I'm sticking to nice and simple libraries even if that means reimplementing a few things. > Many of the problems that Tuomo and others are solving in ion have already > been solved in other more mature pieces of software. For example: > > * module support has been in glib for ages. It already supports loads of > different platforms -- no more CF_UNDERSCORED_MODULE_SYMBOLS hacks. At least gmodule is a rather simple library, and the thought of using it has crossed my mind, but I'm afraid they'll modify it use gobjects and other crap eventually. > * ion's static linking is just like ltdl's preload mechanism. And was only five minutes worth of work. > * unicode support has been in glib for ages. > * anti-aliased font support in gdk for ages. I have no desire for anti-aliased fonts. The patch is there just to please some people. > available now Everything, except nicer utf8 support, that these libraries provide and could be used are already wrappers to Xlib or trivialities. > By building on these libraries (Qt offers all of the above as well) rather > than reinventing the wheel Tuomo and others can concentrate on making Ion > great rather than chasing minutae. By sticking to the good old Xlib and a few simple hacks of mine instead of trying to figure out yet-another-library-that-is-so-popular-these-days- and-everything-should-use-it and another rewrite I can concentrate on making Ion great. > It's 2003 for crying out loud! Surely we > don't STILL have to create our own linked list and string libraries?! I see no point in using other peoples' libraries if the interface sucks and the libraries aren't absolutely necessary to get access to some things (like Xlib and libc are). Libc already has most of the necessary and used string handling functions. Unfortunately the *nix libc:s don't have the very important mbsdec function (which Watcom and M$ seem to have) so I had to implement a few things and force utf8 instead of generic multibyte strings to get decent performance. > a few widgets (GtkEntry rather than ion's wedln), and you're all set. And start designing new themes to get a compatible look? I don't think so. -- Tuomo
