Ok its Friday and I am in the mood for trouble,
so I ask -
Why GUI independence ?
What's the point of GUI independence, why not instead focussing on
a) moving away from XForms, because
- XForms is insufficient for our long term needs, XForms technology is simple
but doesn't really provide as much
functionality as most modern toolkits. Drag and drop as well as cut and
paste will probably never be implemented
satisfactory. XForms has many other disadvantages though it is fast and
simple. Interoperability with Gtk, Motif,
Qt/KDE or (g.h.u.) Windows seem unthinkable today with XForms.
- With such a small developer team and so much of a project, the toolkit
should really be as sofisticated as possible.
One should make up ones mind whether the goal is to have a nice, well
functioning application or whether the goal is
to implement large blocks if basic fuctionality (e.g. Signal/Slot) that
is actually better implemented in a toolkit. XForms
deficiencies are the reason for developers having to work around.
- XForms scares potential developers and potential users away. It is the sole
reason LyX isnt shipped with RedHat nor
with Mandrake nor Suse (afaik) (dont know about Debian).
- It is non free and therefore inferior to most other toolkits, it is
impossible to fix bugs and to implement missing
features.
- There is no noticable development anymore, the website goes down for weeks
on end, the whole project seems
dead to me somehow.
b) pushing the no-GUI version of LyX, i.e. lyx --export latex foo.lyx, or better
pushing towards XML
- it is an illusion to think that an ncurses version really makes sense, it
is a very marginal feature that blocks development.
Instead what people have asked for many times is the translation feature.
Actually with switching to XML and an
appropriate LyX DTD and LaTeX XSL or CSS this would come automatically.
c) decide on a well supported, possibly cross platform alternative toolkit.
- wxwin is very promising with respect to cross platform, it has many
features but is also missing some functionality
- Gtk+, since everybody knows this one and there is also a least a Windows
hack available
- Qt/KDE is objectively the best toolkit available today. There are even IDE's
available for the GUI stuff
d) alternative to c) pick up/take over KLyX and try to merge LyX into KLyX and
dump XForms asap.
KLyX is afaik not actively developed anymore, the mailing list is close to
dead and I think Jochen is the only person
working on it occasionally (right Jochen?).
What do yall think ?
Juergen Vigna wrote:
> On 14-Jan-2000 Allan Rae wrote:
> >
> > It is probably a mistake to look at LyX internals when defining a new
> > file format. If for no other reason than that we still fully intend
> > to merge Asger's kernel and all the new Insets from the old devel
> > branch. In fact it might be wiser to either just study the Inset
> > family from the old devel branch to see where we are headed or better
> > yet help backport those insets. In particular the InsetText and
> > InsetERT stuff would be _major_ wins if we can get those in soon.
>
> I just wanted to do this for a long time now, but I've to wait till we
> backport the Painter and PainterBackend as this is the base for the insets
> in the old devel-branch. So we have to start the GUI independence first!
>
> In regard to the new file format it's just impossible to introduce something
> decent now for tabulars it will be only possible after having a tabular-
> inset. Obviously we can have a <tabular>[all the tabular file format ASIS]
> </tabular> :)
>
> Greets Jürgen
>
> -._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._
>
> Dr. Jürgen Vigna E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Italienallee 13/N Tel: +39-0471-450260
> I-39100 Bozen Fax: +39-0471-450296
> ITALY Web: http://www.sad.it/~jug
>
> Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
>
> -._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._-._
