🚀 go-pugleaf

rachel@virago.org.au (Rachel Polanskis) writes:

> In article <34CB2E71.A180F508@netscape.com>,
> 	Jamie Zawinski <jwz@netscape.com> writes:
> > 
> > I think that retargetting it to a different GUI toolkit, given that the
> > free implementation of Motif exists, would be a huge waste of time. 
> > There are ten zillion improvements you could make; who cares what
> > toolkit it uses, as long as it works and the toolkit is widely
> > available.
> 
> I agree.
> I will be severely disappointed if Netscape gets totally 
> assimilated by the Linux community, given their penchant for 
> completely reinventing traditional UNIX ways of doing things, 
> at the expense of portability.

I have a lot of gripes with linux but this isn't one of them.  Could
you please give an example?  (I have built with almost zero
portability problems (well... the "top" programs don't work but what
do you want??) kde, gnome, gimp and other new linux programs on
my freebsd box).  (in fact I can run the binaries =)

> Remember, Linux is still UNIX, and a good programmer will adhere to 
> the paradigms that make a an application portable between UNIX versions.
> 
> It's no good if those of us with access to Motif (Solaris, AIX, etc) 
> have to download and compile YAWK to make a favourite piece of software 
> run.
> 
> I use Motif for lots of things, and GTK (for example) for just one - GIMP.
> What a waste of space.  I have a program that uses Xforms.
> It's the only one.  What a waste of memory and space.
> I also have a program that uses Qt - just one program.  Also a waste 
> of space.

Um... and that's how ppl with free unixes see motif.  It just depends
which side of the fence you're on.  Thing is, motif is largely dead
for new development, whereas there is tons of new stuff for qt and
gtk.

> 
> Motif might be horrible 
> (personally I like it, and can't see what the fuss is about)
> but it's a *standard* library that can be found on nearly all commercial 
> UNIX OS's - if you don't have it, it's not hard to come by.
> So what if you have to spend a few dollars for it.
> It came free with Solaris, so I'm happy.
> If I had to use linux as a desktop console there's no way I 
> would not have Motif on there, even if I have to fork out AUD100...
> 
> If Netscape goes the way of 10,000 other Linux GUI projects, I'll just 
> stick to the standard source tree, and conserve my disk space for 
> the shared objects I'll use the most...

Well, you *can* do that.  Unless they have something better to
offer.... so what's the problem?

> A good Linux programmer is a portable UNIX programmer.

yeah... but most of the decent stuff that's coming out for linux *is*
portable.  Sure mnemonic requires thread safe X libraries and
linuxthreads and doesn't work but guess what--no one cares.  no one
uses it.  Do you have any decent examples? (oh, wait, I've got
one--gnoom... but this is prerelease stuff, and the portability issues
are trivial (location of a few header files), at least to freebsd
(which happens to use the linux sound drivers), even if it does
compile to a directory called "linux" =)