[Desktop_architects] Portland: The Linux DesktopIntegrationInterface

[Steve Northover]

>   It would be easy, but then it wouldn't be Linux.

Don't let them quote you on that!

Steve




George Staikos <staikos at kde.org> 
Sent by: desktop_architects-bounces at lists.osdl.org
12/05/2005 03:19 PM

To
desktop_architects at lists.osdl.org
cc

Subject
Re: [Desktop_architects] Portland: The  Linux DesktopIntegrationInterface






On Monday 05 December 2005 15:15, Michael Sweet wrote:
> Brooks, Phil wrote:
> > ...
> > I agree with you that the library or widget set is not the issue.  The
> > issue is that by choosing a library or widget set, I also dictate my
> > customer's environment. ISVs are very reluctant to dictate 
environments
> > to their customers because they get very mad at us when we do.
>
> As an "old" ISV, we've had problems even back when there was "one true
> toolkit" (Motif), as Sun would make incompatible changes to their Motif
> distribution that broke custom widgets.
>
> As an ISV, our GUI toolkit requirements include:
>
>      1. Stable API
>      2. Native (or similar) look-n-feel
>      3. Basic UI widgets - buttons, lists, tabs, menus
>      4. Ability to develop custom widgets
>      5. Unicode support
>      6. Static linking or stable, vendor-supplied shared libraries
>      7. Cross platform (UNIX/Linux, MacOS X, Windows)
>      8. Smaller is better
>      9. License should allow for binary-only distribution.
>
> We've looked at using KDE/Qt and GNOME/GTK+, but neither provides 6,
> 7, or 8 on our list.

   Qt provides 6 and 7.  KDE libraries do not yet provide either.  GTK+ 
provides 6 last I checked, and a bit of 7.

> KDE/Qt doesn't allow binary distribution (9) 
> unless you buy a license from Trolltech... 

   Specifically, GPL-incompatible binary distribution.  You can write GPL 
compatible code and distribute binaries for it.

> GUI toolkits.  I'd love to see a single standard toolkit that ISVs like
> us can use for Linux that has minimal external dependencies so that it
> will work on all Linux distributions and even commercial UNIX's, not
> just a select few you choose to support.

   It would be easy, but then it wouldn't be Linux.

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer                                                            
http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.                          
http://www.staikos.net/
_______________________________________________
Desktop_architects mailing list
Desktop_architects at lists.osdl.org
https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/desktop_architects/attachments/20051205/14c87beb/attachment-0001.htm