[Desktop_architects] Portland: The Linux DesktopIntegrationInterface

[Michael Sweet]

George Staikos wrote:
> 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.

Last time I checked, it was extremely hard to get GTK+ or Qt linked
statically without adding a lot of platform/compiler-specific options,
but I'll take your word for it...

>> 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.

Right, from the standpoint of traditional ISVs, forcing the GPL can be
a non-starter.

>> 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.

:)

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com