[798] in The GTK GIMP ToolKit mailing list archive
[gtk-list] Re: Gtk and the scripting languages of the world
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marius Vollmer)
Fri Aug 22 08:49:02 1997
To: gtk-list@redhat.com
From: Marius Vollmer <mvo@zagadka.ping.de>
Date: 22 Aug 1997 11:50:20 +0200
In-Reply-To: atai@ece.ucsd.edu's message of Thu, 21 Aug 1997 18:48:23 -0700 (PDT)
Resent-From: gtk-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: gtk-list@redhat.com
atai@ece.ucsd.edu (Andy Tai) writes:
>
> Please whatever you do, remember that there are lots of programmers
> who prefer to use C/C++ over any script languages for building GUI
> and large scale projects. So your interface should not degrade the
> gtk's utility for low level programming and make it difficult for
> building advanced C++ toolkits on top of gtk.
Yes, I try to be careful. As Peter Mattis pointed out, there is
already some non-trivial amount of code out there that uses Gtk. I
don't want to break it, of course. Likewise, I don't want to take
features away from Gtk only because I don't know how to interface them
to Scheme.
I'm, however, of the opinion that we have to take the needs of
higher-level languages into account when designing the Gtk API.
You just need some working form of automatic garbage collection when
writing large, long-running, interactive programs. You need powerful
abstraction tools for prototyping and implementing new interfaces. I
can't get that easily from C or C++.
But I do recognize the importance of a reasonable C API to Gtk. I'm
just not enthusiastic about it.
> We do not want gtk to become another Tk.
The major problem of Tk is its strong dependence on TCL. It cannot
live without TCL.
Gtk should be usable from C and C++, but also from Perl, Phython and
Scheme (and any other inetersting languages, maybe Common Lisp).
These interfaces to the high-level languages should feel `natural' and
be robust. It should be easy to evovle them alongside an evolving Gtk
and they should be able to easily cover `third party' extensions to
Gtk.
--
To unsubscribe: mail -s unsubscribe gtk-list-request@redhat.com < /dev/null
