[9975] in The GTK GIMP ToolKit mailing list archive
[gtk-list] Re: To GTK, or not to GTK - that is the question
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ulric Eriksson)
Mon Nov 9 16:19:33 1998
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 19:42:51 +0100 (CET)
From: Ulric Eriksson <ulric@edu.stockholm.se>
To: gtk-list@redhat.com
In-Reply-To: <m3yaplpx6b.fsf@term1.dccs.com.au>
Resent-From: gtk-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: gtk-list@redhat.com
On 9 Nov 1998, Dave Cole wrote:
> >>>>> "Chris" == Chris Bitmead <Chris.Bitmead@misys.com.au> writes:
>
> Chris> It seems like there is a lot to lose to me. Don't take this as
> Chris> a flame. It may be worth it. Maybe I will find out why as I
> Chris> start to use GTK. But it just looks to me at the moment like
> Chris> gratuitously breaking standards. It's not clear to me right now
> Chris> what exactly could possibly have been gained that couldn't have
> Chris> been done by extending what was standard out there
> Chris> already. There's just so many X11 widget sets out there, it's
> Chris> crazy.
>
> Having lots of widget sets is good - it promotes competition. In the
> short term you have a mixture of sets present on your desktop as the
> applications you want to run are written using different sets. As
> time passes, one of the good widget sets reaches critical mindshare
> mass and emerges as the defacto standard. This is called innovation.
It is also called forking and duplication of effort.
It took years and years for a widget set to become the de facto standard
for commercial software. With the supply of ego and talent in free
software, I would be very surprised to *ever* see a de facto standard.
Eric Raymond's Homesteading the Noosphere has some good explanations for
this.
Anyone for making an Xt port of Gtk? ;-)
Ulric
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