Hi, answering both mails in one... Kelly Martin <kmartin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:57:50 +0100, "Adam D. Moss" <adam@xxxxxxxx> said: > > >* What are pango and atk, and why do we suddenly require them (if > >indeed we do)? Pango is the font layout and rendering system used by gtk+. It allows for fancy stuff like bidirectional text and makes an end to the X font mess. ATK is the accessibility toolkit which allows e.g. voice control of programs. Both are required by gtk+ HEAD and everything compiles 100% smoothly most of the time. > >* Are there compelling advantages to using CVS-GTK which outweigh the > >cons of forcing developers and users to upgrade? Is GTK 1.3 not > >backwardly compatible with the GTK 1.2 API? My concern is that with > >such a casual-user oriented application as GIMP we can easily lose > >users by the wayside with each additional stipulation. There are lots of advantages with Glib/Gtk 2.0. One of them is the clean core/ui separation they provide because the object system has been moved to GLib. We get sane Xinput support and support for new platforms (because GDK is frontend/backend separated now). We get a much improved object system, better looking widgets, better user preferences for widgets classes. We can strip tons and tons of evil hacks because we also get rid of lots of gtk 1.2 brokenness. And BTW, GIMP 1.4 will be released _after_ Gtk 2.0 is released in a stable version (which will be in not too distant future). IMHO the pro's outweigh the con's by far, as it's simply not possible without grand hacks to write an internal object model and a nice generic GUI with Gtk 1.2. The biggest pro of GLib 2.0's object system is it's great degree of dynamism which will bring us e.g. pluggable tools almost for free. Also, it will simply not be possible to include a Gtk+ header from app/core/, which is great for enforcing core/ui separation. > >* For those of us with pieces of the tree's core which diverge > >somewhat from the trunk, how much of a no-brainer is converting our > >code to GTK 1.3-isms? The changes made for 2.0 migration are much less of a structural change than what happens in two weeks of usual HEAD-reorganizing. Not a single file was moved and almost only the object stuff was touched. Gtk 2.0 is _very_ source compatible compared to Gtk 1.2 except for the object system (which is much more consistent and powerful than before) What's a "no-brainer" BTW ? > I would add: > > * are there Windows versions of pango and atk? > * do we reasonably expect Windows ports of the HEAD versions of all of > these libraries before 1.4 is released? This is a misunderstanding: _only_ GLib/Gtk 2.0 exist for windows, the current hack to compile GIMP for windows with a Gtk 1.3 snapshot which is almost a year old is the reason for all those windows bugreports. Pango and ATK of course compile under windows and the folks porting GIMP to windows will love to use a sane version of Gtk. After all, isn't is just natural for GIMP HEAD to use the GIMP Toolkit's bleeding edge version? This is unstable development. ciao, --Mitch
