[ale] Re: object oriented X desktop ?

[Dan Newcombe]

>  It seem that Linux community is on the edge of being bombarded by new
> (mostly commercial) software, and it would be nice if the new
> applications were working *together*. i.e. "cooperating". 

Well...if WordPerfect is an indication, it'll all work out as long as 
it is under Caldera (ha ha)  Sorry - leftover from a thread on one of 
the newsgroups.

>  The idea is to adhere to a standard that the new apps would be forced
> to accept in order to be rendered usable.

That way things would look, feel, and act similar - kinda like Motif or 
OpenLook.
 
>  I suggest looking into OpenDoc or similair specs to achive a high
> degree of application interoperability. Thus in the future, the X

There is already some sort of spec out there - CDE, or Common Desktop 
Environment which is supposed to specify a lot of that junk for X/Unix. 
There was a company porting it to Linux, but they chickened out.  I 
think that OpenDoc is incorporated into that as well.

> desktop could consist of a set of "object handler" libraries with a
> defined set of APIs. (e.g. "picture/jpeg" object could have APIs like
> "display, stretch, print, process_colors, process_edges", etc ... Then
> a word processor could simply include the object in its document, not
> needing any additional code to handle jpeg-specific bitmaps ...

Sounds like you hit OpenDoc right on the head.  But to make it all seem 
consistent, the apps should have a similar look an feel - which is 
where the CDE comes in.  It specifies Motif (blech) and other things.  
That way you don't have to deal with an Xaw, Xt, Xlib, Xview, and Motif 
scrollbar all acting different.

Of course, the problem I see with this for Linux is that the Motif 
run-time (ie. shared) libraries are not freely available.  So, if you 
do not own Motif, you must use static (read:friggin' huge) binaries, 
which is more of a deterent.  (Of course, I use XEmacs, so why should I 
complain :)   Anyway, for this to work on Linux, in my opinion, there 
needs to be a freely availiable shared Motif library for people so they 
can all run Motif without any excuses.  Hopefully LessTif will fill 
this gap - we'll see.  Then the Open Software Foundation (Open my ass!) 
can charge for the development tools.

Hopefully by that time, GnuStep will be rather robust :)

	-Dan 

--
Dan Newcombe - Clayton State College - User Services - 770-961-3421 
newcombe at aa.csc.peachnet.edu  http://www.csc.peachnet.edu/home/dan/
- You had found true love, or so you believed, and the wideboys
  tattooed your hearts upon their sleeves.
                                  (Marillion, Waterhole(Expresso Bongo) )