To: bpr at artisan.com
Cc: lablgtk at kaba.or.jp
Subject: Re: GTK 2.0
In-Reply-To: <15517.24133.604935.442218 at granite.artisan.com>
References: <15517.24133.604935.442218 at granite.artisan.com>
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Message-Id: <20020325181443C.garrigue at kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 18:14:43 +0900
From: Jacques Garrigue <garrigue at kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp>
Lines: 28

From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@artisan.com>

> I've just started messing around with the new version of GTK, and it looks
> like there are quite a few changes, even though there are compatibility
> functions. What's the plan for the lablgtk world? Will there be two
> versions to support 1.2 and 2.x, or just one? 

I have not started porting yet.
The worse changes seem to be in the signal mechanism, meaning lots of
internal code to modify... and hard to keep a compatible codebase.
On the API side, there are a few new widgets, which improve a lot.
They prove me correct in not attempting to interface CTree, which is
now deprecated :-)
On the downside, I've seen terrible comments about degraded
performance :-(

As Benjamin Pierce pointed, for most people what matters most is
portability, and we will have to wait a bit before GTK 2 is everywhere
around. But if Gnome 2 uses it, this could also be pretty fast.

Since the compatibility is only partial, I think the only reasonable
way to go is to name the new library lablgtk2, and make it possible to
install it together with lablgtk1.
Thanks to strong typing, adapting to API changes should be easy.
Still, this means cooperation in the community: every author of a
published piece should be ready to update it when needed.

Jacques