-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sat, 10 Nov 2001, Alex Buell wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Nov 2001, Jeremy C. Reed wrote: > > > I look forward to using a non-bloated konqueror. Feel free to point me > > to some docs that show how I can quickly install and use it without > > the QT and KDE baggage. (I guess this is similar to the projects that > > use the mozilla base.) > > [Off topic, I guess but here goes.. ] > > Mozilla on UNIX platforms only requires the addition of the GTK libraries, > and ORBit (primarily for the IDL stuff) library, which is a lot better > than having to install QT & KDE (or even GNOME!) For security, you may use > the OpenSSL library as well. After compiling and packing for distribution, > you end up with a ~10 megabyte tarball. Installing it takes up ~30MB of > disk space, which compares very favourably with M$ Internet Exploder and > its ilk. Since most UNIX-based GUI programs uses the X11 software, it's > an indispenable part of most distributions. What I'm not sure of is > whether Mozilla can be compiled on a UNIX platform using the GTK console > framebuffer toolkit. Maybe I'll give that a try, Ghods only knows how > bored I am on a Friday night! > > It's a shame that a lot of software requires the use of GNOME or KDE. I > won't install GNOME or KDE on my box, because I don't feel it necessary, > when one can get by using just the GTK library with Blackbox. You're missing the point by so far. The "do one thing and do it well" approach that is so good to unix, and the open source community in general usually, is the exact opposite of what mozilla does. The fact that most software uses GTK or QT is a *good thing*. They don't have to rewrite all of that code again. You have 3 GTK apps running, you only need one copy of the libgtk in ram. If you have 3 programs each with all their own tookit code, they each have taken 5 times as long to develop, are half as usable, are less stable, and/or look like ass, and each one has to be loaded into ram fully, now occupying far more ram than did the 3 GTK apps, which are each considerably smaller on their own that the 3 custom toolkit apps. Etc etc etc.. The mozilla project started at pretty much nothing, and rewrote a lot of code that already exists. Its barely even componentized to be reused, or to be worked on separately from all I can tell. Other projects have managed to use just the rendering engine with GTK etc. Theres are a much better example of the UNIX way than mozilla. Instead of trying to do everything associated with web browsing, they do one thing - design and provide an interface for browsing to the user (but not rewriting the toolkit, building on GTK - and leave the rest up to over peices of software, such as GTK and the gecko engine. The idea is not to, from what i gather, to always have as many small programs, where you have to interact with them all to get the job done, as possible. This is good on the command line, but does not hold up in a GUI environment. This causes clutter, its slow, and its annoying. Rathe the approach should be to take what exists, use it and add you own bit of code that does what it needs to do, and do it well. Don't rewrite it all, e.g. mozilla, in a huge monolithic application that cannot or will not be reused in the way that GTK or QT can and will be. Gnome and KDE provide a lot of functionality that would otherwise need to be rewritten, or wouldnt be rewritten, and so we'd end up with far less functional software. You don;t need to run the gnome environment to use a gnome app, and then only the libs it strictly requires will be loaded. Which are sure to be no smaller than if the app's authors had taken the 10 years to write all that same code for it. Or, like i said, maybe they wouldn't do that and the app would just be far less functional. Building on what's there is a good idea, and not done often enough. And I'm out of shit to spit, so I'll stop now. xOr - -- I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE77J4i8mPQRGtSu14RAqpfAKCOQus6WIErN8MWA3QpHVOC7ZOKeACfTfzf lXHDLu5RFbpOWbM/NTiM6mw= =AsLT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
