On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 11:46:16 -0500 Mike Hollis <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've followed this thread with interest. The increased interdependency > issue is something that has bugged me for some time. To pursue my > interests, I truly don't need a graphical environment, but when I do > use one I try to make it as lean as possible. But a lean graphical > environment has almost become an oxymoron. > > To use a program that interests me ,such as the afore mentioned > Inkscape , I have to install programs and libraries that I don't > want or need and won't use out of the context of the program. As one example, I looked a bit into that libboost thing Inkscape requires: http://www.boost.org/ and what it is about: http://www.boost.org/users/proposal.pdf It seems to be a large collection of all kinds of C++ libraries that have little in common other than someone once felt the need to create them and somebody else thought that someone else might have a use for them. And quoting the above PDF: "Must a library do useful work? No. A library meant as a teaching example or demonstration might not actually do any work, but that is fine if the peer reviewers support it." A 20MB+ tar ball of this stuff to get Inkscape up. Heck, the install boost RPMs I see on the net are 100MB+. It seems to me this library was intended for use in software development, not for run-time linking by production applications. Because it is released under a *very* free license, people are free to grab only the parts they need out of it and pull them into their own source tree. But, IMHO, app developers should not (at least today) require that libboost-X.so be available on all client systems. For GUI toolkits, I can understand TCL/TK for ultra-quick simple GUI creation, lesstif, mostly for (now dying) legacy apps, GTK+ for heavy weight and current mainstream applications, and Wx or QT for cross platform development (although I generally don't care much for cross platform stuff as it tends to feel of compromise). I also wish FLTK-2 (http://www.fltk.org/) would evolve more (in development or use) to provide a much lighter alternative to GTK+ for applications that don't need all that. But, once the needs of the core niches (light, heavy, easy, cross-platform, etc.) are filled, more choices just create more headaches. Another thing that irks me is the proliferation of audio formats, especially proprietary ones, and also because one can't recode lossy formats without further degradation. People with all those MP3s are going to be in for a surprise if MP3's reign ever ends. I for one am thankful that the original CD-audio format was so simple, lossless, hi-fi and open because it allows us to grab the raw audio and recode as we wish. Given that storage space is not a problem anymore, well at least as far as audio sizes are concerned, IMHO, everybody (and most especially hardware players, including those in cars) should just move to FLAC and be done with it: http://flac.sourceforge.net/ And don't get me started on the fix-the-bugs-before-adding-new-features issue. I guess I should just be thankful there aren't dozens of competing "project-and-library-things-with-the-Gnome-attitude" out there. Cheers, Mike -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
