> Alexander Mai wrote:
> The recent FileSB report has shown that there is still an unknown
> amount of stuff missing for 2.x ... (or does anyone have a private
> list of those 'minor' things which we might miss yet?)
If I may I would like to use this as a segue into an advocacy
discussion. I meant to respond to the advocacy thread that
came up about two weeks ago but was busy at the time...
I applogize in advance for any improprieties.
I would like to address two issues:
1) The future of Motif.
2) The future of Lesstif.
Disclaimer
----------
Firstly, I am not a Motif expert. If some of my comments seem ignorant
its
because they probably are. I am a long time X11 user and have done a
little
Xt/Xlib programming. I have done a fair amount of reading on Motif
programming
and so have at least an idea of what writing a Motif application entails.
Lastly, and ironically, I have been assigned to a project in which I am
required to do some programming using Qt :(.
Future of Motif
---------------
First I think we need to establish whether anyone here really believes
that their is a future for Motif in either or both the OpenSource and
commercial markets. That may seem like a silly question but if you and
I believe Motif is still a viable GUI technology we need to be active in
making sure of it. If the consensus is that there isn't any future then
we may as well just close up shop today and call it quits because there
really isn't any point.
Those in the OpenMotif and Lesstif projects, and others such as myself
who
feel that Motif is still the best, *on the whole*, X11 GUI toolkit
available
need to come together and reinvigorate interest in Motif and move forward
with
what I would call the Motif Enabled Desktop. For all the focus on KDE/Qt
and
Gnome/GTK in OpenSource circles I get the distinct feeling that there are
a
considerable number of people that are pleased with neither KDE/Qt or
Gnome/GTK
and these are the people that are potential users for the Motif Enabled
Desktop.
What is the Motif Enabled Desktop? Well, I don't know exactly and this
is part of why I am writing this message, to get others involved and
start discussing the concept. But I do see at its basis a framework which
consist of the following.
1) Based on Motif :)
2) A cooperative framework/standard in which applications can
cooperate with one another to accomplish some larger task
(e.g.
passing documents and data from a word-processor to a
browser).
And no, I'm not advocating a "component" model such as Gnome
project where you can gee-wiz embed you html widget into your
word processor widget, into your ...; I don't envision
something
on that level of complexity. It has certainly been the bane
for
Windows users and it probably will be for Gnome users as well.
3) Provide a minimum set of apps that users need on a daily
basis.
I think it pretty well established (at least for now) that
users
want:
a) Word-processor
b) Spreadsheet
c) Mail
d) Browser
e) File-manager
These seem to be the *must have* applications that *most*
people
want on a day-to-day basis. If you can provide these you go a
long
way in making you desktop appealing. To a lesser degree people
also
want goodies such as:
e) CD player
f) Mpeg/Avi player.
g) Paint/Drawing/Graphics
h) ???
One would also need a window manager and I would suggest mwm
as
a starting point. Personally I think its a pretty good window
manager though I'm sure it could be made better. And, yes you
could replace mwm with some else if you preferred...
4) An efficient environment that is responsive to users. I myself
dumped KDE and switched to mwm because I was tired of waiting
2-3 seconds for a kvt terminal to come up. Under mwm my mxterm
terminals come up immediately and it makes for a much more
pleasant
experience (and I like mxterm better than kvt too).
5) An easy way for the user to interactively customize the
desktop
environment. Mostly this would be the ability to set color
schemes
in an interactive way. Perhaps this could based on the
Resource
Configuration Management (RCM) scheme (See the X11 release
notes).
I'm *not* suggesting abandoning the concept of X11 resources.
I
think they are powerful and useful and I believe RCM is based
on the
use of X11 resources.
Okay, that's a start. Does it sound a little like CDE? Well, maybe.
Perhaps
CDE would be a good place to start if the OpenGroup were to make CDE
available
to the OpenSource source community. I know Motif is a GUI technology and
not
a desktop technology but it is hard to separate the two these days, so it
would
seem.
Future of Lesstif
-----------------
As for the future of Lesstif... Unless the project team feels that it is
very close to having a compatible CDE/Motif 2.1 then I think that the
best
thing to do would be for the project to refocus its efforts on projects
which would help Motif in general become more widespread. The Lesstif
project
has a lot of talented people working for it and I think that expertise
should
be focused on making Motif (via OpenMotif) better through advocacy,
bug-fixing,
application development, development of the Motif Enabled Desktop, etc...
I'm not suggesting that all work on Lesstif stop. I'm sure you could make
a
case where having Lesstif in addition to OpenMotif would be useful, but
at
this point in time I think the important thing is that Motif in general
be
moved forward.
--
I'm not really a very good writer so I probably didn't convey my message
all that well but hopefully you got a feel for the general idea(s). If
anyone would like to continue this discussion other than on these mailing
lists than please email me directly.
Thanks for Your Time,
Kent
