Gtk and bowsers [sic] [was: Opera for Linux ]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "Will" == Will Newton <will [at] misconception.org.uk> writes:

    Will> "Alex Hudson" <eah106 [at] york.ac.uk> tapped some keys and
    Will> produced:
    >> That's a price for cross-platform compatibility, s'often the
    >> same with stuff like that. :(

    Will> I don't think it has to be though. Abstracting native GUI
    Will> elements has to be better than hand drawing them all as
    Will> Netscape seems to do. I didn't set up my GTK themes for
    Will> nothing.

Um, well, the fact is that Gtk simply threw out a decade and a half of
X development, and is entirely incompatible with everything else in
the X11 world at the event loop level.  Not to mention that it can
only handle one display at a time.

If what you want is Free-Win32-API-on-Linux (nothing wrong with that,
IMO, in fact it's desperately needed if we want to put Linux on more
than a few of the desktops currently sporting the world's ugliest
anti-aliased splash screen---but it is most definitely not something I
personally can live with for my editor or browser) Gtk is for you.

Including crashes.  I would be willing to bet a round at the necxt
Sheflug meeting (even if I can't make it, as seems likely ;) (knowing
next to nothing about it except what those who are currently
submitting a bid to port XEmacs to Gtk are saying, which is a fair
amount) that part of Mozilla's problem is non-robustness in the Gtk
event handling stuff.

BTW, as one who lives in XEmacs, I have to say that my XEmacs browser
of choice is M-x shell RET lynx RET.  w3.el is just too slow on
anything slower than a P-III 450.  And its internals put lynx to
shame.  Not to mention that it will happily tell you that its own home
page is done in BAD HTML!

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