Re: Unify the Platforms: Cairo+FreeType+Harfbuzz Everywhere (except TTY)

[Arthur Miller]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> On May 17, 2020 5:09:08 PM GMT+03:00, Arthur Miller <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Julius Pfrommer <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > during the recent discussion on "Emacs being too square", I recalled
>> a
>> > few projects that use OpenGL for terminal emulators [1,2]. With good
>> > performance, smooth scrolling and the possibility to add more visual
>> > *bling*.
>> >
>> > I had a good look at Emacs' code-base to see if similar approaches
>> > could be used. As you can imagine, I got lost in a forest of #ifdef
>> for
>> > different platforms and GUI toolkits. The code looks scary to touch.
>> If
>> > you don't have access to *all supported platform*, it is likely that
>> > changes break a platform you could not test locally.
>> 
>> I have been looking into same, some time ago and recently, and I
>> experience same problem. A forest of cases, all coded into same place
>> in
>> giant files of 5K+ lines :-).
>> 
>> > To make the code-base less scary, there should be more code-sharing
>> > across GUI platforms. And this is indeed possible!
>> Emacs and Emacs src could benefit of some modularization and
>> refactoring
>> definitely.
>
> I suggest to go through the archives and the Git logs to see how many such
> efforts have been made and are already in the codebase. It isn't like the
> advantages of this are unclear to the development team, or that nothing is 
> being
> done in that direction. Far from it.
I understand that, and I am conscius myself that you devs are aware of
it and that you would probably do something about it if it was less work
than it probably is. I believe you it is not easy considering the long
history of Emacs. I am just reflecting over how I feel every time I peek
into souces. It feels like I am looking into sqlite ammalgamation :-).