Re: Motif support

[Arthur Miller]

xenodasein--- via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> Quoting: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2021-12/msg02051.html
> From: Eli Zaretskii
> Subject: Re: Motif support
> Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2021 22:23:12 +0200
>
>> What would the library be capable of? You say that you can replace
>> all the window decorations we now implement via toolkits: menus,
>> dialogs, scroll bars, title and caption bar, the tool bar. Will all
>> of this be in the library, complete with support for colors and other
>> stuff? If not, what would such a library prove?
>
> Yes, I can do the listed elements (without text; I could use FreeType
> but I'd rather keep build simple. And what is the caption bar? I normally
> use --without-x), it would look like an Emacs frame with window area being
> empty, elements interact-able.  Just rendering code with WinMain.
Isn't Emacs already linked to FreeType2 library?

I am not sure how much work it would be, and how well it would play with
harfbuzz and what Emacs uses for text rendering, but at least in theory it could
be possibly to render text without system libraries. Or is it too much work? If
I am not misstaken, alacritty uses Freetype2 to load fonts and renders all text
on gpu. Emacs does not need to do it on gpu, but would it be too much work to go
that path?

In general, I share your opinion from the start of this thread, that Emacs could
in general do fine with just one OS window for the frame and do it's own thing
for the little GUI it does (menubar, toolbar, buttons and scrollbars,
fringes). They could maybe even be implemented in pure lisp, with help of svg
renderer or without. But, yes, the looks and feel wouldn't feel "native".