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Re: [Mlview-hacking] None


From: Dodji Seketeli
Subject: Re: [Mlview-hacking] None
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 16:37:21 +0100 (MET)
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Hi Frederik,

> Dodji:
> 
> My experience has been that Java Swing gives the best *native* support -
> 
> i.e., blending the basic controls in with the underlying style of the 
> platform.  I think one needs to be thinking in a very task-oriented and
> 
> seamless way to want to do this kind of thing.  IE, you really have to 
> think of the application as a GUI application.  An example of this is 
> NoMagic's magicdraw (a UML design tool.) There are numerous products out
> 
> there that demonstrate this, and even Sun's own demos of Swing are quite
> 
> convincing.
> 
> So, having said that ...

Hmmh, I think that java is an too memory consuming alternative for
a desktop application like an xml editor, at least today. 
I have been using xmloperator (a java written xml editor) 
for a while and one day I tried
to author a docbook document. After loading the docbook DTD, 
the system started to swap memory. At that time, I had a pentium
with 256 Meg of RAM. It's needless to say that I felt my pain that day.
I decided to write MlView back in that time :)

Today, with mlview (which is far for being complete, granted) 
I can load a docbook DTD on my vaio laptop with 128 Meg of RAM.

Another thing is that Java is much more than a language. It is a platform.
And as a platform, it is very difficult to integrate java smoothly
in other environments like gnome and so on. When you start using
java to code a given application, from that application's point of view,
the rest of the world would better be in java too :) although nothing remains
impossible.

That being said, I have nothing against Java. I like it as a language
and as a development platform.

However, I think that some bindings in interpreted languages could help
to foster the development of MlView somehow ... but that would not
replace the fact that the core of the the application is in C and is less
memory consuming than if it was totaly written in an interpreted language.

> 
> For an alternative point of view  you may want to look at Vim, if you 
> don't already use it.  I use Vim regularly on both Windows and Linux 
> (but I have not used it on the Mac.)  It's approach (gvim) has been to 
> keep with the GTK style while imposing its own UI quirks -- it is after
> 
> all an editor with a venerable tradition and way of doing things.

I am not sure to understand very well. Do you say I should look at
vim as an alternate xml editor ? Or do you say I should look at the
way vim's gui is done and try to do the same with MlView ?

> 
> You might want to carefully consider implications in going to the Mac. 
>  Gvim for the Mac has several versions, pre OS X and flavors for OS X 
> itself.  One name, two platforms ...  If you look at the list of 
> platforms that Vim is running on I think you'll be impressed.
> 

> If you are going to be on Windows, do you need to embrace .NET (GNOME 
> MONO?) in some way?  This is a tarpit.
> 

Hmm, from a computer scientist point of view, I don't see many 
conceptual differences between Java and .Net. The same things
I said about java would apply here I think.

> I think that staying within the parameters of somthing like GTK will go
> 
> a long way on all three platforms.  I personally think the GTK approach
> 
> is very good and durable.

Okay, so you think we should stick to the current state of things and
continue to improve MlView using the gtk basis ? That has at least
the advantage of saving me a couple of hours of code rewrite :)

Thank you for your advices.

Dodji.



> Fred Druseikis
> 
> Dodji Seketeli wrote:
> 
> >Hi all,
> >
> >This is just to ask your advice on a issue I have been thinking
> >about.
> >
> >I would like MlView to be truly portable accross OSes (*nices, windows,
> Mac).
> >And I would like to do without switching to Java.
> >
> >I was thinking about porting MlView to a portable 
> >graphical toolkit like wxWindows. In the same time, 
> >the language of choice would be C++ instead of C.
> >
> >Do you guys have an experience with this kind of portable toolkit yet
> ?
> >Do you know a toolkit that would be better ? Do you think I should
> stick 
> >with gtk and just port MlView to gtk2 ?
> >
> >Thank in advance for you advice.
> >
> 


Dodji.

---
Dodji Seketeli.                 | Gnome MlView, an XML Editor for GNOME
address@hidden              | http://www.nongnu.org/mlview         
http://www.seketeli.org/dodji   |                                      







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