From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Platform independent graphical display for Emacs Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2021 09:25:07 +0200 Message-ID: <83tuexqh7w.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87ilvgwfor.fsf@telefonica.net> <83a6grx1o9.fsf@gnu.org> <834k6zwvi1.fsf@gnu.org> <87h7azilmu.fsf@yahoo.com> <87sfujh4a2.fsf@yahoo.com> <877dbuhm6j.fsf@yahoo.com> <87tueyg5gc.fsf@yahoo.com> <83y24asbh4.fsf@gnu.org> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="23775"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, stefankangas@gmail.com, drew.adams@oracle.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Dmitry Gutov Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sat Dec 25 08:26:33 2021 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1n11Rp-0005y1-48 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 25 Dec 2021 08:26:33 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45064 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n11Rm-00062G-Hz for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 25 Dec 2021 02:26:30 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:45048) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n11QJ-0005GX-6T for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 25 Dec 2021 02:24:59 -0500 Original-Received: from [2001:470:142:3::e] (port=39884 helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n11QH-0003Mi-Bp; Sat, 25 Dec 2021 02:24:57 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=References:Subject:In-Reply-To:To:From:Date: mime-version; bh=BPsKuAs0WNhajYI3Lq4pPITA/1CyTZEVT9v7i0MWBFM=; b=h5hbB2kQA9wd tC2BRCKKuNmqcvOwMH2eeRPEn7g24RGyAx5v11tpsEjx3qbYsMshfRfCUM7YBgB7UOpnTnbbRKcMW I9m6N+YXYvkvizlBqKmD3+Pw1qynzWFHdPduZWoc0UhxJDgoooBm5wntIlQdRJF17R4dQKFMObkK2 qM3Ov5lZsF2yWt/txVAUf2+VwaVUVHwMPtgkQt54MGDYAJ/TqQL3AREhTAD3Aj2kxqW1HQH20CQnt KE2IbG6OM9vQXDEfx9rr2z/Vi3+W7y2a72H3+s0JHmPbOtTIP0eSM5Xkr9xHxi7AbQ1lqERB8E7He nVpH1cxfDtw2Fsdm/RxvQA==; Original-Received: from [87.69.77.57] (port=2726 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n11QH-00035h-AE; Sat, 25 Dec 2021 02:24:57 -0500 In-Reply-To: (message from Dmitry Gutov on Sat, 25 Dec 2021 02:30:25 +0200) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:283188 Archived-At: > Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, drew.adams@oracle.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org > From: Dmitry Gutov > Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2021 02:30:25 +0200 > > On 24.12.2021 10:33, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > >> That said, all of this would obviously be a lot of work and until and > >> unless someone starts such work this is all rather academic. > > Not only that, I'd hesitate to accept such a contribution, because its > > long-term maintenance would most probably be a constant burden, > > How it that different from a BeOS port, or a PGTK port, or etc? Where > the general policy has been (I think?) that we accept such contributions > as long as there interest from the author in maintaining it, and some > probable interest the users. The suggestion, as I understood it, was to drop all the other toolkits and leave only this proposed one. That was its main "selling point". If we decide to have just one toolkit, then having that unmaintained would be a serious problem for the future of Emacs. > I would hate to discourage someone from taking the initiative a trying > to create a better "no-toolkit" port which supports font scaling, for > example. The suggestion was not to improve the no-toolkit configuration and leave all the supported toolkits in place. The suggestion was to drop all the others. I have nothing in principle against improving the no-toolkit configuration. I do think that _adding_ another no-toolkit configuration would be undesirable, because it would make the proverbial "spaghetti of Emacs code" even harder to understand and maintain. (I don't think such a suggestion is on the table, but since you seem to say I misunderstood the suggestion, perhaps I've misunderstood that as well.) > Worst-case scenario, we'd just have to drop that "port", wouldn't we? We cannot just "drop" the only toolkit we have. > Like some people said previously, Emacs feels similar in spirit to > another popular FLOSS project: Blender. Community of professionals, > keyboard-driven interface, power and customizability. > > Blender never used an existing GUI toolkit. And I think it looks pretty > good (even though I hope it has grown a light-bg theme by now): > > https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/_images/editors_preferences_section_interface.png > https://b3d.interplanety.org/wp-content/upload_content/2016/09/01-4.jpg > > Of course, the Blender community is much larger and better funded, but > OTOH the number of different UI elements we'd need to support is much > smaller as well. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying we don't have such talent on board. Maybe Blender does, which would be understandable, given the focus of the project. Our experience is that GUI experts in our ranks are very rare and far in-between, and there are no reasons to believe this will change. > And we could tap into some existing community talent by having a lot of > the UI logic implemented in Lisp. Similarly to how a number of recent > web browser projects have their UIs implemented with JS+HTML. I think this hope is misguided, because Emacs Lisp was not designed to be a UI programming language, it was designed as a text-processing language. So it would need significant extensions to get closer to your dream.