Emacs, QT and Cairo Was: Re: Efforts to attract more users?

[Stephen Eilert <spedrosa@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Bernardo Barros
<bernardobarros2@gmail.com> wrote:
> many people in the gnu world are using qt4. are there reasons not to
> consider it?
>

Does it matter?

You see, it is not like Emacs has stretched GTK's capabilities to the
limit. Actually there isn't much being used: menu, the window itself,
scrollbars and a very primitive toolbar (that I always turn off), as
far as I can tell.

What about exposing Cairo bindings (GTK already uses it, so it is not
exactly a new dependency, only the headers) to elisp so that we can
actually draw a prettier user interface? Things like real lines
instead of "-" for the modeline (and a better looking modeline
itself), better looking widgets (the horrendous fake buttons created
by customize, for example), better fringe layer or even, say, an UML
mode with good-looking classes. And perhaps a cute speedbar.

Yes, looks do matter. Most Emacs screenshots look kinda dated and
primitive - and this carries over to the overall perception. I've
added hundreds of lines to my .emacs for looks alone, but I can't draw
something better programatically.


--Stephen

Sent from my Emacs