--with-gtk as default?

--with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
--with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?

Athena widgets are really quite ghastly to look at, don't get
antialiasing IIRC and are a bad choice for the _default_ look of Emacs
as it will probably get distributed by OS distributors unless we
change the default.

It is ok to have Xaw as a fallback and on demand, but we also use
GNOME icons and stuff, and the resulting optics would be quite more
consistent.

While my personal choice (GTK+ widgets but Lucid scrollbar) is not fit
for a default, I definitely think I would rather live with the GTK+
scrollbar semantics (and/or nag the GTK developers to make their
behavior customizable) than the Athena looks.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:43:53 +0100
> 
> Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
> --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
> widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?

I don't have an opinion about this, but if we eventually do make this
the default, please exclude Cygwin from the platforms that build with
GTK+ by default, because as Jan discovered, the Cygwin build is
currently incompatible with GTK+.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:43:53 +0100
>> 
>> Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>> --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>> widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>
> I don't have an opinion about this, but if we eventually do make this
> the default, please exclude Cygwin from the platforms that build with
> GTK+ by default, because as Jan discovered, the Cygwin build is
> currently incompatible with GTK+.

Cygwin is basically an X11 build?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Nick Roberts]

 > >> Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
 > >> --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
 > >> widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
 > >
 > > I don't have an opinion about this, but if we eventually do make this
 > > the default, please exclude Cygwin from the platforms that build with
 > > GTK+ by default, because as Jan discovered, the Cygwin build is
 > > currently incompatible with GTK+.
 > 
 > Cygwin is basically an X11 build?

I guess the various distributions will build Emacs with GTK, anyway.  The
advantage of Athena widgets may be that they build everywhere and, for that
reason alone, I think it is the best choice for the default.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:

>  > >> Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>  > >> --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>  > >> widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>  > >
>  > > I don't have an opinion about this, but if we eventually do make this
>  > > the default, please exclude Cygwin from the platforms that build with
>  > > GTK+ by default, because as Jan discovered, the Cygwin build is
>  > > currently incompatible with GTK+.
>  > 
>  > Cygwin is basically an X11 build?
>
> I guess the various distributions will build Emacs with GTK, anyway.
> The advantage of Athena widgets may be that they build everywhere
> and, for that reason alone, I think it is the best choice for the
> default.

Why?  If X11 is not available, we fall back to without-X.  Would you
claim that without-X is for that reason the best choice for the
default?  Because it builds on more platforms?

I'd say that trying for GTK+ as default and Xaw as fallback is
perfectly reasonable for an X11 build.  Nowadays Xaw widgets are not
even as likely to be available as developer libraries as GTK+ is.

What builds everywhere for X11 is actually the "native" Lucid widget
version, not Xaw.  And yet Xaw is the default, _when_ available.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Nick Roberts]

 > Why?  If X11 is not available, we fall back to without-X.  Would you
 > claim that without-X is for that reason the best choice for the
 > default?  Because it builds on more platforms?

That's an absurd analogy.

 > I'd say that trying for GTK+ as default and Xaw as fallback is
 > perfectly reasonable for an X11 build.  Nowadays Xaw widgets are not
 > even as likely to be available as developer libraries as GTK+ is.
 > 
 > What builds everywhere for X11 is actually the "native" Lucid widget
 > version, not Xaw.  And yet Xaw is the default, _when_ available.

I know very little about the availability of widget sets but given that the
last five pretests haven't built with GTK as default and the momentum from them
appears to have diminished, it would seem to be too late to make this decision.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:

>  > Why?  If X11 is not available, we fall back to without-X.  Would you
>  > claim that without-X is for that reason the best choice for the
>  > default?  Because it builds on more platforms?
>
> That's an absurd analogy.

Which is why I consider your original argument absurd.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:

>  > >> Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>  > >> --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>  > >> widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>  > >
>  > > I don't have an opinion about this, but if we eventually do make this
>  > > the default, please exclude Cygwin from the platforms that build with
>  > > GTK+ by default, because as Jan discovered, the Cygwin build is
>  > > currently incompatible with GTK+.
>  > 
>  > Cygwin is basically an X11 build?
>
> I guess the various distributions will build Emacs with GTK, anyway.

The evidence is against you here.  There are already emacs-snapshot
packages for Debian GNU/Linux and derivatives, and to get a version
for GTK+ you _explicitly_ have to install emacs-snapshot-gtk.
Otherwise you will get the Athena widget version.

I don't see where you get the conviction that things will change with
the release of Emacs 22 _unless_ we express our "upstream" intent to
have GTK+ preferred over Athena in a default installation by, well,
making it the default installation.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:
>
>>  > > I don't have an opinion about this, but if we eventually do
>>  > > make this the default, please exclude Cygwin from the
>>  > > platforms that build with GTK+ by default, because as Jan
>>  > > discovered, the Cygwin build is currently incompatible with
>>  > > GTK+.
>>  > 
>>  > Cygwin is basically an X11 build?
>>
>> I guess the various distributions will build Emacs with GTK, anyway.
>
> The evidence is against you here.  There are already emacs-snapshot
> packages for Debian GNU/Linux and derivatives, and to get a version
> for GTK+ you _explicitly_ have to install emacs-snapshot-gtk.
> Otherwise you will get the Athena widget version.
>
> I don't see where you get the conviction that things will change with
> the release of Emacs 22 _unless_ we express our "upstream" intent to
> have GTK+ preferred over Athena in a default installation by, well,
> making it the default installation.

Of course, only when we can reasonably expect it to work which would
appear to exclude the Cygwin environment Eli mentioned.

Mainly because I am nosy I'd still be interested in knowing whether
that is basically an X11 environment, or possibly just the Gtk+ widget
set without using the underlying X server infrastructure probably
provided by Cygwin.

Eli?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:20:03 +0100
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Cygwin is basically an X11 build?

Yes.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:20:03 +0100
>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> 
>> Cygwin is basically an X11 build?
>
> Yes.

Thanks.  Of course you are right in that it does not exactly help that
Cygwin Gtk+ appears to crash.

I have no idea whether this should be considered a general
showstopper.  Probably depends on how many people would consider the
platform Cygwin/Gtk+ a "natural" choice.

If it is not a showstopper, then Cygwin/Gtk+ should likely lead to a
strong warning upon configuration, and not be the default for Cygwin.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jan Djärv]

David Kastrup skrev:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
>>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>>> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:20:03 +0100
>>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>>>
>>> Cygwin is basically an X11 build?
>> Yes.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you can also build an Emacs as a w32 
application with cygwin?

> 
> Thanks.  Of course you are right in that it does not exactly help that
> Cygwin Gtk+ appears to crash.
> 
> I have no idea whether this should be considered a general
> showstopper.  Probably depends on how many people would consider the
> platform Cygwin/Gtk+ a "natural" choice.
> 
> If it is not a showstopper, then Cygwin/Gtk+ should likely lead to a
> strong warning upon configuration, and not be the default for Cygwin.


I am all for having Gtk as the default.  As pointed out, Gnome is the 
preferred GNU desktop environment.  The cygwin issue may still be fixable, 
there was a suggestion on the cygwin mailing list that a different link order 
might solve this.  However, I have no time to try this until the weekend.  For 
now, I just added a note in etc/PROBLEMS.  If the link order doesn't work I 
will add some stuff to configure so cygwin + Gtk gives a warning.

	Jan D.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:32:01 +0100
> From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan_Dj=E4rv?= <jan.h.d@swipnet.se>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> David Kastrup skrev:
> > Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> > 
> >>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> >>> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:20:03 +0100
> >>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >>>
> >>> Cygwin is basically an X11 build?
> >> Yes.
> 
> Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you can also build an Emacs as a w32 
> application with cygwin?

That's true, but this fact is irrelevant to the current discussion.
One can, indeed, use Cygwin to build a native Windows port of Emacs,
but such a build does not use Cygwin libraries and therefore cannot
use the Cygwin ports of X libraries and of GTK+.

IOW, such a build simply uses the Cygwin GCC and Binutils to produce a
binary that is linked to stock Windows runtime libraries, just like
the MinGW ports of GCC and Binutils.

Therefore, the problem you found in the Cygwin build wrt GTK+ and its
use of memalign can never happen in the native Windows build of Emacs,
no matter if that native build used Cygwin GCC or any other compiler.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jason Rumney]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Therefore, the problem you found in the Cygwin build wrt GTK+ and its
> use of memalign can never happen in the native Windows build of Emacs,
> no matter if that native build used Cygwin GCC or any other compiler.
>   

Not with GTK, but I think the underlying problem is the same as we 
encountered a few months ago trying to get Emacs compiling with the 
latest version of msvc when we tried linking with the DLL version of the 
Microsoft C Library.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:15:16 +0000
> From: Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>
> Cc: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan_Dj=E4rv?= <jan.h.d@swipnet.se>,
> 	emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Not with GTK, but I think the underlying problem is the same as we 
> encountered a few months ago trying to get Emacs compiling with the 
> latest version of msvc when we tried linking with the DLL version of the 
> Microsoft C Library.

Yes, of course.  The fact that symbol resolution is done at link time
on Windows (as opposed to runtime) is something we cannot change.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jan Djärv]

Jason Rumney skrev:
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Therefore, the problem you found in the Cygwin build wrt GTK+ and its
>> use of memalign can never happen in the native Windows build of Emacs,
>> no matter if that native build used Cygwin GCC or any other compiler.
>>   
> 
> Not with GTK, but I think the underlying problem is the same as we 
> encountered a few months ago trying to get Emacs compiling with the 
> latest version of msvc when we tried linking with the DLL version of the 
> Microsoft C Library.

How was that issue resolved?

	Jan D.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jason Rumney]

Jan Djärv wrote:
>> Not with GTK, but I think the underlying problem is the same as we 
>> encountered a few months ago trying to get Emacs compiling with the 
>> latest version of msvc when we tried linking with the DLL version of 
>> the Microsoft C Library.
>
> How was that issue resolved?

It wasn't. Emacs still does not build with the latest Microsoft 
compiler. The solution is to use static libraries rather than dynamic, 
but the multithreaded static library was missing some functions we need, 
and the singlethreaded static library, which is what we use with earlier 
versions of the Microsoft compiler, has been removed from the latest 
release.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Richard Stallman]

    It wasn't. Emacs still does not build with the latest Microsoft 
    compiler. The solution is to use static libraries rather than dynamic, 
    but the multithreaded static library was missing some functions we need, 
    and the singlethreaded static library, which is what we use with earlier 
    versions of the Microsoft compiler, has been removed from the latest 
    release.

What do you recommend we do now?  Should we simply say, "Microsoft's
compiler is broken, so use GCC"?

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Kevin Rodgers]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     It wasn't. Emacs still does not build with the latest Microsoft 
>     compiler. The solution is to use static libraries rather than dynamic, 
>     but the multithreaded static library was missing some functions we need, 
>     and the singlethreaded static library, which is what we use with earlier 
>     versions of the Microsoft compiler, has been removed from the latest 
>     release.
> 
> What do you recommend we do now?  Should we simply say, "Microsoft's
> compiler is broken, so use GCC"?

"Emacs is not forward-compatible with the Microsoft C Standard".

Freedom to innovate,

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jason Rumney]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     It wasn't. Emacs still does not build with the latest Microsoft 
>     compiler. The solution is to use static libraries rather than dynamic, 
>     but the multithreaded static library was missing some functions we need, 
>     and the singlethreaded static library, which is what we use with earlier 
>     versions of the Microsoft compiler, has been removed from the latest 
>     release.
>
> What do you recommend we do now?  Should we simply say, "Microsoft's
> compiler is broken, so use GCC"?
>   

We should document that the latest version of msvc will not work, yes. I 
don't see a point in putting a lot of effort into supporting it anymore. 
In the past there wasn't a suitable port of gcc to Windows so we put 
more effort into making sure Emacs compiled with every version of msvc.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:15:17 +0000
> From: Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>
> Cc: jan.h.d@swipnet.se, eliz@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >
> > What do you recommend we do now?  Should we simply say, "Microsoft's
> > compiler is broken, so use GCC"?
> 
> We should document that the latest version of msvc will not work, yes.

We already do say that, see nt/INSTALL.

Richard, this problem happens only with the latest version of the
Microsoft's compiler (and probably with all that will come later); the
older versions of MSVC are still supported by Emacs.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Richard Stallman]

    We already do say that, see nt/INSTALL.

    Richard, this problem happens only with the latest version of the
    Microsoft's compiler (and probably with all that will come later); the
    older versions of MSVC are still supported by Emacs.

Whatever the details are, the point is to state them.
Is nt/INSTALL clear and complete on this topic?

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Richard Stallman]

    We should document that the latest version of msvc will not work, yes. I 
    don't see a point in putting a lot of effort into supporting it anymore. 

Ok.  Can check MACHINES, PROBLEMS, and the installation instructions,
to make sure they all give the right advice?

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jason Rumney]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     We should document that the latest version of msvc will not work, yes. I 
>     don't see a point in putting a lot of effort into supporting it anymore. 
>
> Ok.  Can check MACHINES, PROBLEMS, and the installation instructions,
> to make sure they all give the right advice?
>   

I've added something to etc/PROBLEMS, and clarified what was already in 
nt/INSTALL slightly.
etc/MACHINES already points users to nt/INSTALL for detailed 
instructions for building on Windows.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Richard Stallman]

    I've added something to etc/PROBLEMS, and clarified what was already in 
    nt/INSTALL slightly.
    etc/MACHINES already points users to nt/INSTALL for detailed 
    instructions for building on Windows.

Thanks.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 22:27:47 -0500
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, jan.h.d@swipnet.se, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> What do you recommend we do now?  Should we simply say, "Microsoft's
> compiler is broken, so use GCC"?

The compiler per se isn't broken, it's just incompatible with Emacs's
defining its own malloc.  I agree with Jason that, since GCC is
available, it would be silly to spend our scarce resources on catering
to MSVC.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:29:28 +0100
> 
> I have no idea whether this should be considered a general
> showstopper.

I don't think it should be a showstopper.

> If it is not a showstopper, then Cygwin/Gtk+ should likely lead to a
> strong warning upon configuration, and not be the default for Cygwin.

Yes.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Richard Stallman]

    Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
    --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
    widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?

In principle maybe, but it isn't working well enough yet.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>     --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>     widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>
> In principle maybe, but it isn't working well enough yet.

Interesting.  In my experience, it is working quite better than the
Athena widgets.  Which is one of the reasons I have been using the
Gtk+ port for years now.  For example, it has no problems using
Unicode in the menus.

Could you provide examples about things that work worse than with
Athena widgets?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jan Djärv]

David Kastrup skrev:
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> 
>>     Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>>     --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>>     widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>>
>> In principle maybe, but it isn't working well enough yet.
> 
> Interesting.  In my experience, it is working quite better than the
> Athena widgets.  Which is one of the reasons I have been using the
> Gtk+ port for years now.  For example, it has no problems using
> Unicode in the menus.
> 
> Could you provide examples about things that work worse than with
> Athena widgets?
> 

The only thing I can think of is the display close bug that Gtk+ has.  Are 
there other problems that keeps us from having --with-gtk as the default?

	Jan D.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Nick Roberts]

 > > Interesting.  In my experience, it is working quite better than the
 > > Athena widgets.  Which is one of the reasons I have been using the
 > > Gtk+ port for years now.  For example, it has no problems using
 > > Unicode in the menus.

How many different platforms have you used it on?

 > > Could you provide examples about things that work worse than with
 > > Athena widgets?
 > > 
 > 
 > The only thing I can think of is the display close bug that Gtk+ has.  Are 
 > there other problems that keeps us from having --with-gtk as the default?

Surely it's not a matter of knowing that there are problems but not knowing
there aren't.  I, and perhaps many other users of Emacs in CVS. just compile
with the default toolkit and so haven't tested the GTK port at all.  Would it
not be better to make --with-gtk the default immediately _after_ the release so
it gets a thorough testing first?

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:

>  > > Interesting.  In my experience, it is working quite better than the
>  > > Athena widgets.  Which is one of the reasons I have been using the
>  > > Gtk+ port for years now.  For example, it has no problems using
>  > > Unicode in the menus.
>
> How many different platforms have you used it on?

Just GNU/Linux, but since it is thoroughly X11-based, I would not
expect lots of differences on the supported platforms, Cygwin
excepted.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Kim F. Storm]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:

> Would it
> not be better to make --with-gtk the default immediately _after_ the release so
> it gets a thorough testing first?

That's a good plan.

The risk is that there are older (or incomplete) versions of GTK out
there which don't work well with Emacs, so making --with-gtk the
default would make it harder to get a working Emacs on such systems.

Personally, I had a lot of problems trying to collect a working set of
GTK libraries when I tried to update my Redhat 9.0 to be able to build
--with-gtk.  I don't recall whether it succeeded or I gave up on it,
but I haven't tried to build --with-gtk since, and probably wont.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:
>
>> Would it
>> not be better to make --with-gtk the default immediately _after_ the release so
>> it gets a thorough testing first?
>
> That's a good plan.
>
> The risk is that there are older (or incomplete) versions of GTK out
> there which don't work well with Emacs, so making --with-gtk the
> default would make it harder to get a working Emacs on such systems.
>
> Personally, I had a lot of problems trying to collect a working set
> of GTK libraries when I tried to update my Redhat 9.0 to be able to
> build --with-gtk.  I don't recall whether it succeeded or I gave up
> on it, but I haven't tried to build --with-gtk since, and probably
> wont.

Sigh.  So the default Emacs installations for decades to come are
going to show off the utterly archaic Athena look, except on
proprietary platforms like Windows and MacosX.  Does Athena even allow
Unicode characters in menus (never mind about antialiasing them) by
now?

Consider me disappointed.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Kim F. Storm]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> Sigh.  So the default Emacs installations for decades to come are
> going to show off the utterly archaic Athena look, 

hgiS.  I happen to like that look (but maybe I look a bit archaic myself).

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Sigh.  So the default Emacs installations for decades to come are
>> going to show off the utterly archaic Athena look, 
>
> hgiS.  I happen to like that look (but maybe I look a bit archaic myself).

It does not blend into current desktops at all.  Which is the greatest
weakness of XEmacs' looks IMO (it looks pretty much the same on every
desktop, and pretty much out of kilter everywhere).

So we get well-integrated looks supporting antialiased Unicode menus
under Windows and MacOSX desktops by default, and a bunch of rather
crudely designed retrowidgets (and no "open file" widgets at all IIRC)
with pixelish menu fonts under GNU/Linux and other X11 based desktops.

Such a waste.  It's frustrating to advertise an editor that visually
appears to be stuck in the last millennium.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Romain Francoise]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> Such a waste.  It's frustrating to advertise an editor that
> visually appears to be stuck in the last millennium.

I agree!

FWIW, in Debian we offer both versions of Emacs 22 (X and GTK) and
out of 616 users, 373 have the GTK version installed, vs. 258 for
the vanilla X version[1][2].  And this despite the fact that the
default version is the X version: the GTK build must be requested
explicitly.

(I know that all statistics are useless, etc, etc.)

-- 
Romain Francoise <romain@orebokech.com> | The sea! the sea! the open
it's a miracle -- http://orebokech.com/ | sea! The blue, the fresh, the
                                        | ever free! --Bryan W. Procter


Footnotes:
[1]  http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=emacs-snapshot
[2]  (> (+ 373 258) 616) because you can have both versions
     installed concurrently.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Nick Roberts]

 > > Such a waste.  It's frustrating to advertise an editor that
 > > visually appears to be stuck in the last millennium.
 > 
 > I agree!
 > 
 > FWIW, in Debian we offer both versions of Emacs 22 (X and GTK) and
 > out of 616 users, 373 have the GTK version installed, vs. 258 for
 > the vanilla X version[1][2].  And this despite the fact that the
 > default version is the X version: the GTK build must be requested
 > explicitly.

That says to me that Debian should make the GTK version the standard
installation.  It's a different choice to ours though, because it's for one
platform only.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Christian Faulhammer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 394 bytes --]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>:

> That says to me that Debian should make the GTK version the standard
> installation.  It's a different choice to ours though, because it's
> for one platform only.

 From what I can see, Gentoo users mostly pick GTK+ version.  When 22
hits the stable tree it will have GTK+ as default when there is a
conflict between chosen widget sets.

V-Li

[-- Attachment #1.2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 142 bytes --]

_______________________________________________
Emacs-devel mailing list
Emacs-devel@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Andreas Schwab]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> Such a waste.  It's frustrating to advertise an editor that visually
> appears to be stuck in the last millennium.

Often less is more.  (I only use more when I don't have less.)

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Such a waste.  It's frustrating to advertise an editor that visually
>> appears to be stuck in the last millennium.
>
> Often less is more.  (I only use more when I don't have less.)

And your point was?  Last time I looked, less did not have a less
sophisticated graphical interface than more.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Andreas Schwab]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:
>
>> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>>> Such a waste.  It's frustrating to advertise an editor that visually
>>> appears to be stuck in the last millennium.
>>
>> Often less is more.  (I only use more when I don't have less.)
>
> And your point was?  Last time I looked, less did not have a less
> sophisticated graphical interface than more.

It has more functionality, but still a plain look.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:
>>
>>> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> Such a waste.  It's frustrating to advertise an editor that visually
>>>> appears to be stuck in the last millennium.
>>>
>>> Often less is more.  (I only use more when I don't have less.)
>>
>> And your point was?  Last time I looked, less did not have a less
>> sophisticated graphical interface than more.
>
> It has more functionality, but still a plain look.

Wrong.  It will use the terminal application's widgets, and in that
way will blend in right with the desktop.

As opposed to Emacs.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Sigh.  So the default Emacs installations for decades to come are going to
> show off the utterly archaic Athena look, except on proprietary platforms
> like Windows and MacosX.

I happen to find the Athena widget OK, but I see what you mean.

> Does Athena even allow Unicode characters in menus (never mind about
> antialiasing them) by now?

Yes, but only if your locale is using utf-8.

But IIRC Emacs doesn't take advantage of it, because the Xaw-fontset
handling seemed to have some problems at times, so we disabled it (after
I installed it, thinking it worked).  Actually, maybe it wasn't completely
disabled, and works as long as you explicitly set a fontset in Emacs's
Xresources.  Can't remember.

> Consider me disappointed.

I happen to find the multi-display problem of Gtk pretty serious (I use
multi-display mode fairly often, and in those cases I always need to close
the X connection without killing Emacs).


        Stefan

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:40:23 +0100
> Cc: Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>,
> 	Jan =?iso-8859-1?Q?Dj=E4rv?= <jan.h.d@swipnet.se>, rms@gnu.org,
> 	emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Sigh.  So the default Emacs installations for decades to come are
> going to show off the utterly archaic Athena look

I don't see why this should be inevitable.  I'd expect the
distributors of GNU/Linux systems (RH, Debian, Suse, etc.) to provide
packages built with several (perhaps even all) supported toolkits,
including GTK+, even if it's not the default.  At least, that's what I
would do if I were the individual responsible for packaging Emacs.

IOW, the GNU project does not provide binaries for GNU/Linux
distributions, so how those binaries are configured and built is not
up to us.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>> Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:40:23 +0100
>> Cc: Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>,
>> 	Jan =?iso-8859-1?Q?Dj=E4rv?= <jan.h.d@swipnet.se>, rms@gnu.org,
>> 	emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> 
>> Sigh.  So the default Emacs installations for decades to come are
>> going to show off the utterly archaic Athena look
>
> I don't see why this should be inevitable.  I'd expect the
> distributors of GNU/Linux systems (RH, Debian, Suse, etc.) to
> provide packages built with several (perhaps even all) supported
> toolkits, including GTK+, even if it's not the default.  At least,
> that's what I would do if I were the individual responsible for
> packaging Emacs.

We have currently packages in Debian called "emacs-snapshot" and
"emacs-snapshot-gtk"

apt-cache search emacs-snapshot

emacs-snapshot - The GNU Emacs editor (development snapshot)
emacs-snapshot-bin-common - The GNU Emacs editor's shared, architecture dependent files
emacs-snapshot-common - The GNU Emacs editor's common infrastructure
emacs-snapshot-el - GNU Emacs LISP (.el) files
emacs-snapshot-gtk - The GNU Emacs editor (with GTK+ 2.x support)
emacs-snapshot-nox - The GNU Emacs editor (without X support)

It is obvious that the _standard_ Emacs is the one built without extra
configure options, namely using the Athena toolkit.

At the current point of time, it appears that more than half the
people install the GTK+ snapshot.  However, if someone is going to do
a review, or if someone is going to provide a "standard installation",
he is going to go with the standard.

So the installations of reviewers and of site-wide installations from
sysadmins not using Emacs themselves are going to be Athena.

I am really not eager to see screenshots of that on modern GNU/Linux
desktops, in particular not side by side with screenshots on Windows
and MaxOSX desktops.

It will be quite embarrassing and look completely out of place.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Richard Stallman]

    The only thing I can think of is the display close bug that Gtk+ has.  Are 
    there other problems that keeps us from having --with-gtk as the default?

If you don't know of any, there probably aren't any.
But I feel anxious about changing this close to release.
Let's change it after the release.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     The only thing I can think of is the display close bug that Gtk+
>     has.  Are there other problems that keeps us from having
>     --with-gtk as the default?
>
> If you don't know of any, there probably aren't any.
> But I feel anxious about changing this close to release.

It is a pity I have not thought of it earlier.

> Let's change it after the release.

Such a shame.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Jan Djärv <jan.h.d@swipnet.se> writes:

> David Kastrup skrev:
>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>>>     Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>>>     --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>>>     widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>>>
>>> In principle maybe, but it isn't working well enough yet.
>>
>> Interesting.  In my experience, it is working quite better than the
>> Athena widgets.  Which is one of the reasons I have been using the
>> Gtk+ port for years now.  For example, it has no problems using
>> Unicode in the menus.
>>
>> Could you provide examples about things that work worse than with
>> Athena widgets?
>
> The only thing I can think of is the display close bug that Gtk+
> has.  Are there other problems that keeps us from having --with-gtk
> as the default?

As far as I remember from the discussions (and I might well be wrong),
the display close bug has been fixed in the newest Gtk+ versions.

So how would this strategy be?  If no toolkit is specified and GTK+ is
available, use GTK+ if it does not crash on display close.

Of course, at configure time, we might not have a DISPLAY available in
the first place.  Is there a good heuristic to figure out whether a
given GTK+ version would crash on close, even without having a display
in the first place to test it with?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jason Rumney]

David Kastrup wrote:
> So how would this strategy be?  If no toolkit is specified and GTK+ is
> available, use GTK+ if it does not crash on display close.
>   

These, and the changes necessary to avoid using GTK on Cygwin by 
default, are significant changes to the configure step, so they really 
need to wait until after release. I don't see any safe way to make GTK 
the default for this release. Maybe we should write to the maintainers 
of Emacs packages for the major GNU/Linux distributions and request that 
they make GTK the default downstream. Although the figures we've seen 
show that emacs-snapshot-gtk is already more popular than 
emacs-snapshot, users of both of those are already going out of their 
way to investigate and decide which package is best. Most users do not 
have that motivation, and will still be using the "emacs" package, and 
it is those users we want to get the best out of the box experience. 
People who build from source are probably in the bleeding-edge category, 
and will find out about --with-gtk on their own, so I don't think we 
need to worry so much about them

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup]

Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> So how would this strategy be?  If no toolkit is specified and GTK+ is
>> available, use GTK+ if it does not crash on display close.
>>   
>
> These, and the changes necessary to avoid using GTK on Cygwin by
> default, are significant changes to the configure step, so they
> really need to wait until after release.

Granted.  In return, let me ask you to stand aside while I holler in
frustration.

> I don't see any safe way to make GTK the default for this
> release. Maybe we should write to the maintainers of Emacs packages
> for the major GNU/Linux distributions and request that they make GTK
> the default downstream. Although the figures we've seen show that
> emacs-snapshot-gtk is already more popular than emacs-snapshot,
> users of both of those are already going out of their way to
> investigate and decide which package is best.

A small majority of those users who are audacious enough to install a
snapshot from unstable (well, or from Ubuntu universe).

I don't see why the packaging scheme (emacs-snapshot vs
emacs-snapshot-nox vs emacs-snapshot-gtk) should magically change once
emacs-snapshot-* becomes emacs22-*.  And once we have emacs22, the
ratio of "audacious and educated" vs "installs what seems easiest"
will sharply decline, and the latter class will be the one making
screen shots and reviews.

> Most users do not have that motivation, and will still be using the
> "emacs" package, and it is those users we want to get the best out
> of the box experience.

The only thing which we might have some tiny chance of success with is
asking to _not_ offer any emacs22 package at all, but merely
emacs22-xaw, emacs22-gtk, emacs22-nox.

And chances for that are slim if our own defaults prefer Xaw.

> People who build from source are probably in the bleeding-edge
> category, and will find out about --with-gtk on their own, so I
> don't think we need to worry so much about them

Some people who build from source are in the sysadmin/distribution
maintainer category, and won't mess with special configure options
that upstream obviously did not feel good about.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Jan Djärv]

David Kastrup skrev:
> Jan Djärv <jan.h.d@swipnet.se> writes:
> 
>> David Kastrup skrev:
>>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>>>
>>>>     Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>>>>     --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>>>>     widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>>>>
>>>> In principle maybe, but it isn't working well enough yet.
>>> Interesting.  In my experience, it is working quite better than the
>>> Athena widgets.  Which is one of the reasons I have been using the
>>> Gtk+ port for years now.  For example, it has no problems using
>>> Unicode in the menus.
>>>
>>> Could you provide examples about things that work worse than with
>>> Athena widgets?
>> The only thing I can think of is the display close bug that Gtk+
>> has.  Are there other problems that keeps us from having --with-gtk
>> as the default?
> 
> As far as I remember from the discussions (and I might well be wrong),
> the display close bug has been fixed in the newest Gtk+ versions.

Well, sortof.  There are still memoty leaks inside Gtk+, but it does not crash.

> 
> So how would this strategy be?  If no toolkit is specified and GTK+ is
> available, use GTK+ if it does not crash on display close.
> 
> Of course, at configure time, we might not have a DISPLAY available in
> the first place.  Is there a good heuristic to figure out whether a
> given GTK+ version would crash on close, even without having a display
> in the first place to test it with?
> 

In gtkutil.c we just check that Gtk+ is version 2.10 or newer.

	Jan D.

Re: --with-gtk as default?

[Ralf Angeli]

* David Kastrup (2007-02-28) writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>     Given that GNOME is considered part of the GNU project, should not be
>>     --with-gtk be the default for compiling Emacs rather than Athena
>>     widgets, at least where GTK+ is available?
>>
>> In principle maybe, but it isn't working well enough yet.
>
> Interesting.  In my experience, it is working quite better than the
> Athena widgets.  Which is one of the reasons I have been using the
> Gtk+ port for years now.  For example, it has no problems using
> Unicode in the menus.

And opening menus works better with GTK+ than with Athena.  It often
happened to me that a menu did not open upon clicking on it or it was
closed again immediately.  (Something like that.  It has been a long
time since I used an Emacs compiled with Athena widgets.)

-- 
Ralf