Re: --with-gtk as default?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

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