Support for pkgconfig

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On 15 Apr 2003, Mike Hearn wrote:

> I'm not really sure what it is then, a desktop based on Wine? Why would
> that be better than a desktop based on Qt or GTK?

Maybe. We do have a few big advantage. Unfortunately Qt is GPL and for
taht reason I don't think it's viable to become the standard for Linux
desktop. I'm not the only one thinking this way, that's why RedHat it's
pushing GTK. But regardless, this is another discussion.

Let's look at what we bring to the table:
  1. Stable API *and* ABI
  2. Well known programming environment
  3. A working, tested and accepted object embedding standard
  4. A lot of standardized interfaces lacking currently in Linux
  5. A LGPL, neat implementation

Let's see how the other compare:
  1. KDE: broke API compatibility on every major release, as
	  well as ABI compatibility. They claim they'll keep
	  API compatibility, but ABI compatibility is likely
	  to be broken in the (no so distant) future. This
	  is a big no-no for ISV, it certainly doesn't sit well
	  with me (mind you, I am a KDE user)
     GNOME: broke API compatibility from 1.x -> 2.x. It is
	  true, it looks like they're gonna stick to the new
	  one, and they are a lot more likely to maintain
	  binary compatibitity in the future. But porting
	  stuff to the 2.x API is going slowly, and the project
	  seems to have lost steam.

   2. KDE: it's C++, and a lot of people don't like that.
	  Yes, they do have bindings to other langauges,
	  but they often lag behind, it's simply not a viable
	  alternative.
      GNOME: they justs switched to the new 2.x API, it's
	  new, people by and large don't know it. It takes
	  a lot of time traning 100 of thousand of programmers.
	  However, it seems to be a decent API, so it is
	  a promissing alternative.

   3. KDE: KParts. Very non-standard, many people don't like it,
	  it is only KDE that can use it. I really doubt it
	  that it will ever become a commonly accepted standard,
	  no matter how nice it may be.
      GNOME: Bonobo. Copied fairly closely from the Windows world
	  why is it any better? In fact, the entire CORBA thing
	  sucks badly, we'd be a lot better of with binary compati-
	  bility with OLE. How cool would it be to have Word
	  embedded in gnumeric? :)

   4. We just have more APIs for stuff. Yeah, some of them are
      ugly, some not needed, but most are accepted and used by
      people, which is what matters in the end.

   5. KDE does not qualify unfortunately. GNOME is OK on this
      point.

I think we should change a bit our point of view. We are comparing
Win32 with GTK and QT. Not fair. We should compare it with Xlib,
and then it becomes clear that it gives us a lot more.

The scenario that like to happen (and is preferable from almost
any conceivable point of view) is to have Wine _below_ GTK, not
the other way around:



			    | Applications ....
			-----------------------------
			| GTK | QT | MFC | Mono | ...
		    ---------------------------------
		    | Wine 
	        -------------------------------------
		| Xlib | (other unix libs ...)
	    -----------------------------------------
	    | glibc | (other low level libs ...)
	---------------------------------------------
	| Linux kernel
	=============================================

This one will allow for a lot of interoperability, it's technically
feasible, it has all sorts of advantages. Having Wine use QT/GTK/etc.
is just bound to fail.

-- 
Dimi.