Re: Cleaning out old X11 toolkits?

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-02-13 10:52]:
> > Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2021 00:49:29 +0300
> > From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> > Cc: Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,
> >   chad <yandros@gmail.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > 
> > > > So itʼs ~80% GTK, 16% Lucid, and Motif can be removed.
> > > 
> > > Thanks for the analysis, and I agree that if we're going to remove
> > > anything Motif seems like the obvious candidate here.
> > > 
> > > One possible thing to take into consideration: Are there any systems
> > > (that we care about) where Motif is the only toolkit solution
> > > available?
> > 
> > Motif:
> > http://www.opengroup.org/desktop/motif.html
> > 
> > CDE:
> > https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/Home/
> > 
> > As Motif offers high degree of compatibility for various systems it
> > would not be good to remove it for the sake of users on those
> > systems.
> 
> Which systems are those where Motif is the _only_ toolkit available,
> though?  That was the question.  If you have the answer to that
> question, or some resource which could provide the answer, please
> tell.  I couldn't find the answer on the pages to which you pointed;
> did I miss something?  The pages look outdated, btw.

I do not believe there is any UNIX or UNIX-like system where there is
just one toolkit available.

In making that decision it is better to consider users, not systems.

Then we can say if there is no system exclusively using Lucid, let us
exclude Lucid, until you get only one system exclusively using Gtk,
then there will be no users neither of Lucid neither of
Motif/Lesstiff, of course. That is developers' decision.

When Lucid is removed there will be not any more 0.24% of Debian users
using Emacs with Lucid:
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=emacs

In that analogy there is no system that uses exclusively Lucid, should
it be removed?

Motif/Lesstif may be used more today on those systems where CDE is
used.

Maybe Debian decided not to provide Lesstif/Motif versions, so there
may not be the package any more.

Gentoo does use Motif:
https://packages.gentoo.org/useflags/motif and offers some
instructions:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xft_support_for_GNU_Emacs#Motif_toolkit
which are indications that there are users using Emacs with motif

There are some benefits (profits) and expenses (impacted users or
systems) in making such decisions.

Is the cost of keeping Motif/Lesstif too high? Maybe developers would
have additional work to cleanup sources, that is also the cost.

Is the principle in use that if certain function is not used by more
than XXX number of people, that such function should be removed?
Removing Motif in Emacs seem to be action that would impact many
involved. With many I think of thousands probable users, but not
hundreds of thousands. Maybe 10000 maybe 2000 maybe 20000 or more. Who
knows, I have not come to research number of users. But Gentoo users
are in that group.

I also believe that Motif version would be used on CDE for reasons of
consistency and harmony with the look a like of the system. Me
personally, in last 3 days I did want to use Motif, I just did not
find easy way to do it. In fact I am using Lucid because I was
thinking it is Motif. But I don't mind if you remove or not as I
failed in last 2 years to come to it, today I have realized it. Here I
am rather considering impact on other users globally.

Project activity of CDE:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/

,----
|  Matt Smith posted a comment on ticket #92
| I think it's still worthwhile to commit the fixes you've done since they 
still fix some obvious build issues (like fpic vs fPIC) and are a good starting 
point to figuring out the rest of the problems. I left dtwm running for quite 
awhile and it eventually crashed so I have two core dumps from this most recent 
attempt. One for dtwm and one for dtdbcache. Both attached.
| 2 days ago
| Lev Kujawski posted a comment on ticket #92
| Hi, I'm sorry to hear that CDE's not working for you. Do you think it is 
still worthwhile to commit the build fixes I have for SPARC? I'd be willing to 
look at any backtraces or core dumps if you have them.
| 2 days ago
| Matt Smith posted a comment on ticket #92
| Just a quick followup. make World.dev compiles with -pthread for tcl. 
Actually running it still fails though. I see dtdbcache segfaulting when I run 
/usr/dt/bin/Xsessionbut that's not the only problem. Just running dtwm or 
dtsession will hang with no error messages. I'll probably need to hit this with 
gdb but I don't really have the time right now to go further into it. Maybe in 
a month or two
| 3 days ago
| John Garry posted a comment on ticket #104
| Looks like many people are against this, i'm fine with it being optional 
trays ruin the aesthetic of cde. maybe it doesnt have to be added to cde though 
if stalonetray had a decoration or mode that made it look more like it belongs 
there. On 2/9/21, John Garry johngarry@users.sourceforge.net wrote: 
[tickets:#104] Possible system try blended into the bar? Status: open Created: 
Tue Feb 09, 2021 07:19 AM UTC by John Garry Last Updated: Tue Feb 09, 2021 
07:19 AM UTC Owner: nobody So far, each time i've...
| 1 week ago
| Jon Trulson committed [3685f6]
| Purge unused Freetype dependency from CDE
`----

,----
| Original Reference Platforms
| 
| In 1999 the reference platforms on which CDE was built were;
| Supplier      Platform        OS
| Digital       AlphaStation 200        Digital UNIX V4.0
| Fujitsu       DS/90 7000      UXP/DS V20L10
| HP    HP9000/7xx      HP-UX 10.01
| IBM   RS/6000         AIX 4.2
| Novell        Intel 486/Pentium       UnixWare 2.02
| Sun   SPARCstation    Solaris 2.4
`----

Maybe those platforms are where Emacs may play well in its Motif
version as to be harmonized with the rest of the desktop system used
like CDE?

How many users of those platforms are there I would not know, but
there could be some. Would they be able to compile software? Maybe
their settings and packages would be impacted, and administrators
would have hard time in changing definitions on how to compile new
Emacs.

Evidence is there that:

- CDE is still under development, few days ago, unless the Sourceforge
  database is wrong or not functional

- There are reasons why CDE works and it probably works on those
  platforms and GNU/Linux as well, even if not popular by majority,
  but it works.

- that there are Gentoo instructions for Emacs on Lesstif/Motif for
  Gentoo users, I have not verified other GNU/Linux distributions

Deducing by the above facts, number of users could be in thousands. 

Basically you could consider profit and expenses in developer
terms. If it is too much of an expense to keep Lesstif/Motif version
then you may enforce it over probably some few thousands of Emacs
Motif users. But maybe Emacs team and Emacs community can profit and
benefit by providing support for various toolkits and not cutting that
support too early. That sounds more friendly to me.

I would apply that formula, does it give more benefits to provide
Motif/Lesstif versions and open up harmonization or easier use on
those other platforms and let Gentoo and other users in peace?

Or maybe those users using Motif/Lesstif versions could swallow it?
Maybe those platforms which don't work same as GNU/Linux better adopt
Gtk to run Emacs on their system? That is maybe more benefit then
expense? Maybe administrators of those platforms and package
maintainers better learn how to compile Emacs with Gtk or Lucid. Maybe
1000 users is too little, why bother? Then employ Emacs developers to
remove any traces of Motif as it was costly keeping them in sources?

Those are questions to consider by development IMHO.

I do remember that back in time Emacs development was proud that it
works on so many systems. Now that changed. Compatibilities and wider
adoption seem to be of less importance today. All efforts move what is
most popular while forgetting good and well established technologies.

I live in a different surprising new world. Maybe tomorrow NetBSD will
decide not to be compatible with XX+ platforms and will just work for
PC, even that would not be surprising any more.

Widening adoption drives innovation. Narrowing features, excluding
such features, does not grow innovation.

Jean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD