Re: Platform independent graphical display for Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: stefankangas@gmail.com, luangruo@yahoo.com, drew.adams@oracle.com,
>  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2021 13:57:40 +0200
> 
> > So you'd suggest to the OP to develop the software in the hope that
> > all of the above will happen?  And if it doesn't, just agree for the
> > results to be abandoned?  The OP would have to agree to that.
> 
> I suppose.
> 
> And I think the BeOS port had been accepted under the same conditions 
> recently.

Because we did have someone who volunteered, and because nothing would
be lost on platforms of interest to us if the BeOS port bitrots.

> > And I fail to see how that solves the long-term maintenance problem,
> > once we do accept the code.  This happened in the past, more than
> > once.
> 
> We should be able to drop unmaintained ports.

Once again, a single toolkit on which all the platforms depend cannot
be dropped.  So it's a huge difference from the BeOS port.

> Even if we're reluctant, in general, to remove features that someone
> is using. After all, the history of changes is saved, so as soon as
> a volunteer arrives to resurrect it, they can start with 'git
> revert' and continue.

That's generally not a practical possibility, because the code changes
very rapidly, and what you revert won't even compile in most cases.

> > What would be the motivation for such a switch, as opposed to just
> > incrementally improving the existing no-toolkit build?  Come to think
> > of that, what exactly is the difference between these two
> > alternatives?
> 
> In my mind, the new port would, similar to Blender, or VS Code, or IDEA, 
> have their own set of widgets for menus, buttons, tabs, etc, which would 
> remain consistent across platforms and look at least somewhat 
> fresh/modern-ish. And it would support HiDPI scaling.

So your dream is even more in the fantasy-land than I thought.  Of
course, even such fantasies could come true if we have someone to do
the job and stick around to keep it working.